Monthly Archives: April 2012

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IBM’s Buying Vivisimo for Its Big Data Push

In the name of its Hadoop-based Big Data platform, IBM is buying Carnegie Mellon spin-off and enterprise search house Vivisimo on undisclosed terms.
The Pittsburgh ISV, which has its own search and navigation system, is supposed to be good at “capturing and delivering quality information across the broadest range of data sources, no matter what format it is, or where it resides,” providing a “single view across the enterprise.” It’s all automated and can be used standalone or embedded.
Vivisimo saw all of $5.66 million in funding from 2000 through 2008 according to CrunchBase, including a $4 million A round led by North Atlantic Capital.

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appzero announces availability of zapp cloud migrator

The fastest and most flexible way to move server applications to any cloud, appzero took a market-setting step forward today with the release of zapp cloud migration. This technology extracts Windows server applications from production environments and packages them for movement to any cloud, without re-engineering, change, or lock-in.
Applications packaged by zapp can be copied and run on any cloud or data center server with the ease of an enterprise app store. This capability is well suited to hybrid/federated cloud scenarios in which enterprise workloads are moved on premise or to clouds in response to business requirements.
For use cases that call for ease of application on-boarding with no further planned movement, appzero also offers a dissolve function. Upon deployment, dissolve removes the appzero packaging, installing the application to the OS.

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frontpage

Guest post: The Taxonomy of IT – Part 5

25th April 2012

Journey to the Cloud’s Geoff Smith provides the final part of his five-part blog post series, in which he looks at how to classify current changes in the IT department. This week he focuses on the concept of species, and explaining why the idea of classifying IT is so important.

Big Data, Biomax Informatics AG, DNA sequencing, Illumina, Ingenuity Systems, Knome, Medical, Real Time Genomics, Strand Life Sciences

Illumina Introduces BaseSpace Apps Genome Informatics

Illumina, Inc. today introduced BaseSpace Apps, a dedicated applications store for BaseSpace, the Company’s genomics cloud computing platform. Informatics solutions available through BaseSpace Apps will allow customers to connect with a growing community of academic, commercial and open source tool providers who are building applications around Illumina data to dramatically simplify and accelerate genomic data analysis.

BaseSpace Apps will include a publicly available API (application programming interface) that allows developers to create and deploy new applications for the analysis of genetic data generated on Illumina systems. Diagnomics, GenoLogics Life Sciences, Genomatix, Golden Helix, Ingenuity Systems, Knome, Omicia, Spiral Genetics, Omixon, Real Time Genomics, Station X, Integromics Inc., Biomax Informatics AG, and Strand Life Sciences were named as initial application development partners.

“The rapid adoption of BaseSpace coupled with BaseSpace Apps will help us achieve our goal to create an ecosystem where users of Illumina next generation sequencers can easily access a broad range of genome analysis tools from the world’s leading bioinformatics vendors,” said Alex Dickinson, Illumina’s Senior Vice President, Cloud Genomics. “By providing an open API and collaborative environment, we can encourage more rapid proliferation of the tools that will enable scientists to analyze, understand and make use of massive amounts of genetic data.”

Illumina also introduced its iSAAC genome alignment tool today. Historically, alignment has been the most time consuming and processor-intensive step in genome analysis. Available on BaseSpace as well as standard workstations, iSAAC maps sequencing reads to their proper location up to 10 times faster than existing aligners, significantly expediting and simplifying a critical component in data analysis.

Through BaseSpace Apps, a diverse array of new data analysis applications and programs such as iSAAC will be available as part of a growing toolset within the BaseSpace cloud for MiSeq® and HiSeq® systems. Collectively, the tools will provide a wide range of functionality, from workflow management and downstream data analysis, to data visualization and biological interpretation.

BaseSpace is a scalable cloud-computing environment for all of Illumina’s sequencing systems that can be accessed securely from anywhere in the world. MiSeq system data already can be seamlessly transferred to BaseSpace for storage, analysis and sharing between researchers and their peers around the world, all in a secure and user-friendly environment. HiSeq data storage and analysis capabilities will be commercially released later this year.


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Low-Profile SingleHop Gets $27.5 Million in Funding

SingleHop, an IaaS and cloud computing concern started in 2006, has gotten its first institutional financing, a $27.5 million round led by Battery Ventures. American Chartered Bank also participated in the round.
Battery’s general partner Dave Tabors along with Morad Elhafed will be joining the SingleHop board.
CEO Zak Boca claims SingleHop’s “business is unique in the hosting industry because all of our services are provided through our proprietary and fully automated platform. This gives us great operational advantages, and with the growing demand for hybrid solutions, it also positions us very well to offer a unified experience to our clients.”

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GlassFish, Hosting, Java package, Jelastic, MongoDB, NoSQL, Platform as a service

ServInt Launches Jelastic Java Cloud Hosting Platform

ServInt, a provider of managed cloud hosting for enterprises worldwide, today announced the commercial availability of Jelastic, the world’s first software stack-agnostic, platform-as-a-service cloud hosting offering for Java applications. ServInt is the exclusive provider of Jelastic cloud hosting services in the United States, and the first service provider to offer Jelastic commercially.

ServInt’s Jelastic release follows the introduction last month of the ServInt Flex line of “dedicated cloud” servers, which combine the scalability advantages of cloud hosting with the sole-owner benefits of dedicated servers. ServInt now offers hosting products in both the IaaS and PaaS categories, with more cloud offerings and enhancements scheduled for release soon.

“This isn’t the first PaaS solution on the market – even for Java – but it’s the first one that leverages best-of-breed systems from both the hosting and the PaaS software industries,” said ServInt CEO Reed Caldwell. “The folks at Jelastic are amazing software developers. We are a world-class hosting provider. Too many PaaS providers try to be too many things to too many people, and that lack of focus makes them ineffective. We have collaborated directly with Jelastic every step of the way to ensure that Jelastic is the best designed, most reliable and best supported PaaS on the market.”

Jelastic COO Dmitry Sotnikov added, “Since we launched our public beta in October of last year, we have been growing at a rapid pace. Demand hasn’t slowed and the question of commercial availability has become even more frequent. Today, through our U.S. partner ServInt, Jelastic is now commercially available. This is a major step toward making our vision of a truly global, no lock-in, standards-based Java PaaS a reality.”

Unlike other Java PaaS and IaaS options on the market, Jelastic does not require customers to code to any specific API. Jelastic dynamically and instantaneously allocates resources for hosted applications, scaling servers up and down to make sure hosted apps have the resources they need, when they need them.

ServInt’s Jelastic customers are charged only for the actual RAM and CPU resources they consume, rather than for any predefined hosting service package or server they might otherwise purchase. This means hosting costs automatically go down when applications are off or not being used.

Jelastic measures resources being consumed in “cloudlets”, with one cloudlet equal to 128 MB of RAM and 200MHz of CPU processing power. Pricing is set at $0.02 per cloudlet/hour and there is no practical limit on the number of cloudlets that can be deployed. Jelastic does not require any application code changes. This means developers can simply upload their Java package or specify connection to their SVN or GIT code repository, and have their application running in the cloud in a few minutes – with no lock-in whatsoever.

Jelastic is fully compatible with all major Java software stacks, including Tomcat, GlassFish, Jetty and JBoss application servers – as well as with SQL (MariaDB, PostgreSQL, MySQL) and NoSQL (MongoDB, CouchDB) databases.


Customer Relationship Management, Valeritas

Valeritas Replaces Client/Server CRM with Veeva CRM in the Cloud

With its innovative and simple-to-use insulin delivery device, the V-Go, Valeritas knows the importance of easy-to-use delivery mechanisms. Its CRM system is no exception. The medical technology company desperately wanted to replace its convoluted, problematic client/server CRM system with something more straightforward to deliver valuable physician information to its commercial teams and vice versa more efficiently. Valeritas turned to cloud-based Veeva CRM and Veeva iRep for the iPad, the same system used by its valued contract sales partner, inVentiv.

“Compared with other vendors, Veeva CRM seems to be the most logical – meaning it’s easy for users to figure out and fairly obvious how to do something new or different,” said Hokan Ojert, vice president of sales for Valeritas. “Even the analytics aspect of Veeva CRM is painless – what used to take multiple steps in and out of different applications with our previous system is now aggregated neatly within Veeva and accessible in a click or two. This streamlined technology approach allows us to focus on what we are supposed to be doing…supporting our physicians.”

In addition to Veeva CRM’s ease of use, Valeritas selected Veeva CRM for its well-documented flexibility and popular iRep application, the only cloud-based system to combine CRM and closed loop marketing on the Apple iPad. Veeva iRep has quickly become the industry’s choice for comprehensive CRM on the iPad with the largest installed base worldwide, according to recent numbers.

“The ability to seamlessly and quickly move back and forth between a customer profile in Veeva and a presentation on the iPad to answer a physician question during a call was very attractive for us,” added Ojert. “Like most sales teams these days, our time in front of the customer is extremely limited so we often need to access a presentation or other information to make a point quickly, without losing the physician’s attention. And, then to be able to record that interaction instantly to enhance future marketing efforts is very valuable. Veeva is the only company that offers this level of forward-thinking technology on the iPad.”

Built on an inherently flexible, multitenant cloud-based platform, Veeva CRM enables life sciences companies of all sizes to make changes with simple point-and-click configuration while also providing ongoing updates, transparently, that customers can “turn on” or off as needed. It also empowers customers with anytime, anywhere access via the customer’s choice of device. The complete suite delivers rich functionality that supports the unique needs of multiple commercial teams in a single solution and empowers management with advanced reporting capabilities – ideal for Valeritas, which relies heavily on its analytics.

“Also, I am very excited about the fact that we will no longer have to wait for ‘end-of-the-day’ or week syncing. We will have more accurate analytics from the field much faster. In the past, we might wait as long as a week for the data and only receive spotty call records. Veeva CRM with iRep is instant,” concluded Ojert


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Cloud Makes Impact on TV Execs at NAB Show

The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) conference in Las Vegas that ended last week saw a 10 percent hike in vendor exhibits from last year and a slight rise in the number of people attending at 92,112. The world’s largest media event since covering filmed entertainment and content delivery in 1922 inducted Betty White and Bob Uecker into its Hall of Fame, and the unmanned military-issued drone flying overhead was prone to taking pictures of Teri Hatcher among other beauties. But among the technorati, those things were not the only star attractions.
For the first time in NAB history, cloud computing was put on the agenda. Thanks to the efforts of the Distributed Computing Industry Association (DCIA.info), a pavilion was dedicated to looking at how the cloud relates to the A/V ecosystem at each stage of the content distribution chain, from collaboration to storage, delivery and analytics, ending the cloud portion of the show with “Disruptive Effects of Cloud Computing Will Continue.”

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Cloud Expo New York Speaker Profile: Jill T. Singer – NRO

With Cloud Expo 2012 New York (10th Cloud Expo) now just seven weeks away, what better time to introduce you in greater detail to the distinguished individuals in our incredible Speaker Faculty for the technical and strategy sessions at the conference…

We have technical and strategy sessions for you every day from June 11 through June 14 dealing with every nook and cranny of Cloud Computing and Big Data, but what of those who are presenting? Who are they, where do they work, what else have they written and/or said about the Cloud that is transforming the world of Enterprise IT, side by side with the exploding use of enterprise Big Data – processed in the Cloud – to drive value for businesses…?

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