Kognitio, driving the convergence of Big Data and Cloud Computing, today announced a strategic relationship with Xtremeinsights, a solution provider focused on solving the challenges of Big Data by leveraging Hadoop with existing data management systems. Together, the companies said they will jointly offer their software and integration capabilities to companies seeking to gain greater insights from Big Data, especially at firms seeking to exploit the capabilities of the Hadoop platform.

Cloudera, a leading provider of enterprise Apache Hadoop software and services, and HP today announced an agreement that will enable clients to deploy, manage and scale Hadoop systems quickly to gain more effective insight from their business data. They will deliver open-standards-based reference architectures that simplify management and accelerate deployment of Hadoop Cluster environments. Clients can purchase the Cloudera Enterprise platform and future Cloudera products either directly from HP or bundled in HP AppSystem for Apache Hadoop.

Oracle announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Xsigo Systems (an eight year old company), a leading provider of network virtualization technology. The financial structure of the deal is not disclosed to the public. Recently VMWare acquired Xsigo's competitor Nicira for approximately $1.05 billion in cash plus approximately $210 million of assumed unvested equity awards. The latest acquisition shows the importance given by companies for the SDN Technology and their investment strategy to capture the cloud market. This Acquisition could be summed up as increased performance, simplicity, agility and ROI.

Apple Inc. has agreed to purchase mobile security firm AuthenTec for $356 million as reported by Reuters. The report also says the Apple has shelled out $8.00 per share, about 58 percent premium. AuthenTec, a 15 year old company, is well known for its fingerprint sensors and identity management software. It would be interesting to see if Apple incorporates fingerprint authentication technology into its devices.

Uhuru Software, Inc., a software start-up that gives developers the simplicity and flexibility they need for deploying applications on the internet, delivered the Uhuru AppCloud beta. This is one of the truly multi-platform Platform as a Service (PaaS) offerings which allows software engineers to not only publish both applications written on Microsoft’s .NET technology as well as well popular Open Source technologies like Java, Ruby, PHP and Node.js but to mix and match the best of Open Source and .NET.

BizAnytime has launched an All-In-One Cloud Collaboration Service for Small Businesses at 10$ per month. BizAnytime delivers a new digital office to your PC, Tablet and Smartphone through the cloud. BizAnytime delivers a new digital office to your PC, Tablet and Smartphone through the cloud thereby facilitating employees on the move to access data in a secure Cloud Environment.

VMWare adds one more to the list of acquisitions this year by acquiring Nicira, in turn strengthening its networking capabilities for cloud environments. VMware will acquire Nicira for approximately $1.05 billion in cash plus approximately $210 million of assumed unvested equity awards. Niciras' software-defined networking enables the dynamic creation of virtual network infrastructure and services that are completely decoupled and independent from the physical network hardware.

Java and Platform-as-a-Service, a combination any developer would relish to work with any day. CumuLogic, a company is trying to redefine Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) to include a complete platform for running applications in the cloud, not just with a view to develop but provide a platform to manage, migrate, monitor and meter applications within the cloud.

Kognitio has revealed it is now making its in-memory analytical platform immediately available via Amazon Web Services (AWS), offering reduced costs and greater flexibility in the cloud.

JetBrains, the company behind many products like TeamCity(continuous integration) and quite a few IDE's like IntelliJ IDEA, dotCover etc., have recently launced new release of YouTrace 4. There are quite a few major enhancement done to the product which are agile friendly. Teams can customize the workflow based on their needs.