How Cisco Moved Along to PaaS CIO. Having on-demand virtual machines for employees is one thing, but that wasn't enough for networking giant Cisco, says Rodrigo Flores, an enterprise architect in the company's intelligent automation business unit. Last year Cisco launched what Flores calls one of the most advanced private cloud networks in the world, giving Cisco's 60,000 employees access to a shopping cart of virtual machine types. This infrastructure as a service (IaaS) cloud has offerings ranging from mirco instances of anywhere from one to five VMs to jumbo instances of 250 VMs, with 500 CPUs and up to 1TB of RAM. After launching the Cisco IT elastic infrastructure services, code-named CITEIS, Flores says there was a collective thinking internally of, "What's next? " For Cisco, it was platform as a service (PaaS). DR IN THE CLOUD: Vendors jump in, enterprises wade To continue reading, register here to become an Insider It's FREE to join MORE CLOUD: OpenStack releases Folsom with heavy dose of virtual networking baked in.
SkyDrive Moves Out of Beta and Gets 'Modern' Look. News SkyDrive Moves Out of Beta and Gets 'Modern' Look Microsoft announced on Tuesday that its SkyDrive cloud storage solution for consumers has moved beyond the preview stage. The new updates to the service were being pushed down to users as of yesterday. The updates add a "Metro" or "modern" look (or whatever term Microsoft may settle on to describe its flat, tile-like menu display) to the earlier released previews and apps. In general, SkyDrive provides users with 7 GB of no-cost storage space, which is made available to users via Microsoft's Internet cloud. Earlier users of the SkyDrive service had access to 25 GB of free storage space, but Microsoft announced in April it was cutting free storage space to 7 GB.
Microsoft announced previews of SkyDrive for Windows and SkyDrive for OS X Lion back in April. SkyDrive for Windows and SkyDrive for OS X Lion have capabilities that are different from the SkyDrive apps, which run in browsers. About the Author. Microsoft Releases Previews of Office 2013, SharePoint 2013 and Exchange 2013. News Microsoft Releases Previews of Office 2013, SharePoint 2013 and Exchange 2013 Microsoft followed up on a "customer preview" launch of its next-generation Office 365 services this week by announcing the availability of preview trials of other 2013-branded products. Those previews include 2013 versions of SharePoint, Exchange, Lync, Office Web Apps Server, Project, Visio and Office Professional Plus. Microsoft has a single portal for downloading those trial applications, which can be found at its new Office site page here. Those releases come a day after Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Kirk Koenigsbauer, corporate vice president of the Microsoft Office Division, officiated over the launch of the next Office 365, which includes an actual service-enabled version of the full Microsoft Office productivity suite.
For those looking for a step-by-step guide to installing the Office 2013 customer preview, details can be found in this Microsoft blog post. What To Expect in SharePoint 15. In-Depth What To Expect in SharePoint 2013 A new version of the Microsoft collaboration and enterprise content management platform is in the works, and it will offer improved social networking, client and mobile UI enhancements, an app marketplace, and better cloud support. And that just scratches the surface. Editor's Note: When this article was written, SharePoint 2013 was still being referred to by the "SharePoint 15" code name. It's no surprise that Microsoft SharePoint is among the most widely deployed platforms for enterprise collaboration, with more than 125 million licenses sold to more than 65,000 enterprise customers.
The current product, SharePoint 2010, is now 2 years old. Experts say Microsoft will address many of those concerns with SharePoint 15. Redmond talked to various SharePoint experts who described what they're expecting to see in SharePoint 15, as well as what they'd like to see based on the current product. Microsoft appears to have larger plans in mind, though. 30 minutes inside the mind of 8-time entrepreneur Steve Blank. It’s a fortunate man who can blow through $35 million one week, only to be offered $12 million the next. For serial entrepreneur Steve Blank, this story sums up the ethos of Silicon Valley. The day he experienced the most monumental failure of his career, upon the demise of Rocket Science Games back in 1997, Blank bumped into an old friend at a Palo Alto coffee shop. “His first words to me were, ‘Steve, when do you start your next company?’” Chuckling, he added, “Where else do you hear that?” Instead of going into hiding to nurse his bruised ego, Blank did what he usually does.
“Here in Silicon Valley, a failed entrepreneur is called experienced,” said Blank. In all, Blank has founded eight companies. I caught up with Blank, now retired, for a 30-minute chat the day after Marissa Mayer was named CEO, to talk about the real Silicon Valley, warts and all. Launching the Lean Launchpad Movement The story of Blank’s comeback is also one of his favorites to share with students. The rise of ed-tech. Facebook is dying. “O, woe is me, to have seen what I have seen, see what I see.” ...
The prophets have spoken, the returns are in, turnover and profits are down and Facebook, my friend, is dying. At least that would be the future from extrapolated trends from the first public Facebook report showing a drop of $157 million from April to June. Trading last week showed a fall of more than 37% from initial listing price and the talk is of bursting bubbles and crows lining up to hover over the fragile remnants of this once gargantuan beast. What is clear is that social media or rather that those that talk about the potential of the business of social media have lost none of their flair for the dramatic and none of the want to embrace hubris in all its forms, even if they lead to tragedy as per Hamlet and cast.
What is Facebook worth? ReachIncentiveUbiquity Reach Incentive The ‘insidiousness’ of Facebook is reflected in the incentive of the platform. And those are only a snapshot. Ubiquity Connect: Authored by: Microsoft's radical new business plan is hidden in plain sight. Every publicly held corporation whose stock trades in the United States is required by the Securities and Exchange Commission to file a detailed annual report (Form 10-K) at the end of its fiscal year. Call me weird, but I love reading 10-Ks. I especially love reading the parts that make corporate lawyers and executives squirm, because they’re required to divulge details they would never discuss with journalists. And although there’s a fair amount of boilerplate and yadda yadda, there’s also a lot of substance buried in these reports. For example: Carefully reading last year’s 10-K from Microsoft (MSFT) allowed me to predict in August 2011 that Microsoft was going to get into the hardware business.
They validated that prediction with the announcement in June of this year that they plan to enter the hardware business with a new line of devices under the Surface brand name. I’ve just completed my detailed analysis of Microsoft’s 2012 10-K. This section is especially revealing.