I guess this why companies like Oracle and IBM keep buying advertising SaaSes and such: The report estimates that in 2012, the data-driven marketing economy added $156 billion in revenue to the U.S. economy and fueled more than 675,000 jobs. To put that statistic in perspective, that’s nearly half of total U.S. expenditures on marketing and advertising services (estimated at $292 billion annually), more than half the size of the entire Internet ecosystem (estimated by the IAB at $300 billion) and more than two-thirds the size of the entire e-commerce market.

“We intend to compete aggressively in the commodity infrastructure-as-a-service marketplace,” he said. “We’re not going to have that alone … our intention is to sell our customers IaaS and the same customer a highly differentiated platform-as-a-service which will let us get better margins and a highly differentiated suite of applications for the cloud.” Oracle's cloud plans

“We intend to compete aggressively in the commodity infrastructure-as-a-service marketplace,” he said. “We’re not going to have that alone … our intention is to sell our customers IaaS and the same customer a highly differentiated platform-as-a-service which will let us get better margins and a highly differentiated suite of applications for the cloud.” Oracle's cloud plans

Continued soft demand for servers around the world resulted in a 3.7 percent decline in sales during the third quarter, according to IDC. A poor showing by IBM, which suffered a 19.4 percent decline in factory revenues during the quarter, enabled Hewlett-Packard to regain the title as the world’s top server maker. Cisco and the ODMs have growth (and a tiny bit from HP), it seems. On the other end, Amazon is selling out of it’s high-end servers, C3, showing that there’s some sort of demand for higher horse power.

Continued soft demand for servers around the world resulted in a 3.7 percent decline in sales during the third quarter, according to IDC. A poor showing by IBM, which suffered a 19.4 percent decline in factory revenues during the quarter, enabled Hewlett-Packard to regain the title as the world’s top server maker. Cisco and the ODMs have growth (and a tiny bit from HP), it seems. On the other end, Amazon is selling out of it’s high-end servers, C3, showing that there’s some sort of demand for higher horse power.

Continued soft demand for servers around the world resulted in a 3.7 percent decline in sales during the third quarter, according to IDC. A poor showing by IBM, which suffered a 19.4 percent decline in factory revenues during the quarter, enabled Hewlett-Packard to regain the title as the world’s top server maker. Cisco and the ODMs have growth (and a tiny bit from HP), it seems. On the other end, Amazon is selling out of it’s high-end servers, C3, showing that there’s some sort of demand for higher horse power.

Good wrap-up so far: It’s a long list of news but I’m left wondering how substantive it will actually be for Dell as a company. I understand their new strategy of being a neutral player and offering a plethora of cloud services – but all these announcements run the risk of creating mass confusion for the customer base – with Dell’s sales force having to articulate a value proposition that differentiates between all these different partnerships, customers could well be left scratching their heads.

Good wrap-up so far: It’s a long list of news but I’m left wondering how substantive it will actually be for Dell as a company. I understand their new strategy of being a neutral player and offering a plethora of cloud services – but all these announcements run the risk of creating mass confusion for the customer base – with Dell’s sales force having to articulate a value proposition that differentiates between all these different partnerships, customers could well be left scratching their heads.

Good wrap-up so far: It’s a long list of news but I’m left wondering how substantive it will actually be for Dell as a company. I understand their new strategy of being a neutral player and offering a plethora of cloud services – but all these announcements run the risk of creating mass confusion for the customer base – with Dell’s sales force having to articulate a value proposition that differentiates between all these different partnerships, customers could well be left scratching their heads.

Nearly 50% saw cloud-based solutions as having “a great deal of risk” while 33% saw “somewhat” risk. Only 12% indicated there was little risk. Risk of your cloud going out of business