CopperEgg Corp., a leading cloud monitoring and analytics company, today announced a new Cloud Sizing Tool that accurately benchmarks enterprise and cloud servers to help customers choose the proper Amazon EC2 instance types, pricing, and Elastic Block Storage (EBS) configurations from over 200 possible Amazon Web Services (AWS) combinations. Businesses can save money and ensure application performance by using the Cloud Sizing Tool to rightsize instances during cloud migrations, resize existing EC2 instances, and avoid over- or under-provisioned cloud resources. CopperEgg will demonstrate the Cloud Sizing Tool at the AWS Summit 2013 in New York City on April 18 and at the Opscode #ChefConf 2013 in San Francisco.

“The cloud sizing report gives us a better way to measure server usage,” said Jonathan Marbutt, Vice President of WayCool Software. “By changing cloud providers and switching to AWS, we were able to reduce cost by at least 30 percent, plus gain more powerful servers in the process. Our app response time has also improved.”

Grazed from FierceTelecom. Author: Sean Buckley.

AT&T and Verizon, according to Gartner’s Magic Quadrant report on managed hosting providers in North America, have established themselves as key players in the segment. Having built a broad presence in the U.S. and international markets with its set of private IaaS and colocation services, AT&T provides cloud and managed services out of 23 data centers in North America in addition to facilities in Europe and Asia.

The telco’s depth and experience in providing managed hosting services continues to be a selling point for its large multinational corporation (MNC) customers that have complex enterprise application and hosting needs. "AT&T is able to use its network as a differentiator for use cases where network access is a heavily weighted criterion, or where end-to-end service management with SLAs is required," Gartner wrote…

Grazed from MarketWire. Author: PR Announcement.

Juniper Networks (NYSE: JNPR), the industry leader in network innovation, is now a Gold Member of the OpenStack Foundation, reaffirming the company’s commitment to industry collaboration and open standards. The decision was made at the OpenStack Summit, held in Portland, Ore. this week, following approval of Juniper’s application by the OpenStack Foundation Board of Directors.

Juniper Networks believes industry collaboration and the move toward standards is critical to driving innovation across the networking industry. The company’s broad solutions portfolio and its vision for the future of networking are key to promoting the adoption of OpenStack integrated architectures with partners and customers, enabling flexible application development for cloud computing environments…

Grazed from TechTarget. Author: Christine Cignoli.

Cloud computing has changed the cost and budget equation for many businesses, and IT managers can get a better understanding of where the money goes — and get more for their cloud money — if they keep a watchful eye on the numbers. Using cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) can remove a business’s capital expenditure, said Kris Bliesner, CEO of 2nd Watch, an Amazon Web Services (AWS) systems integrator. But the timing involved in deploying IT services has shifted dramatically, Bliesner said.

"Before, when I talked about building a budget as an IT person, I thought about three years ahead," he said. "Now, my cost model is a by-the-hour cost model. How do I take advantage of that?" Bliesner offered some tips on getting the most out of this new cloud cost model at the Modern Infrastructure Decisions conference in New York last week…

Grazed from Forbes. Author: Reuven Cohen.

If you’ve attended a technology conference over the last couple years it’s hard to avoid the obvious buzz around cloud computing. Almost every vendor has applied the term to anything and everything imaginable. During this time there has been some debate over the level of adoption outside of the startup scene, specifically within the larger “enterprise class” of companies. We’re now at a point where most “new software” created, is created with the Internet as a central tenant. It’s how modern software is developed, deployed and consumed. Yes. The cloud has gone mainstream.

New research sponsored by enterprise focused cloud computing firm, Virtustream, sheds new light on the adoption of cloud computing. The report findings indicate that the majority of U.S. businesses are now using some form of cloud computing for IT. The report notes that increasingly most of these businesses use multiple cloud providers leading to potential problems with interoperability and, so called, “Cloud Sprawl”…

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: Ted Samson.

Microsoft on Tuesday made a flurry of Windows Azure-related announcements, including the general availability of Windows Azure IaaS (infrastructure as a service), with new VMI (virtual machine image) templates for SQL Server, BizTalk Server, and SharePoint; larger VM sizes; and new pricing to challenge Amazon Web Services (AWS). What’s more, Microsoft announced the general availability of Windows Azure Virtual Networks.

Microsoft unveiled previews of Azure IaaS and Virtual Networks last June as part of a significant overhaul to the formerly PaaS-centric platform featuring a healthy dose of IaaS capabilities and broader support for various OSes and development platforms. Today’s news marks an important milestone for Microsoft Azure as it emerges as a credible competitor to AWS, OpenStack, and other cloud platforms jockeying for position. (Check out InfoWorld’s review of Azure for more details about the Microsoft-crafted cloud.)…

Grazed from ITBusinessEdge. Author: Loraine Lawson.

Integration continues to frustrate organizations trying to use SaaS applications. TechTarget reports that application integration showed up as a top cloud problem in two surveys it recently conducted. You may recall earlier this year a KPGM survey that found 31 percent said integrating cloud services with their on-premise applications and systems was more complex than expected.

TechTarget’s Cloud Pulse survey found similar results: 34 percent said SaaS programs can’t interoperate with other programs from the cloud or in house. “And once again, customization was tied with integration: Even with customization, 34 percent of Cloud Pulse respondents said SaaS apps can be inadequate for the client’s business needs,” reports SearchEnterpriseLinux.com Site Editor Jan Stafford…

Grazed from ZDNet. Author: Rachel King.

Hewlett-Packard is boasting its dedication to OpenStack through the debut of a handful of new Converged Cloud products being debuted today. Announced amid the OpenStack Summit in Portland this week, HP is integrating more of the open source cloud computing software with its own portfolio of private and public cloud solutions. Starting with brand new options, HP has added new private cloud bursting services intended to simplify the startup of hybrid clouds.

Dubbed CloudSystem Bursting Activation Services, HP will provide support to help clients configure the software needed to burst from HP CloudSystem (the tech giant’s private cloud flagship product) to another while also streamlining access to additional capacity across multiple HP CloudSystems. Service providers will also be able to use these services to deliver on-demand capacity to customers…

Grazed from BusinessWire. Author: PR Announcement.

Citrix and The Linux Foundation today announced that open source community development for the Xen(R) virtualization platform will become a Linux Foundation Collaborative Project. Leveraging its proven model of collaborative development for the new Xen Project(TM) initiative, The Linux Foundation will provide infrastructure, guidance and a collaborative network. The neutral, member-led community will help accelerate cross-industry innovation around the Xen Project hypervisor, bringing guidance and contributions from a more diverse group of technology leaders.

Over the past decade, collaborative innovations in cloud computing, security and advanced processor support have made Xen the most scalable and secure hypervisor in the industry. It is these innovations that have led to the adoption of Xen and Citrix XenServer(R) as the platforms for powering approximately two-thirds of the public cloud revenue in the world. The initial set of supporters demonstrates the broad reach the technology has had in the marketplace. With more than 10 years of development and in use by more than 10 million users, the open source technology attracts contributions from organizations such as Amazon, AMD, Cambridge University, Citrix, Fujitsu, Intel, National Security Agency (NSA), Oracle and SUSE…

Grazed from CloudTech. Author: James Bourne.

A whitepaper from Melbourne’s Centre for Energy Efficient Telecommunications (CEET) has cast doubt on traditional thinking regarding the energy consumption of cloud computing. “Previous analysis and industry focus has missed the point,” blistered the Power of Wireless Cloud report to open its executive summary. “Access networks, not data centres, are the biggest threat to the sustainability of cloud services.”

As straight to the point as this is, what are the underlying reasons behind this summation? According to the researchers, the wireless infrastructure is a more fundamental part of the cloudy ecosystem, with data centres just a part of a larger space. “Wireless cloud is a surging sector with implications that cannot be ignored,” the report notes…