DataStax, the leading provider of database software for cloud applications based on Apache Cassandra™, today announced the acquisition of DataScale, a provider of cloud-based management services for data infrastructure. DataStax also announced the forthcoming availability of DataStax Managed Cloud, a fully-managed database service. DataStax Managed Cloud will be available in early 2017 on Amazon Web Services, followed by other popular public cloud providers.

"At DataStax, we recognize that delivering cloud applications at a global scale is critically important, and that’s why we’ve decided to introduce a fully-managed, comprehensive data service offering to help our customers transform their businesses even faster," said Billy Bosworth, CEO, DataStax. "DataStax is thrilled to welcome to our team the experienced engineers and senior leaders at DataScale. Together we will accelerate our customers’ ability to deliver cloud applications that provide real-time value, by offering another powerful option for deploying and managing those systems at epic scale." 

Grazed from IndustryWeek. Author: Editorial Staff.

General Electric Co. agreed to buy ServiceMax, a cloud-based software company, for $915 million to expand its digital operations and enhance equipment maintenance. The deal will help GE automate and digitize the servicing of heavy-duty machinery, the Boston-based company said Monday in a statement. GE expects the acquisition to close in January.

“It’s no secret our services revenue is the bulk of our earnings and is a key part of what makes us successful,” Bill Ruh, chief executive officer of GE Digital, said in an interview. “We’re moving away from where it’s all on paper to where it’s all becoming fully automated. Services are becoming a key part of the digital economy.”…

Read more from the source @ http://www.industryweek.com/strategic-planning-execution/ge-deepens-silicon-valley-push-915-million-cloud-purchase

Skyport Systems, a leading secure hyper-converged infrastructure provider for the hybrid enterprise, today announced the addition of threat analytics to its hyper-converged system, SkySecure. SkySecure delivers a turnkey hyper-converged solution that combines secure computer, virtualization, and network security controls to run critical applications, like Microsoft Active Directory, with less complexity and greater peace of mind. SkySecure Threat Analytics can detect administrative account and credential misuse, providing actionable insight that can help mitigate and prevent security breaches. 

In 2015, over 75 percent of all compromised records due to data breaches involved the loss or theft of a privileged credential. Attackers used stolen administrative access for weeks without detection, resulting in breach costs in the millions.

Five9, Inc. and Verint Systems Inc. today announced a new partnership in which Five9 will resell the complete Verint Enterprise Workforce Optimization (WFO) suite in the cloud. 

Verint Enterprise Workforce Optimization is now being offered as an integral part of the Five9 portfolio, fully integrated and deployed alongside the award-winning Five9 cloud Virtual Contact Center. Five9 will sell and support the complete range of Verint WFO solutions that Five9 will make available from the cloud to organizations of all sizes.

Featuring a single user interface and unique business process workflows, Verint’s WFO solution offers rich functionality for call recording, quality management, workforce management, performance management, elearning and coaching, and desktop and process analytics, as well as speech analytics. Leveraging the comprehensive solution, organizations can capture and analyze customer interactions, journeys and sentiments across channels to enhance the quality and security of interactions, drive deeper engagement with customers and employees, enhance internal processes and compliance, uncover business trends, and heighten overall productivity and performance.

The new offering will dramatically lower the barrier to leveraging the high performance, energy efficient power of FPGAs to accelerate high end computational workflows across all industries.  Developers can now run these tools in the cloud and then test and deploy on the latest Xilinx-accelerated hardware with no upfront investment or equipment purchases.

Grazed from Forbes. Author: Joe McKendrick.

You don’t need Sherlock Holmes to tell you that cloud computing is on the rise, and that cloud traffic keeps going up. However, it is enlightening to see the degree by which it is increasing, which is, in essence, about to quadruple in the next few years. By that time, 92% percent of workloads will be processed by cloud data centers; versus only eight percent being processed by traditional data centers.

Cisco, which does a decent job of measuring such things, just released estimates that shows cloud traffic likely to rise 3.7-fold by 2020, increasing 3.9 zettabytes (ZB) per year in 2015 (the latest full year data for which data is available) to 14.1 ZB per year by 2020. The big data and associated Internet of Things are a big part of this growth, the study’s authors state…

Grazed from TheTennessean. Author: JJ Rosen.

The shortage of tech professionals has been a hot issue in the Nashville business community for years now. Running a technology consulting firm myself, I can attest that the challenge to find, hire and retain top tech talent is the No. 1 barrier to growth. The problem is pretty simple: a matter of supply and demand.

Since most every organization is dependent on technology in some respect, the demand curve for tech know-how is on a steep, never-ending climb. So far, the supply side has simply been unable to keep up. Despite increased training opportunities for anyone seeking a career as network engineer or software developer, nationally we are still coming up short of candidates to fill the thousands of job openings…

CloudJumper, a Workspace as a Service (WaaS) platform innovator for agile business IT, today announced coverage in a new Workspace as a Service vendor landscape report by MarketsandMarkets Research. The 2016 Vendor Comparison on Workspace as a Service providers offers an analysis of the top vendors in the category, including CloudJumper, Amazon Web Services, Citrix Systems, IndependenceIT, Microsoft Corporation (Azure), and VMware.

The MarketsandMarkets report is based on the research firm’s DIVE methodology based on a comprehensive study of the major players offering workspace software and/or services to channel partners and/or independent software vendors. MSPs, ISVs, agents, and other IT service providers are increasingly turning to WaaS to facilitate the easy deployment of digital workplaces at client locations. WaaS is a combined set of pre-integrated services to enable smooth deployment of digital workspaces at client locations. The key vendors in this WaaS market report were shortlisted based on their service capabilities, technology innovations, industry coverage, viability, and breadth of services offered.

In today’s unveiling of the sixth annual Cisco Global Cloud Index (2015-2020), cloud traffic is expected to rise 3.7-fold, up from 3.9 zettabytes (ZB) per year in 2015 to 14.1 ZB per year by 2020. This rapid growth of cloud traffic is attributed to increased migration to cloud architectures due to their ability to scale quickly and efficiently support more workloads than traditional data centers.

With greater data center virtualization, cloud operators are also able to achieve greater operational efficiencies while flexibly delivering a growing variety of services to businesses and consumers with optimal performance. To better understand data center growth, new analysis on application workloads was developed for this year’s report. The following business and consumer projections were revealed:

In addition to its existing automated processes for SAM, the updated Snow Automation Platform introduces new off-the-shelf automation workbooks to manage mobile and cloud investments.