You’re hard pressed to find any sector of the tech economy that is getting more financing than cloud computing. Today’s announcement by Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft is a good example. The two tech giants announced a partnership today that is valued at $250 million. Why are these ventures getting such an influx of revenue? If content is king, then infrastructure in the castle in the cloud. Sponsor Castles cost a lot to build and so does a cloud service. The Microsoft-HP deal is a case in point. The two companies are building a cloud infrastructure that spans hardware and software integration. They are developing their own applications. It’s like an effort to build a massive data center network that works as one giant computer. The investment includes the use of HP servers for Azure, the cloud platform developed by Microsoft. In return, Microsoft software, database programs and other applications will be loaded on the HP machines. Both companies want to own the enterprise. It’s apparent that the two feel this can only be done by having a deep cloud-based infrastructure that bundles a full suite of software and tools to optimize systems for business customers. Stacey Higginbotham of GigaOm makes an excellent point in asking if optimization is the new code word for proprietary systems. There’s a danger in that for customers as it can lead to vendor lock-in. But Microsoft and HP obviously see a need to form their own partnership to compete with the likes of Cisco, which has a deal with VMWare. Oracle, for its part, is still waiting for approval on its deal with Sun Microsystems. Enterprise customers should be wary of these mega deals. The castle in the cloud may look nice but the enterprise customer may find itself in the dungeon if it makes too heavy an investment in proprietary systems that lock them into specific vendors. Discuss

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Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard Deal: The Cloud is not Cheap

Jive Software has acquired Filtrbox , a Boulder-based startup that monitors the social Web to help clients understand and better participate in online conversations. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Jive sought a social media monitoring company to bring into its Social Business Software (SBS) platform. The goal is to extend the social footprint of the Jive platform. Jive sees the market becoming far more oriented around conversations on social networks such as Twitter and Facebook. These conversations affect everything from product development to sales strategies. Monitoring is critical to following and capitalizing on the conversation flow. Sponsor Jive looked at several companies in the space before deciding to approach Filtrbox. The choice came down to the Filtrbox user experience; its collaboration features; the scalable architecture and the social intelligence baked into the product. The Filtrbox architecture may be the greatest value to Jive. Filtrbox Founder Ari Newman said its architecture is a hybrid that leverages the cloud. He would not say much more about it though its business model reflects a cloud based approach. Services that leverage the cloud effectively let users scale up and down, depending on demand. Many charge on a per use basis. Newman said Filtrbox charges $10,000 per year for up to six users. Customers get unlimited use of the platform. How companies leverage the cloud will determine how they fare in the market. The ability to crunch large amounts of data is vital for understanding the real-time nature of how conversations flow. Jive seems to understand this and appears to be moving more toward a cloud-based strategy. Initially, Jive will market Filtrbox through its Jive Market Engagement solution along side Radian6. Jive and Radian6 formed a partnership back in September. Here’s what Jeremiah Owyang and his colleague, R “Ray” Wang had to say about the partnership. Radian6 and Filrtrbox are essentially in the same space. it is unclear how the relationship between Jive and Radian6 will be affected by the Filtrbox purchase. Filtrbox will be fully integrated into the Jive SBS platform in the second quarter of this year. Discuss

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Jive Software Buys Filtrbox: A Purchase All About The Social Web

Demand for cloud-based storage and backup is creating some lucrative opportunities for companies servicing large telecommunications providers. We are seeing a number of carriers offering cloud-based services. Orange Business Services announced today that it will be offering cloud storage and other cloud-based services for its customers. Verizon announced earlier this month that it is offering a number of cloud-related services. Telecommunications companies are partnering with services like Nomadesk to give customers the ability to do their own cloud-based online backups. Sponsor Belgium-based Nomadesk is an online backup and syncing service for small business owners and personal users. It provides unlimited storage and sharing. The company announced this week a partnership with Bell Canada to provide its millions of customers with online back up for their mobile devices. Nomadesk is a virtual hard drive on your desktop. It’s very simple. We downloaded the application, made some simple configurations and immediately had the ability to drag and drop files into the virtual hard drive that sits on the desktop.The hard drive is connected to the cloud and syncs when updates are made. Your data is secured and encrypted. It can be shared with any number of users and synced across the community. Applications can be backed up. Access to documents are available online or offline. Nomadesk CEO Filip Tack is touting the service as a better alternative to Box.net and Mozy . We agree that Nomadesk is easy to use, but as a collaboration platform it has some way to go. For example, Nomadesk does not have an advanced search capability like Box.net. We view enterprise search as a key feature for collaboration services. Tack said the company will offer search as a feature in the first part of 2010. Companies in this space are showing big market gains as larger providers seek revenues from the petabytes of data being produced every day. Mozy, for instance, just announced a partnership with Cox Business. Mozy is also partnering with China Telecom, McAfee and Vodafone to deliver cloud-based backup to customers. What is the amount of data that is produced every day in the enterprise? We know this can vary wildly but even small businesses are starting to produce exponential amounts of information compared to just a year ago. As this amount of information continues to grow, services like Nomadesk should stand to do very well as providers for large telecommunications companies. Nomadesk service for small businesses starts at $15 per user, per month. Discuss

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Nomadesk: Cloud-Based Backup Providers Doing Quite Well

IBM is teaming up with eyeOS , the maker of an open-source, web-based operating system. We’ve had our (ahem) eye on eyeOS for quite some time . It’s receiving renewed interest in the wake of the much anticipated launch of Google Chrome OS . IBM will offer eyeOS 2.0, available in January, to all customers who buy IBM’s System Z mainframe servers. SystemZ servers are used mainly by large organizations for data processing purposes. So eyeOS will be used as a desktop in the cloud for potentially thousands of enterprise users. Sponsor This is a huge win for eyeOS, making it one of Google’s biggest competitors in the web OS or ” webtop ,” space. IBM has a huge channel for distributing eyeOS, which will better position the Barcelona-based company in the enterprise market. Questions still remain about the eyeOS platform. IBM is adopting the software for availability on its servers, which raises questions about eyeOS as a true cloud offering. The beauty of cloud computing is its ease of use, with the Web as its backbone. As our own Sarah Perez wrote in September about eyeOS : “Besides, offering the host-your-own solution almost misses the point of being a web OS. The promise of cloud computing is that it’s supposed to make our lives easier – our data lives on the web now and not on our fallible hard disks and CDs. We don’t have to backup, because Google (or any other cloud vendor) does that for you. We don’t have to worry with hard drive space either – we use the cloud, sometimes even for a fee, and we can get to our data from anywhere using any device. And all this is provided to you within your browser.” Nonetheless, this is a big step forward for eyeOS and validation that this kind of “webtop” solution may have legs after all. Discuss

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IBM Gets Webtop From eyeOS, Eyes Google Chrome OS

Roambi announced a pro version of its iPhone application this week that syncs with Salesforce.com and other cloud-based services or on-premsie sales environments. It’s a visualization application, providing mobile workers with a pretty cool way to see sales information. Integration is by far one of the most significant trends we are seeing in the enterprise space. It’s a wave, really, marked this week by Salesforce.com and its move to turn the Force.com development platform into a service that makes all of its applications social. Sponsor A good example of this trend are small companies like Roambi that can now reach into the enterprise by integrating with Salesforce.com and other cloud platforms like Google Apps. We caught up with the founders of Roambi for a quick demo of their new pro product and how it syncs with both on-premse applications and SaaS services. Discuss

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An iPhone Visualization App That Syncs with the Cloud

Rackspace is launching a new service called ” Cloud Drive ,” that allows businesses to store, share and back up files in the Rackspace cloud. Rackspace is one of the world’s largest hosting companies but with more services being offered in the cloud, it is starting to look like it is also establishing a presence as a collaboration services provider. Sponsor Pat Mathews, president of email and apps for Rackspace said this is exactly what is happening. “We are definitely moving down the collaboration path with Cloud Drive,” Mathews sad. In reality, Rackspace is following a natural progression. With the ability to move IT to the cloud, Rackspace will have to deepen its collaboration service. For instance, search is not a part of the current offering. But it is part of the roadmap and will become a critical service for customers as they move their files to the cloud. It’s a focal reason why collaboration providers like Box.net put a heavy premium on search. Customers need the capability. Without it, the information can end up in folders without ever being touched again. Some of the features that are part of Cloud Drive include: Synchronized folders across one or more computers. Syncronized version control to make sure colleagues are working with the most recent files. Automatic data backups in the event of a hardware failure. Complementing Cloud Drive is Rackspace Server Backup, which backs up applications and protects file server data. Its primary function is to back up Windows or Linux data. Bot Cloud Drive and Rackspace Server Backup are powered by Jungle Disk , which Rackspace acquired last year. Rackspace Cloud Drive costs $4 per user, per month. Rackspace Server Backup costs $5 per server, per month. Discuss

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Rackspace Adds More Cloud-Based Services, Moves Down the Collaboration Path

Trying to understand the basics of cloud computing is one matter but getting a grasp on the technologies across the different platforms is another issue entirely. To try and simplify things just a bit, Appirio is offering a map that shows the cloud ecosystem . The map breaks out 70 different layers of technology across applications, platforms and infrastructure. The map is pretty sophisticated with the ability to drill down to understand the underlying technologies. Sponsor

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A Map To Better Understand The Cloud Ecosystem…And The Hype