IBM gets the patent for a means of combining Big Data gathered from the cloud with that stored on local IT systems, thus promising enterprises will be able to more effectively market and serve customers.

The cloud-based invention is called "Dynamically Optimized Distributed Cloud Computing-based Business Process Management (BPM) System (US Patent #8504400, patent fans). As Big Blue puts it, it "provides a method for developing a new breed of enterprise applications that seamlessly combine locally-stored data from business process across an enterprise with cloud-based Big Data."

An example IBM gives involves a retailer checking in-house sales records for customer habit analysis while combining data from online ratings and reviews before the creation of personalised coupons, offers and promotion across a variety of sales channels.

HP and Salesforce form a cloud computing "strategic partnership"-- the Salesforce Superpod, described by the two companies as "a dedicated instance in the Salesforce multi-tenant cloud, running on HP Converged Infrastructure."

In other words, Superpod is a Salesforce cloud running on HP server, storage and networking hardware and software. HP CEO Meg Whitman Superpod says it is part of a "New Style of IT" and "will deliver the highest standard in performance, reliability and management."

The partnership is a sign of a deepening relationship between the two companies-- one reportedly involving Salesforce buying a "fair amount" of HP data centre hardware. Either way, HP believes in Superpod so much it will be its very first customer.

Avere Systems announces the Avere Cloud NAS at the Amazon re:Invent conference-- a service the company claims "changes the economics and functionality of data storage for the cloud era."

In a few words, Cloud NAS combines legacy local and cloud (Amazon S3 and Glacier) storage within a single global namespace (GNS).FlashCloud software running on Avere FXT Edge filers handles performance, scalability (to up to 450TB) and clustering, ensuring data is always available even during network outages and other failures.

“Avere Cloud NAS eliminates the most serious technological challenges customers face with moving to the cloud," the company states. "Moreover, the combination of Avere with Amazon Web Services offerings gives them an enormous cost advantage over traditional storage models and allows them to bend the data center cost curve.”

Swisscom sets to build an own "Swiss Cloud"-- one promising to rival likes of Amazon and Google by being free of snooping from foreign intelligence services. 

Reportedly the decision to build a home cloud is "unrelated" to recent revelations involving the US National Security Agency (NSA) gathering user data from 9 US companies (including Google, Apple and Facebook), but Swisscom head of IT services Andreas Koening tells Reuters "data protection and privacy is a long tradition in Switzerland, and that's why it's pretty difficult to get to something." 

Koening also says "if legal requirements are there and we are asked by the judge to obtain or deliver certain information then we would obviously have to comply with it." Read more...