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News

• Amazon makes it easier to track costs, usage in its cloud

  Somewhat undercutting a budding ecosystem of vendors that provide similar services, Amazon Web Services today announced increased features for customers to track their usage of AWS public cloud resources.

• Rackspace follows Amazon in beefing up its database tools

  Following major announcements from Amazon Web Services in recent weeks around data warehousing and management, Rackspace today announced new capabilities for database hosting and management.

• Nicira CTO shares sneak peek of company's SDN plans

  Nicira, the software-defined networking (SDN) startup that VMware purchased for $1.2 billion earlier this year, plans to release an SDN product that runs independent of the underlying hypervisor and hardware that will work in VMware environments and beyond.

• Weather Channel forecasts heavier reliance on cloud computing

  During Hurricane Sandy this fall, The Weather Channel experienced its highest traffic ever. Normally the media company -- which spans television, desktop and mobile platforms -- supports about 90 million Web and mobile users a month. During Sandy, that jumped to 450 million -- nearly double the company's previous high for Web traffic.

• Consultancy launches DIY cloud, OpenStack-style

  Cloud consultancy Mirantis today released a series of support options to help customers launch test or full-scale deployments of OpenStack-powered clouds.

• Microsoft announces "me too" Cloud price drop for Azure

  Microsoft is the latest to drop the price of its Cloud computing services, following two price cuts each by Google and Amazon Web Services.

• Windows shops now more welcome in Amazon cloud

  Amazon Web Services has announced support for a handful of Windows Server applications in its public cloud, the company's latest move to attract enterprise IT shops.

• WD releases 4TB version of high-performance drive

  Western Digital today released a 4TB version of its highest performance desktop drive, the WD Black, a 3.5-inch, 7200rpm drive with 64MB of cache and SATA 6Gbps interface.

• Apple to kill Messages beta for OS X Lion next month

  Apple has told Mac owners running OS X Lion that the beta of Messages, its replacement for both the older iChat instant messaging service and SMS (short message service) texting, will expire Dec. 14.

• Microsoft to webcast BUILD keynotes, other content today

  Microsoft said it will webcast the two keynotes of its BUILD developers conference, starting with today's at noon ET,

• Apple adds Retina to 13-in. MacBook Pro, makes iMac customers wait

  Along with the long-rumored iPad Mini, Apple yesterday also refreshed its two best-selling Macs, the 13-in. MacBook Pro and the iMac.