Skytap Announces Over One Million Virtual Machines Launched
Skytap Inc., the leading provider of self-service cloud automation solutions, today announced that over one million virtual machines (VMs) have been launched by customers using its leading Skytap Cloud service. This represents a major milestone for Skytap, which provides businesses with an easy and secure way to create complex computing environments in the cloud. The announcement follows a string of innovations and accolades achieved by the company throughout 2011, including being selected as a "Best of VMWorld 2011" award winner in the public/hybrid cloud computing technologies category.
"Enterprise demand for simple and secure cloud computing has accelerated over the past year, and it’s clear the market is poised for rapid growth as we head into 2012," said Brett Goodwin, vice president of marketing and business development at Skytap. "Over the last year, we have demonstrated our commitment to providing customers with an innovative cloud solution that delivers self-service simplicity, visibility and control for development and test environments, online demonstrations, and virtual training. Launching over one million virtual machines is a testament to the success and tremendous business value that our customers derive from their use of Skytap Cloud."…
(Super)computing On the Cloud
$1279 an hour – seems a lot to hire a computer, right? What if it’s a supercomputer capable of performing 240 trillion calculations per second, or 240 teraflops (a flop is the acronym for floating point operations per second, the universal measure of a computer’s performance)? This is the performance promised by the latest innovation from the Amazon stable – the supercomputer on the cloud.
This cloud supercomputer runs on Amazon Web Services Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and features Intel’s Xeon 8C 2.60 GHz processor with 10G Ethernet interconnects providing 65,968 GB of capacity and 17,024 cores. As per the latest supercomputer rankings, this cloud supercomputer ranks as the 42nd fastest in the world. Considering that it’s the only one on the cloud and built with existing non-specialized equipment even as the company continued normal operations, that’s extremely impressive…
Active Network acquires Starcite and launches cloud computing solution
Grazed from CMW. Author: PColston.
San Diego-based international provider of organisation-based cloud computing applications Active Network, has announced the acquisition of Starcite, the Philadelphia-based operator of corporate strategic meetings management system, for US$51.8m in cash and stock.
News of the acquisition comes as Active Network launches its Business Solutions Division designed to create an end-to-end global ecosystem for the events industry.
StarCite will be incorporated into the new division and Active Network anticipates StarCite giving it access to a vast online marketplace of the top hotels, destinations and venue suppliers worldwide…
Prepare Ye the Way of the Intercloud
The term Intercloud describes the future interconnectedness–or federation–of clouds, similar to the network of networks that is today’s Internet. Like the electrical grid, in which a utility is shared based on supply and demand, the Intercloud will be a mesh of cloud computing resources owned by many, and interconnected and shared via open standards.
Economic forces are propelling cloud service providers toward peering arrangements that presage cloud federation. Federation allows cloud providers to buy external resources when demand exceeds supply, and to rent resources when fellow providers need help meeting demand. It also allows providers to offer service outside their footprint without deploying computing resources in every nook and cranny of the world. Sharing resources among providers is especially compelling for smaller service providers because it enables them compete on a more even footing with Goliaths like Amazon’s EC2…
Hospital health IT tips and tricks: From cloud computing to mobile apps
Last year I started a series of ’Do’s and Dont’s’ in hospital tech by focusing on wireless technologies.
Folks asked a lot of questions about do’s and dont’s in other tech areas so here’s a list of more tips and tricks:
- Do start implementing cloud-based services. Don’t think, though, that just because you are implementing cloud services that you will have less infrastructure or related work to do. Cloud services, especially in the SaaS realm, are ’application-centric’ solutions and as such the infrastructure requirements remain pretty substantial ’ especially the sophistication of the network infrastructure…
CES: Acer to offer free cloud service
Acer kicked off the Consumer Electronics Show on Sunday by previewing a free cloud service for storing images and other documents online, and showing a novel ultrabook that hides its I/O ports in a hidden pop-up section at the back.
The cloud service, called AcerCloud, will allow people to upload all their images, video and documents to an online service hosted by Acer, and access them over the Web from any PC, mobile phone or tablet running Windows or Android. That includes devices from other vendors…
Four Screens Are Better than One with Lenovo’s New “Personal Cloud” Vision
Lenovo, the world’s number two PC company, is flexing its innovation muscle at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show and beyond, to create a seamless digital experience for its customers across multiple devices, be it PCs, tablets, smartphones or Smart TVs. Lenovo recently unveiled its "Personal Cloud" vision, marking the transformation of the company from a "personal computer" manufacturer to a "personal cloud solution" provider that integrates hardware, software and cloud computing together. The Company’s direction is evident in a variety of new products, including the IdeaTab S2, Smartphone S2 and K91 smart TV…
iCloud Holds Tremendous Potential for Small & Medium-sized Businesses (SMBs)
iCloudDrive for Business; Performance Edge of a Networked Company through Added Flexibility and Mobility at Affordable Price Points
There are a number of different ways that cloud computing can drive business value. In addition to lowering the cost of IT, cloud can help provide access to new markets and enable new business models. Cloud service provider iCloud Inc. brings a value proposition to SMBs by providing a service that has the potential to transform business strategy in the following ways:
Increasing business responsiveness with mobility providing connect anywhere flexibility and real-time access to all your data and information sharing without device or location constraints…
Cloud is complex—deal with it
If you are looking to cloud computing to simplify your IT environment, I’m afraid I have bad news for you.
Yeah, you might find yourself having to worry less about infrastructure, less about how storage systems work or what networking to use to connect a virtualized resource pool, or even what middleware settings are optimal for your applications. However, for every problem eliminated by choosing cloud, you’ll find it just creates more of the problems you remain accountable for—and may even create some new problems that you never had to face before.
Which is as it should be. Let me explain…
Connecting To The Cloud – 4 questions you need to ask telecom providers
The past year saw an overwhelming adoption of cloud computing, software-as-a-service (SaaS) and hosted applications, as many businesses chose to store their data online rather than on physical computers and servers. A new report from Cisco estimates that cloud computing usage is expected to grow twelvefold by 2015, But an increasing number of local companies are finding that simply having the cloud in their business isn’t enough; it’s how quickly and reliably they can access that cloud (and the applications in it) that will determine their success in 2012.
Businesses are also finding that the cloud helps reduce energy consumption and offers them the flexibility to purchase more data storage for only as long as they need it, rather than being forced to invest in costly office equipment that takes years to pay off…