Author: David

Rackspace Hosting, the open cloud company, today announced that IT industry veteran Rick Jackson has joined the company as Chief Marketing Officer (CMO). Jackson will lead Rackspace’s global marketing strategy and execution as the company works to strengthen its leadership position around hybrid cloud.

Jackson officially joined Rackspace on July 1 and today brings with him over 25 years of IT industry experience. Most recently, Jackson served as CMO at VMware, where he was responsible for leading the company’s global marketing strategy since early 2009.

Netsocket, a technology leader in virtualized, software-defined networking, today announced its flagship Netsocket Virtual Network (NVN) product suite, delivering on the promise of software-defined networking (SDN) with powerful, robust orchestration and automation applications running on a completely virtualized network infrastructure. Additionally, Netsocket is announcing the availability of Netsocket Virtual Network Early Experience Edition, which is downloadable today for free.

The Netsocket Virtual Network is an SDN framework for network virtualization and advanced automation. A fully optimized, automated and cost-effective network, the NVN solution is comprised of a complete, three-tier SDN architecture – providing end-to-end virtual networking, centralized orchestration and automation, and superior interoperability and integration with legacy routed networks as well as higher level management systems such as Microsoft System Center.

Grazed from TheNextWeb.  Author: Robing Wauters.

Zimory, a Berlin-based company that delivers cloud management solutions to service providers, enterprises and ‘cloud brokers’ worldwide, today announced that it has raised $20 million in funding.  The financing round was led by new investor Deutsche Boerse, with participation from prior backers Creathor Venture, High-Tech Gruenderfonds (HTGF), IBB Beteiligungsgesellschaft (IBB), KfW and Deutsche Telekom’s venture capital arm, T-Venture.

Deutsche Boerse is not only an investor in Zimory but also a business partner. Just last week, the German financial markets operator said it is planning to launch an independent exchange for trading cloud computing capacity in partnership with the Berlin startup…

Grazed from Citrix.  Author: PR Announcement.

Citrix on Monday outlined that its latest XenDesktop 7 virtualization software will be available on Microsoft’s Windows Azure cloud platform. With the move, XenDesktop’s remote desktop services on Azure sessions can have live roaming and multiple devices.

XenDesktop 7 was outlined at Citrix’s Synergy confab in May. Adding a cloud session option will give Citrix another deployment model for virtual desktops.  For Citrix, Azure support gives XenDesktop more of an audience among smaller enterprises as cloud computing grows…

Grazed from InfoWorld.  Author: Paul Venezia.

Certain elements of cloud computing are inarguably beneficial. The ability to quickly provision, clone, and deploy servers to address capacity issues is a definite plus, and the fact that you can effortlessly add elements such as load balancers, big storage, and databases is equally compelling. However, there is a downside that needs to be understood: the fact that, in many cases, cloud server instances can exhibit wildly different performance metrics, measured from second to second.

Sure, SLAs and guarantees made by the cloud provider can address these issues after the fact, but when it’s crunch time, there’s nothing you can do other than communicate the problem and hope it gets fixed quickly. You may have visibility into what your instances are doing, but you have no idea what the underlying hardware is doing, how it’s configured, or how oversubscribed it might be. That’s the nature of the cloud…

Grazed from Finextra.  Author: Editorial Staff.

Cloud computing is more than just a technology; it’s a model for disruptive business transformation. And like any business transformation endeavor, it has to be supported by some fundamental realignment in organization structures, processes and even culture.   Take for instance the rather radical concept of distributed IT decision making in the cloud model. No more waiting for the IT department to provision technology; end users will independently assess and access the required infrastructure components based on demand. 

IT, then, is no longer a detached purveyor of computing resources. From a pure maintenance and support function, it has to evolve into a more strategic role that involves working with different organizational units to understand their business needs and guide them to the appropriate technological solutions. In this new participative role, IT will be responsible for providing strategic technical guidance, defining standards and enabling innovation…

Grazed from CloudTweaks.  Author: Abdul Salam.

Information has always been the most powerful weapon anyone could wield. It allowed Alexander the Great to conquer nations and allowed the U.S. to drive home crippling blows to the enemy during the Second World War on two fronts –in Europe against Germany and in the Pacific against Japan. I am talking about the two preemptive strikes that sank the two most powerful and biggest battleships during that period, Germany’s Bismarck and later Japan’s Yamato.

Move forward some five to six decades and the threat has changed; now we not only have to deal with physical threats but cyber ones as well.  The times have changed and threats to national security are no longer as black and white or as defined as nations and groups. Information and data are worth millions and are the new unspoken currency…

Fibernet Corp., a recognized leader in customizable colocation, dedicated hosting, and professional virtual hosting, will upgrade its previous control panel software for Windows shared hosting clients to Parallels Plesk.

Fibernet offers Parallels Plesk as a software tool to assist shared hosting users in administering their Windows-based websites. With this new program, customers will be able to manage domains, track their own customers and subscriptions, and build their web presence from their own offices.

Grazed from CSO.  Author: David Braue.

A survey found that data encryption practices amongst cloud providers vary widely, while a privacy advocate was suggesting that the recent revelations about the US government’s PRISM data-filtering program should make businesses think twice about their use of cloud computing and a European Commission report suggested PRISM was harming the business of US cloud providers.

Even as planned July 4 online protests against PRISM seemed to fall flat, caution was being advised regarding disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) services, even more so because of the increasingly apparent number of ways that governments are spying on citizens online. Things have gotten so bad that the European Union approved stricted penalties for cyber-attacks and suspended data-sharing deals with the US in the wake of the PRISM revelations…

Grazed from HostReview.  Author: Brent Johnson.

Cloud computing and virtualization are two approaches to make more efficient use of hardware. The basic principle behind the cloud, which is similar to the old concept of on-demand computing, is that computing resources can be turned into products and delivered over the Internet. A company or individual can then use these resources on a metered basis, which is paying for processing power and storage consumption. For many companies utilizing cloud services may eventually shrink the need for your IT support staff as your cloud provider would manage and support your infrastructure.

Virtualization technology allows you to take physical hardware and split it up into multiple different services or applications all running simultaneously on one system. This allows organizations to consolidate many servers on a single hardware component saving them a ton of money. There are many different forms of virtualization from hardware virtualization to storage to software…