Univa announced a significant advancement in the migration of HPC workloads to the cloud with the release of Navops Launch 1.0, the latest version of the most powerful hybrid HPC cloud management product. Navops Launch meshes public cloud services and on-premise clusters to cost-effectively meet increasing workload demand.

The Navops Launch platform helps HPC organizations manage cloud spending and audit usage. This latest product uses an automation engine that integrates cluster and cloud management systems with end-user defined metrics to fully inform intelligent cloud workload placement actions. With Navops Launch, organizations can take advantage of the virtually unlimited scalability, lightning-fast cluster creation and the pay-per-use economics of hybrid HPC cloud computing with fully automated control of spending and policies.

Navops Launch automation tightly integrates with Univa Grid Engine and its workload status and metrics collection to respond to changes in workload demand and cluster utilization by expanding or contracting the cloud footprint in a dynamic fashion. Once configured, administrators have full control over tying cloud resource usage to a corresponding budget without having to intervene manually. Built-in monitors report the efficiency, use, spend and status of workloads placed in the cloud.

Aviatrix, the pioneer in software-defined cloud routing, has teamed with the digital skills management platform, Cloud Academy, to teach technology professionals how to build and operate software-defined public cloud networks for Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure.

The course, called "Managing Cloud Networks at Scale," is a series of informal "chalk talks" and demonstrations that teach software-defined cloud routing, and look at the architectures and issues teams face when managing multi-cloud implementations.

"While compute and storage are relatively easy to do in the cloud today, networking is not," said Frank Cabri, vice president of marketing at Aviatrix. "Our courses on Cloud Academy will help cloud operations teams learn how to simplify networking and secure connectivity between their data centers and public clouds, and between multi-cloud environments."

Among the specific topics covered in the course are:

To continue supporting enterprise IT infrastructure and connectivity needs, TierPoint and CenturyLink, Inc. announced that CenturyLink’s Cloud Connect Dynamic Connections will be offered out of TierPoint data centers across the United States.

Thirty-five of 43 TierPoint data centers are now connected with fiber to CenturyLink’s global network, with the majority already enabled with the SDN capability. This allows enterprise customers to quickly and easily establish highly scalable Ethernet connections directly to major cloud service providers and their enterprise locations.

Enterprises using TierPoint can turn up and down dedicated Ethernet connections to Amazon Web Services (AWS) locations across the globe, ranging in size from 10 Mb/s to 3 Gb/s in just a few minutes, and only pay for the time the network is used in hourly increments. If customers keep the connection up, it automatically reverts to a lower monthly billing rate. In addition, the connections can be scaled up and down dynamically as bandwidth needs fluctuate.

Elastifile, a pioneer of enterprise-grade, scalable file storage for the public cloud, announced the availability of an Elastifile Qwiklabs learning module along with new enhancements to its cutting-edge data management platform.

The Elastifile Qwiklab provides a commitment-free, hands-on introduction to the company’s storage solution and leads users through a guided tour of the Elastifile experience. Any user can easily create and test an Elastifile Cloud File System in minutes, with no prior experience required.

"A recent study found that 30% of IT fixed assets are missing or can’t be found¹," said Ian Aitchison, Senior Product Director, Ivanti. "For many enterprises, knowing what assets you have and where they are is simply the tip of the IT asset management iceberg. It’s also vital to track contracts, regulatory compliance, and cost of ownership. Ivanti Asset Manager Cloud monitors and reports on these areas as well as what hardware needs to be purchased, updated, and maintained so IT management can plan ahead, avoid hasty purchasing decisions, and optimize asset use operationally and fiscally. It’s the kind of support enterprises need to successfully manage their IT assets."

Built for complete asset optimization, Ivanti Asset Manager Cloud features:

With its latest capabilities for The Connected Enterprise -Boomi Connect Now, Boomi Data Services for Pivotal, Boomi API Gateway and Developer Portal, Bot SDK and new Professional Services offerings -Boomi provides the tools organizations need to support a breadth of use cases across all personas, ensuring both high productivity and IT control. Boomi democratizes integration, making it accessible to all users regardless of their level of technical expertise or role in the organization from citizen developers, business analysts and integration experts.

"Sky’s mission is to connect customers to more of what they love. Dell Boomi’s ability to connect data, processes and people has an extremely positive impact on the experience Sky provides its 12 million UK customers," said Olive Perrins, Service Strategy Manager at Sky. "Our people are critical to our success and being able to bring together our rich talent along with critical applications and data will be key to our continued success."

VMware, Inc. announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Heptio, a leader in the open Kubernetes ecosystem. Heptio’s products and expertise help organizations deploy and operationalize Kubernetes. Terms were not disclosed.

Founded in 2016 by Joe Beda and Craig McLuckie, two of the creators of Kubernetes, Heptio has applied its unique insight to a growing set of products, open source projects and contributions to upstream Kubernetes. This is complemented by Heptio’s work with organizations through training, support and professional services that speed integration of Kubernetes and related technologies into the fabric of enterprise IT. As a result, Heptio will be able to open new channels for VMware to further engage the open source community and harden upstream Kubernetes as well as support the cloud native needs of the largest enterprises in the world upon closing.

DH2i, the leading provider of multi-platform Software Defined Perimeter and Smart Availability software for Windows and Linux, today announced the launch of DxOdyssey, its new network security software that dynamically deploys perimeter security where needed in order to isolate services for fine-grained user access, creating a Software-Defined Perimeter (SDP). The new DH2i SDP offering gives medium and large organizations the perimeter security model needed for Zero Trust network connectivity between on-premises sites and/or multi-cloud environments. In addition, the new offering addresses customer desire for a highly scalable, self-healing networking solution that is easy to configure and manage, with a high ROI. DxOdyssey makes the application infrastructure "always-secure and always-on".

Today’s medium and large organization security and network admins are well-aware of the difficulties that surround using traditional approaches such as virtual private networks (VPNs) for perimeter security to connect on-premises sites and/or multi-cloud environments. The issues include:

Rackspace has expanded its Private Cloud as a Service (PCaaS) portfolio to deliver the future of multi-cloud. Today, with the launch of Rackspace Managed VMware Cloud on AWS, Rackspace is evolving its private cloud portfolio to give customers new ways of deploying workloads across public and private clouds in any location, using a single, industry-standard set of tools and processes. Rackspace is helping customers overcome many of the challenges they face with multi-cloud operations, including standard workflows, consistent APIs, easier access to native services across clouds, simpler geographical expansion, compliance with data sovereignty policies and business continuity, cost-effective disaster recovery, and on-demand flexible capacity.

Rackspace is focused on providing modern IT as a service for its customers, and continues to transform IT delivery by offering unbiased, multi-cloud expertise, an unrivaled portfolio of cloud services, and familiar automation and management tools. This next generation cloud solution delivers greater flexibility for customers to run each VMware workload where it makes the most sense – in VMware Cloud on AWS, in their own data center or hosted in a geo-specific location, along with the consistency of a unified infrastructure that bridges private and public clouds. With thousands of VMware and AWS certifications across hundreds of experts, Rackspace is uniquely positioned to help customers integrate multiple clouds to meet their business requirements.

"This is a game changer in the cloud industry, and with thousands of VMware and AWS certifications across hundreds of experts, Rackspace is a strategic partner to help customers that want to move to VMware Cloud on AWS and further modernize their applications with native AWS services," said Peter FitzGibbon, vice president and general manager of Rackspace managed services for VMware. "Enterprises can now run every application in the best location, optimizing price, reliability, performance and security for every workload while using familiar tools, processes and APIs, which enterprises already use today. We deliver this as a fully managed service, making consumption simple while delivering the outcomes our customers expect."

Wipro Limited announced a new partnership with Check Point Software Technologies Ltd, a leading provider of cyber security solutions globally, to deliver Check Point’s advanced and dynamic cloud security solution, CloudGuard IaaS.

This strategic worldwide partnership will further accelerate demand for the CloudGuard comprehensive suite of cloud security products, which are focused on advanced threat prevention and safeguarding enterprise cloud applications, infrastructure, and data against the most sophisticated fifth-generation cyber-attacks threatening organizations today. CloudGuard already protects more than 2,000 enterprise cloud environments.

Cloud security is a shared responsibility between the service provider and the customer, which can be a challenging model to implement. Through this partnership, Wipro and Check Point are enabling customers to maximize their investment in cloud infrastructure by defending against the most sophisticated fifth-generation cyber security threats to their cloud assets and data.