Hitachi Data Systems Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd., today announced a joint initiative with Microsoft and select channel and systems integrator partners to transform the data center and accelerate hybrid and private cloud adoption by offering substantial incentives for customers who deploy new Hitachi Unified Compute Platform (UCP) Select for Microsoft Private Cloud. This new program runs from July 1, 2013 to July 1, 2014, and aligns with Microsoft’s Cloud OS Accelerate program, which provides funds to help customers offset the services cost of deploying Microsoft private and hybrid cloud solutions, accelerates deals, and helps drive competitive wins.

As announced earlier this year at MMS 2013, Hitachi UCP Select for Microsoft Private Cloud solutions have been validated for Microsoft’s Private Cloud Fast Track architecture, version 3. The Hitachi converged infrastructure for Microsoft Private Cloud Fast Track, version 3, ships pre-configured from Hitachi distribution centers and is architected for Windows Server 2012, System Center 2012 SP1 and the associated monitoring packs – PowerShell cmdlets (pronounced “command-lets”) and Orchestration integrations. The Hitachi converged infrastructure combines Hitachi compute and Hitachi storage with industry-leading virtualization capabilities and best-of-breed networking.

Grazed from eWeek.  Author: Darryl K. Taft.

At its Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) 2013 here, Microsoft announced a series of new programs and services designed to help its partners and customers embrace the challenges and opportunities associated with cloud computing and big data.

Both onstage during a keynote address and in a blog post, Satya Nadella, president of the Server and Tools Business at Microsoft described the new programs, including Cloud OS Accelerate, which is a program in which Microsoft and key partners such as Cisco, NetApp, Hitachi Data Systems, HP and Dell will invest more than $100 million to help put thousands of new private and hybrid cloud solutions into the hands of customers, Nadella said…

"As enterprise organizations deploy applications in more complicated Hybrid environments, tracking transactions across the data center and the cloud is critical to maintaining appropriate performance and availability levels," said Chris Neal, BlueStripe CEO and co-founder. "BlueStripe FactFinder breaks through the barriers between the systems operating in the on-site data center and those running in an Azure cloud, whether Platform as a Service or Infrastructure as a Service."

Parallels, a leading hosting and cloud services enablement provider, today unveiled support for a Microsoft Azure Pack for Hosting Providers and updates to a collection of cloud service delivery solutions for Microsoft partners at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference. The solution, developed in collaboration with Microsoft’s server and tools business group, is in addition to the new support of Microsoft Azure Pack for Hosting. Parallels has also updated its support for Microsoft Lync 2013 Hosting Pack, Microsoft Exchange 2013 and Microsoft Office 365. The new product and updated features help make Parallels, a Microsoft Global ISV and Gold Certified Partner, a leading company in enabling Microsoft Cloud solutions via cloud distribution channels.

To help address small and medium businesses’ growing need for robust cloud solutions, Parallels has been collaborating with Microsoft since 2007 to enable the delivery of cloud services for telecom companies, domain hosting providers, distributors, managed service providers and VARs. This has helped Parallels develop services with value-added support to help its service provider partners drive more revenue faster by offering essential solutions for specific SMB workloads. These solutions include:

Rackspace Hosting, the open cloud company, today announced that IT industry veteran Rick Jackson has joined the company as Chief Marketing Officer (CMO). Jackson will lead Rackspace’s global marketing strategy and execution as the company works to strengthen its leadership position around hybrid cloud.

Jackson officially joined Rackspace on July 1 and today brings with him over 25 years of IT industry experience. Most recently, Jackson served as CMO at VMware, where he was responsible for leading the company’s global marketing strategy since early 2009.

Netsocket, a technology leader in virtualized, software-defined networking, today announced its flagship Netsocket Virtual Network (NVN) product suite, delivering on the promise of software-defined networking (SDN) with powerful, robust orchestration and automation applications running on a completely virtualized network infrastructure. Additionally, Netsocket is announcing the availability of Netsocket Virtual Network Early Experience Edition, which is downloadable today for free.

The Netsocket Virtual Network is an SDN framework for network virtualization and advanced automation. A fully optimized, automated and cost-effective network, the NVN solution is comprised of a complete, three-tier SDN architecture – providing end-to-end virtual networking, centralized orchestration and automation, and superior interoperability and integration with legacy routed networks as well as higher level management systems such as Microsoft System Center.

Grazed from TheNextWeb.  Author: Robing Wauters.

Zimory, a Berlin-based company that delivers cloud management solutions to service providers, enterprises and ‘cloud brokers’ worldwide, today announced that it has raised $20 million in funding.  The financing round was led by new investor Deutsche Boerse, with participation from prior backers Creathor Venture, High-Tech Gruenderfonds (HTGF), IBB Beteiligungsgesellschaft (IBB), KfW and Deutsche Telekom’s venture capital arm, T-Venture.

Deutsche Boerse is not only an investor in Zimory but also a business partner. Just last week, the German financial markets operator said it is planning to launch an independent exchange for trading cloud computing capacity in partnership with the Berlin startup…

Grazed from Citrix.  Author: PR Announcement.

Citrix on Monday outlined that its latest XenDesktop 7 virtualization software will be available on Microsoft’s Windows Azure cloud platform. With the move, XenDesktop’s remote desktop services on Azure sessions can have live roaming and multiple devices.

XenDesktop 7 was outlined at Citrix’s Synergy confab in May. Adding a cloud session option will give Citrix another deployment model for virtual desktops.  For Citrix, Azure support gives XenDesktop more of an audience among smaller enterprises as cloud computing grows…

Grazed from InfoWorld.  Author: Paul Venezia.

Certain elements of cloud computing are inarguably beneficial. The ability to quickly provision, clone, and deploy servers to address capacity issues is a definite plus, and the fact that you can effortlessly add elements such as load balancers, big storage, and databases is equally compelling. However, there is a downside that needs to be understood: the fact that, in many cases, cloud server instances can exhibit wildly different performance metrics, measured from second to second.

Sure, SLAs and guarantees made by the cloud provider can address these issues after the fact, but when it’s crunch time, there’s nothing you can do other than communicate the problem and hope it gets fixed quickly. You may have visibility into what your instances are doing, but you have no idea what the underlying hardware is doing, how it’s configured, or how oversubscribed it might be. That’s the nature of the cloud…

Grazed from Finextra.  Author: Editorial Staff.

Cloud computing is more than just a technology; it’s a model for disruptive business transformation. And like any business transformation endeavor, it has to be supported by some fundamental realignment in organization structures, processes and even culture.   Take for instance the rather radical concept of distributed IT decision making in the cloud model. No more waiting for the IT department to provision technology; end users will independently assess and access the required infrastructure components based on demand. 

IT, then, is no longer a detached purveyor of computing resources. From a pure maintenance and support function, it has to evolve into a more strategic role that involves working with different organizational units to understand their business needs and guide them to the appropriate technological solutions. In this new participative role, IT will be responsible for providing strategic technical guidance, defining standards and enabling innovation…