Dell and Facebook prepping 'significant' announcement

Two of the biggest names in tech are teaming up on a cloud computing project that they plan to announce at a special event next week.

Facebook amasses billions of photos, friend connections, and status updates and stores them up in "the cloud," and Dell is working on being one of the main providers of the infrastructure--servers--that makes the cloud possible.

So what, exactly, are they doing together? Well, we already know Dell provides servers for Palo Alto, Calif.-based Facebook, but what other plans the two have hatched together beyond that is unclear. The event is scheduled for next Tuesday, but other than sending out a nicely worded invitation, the only thing the companies are saying about the partnership is that it involves "the next generation of cloud computing."

Surely more than a few people snickered when they learned earlier this month that Dell has attempted to trademark the term "cloud computing." The United States Patent and Trademark Office basically rejected the company's application this week unless Dell can come up with some evidence that it's not a generic phrase. It's highly unlikely the guys down in Round Rock, Texas can prove otherwise, but it does show that they're serious about the next wave of computing.