In this Cloud Expo Power Panel moderated by Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan in our Times Square studio, Ash Massoudi, CEO at NextAxiom Technology; Henry Fastert, Chief Technologist & Managing Partner at SHI International; Allyson Klein, Director of Leadership Marketing at Intel and Technical Advisor to the Open Data Center Alliance; and Andy Schroepfer, Vice President of Strategy at Rackspace Hosting discuss “The State of Cloud Computing June 2012.”
Cloud Expo 2012 Silicon Valley, November 5–8, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA, will feature technical sessions from a rock star conference faculty and the leading Cloud industry players in the world.
Archivo mensual: Agosto 2012
What’s Driving Big Data – and Why Now?
In this Big Data Power Panel at the 10th International Cloud Expo, moderated by Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan, Govind Rangasamy, Director of Product Management at Eucalyptus Systems; Kevin Brown; CEO of Coraid, Inc.; Christos Tryfonas, CTO and Co-Founder of Cetas; and Max Riggsbee, CMO and VP of Products for WhipTail, discussed such topics as: Big Data has existed since the early days of computing; why, then, do you think there is such an industry buzz around it right now? How is Big Data impacting storage and networking architecture in data centers? How about the intersection of Big Data Analytics and Cloud Computing – how big a sector is that and why? What’s the difference between Big Data and Fast Data?
Google Ventures Backs DocuSign
DocuSign announced today that Google Ventures has joined in the company’s most recent financing round, bringing the total Series D funding to $55.7 million. Google Ventures joins investment lead Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, along with Accel Partners, Comcast Ventures, SAP Ventures, and a large global institutional investor in this round. The company will use the funds to accelerate growth of the DocuSign Global Network via increased customer-focused R&D, deeper vertical industry solutions, and faster international expansion.
DocuSign’s secure, cloud-based platform helps consumers and businesses of all sizes and industries to complete transactions faster by eliminating the hassles, costs, and lack of security inherent in printing, faxing, scanning, and overnighting documents to capture information, payments and signatures. Companies use DocuSign to create better customer experiences and save money by automating and streamlining their business processes.
“The investment by Google Ventures highlights DocuSign’s value as a tech disruptor across the web and mobile platforms, from consumers to global enterprises,” said Keith Krach, DocuSign chairman and CEO. “DocuSign has become the global standard for eSignature by building a viral network of more than 20 million users that attracts 60,000 new users every day.”
“Electronic signatures are being rapidly adopted by enterprises, small businesses and consumers worldwide due to their convenience, security and ease of use,” said Karim Faris, partner, Google Ventures. “DocuSign’s market momentum, deep technology and strong team attracted us to them and we are excited to be working with the company as they scale their business worldwide extending their reach to hundreds millions of consumers.”
Global enterprises, business departments, individual professionals and consumers are standardizing on DocuSign, with 60,000 new users joining the DocuSign Global Network every day. Today, that network includes 20 million users who have DocuSigned more than 150 million documents in 188 countries – including employees at 90 percent of the Fortune 500. DocuSign is used to finish business faster across nearly every industry – from financial services, insurance, technology, healthcare, manufacturing, communications, real estate, consumer goods to higher education and others – as well every business department, including sales, finance, operations, procurement, HR/staffing, legal, and customer support.
Infosys Launches Cloud Ecosystem Hub
Infosys on Tuesday launched the Infosys Cloud Ecosystem Hub. It enables enterprises to create, adopt and govern cloud services across the ecosystem. Businesses can now accelerate time-to-market of Cloud services by up to 40 percent, improve productivity by up to 20 percent and achieve cost-savings of up to 30 percent.
According to Daryl C. Plummer, Group Vice President and Chief Gartner Fellow: “As hybrid Cloud ecosystems are a reality today, there is a need for enterprises to work with Cloud services brokers for smartly assessing and brokering Cloud services. To truly unlock the challenges of managing a fragmented IT environment, it would be critical for enterprises to embrace Cloud services brokerages.”
Accedian Updates MetroNID and MetroNODE 10GE Solutions
Accedian Networks today announced the release of its Version 5.5 software, which is now available on its MetroNID® and MetroNODE 10GE™ solutions.
This latest release embedded in Accedian’s MetroNID and MetroNODE 10GE solutions enables operators to perform Y.1564 testing with multiple simultaneous flows from a single device directly from the cell site. By using multiple flows to different destinations, service providers can test different services at the same time and thereby save time, money and OPEX.
The addition of TWAMP-Lite as a second Layer 3 testing option provides further flexibility to the operators and allows Layer 3 performance monitoring with any standards compliant monitoring tools.
“This release validates our leadership position in the market and affirms our commitment to continually be bold and innovative,” said Patrick Ostiguy, CEO of Accedian Networks. “As consumers insatiable demand for all things mobile continues to put pressure on the network, and as carrier Ethernet is the technology of choice for mobile operators and service providers, we are pleased to deliver the most innovative and effective solution to meet, and exceed, the needs of our global customers.”
On Earth as It Is in Cloud
The open source world is experiencing some watershed developments that are pushing enterprise-level technologies into a new space that CIOs must now take heed of.
Open source, open standards, open data, open platforms and open clouds are now driving our collective technology futures forward at a pace we could not have imagined perhaps even half a decade ago.
Far less could Linus Torvalds have prophesied what he was about to create when he wrote on 25 Aug 1991 at 20:57:08 GMT, “I’m doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won’t be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones.”
Ubuntu for one has now reached 12.04 LTS in its server iteration (and desktop), where LTS stands for Long-Term Support. This means five years of cover for companies requiring official certification and audit compliance as well as enterprise-level security guarantees from Ubuntu’s commercial parent Canonical.
Unleashing the Ever-Growing Value of the Cloud
In this “Cloud Trends” Power Panel at the 10th International Cloud Expo, moderated by Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan, Karen Padir, EVP of Products & Engineering at EnterpriseDB, and Aaron Hollobaugh, VP of Marketing & Communications at Hostway Corporation, map the hottest areas of cloud computing right now, and share real-world examples of offerings that are generating value.
Cloud Expo 2012 Silicon Valley, November 5–8, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA, will feature technical sessions from a rock star conference faculty and the leading Cloud industry players in the world.
Fonality Enhances Contact Center Features for HUD Mobile
Fonality today announced a new release of the Fonality Heads Up Display (HUD) Mobile application delivering extensive contact center features among other enhancements. The application now offers users 100 percent management and visibility of individual queues over tablets and mobile smartphones. In addition, the solution can now be accessed by Fonality’s 200,000+ end-users across its entire cloud-based and hybrid-hosted product line including: Fonality Connect, Fonality PBXtra and Fonality trixboxPro.
HUD Mobile empowers the mobile workforce with cloud-based Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) communications and contact center capabilities in a single-view, secure, user-friendly interface via Apple or Android platforms. This announcement represents a first step in an ongoing “innovation series” of rollouts over the coming months to help growing businesses save time, communicate more efficiently and reduce costs.
“Mobility is without question a must-have to drive productivity especially for SMBs and we’ve already seen broad adoption of Fonality HUD Mobile,” said Fonality’s Chief Technology Officer Rick Bushell. “By enhancing contact center features and making the app available our entire solution base, all of our customers can work from anywhere, anytime. We are committed to delivering smart, simple and affordable business phone solutions to small businesses. HUD Mobile and the upcoming feature releases were designed to help our customers communicate more efficiently, giving them the competitive edge they need for growth.”
The exclusive Fonality HUD Mobile technology brings the entirety of the contact center environment on-the-go. All activities in the queue, including current and pending calls, can be accessed complemented by real-time performance metrics for quality control. Managers enjoy a 360-degree view of all communications, including color-coded agent status, call types and duration. In addition, they have the ability to record calls on-the-fly or join through barge, monitor or whisper modes. Agents can also log in and out of queues to maintain high levels of customer service.
“As a global wine distributor we are extremely busy and often work remotely,” said Justin Hammer, vice president of B-21. “Because our industry is so competitive, we have to be in touch with our global network of buyers to ensure that we have the most popular wines available as quickly as possible. Fonality HUD Mobile allows us to stay connected around the world so we can make quick purchasing decisions to add the latest wines to our catalog. This flexibility has improved our productivity and profitability, because we can stock wines faster. In fact, we recently secured a new wine, made it available online and sold out within a single day solely because of the efficiencies enabled by Fonality HUD Mobile. It is a real difference maker!”
Fonality HUD Mobile creates the same experience as its award-winning desktop counterpart. The mobile solution connects phones, desktops and critical business applications with access to presence and collaboration capabilities. “Find me/follow me” provides seamless connectivity between desktop and mobile devices, along with unified messaging and Microsoft Outlook integration. For improved productivity, other features include company directory, visual voicemail, virtual conference room access, as well as photo caller ID, ring-back and on-the-fly call recording. To control costs and preserve cell minutes, Wi-Fi connectivity can also be activated.
Cloud Computing: Protecting Sensitive Information in the Cloud
Gartner recently published a report that highlights a trend that we have been experiencing over the past few years, namely, the growing number of enterprises wrestling with cloud data security, cloud compliance, and cloud data residency issues associated with storing and processing sensitive information in SaaS cloud applications. Gartner estimates that by 2016, 25% of enterprises will secure access to cloud-based services using what they term a Cloud Access Security Broker platform and that these platforms will reduce the cost of securing access by 30%. Based on what we have seen from our clients, I think the cost savings are a low estimate.
The report also highlights an important consideration that our enterprise clients have told us is critical to their IT departments. Gartner recommends that companies strongly consider a “unified” Cloud Access Security Broker solution that is capable of providing multiple security policy enforcement capabilities from a single platform in order to avoid separate siloed solutions. It is clear that this capability alone could be the driver for significant savings in the enterprise.
Cloud Computing: TwinStrata Releases New In-Cloud Storage Gateways
TwinStrata on Tuesday announced that TwinStrata CloudArray is now available as an in-cloud gateway to support progressive organizations with cloud-based infrastructures. By enabling CloudArray to run on a growing number of cloud compute environments – IBM SmartCloud Enterprise, Rackspace, Amazon EC2 and Google (availability late Q3) – TwinStrata delivers a solution ideal for both enhancing storage infrastructures already deployed in the cloud, as well as sophisticated disaster recovery efforts.
Nicos Vekiarides, chief executive officer at TwinStrata, stated: “Whether you want to avoid the impact of cloud outages or local outages, easily and flexibly grow capacity without limits, or benefit from a centralized SAN in the cloud, CloudArray delivers trademark simplicity and enterprise-class data protection.”