SiliconBeat

It’s a sunny day in Silicon Valley, and still we can’t help thinking about clouds. Maybe it’s because in recent days, some big tech companies have been talking up their efforts in the business of cloud computing.

Cloud computing, in which software and services are accessed from a remote data center “cloud,” has been the focus of much industry hype. But all that talk has left many businesses uncertain about how to use the technology, as IDC analyst Frank Gens said in a recent statement. Both IBM and Hewlett-Packard clearly see this as an opportunity.

HP, which already sells hardware and software for data centers, rolled out a new package of consulting services earlier this week, including workshops and “road maps” of recommendations on design, testing and security for businesses considering the use of cloud-based services or building their own clouds for internal use.

IBM, meanwhile, announced its own portfolio of new cloud products and services just last week — including software and services that customers can access from IBM’s data centers, services based on internal clouds that IBM can build and run for its clients, and systems of hardware and software designed to work together.

Even Larry Ellison got into the discussion during Oracle’s quarterly earnings call this week, as he told analysts that Oracle is preparing to make more of its business software available on a subscription basis, to compete with companies like Salesforce.com. Ellison said Oracle will host the software on its own data centers or install it on a client’s data center, with Oracle operating it as a service.

One analyst said that sounded like Ellison was talking about cloud computing, which the Oracle CEO has famously derided in the past. Ellison did not disagree.

And if that’s not enough cloud news, some top execs from HP, Amazon, Sun and other companies were trading ideas at the GigaOM Network’s Structure 09 conference in San Francisco this week. The Register had an interesting account .

Remember way back in the beginning of this year when Microsoft supposedly said it was willing to buy Yahoo for $44.6 billion? (And that was before the company reportedly was willing to bump the offer up even more).

Well, not that I’m actually suggesting anyone do this, but…Thanks to the stock markets’ implosion, if you had enough spare change lying under your couch, you could now buy eBay AND Yahoo for less than that. Read the rest of this entry »

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey just posted on his blog that two new investors have taken a stake in the micro-blogging site:

“We’re happy to announce two new members of our investment team: Bijan Sabet with SparkCapital in Boston and Jeff Bezos of Bezos Expeditions in Seattle.”

That would also be Bezos of Amazon.com, who apparently won’t be found on Twitter, unlike Sabet who can be followed @bijan. Dorsey didn’t disclose the size of the investment, but it has previously been reported to be about $15 million. While the size of the funding had leaked out before, folks had been speculating about who ponied up the money, with Spark being a popular guess.

Original venture backer Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures was also said to have participated in this round.

One interesting thing that immediately struck me: None of the main investors are based in Silicon Valley. Bezos is in Seattle; Wilson is in New York; Sabet is based in Boston. Twitter is based in San Francisco. That may not ultimately matter, but I wonder how many other prominent Web 2.0 start-ups don’t have at least one major backer in the Valley? Read the rest of this entry »