Look at the genealogy here, starting with our first move, the acquisition of MCI back in 2006. That provided us this very expansive global IP backbone network. [Then we moved] on to Cybertrust Managed Security capabilities in 2007, and then further on with Terremark in 2011, then a company called CloudSwitch, then Hughes Telematics, as well as the organic investment in our 4G LTE wireless network. –Verizon Enterprise Solutions, the nearly $30 billion unit

EMC believes that the third era will be one of mobile devices, cloud computing and big data.... "We don't want you to build an app in Amazon's cloud and have to pay Amazon a tax for the rest of its lifecycle." --EMC World: Pivotal boss Paul Maritz talks up plans for new firm

“We will do cloud-based ERP on a massive scale,” said Vishal Sikka, a member of SAP’s executive board and one of the people who oversaw the project. Of SAP’s regular product, he said, “At some point in the future, complex implementations should go away. All of our products are moving to HANA.” --SAP Takes It All to the Cloud

With the Enstratius acquisition, Dell is getting a group of people with deep influence in the community. Founder George Reese is an O'Reilly author and a cloud pioneer. He is supported by James Urquhart, Bernard Golden and John Willis, all recognized as influencers in the cloud community. --Alex Williams, TechCruch cloud strength.Welcome @botchagalupe @davidajbagley @georgereese @jamesurquhart @bernardgolden and the entire @enstratius team — Rob Hirschfeld (@zehicle) May 6, 2013 This is the part I'm most excited about.

[flickr video=8678862379 secret=ee744f017f w=400 h=225] Last week I was at on a Dell event panel representing Dell cloud think. Our moderator asked if developers are really in the driver seat - here's the answer! What else would you expect from a RedMonk? ;> Also, Andy Rhode's car fleet analogy is a good one for explaining bespoke IT vs. cloud IT.

“Managing the incompleteness of communications” is core to mastering agile software development. --Agile Software Development: The Cooperative Game (2nd Edition) I recall reading the first edition of this book years ago. Man, that was fun.

Check it out! Charles and I recorded an episode. In Video! Charles and I discuss DevOpsDays Austin, how programmers keep up with things now-a-days, and some detailed examples of the social parts of GitHub.

Some take aways from Rob. More: 7 takeaways from DevOps Days Austin

I was in and out of DevOpsDays Austin over the past few days. It's always a fun, event, packed with plenty of old friends and folks to catch up. We gave away a Sputnik to a lucky winner, a fine fellow from Boston as I recall. Also, check out Barton’s video interview with Patrick Debois.

Amazon Web Services (AWS), by way of comparison, is estimated to have brought in $1.8 billion last year. --Microsoft adds Azure to its billion dollar a year club | Ars Technica