My team has a new report up on Mirantis, with updates on their momentum and an overview of what’s in their 4.0 OpenStack distro release. Here’s the 451 take, our brief opinion on the news: Mirantis reported more bookings in the last quarter of 2013 than all of 2012 – its growth by revenue, employees and overall business highlights the company as a leader among OpenStack pure-play vendors. Mirantis seems well positioned for an evolving OpenStack ecosystem and market, but the transition from services and support, which has been its specialty, to product subscription models may be challenging.

My team has a new report up on Mirantis, with updates on their momentum and an overview of what’s in their 4.0 OpenStack distro release. Here’s the 451 take, our brief opinion on the news: Mirantis reported more bookings in the last quarter of 2013 than all of 2012 – its growth by revenue, employees and overall business highlights the company as a leader among OpenStack pure-play vendors. Mirantis seems well positioned for an evolving OpenStack ecosystem and market, but the transition from services and support, which has been its specialty, to product subscription models may be challenging.

It’d be loopy, in a fun way, to see a renewed interest in Power, esp. from “commodity hardware” cloud people. Interest from new places in Power chips

It’d be loopy, in a fun way, to see a renewed interest in Power, esp. from “commodity hardware” cloud people. Interest from new places in Power chips

It’d be loopy, in a fun way, to see a renewed interest in Power, esp. from “commodity hardware” cloud people. Interest from new places in Power chips

As I mentioned, a few weeks back I was in a recorded “think tank” put on by Dell which was, largely, about the changing nature of IT and how CIOs could go about managing it. For those who don’t want to nuzzle up to a 3.5 hour recording (perhaps with a six pack and some chips?), Dell has pulled some highlights: “What do customers expect in an application today?” IT is facing competition for the first time ever The Web Of C-Level Relationships The Willy-wonky of Servers talks about “persistently, ubiquitously connected to the network era” And check out Barton’s omnibus overview.

Over the last decade, through a series of successful moves, Icahn has become the sole force behind Icahn Enterprises LP, a diversified holding company that puts him in command of roughly $24 billion in capital. “As essentially the wealthiest individual hedge-fund manager of all time, he is in an extremely rare position,” explains Brown. “Nobody can tell him what to do or what not to do.” … “Tech companies have gotten away for far too long with far too much cash on their balance sheets,” says Kedrosky.

From El Reg’s Gavin Clarke: Let’s begin by saying money was not the problem that needed solving: on that, the world’s largest software company is printing cash. … That means everything Nadella does now is about execution, not innovation. That makes Nadella’s story as CEO one of sales and expanded market share. We, 451, have a quick piece from the day of and I just submitted a longer piece yesterday (along with Carl Brooks), hopefully published soon.

These are the most important three chunks from Satya Nadella (Microsoft’s new CEO) memo: Our industry does not respect tradition — it only respects innovation. … Our job is to ensure that Microsoft thrives in a mobile and cloud-first world. … I believe over the next decade computing will become even more ubiquitous and intelligence will become ambient. The coevolution of software and new hardware form factors will intermediate and digitize — many of the things we do and experience in business, life and our world.

We spent part of 2012 and all of 2013 building a private cloud in Virginia, Washington, and mostly Texas. This was a big bet with over $4 million in capital lease obligations on the line, and the good news is that it’s starting to pay off. On a cash basis, we spent $6.2 million at Amazon Web Services, and a mere $2.8 million on our own data centers. The business impact is profound.