If you’re rocking the Dropbox app on your Android phone, you may have noticed that it updated last night. More than a mere bug fix, said update is instead a full-fledged version 2.0, complete with Ice Cream Sandwich support and a host of new features designed to make using the Dropbox app a smoother, more seamless experience. Looks like Christmas came early for Android users. 
Tis the season to shop around, and while you're out there buying gifts, sometimes you have to splurge on yourself. That's what IBM is doing, which announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire DemandTec, a cloud-based analytics company, for around $440 million in an all-cash transaction. IBM is hoping the acquisition will extend its Smarter Commerce initiative by adding cloud-based price, promotion, and other merchandising and marketing analytics to its portfolio.
German enterprise software maker SAP announced that its subsidiary, SAP America, has entered into a definitive agreement to scoop up SuccessFactors, a provider of cloud-based human capital management (HCM) solutions. Under terms of the agreement, SAP will acquire all outstanding shares of common stock of SuccessFactors for $40 per share, valuing the deal at a staggering $3.4 billion.
Microsoft always seemed a little embarrassed by SkyDrive, its online file storage and sharing tool. It was shoved off in the corner, not integrated with other products where it might be useful. Then today Redmond dropped a huge HTML5-centric update on us that makes SkyDrive more than usable. It’s actually kind of good.
The data meteorologists at Cisco say the upcoming forecast extending into the year 2015 calls for a 12-fold increase in global cloud traffic, compared to 2010. Cisco doesn't expect data center traffic to grow quite as steadily, but it will still zoom past 2010 levels and show a four-fold increase by 2015, according to data outlined in Cisco's latest study, "Cisco Global Cloud Index: Forecast and Methodology, 2010-2015."
Remember Chrome OS? Google's cloud-based operating system was all over the news when Chromebooks first came out, and then they virtually disappeared from headlines. Until recently, that is. Acer a few days ago announced a price drop for its AC700 Chromebook, and Samsung said it was coming out with a Piano Black color option. But the biggest news is that HTC seems at least mildly interested in Chrome OS.
iTunes killer. We're not saying Google is or is not an iTunes killer, but now that the sultan of search has removed the beta label from its Google Music platform and opened its disco doors to the public, we wanted to throw those two words out there so you can get used to seeing them. Google Music is officially open for business and you can bet there will be lots of comparisons to iTunes. So, were the 
Pogoplug today unveiled a new cloud-based storage service for mobile phones that provides users with 5GB of free online storage. By adding this service to its lineup, the braggadocios folks at Pogoplug claims their's is the only company with a combined hardware/software/cloud offering, and has more sharing and streaming services solutions than anyone else on the market.
You may be thinking that Google Music launched months ago, but you’d be wrong. This whole time it’s been another of Google’s famous betas. Well, now it seems a sure thing that the search giant is about to launch the service for real, and music purchases could be part of the deal. An event called “These Go To Eleven” is slated for November 16th.
Amazon's HTML5-based Kindle Cloud Reader lets you read your Kindle books in your Web browser, a neat idea that's hampered by lack of widespread support, including Internet Explorer and Firefox. Well, Amazon is still shunning Internet Explorer (or vice versa), but the Kindle Cloud Reader does now work with Mozilla Firefox, along with existing support for Chrome and Safari (on the iPad and desktop).
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