May 6, 2013
Cloud Computing: Amazon’s growing threat to H-P, Dell and Oracle
Grazed from MarketWatch. Author: PR Announcement.
At any given moment, Netflix Inc. is serving up thousands if not millions of videos online that are hosted in a big data center that the company’s 33 million subscribers couldn’t care less about as long as those shows run immediately on demand.
While Netflix may be the face for providing its subscribers access to movies such as “The Hunger Games” and TV shows like “Mad Men,” it’s Amazon.com Inc. AMZN -0.42% actually streaming that content to their screens. And the e-commerce giant has gone well beyond movie streaming, having used its massive technology backbone and expertise to solve the cloud computing needs of many large and small enterprises…
Dell announced on Monday it will acquire Enstratius, an enterprise cloud management software firm, for an undisclosed amount. Founded in 2008, Enstratius offers cloud management services to hybrid and single-cloud customers as a software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering that sits either as a hosted service or within the network. By embracing a "cloud agnostic" platform, the technology works with both Dell and non-Dell customers, including OpenStack, Microsoft’s Azure, Amazon Web Services, VMware and Rackspace, just to name a few.
Sprint (NYSE: S) is taking its partnership with CSC to another level with the introduction of its new infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) service called CloudCompute. The new service, which couples CSC’s utility-based cloud computing solution with Sprint’s Global MPLS network, has been designed to provide its mid-sized domestic customers a path to cloud services.
The Debian Project has released the finalised version 7.0 of its latest free operating system distribution, with tools to set up private clouds built into it. Code-named Wheezy, Debian 7.0 provides testing packages for the open source OpenStack cloud operating system, and also the Xen Cloud Platform enterprise server virtualisation and cloud computing platform.
I’ve been using Chrome OS since the Chromium project was in beta, when I tested out the CR-48 for the Chromebook pilot testing program. This time, I took about two months to completely road test the Chromebook Pixel, Google’s latest hardware for Chrome OS. I tested the ‘cloud laptop’, with the help of my son in two natural computing environments: work and school. For this review, my testing focused on what you can do on the Chromebook Pixel, using apps on Chrome OS to complete everyday computing (and not so everyday development) tasks. During two months of testing, I used the Chromebook Pixel for my writing work, and my son used the unit for his school work.
Four years after becoming the first account reconciliation/financial close software provider to successfully complete a SAS 70 (now Statement on Standards for Attestation Engagements No. 16 or SSAE 16 SOC 1) audit, the internationally recognized standard developed by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) to set guidelines for auditors to use in order to objectively assess the internal controls of service organizations, BlackLine Systems is now also first in its space to successfully complete a SOC 2 Type 2 examination – adding even greater focus on controls related to the security and availability of the BlackLine Financial Close Suite, and demonstrating the operating effectiveness of these controls over the entire period of the audit.
T-Mobile, fresh from the completion of its merger with MetroPCS and new NYSE listing, is now sharpening its focus on new customers and new products, beginning with small businesses and cloud-based, software-as-a-service phone deals. We’ve been passed a letter that T-Mobile is sending out to a selection of small companies (copied below), targeting those with 20 or fewer employees and offering them free business phone service for the remainder of 2013, with half price on phone services in 2014. The plan, called Business Connect, also has a dedicated website.