Grazed from CBROnline. Author: Editorial Staff.

Microsoft has acquired Cycle Computing so that it can accelerate “Big Computing” in the cloud. Cycle Computing is described by Microsoft Azure VP Jason Zander in a blog post as being “a leader in cloud computing orchestration, to help make it easier than ever for customers to use High-Performance Computing and other Big Computing capabilities in the cloud.”

The company first made its name on Amazon Web Services EC2 offering with software that claimed to be able to spin up to 10,000 cores, back in 2011, and then 50,000 cores which was designed for the discovery of pharmaceutical drugs. That was showcased in 2013, along with a 71,000 core offering that ran at 729 teraflops…

Read more from the source @ http://www.cbronline.com/news/cloud/public/microsoft-boosts-cloud-hpc-strategy-cycle-computing-acquisition/

Grazed from SDXCentral. Author: Jessica Lyons Hardcastle.

Juniper Network’s security products have taken a backseat to its switches and routers over the past year as the company’s cloud business strategy continues to boost revenues. But as hyperscalers, telcos, and enterprises invest more in cloud data centers and architecture, they’ll need to beef up security — which makes cloud security a “very attractive market,” said Kevin Hutchins, SVP of strategy and product line management at Juniper.

Speaking at the 2017 Instinet Media and Telecom Conference, Hutchins acknowledged that Juniper’s security product performance “hasn’t been where we’d like it to be.” But, he added, there’s an opportunity to grow that portfolio. “Security is just going to become a key feature of how do you connect users to applications, applications to applications, regardless of where they are sitting,” Hutchins said…

According to a recent Forrester Research report, an alarming 49 percent of global network security decision-makers report that they experienced at least one breach during the past 12 months. The continued increase in security related incidents is forcing Chief Risk and Chief Compliance officers in particular to reevaluate the way their organization handles sensitive customer data to ensure that it is both secure and accessible only by authorized users. The new offering provides businesses with a fully managed data protection service, including data classification, data access policies, encryption and activity reporting, which can be easily integrated with existing applications without requiring code changes.

Organize Your Ideas

We don’t doubt you have a variety of ideas floating around in your head or written in a notebook. However, don’t rush into starting all the ideas at once. Instead, aim to identify the marketing opportunities that will provide the biggest benefits to your business.

Datrium announced Datrium DVX 3.0 with Split Provisioning, a fundamentally new and different method of scaling converged infrastructure for private clouds.  DVX with Split Provisioning is the industry’s first server-powered converged infrastructure system to fully separate scaling of host storage speed and persistent capacity to simply and incrementally match resources to evolving tenant requirements. The new software provides scaling from 1-128 Compute Nodes, or up to 200 gigabytes per second (GB/s) IO bandwidth, and from 1-10 Data Nodes, or up to 1.7 petabytes (PB) of capacity, in a single composable pool. Datrium will demonstrate its DVX platform with Split Provisioning at the VMworld conference in Las Vegas, Aug. 27-31, booth #618.

Unlike Open Converged Infrastructure, Hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) approaches maintain persistent data on every server and are limited to 2 or 3 simultaneous server failures before users experience a data outage. As a result, HCI users tend toward smaller clusters, across which servers and workloads should be homogeneous. According to Gartner, "in today’s world, most hyperconverged deployments are in the range of 8 to 16 nodes.", so rackscale deployments need multiple clusters, each of which needs configuration and administration.  Gartner has concluded that "…many mainstream enterprise IT directors do not yet trust SDS in HCIS solutions to deliver multipetabyte capacity at scale for Tier 1 mixed workloads that require low latency.".

ClearSky Data, provider of on-demand primary storage with built-in offsite backup and disaster recovery (DR) as a single service, today announced it is partnering with leading public and private cloud providers – including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Cloudian, Google and Virtustream. ClearSky’s Cloud Edge offering runs in the public cloud, allowing enterprises to choose the right cloud within a multi-cloud environment while also leveraging public cloud compute for processing without having to copy any data. Customers reap the benefits of the hybrid cloud combined with high performance for their cloud-based workloads. 

A RightScale report this year found almost 70 percent of enterprises are embracing hybrid cloud by deploying multiple public and private clouds. In addition to on-demand data access across multiple locations, these organizations want the flexibility to choose which cloud is right for each application. ClearSky Data’s technology partnerships meet those needs, and its edge-based service delivery model means enterprises can leverage the elasticity and economics of the cloud for all their applications, whether they are on-premises or in the cloud.

Grazed from FinancialExpress. Author: Anand Mehta.

The storage of data on cloud-based servers is the latest iteration in the digital revolution in India and has enabled organisations not only lower risks of loss of data but has also increased remote accessibility of such data. According to the latest IDC Asia Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ) Quarterly Server Tracker, in Q1 2017, the overall server market in India witnessed an increase of 14.2% in terms of revenue to reach $215.6 million as against $188.8 million dollars in the fourth quarter of 2016.

This growing relevance of cloud technology has, however, raised a few issues—particularly, in relation to data privacy and the implications of localisation of data. Being a rapidly and constantly evolving area, regulators globally are grappling with ensuring that legal developments are in consonance with the technological advancement and industry-specific needs. Currently, there is no specific legislation in India that regulates cloud computing…

Read more from the source @ http://www.financialexpress.com/opinion/cloud-computing-for-firms-here-is-why-it-is-a-challenge-to-harness-its-potential/808544/

Looker, the leading data platform company, today announced a new analytical suite aimed at users of the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud to help them optimize performance and investment — Looker Blocks Suite for AWS. One set of Looker Blocks makes it easy for Looker users to drill into and explore their Amazon Redshift metadata down to the query level to easily analyze workload patterns to further improve query performance and throughput. Another set transforms raw billing and CloudTrail log data from the full set of AWS services and provides sophisticated analyses to identify opportunities to understand usage and reduce spending. These Blocks are free to Looker customers and the full suite is available today in the Looker Blocks Directory.

"We are constantly working with our strategic partners, like AWS, to ensure our joint customers have the best possible experience with solutions from our companies," said Keenan Rice, VP of Alliances at Looker. "This new suite of Looker Blocks compiles a welcomed set of features into a simplified package for our large number of AWS customers to optimize and manage all their AWS investments with Looker."

Today, Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com company, announced Amazon Macie, a new security service that uses machine learning to help customers prevent data loss by automatically discovering, classifying, and protecting sensitive data in AWS. Amazon Macie recognizes sensitive data such as personally identifiable information (PII) or intellectual property, and provides customers with dashboards and alerts that give visibility into how this data is being accessed or moved. The fully managed service continuously monitors data access activity for anomalies, and generates detailed alerts when it detects risk of unauthorized access or inadvertent data leaks. Today, Amazon Macie is available to protect data stored in Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), with support for additional AWS data stores coming later this year. Customers can enable Amazon Macie from the AWS Management Console, and pay only for the GBs of Amazon S3 content classified and the AWS CloudTrail events analyzed, with no upfront costs or software purchases required. To get started with Amazon Macie, visit: https://aws.amazon.com/macie.

Grazed from Tintri, Inc.

Tintri, Inc. today announced that Purely Cloud is using the Tintri Enterprise Cloud platform to guarantee performance for its clients’ enterprise applications while reducing their management effort. Tintri’s ability to spin up new environments and to scale fluidly has helped Purely Cloud to win deals against other cloud service providers and public cloud alternatives.

Based in San Diego, Calif., with clients worldwide, Purely Cloud provides highly available, redundant cloud designs that deliver adaptive performance for mainstream business applications, including virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), SQL Server, Microsoft SharePoint, Exchange and Dynamics ERP.

Purely Cloud’s previous storage system did not scale easily with the company’s rapid growth and a lack of visibility made it difficult to manage and identify customer issues with latency.