Category: News

August 7, 2013 Off

DigitalOcean Raises $3.2 Million in Funding to Expand IaaS Solutions

By David

Grazed from The Web Site Host. Author: Editorial Staff.

Infrastructure-as-a-service provider DigitalOcean announced on Wednesday it has raised a $3.2 million seed round led by IA Ventures, with participation from CrunchFund and TechStars. The move comes a few months after DigitalOcean suffered a data breach that impacted a “small percentage of customers”, and promptly rolled out a fix for those affected customers.

DigitalOcean nearly has 350,000 cloud servers to date, adding an average of 500 new subscribers a day. The company says it plans to use the proceeds from this funding round to hire more marketing and engineering employees, as well as build out its infrastructure…

August 7, 2013 Off

Datadog Addresses Top AWS Performance Problems

By David

Grazed from PRWeb. Author: PR Announcement.

Datadog, the SaaS-based monitoring and data analytics platform that provides a unified view of IT infrastructure, released today a troubleshooting guide for developers and system administrators using Amazon Web Services (AWS) Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). In the new eBook, The Top 5 AWS EC2 Performance Problems, Datadogs technical team details the top five EC2 performance issues and provides instructions on how to detect and remediate these problems.

For many developers and system administrators, AWS’ EC2 promises ease of deployment and instant scalability. However, EC2 also introduces significant changes to coding, deployment and application maintenance which makes this infrastructure behave differently from traditional on-premise servers. These differences lead to performance issues such as unpredictable EBS disk I/O, EC2 instance ECU mismatches, and ELB load balancing traffic latency. Applications running on AWS infrastructure that are affected by these issues experience a decrease in performance or downtime…

August 7, 2013 Off

Why Amazon and others don’t specifically report cloud revenues

By David

Grazed from NetworkWorld. Author: Brandon Butler.

Recent news that the Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating how IBM reports its cloud computing revenues begs the question: Why are companies so coy about reporting their cloud revenues? Basically, the answer is because they can be. Although, the SEC’s most recent probe could change that, for at least some companies.

Perhaps the biggest player in the IaaS market of the cloud, Amazon Web Services, is a good example of the issue. In financial filings, the company reports revenues from its cloud computing division – Amazon Web Services – in a line item lumped in together with two other items, advertising services and credit card agreements. So, it’s difficult to decipher exactly how much revenue is derived from AWS alone…

August 7, 2013 Off

Cloud computing will kill the IT department. True or false?

By David

Grazed from ComputerWorld. Author: Stuart Kippelman.

I know this might not be a comfortable topic for everyone, but we have to talk about it. What if the cloud becomes the primary data center, and SaaS is the only way applications are sold? Will there be a need for an IT department?

This blog won’t come up with the answer, but an open dialog is always healthy. This topic comes up frequently, and depending on the day and with whom I speak, the viewpoints are very different. I encourage you to post your thoughts and let’s discuss them. There are two very different sides to this topic. Let me try and represent both for your consideration. IT departments are toast:…

August 7, 2013 Off

10 Things CIOs Should Know About The World’s First Cloud Database

By David

Grazed from Forbes. Author: John Foley.

When CEO Larry Ellison introduced Oracle Database 12c at Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco last September, he described it as a new foundation for modern cloud applications. That sums up Oracle Database 12c perfectly. First and foremost, it’s a platform for cloud computing, as signified by the “c” in its moniker. If there were just one single thing you should know about Oracle Database 12c, that would be it.

Wrapped up in that big idea are hundreds of database improvements. In fact, there are more than 500 new features in Oracle Database 12c, which together bring new levels of efficiency, scalability, and security to Oracle’s market-leading database management system…

August 7, 2013 Off

Cloud Providers Tapping Into Vertical Markets

By David

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Chris Talbot.

For cloud services providers, there’s a horizontal approach to service development that most providers take, but there’s also a strong business case to be made for vertical services. Vertical markets present a strong growth opportunity for cloud providers, and one of those verticals that has been growing quickly is health care.

We’ve covered the healthcare vertical frequently and recently, and cloud services providers are clearly finding success in building and targeting apps at a variety of healthcare organizations and businesses. Take Peak 10 as the latest example of a cloud provider who has had success in the healthcare vertical. Peak 10 recently announced it had scored a new multiyear cloud services contract with Premier, a healthcare alliance consisting of about 2,800 community hospitals and 95,000 alternate sites. That’s a big win for the cloud services provider…

August 7, 2013 Off

NSA Leaks Pricked The ‘Cloud’ Bubble For US Tech Companies

By David

Grazed from BusinessInsider. Author: Wolf Richter.

The cloud is a growth industry. And a religion in Silicon Valley: you’re better off with all your data and software stored in a data center somewhere on the planet. It’s at the core of Big Data. It’s a beacon of growth that revenue-challenged tech giants like Oracle and IBM wave in the faces of antsy investors.

IBM used the word 14 times during its earnings call in July. “Cloud computing,” “cloud offerings,” “cloud infrastructure,” it was all there. Revenues from the cloud jumped 70% during the first half, IBM bragged – to cover up an ugly tidbit: overall revenues fell 3.3%, and revenues at its US hardware division, Systems and Technology group, plunged 12%…

August 7, 2013 Off

CSA To Host CloudBytes Town Hall On NSA/PRISM Lessons Learned: The Repercussions for Cloud Services Adoption

By David

Grazed from PRNewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) today announced that it will host a free CloudBytes Town Hall on Monday, August 12th at 8:00am (PDT), on "NSA/PRISM Lessons Learned: The Repercussions for Cloud Services Adoption".

The ongoing disclosure of the extent of the PRISM program has raised major privacy and confidentiality concerns for customers of cloud-based services. A recent CSA survey of 500 respondents found that 56% of non-US residents were less likely to use US-based cloud providers, in light of recent revelations about government access to customer information. Companies have fiduciary obligations and other requirements to keep corporate data not only secure, but also private and confidential…

August 7, 2013 Off

Cloud Computing: EVault, A Seagate Company, Announces Partnership with Hitachi Data Systems

By David

Grazed from BusinessWire. Author: PR Announcement.

EVault, Inc., a Seagate Company STX -0.32% , today announced that a new strategic partnership with Hitachi Data Systems allows Hitachi TrueNorth partners to deliver cloud-based backup services by leveraging EVault SaaS and EVault Endpoint Protection in select Asia Pacific countries.

EVault provides onsite, cloud and cloud-connected data protection solutions to help organizations protect distributed environments, supported by a secure, reliable cloud storage infrastructure and backed by the highest quality customer service. EVault has been a leader in the industry’s move to hybrid storage models, with a uniquely integrated ecosystem of EVault storage software, SaaS, managed services and appliances that help ensure customers maintain business continuity. Geared towards mid-market and enterprise-level businesses, EVault solutions are optimized to perform in multi-site, multi-platform environments, ideal for protecting operations in remote and branch office locations…

August 7, 2013 Off

Paradyne and Exoprise Bring Crowd-Powered Cloud Management to Australia

By David

Grazed from MarketWire. Author: PR Announcement.

Paradyne, a Microsoft Online Services Partner of the Year finalist and leading Cloud Accelerate partner, and Exoprise, a provider of cloud based monitoring and enablement solutions for Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications, today announced a value-add, strategic partnership. The agreement brings Exoprise’s complementary offerings for Microsoft Office 365 to the Australian market for the first time and accelerates the adoption of cloud office applications. The announcement follows the recent launch of Exoprise’s new cloud monitoring solution for Microsoft Office 365.

Office 365 is a subscription-based suite offering online access to the software and services built around the Microsoft Office platform. Unlike on-premise deployments, where IT teams can monitor performance via direct access to the servers running their Office applications, visibility to Office 365 performance is limited to the Microsoft Office 365 Service Status Dashboard. While this dashboard provides current status of Office 365 itself, it cannot provide real-time end-to-end performance data nor can it provide information on the health and availability of the various networks — the customer’s, the ISP’s, the regional backbone, etc. connecting the users to the service…