TheOpenAnalyst

You are browsing the archives of 2009 March.

Image via CrunchBase
Well backed Silicon Valley start-up Cloudera has now released a free, private cloud-oriented distribution of a Linux software environment first built by major Web enterprises for “big data.”
“Hadoop offers capabilities for capturing, storing and analyzing data that are unmatched. But it’s something that enterprises have shied away from until now,” said Michael Olson, [...]

In an interesting turn of events, TomTom has countersued Microsoft for patent infringement.
Microsoft sued TomTom in February claiming the GPS device maker infringed on Microsoft’s patents. TomTom, obviously thinking that turnabout is fair play, has in turned leveled its own lawsuit against the software giant.
TomTom Countersues Microsoft for Patent Infringement

Image via CrunchBase
IBM’s chances of being a major player in the era of cloud computing would be enhanced by a merger with Sun, says BusinessWeek.
IBM can also afford the $6.5BN acquisition that is apparently being discussed since it has $13BN cash hoard, notes BW Senior writer Steve Hamm.
In his report published today, the day after [...]

Image via CrunchBase
The open source route has generated more money for Sun Microsystems than before, says its open source chief, and staying on this path will be central to the company’s growth strategy.
Sun made more money from Solaris today than it did four years ago after it moved the server platform to an open source [...]

Greenplum, the high-end open source database house and friend of Sun – so it’s gotta be nibbling on its nails wondering whether it’s lost a channel – has some sexy new technology to accelerate data loading for companies stressing under exponential data growth.
It’s called MPP Scatter/Gather Streaming or SG Streaming for short and it’s supposed [...]

Image by Getty Images via Daylife
Vendors can build revenues from services and subscriptions, while CIOs, CEOs and the businesses they lead are freed from the “slavery” of traditional software procurement processes, said Sun’s Simon Phipps, speaking at a Sun developers conference in New York City.
In the midst of industry speculation that IBM might buy Sun [...]

The database market – currently at $18 billion a year (£12.3 billion) – will shrink substantially as the recession drives users to accept the open source message, according to open source database company Ingres.
Companies who now pay large software licence fees will finally make the move to open source software which costs a fraction of [...]

Bill Foster (right), the physicist and Democrat who succeeded former Speaker Dennis Hastert in Congress, has what you might call a cunning open source plan.
Any federal agency spending over $10 million on scientific education should put 2% of that money into creating open source materials, posting them on the Web for students, and updating them.
Foster [...]

Image by
Sun Microsystems
via CrunchBase
It’s not clear if IBM is thinking about buying Sun. But one thing is clear: Sun execs are out selling it as the “largest” open source company in the world.
In a series of blogs written this week, Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz claimed that Sun’s open source business — software and related [...]

One topic I bring up a lot at this blogsite is that of market disruption. Typically, when new technologies or products hit the market, they cater first to high-end, high margin businesses. Eventually, new players come in with more commoditized solutions at lower price points that serve the unserved part of the market, and, lo [...]