In a Blow to Cloud Computing, Nirvanix Officially Shuts Down

　　early two weeks after reports in The Wall Street Journal and several tech publications that the cloud-storage company Nirvanix Inc. was going under, the company has finally acknowledged they’re true.
　　Nirvanix has now wiped all information off its website, except for a noticesaying that it’s working with International Business Machines Corp. and “dedicating the resources we can” to either returning customers’ data or helping them transfer it to IBM, Amazon.com Inc., Google Inc., Microsoft Corp. or some other cloud storage provider.
　　“We are working hard to have resources available through October 15 to assist you with the transition process,” the website says.
　　Since it was started in 2007, Nirvanix had raised about $70 million from firms including Khosla Ventures, Intel Capital, Mission Ventures, Valhalla Partners and Windward Ventures, according to VentureWire records.
　　The company described itself in press materials as “the leader in enterprise cloud storage” and touted its “extreme security, reliability and redundancy.”
　　In May 2012 after the last funding round, which was $25 million, former Chief Executive Scott Genereux told VentureWire that Nirvanix was growing and headed toward profitability and a possible IPO.
　　In October, at the Intel Capital Summit, Mr. Genereux praised Intel for its help in closing a large transaction between Nirvanix and Credit Suisse, and in December, after he had left Nirvanix for Oracle Corp., Nirvanix announced that it was ranked by the industry analyst Gartner Inc., which rated Nirvanix’s product viability as “excellent.”
　　(In a blog post last week, Gartner urged corporate customers to have a cloud exit strategy and to not panic at the Nirvanix news. The firm said it’s been fielding questions from Nirvanix customers on what they should do).
　　So far, not a single Nirvanix investor or any of its three last chief executives (two followed Mr. Genereux) have been willing to discuss publicly what went wrong with the company or say what precautions, if any, were taken to protect Nirvanix customers. (If that changes, I’ll update this post).
　　Venture capitalists must ultimately answer to their own investors–their limited partners–and it makes sense for them to put the best public face on a company for as long as they can while at the same time refusing to throw good money after bad.
　　Still, the sudden and secretive way that Nirvanix is shutting down has raised questions about the future of cloud computing. Nirvanix is the second venture-backed cloud-storage company to fail so publicly in less than three years–Cirtas Systems Inc., which had raised a little over $30 million, closed abruptly in April, 2011.
　　Despite the hype around cloud computing and the several cloud companies that have been successful so far, Nirvanix’s sudden demise serves as a warning once again to be careful about putting anything of value in the cloud.

I’ve hinted at ahead of, is that a single of Microsoft’s OS

　　In an work to save both of its ailing platforms, Microsoft is organizing to combine each the Windows 8 and Windows Telephone eight app stores into a single, all-encompassing app retailer. It is not completely clear no matter whether this will result in complete cross-platform compatibility for each Windows eight and WP8 apps - like Apple’s iPhone and iPad App Shop - or if it is extra a case of designing a truly kick-ass app shop that each platforms will then use independently of each other. In either case, the new combined app store will seek to rectify two substantial complaints: That Windows eight and Windows Phone 8 have poor app ecosystems, and, specially in the case of Windows 8, the utterly atrocious app retailer experience that generally leaves you asking yourself why on earth you decided to get a Windows tablet in place of an iPad.
　　This news comes from the usual “sources acquainted with the company’s plans,” who spoke towards the Verge. According to the source, the head of Microsoft’s newly formed Operating Systems group, Terry Myerson, held a meeting exactly where he told a large number of Microsoft workers in regards to the new strategy to combine the app shops. There didn’t seem to become a great deal inside the way of specifics, only that the new store - which we’ll bet excellent dollars on it being called One Retailer - would come with the “next release” of Windows and Windows Phone. This ought to mean Windows Phone 8.1 and an update for Windows 8.1, each of that are due in spring 2014.
　　As for how the One Retailer will actually perform, we can only guess. In a perfect world, it would perform like the iOS App Shop: apps developed for Windows Phone 8 will be scaled up for use on Windows 8 tablets, and apps especially made for tablet interfaces would show up if you’re browsing the retailer on your Windows 8 tablet. Apple can get away with this due to the fact its smartphones and tablets run the same operating program, and hence developers can target the precise identical APIs. Windows eight and Windows Phone 8 share a whole lot of comparable features, as well as some low-level code, but it is nowhere close to the identical degree of similarity as an iPhone and iPad.
　　Microsoft, for its aspect, has previously taken for the stage and promised a unified ecosystem - however the specifics on how such unification might actually happen haven’t been forthcoming. Because it stands, when you develop a Metro app cautiously, porting it to Windows Phone eight is often as quick as changing some lines of code. In reality, though, resulting from wildly distinctive screen sizes, UI and UX paradigms, as well as a huge range of hardware targets (from Tegra three and integrated GPUs, through to Haswell and discrete GPUs), cross-platform cheap windows 7 professional activation key compatibility has remained elusive.
　　Unless Microsoft features a magic trick up its sleeve to let developers to easily develop apps that run on both platforms - a compatibility layer (emulator) of some sort, possibly - then it is additional likely that the One Shop will just be a brand new app store style that is employed by both Windows eight and Windows Telephone eight. Windows 8 sorely desires a brand new app shop, and if a truly unified app ecosystem is coming for Windows 9 and Windows Telephone 9, then it wouldn’t hurt to have people today utilized for the new app retailer currently. (Read: The Windows 8 Retailer is broken: Here’s tips on how to fix it.)
　　A different possibility, as I’ve hinted at ahead of, is that a single of Microsoft’s OSes may well really consume the other. As not too long ago as last week, Microsoft’s Myerson told some analysts that we need to anticipate to determine Windows RT on bigger phones - and it goes the other way, as well, using the Lumia 1520 phablet running Windows Telephone. I would not be surprised if Windows/RT ultimately consumes Windows Phone, which would really neatly resolve the situation of cross-platform compatibility by removing the pesky “cross” bit.
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