In the run-up to the next Cloud Expo, 7th Cloud Expo (November 1–4, 2010) being held at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Silicon Valley, it's time to give my earlier list a complete overhaul. Here, accordingly, is an expanded list of the most active players in the Cloud Ecosystem. I have increased it from the 'mere' 150 I identified back in January of this year, to 250, testimony – as if any were needed! – to the fierce and continuing growth of the "Elastic IT" paradigm throughout the world of enterprise computing. Editorial note: The words in quotation marks used to describe the various services and solutions in this round-up are in every case taken from the Web sites of the companies themselves. Omissions to this Top 250 list should be sent to me via Twitter (twitter.com/jg21) and I will endeavor to include them in any future revision of this newly expanded rou... (more)

Cloud Expo Announces CloudCamp @ Cloud Expo Silicon Valley

Register for CloudCamp @ Cloud Expo Silicon Valley Follow @CloudExpo on Twitter Further cementing its position as The Largest Cloud Computing Event in the World, the organizers of the 7th International Cloud Expo being held at the Santa Clara Convention Center, Santa Clara, CA, on November 1-4, 2010, announced today that the event will also feature - on November 2nd, 2010 - a CloudCamp unconference. CloudCamp @Cloud Expo Silicon Valley is aimed at anyone working with, or interested in working with, cloud technologies. "With the rapid change occurring in the industry, we need a plac... (more)

Who’s Gonna Buy Novell?

Novell set this week as the deadline for acquisition offers, according to the Wall Street Journal followed by the New York Times. Elliott Associates LLP spokesman Scott Tagliarino claims Elliott, whose $5.75-a-share offer put Novell in play a couple of months ago, knows nothing about Novell's schedule. "It's running its own show," he said. Elliott's offer is still on the table. Novell refused the hedge fund's unsolicited bid as too low but since the offer inflated Novell's sunken stock price the company knew it was trapped and went looking for a sweeter deal. The Journal report... (more)

BIRT and OLAP

BIRT Introduced OLAP style data cubes and crosstabs in version 2.2 and while they have been around for some time we still get a lot of questions on how to use and manipulate them. Below are just some of the resources that have been posted to BIRT Exchange that should help you with cubes and crosstabs. Introduction Resources To get an idea of what a BIRT cube is and how to tie it to a crosstab report item, take a look at this article which provides a detailed write-up of the technology and supplies some examples. To see a recorded demonstration of a crosstab style report being build s... (more)

Pentaho Harnesses Apache Hadoop to Deliver Big Data Analytics

Pentaho Corporation, the open source business intelligence (BI) leader, on Wednesday announced plans to deliver the industry's first complete end-to-end data integration and business intelligence platform to support Apache Hadoop. The Pentaho BI Suite features a single visual development environment that dramatically simplifies the creation of applications for analyzing the massive volumes of information currently being collected by enterprises. This will widen the appeal of Apache Hadoop by enabling developers and business analysts to more quickly and easily access and analyze d... (more)