WekaIO, a venture backed high-performance cloud storage software company, today emerged from stealth to introduce the industry’s first cloud-native scalable file system that delivers unprecedented performance to applications, scaling to Exabytes of data in a single namespace. Headquartered in San Jose, CA, WekaIO has developed the first software platform that harnesses flash technology to create a high-performance parallel scale out file storage solution for both on-premises servers and public clouds.

WekaIO is the world’s fastest distributed file system, processing four times the workload compared to IBM Spectrum Scale measured on Standard Performance Evaluation Corp. (SPEC) SFS 2014, an independent industry benchmark. Utilizing only 120 cloud compute instances with locally attached storage, WekaIO completed 1,000 simultaneous software builds compared to 240 on IBM’s high-end FlashSystem 900. The WekaIO software utilized only 5% of the AWS compute instance resources, leaving 95% available to run customer applications.

Grazed from Bloomberg. Author: Editorial Staff.

International Business Machines Corp. is revamping its Global Technology Services division, which helps customers run their computer networks, to rely more heavily on artificial intelligence. The new AI-capability will help IBM’s customers minimize disruptions such as server outages or switching malfunctions by predicting problems before they occur and automatically taking corrective action, such as brokering additional cloud capacity or rerouting network traffic around bottlenecks, Bart van den Daele, general manager of IBM Global Technology Services in Europe, said in an interview.

The product offering, powered by IBM’s Watson cognitive computing platform, will enable the company to maintain its market share in IT network infrastructure management, Van Daele said. New York-based IBM has been struggling to pivot from reliance on older products like computers and operating system software and into higher-growth areas like AI and the cloud…

Grazed from CryptoInsider. Author: Giulio Prisco.

The Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA) wants to connect Fortune 500 enterprises, startups, academics, and technology vendors with Ethereum subject matter experts. “Together, we will learn from and build upon the only smart contract supporting blockchain currently running in real-world production – Ethereum – to define enterprise-grade software capable of handling the most complex, highly demanding applications at the speed of business,” states the EEA website.

Store of Value recently published a short EEA explainer, noting that the EEA wants to create open-source standards for corporations to develop their own Ethereum implementations, while ensuring that applications built on Ethereum-derived platforms will run on all Ethereum platforms. Many high-profile banks and financial operators, which have joined the EEA, are listed in the EEA news page…

Grazed from TheStar. Author: Editorial Staff.

Microsoft Corp on July 10 unveiled a new service that allows customers to use its cloud technology on their own servers, part of the company’s efforts to refocus its product line to compete more effectively with rivals Amazon.com Inc and Alphabet Inc’s Google. The world’s biggest software maker is looking to carve out a niche among customers who cannot or do not want to move all their computing operations to the massive shared data centres that are collectively known as the cloud.

“One of the key differentiations we have with Azure versus our two biggest competitors in the cloud platform space is our ability to support true hybrid solutions,” Judson Althoff, Microsoft’s executive vice president of worldwide commercial business, told Reuters. Azure is Microsoft’s cloud-computing platform, pegged by most market share studies as second in cloud computing behind Amazon Web Services…

Five9, a leading provider of cloud software for the enterprise contact center market, today announced the availability of Summer Release 2017, the latest major release of the award winning Virtual Contact Center(VCC). This release provides a global contact center solution that meets the requirements of today’s leading multinational enterprises.

Today’s global enterprises aspire to engage with customers consistently, regardless of location or device. However, legacy systems have hampered their transformation to today’s digital world, leading to poor and inconsistent customer experience. Five9 Summer Release 2017 provides these global enterprises a complete omnichannel solution with a holistic view of their customers’ journey across all touchpoints. Enterprises can easily engage with customers anywhere in the world, intelligently distributing interactions to the right agent regardless of location. Most importantly, Five9 delivers all these capabilities on a modular microservices-based architecture, enabling enterprises to maintain the rapid pace of innovation required to compete in today’s fast-paced consumer centric world.

The Five9 Summer Release 2017 includes four key areas:

Talend, a global leader in cloud and big data integration solutions, today unveiled a new set of connectors for the Talend Data Fabric platform that helps customers rapidly migrate enterprise-wide data sources to Microsoft Azure to build more intelligent and scalable cloud data pipelines for real-time analytics.

"Today’s companies understand cloud technology is becoming the new growth engine for their business and are eager to bridge legacy, on-premises data with the new world of cloud-powered big data lakes," said Ashley Stirrup, CMO, Talend. "Teaming with Microsoft allows us to deliver a complete solution for scaling big data workloads in the cloud. While other data integration solutions only connect with a few data sources, our Summer ‘17 release of Talend Data Fabric includes in-depth, native functionality to help customers quickly migrate a broad range of on-premise data sources to the Azure cloud and optimize cloud data pipelines, speeding time to insight."

Viptela, Inc., today announced Viptela Cloud onRamp, which enables organizations to seamlessly connect users and sites to the cloud, including infrastructure services (IaaS) and SaaS applications, while providing a highly optimized user-experience. Cloud onRamp is part of Viptela Fabric, a single platform that supports multiple use-cases including SD-WAN, Cloud Networking, Network-as-a-Service and AppUX.

"Viptela Cloud onRamp has transformed the user experience for our cloud-based services," said Pascal Heger, Global Network Architect for Agilent Technologies. "For example, Microsoft Office 365 response times have improved dramatically, especially at our international sites. We have fewer screen-freezes and a more responsive application experience. Viptela Cloud onRamp also enables a seamless migration to AWS."

Optimized IaaS and SaaS Clouds

Quest Software, a global systems management and security software provider, today announced the availability of Quest On Demand, a new, cloud-hosted software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform that makes it simple for IT administrators to manage and secure Microsoft Office 365 and Microsoft Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) workloads. The first release of Quest On Demand delivers solutions that make it easy for organizations to rapidly backup and recover Azure AD and Office 365 users, attributes, groups and group membership. Additionally, it allows for secure access to Microsoft Exchange Online and Skype for Business Online features through automated policy management.

On Demand, the first SaaS platform from the Quest Microsoft Platform Management (MPM) business, delivers automation at scale. With On Demand, customers no longer need to install and configure on-premises software nor manage the roll-out of updates. The On Demand platform is ready to use after a few clicks and integrates the core security features built into Azure to ensure data integrity and security. Now, IT organizations can innovate faster, lower costs, and take advantage of enhanced security.