Post-mortem analysis says Friday’s cloud service outage was because of bad script in routine maintenance update. Deadly Downtime: The Worst Network Outages Of 2013 (click image for larger view and for slideshow) Dropbox says it knows tips on how to avoid the kind of outage that struck its service Friday: Someday, this may check the state of its servers before making additions to their code. That will prevent an operating system update from being applied to a running production server, a process that typically leads to the server shutting down. Enterprise users who rely upon Dropbox for offsite storage already understand the primary. Some can be wondering whether Dropbox has the operational smarts to be relied upon for the long run. Dropbox was seeking to upgrade some servers’ operating systems Friday evening in “a routine maintenance episode” when a buggy script caused probably the most updates to be applied to production servers, a move that ended in the upkeep effort being anything but routine. Dropbox... Read More »

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

Dell boosts its services and consulting business through a partnership with cloud ERP vendor NetSuite. 16 Top Big Data Analytics Platforms (Click image for larger view and slideshow.) Dell want and desires more services and consulting business to offset its low-margin PC business. It’s partnering with cloud ERP vendor NetSuite, hoping to accelerate and be a part of that company’s fast growth. In a deal announced Tuesday, Dell has expanded its existing relationship with NetSuite by becoming a reseller and implementation partner. The move gives NetSuite more sales and implementation feet in the street while giving Dell more opportunities to provide its consulting and alertness services. One strong fit between Dell and NetSuite is Dell Boomi, a cloud-based data-integration service that’s already helping NetSuite customers make connections between cloud services and on-premises systems and knowledge stores. The Boomi AtomSphere app for NetSuite provides an “extensive library of pre-built connectors for NetSuite-to-SaaS and NetSuite-to-on-premise integrations,” in line with an announcement from Dell. [Want more on software... Read More »

Former chief customer officer aims to shake off investor doubts about Rackspace’s cloud service fortunes. Rackspace has named chief customer officer Taylor Rhodes its new president after a six-month stretch within which its CEO Lanham Napier served in both roles. Rhodes’s ascension is an indication that Rackspace wants all executive positions filled and all hands on deck because it battles for market share against Amazon, Google, and other cloud service providers. Investors appear pessimistic: Rackspace stock dropped from $36.59 to $35.83, off 2%, at the news. It’s well below 1/2 its 52-week high of $81.36 per share. CEO Napier assumed the president’s post on the end of July when Lew Moorman, president and chief strategy officer, resigned. Moorman remains a member of the board but left his position “to spend more time with my family,” consistent with a blog he posted July 25. Moorman’s wife had just completed a successful cancer surgery, and his eldest daughter was facing continuing illnesses. [Learn more about how Rackspace’s... Read More »