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.

[Lancelot9201]

With all this 'Cloud" computing being promoted so aggressively our "ISP's" inability to support the required bandwidth is going to become very evident very quickly - According to a recent article on digg the USA is ranked like 18th when it comes to transfer speeds - plus the monthly rates / charges are way to high for what we get.

[Darkwend]

Think of the consequences if some of these isps get their way and begin placing limits on the bandwidth you can use each month and charging you whenever you go over.

[ppgreat]

mobiledell?

[Orion Blastar]

Hey hey, you you, get off of my cloud! My pictures are private I don't want Facebook making them public and part of a cloud!

[nowitall]

Hay, OB, you post pictures on a giant social network and think they'll be private???? Chuckle snort....

[t26l]

Surely more than a few people snickered when they learned earlier this month that Dell has attempted to trademark the term "cloud computing."
Yup, I did...how'dya know?