Analytics

A bit more than six months ago, EMC and VMware celebrated the launch of Pivotal, a new company led by former VMware CEO Paul Maritz. Pivotal's team included IP and personnel from EMC's Greenplum and Pivotal Labs organizations, and VMware's vFabric, Cloud Foundry and Cetas organizations. A considerab...

The U.S. government's Big Data initiative is sparking more investments in data management projects, especially those involving joint efforts between business and government. Under the sponsorship of the Obama administration initiative, the White House showcased more than 30 Big Data projects Nov. 12...

Google is planning to compensate users for letting it monitor their behavior via a mobile app currently in development. The project is part of Google's Screenwise market research program, which was launched about a year ago, said Google spokesperson Andrea Faville. "We conduct this research with sma...

Facebook on Monday announced it was acquiring Onavo, a 3-year-old company that has developed a data compression technology for smartphones, among other things. Based in Israel, Onavo will give Facebook a foothold in a market known for its advanced tech talent base. Onavo's Tel-Aviv office will becom...

AOL on Monday launched a limited version of Gathr, which aggregates online services for subscription at discounts of up to 60 percent of what they would cost on their own. Monthly subscriptions to prebundled packages start at $15, and some come with a bonus $10 Amazon gift card. Alternatively, con...

Ambitious plans to improve federal information technology systems could easily founder on the shoals of deficient networks. Government agencies currently are striving to meet the challenges associated with initiatives in five major areas: cloud technology; Big Data management; cybersecurity requirem...

Tumblr has teamed up with social analytics company DataSift to provide users with information about consumer engagement and sentiment. As of Monday, DataSift subscribers gained access to both historic and real-time data about what consumers were posting about their brands in Tumblr's 5.5 billion mon...

Yahoo topped Google as the most-visited website in the United States in July, Web analytics firm comScore reported on Wednesday. Specifically, Yahoo received 196.6 million unique visitors during the month, compared with 192.3 million for Google. This is the first time Yahoo has found itself in the t...

Anyone who's ever made a presentation with data knows that making data presentable isn't always easy. That's part of the rationale behind Databoard, a new tool from Google that's designed to help users do just that. Announced on Tuesday, Google Databoard gives users a new way to share data insights....

Open cloud provider Rackspace has entered into a yearlong contributor agreement with CERN openlab whereby it will deliver a hybrid cloud solution based on OpenStack to help CERN research the origins of the universe, the company announced on Monday. CERN openlab provides a framework for testing and v...

E-commerce companies rely on Big Data to glean valuable, real-time insights that drive smarter, more profitable business decisions. Problems can arise, however, when Big Data infrastructures become riddled with bottlenecks and don't perform optimally, causing critical intelligence to be delayed or u...

A U.S. Federal Trade Commissioner is urging consumers to take more control over their data. The call to action comes as revelations that the NSA is spying on Americans to an unprecedented degree continue to shake the country. Unease has been mounting over the amount of data companies are handing ove...

AOL has joined the throng of companies launching RSS readers in the hope of attracting the users who will be without their Google Reader feed come July 1. AOL is positioning its entry as the single online spot readers can turn to for content from all their favorite websites. AOL Reader will be avail...

The U.S. government is awash in data that is collected, stored and disseminated by federal agencies to fulfill their public service missions. However, the existence of huge amounts of information within the government presents a major profit-making opportunity for commercial firms. The Obama adminis...

There's no shortage of partner initiatives at most annual IT vendor events, but that was especially apparent at SAP's recent Sapphire NOW conference in Orlando, Fla. In large part, it's simply the nature of the event beast. Vendors work for weeks or even months on conference-related announcements, h...