It was a busy week for technology mergers and acquisitions, as IBM, Dell, Google, Amazon and HP all announced deals.
What the new Top 500 tells us about trends in supercomputing: Growing adoption of Infiniband, ubiquity for quad-core processor systems, continued dominance by the U.S. but serious gains by China.
Gartner sees 23 percent growth in global server shipments, IBM buys Sterling Commerce from AT&T for $1.4 billion, and Level 3 provides wholesale services for EtherSpeak.
NTT America partners with OpSource on a multi-tenant public cloud, network infrastructure management provider Infoblox acquires Netcordia, Akamai (AKAM) and IBM team on app acceleration.
IBM has acquired Cast Iron Systems in a deal that highlights the growing niche for companies that serve as "cloud brokers" that serve as guides for companies seeking to make the most of the emerging cloud delivery model.