Grazed from NetworkWorld. Author: Brandon Butler.

Google, attempting to build its reputation as an enterprise and developer-focused cloud computing provider, today said its cloud platform is open for anyone to signup for, and can be used with a new by-the-minute billing scheme. Google Compute Engine (GCE) is a pure-play infrastructure as a service (IaaS) offering that includes both virtual machine and storage pay-as-you-go resources. The service has been in limited beta – first available through invite-only, and then more recently only with a Gold Support package, which cost $400 per month. Today, GCE is open for shop in an “open preview,” meaning anyone can sign up to use it though. (Check out Google's cloud platform blog.)

In addition to the GCE news, Google also launched a cloud database for non-relational database, new security measures for its cloud, and support for a new language on its Google App Engine platform as a service (PaaS). “Over the last 14 years we have been developing some of the best infrastructure in the world to power Google’s global-scale services,” wrote Urs Hölzle, Google’s senior vice president for technical infrastructure at Google, and one of its chief cloud builders...

Grazed from MarketWire. Author: PR Announcement.

Engine Yard, the leading Platform as a Service (PaaS), today announced general availability of PHP on Engine Yard Cloud. Building on its commitment to transform cloud application development, Engine Yard offers increased levels of choice, control and management to PHP developers and DevOps professionals. Engine Yard also introduced support for Riak, the distributed, highly available database from Basho. Both of these announcements coincide with reductions in Engine Yard pricing that make it even easier to get started and scale applications.

"As a strong advocate of open source technology, and with our acquisition of Orchestra in 2011, PHP has been a key part of our vision for a flexible application cloud, which is now a reality with our release of PHP on Engine Yard Cloud," said Bill Platt, senior vice president of operations at Engine Yard. "PHP developers will benefit from our leading commercial grade platform and world class support services, while taking advantage of the new innovative technologies that continue to be rolled into Engine Yard Cloud."...

Grazed from MarketWatch. Author: PR Announcement.

ActiveState(R), whose software enables developers and enterprises to innovate from code to cloud, today announced the release of Stackato(R) 2.10, the next evolution of the company's groundbreaking private Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) technology for the agile enterprise. Enterprise cloud leaders like HP, ExactTarget, and Mozilla use Stackato to get to market faster, be more productive, save money, and innovate.

Highlighting this Stackato release is a new Oracle DB add-on, allowing enterprise developers to easily create and deploy applications that depend on an Oracle back-end, without IT assistance. Additional updates include more efficient log-streaming (with Logyard), improved security, an even better web management console user interface, and upgrades to PostgreSQL, Perl, Node.js, MongoDB, uWSGI, and the Mono add-on for .NET applications...

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Chris Talbot.

Cyber Innovation Labs and NEC have partnered to deploy the next generation of Big Data solutions. Using Cyber Innovations Labs' Cloud in a Vault (CiaV) offering and NEC's Nblock integrated IT infrastructure, the two companies are aiming to help enterprises deploy Big Data solutions.

IaaS provider Cyber Innovation Labs' CiaV offering is a dedicated, fully managed and scalable private cloud that takes NEC's Nblock IT infrastructure and combines it with security, compliance and monitoring in a hosted environment. According to the two companies, this enables organizations to "quickly and easily align business projects with infrastructure costs by allowing them to consume only the infrastructure they need, incurring only monthly operational expenses and zero capital expenses for equipment."...

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Chris Talbot.

Hadoop and Big Data specialist MapR Technologies will be expanding its global presence a lot quicker thanks to a new round of funding that has put $30 million in the company's coffers. The funding was led by new investor Mayfield Fund, but also includes existing investors Lightspeed Venture Partners, NEA and Redpoint Ventures. In total, MapR has raised $59 million in funding.

The new funding will be used for accelerating MapR's global expansion and continued research development. With this latest round of funding, MapR's first goal will be expansion into the Asia-Pacific region to serve what it described as a "growing customer base in the region." The company has already expanded into Europe, opening offices in 2012 in London and Munich...

Grazed from CloudTweaks. Author: John Omwamba.

The major premise of cloud actionable analytics is having a budget-worthy processor and dedicated staff. The agility of businesses lies in the way they analyze their operations in and out. They have to strategize on ways to improve their productivity while cutting costs. In the past, it took data outsourcing to get a candid view of where the company stood and how it was likely to perform in coming years. This was costly: besides, the equipment was not as minimalist or set for big data projects like they are now. More so, the storage expenditure was not on a pay-as-you go platform as they are now.

This kind of analytics is a significant cloud trend, because, as Gartner predicts, it will help corporate entities presage what is going to happen to them. This is unlike before when a company had to toil using past contexts with a subset of formulae to gain a breakthrough. There are several influences that one can explore regarding actionable analytics on cloud computing and their role in tomorrow’s company:...

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Chris Talbot.

Red Hat is outlining its five big data "must haves" with a new strategy that pushes ahead with its cloud big data analytics workload plans for the next year or so. With a new Apache Hadoop plugin that connects Red Hat storage products into Hadoop open platforms, the company is looking to help partners provide customers with a comprehensive big data solutions portfolio.

"Red Hat is uniquely positioned to excel in enterprise big data solutions, a market that IDC expects to grow from $6 billion in 2011 to $23.8 billion in 2016.2 Red Hat is one of the very few infrastructure providers that can deliver a comprehensive big data solution because of the breadth of its infrastructure solutions and application platforms for on-premises or cloud delivery models. As a leading contributor to open source communities developing essential technologies for the big data IT stack – from Linux to OpenStack Origin and Gluster – Red Hat will continue to play a pivotal role in in Big Data," said Ashish Nadkarni, research director of storage systems and co-lead of Big Data Global Overview at IDC, in a prepared statement...

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Chris Talbot.

Riverbed Technology (NASDAQ: RVBD) is rolling out the next incremental version of its virtual Whitewater appliance. Whitewater Operating System (WWOS) 2.1 introduces larger virtual appliances than were previously available, but the biggest news is that Whitewater now supports Amazon Glacier archival storage.

Jerome Noll, director of products and marketing for the Whitewater product family at Riverbed Technology, told Talkin' Cloud that the company has been gaining a lot of interest from customers, who now number in "the triple digits." And what's happening, he said, is customers are going to Riverbed and its VARs to buy one appliance, and then later beefing up their systems with additional appliances...

Grazed from DazeInfo. Author: Abhishek Singh.

IBM Q4 2012 earnings report is now globally available. The company has reported a GAAP net income of $5.8 billion for Q4 2012, up 6% from the same quarter of the previous year. On the other side, its Non-GAAP net income was $6.1 billion in Q4 2012. Last year, the company outstandingly performed in BRIC countries–Brazil, Russia, India and China. Really, Q4 2012 was one of the best quarters for the company over the last couple of years.

IBM Q4 2012 Earnings:
IBM has reported revenues of $29.3 billion in Q4 2012, down 1% from $29.5 billion in Q4, 2011. The company’s earnings per share were $5.39 in Q4 2012, up from $4.71 billion in the last year. Furthermore, the company’s net income for the year, ended December 31, 2012 – was $16.6 billion, increased from $15.9 billion from the prior year. In addition, operating (non-GAAP) net income was $17.6 billion in Q4 2012, up 8% from $16.3 billion in 2011...

Grazed from CRN. Author: Rick Whiting.

Reaping the benefits of its initiatives in cloud computing, mobile technology and its HANA in-memory database, software giant SAP (NYSE:SAP) Wednesday reported double-digit growth for its fourth-quarter and fiscal 2012 sales. SAP also is undergoing a reorganization and centralization of its sales operations, putting both channel sales and regional direct sales under Rob Enslin, president of global operations.

SAP reported total revenue of 5.0 billion Euros (U.S. $6.7 billion) for the fourth quarter ended Dec. 31, up 12 percent from 4.5 billion Euros (U.S. $6.0 billion) in the same period one year earlier. After-tax profits, however dropped 8 percent to 1.1 billion Euros (U.S. $1.5 billion) from 1.2 billion Euros (U.S. $1.6 billion) one year earlier...