Patrik Sallner, the CEO of Finnish database proprietor SkySQL, wants to make something clear. His company’s latest product, MariaDB Enterprise, was not designed with a certain Redwood-based relational database provider in mind.

“We’re not specifically targeting Oracle or anybody else here,” he tells CloudTech. “We’re just making an offering available which we clearly know there’s a strong demand for.”

This appears to be the company line, although other tech outlets, from The Register to ZDNet, thought otherwise.

The MariaDB Enterprise product, announced last week, is built upon the open source MariaDB Server and Galera Cluster software, on the Linux OS, and is offered as a renewable one year subscription package either on-premise, virtualised or in cloud.

Sallner instead describes the update as “something which is feasible for somebody without deep MySQL expertise”.

The product’s high availability comes from being able to cluster databases without a …

Roy Illsley, Principal Analyst, Ovum Software

IBM has announced that it will invest more than $1bn in the new IBM Watson Group, as well as $1.2bn to expand its global cloud computing footprint to 40 data centers worldwide in 15 countries across five continents. On January 23, 2014, IBM also announced that it has reached a definitive agreement with Lenovo to sell the Chinese company the majority of its x86 server business in a $2.3bn deal that includes System x, BladeCenter and Flex System blade servers and switches, x86-based Flex integrated systems, NeXtScale and iDataPlex servers and associated software, blade networking, and maintenance operations.

This represents the biggest ever technology acquisition by a Chinese company, and sees IBM exit server manufacturing in all but the System z mainframes, Power Systems, Storage Systems, Power-based Flex servers, and PureApplication and PureData appliances markets.

Is Lenovo IBM’s strategic partner for …

The fallout of the Edward Snowden scandal that broke over the summer is being felt globally, with concerns around governments’ ability to access data prompting many organisations to rethink their investment in ICT and the cloud. It is this information that has contributed to analysts estimating that the US cloud computing industry could lose up to $180 million by 2016. This has opened up a debate – has the PRISM project spawned a culture of paranoia?

Why are organisations so worried about data monitoring and is it a justifiable concern?

Following what the business community has learnt about online surveillance, organisations are now asking their cloud provider how they can improve data security. Equally, data sovereignty, the physical location where data is stored and the data centre partner are now wider organisational concerns, not simply just the remit of the CIO. Keeping data in data centres in a country where the …

I’ve been hearing a lot about Platform as a Service (PaaS) lately as part of the broader discussion of cloud computing from both customers and in articles across the web. In this post, I’ll describe PaaS, discuss a recent article that came out on the subject, and take a shot at sorting out IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS.

What is PaaS?

First a quick trip down memory lane for me. As an intern in college, one of my tours of duty was through the manufacturing systems department at an automaker. I came to work the first day to find a modest desktop computer loaded with all of the applications I needed to look busy, and a nicely printed sheet with logins to various development systems.

My supervisor called the play: “I tell you what I want, you code it up, I’ll take a look at it, and move …

Cloud computing services and technology is on the cusp of mass adoption by the legal industry, according to a report from LexisNexis.

Nearly three quarters (72.4%) of firms surveyed said they were more likely to use the cloud this year, with adoption levels among attorneys in smaller firms hitting 40% – a number which is 10% higher than previous surveys.

This consensus is so grounded that, for the majority (38.7%) of the over 275 respondents, cloud systems will overtake on-premise in the legal profession within five years.

There was also a sense in the survey that a move to the cloud was inevitable. Almost a quarter of respondents believe that their employees are already using cloud tools, without the law firm’s knowledge of approval. As the report noted, this uncertainty means real usage figures would be higher.

Document storage and management services were the most popular cloud products …

By Richard Campione,  President, Cloud & Data at Services Business at ServiceSource

A recent CIO Zone article stated “cloud computing is increasingly becoming the rule and not the exception.”  With cloud computing becoming so pervasive and commonplace in our day-to-day lives and businesses, everyone has differing opinions on how to quantify the true value of the cloud.

So, how exactly do you put a value on and quantify the business benefits of the cloud?

On its surface, the cloud brings economies of scale that can be quantified through traditional metrics such as cost savings and performance improvements.  For ServiceSource, a company focused on harnessing the power of big data to increase recurring revenue and customer retention for our clients, the real benefit of the cloud is the ability to do things that you couldn’t otherwise do, and the unprecedented agility it affords.

Let’s start with agility

I frame this …

Aphrodite Brinsmead, Senior Analyst, Customer Engagement

At its industry analyst conference in Phoenix, Arizona in January 2014, Aspect proudly discussed its newly refocused business. Two years ago the vendor was working closely with Microsoft and struggling to gain new business in a saturated contact center infrastructure market. However, Aspect begins 2014 with new products, strong financials for 2013, and a positive growth forecast.

The strategic acquisitions it made in 2013 have helped Aspect get back on track. Most significantly, the decision to acquire Voxeo in July 2013 and take on some of its business practices means that the company is now better poised to respond to enterprises’ demands for multichannel capabilities, analytics, and flexibility in deployment options.

The Voxeo acquisition changes everything

The Voxeo acquisition appears to have been the turning point in securing Aspect’s future success. Aspect gained a robust IVR solution, cloud expertize, and new data centers …

Only a quarter of CFOs are planning to move into cloud accounting in the next five years, according to a survey from chartered accountant firm William Buck.

The survey, which covered CFOs in Australia and New Zealand, painted a cautious picture of cloud adoption among the accountancy sector. 12% of firms currently use cloud accounting, with a huge 64% saying they’re not looking at moving into the cloud by 2018.

“While the cloud accounting media drum has been beating for some time, many CFOs are still cautious about the new technology and are hesitant to move away from the tools that they have been using for decades,” the William Buck report notes.

Education on the benefits of cloud accounting is therefore key, according to the report.

The primary benefits of cloud accounting are increased flexibility, streamlined workflow and reduced software expenses, as the CFOs surveyed pointed out.

Other areas …

IBM has today announced a $1.2bn (£735m) commitment to “expand its global footprint”, building data centres to cover all geographies and financial centres.

“Today’s announcement is another major step in driving a global expansion of IBM’s cloud footprint and helping clients drive transformation,” thundered Erich Clementi, IBM global technology services SVP in a statement.

IBM plans to open 15 data centres in the coming year, to add to its 12 already deployed and the baker’s dozen it picked up following the $2bn acquisition of SoftLayer last year. Armonk claims the acquisition has helped pick up 2400 clients.

The new data centres will be launched in China – joining a long list of firms with the same idea – Hong Kong, India and Japan, alongside Dallas, London, Mexico City and Washington DC.

You’ve got to spend money to make money, as the old saying goes, and IBM certainly …

Cloud storage provider Box is offering 50GB’s worth of free storage for users who sign up to its service in the next month – twisting the knife further into rival Dropbox, whose service went down over the weekend.

Dropbox hit the skids after what VP of engineering Aditya Agarwal described as a routine server upgrade, with a bug installed on active servers bringing down the show.

While Dropbox was at pains to insist that everyone’s files were safe, it’s fair to say the news will have affected the company’s reputation. And in a not coincidental move announced yesterday, Box is opening up 50GB of storage for new customers, as well as rolling out a new iPhone and iPad app.

“We’ve overhauled our app to make it super-fast, simpler to use and more immersive,” wrote David Still, Box VP mobile products in a blog post.

“The result …