Akanda is the main contributor to the OpenStack project Astara, which they will be charming as part of the CPP. It is the leading open source network orchestration solution built by OpenStack operators for real OpenStack clouds. Astara eliminates the need for complex SDN controllers, overlays and multiple plugins for cloud networking by providing a simple integrated networking stack (routing, firewall, load balancing) for connecting and securing multi­tenant OpenStack environments.

Software analytics company New Relic, Inc. announced today new capabilities and features across the New Relic Software Analytics Cloud which have been designed to help companies build and run better software. These updates to the New Relic cloud-based platform and products (New Relic APM, New Relic Synthetics, and New Relic Mobile) aim to help developers and IT operations teams better understand the performance of their applications and underlying services, be more responsive to and anticipate issues, and be more agile to deliver new functionality.

“Software powers business, so we see it as critical for every company to have visibility and ask questions about the health of their business in real-time. These updates to New Relic expand the platform’s analytics capabilities and aim to remove the friction associated with advanced performance analysis. They also enhance the extensibility of the platform through open APIs,” said Jim Gochee, Chief Product Officer, New Relic. “We’re also thrilled to announce new capabilities for our APM, Synthetics, and Mobile products that we believe will help our customers be more effective building and operating their digital initiatives.”

Odin today announced it has launched a new portal for Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) partners, www.odin.cloud, enabling potential partners to access marketing information on a dedicated site. As part of the .cloud Pioneer Program, Odin is one of the first to market with the .cloud top level domain.

By using Odin Service Automation, partners have already delivered more than 1.8 million Office 365 and Exchange business class email seats. Odin Service Automation is one of the first platforms available for partners to automate the end-to-end service delivery, customer management, and billing across Microsoft Azure services, Office 365, the Enterprise Mobility Suite, together with hundreds of other complementary Odin-enabled services. Many service providers have already adopted Odin Service Automation to accelerate their time-to-market in the Microsoft CSP program.

Grazed from CloudWedge. Author: Editorial Staff.

We often hear a lot about Cloud Computing in the tech world, but Fog Computing is real trend that is starting to take hold. So what exactly is Fog Computing? Think about the way cloud computing has abstracted computing resources such as compute, storage and bandwidth. Fog Computing exists on the outer edges of the cloud and its main purpose is to interact with IoT devices.

When you explain Fog Computing as existing on the outer edges of the cloud, its important to realize that Fog Computing is part of the cloud itself; just a more streamlined version of a cloud resource that specifically exists to rapidly interact with other devices in the cloud. Think about the inevitable cloud connected, driverless cars of the future. How will those cars communicate with each other?…

Grazed from Concur. Author: Editorial Staff.

We sat down with Concur Chief Technology Officer Mark Nelson to talk about the impact of cloud computing on the role of CIOs and IT departments. In his role, Mark is responsible for running all IT for Concur, including the company’s cloud services offerings for customers and internal IT operations for the company. Prior to joining Concur, Mark was responsible for Oracle’s cloud infrastructure, including its Infrastructure as a Service, Java Platform as a Service, and Infrastructure for Fusion Applications SaaS offerings.

1) What is the biggest change in IT landscape w/ advent of cloud computing?

With cloud computing, we’re seeing the traditional role of IT changing quickly. Cloud companies are coming in to sell line of business (LOB) leaders discrete, cloud solutions for their functions. More and more, it’s the LOB, not IT, that’s buying cloud-based solutions, which naturally creates tension between IT and the business…

Grazed from IndustryWeek. Author: Editorial Staff.

Amazon is widely known as an online retail colossus, but is also thriving when it comes to sending business aloft in the Internet cloud. Internet industry giants have long been plowing cash into massive data centers and green energy sources to power cloud computing that essentially lets them use massive computing power to provide data and services to Internet-linked devices.

While titans including Apple, Google, and Facebook have resources and reasons to build their own data centers, it is more common for companies to spare themselves the cost and trouble by "renting" server space from cloud computing operations such as Amazon Web Services. Ranks of cloud computing rivals range from specialty firms such as Rackspace to century-old technology veteran IBM, which is working to differentiate its offering by mixing in the smarts of its Jeopardy-game-winning Watson artificial intelligence…

Read more from the source @ http://www.industryweek.com/cloud-computing/amazon-out-front-race-internet-cloud

Grazed from NetworksAsia. Author: Editorial Staff.

Cloud usage amongst midsize organizations worldwide grew from 79% in 2014 to 82% this year, according to Dell’s latest Global Technology Adoption Index (GTAI). The cloud adoption rate for SMEs in the Asia Pacific region particularly remains healthy and this aligns with data from the Asia Cloud Computing Association (ACCA), which shows that SMEs spent about US$2 billion on cloud computing services in developed and emerging Asia Pacific in 2014.

The same report also found that cloud computing services for emerging Asia Pacific markets are growing at a rate of 42%. But a number of factors are still holding SMEs back from taking their cloud journey to the next level. “One of the things that we observe during our conversations with SME customers in the region is that cost control and security concerns remain the biggest barriers for midsize organizations when it comes to expanding their cloud usage,” says Chris Kelly (pictured above), an executive director of Commercial Sales & Enterprise Solutions at Dell APJ…

Read more from the source @ http://www.networksasia.net/article/dell-targets-simpler-cloud-experience-emc.1447295769

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Michael Cusanelli.

Akamai Technologies (AKAM) is looking to help customers solve weaknesses in their Wide Area Network (WAN) architectures with the release of Akamai Cloud Networking, an integrated system of services designed to protect applications and eliminate network downtime.

The Akamai Cloud Networking service is a globally available system created to strengthen the reliability of enterprise solutions like Software-as-a-Service and cloud-based applications. The system is necessary to meet the increasing connectivity demands created by the use of Direct Internet Access (DIA) breakouts and hybrid WANs among enterprise users, according to the company…

Read more from the source @ http://talkincloud.com/cloud-computing/akamai-debuts-cloud-networking-service-remote-offices

Grazed from Forbes. Author: Brian Bridgwater.

Microsoft has its fingers deep inside the greasy guts of its own Azure cloud computing mechanics right now. The firm doesn’t exactly publicly acknowledge that it lags behind Amazon Web Services in terms of market share, but it is doing as much as it can to make up ground — it has now invested more than US$15bn in building a global cloud infrastructure and cloud services proposition.

There are currently 26 Azure regions around the planet — and a ‘region’ in this case can have more than one datacenter in it, so for example in the Azure world we find that American is two regions: West and East. It is important to remember that AWS is actually bigger than (at least four, some say closer to ten) of its largest cloud competitors combined. The catch up players also include Google, CenturyLink, VMware, Virtustream, Rackspace and IBM’s SoftLayer…

Read more from the source @ http://www.forbes.com/sites/adrianbridgwater/2015/11/11/microsoft-azure-cloud-evolves-for-intelligent-machine-learning/