OneCloud Software has launched the OneCloud Partner Program. Responding to demand from prospective partners, the Program offers managed service providers (MSPs) and resellers the resources they need to grow their business with the OneCloud Recovery solution. OneCloud Recovery is an automated solution for disaster recovery/business continuity (DR/BC), which leverages Amazon Web Services as the disaster recovery site.
“This is a tremendous opportunity with an innovative hybrid cloud-based DR product and a partner committed to providing the tools and support that will enable a competitive advantage,” said Marc Crespi, CEO at OneCloud Software. «MSPs will have a superior software solution they can leverage to bring highly differentiated and strong margin offerings to customers, while resellers will have easy to sell and install solution capabilities that will extend their business.”
Archivo mensual: enero 2015
Internet of Things Platform By @Wipro & @SoftwareAG | @ThingsExpo [#IoT]
Software AG and Wipro Ltd. have announced a joint solution platform for streaming analytics that provides real-time actionable intelligence for the Internet of Things (IoT) market.
“The key to successfully addressing the IoT market is the ability to rapidly build and evolve apps that tap into, analyze and make smart decisions on fast, big data”, said John Bates, Global Head of Industry Solutions and CMO, Software AG.
To address the huge market potential created by streaming analytics in conjunction with IoT and other emerging technologies, Wipro and Software AG have come up with a solution that provides enterprises with a competitive edge by responding to events in real-time with unlimited scalability.
CDB Software To Be Acquired By @BMCSoftware | @CloudExpo [#Cloud]
BMC Software plans to acquire assets of CDB Software, Inc., a mainframe data management company that has developed utilities for managing IBM DB2 databases with virtually no outage. Focusing on the availability of mission-critical applications is strategic for BMC as it continues to help its customers transform IT into a competitive advantage for their business.
CDB’s technology complements BMC’s existing mainframe data management portfolio, which includes software utilities for DB2 administration, maintenance, application tuning, and backup/recovery. The integrated BMC portfolio will give DB2 customers an advantage as they manage ever-larger DB2 objects and real-time transaction volumes in a digital 24×7 world.
Take a look inside SoftLayer’s new UK data centre
Picture credit: SoftLayer
Six months after it was launched, IBM and SoftLayer opened the doors of its new UK data centre to the media, with IBM UK&I cloud leader Doug Clark and SoftLayer CTO Marc Jones in attendance to review 2014 and look forward to the year ahead.
The data centre in Chessington, run by Digital Realty, was until 2012 a shipping warehouse before being converted. Each pod, which Jones pointed out had the same design in every SoftLayer data centre, has 150 racks, 4000 physical nodes, and a 10,000 ft² isolated zone. Alongside the usual mix of generators is a series of car batteries to share the load for the first few minutes while the generators whir up.
The compute nodes which power SAP HANA have as much as 1TB of memory
2014 has been an extremely busy year for both IBM and SoftLayer, with a mix of the familiar, such as the partnership with SAP’s in-memory database HANA, and the unfamiliar. Firmly in the latter category includes IBM’s deals with Twitterand Docker, which Clark called «positively disruptive.» Part of SAP HANA runs on SoftLayer, and Jones noted the compute nodes that power it have as much as one terabyte of memory each.
Picture credit: SoftLayer
The event also featured customer testimonials from Gyrocom and GoCardless, although SoftLayer was keen to emphasise others, most notably «poster child» WhatsApp, which is run entirely on the SoftLayer infrastructure, as well as Cloudant, which before being acquired by IBM was a «major» SoftLayer customer.
For each customer, SoftLayer’s expertise in bare metal servers was a key differentiator alongside, naturally, location. This publication has extensively covered the geography of newly built data centres, not just from a data sovereignty view with European customers wanting their data to reside in European data houses, but also within the UK; greater connectivity and relatively similar latency means vendors can choose their build sites a bit further away from London.
SoftLayer’s expertise in bare metal servers was a key differentiator for all customers
GoCardless CTO Harry Marr explained how the startup was also looking at AWS, but eventually plumped for SoftLayer. Marr noted how GoCardless was «having real problems with the cloud» when initially attempting to scale, mainly due to multi-tenancy issues and the ‘noisy neighbour’. As regular readers of this publication will remember, IBM secured a patent last year to solve that very issue, utilising software defined networking (SDN) to ensure virtual machines give consistent network performance.
Clark noted the importance of SoftLayer in IBM’s strategy going forward, describing the IaaS provider in a slide as the «foundation of the IBM cloud portfolio», as well as explaining SoftLayer was a «fundamental» and «maybe dominant» piece of the hybrid cloud equation.
Another interesting nugget came in the form of developers; with 18.2 million developers in the world, only 25% develop on the cloud. Clark expects both numbers to rise, with IBM predicting the overall figure will increase to 26 million in the coming years. Jones noted SoftLayer has an API, and a small team of API evangelists to aid customer integration.
«If anybody takes their eye off the ball, woe betide them in this new world,» said Clark.
Elsewhere, it was confirmed that SoftLayer’s CEO Lance Crosby has left IBM 20 months after his company was acquired. «We wish Lance Crosby the best as he takes a well deserved break before pursuing new endeavours,» a statement from IBM read. Earlier this month it was confirmed that Robert LeBlanc, an IBM veteran, had moved into the role of head of cloud.
Another picture of the SoftLayer data centre can be found below:
Collaborate in the Cloud by @PSilvas | @CloudExpo [#Cloud]
Employee collaboration and access to communication tools are essential for workplace productivity. Organizations are increasing their use of Microsoft Office 365, a subscription-based service that provides hosted versions of familiar Microsoft applications. Most businesses choose Exchange Online as the first app in Office 365 they adopt.
The challenge with any SaaS application such as Office 365 is that user authentication is usually handled by the application itself, so user credentials are typically stored and managed in the cloud by the provider. The challenge for IT is to properly authenticate the employee (whether located inside or outside the corporate network) to a highly available identity provider (such as Active Directory).
Internet of Things and DIY Wearables | @ThingsExpo [#IoT]
Building low-cost wearable devices can enhance the quality of our lives. In his session at Internet of @ThingsExpo, Sai Yamanoor, Embedded Software Engineer at Altschool, provided an example of putting together a small keychain within a $50 budget that educates the user about the air quality in their surroundings.
He also provided examples such as building a wearable device that provides transit or recreational information.
He then reviewed the resources available to build wearable devices at home including open source hardware, the raw materials required and the options available to power such wearable devices.
WebRTC and the ‘Internet of Things’ Explosion’ By @TeleStax | @ThingsExpo [#IoT #WebRTC]
From telemedicine to smart cars, digital homes and industrial monitoring, the explosive growth of IoT has created exciting new business opportunities for real time calls and messaging.
In his session at @ThingsExpo, Ivelin Ivanov, CEO and Co-Founder of Telestax, shared some of the new revenue sources that IoT created for Restcomm – the open source telephony platform from Telestax.
Ivelin Ivanov is a technology entrepreneur who founded Mobicents, an Open Source VoIP Platform, to help create, deploy, and manage applications integrating voice, video and data. He is the co-founder of TeleStax, an Open Source Cloud Communications company that helps the shift from legacy IN/SS7 telco networks to IP-based cloud comms. An early investor in multiple start-ups, he still finds time to code for his companies and contribute to open source projects.
Identity Mixer Launched by @IBM Software | @CloudExpo [#Cloud]
IBM has announced software that allows people to hide or anonymize their personal information on the Web, ensuring protection from identity theft and other misuse. Developed by researchers at IBM’s laboratory in Zurich, Switzerland, the software – called Identity Mixer – will enable consumers to purchase goods and services on the Internet without disclosing personal information.
As consumers hand over personal details in exchange for downloading music or subscribing to online newsletters, they leave a data trail behind that reveals pieces of information about the size, frequency and source of their online purchases that can be traced back to the user. IBM’s Identity Mixer software eliminates the trail by using artificial identity information, known as pseudonyms, to make online transactions anonymous. For example, the software allows people to purchase books or clothing without revealing their credit card number. It can confirm someone’s spending limit without sharing their bank balance, or provide proof of age without disclosing their date of birth.
Cloud Platform of @CenturyLinkCld Selected By @Axios_Systems | @CloudExpo [#Cloud]
Axios Systems on Tuesday announced it has selected CenturyLink Cloud as the hosting platform for Axios Systems’ IT Service Management (ITSM) solutions in Canada. CenturyLink, a global provider of communications and IT services, joins other leading technology providers across North America, Europe and APAC to help Axios’ international customers drive efficiencies and innovation across their service management provision. The arrangement with CenturyLink enables Axios to further strengthen its presence in the Canadian enterprise IT Service Management (ITSM) sector.
Learn How to Buy Cloud from GovLoop & ViON
«Government IT managers must accept that cloud computing services are services, not the purchases of technology. This usually represents a fundamental change in how technology is acquired and managed. Since the transaction doesn’t involve any physical entity, procedures and processes associated with the inspection, acceptance, inventory and management of IT may not apply. New parallel policies that apply to virtual the delivery of virtual services must, instead, be developed and put in place.»