Quizlet is a site you might never have heard of unless you were a teen or an educator, yourself.

The flashcard-focused site helps millions of students who need to memorize information and prepare for tests by making learning both fun and effective.

The teenage founder, Andrew Sutherland (pictured), built the product to solve a personal problem. “I was puttering along with my dad with some call-and-response type quizzing,” he wrote. “‘Man, I love doing this’ was NOT what I was thinking. So I put my thinking cap on, and the first line of code for Quizlet was written that night.” Read more

This is not really new news: I covered this back in November. But a new posting on FreeDesktop.org from systemd developer Lennart Poettering is seeking to dispel many of the arguments against such a merge, while touting the merger’s advantages.

Poettering is not the initial proposer of /usr merge–that designation goes to fellow Red Hat developers Harald Hoyer and Kay Sievers, as an effort to clean up the mess that was made when the /sbin and /bin directories were first split off from each other. The Grand /usr-fication Theory will, when implemented, essentially pull in every component of the operating system to a single mounted volume. Read more

Mobile World Congress is the global epicenter of this mobile redefinition as our participants enable, lead and accelerate it. No longer limited only to communications, mobile is now a force transforming our world in an unprecedented way. Learn more here

Running production applications and critical business processes in a public cloud requires sophisticated monitoring and correlation capabilities to ensure that businesses get a true organization-wide view of cloud services performance. Circonus and Joyent Cloud will discuss how to effectively monitor a production Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) public cloud deployment and gain real-time visibility into cloud-based services and infrastructure resources. Sign up here

The Joyent solution requires lower infrastructure investment thanks to higher hardware utilization rates, faster performance, and cloud analytics that give visibility into the whole cloud environment. The software, called SmartDataCenter, includes local storage that significantly reduces the total cost of ownership (TCO) of cloud data centers. Designed to manage up to tens of thousands of virtual machines (SmartMachines), Joyent’s infrastructure offers customers and service providers a true “virtual data center.”

SmartDataCenter has all the flexibility needed to deliver a wide choice of cloud services, from the availability of storage and compute power to the support of legacy applications through server virtualization. It also supports a convenient multi-tenant PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service) for the development of new applications and services that fulfill customer requirements and maximize the returns for VARs and Service Providers.

“The quality and importance of the partnership between ICOS and Joyent is a key milestone for the development of the enterprise cloud market and we look forward to working with them to deliver next-generation cloud computing infrastructure in Italy,” said Joyent EMEA President Philippe Weppe. “We look forward to rolling out similar offerings with VARs in other European countries as well.”

“We are glad that we have a partner like Joyent whose solution is currently the industry’s best cloud computing infrastructure platform,” said Riccardo Maiarelli, CEO of ICOS. “SmartDataCenter fits particularly well into our market strategy, providing the most efficient infrastructure solution for organizations wishing to make strategic use of their IT environments. Thanks to Joyent’s flexibility, our partners today have a double opportunity: they can deliver software and services to support the development of their customers’ private clouds, or they can themselves become cloud providers, responding to growing market demand.”

Future plans of ICOS’ partnership with Joyent include development by the distributor of its own cloud infrastructure that will be made available to channel partners, with the objective of enabling them to resell cloud services without having to build their own cloud data center.

About ICOS
ICOS S.p.A. is an Italian Value Added Distributor that offers to its channel partners a comprehensive set of enterprise IT infrastructure solutions and services. The company’s focus is on the strategic architectures for the data center, such as virtualization and cloud computing. As a partner of leading technology vendors, ICOS is able to provide the most complete set of server, storage and software solutions, integrating them with technical, marketing and educational services delivered by certified staff. With its headquarters in Ferrara, ICOS covers the whole Italian territory with sales offices located in Milan, Rome and Naples.

About Joyent
Joyent is a global cloud computing software and service provider that offers an integrated technology suite designed for service providers, enterprises, and developers. JoyentCloud.com delivers public cloud services to some of the most innovative companies in the world, including LinkedIn, Gilt Groupe and Kabam. Joyent licenses its cloud software to service providers that include Dell, FirstServer, XYBase, ClusterTech and Uniserve. Joyent offerings also include Platform-as-a-Service based on Node.js, the open source server-side JavaScript development environment that has been embraced by enterprises around the world, such as Microsoft. Joyent is also the key contributor to and sponsor of Joyent SmartOS, an open source project dedicated to the complete, modern operating system. A global ecosystem of leading technology partners assists Joyent in enabling customers to leverage the performance, scalability, reliability and security inherent in the company’s cloud solutions. Joyent’s EMEA headquarters is in Geneva, Switzerland. For more information, visit http://www.joyent.com.

Joyent Media Contact:
Scott VanSickle
Hoffman PR
Email Contact
+1-408-975-3084

ICOS S.p.A.
Riccardo Fantoni
Strategic marketing & Communication Mgr.
e-mail: Email Contact
Tel. +39 0532.783411

San Francisco—January 23, 2012—Joyent, a global provider of cloud computing software and services, today announced it has completed an $85 million funding round, with European group Weather Investment II providing the majority of the round. Weather II was advised by Accelero Capital, an investment and management group. Both Weather II and Accelero focus on telecommunication and related media and technology companies that clearly hold promise in the rapidly and profoundly changing telecom and enterprise markets worldwide.

Telefónica Digital, the growth arm of global telecom leader Telefónica, is also participating as a strategic investor. Cloud-based services are a key focus area for Telefónica’s new Digital unit, and Joyent’s technology expertise in this area will help Telefónica enhance its product offering.

Existing Joyent investors include El Dorado Ventures, Epic Ventures, Greycroft Partners, Intel Capital, and Liberty Global.

“We believe that Joyent’s unique approach to cloud and systems solutions provides an edge compared to other providers,” said Khaled Bichara, co-CEO of Accelero Capital. “We are delighted to make this strategic investment in a company that is providing solutions to some of the toughest problems in cloud computing, such as cloud performance, resiliency and security, thereby unleashing the full potential of the next generation of computing.”

“This investment is further proof of our ambition in the area of cloud services and is in line with our strategy of working with leaders like Joyent, which is poised to vastly improve the way computing is carried out worldwide,” said Matthew Key, Chairman & CEO, Telefónica Digital. “Joyent’s technology fits perfectly with technologies developed in-house and our cloud services model, and enables us to provide more competitive offerings to a broader range of customer segments.”

Throughout 2012 Joyent will roll out a collection of seamlessly connected high performance public clouds that serve global corporations with consistent computing services on every continent.

“Having worked with customers around the world, we see the demand for consistent global services regardless of how many countries our customers are operating in,” said David Young, CEO and founder of Joyent. “This funding will enable Joyent to build out a global compute offering to assist customers in expanding consistent software, support and services to their clients.”

About Joyent
Joyent is a global cloud computing and systems software provider that offers an integrated technology suite designed for enterprises and developers. JoyentCloud.com delivers public cloud services to some of the most innovative companies in the world, including LinkedIn, Gilt Groupe and Kabam. Node.js, the open source server-side JavaScript project owned and stewarded by Joyent, provides developers and enterprises such as Microsoft with the most powerful runtime for developing data-intensive, real-time apps. Joyent is also the key contributor to and sponsor of Joyent SmartOS, an open source project dedicated to the complete, modern operating system. SmartDataCenter orchestrates Joyent’s technologies into a cohesive, reliable and distributed system that can stand up to the compute demands of the modern world. A global ecosystem of leading technology partners assists Joyent in enabling customers to leverage the performance, scalability, reliability and security inherent in the company’s cloud solutions. For more information, visit http://www.joyent.com.

About Accelero Capital
Accelero Capital is an investment and management group focused on telecommunication, digital media  and technology. Accelero Capital`s management team has an unparalleled track record in strategic, operational and financial management. It leverages its expertise and sector know-how to identify high-growth assets with turnaround potential.  For more information write info@accelerocapital.com or visit http://www.accelerocapital.com.

About Weather Investment II
Weather Investment II is an experienced investor and strategic shareholder in telecommunications companies. Weather II notably owns an economic interest of about 20% in Vimpelcom, the world’s sixth largest mobile telecommunications group by subscribers.

About Telefónica Digital
Telefónica Digital is a global business division of Telefónica. Its mission is to seize the opportunities within the digital world and deliver new growth for Telefónica through research & development, venture capital, global partnerships and digital services such as cloud computing, mobile advertising, M2M and eHealth. Telefónica Digital will deliver these innovative products and services to Telefónica’s 300 million customers as well as leveraging the power of the internet to enter new markets. It is headquartered in London with regional centres in Silicon Valley, Sao Paolo, Spain and Tel Aviv. Jajah, Terra, Tuenti and giffgaff are all part of the Telefónica Digital group of companies.

Joyent Media Contact
Scott VanSickle
Hoffman PR
svansickle@hoffman.com
+1-408-975-3084

Weather Investment II Media Contact
Manal Abdel-Hamid
mabdelhamid@otelecom.com
+20122 215 6333

Telefónica Media Contact
Nick Wilkins
Director of Media Relations
nick.wilkins@o2.com
+44 7712 020937

The race to supply companies with the software they need to build an Amazon-style cloud service is heating up, with $85 million in new funding for Joyent. The company is one of a half dozen or so venture-backed companies selling software that enables companies to set up a cloud computing service. Read more

A San Francisco company that provides cloud computing power for businesses has pulled in $85 million in funding and a partnership with one of the world’s largest telecommunications company.

“You need to think of this as almost a Star Alliance for the cloud,” Dave Young, chief executive of Joyent, said of his company’s deal with Telefonica Digital, which participated in the funding round. Spain’s Telefonica is the world’s third-largest telecom, and the investment from the company will give Joyent an alliance with a company that operates throughout Europe, Asia and Latin America. Read more

Joyent actually began offering its public cloud service a few months before Amazon, according to CEO David Young — “although we didn’t call it cloud.”

While AWS is used by a lot of high-profile startups, Joyent has more than 30,000 customers, including big names like LinkedIn, gaming service Kabam, and one of the big airline reservation booking systems, Sabre. (It also powered Twitter in the early days.) Read more