IaaS for Azure and inclusion of cloud use in enterprise agreements has helped Microsoft’s cloud services gain momentum, says general manager Mike Neil.

Adds new set of Hyperscale servers equipped with SSDs to handle most ambitious public cloud users. 16 Top Big Data Analytics Platforms (Click image for larger view and slideshow.) CenturyLink Cloud desires to compete for the massive data users, high-traffic websites, and distributed analytics applications that many enterprises run on and off during the month. So on Wednesday the corporate is launching a brand new set of Hyperscale virtual servers to deal with these most ambitious public cloud uses. Its Hyperscale virtual servers come equipped with solid state drives — not a mixture of flash and difficult drives, but 100% flash — to maximise the servers’ I/O throughput regardless of how large the applying. The flash is embedded alongside the RAM in dual in-line memory slots at the motherboard of the physical host itself, a trick IBM performed in its new class of X6 servers. The Hyperscale SSDs are closely related to a number within the same rack rather then on a storage area network... Read More »

NRF Big Show 2014 serves up a wealth of recommendation for retail tech leaders trying to embrace digital commerce, adopt a mobile-first strategy, and reap the benefits of big data. Big challenges for retail tech decision makersPity the poor retail CIO. There’s pressure to support new mobile strategies while also thwarting showrooming. They’re asked to personalize the client experience, but beware of those privacy pitfalls. They need to get agile, perhaps by getting into the cloud, but then the most recent data-breach headline puts their security strategy under a microscope. The National Retail Federation’s Big Show, Jan. 12-15, in Long island, puts a focus at the often contradictory technology priorities and trends facing the fashionable retailer. The most important push remains the hunt for what Allan Smith, CIO of clothing maker and retailer Lululemon, calls the “single customer experience.” That is the most recent name for the ten-plus-year-old quest to bring order and consistency to a retail experience that spans physical stores, web stores, call centers, email... Read More »

Platform-as-a-service is just not dead — Red Hat exec Krishnan Subramanian says it has evolved to a stronger state. Recently a brand new meme has started one of the cloud chatterati: the death of PaaS, or PaaS morphing into functionality for IaaS or PaaS. This discussion peaked when an analyst from 451 Research wrote a report titled “Is PaaS becoming only a feature of IaaS?” (subscription required). An example of ways others have picked up the theme appeared Jan. 14 in Network World. In today’s fast-evolving technology world, it’s natural for pundits to jot down premature obituaries, but it also includes important to peer deeper and understand the cause of their confusion. One explanation is that PaaS has gone beyond hype and reached a brand new level of maturity. Last year, many enterprises adopted PaaS for his or her production workloads, but 2013 was also the year when the demarcation between two flavors of PaaS became clear. Another reason is the method adopted by cloud... Read More »