Parallels Expands Partner Program Benefits to Smaller and Growing Web Hosters and Website Designers
Parallels (www.parallels.com), the hosting and cloud services enablement leader, today announced expanded access of its Partner Program specifically for smaller and growing web hosters and website designers. Parallels’ unmatched depth of valuable expertise, best practices, tools and other go-to-market resources are now available to hosters seeking to grow their businesses by delivering cloud services.
“Smaller and growing web hosters and design firms now have access to the best resources available for accelerating their revenue and profitability,” said John Zanni, Vice President, Service Provider Marketing and Alliances, Parallels. “Key benefits of our program include expertise on how to implement proven strategies and tactics for improving customer value through better operations and for delivering a broader set of hosted services and applications.”
Claranet scoops award for its “click-and-provision” Virtual Data Centre
Data sovereignty issues still weigh on cloud adoption
Large enterprises that embrace cloud computing for many tasks still refuse to use public cloud infrastructure for key jobs because of what they see as restrictive data sovereignty regulations.
These laws, which are proliferating in countries around the world, according to attendees of this week’s Forecast 2012 event in New York, mandate that a company keep a customer’s data in that customer’s home country. One oft-cited reason is to prevent that data from being subpoenaed by a foreign power (read: the U.S.)
And that factor is the biggest difference between an enterprise’s virtualized data center and a public infrastructure as a service, said Matt Louth, principal security architect for the National Australia Bank…
Secure-24 to Showcase at Red Hat Summit 2012
Secure-24 Inc. – a leading provider of managed IT operations, application outsourcing and enterprise cloud computing – announced today that it will showcase its capabilities at the Red Hat Summit, being held June 26-29, 2012, at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston.
Secure-24 will be in booth 2833 to answer questions about the company’s capabilities and to meet other highly experienced IT professionals who are interested in cloud computing, critical application management and IT outsourcing. The company is also recruiting additional team members for various technical openings. Interested parties can stop by the booth or visit the website to learn more about the current job listings…
Microsoft Ushers In An Era Of Cloud OS
At the 20th annual TechEd North America conference, Microsoft Server and Tools Business President Satya Nadella described how the cloud OS drives both the modern datacenter and enables the development and management of modern applications, demonstrating how customers can benefit from this transformation with agility, focus and lower costs. He also announced updates to the company’s developer tools and availability of the next release of Windows Intune, the company’s cloud-based solution for PC and mobile device management and security.
Built on decades of experience gleaned from running massive datacenters at scale, Windows Server 2012 is the cloud-optimised server OS for customers of all sizes, and Windows Azure, updated with new services and features, delivers both infrastructure-as-a-service and platform-as-a-service capabilities. Built to complement each other with consistent development, management and identity, they make it easier to create, migrate, deploy and manage applications across public, private and hybrid clouds…
Increasingly, Clouds Are Built the Open Source Way
Today’s cloud computing landscape has no clear leading vendor; but rather is a mosaic of services. While the commercial opportunities are enormous, open source clouds are beginning to dominate the private cloud side of the market.
These are the findings of a new survey of 651 companies, conducted by RightScale, Inc. Among the 64% of respondents who plan to include a private cloud option as part of their cloud portfolio, open source private cloud solutions are taking the lead. The largest share of cloud adopters, 41%, plan to use only open source-based private cloud options (CloudStack, OpenStack or Eucalyptus), while another 29% plan to use a combination of open source and VMware options. Another 30% of those respondents plan to use VMware-only based private cloud options…
Are You Up to Date? Today’s Top Five Security Threats to Your Data

Are You Up to Date? Today’s Top Five Security Threats to Your Data
8 questions that will dominate enterprise cloud adoption
Enterprises have spent the past few years considering if they’ll embrace cloud computing. For the many that have made the move, their attention has now turned to managing the cloud and getting business value from it, says IDC Chief Cloud Analyst Frank Gens.
As IT transitions from the "if" to the "how" phase, enterprises are wrestling with a slew of fresh questions. On the infrastructure side, will a public or private cloud be used? Which vendors are best to work with — legacy IT players or emerging cloud companies? Which mobile device operating systems should be used to enable access to cloud software and what platforms should be used to build next-generation cloud applications?
Those questions were the focus of discussion Wednesday morning at the Cloud Leadership Forum, a three-day event in Santa Clara sponsored by IDC and IDG Enterprise (Network World is an IDGE company)…
Top Cloud Computing Myths
If you randomly selected 10 people on the street and asked them to define "cloud computing," you would likely get 10 different answers. This is not surprising, given the wide spectrum of (confusing) literature and viewpoints on cloud computing available on the public domain. This confusion has been escalated in recent months by the marketing departments of service providers and equipment manufacturers keen to promote these new buzzwords at every opportunity.
To clear up some of the confusion surrounding cloud computing, let me share the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s definition of the term:
Cloud computing is a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.
That definition is concise but insufficient, because of some of the ways cloud computing has been used in recent years. In fact, as a result of the ubiquity and rapid adoption of the phrase "cloud computing," many myths have developed about what it is and what it can or cannot do, driving further confusion about the utility of the technology for operational purposes. I would like to help dispel some of those myths, including the ones you may not have heard before but will cross your path eventually. Here are some of the interesting (and popular) myths I have encountered…
Cloud Federation: It’s Happening; Business Models are Emerging
Although far from a fait accompli, cloud federation is in the works. Like ants in the Internet ant hill, cloud providers are beginning to join forces to improve their individual prospects for long-term growth and sustainability.
Three companies — SpotCloud, OnApp, and Tier 3 — have placed bets on the idea that small-to-medium-sized cloud providers can benefit by federating resources. Each has a different business model that potentially blazes a trail for cloud federation. As its name implies, SpotCloud is a spot market that brings together buyers and sellers of commodity IaaS resources. OnApp federates cloud provider resources to deliver global content delivery network (CDN) services. And Tier 3 federates cloud provider resources to expand geographic reach and scalability for cloud computing services…

