Grazed from WindowsITPro. Author: Joe Panettieri.

Even as the cloud computing market accelerates, SolarWinds CEO Kevin Thompson says his company will never abandon on-premises IT professionals who manage servers, applications, databases, networks and more. In an exclusive interview with MSPmentor and Windows IT Pro, Thompson described how SolarWinds (SWI) will balance on-premises and cloud R&D to make sure IT pros enjoy job security for years to come. First, a little background: SolarWinds has rapidly expanded its IT management software portfolio — through acquisitions and organic software development. In its most recent quarterly results (disclosed in Feb. 2014), SolarWinds said Q4 2013 revenues jumped a strong 32 percent to $97.1 million.

On the one hand, Thompson is quick to evangelize SolarWinds’ growing cloud- and subscription-oriented recurring revenue — which involves the N-able Technologies acquisitions. But on the other hand, Thompson says SolarWinds will continue to empower on-premises IT professionals who manage on-premises equipment…

Grazed from ComputerWorld. Author: Jennifer Lonoff Schiff.

"There is no silver bullet to disaster recovery," says Jack Bailey, engineering manager at cloud computing provider iland. "When outage horror stories take over headlines, executives tend to have kneejerk reactions and look to adopt whatever disaster recovery offering they can implement fastest," he says. "But every organization and location is unique, and failing to thoroughly assess your situation may lead you to adopt a solution that is expensive overkill or cheap and inadequate."

And while most IT executives and data management experts acknowledge that there isn’t one failsafe solution to protecting and recovering data, they agree that there are certain steps organizations should take. What are the necessary precautions companies should take to protect critical files and applications in the event of disaster? Dozens of data storage, data management and disaster recovery experts share their advice. Here are their top 12 suggestions regarding how to disaster-proof data (files and applications)…

Grazed from PRWeb. Author: PR Announcement.

CompuCom, a leading technology infrastructure services company, today announced the results of its recent website poll, revealing that 49 percent of IT professionals surveyed identify cloud adoption as the top IT trend for 2014 – and that cost reductions (32 percent) and accessibility to technology with less friction (31 percent) will be the biggest drivers of cloud technology.

The poll collected 683 responses from IT professionals across multiple industries from January 1, 2014 through February 25, 2014. On-demand delivery of IT services via the cloud have been available for several years, but limited understanding about options, costs and benefits have stalled wholesale implementation. Over time, companies have recognized that cloud services provide scalability, high availability and performance that are worth the challenges of implementation. Most industry analysts call for billion-dollar growth in cloud service adoption during 2014…

Grazed from PRNewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

With security threats multiplying daily, the need to provide clients with an arsenal of tools for protecting their data has never been greater. IPR International is pleased to announce a new partnership with leading cloud security and encryption management provider AFORE Solutions, Inc. that will give IPR’s clients the ability to add Encryption as a Service (EaaS) as an additional layer of security for their cloud environments.

Using AFORE’s CloudLink encryption platform, clients can choose to layer encryption at multiple points within their cloud computing stack. Encryption solutions are available at the storage, virtual machine, file, and application levels and can be deployed and managed from a common framework. Just last week, AFORE announced the addition of two new CloudLink modules to its platform, providing even greater deployment flexibility through more granular security controls…

Grazed from PR NewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

GreenPages-LogicsOne, a leading systems integrator and cloud services company, today announced it has been named to Nine Lives Media’s MSPmentor 501 Global list and report identifying the world’s top 501 Managed Service Providers (MSPs). MSPmentor 501 rankings are based on a range of metrics, including annual managed services revenue growth, revenue per employee, managed services offered and customer devices managed. GreenPages-LogicsOne placed #79 globally.

GreenPages-LogicsOne has also been named to CRN’s MSP Elite 150 list (part of CRN’s MSP500 list) ranking large data center-focused solution providers with a strong mix of on-premiseprofessional servicesas well as off-premise services. The annual list recognizes the top technology providers and consultants in North America whose cutting-edge approach to managed services puts end-user customers in the best position to improve efficiencies, cut costs and speed time to market for their own products and services…

Grazed from InfoStor. Author: Pedro Hernandez.

Cloud computing’s runaway popularity is leaving providers in a bind. While it’s generally a good problem to have, accelerating growth — 200,000-plus customers and counting in Rackspace’s case — can lead to complexity in the data center, not to mention outsized power bills. Rackspace, the San Antonio, Texas-based provider of cloud computing services, turned to Brocade and its Gen 5 Fibre Channel SAN interconnection platform to help implement an upgrade storage architecture that can grow with the company while promoting energy efficiency.

Brocade’s tech is also helping the company squeeze a little more precious rack space out of its data centers. Sean Wedige, CTO of Rackspace Enterprise Solutions at Rackspace, said in a statement that his company worked with Brocade and EMC to "to design a SAN fabric that was easy to grow and manage, while providing the flexibility to allow our data center technicians to connect any device to any switch in the fabric."…

Grazed from PRWeb. Author: PR Announcement.

NaviSite, Inc., a Time Warner Cable Company, has announced it has received two leading industry awards from CRN: the Data Center 100 list, which recognizes the top 100 data centers, and the Top 100 Coolest Cloud Computing Vendors list, which recognizes the top 100 most innovative and creative cloud vendors. These awards cement NaviSite’s position as a leader in delivering secure cloud-based storage technology and solutions, as well as in developing innovative and creative solutions to help customers and partners maximize the flexibility, scalability and cost savings possible through cloud technology.

“We are honored to be recognized by CRN for the innovation and depth of offerings we have delivered in the Cloud arena,” said Craig Sandman, senior director of NaviSite’s channel program. “We have a demonstrated track record of enabling our channel partners to position themselves strategically with their end-customers, unlocking efficiency and innovation by leveraging our comprehensive and personalized portfolio of cloud-based solutions.”…

Grazed from TechPageOne. Author: Lance Boley.

Cloud computing is seeing phenomenal growth. The benefits are enough to convince most businesses to make the switch. However, cloud computing is still in its infancy, and cloud contracts still have bugs that need to be addressed. This is particularly the case with solutions such as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). Businesses utilizing SaaS services are discovering loopholes concerning risk management, data confidentiality, data integrity and recovery. The results should serve as a friendly reminder to any business interested in the cloud: read your Service Level Agreement (SLA) thoroughly.

Alexa Bona, VP at Gartner, mentioned in a statement that “We continue to see frustration among cloud services users over the form and degree of transparency they are able to obtain from prospective and current service providers.” As with all other legal contracts, not knowing is not an excuse. Signing your name on the dotted line makes any document legally binding, and it is assumed that you have done so after reading it. Cloud computing contracts need to be transparent to alleviate users’ concerns. According to research by Gartner, they are often found to be lacking – especially when it comes to data confidentiality, integrity and recovery…

Grazed from PRNewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

CollabNet (www.collab.net), a leading provider of cloud-based Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) solutions for agile software delivery at scale, today announced that its CloudForge development platform is currently available as an add-on service in Pivotal’s on-demand PaaS service, powered by Cloud Foundry and available on-line at http://run.pivotal.io.

CloudForge continues to see strong adoption by organizations that want the benefits of cloud computing with the compliance and traceability CollabNet delivers to enterprises increasingly using open-source tools and cloud-based platforms. CloudForge availability in the Pivotal Web Services add-on marketplace provides developers with an integrated development and PaaS offering. It will accelerate development and deployment of enterprise applications to any Cloud Foundry-based platform, whether it is hosted in a private or public cloud…

Grazed from MarketWire. Author: PR Announcement.

IBM today announced that it has completed the acquisition of Cloudant, Inc ., a privately held database-as-a-service (DBaaS) provider that enables developers to easily and quickly create next generation mobile and web apps. Financial terms were not disclosed. Clients across a variety of industries, including gaming, financial services, mobile device manufacturers, online learning, retail and healthcare are already using Cloudant technology. For instance, video game developer Hothead Games relies on Cloudant to scale application data for its popular series of Big Win Sports mobile games on iPhone®, iPad® and Android™ phones and tablets. With Cloudant running on IBM SoftLayer, Hothead Games can efficiently handle large influxes of users, even when traffic spikes a hundred-fold.

Cloudant will extend IBM’s leadership in Big Data and Analytics , Cloud Computing and Mobile , further helping clients take advantage of these key areas of growth for their businesses. It joins IBM’s newly formed Information and Analytics Group, a business unit within the IBM Software & Systems Group led by Senior Vice President Bob Picciano…