SaaS, Cloud Computing & Virtualization Review

Layer 7 Recognized as a Top Cloud Technology Vendor

2010-11-24T13:14:00.000-08:00

Layer 7 Technologies has been named to SYS-CON’s Top 250 Players in the Cloud Computing Ecosystem list. SYS-CON, which publishes the Cloud Computing Journal and organizes the International Cloud Expo conference series, created its bi-annual Top 250 list to reflect the 250 most active vendors and service providers in the cloud ecosystem. Layer 7 was the only Cloud Gateway or Cloud Broker to be included on the list.

“Layer 7 CloudSpan Gateways help organizations securely connect to the cloud and gives service providers the ability to easily bring on enterprises,” said Paul Rochester, CEO of Layer 7. “Layer 7’s technology extends the boundaries of the enterprise, simplifying information-sharing across organizational boundaries and the cloud. Long recognized as an industry leader in security and integration, Layer 7 offers an unrivaled set of solutions for the cloud market.”“Layer 7 has been helping organizations secure and govern application services for a long while, and is now ‘changing the way organizations connect to, run in and publish services from the cloud,’” according to the entry on SYS-CON. “Layer 7 helps customers with integrating their cloud services—including not just SaaS, but also PaaS and IaaS—with on-premise data and applications. And it helps them protect those services.”

VMware' vFabric Hyperic Simplifies Monitoring of Zimbra Appliance

2010-11-23T13:49:00.000-08:00

VMware announced that VMware vFabric™ Hyperic, is now offered as part of VMware Zimbra® Appliance, an enterprise-class email and collaboration solution delivered as a virtual appliance. This integration brings the award-winning vFabric Hyperic application performance monitoring technology to Zimbra Appliance administrators, providing them with a faster, more efficient way to ensure that critical email and collaboration services are always available to their end users. Integrated as part of Zimbra Appliance and requiring no additional setup, Hyperic gives Zimbra administrators the ability to more rapidly pinpoint, correct, and prevent application performance problems wherever they occur in the application infrastructure. As a result, administrators have up-to-the-minute insight into a comprehensive set of performance metrics related to availability, throughput and utilization that enables them to alert team members on a wide range of issues and to rapidly determine root cause.

“Contegix is committed to providing our customers with the best hosting services possible,” said Matthew Porter, CEO and co-founder of Contegix. “The combination of Hyperic and Zimbra® Appliance increases our visibility into how customers are using email and collaboration. It enables us to increase our productivity and efficiency in managing this critical part of this infrastructure, while simultaneously helping our customers make smarter business decisions.”

Laurus Technologies Announces New Cloud Computing Readiness Assessment Service

2010-11-23T12:37:00.000-08:00

Laurus Technologies announced the availability of a new Cloud Readiness Assessment Service. The new service will help customers who are increasingly seeking guidance on managing their transition to cloud services. In Laurus Technologies cloud readiness assessment methodology, the firm will work with customers to discover and understand their business needs, help them identify and align the available cloud services. If requested, the firm can assist with the implementation. The firm’s methodology will include customer discovery, identification of applicable cloud services, gap analysis compared to industry best practices, an executive dashboard or report, and recommendations in each of the various potential cloud capabilities. Laurus Technologies can also help with building a business case and other TCO assessment needs.“Cloud computing is one of the most important trends in the IT industry today,” said John Udelhofen, CEO of Laurus Technologies. “However, customers tell us that they see conflicting information on how best to proceed. We look to fill the role as a trusted advisor to help them sort out the options and feel confident in their decision regarding the migration to cloud capabilities.”

Symantec publishes its 2010 Disaster Recovery Study

2010-11-23T12:17:00.000-08:00

Symantec released the global results of its sixth annual Symantec Disaster Recovery Study, which demonstrates the growing challenge of managing disparate virtual, physical and cloud resources because of added complexity for organizations protecting and recoveringmission critical applications and data. In addition, the study shows that virtual systems are not properly protected. The study highlights that nearly half – 44 percent – of data on virtual systems is not regularly backed up and only one in five respondents use replication and failover technologies to protect virtual environments. Respondents also indicated that 60 percent of virtualized servers are not covered in their current disaster recovery (DR) plans. This is up significantly from the 45 percent reported by respondents in 2009.

Using multiple tools that manage and protect applications and data in virtual environments causes major difficulties for data center managers. In particular, nearly six in 10 of these respondents (58 percent) who encountered problems protecting mission-critical applications in virtual and physical environments reported this to be a large challenge for their organization. In terms of cloud computing, respondents reported that their organization runs approximately 50 percent of mission-critical applications in the cloud. Two-thirds of respondents (66 percent) report that security is the main concern of putting applications in the cloud. However, the biggest challenge respondents face when implementing cloud computing and storage is the ability to control failovers and make resources highly available (55 percent).

Xactly Corporation Delivers Xactly Express on Salesforce.com’s Force.com Platform

2010-11-22T10:49:00.000-08:00

Xactly Corporation announced that Xactly Express is now available on Force.com, salesforce.com’s enterprise cloud computing platform. Xactly can now provide SMB customers the robust incentive compensation management functionality of Xactly Express on a comprehensive Cloud 2 foundation, regardless if the customer is currently a Salesforce CRM user or not. Xactly Express is a powerful self-service sales compensation application for SMBs, built natively on the Force.com platform. Available as a stand-alone solution or connected to Salesforce CRM, Xactly Express allows users to rapidly configure sales compensation plans, calculate commissions, and export payments to payroll, all from a single, easy-to-use application. With ability to automate traditionally taxing compensation functions and generate reports, Xactly Express customers can make more informed decisions that incent better sales performance and improve top and bottom line results.“Today’s SMB customers are under tremendous pressure to drive efficiencies and results, while minimizing cost,” said Christopher Cabrera, president and CEO, Xactly Corporation. “Our partnership with salesforce.com enables us to provide customers a cost-effective, complete, cloud-based compensation management solution, without the hassle and headache of making additional infrastructure investments.”

UnboundID First to Deliver Identity Management for Virtualized Cloud Services Infrastructures

2010-11-20T13:14:00.000-08:00

UnboundID® Corp. announced that the UnboundID Directory Services Suite is the first to allow organizations to manage identities across virtualized environments. The newly VMware-certified UnboundID platform is specifically designed to support large-scale virtualized infrastructures that require secure identity management to power applications, including high-volume cloud computing and subscriber-based services. “Until now, cloud service providers and enterprises were unable to deliver their offerings via a virtualized identity management environment,” said Stephen Shoaff, co-founder and CEO of UnboundID. “As the first to deliver identity management for high-capacity virtualized environments, we look forward to helping enterprises and cloud service providers realize the additional cost-saving and performance advantages that virtualized infrastructures can deliver.”

Joyent Offers SmartDataCenter Cloud Software Solution with Dell to Service Providers

2010-11-19T13:42:00.000-08:00

Joyent announced availability of its SmartDataCenter cloud software solution for service providers at an event introducing the Dell Cloud Solution for Web Applications. “We selected Dell Data Center Solutions (DCS) as the first OEM partner for Joyent software because Dell DCS, like Joyent, has spent the past five years serving customers at cloud scale,” said David Young, founder and chief executive officer of Joyent. “We see service providers and other enterprises greatly benefiting from accelerated time to market with this innovative combination of proven technology and know-how from Joyent and Dell.”Leveraging the knowledge and expertise gained from serving tens of thousands of public cloud customers worldwide since 2004, Joyent now offers an integrated cloud software solution that enables global telcos, data center operators, ISPs and others to expand their existing businesses by providing cloud services to their customers. With the Joyent SmartDataCenter cloud software solution, service providers can develop new, profitable revenue streams, participate in the most rapidly growing segment of IT, and improve customer value by providing access to proven cloud technology being used by a rapidly growing number of global systems integrators, ISVs and developers.

OpenStack Plans Next Two Cloud Platform Releases at First Public Design Summit

2010-11-17T15:44:00.001-08:00

OpenStack™ completed its first public Design Summit last week, which attracted more than 250 people from 90 companies and 14 countries to plan the next two releases, code-named ‘Bexar’ and ‘Cactus.’ Taking place at the Weston Centre in San Antonio, Texas, the four-day event was hosted by Rackspace® Hosting, a founding member of the open source project.

“From development, to documentation and deployment, last week’s OpenStack Design Summit enabled the OpenStack community to come together to learn and make the key decisions for the next two code releases,” said Jim Curry, chief stacker and general manager, OpenStack. “The themes for the week were how to execute on enterprise and service provider deployments, and the immense opportunity for the commercial ecosystem.”The OpenStack Design Summit featured two separate tracks, one consisting of developer-led sessions to plan the next two code releases, and one for interested users and the partner ecosystem to discuss deployment and commercial opportunities. The Summit also featured an 'InstallFest,' where attendees were able to test and document the installation process on a live, on-site environment provided by Dell and powered by the company's PowerEdge C server line.

Analyzing Cloud Computing (Report)

2010-11-16T13:00:00.000-08:00

Research and Markets announced the addition of the "Analyzing Cloud Computing" report to their offering. Cloud computing is a shift following the switchover from mainframe to clientserver in the early 1980s. Cloud computing is web-based processing, whereby shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices on demand over the Internet. Cloud computing describes a new supplement, consumption, and delivery model for IT services based on the Internet, and it typically involves over-the-Internet provision of dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources. It is a byproduct and consequence of the ease-of-access to remote computing sites provided by the Internet. This new report address the following issues: Market Overview, Features of Cloud Computing, Delivery Models, Deployment Models, Application Programming Interfaces for Building Cloud Computing Solutions, Taxonomy for Cloud Computing, Benefits of Cloud Computing, Organizational Cost Advantages of Cloud Systems, Technological Aspects of Cloud Systems, Regulatory Issues & Government Investment, Commercialization of Cloud Computing, Global Cloud Exchanges and Markets, Cloud Computing Research Projects and a case study of Cloud Computing in Governments.

Cisco, Citrix, VMware and Wyse Unveil Virtualization Infrastructure (VXI)

2010-11-15T11:56:00.000-08:00

Cisco announced a comprehensive desktop virtualization system and solutions comprising collaboration, borderless networking and data center technologies from Cisco and an ecosystem of leading virtualization vendors. Named the Cisco® Virtualization Experience Infrastructure (VXI), the system addresses the current state of fragmented solutions which complicate virtual desktop deployments. It also enhances traditional desktop virtualization for rich media and video. Cisco VXI helps enterprises overcome the principal barriers preventing them from attaining the financial, data security and workforce flexibility benefits offered by desktop virtualization without compromising the user experience or the ability to integrate rich media and video collaboration capabilities. Cisco VXI also reduces the total cost of ownership of desktop virtualization solutions by significantly increasing the number of virtual desktops that can be hosted on each server.

Cisco today also introduced two zero client devices designed to allow users to enjoy all the benefits of desktop virtualization without sacrificing the rich-media collaboration experience inherent with high-powered PCs. Cisco further announced that the Cisco CiusTM business tablet will be enabled to participate in virtualized desktop environments at launch via the introduction of newly designed client applications from Citrix, VMware and Wyse.

Cisco to Discuss the Next Phase of Desktop Virtualization (November 15 - Press Conference)

2010-11-13T12:31:00.000-08:00

Cisco invites media and industry analysts to attend a live Internet broadcast and interactive Q&A session wherein the company will announce new technologies and solutions to usher in a new era in desktop virtualization. Cisco will be joined for the broadcast by a premier group of virtualization partners, including Citrix, VMware and Wyse. This news event will focus on new solutions to the principal barriers preventing enterprises from attaining the financial, data security and workforce flexibility benefits offered by desktop virtualization today. It will further address the challenges of integrating rich media and video collaboration capabilities with virtual desktops. An executive Q&A session will directly follow the discussion, during which participants will have the opportunity to submit questions. Speakers will include Cisco Senior Vice President, Systems and Architectures, Manny Rivelo; Barry O'Sullivan, senior vice president, Voice Technology Group Cisco; Phil Sherburne, vice president Engineering, Cisco; Gordon Payne, senior vice president and general manager, Desktop Division, Citrix; Chris Young, vice president and general manager End User Computing, VMware and Tarkan Maner, president and CEO, Wyse Technology.

ServerCentral Launches Dedicated Private Cloud Service

2010-11-12T13:45:00.000-08:00

ServerCentral launched its Dedicated Private Cloud solution, the ServerCentral DPC. Designed to offer the fundamental benefits of cloud services, the ServerCentral DPC distinguishes itself from existing shared cloud offerings by focusing on the security, performance, and scalability which deliver value to customers and superior overall economics.

“Many businesses look to take advantage of cloud technology but are unable or unwilling to use public cloud platforms. They just don’t feel the multi-tenant shared infrastructures provide a comfortable level of security for their entire application suite, and find they pay more for lower performance as compared to their own dedicated environment. We'll be introducing our shared cloud products early next year, but the demand from our customers today led us to bring the Dedicated Private Cloud to market first,” said Avi Freedman, ServerCentral CTO and architect of cloud services.

Unlike traditional public cloud offerings where each customer is kept on virtual slice of a large, shared infrastructure, the ServerCentral DPC is a single-tenant solution. Each DPC is a truly private cloud built to meet the needs of each individual client. Applications and data are kept in an exclusive, secure and cost-effective environment. Key features of the ServerCentral DPC include: a control plane interface, virtual machine hosting supporting VMware and the popular open source hypervisors, dedicated SAN and NAS, and highly scalable content storage (up to multiple Petabytes of private object storage). The scalable building blocks of ServerCentral DPCs can be deployed in any ServerCentral market across the continental United States, Amsterdam, and Tokyo supported by ServerCentral's managed services including dedicated firewalls, load balancers, and massively scalable IP transit and transport.

SpringCM Announces New Release of Cloud Invoice Automation Solution

2010-11-10T15:20:00.000-08:00

SpringCM® released its new version of Invoice Automation solution, delivered on its award-winning cloud enterprise content management platform. SpringCM’s newest release makes automating invoice processing easier, faster and more affordable to implement. In addition, new reporting and analytics features will provide customers with enhanced management insight into invoice cycle times and bottlenecks, resulting in lower costs and improved financial operational efficiencies.

“Many factors are prompting businesses to focus on ECM as part of a shift toward a SaaS or cloud model,” said Toby Bell, research vice president at Gartner. "The attractions for applications like invoice processing are obvious as it brings with it fewer costs for infrastructure hardware, software and management, and less complexity in the applications layer.”According to a recent SpringCM survey, more than 70 percent of organizations receive over three quarters of their invoices in paper form. While automating invoice processing can reduce costs by 75 to 90 percent, more than half of the 100 respondents cited the perceived cost and resources required with on-premise software as barriers to automation.

Predixion Software Introduces Predictivie Analytics Solution to Access and Run R Models in the Cloud

2010-11-09T12:20:00.000-08:00

Predixion Software announced a new plug-in that provides Predixion Insight™, the company’s low-cost, self-service in the cloud predictive analytics solution, direct access to the R open-source statistical programming language and its more than two million users and thousands of legacy predictive and statistical models. R customers can now use, reuse and share statistical and predictive models via Predixion’s collaborative predictive analytics platform while also gaining seamless access to Microsoft’s business intelligence (BI) platform.

“Predixion Software has developed some innovative cloud-based predictive analytic technology which includes tools from which to load Excel data and build predictive models,” said James Taylor, one of the leading experts in decision management and CEO of Decision Management Solutions. “Thanks to its support of PMML, Predixion is not only able to consume predictive models built in the major commercial data mining tools such as SAS and SPSS, but also provides an avenue to make open source R models available to the Excel user base. It brings the power of the open source research community to an on-demand cloud-based environment.”By linking R to Predixion Insight, users can take the predictive models they’ve already created with R and make them available to the rest of the organization easily and cost-effectively. The new Predixion plug-in enables R users to score any of their statistical models in the cloud from within Predixion Insight, compare those models to those created by Predixion Insight, and share the results within Microsoft Excel® and SharePoint®. R users now have a cost-effective way to bring analysts and less technical information workers into the power of predictive analytics using R.

Symantec and Dell Services Expand Partnership to Deliver Cloud-based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)

2010-11-08T14:58:00.000-08:00

Symantec and Dell Services announced an expanded strategic partnership under which Dell Services will utilize Symantec’s e-mail security platform as the security engine for its Email Management Services (EMS) portfolio of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions. The partnership will utilize Symantec Hosted Services’ state-of-the-art, cloud-based security services to bring new e-mail security features and improved functionality to Dell’s EMS customers and channel partners, providing them with increased e-mail protection and availability. Dell Services’ EMS Email Continuity and EMS Email Archive SaaS solutions are currently offered to Symantec’s customers and channel partners. Through this enhanced partnership, Symantec will increase the depth and breadth of its solutions for customers seeking additional capabilities for hosted e-mail products.

“By combining the individual strengths and expertise of Dell Services and Symantec Hosted Services, we are excited to bring customers and channel partners a best-of-breed portfolio that features robust, industry-leading functionalities. As Dell and Symantec team to bolster state-of-the-art hosted e-mail security, continuity and archiving services, new and existing customers can benefit from heightened protection and expanded hosted offerings,” said Mark Bilger, vice president, Services Product Group, Dell Services.

“This partnership with Dell signifies the strength of both the Symantec Hosted Services and the Dell portfolios and our commitment to cloud-based SaaS services. We are looking forward to working with Dell’s customers and partners to bring the benefits of SaaS to more organizations, anticipating continued success across both our global Enterprise and SMB business,” said Rowan Trollope, senior vice president, Symantec Hosted Services.

Virtual Bridges Announces Immediate Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Support for IBM's Cloud Service

2010-11-08T13:09:00.000-08:00

Virtual Bridges announced that its flagship VERDE™ solution now provides virtual desktop management and provisioning capabilities for the IBM Cloud Service Provider Platform. Working together with IBM, VERDE is immediately available as an integrated and enabled workload offering within the new IBM solution. Service providers can use VERDE to accelerate the delivery of cost-effective cloud-based VDI workloads to businesses of all sizes. This combination of IBM, Virtual Bridges and service providers ushers in the next era of VDI, moving beyond the data center and into the cloud.According to IBM, the market for cloud services is expected to grow to $89 billion by 2015. Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), which allows programs, applications, processes and data from remote PCs to be stored and managed from a central location, is ideally suited for cloud services and helping to drive growing demand. VERDE from Virtual Bridges will enable service providers to capitalize on this exploding market.

“Cloud-based services are quickly emerging as a critical business model for service providers,” said Lauren States, vice president of Cloud Computing for IBM Software Group. “The new cloud service management platform can help providers speed the time to market of new services, including virtual desktop management, while helping lower the associated costs and risk.” VERDE provides a comprehensive, end-to-end desktop virtualization solution combining online, off-line and remote branch VDI solutions. Key advantages include the industry’s first integrated and disconnected use solution, a single Gold Master provisioning model, Distributed Connection brokering architecture, flexibility to run Windows and Linux desktops, branch-level VDI at LAN speeds, and desktop portability on a USB stick. From a deployment perspective, VERDE’s flexibility is designed to meet the needs of any customer, offering on-premise, hosted and hybrid deployment modes while reducing total cost of ownership.

NaviSite Enhances Cloud-Based Managed Messaging Services via Mimecast Partnership

2010-11-05T13:04:00.000-07:00

NaviSite has entered into a reseller partnership with Mimecast®, a leading supplier of cloud-based e-mail security, continuity, policy control and archiving. The partnership allows NaviSite to sell Mimecast’s suite of Unified Email Management (UEM) software as part of its Microsoft Exchange and IBM Lotus managed email messaging services in the cloud.

"A growing number of organizations are evaluating a move to cloud-based email, and are weighing the benefits they can derive, such as lower costs and ease of management with their concerns about security and legal compliance for this mission critical application," said Quoc Hoang, Market Analyst at The Radicati Group, Inc. "Cloud email providers that can offer reliable, cost-effective on-demand email access that ensures security, service continuity and the ability to meet legal discovery requirements with leading-edge capabilities such as archiving, eDiscovery and policy management have the right set of tools to address and overcome these concerns and optimize email performance in the cloud."

By enhancing the power of the NaviSite’s cloud-based Managed Messaging Services with Mimecast’s Unified Email Management (UEM) solution, customers’ email systems can be made more secure, less costly and easier to maintain as several different products can be replaced with one holistic cloud-based solution. Customers gain enhanced spam and virus protections, improved policy management capabilities, guaranteed email continuity and the ability to quickly search through archived emails. In addition, Mimecast recently announced its support for Microsoft Exchange 2010, easing migration concerns for administrators.

AppZero 4.6 Widens Windows and Linux Platform Support for Application Virtualization

2010-11-05T12:03:00.000-07:00

AppZero has released AppZero 4.6, which widens its support of both Windows and Linux platforms. Decoupling both server-side and client-side applications from the operating system (OS), AppZero makes provisioning of Windows and Linux applications as services almost instantaneous: across a network, on any server (physical or virtual), in the datacenter, hosted, or in the cloud. AppZero encapsulates an application into a Virtual Application Appliance (VAA) complete with everything it needs to run except for an executing OS. Because the VAA uses the OS on the target machine, the application executes upon delivery, without installation. The result is server applications that are 100% portable, with zero OS foot print, near-native performance, and no cloud or machine lock-in.

"Customers and partners virtualize applications for reasons that go beyond the straight cost-savings ofserver virtualization. They want to decrease complexity and gain application portability across cloud and datacenter environments. Rapid, simplified deployment is a goal for ISVs as well as for the enterprises they're selling into." said AppZero CEO Greg O'Connor, "We're delivering what customers are telling us they want. In this case, that is simplified Windows application management and a solid Linux offering. Our 4.6 release puts us dead center in the critical mass of IT servers."

Abiquo Announces Verified Support for Citrix XenServer

2010-11-05T11:49:00.000-07:00

Abiquo is one of the first cloud management vendors to be verified as Citrix Ready® for Citrix XenServer® 5.6. The Citrix Ready program helps customers identify third-party solutions that are recommended to enhance virtualization, networking and cloud computing solutions from Citrix. Both Abiquo Community Edition and Abiquo Enterprise Edition completed a rigorous verification process to ensure compatibility with Citrix XenServer®.

“We are pleased to partner with Citrix and provide Abiquo Enterprise Edition and Abiquo Community Edition as Citrix Ready solutions,” said Pete Malcolm, Abiquo CEO. “Given the increasing popularity of Citrix XenServer, we wanted to make sure that both open source community users who want to deploy test environments as well as service providers who need to cost-effectively launch and manage cloud operations for their global 2000 customers can benefit from Abiquo’s unique business policy-driven cloud management solution running on Citrix XenServer.”

"Providing customers with openness and choice are key to realizing the benefits of cloud computing,” said N. Louis Shipley, group vice president and general manager, XenServer Product Group, Citrix. "As part of our growing partner ecosystem, the Abiquo Cloud Management solution clearly helps enterprises and service providers embrace cloud computing by automating the operations across heterogeneous virtual datacenters.”

Morphlabs Announces mCloud On-Demand Public Cloud Platform

2010-11-04T15:32:00.000-07:00

Morphlabs has announced a new cloud management platform called mCloud On-Demand. mCloud On-Demand is an operational management environment that leverages Amazon’s EC2 cloud service to deliver enterprise-class applications over the public cloud. Amazon Web Services (AWS), the largest provider of public cloud computing services, and its leading product, EC2, provides resizable compute capacity in the public cloud for companies of all sizes. According to David Linthicum, CTO and founder of Blue Mountain Labs, and cloud computing thought leader: “The truth of the matter is that Amazon is already sneaking into larger enterprises to displace larger systems development technology.” [The Stealthy Rise of the Public Cloud] According to a report from research firm International Data Corporation (IDC), the public IT cloud services will grow at more than five times the projected growth rate for traditional IT products over the next 5 years. [IDC- Press Release, Through 2014 Public IT Cloud Services Will Grow at More Than Five Times the Rate of Traditional IT Products, New IDC Research Finds, According to IDC, June 23, 2010.] "Our forecast shows that public IT cloud services are currently 'crossing the chasm,' with modest revenue but very fast growth," said Frank Gens, senior vice president and chief analyst at IDC. [IDC- Abstract, Worldwide and Regional Public IT Cloud Services 2010-2014 Forecast, According to IDC, June 2010.]

Morphlabs is an AWS Solutions Provider and has been developing scalable solutions using the Amazon platform since 2007. mCloud On-Demand provides significant control over Amazon EC2 to deliver the power of Enterprise Cloud Architecture (ECA) and provide an integrated cloud stack for deploying, managing and monitoring enterprise class applications. The end result is that clouds built using ECA are reliable, automated, elastic and portable.

IBM Launches Private Multi-tenant Cloud Environment

2010-11-01T14:14:00.000-07:00

IBM's new Federal Community Cloud (FCC) will allow data and services to reside in secure, scalable data centers that can be quickly accessed by federal organizations at a fraction of the cost. The capabilities are dynamic and scalable to help organizations meet government consolidation policies mandated by Obama administration Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra in February. IBM's Federal Community Cloud is in the process of obtaining Fed Ramp certification to meet FISMA (Federal Information Security Management Act) compliance standards, a requirement for government IT contractors, and will be operated and maintained in accordance with Federal Security Guidelines.

The complex nature of work federal organizations will continue to increase in the years ahead, as well as the mandates required to pursue these efforts. For example, using technology to process benefits claims electronically; identifying waste, fraud and abuse in social services programs; conducting health care research; running military simulations; conducting global warming models; or predicting and managing traffic patterns in real-time. This is coupled with current agency needs such as maintaining security, quickly deploying new applications and services for collaboration, meeting environmental mandates, reducing costs, and adhering to the landslide of compliance requirements. As a result, data center capacity will continue to be in short supply, and running independent IT infrastructures becomes a riskier proposition for the federal government, as well as a costlier use of taxpayer dollars.

Alteryx Brings Geographic Business Intelligence to Microsoft’s Windows Azure Marketplace DataMarket

2010-10-29T15:27:00.000-07:00

Alteryx^®, LLC, announced that Microsoft Corp. has named it as a launch partner for Windows Azure Marketplace DataMarket, unveiled today during its Professional Developers Conference in Seattle. Windows Azure Marketplace DataMarket is a cloud-based micro-payment marketplace for data and business services along the lines of an Apple iTunes or Amazon online retail environment.

“Microsoft has set a new precedent for delivering data to a mass market of business users and consumers,” said Dean Stoecker, Alteryx CEO. “Developers will be able to use Alteryx API services to monetize their own content and web applications in ways that have yet to be imagined. By delivering data services in the cloud, Microsoft has freed potentially millions of users from having to provide and maintain their own datasets by simply subscribing in to the integrated Windows Azure DataMarket ecosystem.”Windows Azure Marketplace DataMarket will be hosted within Microsoft’s recently announced Windows Azure cloud-based services platform, creating an open system for users, developers and resellers to transact across a wide range of applications and with tremendous access to vast data resources including Census, demographic and consumer expenditures via free and for-fee transaction services.

TwinStrata Announces Support for VMware High Availability (HA)

2010-10-29T13:36:00.000-07:00

TwinStrata, Inc. has successfully qualified CloudArray® with VMware High Availability (HA), a component of VMware Infrastructure™ - the industry's most complete and robust virtualization platform. With this qualification, TwinStrata’s enterprise-class CloudArray software further enables organizations using VMware to maximize off-site data protection uptime and reduce downtime management costs. TwinStrata’s CloudArray software running on VMware provides seamless protection of CloudArray VMs, application data, and off-site backup operations in the event of hardware failure. Additionally, CloudArray customers using VMware HA can eliminate complex manual recovery steps, decrease planned and unplanned downtime, drive data protection stability across the business, and improve productivity.

Roger Michelson, VP and COO of BNMC, says, “TwinStrata greatly enhances our customers’ business resiliency by providing seamless ‘zero-U’ iSCSI storage that ‘stretches’ VMware’s High Availability into the cloud. The TwinStrata CloudArray plugs right into our customers’ existing VMware environment and works seamlessly with our customers’ existing backup infrastructure to protect all assets.”

“Enterprises consistently look for ways to cut costs and improve the security and reliability of their data protection solutions,” said Nicos Vekiarides, CEO TwinStrata. “With support for multiple VMware availability options, TwinStrata’s CloudArray ensures off-site data protection operations are uninterrupted.”

VMware vCenter™ Server 4.0 and vSphere 4.0 Earn Common Criteria EAL4+ Certification

2010-10-28T13:56:00.000-07:00

VMware announced that VMware vSphere™ 4.0 and VMware vCenter™ Server 4.0 achieved Common Criteria certification at Evaluation Assurance Level 4 (EAL4+) under the Common Criteria Evaluation and Certification Scheme (CCS). Common Criteria is an international set of guidelines (ISO 15408) that provides a common framework for evaluating security features and capabilities of Information Technology (IT) security products, and EAL4+ is the highest assurance level that is recognized globally by all signatories under the Common Criteria Recognition Agreement (CCRA).

“VMware is committed to serving our U.S. federal government customers’ unique requirements by delivering peace of mind to organizations leveraging virtualization as the foundation for cloud computing, or as the key enabler for server or data center consolidation, telework and Continuity of Operations (COOP) initiatives,” said Aileen Black, vice president public sector, VMware. As virtualization occupies an increasingly central position within the U.S. federal government’s IT strategy as the cornerstone of modern infrastructures and the foundation for cloud computing, VMware vSphere enables organizations to achieve the benefits of cloud computing while maintaining the security, control and efficiency they require. Achieving EAL4+ certification marks the completion of an intensive effort during which VMware vSphere 4.0 and VMware vCenter Server 4.0 were examined, tested and certified at EAL4+, validating that VMware vSphere is one of the most proven, trusted platforms for modern IT infrastructure.

Microsoft Outlines Opportunity in the Cloud and on Devices at Developers Conference

2010-10-28T13:12:00.000-07:00

At the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC), Microsoft Corp. showcased how developers can build applications in the cloud to power rich, immersive device experiences. In addition to the developers in attendance at the company’s corporate campus in Redmond, Wash., the event was broadcast live over the Web, and reached more than 20,000 developers at over 200 PDC events held around the world. During the keynote address, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Server and Tools Business President Bob Muglia showed how the company is advancing the Microsoft platform, spanning the PC, phone and cloud. Microsoft specifically highlighted the momentum of Windows Azure, Windows 7, Internet Explorer 9 and Windows Phone 7 and the opportunity for developers today and in the future.

“Microsoft is combining the power and reach of the cloud with both Web and local device experiences,” Ballmer said. “There has never been a better time for developers to bet on Microsoft.” During his keynote at PDC10, Bob Muglia, president, Microsoft Server & Tools Business, outlined the roadmap for Windows Azure. Since the commercial availability of Windows Azure was announced earlier this year, Microsoft has seen strong growth with close to 20,000 applications to date. Demonstrating its RenderMan application during the keynote address, Pixar Animation Studios showed how it intends to use Windows Azure to more efficiently manage compute cycles by scaling as needed, helping improve project performance and eliminate costly back-end infrastructure.