Amazon Web Services will kick off cloud services in China inside the first quarter of 2014. It may learn from the hurdles Microsoft and Google have jumped. Top 10 Cloud Fiascos (click image for larger view) Last May Microsoft established two Azure cloud datacenters in China. Apple is at the verge of changing into the #1 smartphone vendor within the country. If Microsoft, Apple, and Nixon can visit China, Amazon Web Services thinks it may be there, too. The world’s second largest economy is just too big for a corporation with Amazon’s ambitions to disregard. Amazon will launch numerous its cloud services in “limited preview” in its new Beijing region within the first quarter of 2014. Only selected businesses with customers or operations in China should be allowed to apply the services while they continue to be in limited preview. But that would turn into general availability later inside the year. China have been a tough environment for giant Web companies, akin to Google, to... Read More »

IBM execs tout Watson-as-a-Service, venture funding to tech startups in California. Lance Crosby, CEO of IBM’s cloud unit SoftLayer is traveling up and down the Silicon Valley meeting with startups. But his mission isn’t to get them to show to IBM for cloud services, although startups typically show a robust affinity for using cloud infrastructure. Rather, he’s busy introducing IBM’s 14-year-old venture capital unit, which has $100 million to speculate in firms that see new business opportunities from IBM’s Watson analytics system. SoftLayer is now offering Watson-as-a-Service out of 3 of its cloud centers — Dallas, London, and Hong Kong  — Crosby said during a trip to InformationWeek offices Wednesday March 5. “We moved the Watson Group to Manhattan’s Silicon Ally, its tech hub,” noted Crosby. That puts 2,000 Watson developers, maintainers, product managers, and marketers next to at least one of the best concentrations of startups at the East Coast. IBM has previously partnered with John Hopkins University to explore what Watson can do when... Read More »

NFL sponsor SAP is bringing a massive data-analysis expo to ‘Super Bowl Boulevard’ on New York’s Times Square. IBM Predicts Next 5 Life-Changing Tech Innovations (Click image for larger view.) SAP is hoping to provide football fans some idea of what its technology is all about in the course of the SAP Stats Zone, an interactive exhibition set to seem on the corner of 42nd Street and Broadway from January 29 through Super Bowl Sunday. SAP is one in all eight NFL sponsors bringing interactive exhibits to Super Bowl Boulevard, a 13-block stretch of Broadway from 34th Street to 47th Street that may be temporarily closed off to vehicles and packed with football-related exhibits. The NFL is hosting a league apparel shop at Macy’s Herald Square, an autograph and concert stage at 39th Street, and a field-goal kicking challenge on Times Square among other exhibits. SAP’s Stats Zone should be joined by sponsor exhibits by Papa John’s Pizza, Bridgestone tires, Pepsi, Snickers,... Read More »

Enterprises can take a key lesson from game-changing tools like Flipboard and Nest Thermostat: Disrupt but don’t break. I stay amazed by the rapid pace of innovation in virtually every technology market. At any time when you blink, it sort of feels there’s another startup taking up the old guard.  Conventional wisdom in technology is it’s essential to abandon the prevailing order when faced with a brand new bright and glossy product. However, as someone who has worked with both startups and global leaders, i do know it can’t be an either/or approach. Scrapping years or decades of investment in infrastructure is foolish, and the innovators who’re winning are building their breakthrough tools on top of proven technologies. Two great examples are products i take advantage of and love: Flipboard and Nest Thermostat. [Buying business software could be tricky business. Read: 6 Enduring Truths About Selecting Enterprise Software.] By nature, Nest and Flipboard improve upon existing products rather than looking to replace them. For instance,... Read More »

As allies and competitors line up behind the hot Cloud Foundry Foundation, where does that leave Red Hat and its support of OpenStack and Project Solum? Top 10 Cloud Fiascos (Click image for larger view and slideshow.) There’s a fight brewing over which kind of open-source platform-as-a-service should command developer loyalties and function the foundation for future cloud applications. Should or not it’s native to the major open-source cloud project, OpenStack, and work closely with OpenStack components? Or is it more than enough that it runs on top of OpenStack but has a broad mixture of powerful backers to sponsor its development? Red Hat was depending on the previous and dealing to mix its OpenShift PaaS and a brand new OpenStack project, Solum, to form a formidable new PaaS platform. Red Hat is a number one contributor to OpenStack, and a collection of Red Hat engineers jumped into Project Solum within hours of its announcement by Rackspace. The mix of OpenShift and Solum was a... Read More »