Category: News

Article Written by Sally Perkins

Cloud technology is quickly replacing traditional methods of storing data in every area of life. Between the music we listen to, the movies we watch, and the work we perform every day, there is almost no area that isn’t touched by cloud technology. In fact, it has been predicted by Forbes that, by late 2018, "80% of all IT budgets will be committed to cloud solutions." One of the most useful ways of employing this technology is to improve the overall experience your customers receive from your business. Whether used behind the scenes or utilized in a customer-facing function, using cloud technology offers dozens of ways to enhance your relationship with your customers. 

Unsure if your business can utilize cloud technology for this purpose? Explore three reasons your customers need this technology in 2018. 

Today, E8 Storage launched its new E8 Storage Software only product offering, available for a selected range of pre-qualified servers from vendors such as Dell, HP and Lenovo.

Powering the company’s high-performance, high-availability shared NVMe storage solutions, the E8 Storage Software is now available as a software only purchase for customers to install on their supported hardware of choice.

"Enterprises require ever faster infrastructure to handle both new and existing applications, and meeting that need can be complex and expensive," said Tim Stammers, Senior Analyst, Storage, 451 Research.  "E8 Storage is pioneering the use of NVMe flash and a software-defined architecture to address this problem. Allowing customers to run E8 Storage’s software on their choice of commodity hardware increases their ability to control costs, as well as making deployments more flexible."

Red Hat, Inc., the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire CoreOS, Inc., an innovator and leader in Kubernetes and container-native solutions, for a purchase price of $250 million, subject to certain adjustments at closing that are not expected to be material. Red Hat’s acquisition of CoreOS will further its vision of enabling customers to build any application and deploy them in any environment with the flexibility afforded by open source. By combining CoreOS’s complementary capabilities with Red Hat’s already broad Kubernetes and container-based portfolio, including Red Hat OpenShift, Red Hat aims to further accelerate adoption and development of the industry’s leading hybrid cloud platform for modern application workloads.

As applications move to hybrid and multicloud environments, a growing number of organizations are using containers to more easily build, deploy and move applications to, from, and across clouds. IDC noted, "Substantial advances in cloud adoption, simplification, and portability are underway. The demand for cloud continues to grow, and enterprises now anticipate that cloud architecture will dominate their spending for the next several years. With the growing sophistication of containers, customers are looking to their application platform providers to help them use containers to transition and extend existing production applications to be useful in public or private cloud."

ThinPrint Cloud Services, a subsidiary of the print solution experts ThinPrint, announces the availability of its new printing solution ezeep Dash. With the new solution, printers and printer drivers are fully managed via a clearly organized portal. ezeep Dash doesn’t require any server and users print locally eliminating the need for an internet connection to the portal. 

With ezeep Dash, companies can easily move their entire print management system to the cloud. Printers are defined and assigned to users thanks to a clearly organized web console. When selecting the printers, admins can choose from a pool of printer drivers provided by ThinPrint or upload their own drivers. The deployment of IT specialists on site, for example in branch offices, is not necessary, nor is the operation of a server.

Containership, the company behind the popular Containers-as-a-Service platform, Containership Cloud, announced today the release of Containership 3.0. This release is the first in a series that sees the company rebasing its platform on top of the popular Kubernetes container orchestration system. In recent months, Kubernetes has emerged as the leading system for managing containerized workloads in both startups and enterprise businesses. This release will allow for developers and operators to connect their Kubernetes environments to Containership Cloud, and provide a simplified interface for handling deployment, management, and maintenance of infrastructure no matter where it is running. Containership 3.0 allows for the management of clusters from a single pane of glass that is now responsive and mobile friendly, a first for any Container-as-a-Service platform.

Included in this release is support for the following Kubernetes resources, and Containership specific add-on features:

Do your research

Before you make any big decisions, it is important that you do your research. Researching is the perfect opportunity for you to find out whether or not an online business is right for you. Why not create a pros and cons list? You could also create a detailed plan for your move online. Perhaps you would feel more comfortable taking things one step at a time. For instance, you could set up a website to boost the profile of your online brand. Then, you could eventually establish your own online store and delivery service. There is no shame in testing the water before you take the plunge.

Moonwalk Universal, a specialist in large-scale data management solutions, today announced certification for Cloudian HyperStore.

Cloudian HyperStore lets users grow to hundreds of petabytes on-premises simply by adding nodes and leveraging the proven interoperability of the industry’s only 100% native S3 API. Whether for on-premises storage, hybrid cloud, or multi-cloud storage services, Cloudian HyperStore saves time, saves cost, and puts users in control.

With the latest release, Moonwalk version 12.3 brings file control and automation to enterprise storage infrastructure and intelligently moves file content to the appropriate location – on-premise object stores, offsite storage or cloud services.

Zoho today launched Zoho Flow, a drag-and-drop integration platform that allows users to create flexible workflows between cloud applications. By automating information exchange across apps, Zoho Flow helps users save the time and effort spent on manual tasks in their business processes.

Users can create integration workflows, called Flows, without having to write any code. For more common needs, they can also install pre-built Flows from the Flow gallery.

"Most companies depend on multiple apps to manage their business functions. But the integrations needed to coordinate these functions efficiently are often too complicated for them to build by themselves," said Raju Vegesna, Chief Evangelist, Zoho Corp. "With Zoho Flow, we’re enabling businesses build seamless integrations without having to depend on technical help."

The software-defined datacenter (SDDC) is a key enabler to delivering next-generation cloud services.  While a small group of hyper scale service providers have pioneered the SDDC concept with their own proprietary engineering efforts, the level of technology investment required is not practical for the vast majority of enterprise or cloud service provider IT organizations.  Kaminario Cloud Fabric provides a path for cloud service providers to embrace the SDDC paradigm without developing their own proprietary data management software stack.

"A key focus of our multi-cloud management strategy is to empower our customers to migrate and utilize cloud services easier and more confidently," said Bill Berutti, President, Enterprise Solutions at BMC. "Integrating AWS Service Catalog into our service catalog, alongside BMC’s industry-leading solutions, reduces complexity and enables one-stop shopping for enterprise cloud service provisioning and management. We’re excited about this significant step in our relationship with AWS, and to showcase this integrated service catalog at AWS Sales Kickoff 2018."