Written by David Marshall

Zerto releases its answer for those seeking a single platform for disaster recovery, data protection and workload mobility to, from and between multiple clouds for continuous availability. Today, it announced the general availability of Zerto Virtual Replication (ZVR) 6.0, the industry’s first IT Resilience Platform for multi-cloud that delivers disaster recovery, data protection and workload mobility in a single solution, ensuring businesses have continuous data availability. 

ZVR 6.0 delivers inter-cloud workload mobility and protection between Azure, IBM Cloud, AWS and more than 350 cloud service providers; enabling control and flexibility to move to, from and between any combination of clouds. By combining continuous replication, automated orchestration and enterprise-class scalability, the Zerto platform increases business agility and simplifies IT operations. 

Atmosera, a premier Tier-I Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) and iTrellis, a custom software and systems integration consultancy based in Seattle, today announced a strategic partnership to orchestrate the transition of business IT applications to preferred cloud environments, including Microsoft Azure. Atmosera and iTrellis aligned to integrate computing environments and construct workflows that accelerate digital business transformation and agility for IT environments. The combined services also tackle the need for many companies to re-platform or re-factor their applications to take full advantage of advanced cloud features.

According to US analyst house Pacific Crest, the amount spent on cloud is set to triple over the next five years to $239 billion, and Microsoft’s Cloud Platform continues to pick up a large portion of the market. The research firm estimates that in the second half of this year, Microsoft’s Commercial Cloud segment will become the largest public cloud platform for the first time in 10 years, firmly marking its cloud leadership position.

Scality announced that its customer, Rackspace, having chosen Scality RING from among 23 software-defined storage solutions that it evaluated, has seen advantages that exceeded their expectations.

In the competitive business of hosting, infrastructure costs-CAPEX and OPEX both-are key to optimizing profitability. So, when Rackspace embarked on an infrastructure refresh project, lowering TCO was a critical goal-second only to that of maintaining the absolute best in service levels. And, because growth comes with success, Rackspace also required a solution that scales without limits, simply and without interruptions. They found it with Scality RING.

Bromium, Inc., the pioneer and leader in virtualization-based enterprise security that stops advanced malware attacks, today announced it now supports Citrix XenServer 7.3 nested virtualization with superior performance. Citrix XenServer is an open source platform for cost-effective application, desktop, cloud, and server virtual infrastructures. When Bromium is used for cybersecurity, any supported application or task is completely isolated inside a micro virtual-machine (micro-VM) so that any malicious behavior is contained and cannot impact the host or VDI environment. Adding application isolation as a security layer is the smartest way to allow employees to get back to work while containing malware.

"As the most integrated hypervisor with world’s leading VDI and application delivery product, XenDesktop, Citrix XenServer gives our customers an enterprise hypervisor platform for hosting their virtual desktop workloads on-premises," says David Cottingham, Director of XenServer Product Management & Partner Engineering at Citrix. "With today’s ever-increasing sophistication of threats, additional layers of protection are more important than ever. Bromium Secure Platform gives our customers a unique solution for protecting their virtual desktop infrastructure in new ways to safeguard against ransomware – combating sophisticated threats with sophisticated protection."

SonicWall announces a range of public beta trials that demonstrate enhanced security capabilities of the company’s automated real-time breach detection and prevention platform. The new offerings not only provide organizations with robust deployment options across on-premises, cloud and virtualized environments, but also protect endpoints within the network from today’s advanced cyber threats.

"To better equip our customers to protect their businesses, brands and data, we’re ensuring critical security capabilities are available – in an integrated, cohesive architecture – across the environments of their choice," said SonicWall CEO Bill Conner. "Organizations will be able to seamlessly deploy the security tools they want, when they want and where they want while eliminating both complexity and potential network vulnerabilities. This provides a bridge from where they are today to where they are going in the future."

To responsibly validate this customer-focused approach, SonicWall announces three new products for the beta release: SonicWall Capture Client, SonicWall Network Security (NSv) virtual next-generation firewalls and SonicWall virtual web application firewalls. In addition, the beta for SonicOS 6.5.1 includes support for new firewall APIs.

 
Organizations now have a variety of cloud-based options for delivering virtualized applications and desktops. Cloud deployments are fast, involve a lower hardware footprint and simplify IT operations. A key question to answer in this context is:

Does Citrix Cloud services make performance monitoring easier than it was for on-premise deployments?

Join John Worthington, Director of Product Marketing at eG Innovations, for this informative webinar "Does Using Citrix Cloud Services Make Performance Monitoring Easier?" and increase your knowledge base about monitoring Citrix Cloud services. 

WHEN? Thursday, February 15th, 2018 @ 12:00 pm ET | 11:00 am CT | 9:00 am PT

Questions that will be answered during the webinar include:

• What is Citrix Cloud and how does it work?
• What are the deployment options available?
• What performance challenges will they encounter?
• What are the various monitoring tools and options available?

Customers

Virtually every industry under the sun is adopting cloud-based platforms as the path forward, and the accounting and finance sectors are no different. The cloud boasts a lot of benefits, and its implementation is crucial for businesses invested in remaining competitive and relevant. 

But this shift in platform requires a comparative shift in the professionals who fill the ranks of finance and accounting positions within companies. As we’ve previously noted, "There is an explosion in both the use of cloud computing and the demand for people to assist in the mass migration to cloud." 

The demand must be filled by individuals who are able to implement the same ethics and understanding as their predecessors, but in a way that fits the modern technology and systems.

An Overview of Azure

Microsoft Azure, originally called Windows Azure, is Microsoft’s cloud computing service. They changed the name because it can handle Linux as well as Windows. There are hundreds of services like file storage, backups and full virtual machines available on Azure.

It isn’t as heavily utilized as Amazon Web Services or the Google Cloud Platform. For example, Amazon Web Services has more than a million users ranging from small businesses trying to put out an app or develop a service that will be accessible worldwide to big companies like Unilever and Netflix. Microsoft wants to leverage its cloud computing infrastructure to profit off other organizations paying it to deliver their software, content and services.

Article Written by Sally Perkins

Cloud technology is quickly replacing traditional methods of storing data in every area of life. Between the music we listen to, the movies we watch, and the work we perform every day, there is almost no area that isn’t touched by cloud technology. In fact, it has been predicted by Forbes that, by late 2018, "80% of all IT budgets will be committed to cloud solutions." One of the most useful ways of employing this technology is to improve the overall experience your customers receive from your business. Whether used behind the scenes or utilized in a customer-facing function, using cloud technology offers dozens of ways to enhance your relationship with your customers. 

Unsure if your business can utilize cloud technology for this purpose? Explore three reasons your customers need this technology in 2018.