Darryl K. Taft

Hortonworks, a provider of enterprise Apache Hadoop solutions, announced the general availability of Hortonworks Data Platform 1.3 (HDP) for Windows. Hortonworks officials said the open-source HDP 1.3 for Windows is the only Apache Hadoop-based distribution certified to run on Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows Server 2012. It enables Microsoft customers to build and deploy […]

IBM Big Data Tools Preserve European Heritage by Darryl K. Taft IBM Helps Preserve and Share Rare Medieval Texts A big data management solution consisting of IBM System x servers and IBM storage is being used to preserve and digitize nearly 800,000 pages of European historical documents, including medieval manuscripts, at the Wroclaw University Library […]

Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) with Mobile Push, a fast, cross-platform push notification service in the cloud to facilitate application development. AWS officials said with one simple API, application developers can send notifications to Apple iOS, Google Android and Kindle Fire devices. All AWS customers can begin using Mobile […]

Looker Data Sciences, a business intelligence (BI) software provider, announced a $16 million Series A round of investment capital to advance the company’s BI strategy. Looker raised the $16 million in venture funding in a round led by Redpoint Ventures, with contributions from First Round Capital and previous seed-round investors. The company, which launched its […]

Typemock, a provider and pioneer of automated unit testing solutions, announced the launch of a new version of its Isolator unit testing tool for .NET developers. The new release, Isolator version 7.4.1 for .NET developers, includes integration with Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2012. This new capability means customers working with TFS 2012 can now start […]

Indicating that its MobileFirst initiative is paying off, IBM announced that Gartner has positioned IBM as a leader in the research firm’s Magic Quadrant for Mobile Application Development Platforms. The new report places IBM in the Leaders Quadrant, as measured by completeness of vision and execution ability of IBM Worklight, IBM’s mobile application development platform. […]

IBM asserts its big data prominence once again, this time in a new system from IBM Research to help bring more renewable energy to the power grid by predicting the availability of such energy. IBM announced an advanced power- and weather-modeling technology that will help utilities increase the reliability of renewable energy resources. The solution […]

In a series of recent wins, IBM demonstrated how its cloud technology, systems, storage and outsourcing services are helping organizations worldwide–particularly in emerging markets–to make a smooth transition into the digital era, harness big data and improve their overall infrastructure. IBM recently announced that Capitalonline Data Service Co. (CDS), one of China’s leading Internet data […]

Two companies positioning themselves in the cloud, mobile and big data spaces—SOASTA and Apigee—have received new funding. SOASTA, a provider of cloud and mobile testing solutions, has received $30 million in a growth-stage investment, as the company moves to expand globally to enhance its position in the market for Web and mobile application performance services. […]

The OSGi Alliance, formerly known as the Open Services Gateway initiative (OSGi), has approved a more transparent specification development process, allowing the public to comment immediately on requests for comments (RFCs) as well as requests for proposals (RFPs) for OSGi specifications. With this move, the OSGi Alliance joins other prominent developer technology organizations including the […]

Movement in the big data market continues apace with CSC acquiring Infochimps and NICE Systems nabbing Causata. CSC on Aug. 8 formally announced its acquisition of Infochimps, a provider of big data platform-as-a-service for enterprise businesses. Based in Austin, Texas, with an office in Redwood City, Calif., Infochimps has a team of highly skilled big […]

IBM Research has created a new programming model to support its chips that mimic the workings of the human brain, known as Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics, or SyNAPSE, chips. In an effort in which a portion of the project was funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), IBM on Aug. […]