Satya Nadella has the brains and experience to become Microsoft’s CEO — but does he have the pointy tongue of Gates or Ballmer? Match these Microsoft CEO quotes to their outspoken owners. Microsoft In 2013: 7 Lessons Learned (Click image for larger view and for slideshow.) Microsoft’s new CEO Satya Nadella has some big shoes to fill. He faces great expectations with regards to innovation and profit, his predecessors set the bar very high, yada yada yada… But that is not what I’m talking about. Microsoft’s new leader will play follow-as much as two of one of the most prolifically quotable CEOs in history. Nadella, displaying a passion for cricket, a powerful intellect, and a borderline-hipster wardrobe, is already carving out an identity. But he has nothing at the cult of personality that formed around Gates. When a satirical website claimed the Microsoft founder told a reporter, “I provide you with 1,000,000 bucks, and that i get to sever your arm here,” and “Let’s accept... Read More »

Enterprises see the sunshine on big data opportunities. It is only an issue of time before mainstream data-management environments evolve. What’s the status of the large data revolution? Fresh clues emerged with week with Hadoop vendor Cloudera scoring a $160 million round a chance capital funding, big data analytics company Platfora getting a $38 million capital infusion, and Allied Market Research issuing an estimate that the $2 billion Hadoop ecosystem (as measured in 2013) will quickly grow to $50 billion by 2020. Citing that heady $50 billion stat, Rob Bearden, CEO of Cloudera-rival Hortonworks, said that he expects see “60%, 70%, 80%” of enterprise data stepping into Hadoop over the approaching years. Speaking at this week’s GigaOM Structure Data big data event in Long island, Bearden said Hadoop changes the economics of managing data, giving companies a sought-after “single platform that manages all data types and structures.” Structure keynoter Paul Maritz, CEO of EMC-spinoff Pivotal, said his company is targeted on making Hadoop enterprise-ready so... Read More »

Platform-as-a-service differs from IaaS. IBM’s Ric Telford predicts what we’ll see because it matures in the course of the next two years. More than two years ago I wrote the blog post “PaaS Comes Of Age,” where I posited we were entering a platform-as-a-service era — one by which platform services would become the critical cloud capability for enterprises. a whole lot has happened since I wrote that post, and now we’re seeing this “coming of age” story continue into maturity. For the uninitiated, PaaS could be considered a delivery model for functionality you traditionally go along with middleware. Not so coincidently, it also sits inside the “middle” of the cloud stack, between infrastructure-as-a-service and software-as-a-service. PaaS can deliver any combination of application “development” and “runtime” services from the cloud, in some sort of measured model (subscription, pay-as-you-go, etc). Today there are quite a number of PaaS services, such a lot of that it’s hard to maintain them straight. Many companies have converged in this... Read More »

SmartCloud Data Virtualization puts virtualized copies of application data within the cloud, then makes it available wherever it’s most needed. IBM Predicts Next 5 Life-Changing Tech Innovations (Click image for larger view.) IBM has launched SmartCloud Data Virtualization, a cloud storage service that depends Actifio’s Virtual Data Pipeline technology. Actifio’s “one golden copy” option to data may entice enterprises that need multiple copies of every application’s data but try to scale back storage costs. IBM previously recommended a few of its customers store data in now-defunct Nirvanix’s cloud datacenters. Its partnership with Actifio acknowledges that cloud storage have to be backed by stronger vendors with more sophisticated data management systems. SmartCloud Data Virtualization is IBM’s first major foray into data management in accordance with cloud services since Nirvanix declared bankruptcy last October. Actifio can put a front end on multiple applications, each with its own storage system, through IBM’s SmartCloud Data Virtualization service. Enterprise users of the info continue to access it the identical... Read More »

Three initiatives meant to enhance government IT security are languishing from funding challenges, yet CIOs are asked to deliver at the promise of shared services. 6 Cool Apps From Uncle Sam (Click image for larger view and slideshow.) The Obama administration has made an unprecedented commitment to creating government data driven. It has also made cybersecurity a centerpiece of its IT strategy. However it now finds itself mired in controversy on both fronts.   The less-than-stellar rollout of the web site designed to support the Affordable Care Act was a tremendous embarrassment, while the revelations surrounding NSA surveillance methods has cast doubts on the administration’s commitment to privacy as a keystone of national policy. These two story lines symbolize among the many challenges the administration faces in balancing the federal government’s IT investments: It must maintain public support for a sturdy cyberdefense without losing specialize in the civilian agency systems which are the general public interface with “e-government,” but which also must be made safer.   They... Read More »