Grazed from TechTarget. Author: David Carty.

A recent AWS acquisition taps into vertical market technology, hoping to entice new customers with high-performance workloads while also bolstering its cloud management capabilities at the same time. Earlier this month, Amazon Web Services acquired Thinkbox Software, which provides a suite of image and particle-rendering management and geometry caching tools for media visual effects (VFX) design and development, for undisclosed terms.

The AWS acquisition is the latest example of Amazon, and other large public cloud players, adding services that appeal to specific markets and customers, and it could improve existing cloud services with specific capabilities such as support for compute-intensive workloads…

Druva, the leader in cloud data protection and information management, and Carahsoft Technology Corp., the trusted government IT solutions provider, today announced that Carahsoft will serve as Druva’s public sector distribution partner. Under this agreement, Carahsoft will proactively market and sell Druva inSync, the company’s flagship cloud data protection and information management solution, which Carahsoft will make available to the public sector and its reseller ecosystem via Carahsoft’s SEWP contracts. The solution enables agencies to securely manage data protection and information governance across endpoints and cloud applications with unparalleled ease and sophistication.

"Today’s public sector organizations require the highest levels of security and data privacy. In addition to the best technologies, the need to operate in a secure cloud environment and adhere to standards such as FIPS 140 is a unique and demanding need," said Dave Packer, Vice President of Corporate and Product Marketing at Druva. "Whether part of the federal, state or local government, organizations now require data solutions that are compliant with the latest regulations and deliver the most cutting edge technologies. With the Druva and Carahsoft partnership, the public sector can now easily and assuredly protect their users’ valuable data while adhering to all regulations and compliance requirements."

The fact that content marketing is now bigger than ever also means blogging is quickly becoming a popular dream job for many. The market is about to be a lot – and I do mean A LOT – more competitive, so it is time to step up the game and take your blog to new heights. Here are some of the tips you can use to get started.

Social Media and 360 Content Distribution

Virtustream, the enterprise-class cloud company and a Dell Technologies Business, today announced that its enterprise cloud platform and services for mission critical applications are now available in the Asia-Pacific region including Australia and Japan. This offering includes Virtustream’s innovative cloud technology and unique consumption billing model.

The need for enterprise cloud services in the region is increasing. According to published research, by 2020, "IDC predicts the Cloud Systems Infrastructure Services revenue in Asia/Pacific including Japan will reach $12.9 billion."

"The pent up demand for enterprise-level cloud services in the Asia-Pacific region is tremendous as organizations are eager to globally scale their operations at a rapid pace; while also managing the complexities of migrating their existing systems of record to the cloud," said Frank Gens, IDC senior vice president and chief analyst. "Add to that regional needs such as data sovereignty, and it narrows the playing field of providers significantly."

Huawei and Canonical today announced they are expanding their cooperation in enterprise and telecom clouds to announce that they have completed the integration of CloudFabric Cloud Data Center Network Solution and Canonical’s Ubuntu OpenStack. The joint solution integrates the Agile Controller, Huawei’s SDN controller, with Ubuntu OpenStack to improve the efficiency of deploying and maintaining multiple data center networks. A large number of controller nodes can be deployed in minutes to interoperate with the cloud platform quickly. Enterprises or telecom cloud platforms that are using or plan to use Ubuntu OpenStack platform can directly connect their OpenStack platform with the Agile Controller to enable quick, flexible service deployment and integration in multiple data centers.

In the past month both AWS and Microsoft Azure have experienced lengthy outages due to issues with the storage supporting the cloud. These outages have flooded through companies globally and brought into focus the potential downsides of putting all your eggs into the public cloud basket. After both of these incidents, the question is, how reliable is the public cloud and what options and alternatives are available?

A few technology experts have offered their opinion:

The best of both worlds is a multi-cloud strategy

IBM and Red Hat, Inc. announced a strategic collaboration designed to help enterprises benefit from the OpenStack platform’s speed and economics while more easily extending their existing Red Hat virtualized and cloud workloads to the IBM Private Cloud.

As part of this new collaboration, IBM has become a Red Hat Certified Cloud and Service Provider, giving clients greater confidence that they can use Red Hat OpenStack Platform and Red Hat Ceph Storage on IBM Private Cloud when the offering launches for general availability at the end of March 2017.

Additionally, as part of the agreement, Red Hat Cloud Access will be available for IBM Cloud by the end of Q2 2017, allowing Red Hat customers to move eligible, unused Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscriptions from their data centre to a public, virtualized cloud environment in IBM Cloud Data Centres worldwide.