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• Snowflake Computing opens data warehouse to the masses

  Snowflake Computing announced Tuesday that its cloud-based data warehouse service is available to all users.

• IBM plugs OpenPower servers into SoftLayer cloud

  IBM will roll out a cloud computing service next quarter using OpenPower-based servers, continuing an effort to expand the market for Power processors and challenge Intel in hyperscale data centers.

• NTT buys Germany's biggest datacentre provider for $US840 million

  Japan's NTT Group is buying a majority stake in Germany's biggest provider of datacentre services, the latest sign of convergence in a competitive European market.

• French newspapers go offline, but hosting company rules out DDoS as cause

  High-profile French media websites went offline for a few hours Friday morning, prompting frenzied speculation about "unprecedented" cyberattacks -- but the hosting company behind the sites soon dismissed talk of a massive distributed denial-of-service attack.

• HP's BYOD service protects mobile devices and PCs

  Hewlett-Packard wants to make BYOD easier for small businesses through a new cloud-based service to manage and protect mobile devices and PCs.

• IBM customizes cloud services for the enterprise

  Hoping to jump out in front of providers of generic cloud services, IBM has launched a portfolio of cloud packages, called IBM Cloud Business Solutions, designed to run specific business processes such as asset management and customer care.

• Ellison: Facebook the new model for business applications

  Modern business applications need a social network at their core and should be so easy to use that even a CEO can figure them out.

• Yahoo to reinvent small-business services unit

  Yahoo, in its crusade to reinvent itself, is adding another item to the agenda: revamping its small-business Web hosting unit.

• Microsoft offers Azure discounts in renewed cloud push

  Microsoft will offer discounts on its Azure cloud service next month as part of a cloud computing push that also includes new releases of its Windows Server and Systems Center software.

• VMware buys WaveMaker, aims to ease app development

  VMware said on Tuesday it had acquired WaveMaker, the creator of open-source software that lets non-developers build Java Web applications.

• 10 IT-related predictions for 2011

  We were wrong -- so far -- that Carol Bartz would be ousted as Yahoo CEO by the end of this year, but we were right that Apple's tablet, whose name wasn't known at the end of last year, would be huge. OK, so that second one was probably a given, but not all of our 2010 predictions were so easy. We think the same is true with our 2011 predictions.

• Staff cutbacks cited as cause of IT outages

  The effects of an increasing number of outages of web-based service providers were felt in New Zealand recently when hosted software provider Xero was forced offline for 45 minutes after datacentres at RackSpace, which hosts Xero's data, failed on June 30, causing a 45-minute outage for Xero customers.
  The Rackspace incident is far from the only case of a service provider going down in recent months. Based on news reports, the number of such incidents appears to have been increasing lately, analysts say. They cited shutdowns of the Google Apps software hosted by Google, a major outage at PayPal earlier this month and a distributed denial-of-service attack on Twitter, as well as the Rackspace datacentre incident.

• Microsoft adds e-mail, IM hosting to Windows Live

  Microsoft has introduced a test version of a hosted email and instant-messaging service (IM) as part of the beta release of Windows Live.