Cloud Expo New York: The Dirty Little Secret of Private Cloud – Running It

Private clouds solve many problems for enterprises and bring unique operational challenges along with them. There are dozens of companies of all sizes that will build you a private cloud and turn over the keys – then what? Trying to convert a traditional enterprise IT operations team to think and act like a true «cloud ops» team is setting your project up for failure.
In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Wayne Walls, an OpenStack Developer Advocate at Rackspace Cloud, will share lessons learned, discuss operations models available to enterprises for their private cloud deployments and how easy it is to try OpenStack in the data center of choice. As the service leader in Cloud Computing, Rackspace provides managed cloud and infrastructure solutions to over 100,000 global customers – come learn from us.

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Cloud Expo New York: A Higher Cloud Awaits You

Cloud computing is becoming an integral part of every enterprise IT environment. With multiple cloud deployment models to choose from, understanding the essential components to any cloud solution will help ensure your success.
In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Orestes Melgarejo, Director of Product Management for Citrix XenApp, will explain how to design your cloud strategy with your goals, requirements and existing environment in mind in order to quickly transform datacenter resources into automated, elastic, self-service clouds that ensure the best security, performance and reliability whether they are running in the enterprise datacenter or in an external cloud.

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Top 10 Reasons to Love Cloud Computing

10. It’s an approach, not a technology

9. It’s truly global, in the way that food and oil are global

8. It levels the playing field for developing companies and developing nations

7. It’s revived the software industry in a way that was unthinkable a decade ago

6. It fosters the growth of apolitical Open Source

5. It pushes countries to improve their bandwidth

4. It drives the creation of shiny new toys

3. It’s green, no matter what Greenpeace says

2. Its imprecise definition means technology writers will have jobs trying to explain it for a long, long time

1. It isn’t Facebook

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Intel Coupon Code ▸ intelVIPgold Special Offer as Cloud Expo Sponsor

As a Platinum Sponsor of Cloud Expo New York, Intel is offering special passes to SYS-CON’s 10th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on June 11–14, 2012, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York.
Intel is a world leader in computing innovation. The company designs and builds the essential technologies that serve as the foundation for the world’s computing devices.
Cloud Expo 2012 New York, June 11–14, 2012, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York, will feature technical sessions from a rock star conference faculty and the leading Cloud industry players in the world.

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Total Defense Addresses Rampant Cybercrime by Launching Cloud Security Protection for Businesses

Total Defense, Inc. today announced the launch of Total Defense Cloud Security, an integrated cloud-based SaaS (Security as a Service) solution for Web and email protection. This new offering provides organizations with a powerful and versatile Web and email security platform that protects users anytime and anywhere.

The widespread use of the Web as a business tool, coupled with an increasingly mobile workforce, has enhanced corporate productivity, but it has also created new security challenges for companies that must balance providing access with protecting critical corporate assets and data. “The days of the typical business user accessing the Internet solely from the safety of a protected corporate network are over. Today’s workers are connecting from an array of different devices through a multitude of private and public networks, Wi-Fi hotspots, home networks and the like. Traditional appliance-based Web and Email security solutions are unable to address the evolving security needs of modern businesses,” said Paul Lipman, CEO of Total Defense.

“As social media becomes more prevalent, attack vectors are multiplying, forcing IT administrators to require a multi-layered security approach. Our new Cloud Security service complements our existing endpoint products by securing Web and email traffic, while protecting users and data, even when endpoints are outside of the corporate network. Total Defense Cloud Security delivers a comprehensive extra layer of protection for in-house, remote and mobile workers, while improving workplace productivity and reducing cost. Companies can now rest assured that their most valuable assets are safeguarded with multiple layers of protection,” added Lipman.

Total Defense Cloud Security provides users with a secure Internet connection, safe from threats and malware, while ensuring that Web browsing is appropriate and complies with acceptable use policies. Unlike competitors’ security SaaS offerings, the Total Defense service provides a fully unified solution for Web and email protection within a single management and reporting interface, delivering easy and flexible security for all of an organization’s users– wherever they are and on any device. No software installation or administration is required and there are no upfront implementation costs.

“Total Defense Cloud Security is an intuitive, integrated web & e-mail security product that is exceptionally easy to manage. It is extremely simple to provision and customers can be up and running in just a few minutes without ever worrying about server hardware and maintenance,” said Maurice Thompson, Network Administrator for RTL Networks.

Total Defense Cloud Security benefits include:

  • Security for Mobile and Remote Users – protection and policies
    that can be applied to users anywhere whether in the corporate
    environment, on the road or at home
  • Anti-Virus & Blended threat protection – detects and blocks
    virus attachments and malware including malicious URL links to ensure
    protection against the full range of threats that infect corporate
    networks via email
  • Anti-spam & phishing protection – employs latest range of
    anti-spam technologies including IP reputation and real-time content
    analysis to detect and block spam in the cloud before the email
    gateway even receives it
  • Application Control – enables control over social media,
    streaming media and Web-based messaging (E.g. Facebook, Skype, Google
    Talk, YouTube etc.)
  • Bandwidth Control – enables management of Internet bandwidth
    consumption and control over unnecessary, non-business use through
    flexible, policy-based controls
  • URL Filtering – utilizes latest range of Web filtering
    technologies including real-time content analysis and behavioral
    modeling in conjunction with more than 50 continuously updated
    categories of millions of websites
  • Highly redundant Global network – 27 geographic data center
    locations ensures global coverage and near zero latency
  • Comprehensive and Multi-layered Security – Cloud Security
    bundled with Total Defense r12 endpoint suite offers robust tools for
    businesses to secure their assets and data

Total Defense provides a free 15-day trial of Total Defense Cloud Web and Email Security that includes full reporting services to help businesses understand all of the service’s capabilities. To learn more, please visit: www.totaldefense.com/business


Voice Assist Closes $800,000 Strategic Private Placement

Voice Assist, Inc. (speech enabled handsfree safe driving solutions) today announced that it has closed a private placement yielding gross proceeds of $800,000. The terms include the sale of 5,333,333 shares of restricted common stock priced at $0.15 per share. In addition, the company has issued five year callable warrants to purchase up to an additional 5,333,333 shares of common stock at $0.50 per share, which would provide the company with up to $2.6 million of additional working capital if exercised.

“We are excited to participate as a significant strategic shareholder in Voice Assist,” said Paul Arena, Chief Executive Officer of Augme Technologies, Inc.. “This funding should allow Voice Assist the growth capital to accelerate its market penetration and sales cycle and to continue to innovate its speech platform into the smartphone, automotive and other mobile device industries. We are also impressed with Voice Assist’s intellectual property covering speech-driven browsing of cloud-based address books, music libraries and speech-driven updates to social networks including Facebook, Twitter and leading CRM platforms including Salesforce.com. We see a tremendous growth opportunity in these sectors and feel that Voice Assist is well positioned to become a market leader.”

“We believe the growth capital and relationship opportunities provided by strategic investors such as Augme Technologies can support the integration of speech control functionality into mobile marketing,” said Michael Metcalf, Chief Executive Officer of Voice Assist, Inc. “We also appreciate the participation in this private placement by a group of seasoned telecom and digital media executives who understand how our technology can be applied not only to mobile devices but also to landlines, VoIP lines and in other modes of communication.”

The funding package was managed by Source Capital Group, Inc., a boutique investment bank focused on emerging growth companies involved in the Communications, Internet, Digital Media, Energy, and Clean Tech industries. “We’re excited about Voice Assist because its technology can be used on any phone, which opens up a massive market opportunity unlike other solutions, which only run on the data channel of a smartphone,” said Vik Grover, CFA, Senior Managing Director.


Cloud Expo NY: The Growth and Consolidation of Big Data in the Cloud

IT departments are experiencing storage capacity needs doubling every 12-18 months, 50x the amount of information and 75x the number of files. IT managers are dealing with growing constraints on space, power and costs to manage their data center infrastructure. Intel is helping businesses and users realize the benefits of cloud computing technology by working to develop open standards that operate across disparate IT infrastructures and by delivering cloud-based architectures that enable federated, automated and client-aware cloud services. The foundation for this vision will be defined by an open approach that delivers best of breed technologies + flexibility + choice from data center infrastructure to client devices.
In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Tony Hamilton, Enterprise Marketing Manager at Intel, will discuss how Intel is bringing together a broad network of leading hardware and solution providers to build and enhance cloud solutions that are interoperable, multi-vendor and embrace open standards.

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Yottaa Closes $9 Million in Funding for Mobile, Web & Cloud Optimization

Yottaa on Tuesday announced that it has closed $9 million in Series B funding. This round of funding allows Yottaa to accelerate the delivery of affordable services that optimize, protect and monitor websites and critical web applications for any organization – in particular, for small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs). «At Yottaa, we optimize the web,” noted Yottaa CEO Coach Wei. “We make speed, scale and security easy and affordable to our customers for their websites and critical web applications.»
Implementing Yottaa speeds web performance by up to 600 percent and improves conversions by up to 30 percent according to customer data. All existing investors, including General Catalyst Partners, Stata Venture Partners and Cambridge West Ventures returned for this round and were joined by additional undisclosed investors.

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