IBM announces Watson Analytics, a "breakthrough natural language-based cognitive service" providing businesses with access to the company's analytics prowess via the cloud and a freemium pricing model.

An attempt to commercialize the Jeopardy-winning supercomputer system, Watson Analytics runs on both desktop and mobile devices, and includes a range of self-service analytics, including data refinement and data warehousing. Predictive analytics allow it to understand natural language questions, such as "which are the key drivers of my product sales?" or "which deals are most likely to close?"

According to IBM the service can crunch 20 spreadsheets and data rom Salesforce, Teradata and Oracle system in order to make connections and answer questions. Users can also fine-tune questions and data to uncover the most relevant facts, patterns and relationships.

Cisco's cloud ambitions continue apace as it acquires Metacloud, a cloud company with an OpenStack-as-a-Service model allowing it to deliver and remotely operate private clouds in customer data centers.

Following acquisition Metacloud will make part of the Cisco Cloud Infrastructure and Managed Services unit led by SVP Faiyaz Shahpurwala.

"[O]rganisations are shifting from an on-premise IT structure to hybrid IT-- a mix of private cloud, public cloud, and on-premise applications,” Cisco says. “The resulting silos present a challenge to IT administrators, as choice, visibility, data sovereignty and protection in this world of many clouds requires an open platform. We believe Metacloud’s technology will play a critical role in enabling our customers to experience a seamless journey to a new world of many clouds, providing choice, flexibility, and data governance.”

HP buys open source private and hybrid enterprise cloud software developer Eucalyptus in a move to get the necessary manpower to expand its cloud software and services operations.

Financial details of the deal are not available.

Following the acquisition Eucalyptus CEO Maren Mickos gets a place in HP hierarchy as senior VP and general manager of the Cloud business, reporting directly to CEO Meg Whitman. Mickos is the ex-CEO of MySQL, and he will lead HP Cloud in building the OpenStack-based Helion server portfolio.

“Eucalyptus and HP share a common vision for the future of cloud in the enterprise,” Mickos says. “Enterprises are demanding open source cloud solutions, and I’m thrilled to have this opportunity to grow the HP Helion portfolio and lead a world-class business that delivers private, hybrid, managed and public clouds to enterprise customers worldwide.”

According to IDC European IT departments need "significant" improvements before they fully embrace cloud architectures and turn themselves into internal (cloud) service providers.

The analyst reveals European companies admit low confidence when it comes to the cloud. How so? 56% of European IT departments lack qualified staff to support projects, 61% are still struggling to upskill their employees to effectively handle cloud service providers, and 70% still need to learn how to make effective use of automation, self-service and orchestration tools.

Such findings come from a survey of 304 European organisations (100 in the UK, 102 in France, 102 in German).

"The use of cloud computing as an increasingly business-critical technology is quickly changing how companies and institutions evaluate, procure, and deploy IT assets," IDC says. "However, the effective use of automation, self-service, and orchestration tools remains the biggest challenge for IT organizations, while accurately defining costs and implementing chargeback models is a struggle in the business and IT relationship. The transition to cloud computing requires change throughout the organisation-— in people, process, and technology."