Cloud Computing

There is some justification to carriers' excuses about the data hoggery of smartphones: smartphones are data hogs, at least compared to dumb phones. AT&T goes further, bragging it signed up record numbers of users, then complaining they actually use the network.

EMC and VMware are teaming with French IT services company Atos to create a European cloud infrastructure provider, Canopy, the companies announced Wednesday.

Israel-based startup Porticor launches this week with technology aimed at giving enterprises a way to encrypt data held in cloud computing services, including those from Amazon and Rackspace.

The decision to migrate company information-technology functions to the cloud or elsewhere is usually broken down as a set of specific cost-benefit calculations. However complicated the weighing of the startup savings and the longer-term returns involved in outsourcing IT, it at least appears to be a rational process.

While the focus last year was on social media IPOs, this year could be all about cloud-based companies going public.

Companies seeking to deploy intrusion detection and prevention systems (IDPS) for network security have traditionally had to rely on proprietary appliances that cost from $15,000 to $50,000. That puts IDPS out of reach for many small to midsize companies, but SaaS-based alternatives might fit the bill.

Anonymous first took credit for the DDOS attack that downed CIA.gov Friday, then said it was just reporting the outage, before discovering it had, actually, been behind the attack. CIA.gov is down again today, though it would be wise to wait to give credit this time.

RIM went from must-have 'crackberry' to now being pushed into the grave by some analysts.

Getting hacked is not good. Getting hacked then outed for keeping customer passwords in plain text is an epic not good.

Google is preparing to launch a long-rumored cloud storage service that tramples a bit on products and services offered by Google partners. A Wall Street Journal report citing “people familiar with the matter” says the new “Drive” service will be launched by Google in the coming weeks or months. What does that mean for other companies that Google works closely with?

HP has announced the creation of 150 research and development jobs to expand its Irish operations, with funding from regional development agency IDA Ireland.