10gen, the company commercializing MongoDB, and SoftLayer, the largest privately held Infrastructure-as-a-Service provider in the world, have just launched MongoDB Cloud Subscriptions.
It’s a unique pay-as-you-go managed cloud subscription pushing certified pre-engineered and orchestrated MongoDB systems through a highly scalable, automated cloud platform.
The idea is to make the open source NoSQL database more available through the push-button provisioning of high-performance, production-grade, highly scalable clusters at SoftLayer’s portal or API.

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A recent study by researchers at North Carolina State University and the University of Oregon describes a threat scenario that allows attackers to exploit cloud-based resources for malicious purposes like cracking passwords or launching denial-of-service attacks. The study has gotten a lot of attention, including articles in reputable sources like Dark Reading, Ars Technica and Network World.
In order to optimize the performance of mobile apps or browsers, some computation-heavy functions have been offloaded to cloud-based resources, which in turn access backend resources and Web pages. This creates a middle ground in the cloud that is exploited in the attack, which the authors call “Browser Map Reduce (BMR)”. In reading the paper, it’s clear that this is a legitimate threat. The authors actually carried it out using free resources, although they limited the scope in order not to be abusive.

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ScaleIO, a new software-defined storage player, came out from behind
the stealth veil Tuesday jingling a $12 million A round in its pockets and
sporting a bunch of brand names like SAP, Check Point and Aer Lingus that
have been in production with its widgetry for months.

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It is amazing how many open source software companies out there are trying to get hit by the same $1B bolt of lightning that hit MySQL without realizing that the MySQL result is not repeatable.
Looking at the current batch of big data high flyers, from TenGen to Cloudera to Hortonworks, each seems to be vying for the same kind of ubiquitous usage that enabled MySQL to get a more than 20x multiple. What they don’t realize is that the failure of early open source acquisitions to deliver substantial value to owners has made buyers much more wary.
Companies like MySQL were valued based on a mystical belief that downloads could be monitized (not unlike the similarly wishful belief in monetizing eyeballs that motivated disastrous dot com acquisitions in the 90s). Moving forward, open source companies will be valued the old-fashioned way: by the viability of their business model.

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Remember when being “sent to your room” was considered one the harshest punishments a parent could dole out?

I certainly hated it, and I’m pretty sure my kids don’t like it much either. For whatever reason, this form of punishment – the ultimate act of isolation – seems to have stood the test of time. It’s also a great way to quickly introduce your children to the seven stages of grief.

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While the adoption of cloud computing in the enterprise offers all sorts of benefits, too many
organizations are forgetting about risks. Yes, the benefits of cloud computing are very real. I’m certainly
not a cloud denier (and they, like Flat Earthers, do still exist), but one costly misstep as you move to the
cloud could quickly eliminate all of those benefits you were hoping for.

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Last month’s release of Revolution R Enterprise 6.1 added the capability to fit decision and regression trees on large data sets (using a new parallel external memory algorithm included in the RevoScaleR package). It also introduced the possibility of applying this and the other big-data statistical methods of RevoScaleR to data files distributed in in Hadoop’s HDFS file system*, using the Hadoop nodes themselves as the compute engine (with Revolution R Enterprise installed). Revolution Analytics’ VP of Development Sue Ranney explained how this works in a recent webinar. I’ve embedded the slides below, and you can also watch the webinar…

David Smith

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I listened to remarks on CSPAN from the very controversial Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s current Foreign Minister, during his recent appearance at a forum in Washington, DC.

He said he believed that if people focused on economic development in the Palestinian Territories enough to give it a per capita income (PCI) of US$10,000 then the peace process would, in essence, take care of itself.

The territories have a current PCI of $1,820, according to the United Nations. This ranks in the bottom third of the world, next to Sudan and the new country of South Sudan. Compare it to Israel at $29,300.

Or compare it to Lebanon ($9,200), Jordan ($4,400), Syria ($2,900), and Egypt ($2,650).

Research we’ve been conducting for the past two years shows that Jordan and Egypt have strong potential for development on the basis of ICT infrastructures that are relatively advanced, given their income levels. Syria also does well by regional standards. We haven’t covered Lebanon or the Palestinian Territories yet.

But would this magical – and given regional incomes, mythical – PCI number for the Palestinian Territories really bring peace? Countries throughout the world that have achieved this income level include Turkey, Mexico, Brazil, and Venezuela.

If we look not only at violence, but at the economic volatility that has at times almost paralyzed the developed world, we see Ireland, Portugal, and Greece far, far above that income level – as is the United States, of course.

ICT in general improves communications and access to the Worldwide Web, social media, and cloud computing. Strong ICT infrastructures, characterized by widespread, fast connections, can be a disruptive force, as we’ve seen with the Arab Spring, as well as with Chinese and American government efforts to limit or chill the Web’s frightening power.

We believe that the developing countries we’ve identified as having the most potential will, in fact, develop economically more quickly than the laggards in our research. We believe this will occur as political turmoil and ugly violence continue.

But at what point does economic development guarantee peace? Does it ever? Is the phrase “peace and prosperity” a dated concept.

It would be nice to think that things calm down and violence decreases at a certain income level, but that looks like a very tough idea to prove. That said, anyone who wishes an honest conversation on the topic would be welcome, in our view.

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Convirture has released a new version of its ConVirt Enterprise and ConVirt Enterprise Cloud software that can now be used to manage VMware vSphere and ESXi in addition to virtual and cloud technologies including Xen, KVM, Eucalyptus, OpenStack and Amazon EC2.
ConVirt is an open source-based tool that is used by IT organizations worldwide to manage virtual and cloud infrastructures. This new version adds VMware to the list of supported technologies. It provides sophisticated management capabilities to operators of heterogeneous data centers that employ multiple technologies and platforms, including major public and private clouds.

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Outsourcing the IT operations, support and associated infrastructure maintenance has been the norm for large enterprises over the last decade. Typically the multi-year IT outsourcing contracts cover the following aspects:
Application Development Services: These will be the set of resources and other costs, like environment, required to perform the custom development of various applications and sometimes customization and configuration of COTS products.
Application Testing Services: Even though testing is covered as part of development, to make this step more independent most enterprises outsource testing activities as a separate entity.

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