Business

Ecco Pro, a much beloved outliner and personal information management application for Windows was discontinued about 15 years ago. But you can still download it and run it on Windows 7 today thanks to the efforts of a handful of volunteers. Even though the software isn’t open source a few devotees have continued modding it and keeping it current for modern operating systems. They say that no modern application has yet replicated its functionality. Another piece of software with longevity is Eudora, which as of 2009 was still in use by Steve Wozniak as per an interview with Lifehacker. Wozniak didn’t say which version he’s using, but since he says it’s been discontinued, I assume he’s using Eudora 6.2.4 or earlier, not the newer Thunderbird based Open Source Edition. I’ve heard of people using versions as old as 3. They say they can still do stuff with it they just can’t do with anything else. If these were web applications, what are the odds people would still be using them today, mo...

Amazon just updated its Cloud Player music storage service with a number of interesting new features, including an iTunes Match-like scan and match technology that allows Amazon to just scan a user’s music library and add matching songs to that user’s library without having to upload those songs one by one. Just like Apple, Amazon now also upgrades the audio quality of matched files to 256kbps audio, no matter the original bitrate. In addition, Amazon will automatically move all of its users’ previously purchased music from its MP3 store to Cloud Player. To enable these new scan and match imports and audio upgrades, Amazon signed deals with Sony Music Entertainment, EMI Music, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, and more than 150 independent distributors, aggregators and music publishers. Amazon is also now separating its Cloud Drive storage service for regular files from its music service. While the two were directly linked when Cloud Player first launched and music uploads w...

Oracle said today they have bought a company called Xsigo that leverages the growing popularity of software defined networking (SDN) — an emerging virtualization technology that is shaking up the way we view IT and the cloud. The acquisition points to a shift in the market that will eventually make Oracle the loser. The cloud is opening up while Oracle is folding inward. Network virtualization is serving as a catalyst for a federated infrastructure that will make the open cloud more viable for an organization than a vertically integrated stack that needs to be managed by teams of IT engineers.  Oracle is rejecting that premise and will use Xsigo to strengthen its own proprietary environment. It’s a losing game that Oracle is playing. Corporate run data centers are going the way of internally managed corporate utilities at the turn of the century.  The industrial giants of the time realized they had no business being in the electricity business. Now companies are realizing the same th...

Editor’s note: Gordon Ritter is a founder and general partner at Emergence Capital, focused on cloud companies.  In the days before the cloud, on-premise software providers that focused on selling into a vertical market were considered second-class citizens to the “big guns” selling into the broader horizontal marketplace. The real “win”—in market share, wallet share and ultimately, profits—was the broadest approach. The notion of specializing in solutions that serve a market niche or specific industry was considered limited unless it was just the start of something more horizontal. However, with the advent of the SaaS model, the tables have turned. Focusing on niche verticals or specific functional areas may be one of the most successful strategies of the enterprise cloud software era. While there are still a few providers for whom the “all-things-to-all-people” approach is quite successful (Microsoft, Oracle), the vast majority of successful cloud solution providers have struck go...

GoodData has raised $25 million to continue developing its cloud-based business intelligence technology. The funding brings GoodData’s total funding to $55 million. Founder and CEO Roman Stanek said the investment came from existing investors Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst Partners and Fidelity Growth Partners. Windcrest Partners is also contributing to the round. GoodData offers a cloud-based data analytics service that competes with solutions from companies such as IBM, SAP and Oracle. Its business model is pretty clever. Its markets to the vast ecosystem of SaaS providers that integrate the technology into their own platforms. Those providers can then offer their own customers access to dashboards, advanced reporting and other features. The difference is in the apps that the SaaS providers offer from GoodData. Stanek cites as an example how budgets are shifting to digital marketing. Marketers, though, still do not have enough analytics. GoodData provides insights into that ...

Google has a new cloud partner program that shows the company’s drive to go after old IT. In a blog post today, Google provided some details about it with a link to a list of the technology and service providers that are part of the program. It’s a short list but here’s what they are offering. Service providers deliver consulting services for the various Google Platform Cloud products. This would include the new Google Compute Engine, Google App Engine, Google Cloud Storage, Google Big Query and its prediction and translation APIs. Technology partners provide integrations with Google Platform Cloud or use one of its services as a foundation for their products. Google is hinting that it will use its partner program to pursue customers who want to migrate off legacy solutions. According to the Google blog post: For example, Orangescape Technologies, one of our partners, integrated Google App Engine as part of their platform to help United Biscuits, a leading manufacturer of biscuits an...

Ingrid is a reporter for TechCrunch, joining February 2012, based out of London. She comes from paidContent.org, where she was a staff writer, and has in the past also written freelance regularly for other publications such as the Financial Times. Ingrid covers mobile, digital media, advertising and the spaces where these intersect. When it comes to work, she feels most... ? Learn More Search is going very strong in China, and leading player Baidu continues to reap the benefits. In its Q2 results, the company reported sales of 5.456 billion yuan ($858.8 million), up 59.8 percent compared to the same quarter in 2011. The company’s chairman and chief exec, Robin Li, said in a statement that Baidu will “maintain momentum” going forward by investing in new technology, new talent, and more products specifically geared to mobile and cloud services. But these are long-term strategies: for all intents and purposes, just about all of Baidu’s revenues today are coming from online advertising a...

VMware has acquired Nicira, a startup known for its software defined networking technology in a deal pegged at $1.26 billion. It’s an acquisition that has all sorts of ramifications for the ever disruptive enterprise sector of the market. Nicira emerged out of stealth in February after five years in development. It has been widely considered as a successor to traditional networking technology in its capability to create a software defined environment that can essentially be programmed to change through adjustments in the software. This allows for elasticity and the ability to move data easily. It integrates well with horizontal storage environments by scaling out data over horizontal envioronments. Nicira’s software in effect turns a network into an IP backplane. Hierarchies in  physical networks creates bottlenecks. Nicira creates a flat network. Devices connect directly to the switch, allowing for the data to distribute effectively across its infrastructure. Nicira had $50 million ...

Why is the cloud so hard to make funny? Do a search on YouTube. You will see songs about the cloud based upon Joni Mitchell and Vanilla Ice songs. “Cloud, Cloud Maybe.” Groan. Thank goodness for The Onion. Finally, the cloud is funny. The cloud is not supposed to be funny. How can you be funny about a bunch of servers? Elasticity? That’s not funny. There are some decent attempts. One Microsoft spoof on VMware is funny but not Onion kind of funny. It features Tad, the sales guy from VMlimited. And then there is the cloud consultant. He has no credentials but lots of friends who are social media experts. You can get a bit of a laugh about Hitler learning about a security issue. But the Hitler spoofs are numerous on YouTube so it doesn’t have quite the edge. Most of the cloud videos are so awful that they become funny in their own cringing way. Microsoft’s “To the Cloud,” campaign ranks high in that category. I did some checking to find other videos by The Onion about the cloud. I could...