Author: David

February 8, 2012 Off

Red Hat Introduces Virtual Storage Appliance for Amazon Web Services

By David
Grazed from Red Hat.  Author: Press Release.

Red Hat, Inc., the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced the availability of the Red Hat Virtual Storage Appliance for Amazon Web Services (AWS) that is built on the former Gluster technology that the company acquired in October 2011. As the leading enterprise-ready scale-out NAS offering for the public cloud available on the market today, Red Hat Virtual Storage Appliance enables organizations to extend their datacenter storage to the cloud. With the appliance, users have the ability to aggregate both Amazon Elastic Block Storage (EBS) and Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances, creating a highly available virtualized storage pool that offers enhanced scalability and performance in the cloud. This news comes on the heels of Red Hat’s announcement of its Storage Software Appliance in December 2011. These two products provide greater flexibility to organizations looking to include file storage in their on-premise and cloud strategies.

Red Hat Virtual Storage Appliance for AWS features both synchronous and asynchronous file replication, assuring data availability across AWS Availability Zones. Synchronous replication provides users with redundancy and protection within a single datacenter or multiple datacenters and availability zones in a region, while asynchronous geo-replication offers data availability across all AWS Regions. Red Hat Virtual Storage Appliance is POSIX compliant meaning that no application modifications are required for data access in the cloud.

February 8, 2012 Off

Before Marrying that Cloud Provider, Be Sure it isn’t a Bridezilla

By David
Grazed from Logicalis.  Author: Press Release.
 

When it comes to the cloud, selecting the right cloud provider can be challenging at best and nightmarish at worst. The cloud includes a variety of ways to deliver technology services, from standalone software applications like hosted email or databases to very new and exciting uses that include disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS), storage as a service, or platform as a service (PaaS) applications. While there are obvious advantages to entering into a cloud partnership –including decreased IT costs, increased flexibility and a reduced focus on IT maintenance issues – selecting the right cloud provider is a critical first step in realizing those benefits in a way that creates a synergistic, long-term and fulfilling relationship. That’s why Logicalis, an international solution provider (http://www.us.logicalis.com/), has put together a list of the top questions IT pros should ask when they’re considering a cloud partner for the long haul.

“For a CIO or IT manager, choosing a cloud provider can feel like choosing a spouse,” says Tom Roberts, solution architect for Logicalis. “Joking aside, the relationship between the client organization and the cloud provider they choose is a deep and meaningful one. The client trusts the cloud provider with what oftentimes amounts to mission-critical data and information and relies on that provider to keep that information secure and available in sometimes heavily regulated environments. Therefore, choosing the right provider is a serious decision that has to be made with the utmost care and concern.”

February 8, 2012 Off

AirVM Launches Cloud Services Partner Portal/Program at VMware PEX 2012

By David
Grazed from AirVM.  Author: Press Release.

AirVM, one of the fastest growing infrastructure as a service (IaaS) providers, is announcing the launch of it’s partner program designed to enable partners to be cloud server providers in seconds.

AirVM.com, launched two years ago and developed to demonstrate the disruptive nature of AirSembly, it’s core cloud-engine automation technology, has revolutionized the manner in which enterprise-class, cloud servers are configured, provisioned and billed. Contrary to many cloud services providers, AirVM customers are provided clear and transparent details for the services they purchase, the performance guarantees included and exactly what prices they will be charged, hourly and monthly.

February 8, 2012 Off

Flexiant Founder Panelist at Cloud Connect 2012

By David

Grazed from Flexiant.  Author: Press Release.

Tony Lucas, Founder of Flexiant will join a panelist of speakers to discuss the importance of selecting the right data center at Cloud Connect 2012 on Wednesday, February 15 from 13:15-14:15pm at the Santa Clara Convention Centre. Flexiant, a leading provider of cloud orchestration software for on-demand, self-servicing provisioning, multi-hypervisor support and automated billing, will also be exhibiting at the event.

Cloud companies must offer a product that provides optimal application performance, content delivery, reliability and security, and a host of other deliverables to satisfy the intense demands of today’s end-user. Selecting the right data center/s for your Cloud deployments is critical to delivering a differentiated Cloud offering. The session, sponsored by CoreSite and Interxion, will showcase the opinions of some of the largest Cloud computing providers as to what elements to look for in a data center provider and best practices for setting up strategic deployment locations.

February 7, 2012 Off

Virtual Bridges Names Iser Cukierman Chief Financial Officer

By David
Grazed from Virtual Bridges.  Author: Press Release.

 

Virtual Bridges, Inc. today announced the appointment of Iser Cukierman to the company’s executive leadership team. Cukierman will serve as chief financial officer where he will oversee all finance and accounting operations and provide strategic and operational leadership for the company.

Cukierman brings more than two decades of experience running financial operations for multi-million dollar organizations as well as early-stage and emerging growth companies. Most recently he served as general manager and chief financial officer at Fiserv where he was responsible for developing and implementing the company’s strategic plan related to revenues, profitability and growth. Before joining Fiserv, he served as CFO of Strategic Forecasting, a geopolitical analysis and professional services company. Cukierman has also held strategic finance and consulting roles at VirtualCFO, Softbank, Accenture and Ernst & Young.

February 7, 2012 Off

More than a Third of IT Leaders Expect IT Hiring to Increase

By David
Grazed from TEKsystems.  Author: Press Release.
 

TEKsystems, a leading provider of IT staffing solutions, human capital management expertise and IT services, today announced findings from its quarterly IT Executive Outlook survey, conducted in partnership with the Inavero Institute.

While nearly half of IT leaders anticipate their temporary (55%) and permanent (57%) IT headcount to stay the same in the first quarter of 2012, more than a third also expect to hire temporary (34%) and permanent (35%) IT workers during the first three months of the year. Approximately 30% of those respondents expecting to increase hiring in the first quarter anticipate 10% increases to temporary and permanent IT headcount.

February 7, 2012 Off

Cloud Computing: Mobile Computing and Mitigating Risk

By David
Grazed from IT Business Edge.  Author: Michael Vizard.

As it becomes clearer that mobile computing and the cloud are two ends of the same spectrum, IT organizations are increasingly coupling these technologies. Most IT organizations have little experience with creating mobile applications that need to be constantly updated. By developing and then hosting them in the cloud, IT organizations can not only minimize the risks associated with developing these applications, they can also more easily introduce new agile development methodologies.

To address the specific challenge, IBM recently moved to acquire Worklight, a provider of application development tools that allow IT organizations to create these applications and offers tools for managing them. At the same time, IBM also announced that its BigFix managed services platform includes support for a range of tablet PC devices in addition to smartphones…

February 7, 2012 Off

Amazon.com Lures Businesses to the Cloud With Rate Cut

By David
Grazed from The Wall Street Journal.  Author: Jeremy Jerzemsky.

Amazon.com Inc. lowered rates on computer storage it rents over the Internet, as the company applies its strategy of aggressive pricing to cloud computing.

The Seattle-based company cut its price plans by more than 10% for the first 500 terabytes of data that customers store in Amazon’s Internet-based S3 service, which is used for hosting media, backing up files and storing data for businesses to analyze. A terabyte is double the amount of space on a typical laptop computer’s hard drive.

“High volume/low margin businesses are in our DNA,” an Amazon spokeswoman said in an email. “Driving cost efficiencies is an area we’re going to continue to focus on.”…

February 7, 2012 Off

Federal Standards Body Focuses On Big Data, Cloud

By David
Grazed from Information Week.  Author:  J. Nicholas Hoover.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology’s IT Laboratory, which works on IT standards and metrics as well as federal cybersecurity programs, will be placing a new focus on big data and mobility technologies this year and will continue its work on cybersecurity and cloud computing, according to IT Lab Director Chuck Romine.

Romine, who took over for retiring IT Lab director Cita Furlani last fall, told InformationWeek that NIST will be increasing its work on standards, interoperability, reliability, and usability of big data technologies. Government and the private sector continue to amass huge data sets to help facilitate everything from more targeted marketing to improved government oversight.

"NIST can have a lot of impact on the big data question," Romine said, noting that the agency has been involved for years in analysis of how the federal government and private sector can better harness the power of large quantities of data. In 2009, for example, NIST helped publish a report called "Harnessing the Power of Digital Data."…

February 7, 2012 Off

Cloud Computing: Deloitte Entering Into a Global Alliance with Salesforce.com

By David
Grazed from The Daily Disruption.  Author: PR Announcement.

Deloitte announced today it is entering into a global alliance with salesforce.com, the enterprise cloud computing company, to provide multinational and international companies with the software, mobile and open cloud computing technologies for the social enterprise.  Paul Clemmons, principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP and leader of Deloitte’s cloud market offering and emerging solutions service line, will lead the global alliance.  He is based in San Francisco.

“Companies in general, but specifically our clients are looking to work more effectively and more efficiently. The inherent benefits and possibilities via cloud computing and salesforce.com can represent a solution catalyst.  It’s an exciting time to be at the frontier of this domain with a pioneer like salesforce.com,” said Bill Allison, principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP and global technology leader.  “And Paul has a long history leading our efforts in this market, giving us the experience and global network we need to drive this alliance.”