Grazed from ITWorld. Author: Paul Krill.

Microsoft is shifting its licensing for its Azure cloud service, eliminating the pay-as-you-go option for new Azure customers using MPSA (Microsoft Products and Services Agreement) as of Feb. 1. Instead, they will be steered toward the company’s CSP (Cloud Solution Provider) program.

Geared to organizations with at least 250 users, MPSA is Microsoft’s simplified agreement consolidating purchase of cloud services and software. The move detailed today follows on Microsoft’s decision to not proceed with its proposed Enterprise Advantage program, which was meant to allow customers to buy organization-wide on the MPSA…

Grazed from OilPrice. Author: Irina Slav.

Oil and gas is hardly the first industry that springs to mind when one mentions cloud computing. The tech that has been expanding at a breakneck pace, disrupting business models and enabling innovation across industry boards, has not really met with a lot of enthusiasm in the energy industry—at least not yet. But this may be about to change.

The silver lining of the 2014 oil price collapse is making itself increasingly obvious: energy companies have had a wake-up call: They must change the way they play the game. Enhancing operational efficiency, keeping costs low, and approaching new projects more cautiously and flexibly are among the changes we have already witnessed…

Panzura, the leader in hybrid cloud storage, today announced a new $32 million growth capital round led by Matrix Partners and joined by Meritech Capital Partners, Opus Capital, Chevron and Western Digital as well as an undisclosed strategic investor. The new financing will be used to scale Panzura’s leadership in leading the massive transformation of the $32B on premise storage market spend to a cloud first storage model. The monies will also be used to expand Panzura’s hybrid cloud storage offerings for high performance database and virtual workloads, big data analytics and Internet of Thing (IoT) applications.

Panzura had record growth in 2016, including adding over 100 new enterprise customers and expanding its channel and alliance presence with leading cloud providers AWS, Google, IBM and Microsoft Azure. Panzura added over 26 new petabytes of enterprise storage in 2016 and its hybrid cloud NAS, archive and collaboration storage products were deployed in over 33 countries across multiple industries and governments.

Today, Redis Labs, the home of Redis, announced new integrated billing with Amazon Web Services (AWS). Redis Cloud is currently available on AWS globally, and enterprises can now access the Redis Cloud via AWS Marketplace and pay for their Redis Cloud subscriptions on their AWS bill.

AWS customers can simply click to select Redis Cloud on AWS Marketplace, and Redis Cloud charges will be added to the AWS bill without any additional payment processes required, making it even easier for organizations to seamlessly purchase SaaS solutions. Redis Cloud is one of the first database-as-a-service (DBaaS) providers to be made available through AWS Marketplace. The Redis Cloud pricing model is simple, attractive, intuitive and based on a pay-as-you-go model so customers only pay for the amount of data they consume on an hourly basis at a gigabyte level granularity.

WSM International will provide migration services for organizations interested in easily, safely and quickly moving their IT infrastructure to LeaseWeb’s range of hosted and cloud services. 

WSM is the leading provider of cloud migrations services, with a 14-year history of and experience with migrating workloads from onsite to hosted cloud services.   In working with the world’s leading hosting and cloud services company, WSM has successfully completed tens of thousands of migrations, from the simplest web sites to complex enterprise IT workloads. 

LeaseWeb provides global Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and on-demand hosting solutions including dedicated servers, cloud-based servers, colocation services and hybrid cloud offerings. 

Achieving the AWS IoT Competency differentiates CTP as an AWS Partner Network (APN) member that has proven success delivering IoT solutions seamlessly on AWS. To receive the designation, APN Partners must demonstrate expertise in the AWS platform and undergo an assessment of the security, performance and reliability of their solutions.

Aerohive Networks today announced that TMC, a global, integrated media company, has named HiveManager NG as a 2016 Cloud Computing Security Excellence Award winner.

BlackMesh, a leader in enterprise cloud-based solutions, announced today it is continuing to provide innovative technology solutions to the government by launching a new cloud platform focused on security services.

The newly-launched government cloud solution platform meets federal and state requirements for protecting and storing critical data and enables federal, state, and local government agencies and organizations to achieve safe and flexible cloud compute and storage within certified data center facilities.

"As more enterprises across all categories of government begin to leverage the cloud, it is clear to see the importance of making Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) solutions available to them that are as secure and reliable as possible," said Jason Ford, CTO of BlackMesh. "We’ve developed this security-focused cloud solution to consist of seamless data security measures, while remaining customizable based on the customer’s unique requirements – this solution is ideal for government agencies of all types and sizes."

Red Hat, Inc., the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced that OVH has joined the Red Hat Certified Cloud and Service Provider (CCSP) program, offering customers and independent software vendors (ISVs) greater confidence from a partner ecosystem when building their next-generation IT projects using Red Hat solutions. As a Red Hat CCSP, OVH can use Red Hat technologies within its datacentres and offer its customers access to more robust, flexible and open solutions for their infrastructure projects, including hybrid and containerized architecture.

OVH is a French enterprise providing IT services to more than one million clients globally via its 18 datacentres located in Europe and Canada. Its commercial activities have helped it to become a leading hosting provider both in Europe and globally.