Cloud News: Week In Review: December 7th, 2012 For anyone who was still harboring doubts about the importance of the Cloud this week has brought news and changes that have sealed the extraordinary influence the Cloud has on our lives. From CPAs who are planning to adopt their business strategies to factor in the Cloud, to Intel who has recently gave a statement about how the ‘Big Four’ Cloud customers are influencing their hardware development, every business is somehow being touched by it or is even thriving on expanding the range of services that the Cloud can provide. CPA Role Will Change to Include the Cloud
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What’s Special about the Joyent Funding Round? There is nothing special about small companies or startups getting funding, other than the obvious vindication of the opportunities in cloud computing. In fact, such funding stories have been the focus of several articles here (See the latest one: Cloud Computing Startups Raise Big Money: UPDATE 8). However, there’s something different, and in my opinion, special, about the $85 million round of funding closed by San Francisco cloud services provider Joyent (http://www.joyent.com/). What’s special about this round of external financing is not the amount (which, by prevailing standards, is quite impressive) or the
Cloud Apps of the Week: From College to Cancer Cures Matchbox An erstwhile venture capitalist and experienced college admissions officer in might have just revolutionized the pursuit of higher education, via the cloud. As a staff member of the MIT Sloan School of Management’s admissions team, Stephen Marcus experienced firsthand the vexing process of reviewing applications for prospective candidates. He invented Matchbox out of his Matchbox corrals and streamlines the data associated with a college application; the application makes data easily accessible on an iPad, widely used by on-the-go admissions pros. The infinite space in the cloud allowsMatchbox to perform this action for
Ninefold and Rackspace Battle for Australian Startup Mind Space Last month American cloud computing service provider Rackspace, in an effort to expand its presence in the Australian market, announced a deal with early stage venture capitalists Pollenizer to offer Australian start-ups free hosting worth $2,000 a month for their first year of operations. Now, Rackspace’s Australian rival Ninefold has announced an identical scheme, also in partnership with Pollenizer and another incubator Starmate. While Rackspace’s offer had been introduced in the US much earlier as the Rackspace Startup Program (See: Why is Rackspace targeting Startups? ), it’s something new in Australia.
Can Box.net Overtake Microsoft SharePoint? If Microsoft Windows is the dominant operating system in the world and Microsoft Office the most popular productivity suite, Microsoft SharePoint is the preeminent file sharing platform. However, after years of dominance, a new challenger has appeared in the form of Box.net. As things stand today, Box.net with 7 million customers is just a pretender to the throne occupied by SharePoint with 125 million customers. However, with Box.net’s user base increasing by 250,000 every month and its current clientele including 350 companies in the Fortune 500 list, Microsoft may have cause for worry. What’s more,
Cloud Computing Startups Raise Big Money Startups have been an area of focus for this website, and not without reason. With cloud computing being such a new technology, there is a lot of innovation taking place. And startups are often the birthplaces of innovation. However, innovation, like most things in life, requires money, at least initially, in order to flourish. That is where venture financing comes into play. Thankfully for cloud computing startups, there are many financiers willing to back them. Here’s a recap of some recent developments in this area. Box.net: This is a company that I had covered
Fifth Annual Amazon Web Services “Start-Up Challenge” Begins Today for Start-Ups Worldwide Fifteen regional prizes and one global grand prize to be awarded to start-ups with the most innovative businesses built in the AWS cloud SEATTLE, WASHINGTON, Aug 01, 2011 – Amazon Web Services LLC (AWS), an Amazon.com company, today announced the call for entries to the fifth annual AWS Start-Up Challenge, a contest to recognize innovative start-ups that are built on AWS’s cloud computing platform. AWS has expanded the Start-Up Challenge worldwide and will choose a total of 15 regional semi-finalists from the Americas, Asia Pacific, Europe, the Middle East
What Bromium’s Funding Means for Cloud Security What can prompt three experienced professionals in the IT industry – former CTO and SVP of engineering at Phoenix Technologies Gaurav Banga, former CTO of the Data Center & Cloud Division of Citrix Simon Crosby, and former VP of advanced products in the Virtualization and Management Division at Citrix Ian Pratt – to abandon established careers and get together to form a new company? More importantly, what can prompt three experienced venture capitalist funds – Andreessen Horowitz, Ignition Partners, and Lightspeed Venture Partners – to invest $9.2 million in the aforementioned company? The
