John Furrier
Latest from John Furrier
Big Switch Turns On an Entire Industry, Emerges from Stealth with $40M in the Bank
Big Switch is an software-defined networking (SDN) startup with plenty of credentials. The company was co-founded in 2010 by Cisco veteran Kyle Forster and Guido Appenzeller, the Stanford researcher who led the development of the OpenFlow standard. Big Switch raised nearly $40 million in venture capital to date, from investors including Goldman Sachs, Redpoint Ventures, ...
Breaking Analysis: The New Start-Up Founders Playbook
Unlike the old era of entrepreneurship we live in a new moderner era where the frictionless environment of access to and sharing of information creates new levels of transparency. This dynamic is creating all kinds of new disruptions and efficiencies in the start-up eco-system. Let me share with you my opinion and observations. On shinning example is ...
Opinion: How Big Data Can Change the Game – Big Data Propels Obama to Re-election
As the election buzz about how Obama won the election in the most horific economic conditions any incubant has ever seen, many want to know why. America has yelling for years and Barack extracted that signal from the noise using big data to “listen”. He aligned his message to those who were speaking to him. ...
Analysis: The Yahoo Turnaround and the Packaging of Marissa Mayer – Silicon Valley Tech Athlete
The real Silicon Valley it’s about the tech athletes. The entrepreneurs, investors, risk takers, innovators, and executives who make things happen and operate at a high level. Yahoo’s new CEO Marissa Mayer is one of those tech athletes and Yahoo the company is still in the major leagues with hundreds of millions of active users. ...
Cloudera’s Omer Trajman Joins Hot Silicon Valley Startup Wibidata To Run & Scale Field Ops
Wibidata, a hot Silicon Valley, announced on their blog yesterday that Cloudera alpha geek Omer Trajman, has joined Wibidata to head up and scale the company’s field operations. WibiData is defining a new space in Big Data, focusing on solutions that use all the data an organization has to create more people centric applications. Omer ...
Keeping the Founders Around – Founders are Tech Athletes
Founders are what I call “tech athletes”. Founders are the warriors who take the chances and big risks that no one will dare to take. In the world of venture capital, there’s a term that surfaces when investors encounter founders who refuse to relinquish control over their vision: “founderitis.” This term is often wielded with ...
Guest Post: Why Microsoft is Committed to Hadoop
Guest Post from Dave Campbell of Microsoft on their Big Data strategy and why they chose Hortonworks over Cloudera. Last February at Strata Conference in Santa Clara we shared Microsoft’s progress on Big Data, specifically working to broaden the adoption of Hadoop with the simplicity and manageability of Windows and enabling customers to easily derive ...
Breaking Analysis: Violin Memory Systems Going Public at $2b Valuation – Violin IPO
Bloomberg is reporting that Violin Memory is going public at a $2 billion dollar valuation. According to Bloomberg, Violin IPO is being led by JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), Deutsche Bank AG (DBK) and Bank of America Corp. (BAC). The timing and price of the offering have yet to be determined but the report is that the valuation will ...
Microsoft Punches Back: Responds To Scathing NY Times Article on Cloud Factories – Our Summary
Microsoft responses to the NY Times article (series) called Cloud Factories. Here was my response yesterday on SiliconANGLE. New York Times took a cheap shot at Microsoft on a story saying Microsoft was an evil corporate overlord dictating their control over a small rural town. Scathing actually, and wrong. Today, Brian Janous of ...
Cloud Factory Series: Datacenter Innovation Advancement Not About Power, Pollution, and Internet
Breaking Analysis: The NY Times article published over the weekend on datacenter power is a rehash of old data and old concepts that no longer apply to today’s datacenter market. Another one is up today called Data Barns in Farm Town, Gobbling Power and Flexing Muscle. The NYT article has pulled together a lot of unrelated industry ...