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Cloud & IT Management, GSMA, Messaging, Mobile World Congress, RCS, Rich Communication Suite, Telecommunications Industry

Interop Technologies Adds RCS Version 5 Features to Cloud Technology

Interop Technologies, a provider of core wireless solutions for advanced messaging, over-the-air handset management, and connectivity gateways, today announced that its Rich Communication Services (RCS) solution now supports a network address book and social presence. The network address book synchronizes a user’s contacts among different devices including mobile phones, tablets, and PCs. With social presence, RCS users receive rich, real-time information, such as availability, location, favorite link, and portrait icon, for each of their contacts.

Interop Technologies is demonstrating its enhanced RCS solution at OMA Demo Day on February 27 during Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

The network address book and social presence features are aligned with the GSMA-managed RCS Blackbird and Crane releases, which include subsets of priority RCS version 5 features. Using an XML document management server (XDMS) and presence server, the Interop solution stores social presence and service capability information and makes it available in real time to RCS users. Since May 2012, the fully compliant, cloud-based Interop RCS solution has also supported legacy messaging interworking, an RCS version 5 feature providing backward compatibility with Short Message Service (SMS) and Multimedia Message Service (MMS).

Interop has made the enhancements available in its interoperability testing (IOT) environment currently in use by multiple RCS client vendors and smartphone manufacturers. As client and handset vendors release new versions of RCS client software, they can continue to test against the Interop RCS solution to ensure that standards compliance and interoperability are achieved.

RCS, branded as “joyn” by the GSMA, gives subscribers innovative communication options including video chat, one-to-one and group messaging, file transfer, and real-time exchange of image or video files during communication sessions. Because the Interop solution enables operators to offer RCS without a costly and complex IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) core, operators can compete with popular “over-the-top” (OTT) services without expensive changes to their current network. In addition, Interop’s cloud technology option minimizes up-front costs and speeds time to market.

“Our client-agnostic, cloud-based solution now includes multiple RCS version 5 capabilities in line with the Blackbird and Crane releases, resulting in the most advanced, feature-rich RCS solution available today,” said Steve Zitnik, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, Interop Technologies. “By deploying in the cloud, operators can provide their subscribers with this state-of-the-art communication option quickly and cost effectively.”

For more information or to schedule a meeting during Mobile World Congress, please contact info@interoptechnologies.com.

Bessemer Venture Partners, hybrid cloud, Norwest Venture Partners, Ravello, Ravello Systems, Sequoia Capital, Venture Funding, Virtualization

Ravello Systems Gets $26 Million for Hybrid Cloud Hypervisor

Ravello Systems today announced that it has closed its second round of funding bringing the total amount of funds raised to $26 million. Ravello is now backed by Sequoia Capital, Norwest Venture Partners and Bessemer Venture Partners. Founded in 2011 by Rami Tamir and Benny Schnaider, the founding team behind the now standard KVM hypervisor, Ravello is positioned to change the game in the hybrid cloud market by delivering the industry’s first Cloud Application Hypervisor.

“Enterprises cannot use the public cloud the way that they would like to which is to be able to rent capacity on demand and simply spill-over bursty workloads,” said Tamir, CEO, Ravello Systems. “That’s not possible today because the public cloud environment is completely different from the enterprises’ internal data center. The industry needs a solution to normalize the application environment across the private and public cloud, so that enterprises can truly begin using the public cloud.”

“We have developed a Cloud Application Hypervisor that encapsulates multi-VM applications along with their entire environment including the VMs, networking, storage etc. so that enterprises can run any application in any cloud without making any changes,” said Schnaider, president and Chairman of the Board, Ravello Systems. “Unlike other solutions in the market that adopt a management only approach, Ravello’s Cloud Application Hypervisor normalizes the application environment so that it can run on the private or public cloud.”

BigData, Business Intelligence, Computer security, E-Government, Government, Project management, Webinar/Webcast/Presentation

FOSE 2013: Cloud, Virtualization, Cybersecurity, Mobile Government, Big Data Featured

Cloud and Virtualization; Cybersecurity; Mobile Government; Big Data and Business Intelligence; and Project Management will be the featured tracks at FOSE 2013, each providing cutting-edge technology insights, policy updates, case studies and expert guidance to optimize the efficiency and effectiveness of government programs. FOSE 2013, the largest and most comprehensive event serving the government technology community, will take place May 14-16 at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C.

“Late last year we surveyed our government and industry attendees to gauge the topics that are of most interest,” said Mike Eason, Vice President, Public Sector Events, 1105 Media, Inc. “Not surprisingly, cloud, mobile, big data/analytics and cyber came in at the top. It’s our job to ensure we are offering the education that supports the government’s needs around these issues. We are once again structuring our program to highlight these key trends, and will be drawing on the expertise of agency executives that have real past performance in the five areas to serve as speakers.”

Each track provides an in-depth look into the given topic, including:

  • Cloud and Virtualization will feature best practices and insights on technology trends, case studies and leading practices on planning, implementation and benefits realization.
  • Cybersecurity will examine the business of cyber, including detecting complicated malware and adversaries – insider and outsider, determining what data left the organization, developing defensive and preemptive measures to keep attacks from happening and managing risk-based compliance.
  • Mobile Government will offer tools, strategies and insights into hot issues such as BYOD, security, APIs and mobilizing enterprise systems, as well as achieving the goals of the Digital Government Strategy.
  • Big Data and Business Intelligence will focus on how to extract meaning from bits and bytes to reach business objectives, featuring case studies from federal agencies that have found useful intelligence from data, examine toolkits being used and highlight the management and policy challenges that come up in the process.
  • Project Management, developed in conjunction with the Project Management Institute, will provide best practices and trade secrets of agile project management to help the government professional advance their career.

A selection of confirmed session topics includes:

For more information and to keep up-to-date on the full program agenda, visit www.fose.com. To see how FOSE addresses the technology road ahead, view the FOSE 2013 infographic at www.fose.com/techtrends.

Censum, Garbage Collection, Java, Java Virtual Machine, Partnerships, Tools, Waratek

jClarity’s Censum, Waratek’s Virtualization Combined for Java Analytics

jClarity’s Java analysis tool Censum will be integrated with Waratek’s virtualization technology, providing its customers with operational insight into Waratek’s Java Virtual Machine (JVM) and cost savings.

Founded by leading Java experts, jClarity’s debut product jClarity Censum offers Java analytics and insight for developers as opposed to solely supplying raw data. Censum locates Garbage Collection (GC) performance problems and advises how to fix them in an easily comprehensible manner. Launched in December 2012, jClarity Censum has already been hailed as ‘technology you can’t and won’t miss in 2013′ by Nerdability.

The Waratek CloudVM for Java allows enterprises, data centres and providers to run Java in the Cloud with genuine multitenancy, addressing serious incompatibilities that have previously undermined Java’s place in this new computing space.

“Waratek’s technology represents a significant step towards reducing data centre footprint & increasing application density, both of which are hugely important in today’s market conditions” says jClarity’s CEO Ben Evans. “By adopting the combination of Waratek & jClarity, IT departments can feel confident that they can realise cost savings whilst still fully understanding their production plant.”

“Inefficient Garbage collection can affect application performance, using Censum to monitor live application behavior can bring enhanced performance and cost savings to the Cloud” says Waratek’s CTO and Founder John Matthew Holt. “The use of Censum with the Waratek CloudVM for Java, provides a seamless and cost effective way to host elastic multitenant Java applications with fine-grained performance metering and control.”

Big Data, BigData

What’s the BIG Deal? DATA On the Origin of the Term

NY Times BITS (Steve Lohr) today: An interesting “detective story” seeking the coiner of the phrase “Big Data”.

The unruly digital data of the Web is a big ingredient in what is now being called “Big Data.” And as it turns out, the term Big Data seems to be most accurately traced not to references in news or journal archives, but to digital artifacts now posted on technical Web sites, appropriately enough.

Cloud Understanding, EMEA, Research

Polls: Quarter of US, Third of UK Know What ‘Cloud’ Means

Webfusion, a UK hosting group, polled more than 1,000 respondents in the US to gauge their understanding of ‘cloud’ technology. Of the respondents, almost one third (31.8 per cent) stated that they had no understanding of the term at all, with only 25 per cent claiming to have a clear understanding of Cloud technology. The findings come on the heels of a similar survey conducted in the UK, which revealed that 34 per cent of the British public had a good understanding of ‘cloud’.

Key findings include:

  • 25-34 year olds have the best understanding of ‘cloud’, with one third (33.8 per cent) claiming to know what Cloud computing is
  • 63 per cent do not recognize Dropbox / iTunes/ Gmail / Hotmail as Cloud services
  • 91 per cent do not recognize scalable hosting as ‘Cloud’. This figure stands at 84 per cent in the UK

Commenting on the findings, Thomas Vollrath, CEO of Webfusion’s parent company Host Europe Group, said: “We were surprised at the general lack of cloud knowledge in the UK, but it turns out that we are much more Cloud savvy than our American counterparts, despite the US often being considered as technological innovators. With research indicating that three quarters of US businesses are consciously using some sort of cloud service, with UK adoption standing at 61 per cent, these results are yet more surprising.

“If consumers in the US don’t know what ‘Cloud’ means and have no idea that applications like iTunes are Cloud-based, then perhaps the use of the term should be restricted, at least in consumer circles. The reversal between US and UK consumer and enterprise Cloud knowledge goes to show that the use of the term ‘Cloud’ still remains a business message and should be used as such,” he concluded.

Criminal Justice Information Services, Government, International Association of Chiefs of Police, Law Enforcement, Legal, Police, Webinar/Webcast/Presentation

Anticipating Law Enforement Move to the Cloud, Assocation Publishes Guide

Today, the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) released “Guiding Principles on Cloud Computing in Law Enforcement” at the Leveraging the Cloud for Law Enforcement Symposium held at the Newseum.  Developed in collaboration with key law enforcement subject matter experts from around the nation as well as experts from SafeGov.org, the principles establish clear and concise parameters and a path forward for the exploration of cloud-based computing solutions and services by law enforcement.  The IACP principles come after a newly released IACP/Ponemon Institute/SafeGov.org commissioned survey showed that over half of law enforcement agencies surveyed indicated that they had implemented, were planning or considering implementing cloud-based solutions in the next two years.

“Cloud computing represents an important shift in the way information resources are managed and deployed by law enforcement agencies,” said Bart R. Johnson , Executive Director, IACP. “Realizing the substantial potential benefits of cloud computing, however, requires that we recognize the sensitivity of law enforcement information, make every effort to maintain the security and availability of key systems and data, and that we work closely with industry to build solutions that meet the critical and evolving needs of law enforcement.”

The IACP principles focus on addressing some of the most tangible benefits that cloud computing offers, including cost savings, rapid deployment of critical resources, off-site storage and disaster recovery as well as meeting dynamic operational needs, while maintaining the security of systems and the proper use of data.

Key principles include:

  • FBI CJIS Security Policy Compliance – Services provided by a cloud service provider must comply with the requirements of the Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Security Policy.
  • Data Ownership – Law enforcement agencies should ensure that they retain ownership of all data.
  • Impermissibility of Data Mining – Law enforcement agencies should ensure that the cloud service provider does not mine or otherwise process or analyze data for any purpose not explicitly authorized by the law enforcement agency.
  • Confidentiality – The cloud service provider should ensure the confidentiality of law enforcement data it maintains on behalf of a law enforcement agency.

IACP will be working in the coming months to develop model policies associated with cloud computing through the IACP National Law Enforcement Policy Center. Model policies are expected to be released at the IACP Annual Conference, scheduled for October 19-23, 2013 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

To view the IACP principles and results and methodology of the IACP/Ponemon Institute/SafeGov.org commissioned survey, please visit http://www.theiacp.org/cloudcomputing.

COBOL, Mainframe, Partnerships, Tools

COBOL in the Cloud

Heirloom Computing Inc. today announced a new partnership with Java Platform as a Service (PaaS) provider CloudBees to speed the transition of mainframe workloads to the CloudBees PaaS. With the partnership, Heirloom will help IT managers lower costs and modernize their COBOL-based mainframe workloads by deploying them to the cloud, utilizing Heirloom Elastic COBOL and the CloudBees Platform.

For more information about Heirloom Computing and how Heirloom can help you transition mainframe workloads to the cloud, please visitwww.heirloomcomputing.com. For more information about CloudBees, please visit www.cloudbees.com.

Amazon Web Services, Cloud & IT Management, Consulting, Google Apps

Cloudreach Says Businesses Don’t Maximize Cloud Investment, They Can Help

To help businesses maximize their investment in cloud technologies, Cloudreach has today launched an Innovation Services program. Starting with Google Apps, this consultancy-based service helps business cloud users consistently review how they’re using Google Apps, make the best of the tools they have and adopting new services from Google as they are released.  Cloudreach will work with new and existing users to help them adopt and benefit from all of the services Google Apps offers as opposed to just the familiar tools – going beyond the familiarity of Gmail, contacts and calendar to other Enterprise functionality and even the less well known Google Maps and Geospatial data management tools.  By working with Cloudreach businesses can ensure they extract maximum value from the cloud-based services and avoid needlessly making costly investments elsewhere, all while enabling a culture of collaboration and giving end-users the flexible tools and features they demand.

Failing to exploit public cloud services thoroughly is proving costly for cloud users, says Cloudreach. As the adoption of public cloud services soars, businesses have the opportunity to realize vast benefits, such as reduced costs and improved efficiency, but many are only scratching the surface by not reviewing and not looking beyond the more familiar tools, says the cloud computing consultancy.

“It’s not just about driving innovation within business, but also about optimizing all the services you use. In the world of using public cloud, one drives the other, so it’s important that businesses remain focused on getting the most on both counts,” comments Pontus Noren, co-founder and CEO, Cloudreach. “The cloud is a great thing, and the reality is it just keeps getting better as more developments are made by Google Apps and Amazon Web Services. This ongoing evolution is only good news for businesses – as long as they continually review to ensure they harness these developments.”