Amazon Sees No Reason to Slow Its Spending

Amazon defended its free-spending habits yesterday in a call with analysts, arguing that it continues to see new opportunities and will invest accordingly.
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Microsoft: The $71 Billion Cloud Underdog

If I say “cloud computing,” what companies come to mind? Amazon’s Web Services? Google’s cloud-based collaboration tools, Google Apps? How about Microsoft?

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Amazon Adds a Cloud Data Center in Oregon

Amazon Web Services, the Web retailer’s for-hire cloud computing unit, said today that it has opened a new data center in Umatilla, Oregon. The company is the latest on a growing list that includes Google and Facebook to locate a data center in Oregon. Amazon says customers who host their services at this data center will pay 10 percent less than they would at Amazon’s data centers in California and Virginia.

Google, Amazon Hiring for “The Cloud”

Five years ago, when Adam Selipsky started marketing Amazon’s Web-based storage, computing and database services, now commonly known as “the cloud,” a lot of executives would ask him, “What does this have to do with selling books?”

“We Are Absolutely in a Feature Race,” Says Bradley Horowitz of Google+

While some are writing Google+ off for its apparent falling usage or for not being enough of a platform, Google+ VP Bradley Horowitz asks for a little patience.
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Amazon Launches Government-Oriented Cloud Computing Service

Three months after America’s first chief technology officer recommended that the federal government move as much of its IT infrastructure to the cloud as possible in order to save a few billion dollars, cloud provider Amazon says it has just such a service ready to roll. Amazon announced today the launch of GovCloud, a “region” within its Amazon Web Services aimed specifically at U.S. government agencies and their security needs.

Seven Questions for Jeff Dyer, Co-Author of The Innovator’s DNA

Ever wonder what separates companies that innovate from those that don’t? Three authors set out to answer that very question, and came up with some interesting answers.
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Box Adds Apps for Android Tablets, RIM PlayBook

Aiming to make sure it has all its mobile bases covered, the cloud storage company is announcing support for two more types of tablets, and an overhaul of its mobile Web site.
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Short-Lived Amazon Cloud Outage Takes Down Several Sites

Netflix, Foursquare, Virgin America and several other sites were affected this evening when Amazon’s Web services went down for less than an hour. Foursquare confirmed it went down between 7:14 pm and 8:06 pm. Virgin America also said it was down; and Netflix said to users that it was experiencing issues more than an hour ago. Now everything seems to be operating normally again, according to Amazon’s own records. The outage was contained to two facilities in North Virginia and fairly short-lived, unlike the week-long outage in April that affected many consumer services.

Amazon to Run SAP Applications in the Cloud

Back to normal after a significant outage, Amazon Web Services is now a fully certified environment for SAP’s business software.