Scot Petersen

About

Scot Petersen is a technology analyst at Ziff Brothers Investments, a private investment firm. Prior to joining Ziff Brothers, Scot was the editorial director, Business Applications & Architecture, at TechTarget. Before that, he was the director, Editorial Operations, at Ziff Davis Enterprise, While at Ziff Davis Media, he was a writer and editor at eWEEK.

DigitalOcean Growing Rapidly as Cloud Service Without Data Centers

NEW YORK—As traditional enterprise technology leaders Cisco and Hewlett-Packard Enterprise give up trying to compete with Amazon Web Services in the public cloud, at least one relatively smaller player is doubling down on its efforts. The budding success that DigitalOcean, the New York City-based cloud provider, is having is due to the fact that, unlike […]

Dell, Nexenta Help Revionics Implement Software-Defined Storage

Amid the uncertainty of the Dell and EMC merger this fall and what it means for customers, there’s one for whom things are working out quite nicely. Revionics, a producer of price optimization software in Austin, Texas, turned to Dell partner Nexenta to lower its storage costs and gain more flexibility in the management of […]

IT Leaders Still Face Pressure to Invest Wisely to Support Business

LAS VEGAS—The annual Gartner Data Center, Infrastructure and Operations Management Conference kicked off here today, offering attendees advice on how to deal with the myriad changes, challenges and choices they have to deal with today, from budgets to business outcomes. Dave Russell, Gartner vice president and distinguished analyst, and Robert Naegle, a Gartner Research vice […]

Amazon Web Services Keep Setting the Bar Higher for Cloud Computing

LAS VEGAS—Amazon Web Services this week showed once again just how much farther ahead of the pack it is in cloud computing and how high it is setting the bar for the future—not just for cloud computing, but all of IT. At the company’s re:Invent conference here, AWS CEO Andy Jassy and CTO Werner Vogels […]

AWS Exhorts Partners to Build Innovative Services for Amazon Cloud

LAS VEGAS—Amazon Web Services kicked off its 2016 Re:Invent conference with its annual Global Partner Summit here at the Venetian, touting several new and expanded programs for vendors looking to sell software, solutions or services around the AWS cloud. “Topping the news is an integrated partner program built around VMware and AWS, an extension of […]

EMC Shows Its Data Center Strength at Inaugural Dell EMC Conference

AUSTIN, Texas—The EMC takeover of Dell is now complete, or so it seemed at the first combined Dell EMC World show. Despite the exuberant presence of Michael Dell, it wasn’t quite clear whose show this was. It was Dell World in Austin, but it had all the trappings of EMC World in Las Vegas. Call […]

Oracle Closing in on AWS, Microsoft With Public Cloud Infrastructure

SAN FRANCISCO—Oracle has been accused of being late to the party when it comes to cloud computing—almost 10 years too late—but now the company is moving like Olympic champion sprinter Usain Bolt rounding the turn in the 200-meter sprint. The Silicon Valley stalwart and its irrepressible Executive Chairman Larry Ellison are as confident and brash […]

VMware’s Long View of Cloud Transformation May Be Too Conservative

LAS VEGAS—The concept of internet time—where everything seems to happen much faster than the normal pace of life—may or may not be a myth, but it is a double-edged sword for VMware. Here at the annual VMworld conference, the virtualization pioneer is working fast to make VMware viable in a cloud-native world—but maybe not at […]

AWS Pushes ‘Serverless’ App Development at Its New York Summit

NEW YORK—Amazon Web Services is showing it has not run out of ways to improve or expand the AWS cloud, especially for application developers. At the company’s New York City Summit here Aug. 11 at a packed Javits Center, AWS CTO Werner Vogels discussed several developer initiatives based on its contention that the cloud’s economic […]

Black Hat USA Shows Enterprises Fail to Learn Security 101 Lessons

LAS VEGAS—There was plenty of news last week during Black Hat USA about new cyber-threats, vulnerabilities and exploits. The good news is that security technologies are more advanced than ever and researchers are getting better at spotting hacks and malware. The bad news is that most threats are preventable by following “Security 101” practices that […]