Category: News

Unitrends, Inc., the #1 all-in-one backup, archiving, instant recovery and disaster recovery solution and ExaGrid Systems, Inc., the leader in cost-effective and scalable disk-based backup solutions with data deduplication, today announced a partnership that will enable mid-sized enterprises to address today’s heterogeneous IT environments and the sprawl associated with data growth. The seamless integration of Unitrends’ new software-only product, Unitrends Enterprise Backup, and ExaGrid’s purpose-built disk-based backup appliance offers the industry’s best long-term and cost-effective solution to these scalability and complexity problems.

Heterogeneous IT environments combine physical and virtual architectures, multiple operating systems, and platforms. Given these multi-infrastructure environments and data growth rates averaging 30% or more annually, IT organizations are challenged to address scalability and complexity in cost-effective ways. Technologies that reduce the amount of storage needed for backup and also provide an all-in-one solution are required to reduce the burden on already-stressed IT organizations.

ScaleXtreme, a leading provider of cloud and server monitoring and management products, today announced that it has expanded its solution availability to the Rackspace open cloud. ScaleXtreme is available for purchase for Rackspace first generation Cloud Servers and Cloud Servers powered by OpenStack through the enhanced Cloud Tools Marketplace from Rackspace Hosting, the service leader in cloud computing. This marketplace will serve as a gateway to an open ecosystem of cloud solutions, which will give customers access to a broad range of tools that support Rackspace open cloud.

“Rackspace is redefining great service for the cloud computing era and the Cloud Tools Marketplace is going to be a big win for customers,” said ScaleXtreme CEO Nand Mulchandani. “We’re pleased to be featured in the Marketplace, which will make it easier for Rackspace customers to quickly scale up their deployments, monitor their Rackspace machines right next to their on-premise servers, run scripts across both environments, and automate patch management and other critical tasks with ScaleXtreme. It’s a great way to get even more from your Rackspace instances.”

Grazed from MarketWatch. Author: PR Announcement.

Penguin Computing today announced partnerships with multiple universities to enable easy, quick and unbureaucratic on-demand access to scalable HPC compute resources for academic researchers.

"Penguin Computing has traditionally been very successful with HPC deployments in academic environments with widely varying workloads, many departments competing for resources and very limited budgets for capital expenses, a cloud based model for compute resources makes perfect sense," says Tom Coull, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Software and Services at Penguin Computing. "The new partnerships help academic institutions with a flexible cloud based resource allocation for their researchers. At the same time, they present an opportunity for IT departments to create an ongoing revenue stream by offering researchers from other schools access to their cloud."…

Grazed from CloudTweaks. Author: Emma Joseph.

We have gone through the massive cloud computing crazy rather unharmed by everything. Cloud computing is the rage when it comes to just about every aspect of business. From the personal level cloud computing has been more of just giant storage for your typical at home user. To help change this view and to expend into everyone’s living room around the globe and they have been doing this by merging cloud computing with Social media. Today’s new buzz word fraise, social cloud networking. Oracle has really jumped in feet first in this new approach to cloud computing.

Eating them up

Last week, Oracle just bought into and acquired Involver. Involver creates front end applications that let users control or have more control of their branding pages over social networks. Oracle has now bought and taken over three cloud computing or cloud computing related companies and they move deeper and deeper into the fray of cloud computing. Back in June Oracle bought Collective intellect which is on the marketing end of cloud computing. Collective Intellect helps companies respond to customers on social media websites. (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) All the way back into October of 2011 Oracle jumped on the bargain priced Rightnow Technologies for 1.5 billion. Rightnow Technologies markets services to cloud customers and deals with support applications. These bold moves by Oracle are pushing them closer to the top of the cloud computing food chain…

Grazed from Data Center Knowledge. Author: Bill Kleyman.

Several years ago, engineers were tasked with knowing and understanding specific technologies which they were tasked with administrating. These small groups would be asked to collaborate within themselves. Rarely would they deviate and involve other groups. Manager and project leaders were the ones communicating with higher-ups and transferring data on an as-needed basis. With the introduction of cloud computing, distributed data center environments and new technologies, IT professionals are being asked for more. This doesn’t only mean knowing more technologies, but the personality demands have shifted as well.

In working with numerous organizations and hiring firms, it’s clear that the ideal data center or IT professional is someone who diverse, creative and oftentimes most importantly – personable. In this ‘Part 1’ post, we examine career paths for novice and experienced IT professionals by looking at some of the new demands and requirements being placed on the IT industry…

Grazed from Korea Times. Author: Cho Mu-hyun.

Mobile carrier LG Uplus unveiled its cloud computing based game platform called C-games, Wednesday.

Subscribers of various network services can purchase games from the C-games website that can then be played on any device with Web connectivity.

“We have a top level network with more competitiveness than other mobile carriers or broadcasters,” said Chun Byung-wook, senior vice president of LG Uplus’ service platform division. “Cloud games are a central service to LG Uplus’ LTE (long-term evolution) strategy and will once again revolutionize the market.”…

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: Bob Lewis.

Once again, IT is going away or becoming less important or being relegated to nonstrategic support responsibilities or something. We’ve heard this tune for decades. It might really happen this time, though — a consequence not of the cloud or BYOD or any of the usual suspects, but of so many companies being seriously sick.

It’s probably true that CIOs have to take IT to the next level or have it fall to a lower one. What is the next level? To recap from last week’s Advice Line on the subject, next-gen IT collaborates, widely and deeply, with everyone else in the enterprise. That, in turn, can’t happen without a company that (1) does something that matters, (2) has executives, managers, and employees who are committed to making it happen, and (3) has enough mutual trust throughout that whoever needs to collaborate right now can do so without any concerns about the political consequences…

Grazed from CFOWorld. Author: Editorial Staff.

Aptira, a provider of managed hosting, public cloud infrastructure and enterprise private cloud solutions, has selected Piston Cloud Computing’s Piston Enterprise OpenStack™ to bring an easy, secure and open private cloud operating system to its Australian, New Zealand (A/NZ) and Indian enterprise customers. Aptira is Piston Cloud’s sole A/NZ and Indian partner, and selected Piston Enterprise OpenStack because it is the only streamlined cloud platform that can be installed in 10 minutes and can reduce cloud operating costs by more than 30 per cent1.

Customers will have the choice of an on-premises model, or be provided with a hosted data centre, infrastructure management, and server and network equipment powered by Piston Enterprise OpenStack software. By deploying Piston Enterprise OpenStack, Aptira’s customers will be able to easily build and manage their private cloud without requiring a large capital outlay…

Grazed from FederalNewsRadio. Author: Esther Carey.

The General Services Administration is seeking input from industry about the potential of developing cloud-computing brokers which could mediate between cloud providers and consumers. The agency released a request for information Tuesday to assist other agencies in moving toward the cloud.

The end goal is to "develop new and innovative ways for the government to procure cloud services in less time with higher value delivered, and allow government to take advantage of the inherent benefits of cloud computing," GSA said. The RFI identified several possible benefits of cloud computing, including pay-as-you-go pricing and the ability to easily take advantage of innovation…

Grazed from MSPNews. Author: Laura Stotler.

In the wild and rapidly evolving world of cloud computing, there are no regulations or safeguards in place to protect the SMBs and enterprises that increasingly rely on these services. Now more than ever there is a need for a globally accepted and universal standard and code of behavior for managed service providers (MSP) that deliver cloud solutions.

Charles Weaver, co-founder and CEO for the MSPAlliance, a 15,000-member certification and standards body, is calling on the industry to come together to create regulations and standards that will protect cloud services consumers. Weaver contends that with cloud computing adoption accelerating, there is an urgent need for standards and regulations.

"Today, the cloud is unregulated," said Weaver. "It actually takes more licensing, oversight and continuing education to cut and style hair than it does to manage data in the cloud."…