Monthly Archives: August 2012

CareCloud, Clint Miller, People in the News, Sorenson Media

Cloud People in the News This Week (August 10, 2012)

Sorenson Media Promotes Video Transcoding Veteran Mitchell Holyoak to Head of Salt Lake City Office

Sorenson Media appointed Mitchell Holyoak, director of software development, as head of the company’s Salt Lake City office. In conjunction with his elevated managerial role, Holyoak will oversee the full Sorenson Squeeze and Squeeze Server development teams.

As head of the Salt Lake office, Holyoak brings more than 15 years of digital video software development to his role, including leadership in video encoding and decoding, video streaming, video conferencing, and video instruction software. Beginning with the launch of the original version of Sorenson Squeeze, Holyoak’s expertise has been instrumental in developing the industry’s gold-standard video encoding application, Sorenson Squeeze, and the company’s enterprise-grade video encoding solution, Squeeze Server.

ProfitBricks Appoints William Toll VP of Marketing, Clint Miller VP of Sales

ProfitBricks, the cloud computing Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) provider, announced today the appointment of web hosting and Internet infrastructure industry veteran William Toll as Vice President of Marketing and Clint Miller as Vice President of Sales.

As the vice president of marketing at ProfitBricks, Toll will oversee the company’s North American marketing programs. Miller will leverage his twenty-five years of sales experience at hosting, content delivery and infrastructure technology companies to lead the North and South American sales team.

CareCloud Appoints Edwin Miller VP of Product Management

CareCloud, a provider of web-based practice management, electronic healthcare record (EHR), revenue cycle management and medical billing software and services, has hired Edwin Miller as its new Vice President of Product Management. In his new role, Mr. Miller will oversee all development of CareCloud’s existing EHR and forthcoming mobile offerings for the physician practice market. He brings decades of product development and engineering experience to CareCloud, most recently through leadership positions at Practice Fusion and athenahealth.


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Oracle’s Acquisition of Xsigo: The Drive to Integrated Stacks

Network management is important to cloud computing success. Software defined networks and data center fabrics all help in helping manage cloud initiatives better.
Acquisitions in the cloud computing space have been picking up recently as technology companies look to offer end-to-end solutions. It also shows that for large companies, innovation through acquisition is becoming more popular as a way to adapt to changing technology trends. Cloud acquisitions typically fall into the Software as a Service (SaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) category.

Oracle has been a voracious cloud acquirer with a number of SaaS acquisitions like RightNow, Taleo and Vitrue. SAP has also been adding to their SaaS portfolio with purchases of Ariba and SuccessFactors. IBM, which typically claims that it is not in the “application” space, has been adding to its SaaS portfolio with business analytics solutions like DemandTec and Emptoris. SaaS solutions are a great way to open cloud markets to large technology companies as the subscription model allows a low entry point for new customers.

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Oracle Exalogic 2.0 adds cloud management feature

By Tony Baer, Prinicpal Analyst, Ovum Enterprise Solutions

Summary

Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud 2.0 (“Exalogic”) adds features that will make the system better suited for its role as a cloud deployment target. It adds server virtualisation capabilities that accelerate provisioning and deliver the expected elasticity.

A new lightweight virtualisation engine optimised for Oracle workloads improves application performance. This comes atop incremental enhancements to existing features such as Oracle Exabus.

The importance of the 2.0 release is not necessarily in the individual improvements, but rather in how they help the system live up to its original “elastic cloud” branding.

So far, Oracle has successfully sold Exalogic to its installed base, primarily as the middleware complement to the Exadata database platform and as the infrastructure for its business applications.

Oracle has promoted the “soft” business benefits, such as improved responsiveness and efficiency that comes from its engineered systems, but it …

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"Dallas" & The Cloud Drive – Wow!

The words “cloud drive” in the revival of “Dallas” jumped screaming from my TV screen. Said drive was mentioned twice in the season’s recent finale, and once the week prior. The prop was used, among other things, to send a guy to jail, charged with murder (among other things).

No specific product was mentioned, but as the storyline had video that was said to be transmitted automatically from a character’s phone to other devices, I’ll assume the character used Apple’s iCloud.

In any case, this must be the fastest transition ever for an IT industry term to make that leap from geek reporting to big-time Hollywood production. (And yes, I’m putting the “Dallas” revival in the latter category, as it has apparently drawn pretty strong ratings from its location on TNT, and will definitely be back in January.)

I was further astonished that cloud computing made it onto a self-consciously retro show like this “Dallas” revival, which took pains to recreate the original show opening, featured almost every key actor still alive from when the original ended more than 20 years ago, and had a truly merciful lack of whiz-bang technology featured throughout the show.

Oh yes, an email played a key role in driving the plot. But hey, we had email in the 80s. And there was some texting. But I don’t recall Facebook being mentioned, or Google, or YouTube. No ostentatious display of WiFi. No “gesture” interface, no biometric security, no yammering about pods and pads.

A thumb drive seemed to be the most leading-edge tech on the show – until that initial, breathtaking mention of the “cloud drive.”

I mean, one of the show’s main plot devices was the use of an old-fashioned, sleazy Private Eye poking his nose into things, for crying out loud. Another key plot twist involved a microphone strategically placed on one of the character’s bodies and what looked like a Soviet-era recording device.

And then – a “cloud drive.” Wow.

I count “Dallas” as one of my guilty pleasures, and can seriously say that JR Ewing, as created by Larry Hagman is one of the two or three greatest characters in the history of television. Mr. Hagman is 80 years old now, and has had some serious health scares in real life. Without him, the show simply cannot exist.

So come to think of it: How great is it, that even today in 2012, acting, an ancient human talent, can still trump technology?

Oh, rule you cloud drive! Sing your siren song! Dance your delirious dance! But remember, in the end, you just can’t beat JR. Nobody can.

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Cloud Services, Control Panels, Guest Blog, Plesk Panel 11, SMB

Getting Smart About Webhosting Bundles (Guest Blog)

 

Parallels is happy to present a guest blog post from Infratel CEO, Bryan Goode. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.

 

All Add-Ons Are Not Created the Same

 

It is now common to hear industry leaders urge hosting companies to bundle additional services with hosting packages.  Research has consistently shown that adding new services to hosting plans increases average revenue per user [ARPU] and has a positive effect on customer churn rates.

 

But wait, you say – where do I start?  How do I decide what services to bundle with my hosting packages?  Which add-ons best help me increase ARPU and reduce churn?  

 

At Infratel, we believe that you should consider two criteria when deciding which add-ons to include in a bundle:

 

  1. 1) Is this add-on related to the main, anchor product in my hosting plan?
  2. 2) Is this add-on relevant to customers who buy my hosting plans?

 

With these criteria in mind, we’re pleased to announce Infratel ClickConnect for Websites, the ideal add-on for webhosting bundles.  

 

Infratel ClickConnect for Websites is built specifically to be bundled with webhosting plans and allows your users to add ‘Click to Call’ functionality to a site in 30 seconds or less – helping your small business users convert more website visitors into customers!  

 

To make the opportunity even better, Infratel ClickConnect is the entryway into additional telephony services for your customers.   

 

Recent research shows that small businesses truly need a professional phone presence and fewer than 30% of your small business webhosting users have this type of a presence – representing a huge untapped market for the webhosting industry.

 

Get started today bundling Infratel ClickConnect for Websites with your webhosting plans.  To celebrate the Plesk 11 launch, for a limited time we’re offering you a FREE subscription for your own use when you bundle Infratel ClickConnect for Websites with your webhosting plans.  Click here to contact us today!

 

Bryan Goode

 

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Applications in the Cloud

“We have a silo-free development, a runtime environment that allows you to build new applications in the cloud,” noted Ash Massoudi, CEO of NextAxiom Technology, in this interview with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan at our Times Square Studio in New York City.
Cloud Expo 2012 Silicon Valley, November 5-8, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA, will feature technical sessions from a rock star conference faculty and the leading Cloud industry players in the world

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Infosys Unveils Cloud Ecosystem Hub

New solution helps businesses accelerate time to market of cloud services by 40 percent.
Infosys has launched the Infosys Cloud Ecosystem Hub so enterprises can better create, adopt and govern cloud services across a business ecosystem.
The move shows the demand for managing “cloud of cloud” services, and the rapidly growing need for gaining better control over hybrid services delivery — for both businesses and cloud services providers. I think Infosys’s move also shows that one-size-fits-all public clouds will become behind-the-scenes utilities, and that managing services in a business ecosystem context is where the real value will be in cloud adoption.
Infosys says that businesses can accelerate time to market of cloud services by up to 40 percent, improve productivity by up to 20 percent, and achieve cost-savings of up to 30 percent by using it’s Cloud Ecosystem Hub.

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Apple, Icloud, Steve Wozniak, Storage

Woz on Cloud Dangers Started a Useful Conversation

When Apple co-founder and all-around tech icon Steve Wozniak was quoted as saying he expected horror stories from the cloud, and in the wake of a cautionary tale of total cloud hack horror from xxxxxx, it set off a useful round of comment.

Yesterday we had a guest post on the topic.

Today you might read the I,  Cringley take, which as can be expected is full of his usual cobbled-together, but pretty effective, roll-your-own solutions.


CareCloud, EHR, Electronic health record, Health Care, Medical, Partnerships, Texas

Lone Star MSO, CareCloud Partner to Offer Cloud-Based Software and Services to Texas Physicians

CareCloud, a provider of web-based practice management, electronic healthcare record (EHR), revenue cycle management and medical billing software and services, today announced that it has partnered with Lone Star MSO, a practice management services organization in Texas, to offer CareCloud’s cloud-based software and services to medical practice clients. Lone Star MSO currently services hundreds of medical group clients throughout Texas and multiple other states and will look to further assist them in optimizing financial and clinical outcomes through CareCloud’s platform and services.

“We are extremely excited to partner with CareCloud and offer their cloud-based software and services to our clients across Texas and the nation during a time when medical groups of all sizes are requiring more flexible and cost effective ways to streamline their administrative operations and the patient care they deliver,” said Trey W. Schroeder, Managing Director of Lone Star MSO. “We have always looked to bring the industry’s leading web-based practice management technologies to our clients. It has become clear that CareCloud’s practice management and EHR offerings stand out from others in the industry and will be a tremendous help to administrators and caregivers as they navigate an increasingly complex healthcare regulatory environment while delivering the best care possible.”

Under the terms of the agreement, Lone Star MSO will be a value-added reseller of CareCloud’s full suite of cloud-based physician practice management products at pre-negotiated pricing to Lone Star MSO clients. CareCloud currently offers medical groups its Meaningful Use certified electronic health record solution, CareCloud Charts, which is fully integrated with the Company’s practice management offering, CareCloud Central. Additionally, Lone Star MSO customers will be able to leverage CareCloud Concierge, a complete revenue cycle management solution that utilizes dynamic rules intelligence software, expert live support and real time business analytics and reporting tools to help medical practices increase collections and streamline operations.

“Lone Star MSO continues to stand apart in its ability to bring innovative services and technology to physicians across Texas and the nation. By partnering with CareCloud, Lone Star MSO will help its clients grow their practices and deliver the best patient care possible,” said Albert Santalo, Chairman and CEO of CareCloud. “We are thrilled to team with Lone Star MSO and its management team as we look to expand the nationwide presence of our cloud-based platform to help physicians take advantage of new government incentive programs and navigate emerging payer reimbursement methodologies.”