Everyone’s rethinking data and the cloud, especially traditional vendors like Microsoft. It’s entire business model is evolving for today’s Facebook era, where a very mobile world requires a modern data center. Moving data in real-time, on a global scale is the challenge Facebook takes on as it pushes its latest acquisition, mobile messenger WhatsApp, to the corners of the earth. And Microsoft’s obstacles are no different, reiterated with the preview launch of Microsoft Power BI for Office 365. Power BI is a DIY approach to data big and small, and while IT will setup the data sources, at least many of them, the analytics will be done by users on their own machines. In every key area, Microsoft Power BI fails to break new ground, but that’s the point, writes Editor at Large David Coursey.

Power BI works atop Microsoft Excel, benefitting from a user interface everyone already knows and most at least tolerate. It’s a tactic Microsoft hopes can bring BI to the masses, shifting its own cloud strategy to accommodate new subscription schemas. The question of monetization is also being raised for WhatsApp now that it’s headed to Facebook’s camp, but CEO Mark Zuckerberg insists he’ll focus on growth to outpace global rivals. Is there anything Microsoft and the enterprise can learn from Facebook’s methods?

Breaking News: Facebook Buys WhatsApp for $19 billion

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Facebook is buying WhatsApp for 19 billion, which includes retention bonuses. WhatsApp has over 450 million people using the service each month, 70 percent of which are active daily. So what WhatsApp? Pictures, pictures, pictures. Many forget that pictures are the center of what Facebook is and its made no bones about defending that turf as the central point to its dominance.

Photos are the reason Facebook just paid about 10 percent of its market cap for WhatsApp. This acquisition shows the lengths that Facebook will go to preserve their marketshare as the platform for the social web. “WhatsApp is on a path to connect 1 billion people. The services that reach that milestone are all incredibly valuable,” said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO. “I’ve known Jan for a long time and I’m excited to partner with him and his team to make the world more open and connected.”

Enterprise technology was blown away by consumer technology yesterday with Facebook’s announcement. On today’s #theCUBE Conversation Wikibon Senior Analyist Stu Miniman asked Steve Kenniston aka ‘The Storage Alchemist’ who also works at IBM if there were any lessons learned for the enterprise based on Facebook’s $19 billion acquisition of WhatsApp?

“One of the things that is interesting to me, yes its a social media platform, but think about the fact that Facebook runs almost a billion e-mail accounts and how often are they down? And name another enterprise in the world that does that, that doesn’t have major issues. From a technology backend perspective, they have something interesting. So from an M&A perspective, which is kinda where you were going with this, my thought is, I’m curious to see how they integrate that into the overall Facebook experience. If they have an architecture, a backend architecture that allows that to happen seamlessly and easily, that is pretty impressive. I think a lot of IT shops would want to be able to do that. … More interesting will be where it goes inside of Facebook.”

City of Paradigm: The Internet of Things

In the excerpt from The City of Paradigm a novel by Kyt Dotson, Stephen Wolfe finds himself elected to the position of Director of Big Data and Urban Information Analysis—a government position making him the head of the City of Paradigm Bureau of Urban Information Analysis.

The City of Paradigm, California may not be a real place–but smart buildings, smart houses, and sensors as part of infrastructure may not be that far off into the future. The Internet of Things suggests that a lot of little things, each playing their part can coalesce into an understandable whole.

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HP puts senior execs in Cloud group : Bethany Mayer in charge

According the leaked memo, Hewlett-Packard is reassigning Bethany Mayer, who was heading up HP Networking, to a new role as SVP/GM of Network Functions Virtualization (NFV). HP is putting lots of bets on the cloud and this move highlights that. In addition it seems the old enterprise DNA is being flushed with a new focus on keeping their mature markets from falling in share. The growth opportunity is in new markets – cloud and mobile. The consumerization of IT, or as HP calls it the New Style of IT.

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Confirmed: Fusion-io founders back with a vengeance : bag total of $63M for stealth startup

Fusion-io co-founders David Flynn and Rick White have not been idle since their controversial departure from the storage drive maker last May. Four months after handing over the reins to new CEO Shane Robison, the executives secured $50 million for their next venture, an emerging provider of software-defined storage (SDS) solutions called Primary Data. $63 million is a lot of cabbage for a new start-up.

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Could Apple’s next big product be the iCar?

According to a report from the San Francisco Chronicle, Apple is now looking into entering the automotive and health care markets. Apple’s head of merger and acquisitions chief, Adrian Perica, was very busy spearheading the company’s acquisition of various companies last year, and is said to have secretly met with Elon Musk, the founder and CEO of Tesla Motors. Apple isn’t stopping there. With its often rumored wearable devices like the iWatch, home automation features tied in with the Apple TV and producing not just Quantified Self trackers, but something that can help in the early detection of heart attacks.

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The future of Big Data : Open source v. proprietary | #BigDataSV

In last week’s companion to SiliconANGLE’s #BigDataNYC, theCUBE broadcast live from Silicon Valley, highlighting the ongoing maturity of Big Data for 2014 and beyond. John Furrier welcomed theCUBE alumni Bruno Aziza and Rishi Yadev for one of the more interesting conversations centering on the method and business model that will further advance the adoption of Big Data in the Enterprise. Despite their best arguments, it is SiliconANGLE’s stance that companies like Yadev and Aziza’s are fighting a losing battle against open source.

photo credit: SimonQ錫濛譙 via photopin cc