Scalability

Software and upgrades can be relatively expensive, especially when they need to be purchased on a regular basis. However, businesses who use cloud computing have the option of scaling up and down which, in return, could save them a significant amount of money. It means they only have to buy the software that they need and are going to use, which will eliminate waste and unnecessary expenses. It is more or less a pay-as-you-go system, so you only pick products and services that are beneficial to your business, and you can stop paying for them if at any point they’re no longer needed. Another benefit in this regard is that instead of having to pay for upgrades yourself, the service provider typically does it for you.

Vembu BDR Suite, you might remember, is a comprehensive solution, designed to protect critical data across hybrid IT environments.  The backup and replication suite can protect physical servers and workstations, supporting critical workloads for your organization.  In addition to physical, it also handles Virtual (VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V workloads) and Cloud (SaaS applications). 

As we approach VMworld Europe next week, expect to see more backup vendors talking about new features and enhancements, and upcoming new releases.  But prior to the start of the show, we’ve got a sneak peek at some of the new features and enhancements that you can expect to see within Vembu BDR Suite v4.0. 

There are a few new features concerning the Microsoft Hyper-V hypervisor, including:

IBM and Red Hat, the world’s leading provider of open source cloud software, announced that the companies have reached a definitive agreement under which IBM will acquire all of the issued and outstanding common shares of Red Hat for $190.00 per share in cash, representing a total enterprise value of approximately $34 billion.

"The acquisition of Red Hat is a game-changer. It changes everything about the cloud market," said Ginni Rometty, IBM Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer. "IBM will become the world’s #1 hybrid cloud provider, offering companies the only open cloud solution that will unlock the full value of the cloud for their businesses.

"Most companies today are only 20 percent along their cloud journey, renting compute power to cut costs," she said. "The next 80 percent is about unlocking real business value and driving growth. This is the next chapter of the cloud. It requires shifting business applications to hybrid cloud, extracting more data and optimizing every part of the business, from supply chains to sales."

"Open source is the default choice for modern IT solutions, and I’m incredibly proud of the role Red Hat has played in making that a reality in the enterprise," said Jim Whitehurst, President and CEO, Red Hat. "Joining forces with IBM will provide us with a greater level of scale, resources and capabilities to accelerate the impact of open source as the basis for digital transformation and bring Red Hat to an even wider audience –  all while preserving our unique culture and unwavering commitment to open source innovation."

StarlingX – the open source edge computing and IoT cloud platform optimized for low latency and high performance applications – is available in its first release today. The project was established in May as a pilot project supported by the OpenStack Foundation (OSF) and builds on code contributed by Wind River and Intel Corporation.

StarlingX delivers new services to help fill the gaps in the open source edge cloud ecosystem to meet strict requirements of edge use cases and scenarios in both carrier and industrial applications. Additionally, StarlingX leverages components of projects including Ceph, OpenStack and Kubernetes and complements them with new services such as configuration and fault management with a focus on key requirements like high availability (HA), quality of service (QoS), performance and low latency.

StackRox, a leader in security for containerized, cloud-native applications, today announced that Mux, a leading provider of streaming video infrastructure and monitoring technology for developers and publishers of online video, has deployed the StackRox Container Security Platform to protect its microservices and container environments in Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud Platform (GCP). StackRox enables Mux to meet its compliance requirements, harden its Docker and Kubernetes infrastructure to reduce the attack surface, and detect and stop threats at runtime. StackRox secures containers and microservices across the entire life cycle – build, deploy and run – and supports multiple platforms across the ecosystem, including Kubernetes and Docker as well as Amazon EKS, Microsoft AKS, Google Kubernetes Engine and Red Hat OpenShift. 

"Mux’s goal is to make high-quality video streaming accessible to every developer. Our SaaS model lends itself to that level of accessibility, but we needed an agile and powerful infrastructure to match," said Adam Brown, Mux Co-founder and Head of Infrastructure. "With that DevOps mindset, we started building our platform entirely in containers from the outset. As our platform matured, so did our container security and compliance needs, which is why we turned to StackRox."

Amazon Web Services announced it will open an infrastructure region in South Africa in the first half of 2020. The new AWS Africa (Cape Town) Region will consist of three Availability Zones. Currently, AWS provides 55 Availability Zones across 19 infrastructure regions worldwide, with another 12 Availability Zones across four AWS Regions in Bahrain, Hong Kong SAR, Sweden, and a second GovCloud Region in the U.S. expected to come online in the coming months. For more information on AWS’s global infrastructure, go to: https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/global-infrastructure/.

"Having built the original version of Amazon EC2 in our Cape Town development center 14 years ago, and with thousands of African companies using AWS for years, we’ve been able to witness first-hand the technical talent and potential in Africa," said Andy Jassy, CEO, Amazon Web Services, Inc. "Technology has the opportunity to transform lives and economies across Africa and we’re excited about AWS and the Cloud being a meaningful part of that transformation."

The new region is the latest in a series of AWS investments in South Africa. In 2004, Amazon opened a development center in Cape Town that focuses on building pioneering networking technologies, next generation software for customer support, and the technology behind Amazon EC2. AWS has also built a number of local teams including account managers, customer services representatives, partner managers, solutions architects, and more to help customers of all sizes as they move to the cloud. In 2015, AWS opened an office in Johannesburg, and in 2017 brought the Amazon Global Network to Africa through AWS Direct Connect. In May of 2018, AWS continued its investment in South Africa, launching infrastructure points of presence in Cape Town and Johannesburg, bringing Amazon CloudFront, Amazon Route 53, AWS Shield, and AWS WAF to the continent and adding to the 138 points of presence AWS has around the world.

DataDirect Networks (DDN) announced record performance results across the entire spectrum of the SPEC SFS 2014 benchmark suite. The SPEC SFS 2014 benchmarks provide a standardized approach to comparing performance for file server throughput and response time across different vendor platforms. In the latest round of testing, DDN improved on existing benchmark results by at least 25 percent.

The SPEC SFS 2014 benchmarks were introduced to test five aspects of a storage solution’s performance in the number of simultaneous software builds that can be performed: the number of video streams that can be captured; the number of simultaneous databases that can be sustained; electronic design automation; environment simulation; and the number of virtual desktops that can be maintained. DDN’s success across all test parameters demonstrates the flexibility and robust performance capabilities of DDN SFA platforms.

CenturyLink, Inc. is expanding its portfolio of SD-WAN solutions, offering more technology choices for network transformation. CenturyLink will offer customers across the United States Managed Cisco SD-WAN powered by Viptela.

This new offer provides the tools, technology and expertise needed to design, deploy, configure, migrate and manage SD-WAN services. CenturyLink will support the offer across Cisco’s Viptela vEdge series routers and enterprise network computer system (ENCS) 5000 series virtualized network platform, with multiple feature packages available. Customers will also have access to a dedicated CenturyLink SD-WAN portal.

NetApp, the data authority for hybrid cloud, today announced new solutions to enable customers to deliver data-driven business outcomes for applications across hybrid cloud and multicloud environments, including NetApp Cloud Insights, Azure NetApp Files, Cloud Volumes Service, Cloud Volumes ONTAP, NetApp HCI, SaaS Backup for Microsoft Office 365, and NetApp Data Availability Services.

These new data products and services bring to life NetApp’s vision to empower customers to innovate in the cloud, in any form, to improve business outcomes in the face of a rapidly evolving technological landscape. Cloud reliance is now essential for taking advantage of data across the organization to make better business decisions, improve customer experiences, and leverage the Internet of Things to offer new services and develop new business models. However, success in the cloud depends on integrating, protecting, and optimizing data stored in any cloud environment.

"It’s not an exaggeration to say that every time we create a product or service at NetApp, we always first ask ourselves what it will be able to do in the cloud," said Anthony Lye, SVP and GM, cloud data services, NetApp. "For our customers, the competitive demand to transform into a cloud-first organization is now a given – but achieving significant business impact as a result is not. Our vision is to inspire data-driven innovation with the cloud."

DataCore Software today announced the results of its seventh consecutive market survey, "The State of Software-Defined, Hyperconverged and Cloud Storage," which explored the experiences of 400 IT professionals who are currently using or evaluating software-defined storage, hyperconverged and cloud storage to solve critical data storage challenges. The results yield surprising insights from a cross-section of industries over a range of workloads, including the fact that storage availability and avoiding vendor lock-in remain top concerns for IT professionals, and illustrate the status of the industry on its journey to a software-defined future.

The report reveals what respondents view as the primary business drivers for implementing software-defined, hyperconverged, public cloud and hybrid cloud storage. For example, the top results for software-defined storage include: automate frequent or complex storage operations; simplify management of different types of storage; and extend the life of existing storage assets. This portrays the market’s recognition of the economic advantages of software-defined storage and its power to maximize IT infrastructure performance, availability, and utilization.

The report also highlights the capabilities that users would like from their storage infrastructure. The top capabilities identified were business continuity/high availability (which can be achieved via metro clustering, synchronous data mirroring, and other architectures) at 74%; disaster recovery (from remote site or public cloud) at 73%; and enabling storage capacity expansion without disruption at 72%.