Pedro Hernandez

Buoyed by strong IT spending, Microsoft handily beat Wall Street estimates on record revenues of $17.41 billion for its third quarter (Q3), a 6 percent increase over the $16.4 billion the software giant brought in during the same period a year ago. Net income dipped slightly to $5.11 billion in Q3 compared to last year’s […]

Greenpeace took aim at Apple, Microsoft and Amazon over how the companies are powering the data centers that house their fast-growing cloud computing infrastructures. In a move that is reminiscent of its tussle with Facebook over its first-ever data center build in Prineville, Ore., Greenpeace has zeroed in on clean energy’s boogeyman, coal. “Apple, Amazon […]

Tucked in the company’s Windows 8 editions branding strategy announcement was Windows 8 Enterprise. While initially characterized as a business-oriented offshoot of Windows 8 Pro, today there are more details surrounding the OS variant, including a bootable desktop that resides on a USB thumbdrive. In a Windows Blog post, Erwin Visser describes the “premium features” […]

Microsoft revealed its naming strategy for its upcoming Windows 8 OS this week. And in a seeming departure from the dizzying array of Windows editions in the past, the software giant has largely settled on three choices: Windows 8, Windows 8 Pro and Windows RT. Upon its release, the Windows 8 name will come to […]

Google reported on Thursday that it had booked $10.65 billion in revenue during the first quarter of 2012 (1Q12), a 24 percent increase over the same period last year. Traffic acquisition costs took a $2.51 billion bite out of that figure. Net income rose to $2.89 billion, a 60 percent increase over the $1.8 billion […]

CloudPassage, a San Francisco, Calif.-based cloud security startup, announced today that it completed a series B financing round led by Tenaya Capital and valued at $14 million. Founded in 2010, the company has attracted $21 million in venture capital to date. CloudPassage released its flagship Halo Professional product in November 2011. Currently, the company’s client […]

In a big vote of confidence for OpenStack, HP today announced HP Converged Cloud, a suite of public and hybrid cloud services that incorporate the open source cloud platform. Amid growing industry support OpenStack, Citrix raised eyebrows recently when it announced that it was ditching its OpenStack-based Project Olympus project for its own open source […]

HP has found another way to maintain its grip on the cloud computing crown. The IT behemoth is going to help the United States Army build out its private cloud. The company announced this week that it was awarded a portion of the Department of Defense’s $250 million Army Private Cloud contract (APC2). The IT […]

Good news for cloud services providers that cater to small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). A majority of SMB owners have no qualms about parking their business-critical applications on the cloud. In fact, 57 percent of SMB owners reported using cloud services for more than half of their applications, according to a survey conducted by San […]

HP is the cloud equipment king, but IBM and Cisco aren’t far behind, according to a new report from Synergy Research Group. As with any hot market, the research firm’s “4Q11 Cloud Equipment Market Share” report paints a rosy, if volatile, picture of the cloud server, storage and networking equipment sales. In the last quarter, […]