appzero has announced a cloud migration partner program designed specifically for Cloud providers and the System Integrators (SI) who have practices specializing in moving enterprise applications to those clouds. With its recently released zapp migration capability at the core of the program, appzero slashes the time, labor, and costs associated with migrating production applications to any cloud.
Patent-pending zapp migration automates on-boarding of complex server-side applications to any cloud destination, with no changes to the application. SIs in the program receive training and product on which to build and accelerate cloud migration practices. Cloud providers in this program have access to skilled SIs to move customer applications to the cloud. Enterprise customers find a cost-effective channel for cloud migration.
Monthly Archives: June 2012
Porticor Joins VMware Technology Alliance Partner Program
Porticor, a cloud data security company delivering a cloud-based data encryption solution that infuses trust into the cloud and keeps cloud data confidential by ensuring customer keys are kept private, today announced that it has joined the VMware Technology Alliance Partner (TAP) program. Members of the TAP program collaborate with VMware to deliver innovative solutions for virtualization and cloud computing. The diversity and depth of the TAP ecosystem provides customers with the flexibility to choose a partner with the right expertise to satisfy their unique needs.
SOASTA Releases CloudTest Mobile Test Automation Platform for iOS
SOASTA today released CloudTest Mobile, to deliver complete performance and functional test automation of mobile apps across distributed mobile devices. The CloudTest Mobile platform provides precise capture and playback of all continuous touch gestures including pan, pinch, zoom and scroll on iPhones, iPads, and iPods. See the CloudTest Mobile demonstration here.
Today, mobile developers can easily automate the testing of their mobile apps on iOS 6. CloudTest’s unique approach of residing inside the app allows developers to precisely test their apps when new mobile operating systems are released.
“Starting today, developers are working on iOS 6 versions of their Apps and automated functional testing is a real problem for these developers,” stated Tal Broda, VP, Engineering, at SOASTA. “Today, CloudTest provides full support for capture and playback of any App running on iOS 6 including any gesture or any UI element.”
SOASTA also announced today support for Appcelerator Titanium 2.0 platform, which gives Appcelerator’s 300,000 mobile developers seamless access to CloudTest Mobile’s test automation capabilities. See release here.
“The explosion of web and mobile applications along with the proliferation of mobile devices, makes manual testing obsolete. With today’s rapid development cycles, time to market requirements and technology changes, developers require a new set of automation solutions to support multi-touch gestures and 3D gaming,” comments Tom Lounibos, CEO SOASTA. “Now, with CloudTest Mobile, developers can quickly develop, test and deliver their mobile applications with the quality their users expect. Our support for Titanium 2.0 will make this especially seamless for Appcelerator’s mobile developer community.”
CloudTest Mobile delivers affordable, accurate, and complete mobile app testing using real mobile devices. Traditional testing solutions have employed device emulators and optical recognition approaches that are not precise or reliable enough to test this generation of mobile apps. CloudTest Mobile captures the start and end points of each gesture, the journey between, and the speed with which the gesture is performed. It uniquely conducts testing from within the mobile app, replacing brittle optical recognition approaches and enabling validations based on variable values and internal app state changes. Distributed mobile devices are accessed over the air, eliminating the need for tethering or “jail breaking” and allowing mobile devices – anywhere – to be used in a test.
CloudTest Mobile is available today. Download your free version of CloudTest Lite here. SOASTA will be hosting a webinar titled, “Are Your Mobile Apps Rock Star Ready?” on Tuesday, June 19 at 10:00am PST. For more information or to register, please click here.
SPIRIT DSP Announces VideoMost.com 2.0 for White-Label Web Videoconferencing
SPIRIT DSP today announced the next version of its multipoint videoconferencing software for telecom operators, hosted service providers and enterprises, VideoMost.com 2.0. VideoMost is an HD quality, massively multipoint web videoconferencing software-only product, enabling service providers and enterprises to deliver a self-branded videoconferencing service from the cloud or with on-premise installation. The product combines state-of-the-art videoconferencing technology with business collaboration tools, such as conference moderation and management, screen and file sharing, broadcasting, ability to connect SIP endpoints (such as legacy Polycom VC hardware) and many more. VideoMost conferences can be accessed using any standard browser, although the product also has desktop and iPad downloadable clients featuring additional functionality.
“The need for new value-added services is the main topic in today’s telecom world. With the decline of traditional voice service usage due to strong over-the-top and cloud offerings from VoIP and other internet companies, telecom and hosted service providers are looking for services that allow them to compete better.” said SPIRIT’s head of telcos relationships Alex Zakharov. “If a service provider wants to roll-out fast WebEx-like, high-margin, enterprise-focused web videoconferencing service, under its own brand and billing, in a secure and controlled way, from its own data center, VideoMost software licensing is the answer.”
New key features and benefits in VideoMost.com 2.0 include:
- Videoconferencing on the go with support for Apple’s iPad (the
VideoMost client is downloadable in the App Store). - Enhanced video quality with TeamSpirit®
Voice&Video Engine 3.2 inside, supporting connections from 512
Kbps and providing up to 30 fps (frames per second) and 720p
HD-quality for each participant. - Broadcasting/Recording API, allowing the conference speaker to record
and broadcast to an unlimited number of viewers/participants. - SIP integration to support legacy videoconferencing SIP hardware
endpoints (i.e., Tandberg and Polycom), including SIP-in/SIP-out calls
from mobile and fixed phones to/from a conference. - Support for LDAP and corporate controls with single authorization and
corporate contact list support. - Additional features: file sharing, recording, integration with emails
and calendars, text chat. - Support for all popular browsers, including the most recent versions
of Chrome, Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Opera. - Debian 6, CentOS 5 and 6, RHEL 5 and 6 and Ubuntu support for the
VideoMost server.
VideoMost is powered by SPIRIT’s TeamSpirit Conferencing Platform, delivering HD-quality scalable audio and scalable H.264SVC video of up to an unprecedented 1,000 concurrent video channels on a single standard $4000 PC server. VideoMost is uniquely universal, requiring no special hardware equipment to participate (just Internet access, a webcam, a mic and speakers or a headset) and no registration, allowing participants anywhere to start conferencing instantly.
Zakharov continued, “The corporate acceptance of mass-market desktop and mobile videoconferencing is phenomenal. This is partially the inevitable consequence of Moore’s Law, decreased bandwidth costs, the BYOD office trend and evident cost/time saving benefits, along with a large penetration of consumer video calling. What we offer is a sophisticated technology that accumulates more than 10 years of our expertise in scalable, HD and error-resilient VVoIP that ensures truly high audio/video quality, even in best-effort networks that have no QoS. Whether it’s a quad core machine, or iPad, users always get the best quality, with no need for the infrastructure to support heavy and costly servers for media transcoding.”
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Cloud Infrastructure: People & Process — It’s Not Just the Technology
www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqUZPym-pak
It’s not just the technology! In this video, I discuss the importance of the people & processes involved in moving to a cloud infrastructure. This is something organizations often overlook and is key to your success on the Journey to the Cloud.
niu Extends Bespoke Integration Services to the Cloud
ICT services provider niu Solutions on Thursday extends its managed services portfolio with the launch of its cloud integration services. Knitting together multiple cloud products and services from best of breed providers, niu is enabling mid-market organisations to right-source the platforms, processes and technologies that best suit business needs, and delivering them as a single solution with a flexible service wrap.
The new service brings together third party clouds as one unified, independent solution, and tightly integrates this with other products and services, both on and off site, to create a truly tailored approach to application delivery. With the ability to move workloads and apps between any physical, virtual and cloud platform on-demand, niu is providing the agile, scalable and resilient approach to cloud that today’s mid-market organisations demand.
SoftLayer Announces Turnkey Private Clouds
SoftLayer, a provider of global, Internet-scale cloud infrastructure, has unveiled its new SoftLayer Private Clouds solution that provisions and configures full private cloud deployments on demand. These scalable, secure and high-performance deployments leverage the company’s automated architecture, worldwide data center locations and private network, and customer-controlled infrastructure management system.
“For some time our customers have used our portfolio of dedicated servers, network resources, and virtualization options to build their own private clouds. Now, with SoftLayer Private Clouds, instead of starting at square one, you begin with a pre-configured cloud ready for whatever you want to do with it,” said Duke Skarda, Chief Technology Officer for SoftLayer. “We’ve built our Private Clouds solution out of our experience creating and managing our own cloud, and our unique capabilities in automating sophisticated deployments. At the push of a button you have a dedicated cloud at your command, with full access and control over every aspect, and the ability to scale infinitely, on demand.”
Is cloud computing really that much cheaper than on-premise?
Before signing any cloud computing contract, or indeed, renewing his on-premise IT agreement, the CIO should sit down with his CFO to clearly identify and understand the total cost of the IT department to the business, and compare his current solution to a cloud-based alternative. And to complete this cost justification process, the CIO must look at each of the following areas:
The IT Crowd
Whilst a company’s employees are its biggest asset, they are also its biggest cost. And if a business employs a five-strong IT team, when arguably only two are needed, the remuneration required to pay the other three members of staff is simply money down the drain. Generally speaking, up until now, the IT department’s sole responsibility has been to maintain the organisation’s infrastructure. And whether that be to make sure all of the employees’ desktops are running or to resolve any downtime …
Is cloud computing really that much cheaper than on-premise?
Before signing any cloud computing contract, or indeed, renewing his on-premise IT agreement, the CIO should sit down with his CFO to clearly identify and understand the total cost of the IT department to the business, and compare his current solution to a cloud-based alternative. And to complete this cost justification process, the CIO must look at each of the following areas:
The IT Crowd
Whilst a company’s employees are its biggest asset, they are also its biggest cost. And if a business employs a five-strong IT team, when arguably only two are needed, the remuneration required to pay the other three members of staff is simply money down the drain. Generally speaking, up until now, the IT department’s sole responsibility has been to maintain the organisation’s infrastructure. And whether that be to make sure all of the employees’ desktops are running or to resolve any downtime …
SoftLayer Offers "Private Clouds" at Cloud Expo
Dallas-based cloud infrastructure company SoftLayer announceds it Private Clouds solution at Cloud Expo at the Javits Center in New York this week. The idea is to bring the scalability of off-site (public) deployments to on-site (private) initiative for enterprise IT customers who like to control their infrastructure within the comfortibable, traditional local environment.
“For some time our customers have used our portfolio of dedicated servers, network resources, and virtualization options to build their own private clouds. Now, with SoftLayer Private Clouds, instead of starting at square one, you begin with a pre-configured cloud ready for whatever you want to do with it,” said Duke Skarda, Chief Technology Officer for SoftLayer. “We’ve built our Private Clouds solution out of our experience creating and managing our own cloud, and our unique capabilities in automating sophisticated deployments. At the push of a button you have a dedicated cloud at your command, with full access and control over every aspect, and the ability to scale infinitely, on demand.”
SoftLayer Private Clouds will allow customers to “choose the number of physical servers that they need as client hosts and then customize the configuration and resources for those servers as desired. In as few as two hours,” according to the company. Customers can add physical nodes and virtual servers to their Private Clouds as needed through the company’s Customer Portal and API.
The initial Private Clouds solution is built on Citrix CloudPlatform (with what’s now known as Apache CloudStack). Apache CloudStack zones in each data center are controlled from a single pane of glass and centralized management server, and Private Clouds can be managed with RightScale myCloud. The company says Private Clouds will be available August 1, with pricing starting at $1,218 per-month for a base configuration including one management server, one host server, and associated software licenses.
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