The higher-than-expected profitability of Amazon.com’s cloud computing business sent its stock to a new high Friday and rippled through the IT industry. Microsoft shares also jumped on upbeat views for its cloud business, Azure. Late Thursday, Amazon (AMZN) reported financials for Amazon Web Services (AWS), its cloud services unit, for the first time. Q1 revenue for AWS rose 49% from the year-earlier quarter to $1.57 billion, with net income of
Rather than let Amazon Web Services (AWS) crush it, Rackspace soon could partner with cloud computing’s 800-pound gorilla. Besides supporting AWS, Rackspace (RAX) also might support the public cloud business of another rival, Google (GOOGL), some analysts speculate. Rackspace, in any case, doesn’t shy away from describing its intentions for what it calls its public cloud initiative. “We’re working on this model; it’s very interesting, we’re
OpenStack could soon be the software that runs the non-Amazon cloud. Open-source software available for free, OpenStack helps corporate IT departments manage data centers packed with computer servers. OpenStack has also gained popularity as a tool to connect data centers to public clouds, where computing resources are shared via the Internet. But Amazon.com’s (AMZN) Amazon Web Services (AWS) is by far the biggest provider of