Tim Negris

A few weeks ago, I wrote a piece about the tony managed service provider, Datapipe, and their newest offering, managed private clouds deployed in Amazon's infrastructure, a first for both companies.  I think the new service is a very cool idea that presages things to come - "Cloud VARs". Today the company put out one of those "the way we see it" releases that I typically ignore because they are usually empty self-promotion devoid of news, data, or insight.  You know the ones I am talking about - "Acme Technowidgets Predicts Cloud Adoption Will Continue in 2011".  But, this one is worth noting, because it is somewhat insightful, but more because it probably telegraphs future news for Datapipe, a company worth following. Ed Laczynski, Datapipe's vice-president for cloud strategy and architecture, a smart guy with a good grip on where cloud computing is going, has cited ... (more)

AT&T CEO: Cloud Is "Very, Very Important To Us" - And It's Just Like Outsourcing

In an outtake from a sweeping interview in the Sunday edition of the Dallas Morning News, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson tipped his hand just a bit, providing a peek at where the telecom giant might be headed with cloud computing and more than a peek at what might follow the end of AT&T's iPhone exclusivity - hint: it starts with "A" and ends with "ndroid". These days, every telecom carrier has a cloud angle.  Within the past week, we have seen cloud computing announcements from Verizon in the US and SingTel in Singapore, with many more to come, no doubt.  (For an interesting persp... (more)

Has Microsoft Russia Gone Rogue on Redmond?

Microsoft Corporation may have its own "breakaway republic" problem in the heart of the former Soviet Union.  Its Russian subsidiary, headed for less than two years by former telecom executive, Nikolay Pryanishnikov and reporting to HQ through Microsoft's Central and Eastern Europe group, has become embroiled in a global controversy over what role it may have played in helping the Russian government crack down on a variety non-governmental organizations and newspapers critical of the state. As first reported in the New York Times last Saturday, for the past several years Russian... (more)

Brocade Wants to Kill Your Cloud Buzz

Providing a remarkable contrast to Oracle CEO Larry Ellison's exuberant "I got your big honkin' cloud right here" demonstration of his new vertically-integrated Exalogic Elastic Cloud server at OpenWorld, Brocade CMO John McHugh, speaking  at the NetEvents 2010 EMEA Press Summit in Istanbul, took a different, decidedly downbeat view of cloud computing, calling it "overhyped" and predicting that it "is going to get adopted and embraced much more slowly than people believe." In his talk, which was subtitles, an industry visionary seeks gold amongst the chaos of change, McHugh, rat... (more)

They Don't Sell The Chips Larry Wants At Fry's

Larry Ellison is one of the most misunderstood guys in Silicon Valley, and his extemporaneous pronouncements often only serve to make him more so. Sometimes his remarks are explosive and expository, like his now-famous Churchill Club cloud computing rant, and other times they are compact and cryptic, like his recent remarks about buying some chip companies. Either way, the pattern is familiar: he says something that prompts a lot of misguided chatter, and then he does something that only deepens the confusion. After his Churchill Club diatribe, he was roundly, loudly, (and wrong... (more)