After a couple of false starts, cloud-based desktop solutions are picking up steam, driven by trends such as BYOD and pervasive high-speed connectivity.
In his session at 15th Cloud Expo, Seth Bostock, CEO of IndependenceIT, cuts through the hype and the acronyms, and discusses the emergence of full-featured cloud workspaces that do for the desktop what cloud infrastructure did for the server. He’ll discuss VDI vs DaaS, implementation strategies and evaluation criteria.
Monthly Archives: July 2014
Iron Cloud IoT Shootout Announced at @CloudExpo @ThingsExpo Silicon Valley
Cloud Expo, Inc. has announced the first annual “Iron Cloud IoT Shootout” to be held on November 6, 2014 at Cloud Expo Silicon Valley at Santa Clara Convention Center in California. The “Iron Cloud IoT Shootout” will be a live competition among all the key Cloud Computing platforms, and will be held on Day 3 of the show, Thursday, November 6, at the Santa Clara Convention Center.
So far five platforms, Amazon AWS, Google GCE, Microsoft Azure, IBM SoftLayer, and Rackspace have been named as part of the live competition.
The “Iron Cloud IoT Shootout” will feature teams representing each platform. Team members may or may not be employees of the companies which represent the competing platforms. Each team will create an IoT app or service, and be judged by everyone in attendance.
How to Spruce Up Your Evolved PHP Application
Do you have a PHP application running and have to deal with inconveniences like lack of scalability, complexity of debugging, and low performance? That’s bad enough! But trust me: you are not alone.
I’ve been developing Spelix, a system for cave management, for more than 20 years. It originated from a single user DOS application, and has now emerged into a web application with hundreds of users, used nationwide as the official cave directory in Austria.
The New IBM-Apple Partnership
We live in interesting times for sure. Who would have thought ten years ago that IBM and Apple would become partners? Here is the announcement as reported in eWeek:
Apple and IBM surprised many on July 15, announcing a global partnership that will see the companies attempt to “transform enterprise mobility.” The announcement, punctuated with comments from Apple CEO Tim Cook and IBM CEO Ginni Rometty, served notice of the companies’ intentions to make Apple smartphones, tablets and mobile services pre-eminent in the enterprise, replacing the BlackBerry devices and security services that long held the dominant position in that market. The partnership only confirms what Apple has been doing for years with its smartphones, tablets and even its notebook and desktop PCs, moving deeper into enterprises. The company has been touting its success in the corporate world, saying that many of the top companies in the world are now using its iPhones and iPads. In the IBM announcement, Apple’s Cook said that the company’s iPhones and iPads are now running in more than 98 percent of the Fortune 500 and 92 percent of the Global 500. Both Apple and IBM expect those figures to grow with this new partnership.
California moves to the cloud in collaboration with IBM, AT&T, KPMG
The California Department of Technology, alongside IBM, has announced the launch of CalCloud, an infrastructure as a service private cloud rolled out across California.
The news marks an important client win for IBM after losing a widely publicised battle against Amazon Web Services for a lucrative CIA cloud contract back in October. IBM are involved alongside AT&T, which will provide network services, and KPMG to provide education and drive users to the new services.
By putting it in the cloud, government entities can scale their IT up and down as appropriate, with CalCloud “designed to allow around the clock access to a shared pool of easily configurable resources including compute, storage, network and disaster recovery services,” according to a press release.
“Transforming how the State of California delivers technology services is not only more efficient and cost effective, it will spur innovation with cloud capabilities that are open and secure,” said Erich Clementi, IBM global technology services SVP.
“California is setting an example for other states on how to use cloud technology to improve coordination across agencies and municipalities while reducing the barriers and duplication that can impede the delivery of government services.”
The solution is fully FedRAMP accredited, with more than 20 state departments having already requested services through CalCloud.
US president Barack Obama has long since advocated a cloud-first government policy, yet it’s often been difficult to implement fully without issues. The Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare, launched last October to a variety of technical issues. As this publication noted: “If HealthCare.gov is suffering from major IT failures, one can imagine the level of systemic dysfunction that plagues non-public-facing IT projects that do not receive the same level of scrutiny.”
Yet the theory and enthusiasm behind it is solid. As ASG’s Mark Keepax wrote on CloudTech earlier this month: “By utilising the cloud, council IT provision moves from being a static asset, to become a service that provides real value to the whole community.”
Find out more about IBM’s partnership with California here.
OpenNebula 4.8 Beta Released
OpenNebula has just announced the beta release of its version 4.8, code named Lemon Slice, which brings significant improvements in different aspects. Sticking with its vision of bringing simplicity to cloud management, this release comes with improvements in the recently added Cloud View portal, designed for end users. One significant advantage of the new portal is the ability to control flows, groups of interconnected Virtual Machines that conform a service. Based on this Cloud View, a Virtual Datacenter administrators view has been included (VDCAdmin View), which enables VDC admins to easily manage the VDC users and resources.
Benefits and Economics of Strong Two-Factor Authentication Platforms
Recent high profile security breaches at major online websites tell us static passwords are not the answer. Even recent SMS security additions to consumer websites do little to address the issue.
Fortunately, a more secure authentication system is available for consumer websites that takes advantage of the two-factor authentication (2FA) process long used for security by the financial industry and Fortune 500 enterprise employees.
Philip Carty Joins GoodData as Chief Revenue Officer
GoodData on Thursday announced the addition of sales leadership veteran Philip Carty as Chief Revenue Officer. Carty joins GoodData with over 30 years of experience building and leading competitive sales organizations at top technology companies. In this role, Carty will oversee strategy for GoodData’s sales, account management and business development to drive dramatic growth for the business.
Carty joins GoodData from MongoDB, where he served as Worldwide Vice President of Sales. While at MongoDB, he expanded the company’s international footprint in EMEA and APAC and established the Global Strategic and Volume businesses. Prior to MongoDB, Carty served as Global Vice President of Sales at SuccessFactors, an SAP company. During Carty’s tenure at SuccessFactors, the company announced its initial public offering, ran at an annual growth rate of more than 85 percent and completed an acquisition by SAP for $3.6 billion. Prior to SuccessFactors, Carty led successful teams at ADP, Veritas, Oracle and Red Hat.
Avere Systems Raises $20 Million to Accelerate Growth
Avere Systems has announced that it raised an additional $20 million in venture financing, bringing the total amount invested in the company to $72 million. The Series D funding round was led by Western Digital Capital, with participation from previous investors Lightspeed Venture Partners, Menlo Ventures, Norwest Venture Partners and Tenaya Capital. The funding will be used to accelerate sales, marketing and continued development of the company’s hybrid cloud storage solutions.
Taking the Leap to Virtualization
Many mid-market companies have invested significant time and resources to secure and back up their servers, client computers, data, and overall network infrastructure in what was the traditional client-server setup. Now, what were considered emerging technologies just a few years ago, cloud computing and virtualization have arrived on the scene, bringing both significant benefits and new challenges. Find out more about this transition to get the most out of your virtual environment.