Grazed from Engility

Engility Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:EGL) has announced today the launch of Cloud ASCEND^TM, an end-to-end solution for enterprise cloud architecture, migration and optimization. Developed for the unique requirements of highly secure government enterprises, particularly within the Department of Defense and Intelligence Community, Cloud ASCEND brings a data-driven approach to customers that helps realize the benefits of cloud computing and enterprise modernization.

"Cloud ASCEND is another example of the innovative engineering that Engility is driving to support the federal government, for whom cloud migration is a huge priority," said Amanda Brownfield, Senior Vice President for Engility’s Intelligence Solutions Group. "We look forward to working together with our customers and partners to tackle this critical step in advancing the government’s digital transformation."

Cloud ASCEND combines state-of the-art commercial cloud tools with Engility’s proprietary methodology and team of certified cloud experts to help customers realize a seamless and secure digital transformation.

CoreSite Realty Corporation, a premier provider of secure, reliable, high-performance data center and interconnection solutions across the U.S., today announced the availability of Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute through CoreSite’s Boston data center. Private connectivity to Microsoft Azure via ExpressRoute is now available in four of CoreSite’s markets, including through its Denver, Los Angeles and New York data center campuses.

CoreSite customers in Boston may now privately connect to Microsoft Azure, Office 365 and Dynamics 365 via the CoreSite Open Cloud Exchange, which provides private, SLA-backed virtual connections and on-demand provisioning. The integration of Azure ExpressRoute and the CoreSite Open Cloud Exchange provides CoreSite customers with the opportunity to establish a fast and reliable connection into Azure, Office 365 and Dynamics 365 that bypasses the public Internet. With a dedicated, high-performance Azure ExpressRoute connection, customers have a natural extension of their datacenters and can build hybrid applications that span on-premises infrastructure and Azure without compromising privacy or performance.

BeyondTrust, a leading cyber security company dedicated to preventing privilege misuse and stopping unauthorized access, announced support for the Microsoft Azure cloud platform, providing privileged access management (PAM) and vulnerability management (VM) solutions that can now be hosted in and manage Azure instances.

According to the 2016 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Public Cloud Storage Services Worldwide, 80 percent of cloud breaches through 2020 will occur due to customer misconfiguration, mismanaged credentials or insider theft. As the cloud ecosystem evolves it is increasingly critical to ensure visibility and security. However, many traditional security tools that are architected for on-premises environments and extended to the cloud present critical blind spots that put an organization at risk.

MicroStrategy Incorporated, a leading worldwide provider of enterprise analytics and mobility software, today announced the general availability of MicroStrategy on AWS. With MicroStrategy on AWS, users can be up and running on MicroStrategy 10 in the AWS cloud, and will have instant access to an on-demand business intelligence platform that delivers enterprise analytics, reporting, and dashboarding capabilities, within minutes. To try MicroStrategy on AWS with a 30-day free trial, click here. To watch an overview of MicroStrategy on AWS, click here. 

"By offering MicroStrategy on AWS, we’re making it easy for anyone, anywhere, to use the MicroStrategy platform and intelligently collaborate around analytics," said Michael J. Saylor, CEO, MicroStrategy Incorporated. "Combined with our free MicroStrategy Desktop product, users can immediately create a cloud environment on AWS and connect to a centralized server where they can work together, share, and maintain governance over datasets and dashboards. This new offering marks a significant achievement in helping organizations access and deploy transformative analytics applications on AWS in minutes."

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: Editorial Staff.

Cloud computing isn’t like working on-premises. Instead of limiting code to one or maybe two datacenters, we’re designing systems that span not just continents but the entire world. And that’s where we start to get issues. Even using fiber connections, the latency of crossing the Atlantic Ocean is around 60ms, though in practice delays are around 75ms. The Pacific is wider, so latency through trans-Pacific fiber is around 100ms.

Delays add up, and they make it hard to ensure that distributed databases are in sync. That makes it harder still to be sure that a query in the U.K. will return the same result as one in the U.S. Yes, most replication strategies mean that eventually the two will have the same content, but there’s a big question over just when that will happen. If the connections are busy, or there a lot of database writes, data can easily get delayed…

Read more from the source @ http://www.infoworld.com/article/3198394/database/how-cosmos-db-ensures-data-consistency-in-the-global-cloud.html

Graze from EINNews. Author: Editorial Staff.

NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) today launched a partner program with the world’s leading original design manufacturers (ODM) — Foxconn, Inventec, Quanta and Wistron — to more rapidly meet the demands for AI cloud computing. Through the NVIDIA HGX Partner Program, NVIDIA is providing each ODM with early access to the NVIDIA HGX reference architecture, NVIDIA GPU computing technologies and design guidelines. HGX is the same data center design used in Microsoft’s Project Olympus initiative, Facebook’s Big Basin systems and NVIDIA DGX-1™ AI supercomputers.

Using HGX as a starter “recipe,” ODM partners can work with NVIDIA to more quickly design and bring to market a wide range of qualified GPU-accelerated systems for hyperscale data centers. Through the program, NVIDIA engineers will work closely with ODMs to help minimize the amount of time from design win to production deployments…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Editorial Staff.

According to the report, 84 percent of medium and large organizations invested in cloud services in 2016. Nearly half of organizations have migrated 50 percent of corporate application workloads to public clouds. Insight recently launched its 2017 Intelligent Technology Index, which looks at industry trends around the decisions that IT leaders have to make today to ready their organizations for tomorrow. Of course, a central part is cloud services and the considerations that go along with it.

“IT leaders recognize the benefits of the cloud and, as a result, have begun to migrate their applications and workloads. At the same time, risks and anxieties surrounding cloud implementation remain for many IT professionals,” Insight said in the report. “Interestingly, a closer look at the top benefits and challenges — particularly those around security and workflow — reveals IT leaders already see the benefits of cloud implementation outweighing the challenges.”…

Read more from the source @ http://talkincloud.com/cloud-computing/5-cloud-takeaways-insight-s-2017-intelligent-technology-index#slide-0-field_images-64391

Nerdio, a pioneer in ITaaS technology, announced today it has partnered with Observable Networks, an emerging leader of advanced threat detection services, to offer a one-of-a-kind security analytics solution with the Nerdio ITaaS platform.

Nerdio’s VDI-powered platform delivers a comprehensive, seamlessly integrated IT environment for the private cloud, complete with unlimited virtual servers, virtual desktops, the complete Microsoft suite, security, disaster recovery, and more. Observable Networks has customized this offering for Nerdio, combining specific functionalities from its leading-edge products for the Enterprise and the Cloud to provide actionable insights and measurable security results.

Druva, the leader in cloud data protection and information management, today announced that it has successfully completed the Service Organization Control (SOC) 2 Type II certification for its data protection solutions. This certification further assures customers that Druva has designed and implemented effective internal controls that maintain the confidentially and privacy of the data it processes. 

Today’s enterprises are turning to modern, cloud-based solutions to reduce the risk, cost and effort of managing data. As they increasingly depend on service providers to manage mission-critical data, they are also increasingly looking for companies that can demonstrate adherence to the highest security and compliance standards. Obtaining this certification affirms that Druva’s information security practices, policies, procedures and operations meet the SOC 2 standards for security, availability and confidentiality.