Category: News

Grazed from ITWorld. Author: Nancy Gohring.

The OpenStack PaaS market is heating up, with Ubuntu teaming up with Pivotal on a version of Cloud Foundry for OpenStack. Canonical’s founder Mark Shuttleworth made the announcement today in Hong Kong at the OpenStack Summit. You can watch a replay of his keynote online. “I’m really pleased to announce that Pivotal and Canonical will worth together to make the experience of Cloud Foundry on OpenStack absolutely fantastic,” he said.

But here’s where things get interesting. Canonical says it won’t only work on creating Cloud Foundry PaaS for Ubuntu clouds. “If there are vendors in the room who have OpenStack implementations, we’d like to certify and test on yours as well. This is not just for Ubuntu,” he said…

Grazed from NetworkComputing. Author: Joseph Granneman.

The "year of the Linux desktop" has been prophesied by Linux supporters almost every year for the last decade. This was once a lofty goal in the Microsoft-dominated enterprise, but times are changing. Linux has grown into a formidable competitor in the smartphone and cloud computing markets, which has caught Microsoft off guard. More importantly, Google, IBM, Red Hat, Facebook, and Netflix have made huge investments into Linux innovations.

Now, with shrinking technology budgets and rising Microsoft licensing fees, it’s time for IT to seriously consider desktop Linux deployment as an alternative to Windows. The timing for this couldn’t be better: Windows 8.1 was just released, as was the latest version of Ubuntu, 13.10. Windows XP has just five months of support left, so companies need to make the switch to something new. Ubuntu may just have what companies need to support their desktop OS needs. I’ll look at various considerations for making the Linux desktop switch, including training and support, as well as potential complications…

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Charles Babcock.

It just got a lot easier to build OpenStack clouds in a place where they were once deemed unlikely: atop the VMware-virtualized environment of enterprise data centers. VMware has formed a partnership with Mirantis to help its customers build OpenStack private clouds on top of their vSphere virtualized servers, as an alternative to using VMware’s own vCloud option.

VMware plus Mirantis is an unlikely pairing. Mirantis is a leading consulting firm on OpenStack implementations and an OpenStack partisan that has frequently suggested its distribution of OpenStack is a better alternative to VMware’s vCloud suite. Boris Renski, executive VP and co-founder of Mirantis, calls the VMware deal "a strategic partnership" that illustrates how both Mirantis and VMware "are trying to uphold customer choice."…

Grazed from MSPMentor. Author: CJ Arlotta.

Managed services provider (MSP) Datatility has partnered with data storage solutions provider Cleversafe, Inc. to create a multi-functional cloud storage platform for customers with storage challenges. Datatility’s Hydra Cloud, based on Cleversafe’s patented Dispersed Storage Network (dsNet) technology, aims to provide customers with a tiered public cloud storage solution that aligns storage needs with operating costs.

Cleversafe Product Strategy Senior Vice President Russ Kennedy said in an interview that Cleversafe’s solution does not use replication, unlike other open-source cloud storage solutions. This approach allows MSPs to lower costs, while increasing margins, he said…

Grazed from FinancialPost. Author: Editorial Staff.

Business software company Open Text is buying cloud-technology provider GXS Group in a cash-and-stock deal valued at approximately $1.17 billion. Open Text, based in Waterloo, Ont., will pay about $1.07 billion in cash and $100 million of its stock. When the deal closes, part of the cash portion of the purchase price will be used to repay some GXS debt.

GXS stockholders are expected to own about 2.1% to 2.4% of Open Text’s stock once the acquisition is complete. The company said the deal will expand OpenText’s information exchange and cloud service offerings, and expects the merged business will serve more than 80,000 customers once the transaction closes…

Grazed from ComputerWorld. Author: Antony Savas.

Apptio has unveiled a cloud-based system that allows enterprises to measure their IT costs and automatically compare them against industry peers. Apptio’s software-as-a-service (SaaS)system uses a combination of third-party benchmarking data from more than 3,000 organisations and its own anonymised customer service data.

Apptio’s new Cost Transparency solution automates the measurement of IT costs using the same categories and methods as its new IT Benchmarking solution, allowing customers to make direct annual or ongoing comparisons of costs against their industry peers…

Grazed from RedHat. Author: PR Announcement.

Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced that the company, as one of the headline sponsors for this year’s OpenStack Summit in Hong Kong, will be sharing updates on its OpenStack contributions, and how Red Hat aims to be a bridge for OpenStack to grow from a project to enterprise-grade product. Held at the AsiaWorldExpo, the OpenStack Summit brings together some of the industry’s leading technical minds to discuss the future of OpenStack and cloud computing.

The four day summit will feature keynote sessions by headline sponsors, break out sessions and demonstrations. Mark McLoughlin, consulting engineer, Red Hat, who is a member of OpenStack’s technical committee and the OpenStack Foundation’s board of directors, will also be a keynote speaker at the summit. McLoughlin’s keynote will happen on November 6, Wednesday, 9:45 am – 10:15 am (HKT)…

Grazed from Broadcom. Author: PR Announcement.

Broadcom Corporation (NASDAQ: BRCM), a global innovation leader in semiconductor solutions for wired and wireless communications, today launched the first Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) Controller to integrate a management controller with a high-performance network controller. The Broadcom BCM5725 device delivers a streamlined, power-efficient and robust Ethernet and manageability solution ideally suited for large data center and cloud environments. Visit www.broadcom.com to learn more.

As companies deploy public and private cloud environments, they require scalable, cost- and energy-efficient architectures that can support today’s cloud computing demands. The BCM5725 device replaces three separate components from existing server designs–including the baseboard management controller, GbE controller and system management firmware. With the BCM5725 device, Broadcom is delivering a configurable systems management solution to scale out new servers for high-performance cloud computing applications…

Grazed from WindowsITPro. Author: Pete Thurrott.

As we move more and more of our data and computing infrastructure into the cloud, the primary concern in many ways moves from technical concerns around performance, functionality, and the like to something more basic, even primal: trust. And when it comes to the cloud, it’s all about trust.

Oddly enough, trust might be a Microsoft strong point moving forward, especially when you consider that 58 percent of the firm’s revenues currently come from its enterprise customers. Those customers don’t just occupy the pole position in Microsoft’s customer list. They represent its primary growth opportunity as the company moves forward into its devices and services future…

Grazed from Investors.com. Author: Pete Barlas.

Twitter will get the attention this week, but the cloud will continue as an IPO rainmaker. Cloud companies are dominating tech initial public offerings in numbers and performance, even as Twitter gets set to make its much-anticipated IPO, likely this week. Meanwhile, trends continue to favor vendors that provide software that resides on the Internet cloud and is available for quick access as needed.

Cloud computing is fueling the growth of scores of startups that are challenging software giants Microsoft (MSFT), Oracle (ORCL), IBM (IBM), SAP (SAP) and others that have been slow to adopt the platform. Companies with business models steeped in cloud-based computing accounted for the biggest share — 15 of 40, or 37.5% — of all tech-related initial public offerings in the 12 months ended on Sept. 30, says PricewaterhouseCoopers, in research produced for IBD. That’s up from 10 of 39, or 25.6%, in the year-earlier period…