German engineering giant Siemens is working with Amazon.com to test new cloud-based voice and communications software. Siemens rolled out the experimental product at the VoiceCon conference in Orlando and is gauging customer interest. The software runs on Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) — and marks another interesting collaboration for Amazon in the cloud computing arena.

Siemens’ cloud applications include Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and so-called "unified communications" (for example, integrating voice and email or converting voice mail to text). Siemens is hoping it will appeal to cash-strapped businesses that want the software but don’t want to go to the trouble or expense of paying for their own infrastructure.

"The technology can be complex for a small or medium-sized business," said Paul McMillan, Siemens director of unified communication techical vision and strategy. "We’ve elimated a lot of steps for the customer."

McMillan said Siemens is considering a pay-as-you-go cost structure for its cloud services (similar to Amazon’s) or a subscription model. He said the company is also exploring the idea of opening its cloud services up to third-party developers.

The linkup with Siemens is Amazon’s latest enterprise partnership in the cloud. The Seattle online retailer has teamed with a number of other companies, most recently IBM.

There are other firms working with telephony software in the cloud. Twilio, a startup founded by Amazon Web Services alum Jeff Lawson, allows developers to build and scale phone system applications in the cloud. The company scored an undisclosed amount of funding from the Founders Fund and Mitch Kapor in early March.

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and Sun to lay off 24 in Bellevue  Sun Microsystems is laying off 24 employees in Bellevue on May 30, according to a company notification to the state of Washington. Sun confirmed this week that it’s handing out 1,500 layoff notices, but declined to specify where the affected workers are located. The job cuts are part of a broad restructuring that Sun announced in November.

Sun in November said the total number of layoffs could total up to 6,000. It was not immediately clear how many employees are left in Sun’s Bellevue office or whether the office faces additional layoffs.

Sun is reportedly in talks to be acquired by IT services giant IBM, though no deal has been announced. Sun also recently rolled out a cloud computing services platform to compete with the likes of Amazon.com, Microsoft and others.

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and Targeted Genetics on the brink; Firefox in Europe and more  

Struggling Seattle biotech Targeted Genetics today reported a fourth quarter loss of $10.8 million, more than double its loss for the same period in 2007. Revenues also declined to $2.2 million, with the company noting that it only has enough cash on the books to fund operations through June. The company said that it expects the stock — which has traded below $1 for the past year — to be delisted from the Nasdaq.

AuBeta Networks, a 9-year-old Seattle company that provided wide area network services to restaurants and retailers, has hit hard times and is in the process of selling its assets to Telekenex. In a letter to customers earlier this month, AuBeta CEO Ethan Hernandez apologized for service disruptions and said that the company is transitioning operations to San Francisco-based IP service provider Telekenex.

Amazon.com is marking the 3rd anniversary of its Simple Storage Service (S3) with a 3-month discount. The company is offering data transfer into S3 for 3 cents per GB (as opposed to the standard 10 cents per GB) between April and June. S3 — one of Amazon’s first cloud services — now stores over 52 billion objects, according to the company.

Pathway Medical, a Kirkland maker of medical equipment for the treatment of peripheral arterial disease, has announced a $40 million venture deal with participation from Forbion Capital Partners, HLM Venture Partners, Latterell Venture Partners and others.

Seattle iPhone application development studio Zero260, a Madrona-backed startup that we wrote about earlier this month, officially launched its PhotoFeedd, TravelFeed and CarFeedd applications today. The company says the applications allow people to share photos of travel adventures, automobiles and other experiences in less than a minute. The company is led by startup veteran David Bluhm, formerly of HandsOn Mobile, 2Way and GoTV Networks.

Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime talks about the iPhone, the Wii controller, new games and whether its own games dominate its consoles in a lengthy interview with VentureBeat.

Genzyme will pay between $75 million and $100 million to purchase the Seattle area factory where Leukine is produced, as part oof a larger deal with Bayer AG, reports Xconomy.

Google Ventures launches with plans to invest $100 million.

Firefox 3 is gaining browser share in Europe, according a report by Reuters based on data from StatCounter. The Web analytics firm said that Firefox 3 had 35.05 percent of the market, which compared to 34.54 percent for Microsoft Internet Explorer 7. Firefox is now just 10 percentage points behind all version of IE, the report said.

 

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