Author: David

Dimension Data, the $5.8 billion global ICT solutions and services provider, today announced that independent testing carried out in May 2013 by The Tolly Group reveals that Dimension Data’s Public Compute-as-a-Service (CaaS) cloud servers showed consistently high performance across CPU, memory, storage and networking measures. The report shows dramatic differences between providers and highlights the importance of performance in determining the true cost of a cloud computing solution.

"Our blue chip customers require strong SLAs and backups and expect their systems to be up and running when they need them most," said Puneet Pandit, president and CEO of Glassbeam. "They generate large volumes of data and rely on scalability on demand. Dimension Data has provided us with the enterprise-class cloud performance our clients demand."

Puppet Labs, the leading provider of IT automation software for system administrators, today announced its acquisition of Cloudsmith, a provider of development tools for rapidly building and testing infrastructure automation. The acquisition of Cloudsmith accelerates Puppet Labs’ mission of making it easier to manage the flow of changes in complex IT environments.

According to technology research firm Gartner, automation is one of the top initiatives for enterprise IT in 2013. Cloudsmith provides tools for system administrators and developers that make it easier to automate management of IT resources through intuitive GUIs and SaaS applications. Combined with Puppet Labs’ flagship product, Puppet Enterprise, customers experience increased productivity and accelerated time to automation. Puppet Labs plans to tightly integrate Cloudsmith’s products with Puppet Enterprise to further build on these benefits.

Grazed from TechCrunch. Author: Alex Williams.

Google Apple Engine (GAE) released a new versionn of its cloud platform today, offering dedicated memcache that allows developers to purchase in-memory data caching for their apps at a cost of 12 cents per gigabyte per hour. The new service is in addition to new features in GAE 1.8.2 such as better Git support and more PHP integrations.

According to a Google blog post, the new dedicated memcache feature allows the user to cache more data and drive up cache hit rates, which can also reduce Datastore costs and make applications faster. Data is always processed faster when it is close to the application. When the data is in-memory, there are no calls back to the server to retrieve the data. It’s right there ready to be served to the customer using the app…

Grazed from CIO. Author: Editorial Staff.

CloudBees, Inc., the Java Platform as a Service (PaaS) innovation leader, announced the general availability of the CloudBees Eclipse Toolkit 2.0. The new version is a major upgrade of the CloudBees plugin that helps developers create and develop software faster by bringing the full power of the CloudBees PaaS to Eclipse.

The CloudBees Eclipse Toolkit now provides direct access to the CloudBees ClickStart application templates, accessed directly from within the Eclipse environment. ClickStarts sets up the entire development-to-deployment environment for an application in one click…

Grazed from The Fiscal Times. Author: Editorial Staff.

The U.S. federal government is expected to greatly accelerate its spending on cloud computing solutions starting in fiscal year 2014, which begins October 1, 2013. In its report, "Perspective: Growth and Slight Contraction – Government Cloud Spending by U.S. Federal Agency," published July 15, market research firm IDC Government Insights points out that the overall U.S. government cloud services market will reach $9 billion in fiscal year 2017.

Cloud computing is a broad and often ambiguous term, usually referring to the infrastructure of systems available to users from a remote location (data center) over the Internet, as opposed to in-house computing services…

Grazed from MarketWatch. Author: PR Announcement.

Ingram Micro Inc. IM -0.50% , the world’s largest wholesale technology distributor and a global leader in IT supply-chain, mobile device lifecycle services and logistics solutions, announced today that it has achieved the Cisco(R)Cloud and Managed Services Advanced Certification. This certification recognizes Ingram Micro as having the capabilities to globally offer and deliver cloud and managed services to its channel partners to help accelerate time to market and time to revenue for businesses worldwide.

Additionally, the certification rewards partners for their expertise and investments for creating, selling and delivering cloud and managed services with financial incentives and go-to-market benefits in all countries of legal presence…

Grazed from Business Cloud News. Author: Jonathan Brandon.

Carrier services provider Telstra Global on Wednesday announced that it has joined the Cloud Industry Forum (CIF), a non-profit industry body working towards the development of a common code of practice for cloud service providers.

Established in 2009, the Cloud Industry Forum aims to help improve accountability and transparency among cloud service providers, and acts as a focal point for standards development related to cloud computing among other industry consortiums, international standards organisations and public sector groups…

Grazed from Forbes. Author: Joe McKendrick.

The business case for cloud is compelling. Even after all the numbers for the obvious things get crunched, the question is, are there any “gotchas” that could result in higher costs than originally planned for? Business interruptions and outages are obvious risks, but there’s an even more insidious set of issues that could drive up costs.

A couple of years ago, I helped conduct a survey of e-commerce application managers, and one of the key questions we asked was how they find out about slowdowns or glitches that customers may be experiencing. The answer, overwhelmingly, was that these managers didn’t find out about web glitches at their sites until a customer phoned in or emailed a complaint. When you get hung up at a website, the people at the other end usually aren’t aware of your troubles…

Grazed from DataCenter Knowledge.

IT automation software provider Puppet Labs has acquired Cloudsmith, a provider of development tools for rapidly building and testing infrastructure automation. The acquisition will integrate the Cloudsmith engineering team and products into Puppet in a bid to accelerate enterprise adoption of IT automation. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Cloudsmith provides tools for system administrators and developers that make it easier to automate management of IT resources through intuitive GUIs and SaaS applications. Puppet Labs plans to tightly integrate Cloudsmith’s products with its flagship Puppet Enterprise offering to boost customers’ ability to automate and manage complex infrastructures…

Grazed from TechTarget. Author: Lynn Habor.

Increasingly, resellers and born-in-the-cloud companies are adopting subscription-based business models that generate a recurring revenue stream for the business. To help manage their billing needs, San Francisco-based Aria Systems Inc. today launched its cloud-based Unified Channel Billing product.

According to the vendor, Aria Unified Channel Billing provides end-to-end Software as a Service (SaaS) billing and reporting across business partnerships and distribution networks — simplifying any level of complexity for channel partners, including direct, indirect, VARs or independent software vendors…