REAN Cloud, an Amazon Web Services (AWS) Premier Partner and global cloud systems integrator, today announced that it has finalized a five-year contract with the Department of Defense (DoD) for up to $950 million to enable agencies within the DoD to procure cloud solutions and services directly from REAN Cloud in a new streamlined process. The agreement represents a groundbreaking model automating pricing and procurement so that government customers can quickly achieve full IT operations in the cloud.

REAN Cloud worked with Defense Innovation Unit Experimental (DIUx) -- a DoD organization charged with accelerating commercial innovation to the U.S military -- in order to facilitate prototyping and procurement of the full range of cloud adoption requirements, from Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) to application assessments, migrations, operations and more. The production Other Transaction (OT) contract is modeled on an award-winning OT prototype project for the U.S. Transportation Command (USTRANSCOM), DoD's first large-scale infrastructure assessment and cloud migration successfully completed by REAN Cloud last year. This project earned USTRANSCOM honorable mention for the 2017 DoD CIO Cyber and IT Excellence Award, as the migration to highly automated and controlled cloud environments has enabled large-scale modernization.

Grazed from BMC

BMC, a global leader in IT solutions for the digital enterprise, today announced it has integrated AWS Service Catalog into the BMC service catalog, part of the BMC Digital Workplace solution, delivering one-click self-service to the products and services employees need to be productive. The collaboration builds on BMC's existing efforts to help customers move enterprise workloads to Amazon Web Services (AWS) faster in a secure, low-risk, and cost-effective way. The BMC Digital Workplace solution becomes the single interface for customers to provision AWS as well as industry-leading multi-cloud management and IT service management solutions from BMC. 

"A key focus of our multi-cloud management strategy is to empower our customers to migrate and utilize cloud services easier and more confidently," said Bill Berutti, President, Enterprise Solutions at BMC. "Integrating AWS Service Catalog into our service catalog, alongside BMC's industry-leading solutions, reduces complexity and enables one-stop shopping for enterprise cloud service provisioning and management. We're excited about this significant step in our relationship with AWS, and to showcase this integrated service catalog at AWS Sales Kickoff 2018."

CloudPassage, the leader in cloud and container workload security, today announced availability of their award-winning security automation platform Halo and the Server Secure cloud workload security solution on AWS Marketplace. Customers subscribing to Halo Server Secure on AWS Marketplace can now purchase it as part of the new AWS Enterprise Contract program. The Enterprise Contract program standardizes the contract between CloudPassage and the customer, helping them simplify their security budgeting and streamlining payment - CloudPassage Halo will simply appear as a line item on their AWS bill.

"Now AWS Marketplace customers can buy and deploy Halo Server Secure for high-performance cloud workload security in a highly predictable and cost effective way - via a single integrated AWS bill," said John Janetos, director, business development, CloudPassage. "As global enterprises rapidly embrace the cloud for mission-critical workloads and DevOps for application development, automated security that can operate at speed and scale is becoming a critical path. The AWS Marketplace helps eliminate protracted negotiations to make it easy for our customers to securely embrace the cloud."

Traditional business models and the delivery of services are changing as small and midsize businesses demand more from providers to meet evolving requirements and cloud needs. In order to rapidly deliver and strengthen security controls to workloads on the public cloud, Armor, an Amazon Web Services (AWS) Advanced Technology Partner, today announced the availability of the Armor Anywhere solution in AWS Marketplace with new consumption-based pricing and enhanced log management services. 

"The market for cloud-based security services is expected to total close to $9 billion by 2020. To us, this signals an increased dependence on cloud offerings and demand for additional security controls," said founder and CEO Chris Drake, Armor. "There now lies a unique opportunity to accelerate the delivery of additional security features to cloud, and AWS customers now have the ability to further increase the breadth of their security controls and prevent downtime with simple and immediate deployment of Armor Anywhere."

"Over 80 percent of businesses still run on-premise Microsoft Windows file servers to store their files," said Madhan Kanagavel, CEO, FileCloud. "There is no easy way for team members to access these files remotely, greatly inhibiting the speed at which business can be conducted. With FileCloud's ServerSync, customers can access their data locally from the file server and remotely from the cloud."

Hybrid Cloud Approach Compatible with Microsoft Azure, Amazon AWS Cloud Infrastructures

Nuvem Networks, an AWS Technology and Direct Connect partner, announces general availability of self-service deployment for AWS Direct Connect through the AWS Marketplace. This release supports the following AWS regions in the United States: US-East (Northern Virginia), US-West (Northern California), and US-West (Oregon). 

Organizations considering or in the midst of projects involving hybrid cloud solutions with AWS are strongly encouraged to automate the deployment of AWS Direct Connect with Nuvem Networks patented network-as-service (NaaS) platform to achieve significant reductions in the complexity, time, and costs associated with establishing and using hybrid cloud solutions.

Actifio, the Data-as-a-Service company, today announced Sky 8.0 OnVault's availability to customers of VMware Cloud on AWS. VMware Cloud on AWS brings together VMware's enterprise-class Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC) software and elastic, bare-metal infrastructure from Amazon Web Services (AWS) to give organizations consistent operating model and application mobility for private and public cloud. Actifio Sky 8.0 OnVault can deliver cost savings, improved protection, and business acceleration to customers of VMware Cloud on AWS.

"A hybrid cloud strategy combines the computing control brought by a private cloud, with the flexibility achieved by the public cloud, and is going to be increasingly crucial for businesses to adopt moving into 2018," said Ash Ashutosh, CEO of Actifio. "Sky 8.0 OnVault for VMware Cloud on AWS marks an extension of our ongoing collaboration with VMware to provide customers with enhanced business solutions and drive accelerated digital transformation through hybrid cloud environments."

At the center of IRP for Cloud is the well-known Noction Intelligent Routing Platform, which is designed to actively check remote prefixes for metrics such as packet loss, latency, throughput, historical reliability as well as maximum peer capacity; analyze the collected network performance metrics and select the best performing route for traffic to pass through.

Grazed from Amazon and Comcast

Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com company, today announced that Comcast Cable has selected AWS as its preferred public cloud infrastructure provider. Comcast Cable will expand its use of AWS by migrating material workloads and building new applications on AWS.

AWS provides important infrastructure and services to Comcast as it focuses on building cloud-native products and services on AWS that adapt and evolve to meet the needs of customers. That focus is reflected in the class-defining X1 Platform, award-winning voice-control technology, and Xfinity xFi, Comcast's personalized Wi-Fi experience that gives customers pinpoint control over their home networks. Comcast's primary businesses, Comcast Cable and NBCUniversal, are currently running workloads on AWS which has enabled these businesses to become more nimble and launch new, revenue-generating initiatives in the competitive entertainment industry.