Lenovo has released its financial results for the fourth fiscal quarter and full-year ending March, 2013.

The world's second largest PC maker posted full-year sales of $34 billion -- up 15 percent year-on-year -- as well as earnings of $635 million post-tax (up 34 percent year-on-year), despite "a challenging macro-economic environment and ongoing PC industry transformation."

In the fourth quarter, the Chinese PC maker recorded revenues of $7.8 billion, a four percent growth increase year-on-year. Lenovo posted gross profit of $963 million and net profit of $126.9 million, up from $66.8 million a year ago -- a 90 percent rise in quarterly profit which goes beyond analyst expectations of $108.1 million. Basic EPS equates to $1.22 per share.

Operating profit in Q4 was $169 million, up 67 percent year-on-year. Operating profit for the full fiscal year was $800 million, a 37 percent jump. As of March 31, Lenovo has net cash reserves of $3.1 billion.

For the 2012/13 fiscal year, PC shipments grew 10.2 percent year-on-year, in comparison to an overall industry decline of 8.1 percent, according to the Chinese firm. Overall, Lenovo said it shipped 52.4 million PCs worldiwide, and has now snagged global marketshare of 15.5 percent.

While many tech firms have tightened their belts in the face of economic fragility, Lenovo has spent heavily on acquisitions to try and bolster its positon in the PC market. The firm has bought firms including electronics maker CCE, Medion, and IBM's PC business in 2005. Lenovo plans to battle in order to keep its top spot in the PC business, but will also focus on smart devices including smartphones and tablets as well as enterprise hardware in the future.

Lenovo CEO Yang Yuanqing commented:

"Not only were we the fastest growing among all major PC players, with record market share, revenue and profitability, more importantly, our smartphone and tablet businesses saw dramatic growth.

In fact, smartphone shipments were 3.7 times greater than last year globally and we are now number two in the China smartphone market. This has laid a solid foundation for the successful transformation of Lenovo into a PC Plus leader. Going forward, we will focus our investments on the fast-growing tablet, smartphone and enterprise hardware areas, while working to enhance the profitability of our core PC business."

Ireland's finance minister has blasted recent a recent Congressional report which investigated Apple finances, calling the research "flawed" and insisting that the country will not be the U.S.'s "whipping boy."

Apple CEO Tim Cook testified in front of the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee this week, to explain why the firm has not brought billions in profit back to U.S. soil. Congress found that Apple created a complex web of subsidiaries worldwide in order to dodge hefty tax bills, using subsidiaries ran only by executives to declare the majority of the firm's profits in countries with low taxation rates.

The finger was pointed mainly at Ireland, which allowed Apple to obtain the "holy grail of tax avoidance."

The Senate says that due to a past deal with the Irish government, Apple has paid only two percent in tax on profits of $74 billion, far lower than the 35 percent markup imposed in the United States for fund transferred back to the iPad and iPhone maker's home soil. Apple claims it does not use "tax gimmicks" and pays roughly $6 billion into U.S. coffers, but Sen. Carl Levin believes that as the Cupertino, Calif. firm is one of the largest American firms, based on the company's profit margins, this simply means Apple is one of the country's "biggest tax avoiders."

At Tim Cook's hearing, Ireland's EU affairs minister Eamon Gilmore said that the Ireland was "not to blame" for Apple's tax tactics. Now, Irish finance minister Michael Noonan has defended the country further, saying that senators have got their figures wrong, as reported by Reuters.

At a parliamentary committee meeting, Noonan claimed that repeating the accusations was putting Irish jobs at risk, and that he does not want "to be the whipping boy for some misunderstanding in a hearing in the U.S. congress."

"The central point the committee proceeded to speak of was an Irish special tax rate of two percent or less. The two-percent annual rates are got by dividing the tax charged by branches in Ireland by the entire profit of the companies concerned. This is clearly wrong and misleading."

While the Senate subcommittee railed over three Irish-registered Apple subsidiaries which have no tax residency in Ireland -- one of which that has paid no tax whatsoever -- Noonan stated that Apple simply used a tax loophole present between two different tax jurisdictions. When asked whether Apple's tax planning was akin to magic, the finance minister commented:

"Maybe there was a magician, but the magician wasn't living down in Cork. Because they are not tax resident in Ireland, they are not liable to Irish tax."

Apple is simply the latest corporation to have its tax practices scrutinized by governing bodies. In the U.K., Google, Starbucks and Amazon have come under the spotlight due to the little or no capital tax the companies pay on British soil, and opposition Labor party leader Ed Miliband has accused Google in particular of going to "extraordinary lengths" to avoid paying tax.

Next month at the G8 summit, tax avoidance is likely to be a priority topic for European leaders to debate.

The electronics maker announced today in a press release that after being launched worldwide on April 27 this year, the smartphone is being sold and shipped at a rate of four units per second.

The Galaxy S4, which is now Samsung's fastest selling smartphone to date, has smashed through previous records set by the Galaxy S3 and Galaxy S2, which took 50 days and five months retrospectively to reach the same figures.

The ten million sales figure is based on global channel sales rather than purely purchases by consumers. The smartphone is currently available in 110 countries, but will eventually be rolled out to 155 countries based on 327 partnerships.

Reuters analysts believe that Galaxy S4 sales will remain strong; allowing the South Korean firm to record record earnings in the current quarter. In Q1 2013, Samsung declared an operating profit of $7.9 billion based on strong smartphone sales, but expects this figure to decline due to fierce competition within the market.

According to recent Q1 Gartner figures, worldwide smartphone sales totaled 210 million units, which is up 42.9 percent quarter-on-quarter. Samsung snagged 30.8 percent of global smartphone market share, whereas rival firm Apple accounted for 18.2 percent.

In addition to white and black, the Galaxy S4 will also soon be available in blue, red, purple and brown this summer.

While she maintained much of the optimistic rhetoric during the quarterly conference call on Wednesday, Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman didn’t mince words when it came to admitting HP needs to continue working harder.

Pointing towards recent news surrounding Project Moonshot and converged infrastructures, Whitman remarked these will form the “backbone of tomorrow’s cloud.”

See also: HP's Whitman reiterates 'multi-year journey' amid Q2 revenue miss

But for the moment, she described that the problem is balancing the "power of the past" with the "power of the future" for every enterprise unit from servers to storage.

According to HP's second quarter earnings report, its enterprise services (application and business services along with IT outsourcing) revenue declined by eight percent annually while the enterprise group overall was down by 10 percent.

The latter department covers networking, business critical systems, technology services, storage, and industry standard servers revenue.

In regards to these figures, HP’s chief financial officer Cathie Lesjak admitted that the quarter was “not what we expected it to be.”

But the converged infrastructures unit was a bright spot and was up 48 percent up year-over-year.

Whitman described the converged infrastructure market as "highly competitive" with many other tech stalwarts competing for share.

"For me, this all comes down to our willingness to win, and we are committed to winning," Whitman declared.

Without specifying more details nor a roadmap, Whitman noted that HP leaders are working on "revamping business models" to give its sales teams more tools and agility to adjust pricing.

Whitman hinted we'll hear more about these particular efforts later this year.

Today's buy is Thumb Labs, a New York City startup focusing on mobile app design and development. Much like the Yahoo-Tumblr merger earlier this week, Thumb Labs offers further fodder for the validity and strength of New York's startup scene.

Thumb Labs co-founders Rich Kern and Jared Verdi confirmed the news on their website on Wednesday.

The pair explained further that they have already been working closely with another recent Adobe purchase: Behance, an online social media platform for creative professionals to showcase and share their work.

It looks like Thumb Labs resources (talent and products) will be merged with the unit for collective work under Adobe's Creative Cloud software suite.

Here's more from Kern and Verdi:

Like many working in the tech industry, we have come to rely on Adobe products on a daily basis, and have closely followed their evolution throughout the years. With the announcements at Adobe MAX earlier this month, and the launch of the Creative Cloud, it is clear that this is an exciting time at the company. We are looking forward to contributing to these efforts, as Behance's vibrant community becomes more deeply integrated into Adobe's tools.

Thumb Labs will continue to fulfill "any existing obligations" over the next few weeks. Although an exact end date has not been provided, the co-founders acknowledged that Thumb Labs will halt all independent services soon.

Financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed.

Investors had high expectations for Workday, and it delivered.

The Pleasanton, Calif.-based company, which sells cloud-based enterprise resource planning ("ERP") software, reported first quarter 2014 losses per share of $0.15 on revenue of $91.6 million, handily beating expectations of $0.18 losses per share on revenue of $87 million.

Shares (WDAY) were up slightly in after-hours trading.

That's a total revenue increase of 61 percent over the same period a year ago. Subscription revenues were $68.4 million, an increase of 85 percent from same period a year ago.

More numbers to know for the quarter ended April 30, 2013:

• Operating loss, non-GAAP: $24.5 million (same period last year: $18.5 million)
• Operating cash flows: $17.3 million
• Free cash flows: $15.3 million
• Cash and equivalents: $805.8 million

Chief financial officer Mark Peek said he was "very pleased" with the quarter. Co-founder and co-CEO Aneel Bhusri said the company is seeing "increased customer demand" for its wares.

Workday offered Q2 guidance of revenues between $97 million and $101 million, for growth of 55 to 61 percent. It also predicted that it would end the fiscal year with revenues between $425 million and $440 million, representing growth of between 75 and 80 percent.

The company directly competes with SAP and Oracle, and has managed to gain a significant lead over them by embracing software-as-a-service delivery of its payroll, financial management and human capital management software, rather than the on-premise approach on which those more established companies built their names. Workday has spent freely on research and development in pursuit of mobility and big data opportunities.

Workday made its initial public offering in October 2012, and has racked up losses ever since, even as the value of its shares has more than doubled, from $28 to $68. The company continues to indicate to investors that it's playing for the long term, and today's results indicate that it's headed in the right direction.

JPMorgan analyst Mark Murphy wrote this week in a note to investors:

We spoke with a couple of contacts in the Workday ecosystem and walk away with consistent conviction in the company's multi-year growth opportunity. The most important feedback is that WDAY is outpacing the entire HR industry with its pace of product development. A key partner stated that he has never seen one product stay ahead of the market and with less competition for as long as Workday has. The rapid pace of development causes our contacts to believe that WDAY will eventually close the functionality gap with software mega vendors, even in Financials.

They seem to agree: last month, Lone Pine Capital significantly increased its share of ownership of Workday to 9.35 percent, making the hedge fund its fifth-largest shareholder.

On the subsequent investor's call, Bhusri said that Workday now has 450 customers and is engaged in "heavy investment in mobile technologies." He also said that the financials market "dwarfs" the business intelligence and recruiting markets, and that BI was especially hard to predict because "customers are still understanding what big data is."

Peek focused on the value of the company's escalating subscriptions over the long run. "Once we win a customer, we keep a customer for years beyond the initial subscription period," he said.

Though the company is "mindful of the challenging macroeconomic environment and the muted [estimates] on IT spending," Peek said that Workday is focused on "market expansion, continued product innovation and growth" beyond its 1,950 employees.

"We believe that continued investment in our applications will be a key driver for growth," he said.

"The world is moving to the cloud, there's no doubt about it," Bhusri added. "We're the youngest vendor with the most mature solution."

Leading up to Hewlett-Packard's second quarter earnings report after the bell on Wednesday, analysts were expecting a mixed bag.

They got one.

The tech giant reported second quarter earnings of $1.1 billion, or 55 cents per share (statement). Non-GAAP earnings were 87 cents per share on a revenue of $27.6 billion.

Wall Street was expecting earnings of 81 cents a share on revenue of $28.08 billion for the second quarter.

Out of the six core segments highlighted in the second quarter report, only the software group posted a positive revenue mark as the support team was up by 12 percent annually.

The rest of the software unit along with the remaining five segments all dropped in revenue on an annual basis.

CEO Meg Whitman highlighted the better-than-expected earnings per share stat in prepared remarks:

We beat the upper end of our non-GAAP diluted EPS outlook for the quarter by $0.05 per share, driven by better than expected performance in Enterprise Services and Printing, coupled with the accelerated capture of restructuring savings and improvement in our operations.

As far as the revenue miss (and the rest of the company) goes, Whitman reiterated that HP is still in the midst of a "a multi-year journey," adding that she feels good about the rest of the year. She continued that HP is "on track to deliver on our fiscal 2013 non-GAAP diluted earnings per share outlook."

For the outlook, Wall Street predicted that HP will project a weaker third quarter sequentially with sales of $27.78 billion.

HP settled on a third quarter earnings guidance range of 84 to 87 cents per share.

For fiscal 2013, HP kept its previous earnings guidance range of $3.50 to $3.60 per share.

Check back for more on HP's second quarter after today's conference call with analysts and investors at 2PM PT/5PM ET.

Screenshot via HP Investor Relations

After a long string of high profile attacks on accounts held by government and news agencies, Twitter is finally stepping up its game.

The microblogging business is adding the option for two-factor authentication. It's quite similar to the models employed by Google and Facebook.

Twitter users can simply access their security settings to find the new feature and opt-in to require a verification code to be sent via SMS each time they sign in.

Jim O'Leary from Twitter's product security team acknowledged in a blog post on Wednesday that "even with this new security option turned on, it’s still important for you to use a strong password and follow the rest of our advice for keeping your account secure."

Nevertheless, it's a worthy (and arguably necessary) improvement for the social network.

Some of the more recent and widely-reported attacks have hit targets ranging from The White House to the Associated Press to more than 250,000 users at large earlier this year.

At the end of April, the San Francisco-based private company penned a memo to news media outlets warning that such cyber attacks would continue.

In regards to the media, Twitter added at the time that most of the security breaches appeared to be "spear phishing attacks" targeting corporate email. 

For a closer look at Twitter's new security feature, check out the promo clip below:

Image via The Official Twitter Blog

Even with Google I/O over, the Internet giant continues to update a number of its products with minor tweaks and enhancements this week.

For the business set, some of the more notable upgrades have to do with Drive and Analytics.

The Android version of Drive, in particular, is being updated with improvements for making it easier to create and access documents while on-the-go.

This includes being able to "scan" documents by snapping photos of them, which are then automatically saved as PDF files.

Google software engineer Denis Teplyashin suggested in a blog post on Wednesday this could also come in handy for keeping track of business cards. Despite apps such as Bump on the market, there has yet to be a suitable replacement for calling cards.

Android users can also adjust fonts in spreadsheets and print directly from the app through any cloud ready-printer.

As for Analytics, Google is adding new templates targeted towards retail and marketing professionals looking to keep better track of goals regarding sales and in-store visits.

Google Analytics product manager Stefan F. Schnabl explained further in a separate blog post that these updates are meant to make it easier to measure customer behavior and evaluate business performance:

For example, if purchases are your key objective, Ecommerce tracking allows you to measure sales performance. Yet sales are just one possible goal—there are many other important interactions that may be valuable to your business, such as media plays, social connections, newsletter sign-ups, a minimum purchase value, or the amount of time spent on a screen. Using Goals, you can measure these types of engagement activities and track how these interactions help you to meet your larger business objectives.

More details about setting up and using the new Goals templates are available on the Google Analytics blog now.

Screenshots via Google

The virtual desktop is on its way to being spruced up as Nvidia sharpens its focus on the enterprise.

See also: Citrix launches mobility blitz, revamps its product line | Dell unveils new virtual desktop portfolio catering to mobile workers

The visual computing technology company is getting into the action at Citrix Synergy in Anaheim this week with the announcement that its Grid vGPU appliance now supports integration for Citrix's XenDesktop 7 application delivery platform.

Nvidia reps boasted this brings the performance, stabilitity and compatibility of hardware-accelerated graphics to virtual desktop environments.

With such high-definition graphics and capabilities on tap, some of the more obvious uses cases and verticals make this combination suitable for digital content creation, engineering, architecture, and other visual intellectual property applications.

Nvidia also suggested connecting with manufacturing clients and supply chain partners as well as healthcare archiving.

While an exact date hasn't been revealed, Nvidia promised general availability will happen later this year.

Image via Nvidia

See also: SAP, EMPEA intro analytics tool for investment advice in emerging markets

At the heart of the upgrades is new BLU acceleration technology being pumped out from IBM's Research and Development labs.

Some of the new features include analytics access without the need to develop a separate layer of data modeling and processing high-performance data analysis in parallel across different processors.

By adding its DB2 database software to SmartCloud, IBM boasted that both corporate and government customers could see up to 25 times faster reporting and analytics.

Additionally, IBM is opening up the SmartCloud for SAP's HANA in-memory database.

This means support for a physical SAP HANA Appliance on IBM SmartCloud for SAP's business management apps, hosted on the SmartCloud Enterprise+ cloud environment.

A virtual SAP HANA appliance is also available for SmartCloud Enterprise, but it is still in test mode.

Both the physical and virtual SAP HANA appliances for IBM SmartCloud are being sold through "bring your own license" subscriptions. Licenses can also be bought from IBM Global Business Services.

Namely, those two trends are cloud and mobile, which go hand-in-hand most of the time these days.

Unveiled amidst Citrix Synergy in Anaheim this week, Dell affirmed that the additions are specifically designed to complement virtual environments based on Citrix's XenDesktop and XenApp application delivery platforms.

Targeting enterprises with growing mobile workforces, the PC maker boasted that these new products could cut the cost of VDI in half, adding that the portfolio includes the first dual-core and quad-core thin clients to offer virus immune endpoint solutions.

Here's a rundown on each of the new products along with their scheduled release dates:

• Dell DVS Enterprise Active System 800: Extends management features of Dell's Active System Manager from physical infrastructures to virtualized infrastructures and workloads. Available now for Citrix XenDesktop 5.6 FP1 in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, and Germany. Support for XenDesktop 7 in Q2.
• Dell DVS Enterprise Integrated Storage: Supports local storage options meant to cut hardware costs for DVS Enterprise from $400 to less than $200 per user by eliminating the need to purchase a Storage Area Network. Available now for XenDesktop 5.6 FP1 in U.S., U.K., France, the Netherlands, and Germany. Support for XenDesktop 7 in Q2.
• Dell Wyse Xenith Pro 2: Dell’s first dual-core zero client for unified communications and HD multimedia with scalable management for up to 100,000 devices. Available at the end of July 2013 worldwide for $399.
• Dell Wyse D90Q7 and Z90Q7: Quad-core, fan-less, disk-less thin clients based on Windows Embedded supporting Citrix, Dell, Microsoft and VMware virtual environments. Also scalable to support management for up to 100,000 devices. Available early July 2013 in the U.S. and Europe.

Mark Templeton, CEO of Citrix, is expected to outline the new offerings and the company's broader strategy at Synergy, the enterprise software player's annual customer powwow. Among the key moves:

• Citrix will launch XenDesktop 7, which will be designed to virtualize PCs as well as mobile devices. Steve Daheb, Citrix's chief marketing officer, said that the company has given XenDesktop a cloud delivery spin with automated provisioning and scale. The interface has also been revamped to become "simpler to use."
• HDX Mobile boosts wide area networking bandwidth, improves video performance and offers native functionality to Windows Apps running on mobile devices. Citrix also launched a mobile software developer kit for Windows applications.
• XenMobile Enterprise Edition is designed to offer mobile device management, federated identity, remote lock and wipe and mobile productivity apps.
• Mobile productivity apps that integrate email, contacts and documents on various devices.

Of the moves, HDX Mobile may become the most interesting for enterprise tech buyers. Why? Companies have a lot invested in legacy Windows apps. HDX Mobile can take those applications and give them a new look that's mobile friendly. As a result, it's possible that companies won't have to spend time rewriting code and can revamp apps via HDX Mobile in a few weeks.

"There's an obvious infrastructure investment that enterprises have made in the Windows environment," said Daheb. "It's important for customers to mobilize the investment they've already made."

Here's a look at the before and after via HDX Mobile.

 Related:

• Citrix eyes wide area networking optimization via CloudBridge
• Citrix spruces up mobile portfolio with ShareFile, Podio updates
• Citrix launches XenMobile, broadens MDM footprint

SAP has teamed up with the Emerging Markets Private Equity Association for a new scheme for promoting and advising sustainable investment strategies across emerging economies.

Essentially, SAP has the tool set (thanks primarily to its flagship HANA in-memory database) while EMPEA will provide the brainpower.

EMPEA already retains more than 300 fund managers and institutional investors from nearly 60 countries, representing over $1 trillion of managed assets.

SAP is essentially donating the analytics capabilities that will be reformatted into an interactive dashboard, powered by the German software provider's BusinessObjects dashboard solutions.

The platform is set up to display the impact of equity and venture capital funding across emerging markets with features for honing in on capital flows, trends and country-level details.

Both parties have already demonstrated the platform for more than 800 emerging market investors at a conference hosted by the International Finance Corporation in Washington, D.C. last week.

For the general public, the dashboards and a summary of private equity statistics in emerging markets is available online now. More in-depth data is available to EMPEA members with a subscription.;

Screenshot via EMPEA

Salesforce.com has debuted a set of new mobile apps targeted toward federal, state and local government agencies in times of emergency.

The goal for these apps is to improve the connection and response time in alerting citizens using any type of mobile device across any channel. In light of the tornadoes in Oklahoma this past week, it is more evident than ever that ever second counts, and mobile offers more opportunities to reach more people in times of trouble.

Here's a rundown on each app:

• Rapid Response 311: Built on the Salesforce Service Cloud, this app provides case agents with all of the pertinent information to manage a case on any channel, whether it be phone, email, or social media.
• Mobile Communities for Government: Agencies can create private and secure social communities to connect with other departments, agencies and external partners. Social networking features include the standard set (i.e. profiles, real-time feeds, trending topics, recommendations and influence measurement) along with business information and processes found in Salesforce.
• Government Social Command Center: Based on the Salesforce Marketing Cloud, this platform operates much like the one Salesforce already deploys for corporate customers at business events and trade shows. Agencies can identify and connect with citizens in real-time by determining where they are most engaged: social networks, websites, or mobile devices.
• Platform Mobile Services for Government: Government IT departments can build, integrate and deploy any government app that makes data available on any device, whether they are productivity apps for either personal or corporate use.

The Salesforce public sector apps are available now.

Images via Salesforce.com

Fan fiction might have officially gone mainstream with the news that Amazon Publishing is adding a special section dedicated to the obsessive literature genre.

The new scheme is dubbed "Kindle Worlds," touted to be the first commercial (and legal) platform for authors to pen fan fiction about their favorite pop culture characters and get paid for it.

See also: Amazon Publishing goes back to basics with Kindle Serials

The bottom line is that Amazon is looking for the next Fifty Shades of Grey by panning directly to would-be fan fiction authors.

For reference, that trilogy of self-published books jumped to the top of book sales charts worldwide last year -- and it started out as a simple set of fan fiction stories based on another popular literary and film franchise, Twilight.

Thus, instead of waiting around and looking for the next big thing (which Amazon Publishing scouts can still do through Kindle Singles), the online retail giant is taking a more proactive approach.

However, there is a catch. To keep things legal, Amazon is inking deals with various film studios and other companies that already own the rights to major pop culture characters.

The Seattle-based corporation is starting with Warner Bros. But before you start uploading your Harry Potter fan fiction, note that it is only WB Television Group’s Alloy Entertainment division.

It's an important distinction for a number of reasons -- but especially because this unit owns a number of well-known (and bankable) young adult franchises, including Gossip Girl, Pretty Little Liars, and The Vampire Diaries.

Thus, Kindle Worlds authors can publish authorized stories based on characters and locations in these stories to then be sold to the mass market in the Kindle Store. Amazon will take care of paying royalties to both the authors as well as the studios and other firms that own the rights to the characters.

Amazon Worlds authors can expect up to 35 percent of net revenue for titles with word counts of 10,000 or more. Net revenue is based of the sales price.

For works between 5,000 and 10,000 words, Amazon is introducing a pilot program in which it will pay authors royalties of 20 percent.

Kindle Worlds opens to potential authors today. The digital storefront and a self-service submission platform will launch in June.

Barracuda Networks announced this morning that it acquired SignNow, the mobile signing and document storage company.

A price was not disclosed.

The value of the smaller company, which counts a million users ("and over half of the Fortune 500") in its database, plays into Barracuda's cloud data storage strategy. The company anticipates the adoption of electronic signatures—which are easier, faster and therefore cheaper—to continue to accelerate in business. SignNow's emphasis on mobile applications is icing on the cake.

Barracuda expects to integrate SignNow's technology into its existing cloud and on-premise offerings, though it will remain a standalone product. Founder Chris Hawkins wrote in a blog post this morning that the company is hiring engineers in anticipation of growth.

Both companies are based in California. SignNow was backed by several unnamed angel investors and Khosla Ventures; 10-year-old Barracuda is privately held and backed by Sequoia Capital and Francisco Partners, among others.

"We started SignNow to make it easy for businesses to get documents signed from any device," Hawkins said. "We've built incredibly strong momentum, including seeing the number of paying customers double over the last three months."

Wyless, the global M2M managed services provider, and SingTel, the Asian ICT services provider, announced this morning that they will partner to offer machine-to-machine, or M2M, services in the Asia-Pacific market.

M2M is the term that describes when Internet-connected ("smart") machines can communicate with each other. It has also been referred to as "the Internet of Things," and is of particular interest to telecommunications companies, on whose networks this communication must occur.

The deal gives Wyless a huge boost in the APAC market; SingTel is a powerful company in the region and has enough presence to speed deployment of M2M services in Singapore, Australia, India, Japan and China. (The company promises it "in just 30 days.") It also has existing partnerships with mobile operators (such as Optus Business in Australia) to leverage.

Their pitch to customers: work with us, and you won't have to redesign your product with every new market, because we've got them all covered.

Blue Coat Systems, the U.S. enterprise security company, announced this morning that it will acquire Utah-based Solera Networks, which specializes in big data security intelligence and analytics.

The price was not disclosed.

Of interest is Solera's DeepSee platform, which will give Blue Coat's existing product lineup real-time forensic capabilities and fill out its overall portfolio, which ranges from protection to remediation to governance. DeepSee, which includes both software and appliances, provides a historic record of all network traffic (packets, flows and files) so that enterprises can identify and establish the scope of targeted attacks.

Combined, the companies have 15,000 customers ("86 percent of the Fortune Global 500," it says) and 75 million users across the globe. Solera alone sells to the U.S. departments of Energy, Homeland Security and Defense; Hitachi and Qualcomm, among others.

"The future of the industry is moving beyond just blocking malware and stopping targeted attacks to also identifying and resolving the full scope of the attacks in real time," Blue Coat chief executive Greg Clark said. "Retrospective capture and analytics are now an essential component of modern security architecture."

Ahead of next month's G8 summit -- where company tax avoidance is likely to become a hot topic -- Miliband plans to tell visitors at a Google event today close to London that he is "disappointed" that the tech giant pays so little tax.

"I can't be the only person here who feels disappointed that such a great company as Google...would be reduced to arguing that when it employs thousands of people in Britain, makes billions of pounds of revenue in Britain, it pays just a fraction of that in tax." Miliband will say within his speech, according to Reuters.

"So when Google does great things for the world, as it does, I applaud you, but when Google goes to extraordinary lengths to avoid paying its taxes, I think it's wrong."

British lawmakers are under rising pressure to tackle the issue of tax avoidance and the tactics used by large firms to avoid high sales and corporate taxes. In November, Google and Amazon came under the spotlight in front of the U.K.'s Public Accounts parliamentary committee, which grilled the firms on why they did not pay the 23-24 percent corporation tax rate in the U.K. Amazon admitted it operates officially out of Luxembourg where the tax rate is lower, whereas Google stipulated it pays as much tax as the U.K. requires -- and so how it operates in Europe should not be of concern.

A number of firms use tactics described by U.K. officials as "smoke and mirrors," in other words, operating subsidiaries and being officially located in countries where tax is lower, and some use offshore accounts to prevent funds being taxed when transferred overseas.

Although these methods are legal -- unlike tax evasion -- public anger is enough that a number of petitions have been started in order to try and make taxation fairer. A petition launched by independent booksellers Frances and Keith Smith demands that Amazon "pays its fair share of tax in the U.K.," and has gained 168,844 supporters at the time of writing.

In an article for The Huffington Post UK, the labor leader criticized Prime Minister David Cameron for not taking a tougher stance.

"Google is said to have paid only 10 million pounds in corporation tax in the UK between 2006 and 2011, despite revenues of 11.9 billion pounds. I was surprised the prime minister failed to raise this when Eric Schmidt attended the business advisory council's meeting."

Google and Amazon are not the only ones under governmental scrutiny. Across the pond, Apple chief executive Tim Cook has testified to the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations on how the tech giant manages its tax arrangements. Congress accused the company of creating a complex web of subsidiaries in order to avoid the 35 percent sales tax rate in the U.S., whereas Apple defends its position based on legality. Cook said that funds will stay off U.S. soil unless the taxation rate becomes "reasonable," whereas Sen. Carl Levin believes the current system is simply "not right."