April 2012
Grazed from PC World. Author: Thor Olavsrud.
In the 25 years since Richard Stallman wrote the GNU General Public License, free and open source software (FOSS) have become pervasive in computing: Linux, Apache HTTP Server, MySQL and more can be found in large numbers of enterprises across the globe. And open source is now increasingly undergirding cloud computing as well. "Open source is certainly at the foundation in terms of building out cloud technologies," says Byran Che, senior director of product management at Red Hat and responsible for its cloud operations offerings, management software and Red Hat Enterprise MRG, (Red Hat's Messaging, Real-time and Grid platform). "If you take a look at market share in the server space, as you look at traditional data centers, about 70 percent are running on the Windows platform and about 30 percent are running Linux. As you take a look at what operating systems people are choosing to build applications on in the cloud, the ratio flips completely."... |
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Grazed from PR Newswire. Author: PR Announcement.  2nd Watch, Inc., a software and cloud-computing consulting company, has been recognized by Microsoft for its commitment and expertise providing cloud solutions with an invitation to join the SMB Cloud Champions Club. 2nd Watch is the only company in the Inland Northwest, and one among only three hundred in the nation, awarded the Cloud Champions Club designation. The company has also been recognized as a Microsoft Cloud Accelerate partner.
In addition to its Microsoft Partnerships, the SMB Cloud Champions Club and the Cloud Accelerate Program further extend 2nd Watch's resources to assist and manage client migrations to Microsoft's Office 365 online products. The Cloud Champions Club connects partner businesses with tools they can use to grow their cloud-based services with resources ranging from technical professionals to business and marketing funds. The Cloud Accelerate Program provides additional software and marketing benefits as well as Core Silver Competency benefits. "The Cloud Champion Club and the Cloud Accelerate partner designations are testaments to our team's experience and drive toward saving companies money and providing a more mobile and agile product," stated 2nd Watch's President Jeff Aden. "Gone are the days of managing exchange on premises, and along with that are lower costs that require less maintenance."... |
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Grazed from Investors.com. Author: Pete Barlas.
While many companies support OpenStack, this group does not include two of Rackspace's biggest cloud rivals, Amazon.com (AMZN) and Citrix Systems (CTXS). Rackspace has emerged as a fast-growing player in cloud computing services, which let companies store and access their data via the Internet, or the "cloud," reducing their hardware and overall IT spending. Rackspace's year-over-year sales have jumped 32% in each of the past three quarters. Per-share profit has risen at least 56% in that span. And company shares are up 31% this year... |
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Rackspace
Grazed from GreenBiz.com. Author: Joel Makower.
How green is the cloud? Reading GreenBiz.com these days, you’d think it was the next big green thing. In recent weeks, for example, we’ve covered companies bringing products to the cloud, research findings on how the cloud is a “game changer” for energy managers, cloud-based tools for designers, even ethical concerns related to cloud computing. As my colleague Matthew Wheeland noted recently: “Everyone is talking about cloud computing as the future of IT, or the future of business, or the future of commerce, or all of the above.” How green is it? Conventional wisdom is that cloud computing — the delivery of computing as a service rather than a product, in which computers access shared resources, software, and information, instead of each computer having its own — is a highly eco-efficient medium. In addition to dramatically reducing hardware and software, the cloud maximizes the utilization of all computing resources, at least in theory... |
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Grazed from CloudTimes. Author: Editorial Staff. A recent study from IDG Enterprise conducted a study among 1,600 IT and business leaders. It revealed that majority of these companies have spent more than a third of their IT budget to Cloud Computing. Further, almost two thirds of the respondents said they will continue to increase their spending in Cloud Computing in the next couple of years. They believe their investments now will eventually pay off either by providing the company a more efficient work system or by replacing other hardware and software recurring costs. There is an onslaught of literature on the potential of Cloud Computing. It is also this very rich literature that makes it confusing for people to determine which is reliable and which is a baseless claim. I am just as confused as everyone... |
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Grazed from Computer Technology Review. Author: John Humphreys.
Cloud computing is a term that has become part of our everyday conversations. More and more businesses want to be in the cloud and are taking steps to move to more virtual environments. According to the Open Data Center Alliance, more than 40 percent of its members expect to run more than 40 percent of internal IT systems in cloud environments within two years. Recent discussions have also focused on the types of cloud services available. Whether businesses are using services such as Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) or Software as a Service (SaaS), the end goal is the same: to reduce the costs of business operations. The challenge is to make sure businesses understand what each service offers and to determine which option makes the most sense for their specific cloud needs... |
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Grazed from Sys Con Media. Author: Suresh Sambandam. Cloud Computing , more specifically Platform as a Service (PaaS) is changing the business app developer demographic forever. Or should I say that, PaaS is reviving or giving a new lease of life for productivity focused business developers. The kind that existed during the Client-Server paradigm empowered by Power Builder, Developer 2000, Visual Basic and the likes. Pardon me for using a poor - Jurasic metaphor! A great meteor in the name of "web development" hit software industry and nearly wiped out those folks. That changed the cost of developing software within the enterprises multi-fold. Rewind, 15 years ago. Visual Developers were a boon for CIOs, VP and IT Managers in large enterprises. They understood the business and produced software quickly meeting the needs of the enterprise. Loosing them was a big handicap for the IT department. My hunch says that is one of the large contributors for the IT department gradually loosing its innovation and eventually gave into outsourcing.... |
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Grazed from Business Wire. Author: PR Announcement.
Netelligent is a unified communications leader, providing cloud, virtualization, networking and telephony services to large enterprises and private organizations. Through its partnership with Desktone, Netelligent will expand its services to offer cost-effective cloud-hosted full Windows 7 virtual desktops that can easily scale to meet customer needs. By leveraging Desktone’s DaaS technology, Netelligent can provide end users with secure, convenient access to virtual desktops delivered from the cloud, without the need for costly on-site infrastructure... |
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Netelligent, a leading provider of cloud and managed services, today announced a partnership with
Grazed from Certes Networks. Author: Q&A with Jim Doherty, the SVP of Marketing & CMO
Today, Certes Networks released a new virtual security appliance called the vCEP (virtual Certes Enforcement Point). The point is to make the cloud safe for sensitive workloads by protecting the network traffic inside IaaS clouds and between locations. To find out more about this, we spoke with Jim Doherty, the SVP of Marketing & CMO at Certes Networks. Here is that conversation: Q: What do you see as the main issue keeping enterprises and government organizations from moving to off-premise cloud environments? Jim Doherty: Today's enterprises and government organizations want to take advantage of the benefits moving to an off-premise cloud environment can provide. However they view the lack of security as a roadblock. In order for these companies and organizations to reap the benefits that the cloud has to offer, there needs to be a solution that filled the gap, and this is where vCEP comes in. |
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Grazed from MarketWatch. Author: PR Announcement.
 InnoVergent ( www.innovergent.com ), a technology consultancy firm and reseller and system integrator of cloud computing accounting software, announced today that InnoVergent founder Paul Cammisa will speak at the Information Technology Alliance (ITA) Spring Conference in a session titled "Adopting a Cloud Solution for Your Practice."
"When you look at the benefits cloud computing can offer a growing business, it's not overstating the case to say that this is the most exciting development in financial accounting technology since mainframe applications were traded for desktop applications," said Cammisa. "Cloud computing gives businesses the opportunity to take advantage of great applications; anywhere/any time access to information; freedom from budget-draining investments in hardware and infrastructure; and better compete in an ever-changing economic landscape."... |
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Grazed from Sys Con Media. Author: Maureen O'Gara.
It's buying another analytics house. This time it's Varicent Software from up Toronto way. And again IBM isn't saying what it's paying. Nine-year-old Varicent does analytics software for compensation and sales performance management. More specifically, it automates and analyzes the collection and reporting of sales data across finance, sales, HR and IT. Blue figures it can be used horizontally, and combined with other stuff in its grab bag delivered through on-premise or cloud models... |
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IBM has gotten as predictable in its acquisitions as it used to be in its suits.
Grazed from Sys Con Media. Author: Roger Strukhoff.
Dallas-based SoftLayer is targeting traditional scientific environments - think oil & gas and other seismic applications - along with other numerical analyses, data mining, as well as "advertising agencies and web-design shops looking to develop interactive games, applications, and 3D content," according to Nathan Day, SoftLayer's Chief Scientist... |
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Graphics processing units (GPUs) are taking center stage in SoftLayer's latest high-performance computing (HPC) strategy in the cloud, as the company now offers HPC servers with NVIDIA GPUs starting at US$879 per month for an entry-level configuration of one GPU, 16GB of RAM, and 500GB of storage.
Grazed from Midsize Insider. Author: Bert Markgraf. The IT departments of many companies are juggling the security issues that arise with employee requests for remote access to data, increasing data volumes, and cost reductions in an uncertain business environment. Suppliers are offering solutions, but with an emphasis on different features. Some companies operate their own cloud. The technology is evolving to a standardized service, but the standards are not clear yet. The largest IT companies offer cloud computing with a wide array of IT infrastructure. In an article on ComuterWorld, HP presents its view of the future of the cloud. According to the company, there will be 10 to 20 major cloud suppliers with smaller clouds focused in particular industries or geographical areas. HP believes the cloud will be more than just remote servers and virtual machines. They think companies will want software services in the cloud, and requirements could range from simple apps to data analytics. An open environment leading to interoperability is also important... |
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Grazed from Network World. Author: Christine Burns. We assembled this list with help from analysts at Cloud Technology Partners, Current Analysis, Enterprise Strategy Group, Gartner, IDC and Neovise who watch the public cloud Infrastructure as a Service scene very closely. Each was asked to name the companies they believed have the most influence -- whether that's measured in market share, mind share, revenue, existing enterprise pull or underlying technology links -- in drawing enterprise customers into the realm of public cloud infrastructure. They are listed here in alphabetical order. 1. Amazon Web Services: The gold standard Amazon is the standard bearer in the public IaaS space, as its paid-by-the-VM Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) is both the market share and mindshare leader by a fairly big gap. It's got a huge portfolio of services that run atop its Xen-based virtualized infrastructure and Amazon keeps adding to those offerings while it lowers its prices. The company has built a thriving ecosystem of partners around its public cloud, has clamored to get all the necessary security and compliance certifications and offers world-wide data center coverage... |
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Grazed from ITWorld. Author: Lucas Mearian.  Cloud storage service provider SpiderOak is taking on Dropbox, Box and other more established services with what it calls the first truly secure data backup and collaboration cloud for businesses.
There are three service levels for SpiderOak Blue, the company's new cloud storage service, which span small-to-midsize and enterprise-class businesses. SpiderOak has had a consumer cloud storage service -- SpiderOak Orange -- since 2006 that allows consumers to back up, share and sync their data. SpiderOak's claim to differentiation is its "zero-knowledge" privacy standard, which allows users to create their own passwords so that the SaaS provider couldn't read a customer's unencrypted data even if it wanted to... |
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Grazed from PR NewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.  TELUS AgilIT is a flexible, on-demand, enterprise-class Cloud offering designed specifically for business needs
TELUS today announced the launch of the TELUS AgilIT Virtual Private Cloud, an innovative service that enables businesses to take full control of their cloud environment. The first of TELUS' AgilIT cloud offerings, and unlike other cloud infrastructure services, TELUS' Virtual Private Cloud service provides organizations of all sizes access to computing resources on-demand with a powerful, full-featured portal that enables 24x7 remote access to view and manage their cloud. "TELUS has taken a quality-based approach to cloud computing by providing customers with secured, guaranteed capacity of computing power while maintaining the flexibility to create, change or suspend their computing jobs as required through a centralized view of their cloud infrastructure," said Tony Krueck, vice-president of Business Products & Services at TELUS. "This allows businesses to respond with greater agility to market demands, develop new applications faster, and contain IT costs by subscribing to computing capacity only as needed."... |
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Grazed from The Seattle Times. Author: Janet Tu. "Cloud" refers to storing data and applications on remote servers and data centers, which users can access through the Internet. That's in contrast with the more traditional method of storage in a company's own servers or mainframes. Greenpeace's report looks at 14 big tech companies' data centers and estimates how much power they need, as well as what type of energy — "clean" or "dirty" — is used to supply that power... |
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Greenpeace is releasing today its ratings on how clean or dirty tech companies' clouds are, and among those it dings are two local giants:
Grazed from BusinessWire. Author: PR Announcement.  Aspera, Inc., creators of next-generation software technologies that move the world’s data at maximum speed, today announced that its patented faspTM transport technology will be demonstrated as part of numerous partner solutions at NAB 2012. Aspera enables a growing ecosystem of partners in the areas of cloud computing, network-attached storage and digital media production and delivery, where leading technology suppliers bring high-performance transport capabilities to their products, systems and services by building upon the Aspera platform.
A pioneer in the enablement of high-speed data-intensive workflows throughout the enterprise, Aspera has now unlocked the cloud for big data with its industry-leading high-speed transport solutions. Amazon Web Services and Aspera offer combined solutions for high-performance storage, processing and distribution in the cloud, allowing media companies large and small to take full advantage of integrated media workflows at scale on AWS. Microsoft selected Aspera to enable Aspera high-speed transfer with Windows Azure Media Services. Video encoding pioneers, Sorenson Media and Zencoder provide cloud-based services that rely Aspera for big-data movement to and from remote infrastructures in order to offer massively scalable video encoding to their customers. And, online file sharing leader YouSendIt is taking advantage of the Aspera transport platform to deliver enhanced file transfer speeds for large files... |
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Grazed from MarketWire. Author: PR Announcement.  DataDirect Networks (DDN), world leader in massively scalable storage, today announced the availability of the DDN NAS Scaler 1.1, the latest update to the company's highly-scalable, feature-rich unstructured data storage platform.
Introduced in April 2011, NAS Scaler enables customers to create a customized blend of capacity, throughput, and IOPS to align with specific applications, a breakthrough that eliminates both system and namespace sprawl and the costly over-provisioning found in other NAS systems. NAS Scaler 1.1 marks the introduction of VMware integration and data deduplication features, along with major enhancements in disaster recovery and multi-protocol file access capabilities to enable enterprise organizations to start small and then scale their Big Data applications with ease... |
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CloudCow is an online publication dedicated to the next generation data center environment. CloudCow is a comprehensive resource for cloud computing news, analysis and information. The online publication provides IT professionals and executives with access to the latest information needed to make cloud computing and IT business decisions within their respective organizations. |
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