As a child of the 1980s, there are particular songs, such as "Danger Zone," "Shout" and "No Sleep Till Brooklyn," that really take me back to the essence of that time period (RIP mullet). On the flip side, there are also times where current events make me think of ‘80s hits. Take today’s storage market and the myriad of technologies and changes being discussed. Can’t you just hear Public Enemy’s classic "Don’t Believe the Hype" playing in the background? I know I can.

Cumulus Networks, a leading provider of enterprise Open Networking solutions, announced today that it is among the first to receive the “Nutanix Ready – Networking and Security” validation for the Nutanix Acropolis Hypervisor. The validation makes it simple for enterprises to add Cumulus Linux network switches to Nutanix hyper-converged infrastructure to provide an intelligent software-defined data center.

Nutanix customers can install Cumulus Linux on 31 different networking platforms from seven different hardware switch vendors and multiple CPU architectures. With Cumulus Linux, data center switches can be treated just like servers running a native Linux OS. This gives flexibility at all levels and provides the stability of Linux running in the entire rack.

Perth Radiological Clinic is one business that has already selected Cumulus Networks and Nutanix to improve performance and agility for its overall IT infrastructure. A leader in advanced medical imaging, and with 15 sites throughout Perth, the company needed a solution that allowed it to make every image taken by each of its clinicians available to all authorized viewers via its data center, regardless of their location.

The LeaseWeb Cloud portfolio consists of public cloud as well as Apache CloudStack and VMware-based private cloud solutions. All services have an extensive feature set, including: instant deployment, fully redundant architecture, full flash-based storage, flat flee pricing, intuitive customer portal, and extensive APIs. LeaseWeb Asia Pacific also provides dedicated hosting, CDN and hybrid solutions.

CenturyLink is aggressively working to transform its existing core network into an SDN and NFV-based environment and will virtualize 40 percent of its global IP core network locations by end of 2015 with plans to have full global virtualization coverage in its IP core network and data centers by 2018. The company has already built its NFV platform in 36 network and data center locations in seven countries, with plans to expand into a total of 44 locations by the end of the year. CenturyLink also was one of the first providers to use NFV technology to virtualize security features such as firewalls and a content delivery network (CDN) to distribute video through its Prism^® TV service, providing quicker delivery of these services. In the coming months, CenturyLink will begin deploying a range of virtualized data and voice infrastructure services, including virtualized Multi Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) routers and Customer Premises Equipment (CPE) to enable dynamic delivery of scalable services for customers.

Grazed from ComputerWorld. Author: Editorial Staff.

During the week of October 5th I had an opportunity to attend the AWS re:Invent 2015 conference in Las Vegas, of all places. As someone who has built an entire career on putting together custom application server software, I should be the last one to get excited about server-less applications. Just like Salesforce’s “no software,” Amazon’s “server-less software” mantra is about a world where application development is not limited by IT, software to install and servers to manage.

Traditionally, in an on-premise environment, putting together an enterprise application involved building out three pieces: the data store, the server and the client. Between the hardware, the software and the infrastructure associated with the aforementioned on-premise application, there were hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of up-front capital expense…

Grazed from ETFDB. Author: Justin Kuepper.

Dell Inc. agreed to buy EMC Corp. (EMC) in October for $67 billion in the largest technology acquisition in history. While some analysts attributed the deal to tech market froth, the acquisition also signifies the growing importance of cloud computing. The move is also just the latest in a trend of such acquisitions, including International Business Machine’s (IBM) acquisition of SoftLayer in 2013 for $2 billion after selling off its PC business. Investors looking to capitalize on these trends may want to take a look at the ISE Cloud Computing Index Fund (SKYY B), which is a $500 million exchange-traded fund (ETF) that provides them with exposure to cloud computing technology.

Massive Shift Spurs M&A

According to Cisco Systems Inc.’s (CSCO) Global Cloud Index white paper, more than three-quarters (78%) of workloads will be processed by cloud data centers by 2018 compared to just 22% processed by traditional data centers. The growth will be largely driven by software-as-a-service’s 33% CAGR, although infrastructure-as-a-service and platform-as-a-service technologies are also expected to realize double-digit annual growth rates…

Read more from the source @ http://etfdb.com/news/2015/10/19/cloud-computing-the-top-of-trend-or-beginning-of-an-opportunity/

Grazed from OpenStack.org.  Author: PR Announcement.

 Quobyte, technology leader in data center file systems, starting rolling out version 1.2 of its next-generation software storage system. Tried and tested in production, Quobyte presents the first fault-tolerant storage system that provides an all-in-one solution for an OpenStack infrastructure, hosting virtual machines, shared file systems and object storage in a single software-defined deployment.

Grazed from BusinessCloudNews.  Author: Editorial Staff.

Cloud builders, operators and users unwrap a lengthy wish list of new features and refinements today with the Liberty release of OpenStack, the 12th version of the most widely deployed open source software for building clouds. With the broadest support for popular data center technologies, OpenStack has become the integration engine for service providers and enterprises deploying cloud services.

Available for download today, OpenStack Liberty answers the requests of a diverse community of the software’s users, including finer-grained management controls, performance enhancements for large deployments and more powerful tools for managing new technologies like containers in production environment.