All posts by Richard

Enterprise storage, IceWEB, Intellectual Property, Patent application, Storage

IceWEB Files Patent for IceSTORM Operating System

Image representing IceWEB as depicted in Crunc...

IceWEB Inc. today announced that the Company has filed an application with the United States Patent & Trademark Office (Application #: 61714375) entitled “Single Management Pane for Unified Storage” to secure one of its most valuable assets, the IceSTORM Operating System.

“Our breakthrough ‘single pane of glass’ approach provided by all of IceWEB’s Unified Storage products is built upon our IceSTORM technology. Protecting this key intellectual property is a great step forward for our company,” said Rob Howe, CEO of IceWEB. “Our growing base of customers understands that IceSTORM makes our solutions more useful, more easily trained upon, and more quickly and easily expandable. That’s real core value.” Howe said.


Document imaging, Imaging, iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, Loan, Loan origination, Mobile

Capsilon Provides New Mobile Application for Mortgage Lenders to Access Loan Documents

Capsilon, a provider of cloud-based document sharing, imaging and collaboration solutions for mortgage lenders, announced the release of its Katalyst mobile app for Apple iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad, which addresses mortgage lenders’ need for a cloud-based imaging solution available to them from any location, at any time.

With the Katalyst mobile app, authorized users can access and view electronic loan folders from a variety of Apple devices. The mobile app enables retail loan officers in branch offices, regional account executives, production managers and other on-the-go users to better participate in the loan origination process while out of the office. The solution gives users the ability to review documents and the documents’ status while traveling, providing better and more timely information and support to customers.

“Capsilon’s mobile solution transforms the loan origination process for mortgage professionals by greatly enhancing their productivity through a reliable document management system,” said Sanjeev Malaney, chief executive officer at Capsilon. “At last, mortgage professionals can instantly see up-to-date loan documents, wherever they are, whenever they need them.”

Capsilon’s new mobile app works with Katalyst 8, the newest version of the company’s cloud-based document imaging and collaboration platform to ensure all loan information is accurate. Katalyst mobile works in conjunction with the Web-browser and desktop interfaces, providing ubiquitous access and meeting the needs of all user types to streamline document management through the entire lending process.

The recently enhanced Katalyst 8 solution includes a re-architected image conversion system that dramatically reduces errors during file intake, a more sophisticated automated document recognition capability that provides faster and more reliable document naming and filing and a new high-performance desktop application for employees who access documents frequently or for longer periods of time. Capsilon’s secure cloud-based platform provides lenders with the assurance that borrower information is protected while documents are accessed.


Amazon AWS, App Status Dashboard, Azure, Google, Outage Alert, Tools

Most Popular: App Status Dashboard of Dashboards

Since we introduced our App Status Dashboards page, it has proven to be our most popular offering. As most of what we offer is news that quickly gets stale that’s not surprising, though it is sort of heartening that something with serious rather than humorous intent is finally edging out our most popular post ever.

How can we make it better? Send any ideas to richard at cloud news daily dot com.


ChannelAdvisor, Funding, Kabbage, Partnerships, Working capital

ChannelAdvisor, Kabbage Partnership Offers Retailers Access to Capital

ChannelAdvisor, a  provider of cloud-based e-commerce solutions that enable retailers to increase global sales, today announced its partnership with Kabbage Inc., an online provider of working capital for small businesses. This collaboration offers ChannelAdvisor customers direct access to a new source of funding in time for the 2012 holiday season.

Together, ChannelAdvisor and Kabbage offer online retailers a competitive advantage through the combination of advanced e-commerce software and immediate access to capital. Online retailers are able to use Kabbage to apply for and secure funding online within minutes. The funds can be used to stock up on inventory, expand channels, launch new marketing initiatives, hire staff and much more.

“ChannelAdvisor creates strategic partnerships that help retailers ramp up their sales, and our recent partnership with Kabbage provides our customers capital to fund their business needs,” said ChannelAdvisor Director of Business Development Jordan Weinstein. “Both ChannelAdvisor and Kabbage are key resources for any retailer who is looking to increase their marketplace volume. This opportunity is especially beneficial right before the holiday season, giving retailers a means to invest in new initiatives or inventory that will accelerate their sales in the coming months.”

“Many retailers are growing rapidly but lack the capital to truly take their business to the next level,” said Kabbage Chairman Marc Gorlin. “ChannelAdvisor is in the business of helping retailers grow and so are we, which is why this partnership makes so much sense. Together we are giving entrepreneurs access to the most trusted source of funding, used by thousands of small businesses to realize their growth potential.”

This new partnership has already benefitted Empire Security Cameras, a joint ChannelAdvisor and Kabbage customer, which is using Kabbage funds to implement advanced technology in order to efficiently scale its business.

“Connecting with Kabbage was a quick and easy process that allowed us to secure the funding that we needed to expand our online operations,” said Empire Security Cameras CEO Kyle Korona. “Traditional lending programs are not a fit for our business model, so being able to access much needed cash within minutes immediately changed our strategy. We were able to invest further in ChannelAdvisor software and additional marketing programs that ensure we are one of the most competitive security camera retailers on the internet.”


ISO/IEC 27001, New York, StratoGen, Virtualization, VMware

StratoGen Adds New York VMware Hosting, Offers Discount

StratoGen today announced the immediate availability of its latest cloud location in New York, promoting it with an offer of a 33% discount for clients that sign up before the end of November 2012.

“We are really excited to bring our unique VMware hosting solutions to the East Coast.” said Karl Robinson, Vice President of Sales. “Everything we do is driven by the needs of our clients and this expansion is no different.  We built the platform to extremely high standards to ensure our clients’ business critical applications perform exceptionally well and are available 100% of the time. Our no compromise approach meant utilizing top end NetApp SANs and HP Blade systems to give the kind of performance that will leave others reeling.”

StratoGen cloud locations offer an enterprise grade service allowing customers to self-manage their hosted VMware infrastructure through the StratoGen control panel. In addition to deploying elastic servers or VMware appliances; clients can use the control panel to integrate with their local systems (including corporate authentication), build out complex networks, firewalls and even site to site VPNs.

StratoGen also holds SSAE 16 Type II data center certification and ISO 27001 security credentials.


Actional, Aurea, M&A Activity, Progress, Savvion, Sonic, Trilogy

Trilogy Enterprises Acquiring Four Progress Software Businesses to Form New Company

The software investment arm of Trilogy Enterprises, one of the largest privately held enterprise software companies in the world, today announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire four Progress Software businesses – Sonic, Savvion, Actional and DXSI. Trilogy will combine the businesses to form the core of a new “best of breed” intelligent business process, application, and data management company. The new company will be called Aurea Software and will be headed by enterprise software industry veteran Scott Brighton. Brighton currently serves as President of Trilogy Enterprises.

“The promise of intelligent business process, application, and data management – and the ability to provide real-time insights on complex business processes across the cloud, mobile, and social – is the most exciting idea to emerge in the business process management space since its inception,” said Scott Brighton, Aurea CEO. “With Aurea, our goal will be to take these market leading, enterprise-class products and place a renewed focus on creating the next generation iBPMS – with a specific emphasis on enabling critical, high-value business processes in key vertical markets.”

Aurea will adopt the Trilogy model of high customer touch. “Our strategy will center around an extraordinary level of customer focus through a program we call 100% Customer Success. Aurea’s customers should expect a marked increase in the level of investment in and attention paid to them. I plan to meet personally with each and every customer over the first six months of the company’s formation,” said Brighton.

“We will inherit a strong and talented team from Progress that will form the core of Aurea, and we will focus on adding critical resources that will drive customer impact across Account Management, Development, Support, and Professional Services,” added Brighton.


Google, Network Neutrality, Series of tubes, Ted Stevens

Photo Evidence From Google: Apparently the Internet Actually IS a Series of Tubes

The late Senator Ted Stevens famously claimed the Internet was “A series of tubes” when speechifying on Network Neutrality. His maladroit metaphor immediately became a meme. Now, from a first-ever tour of a Google data center comes this photo, which appears to show he was  right all along:

Google Data Center Inside Google Data Center. It’s full of tubes!

[Image: Connie Zhou / Google]


CA Technologies, Citrix, Citrix Systems, Citrix XenApp, Dell, Desktop virtualization, Partnerships, Virtualization, Webinar/Webcast/Presentation

News shorts from Citrix Synergy Barcelona (October 17-19)

CENTERM Exhibiting Cloud Terminal

CENTERM will exhibit its new desktop cloud terminal B20 and mobile cloud terminal CT Pad2, calling it “…a major step forward as the firm demonstrates its latest technological achievement in System-on-Chip (SoC) and Power-over-Ethernet (POE) after CENTERM made its first foray into the US and European markets when it announced the GM810 cloud terminal at Citrix Synergy San Francisco 2012 in May.”

The GM810 is certified as Citrix HDX Ready and ready to ship now.

CA, Citrix Partner

CA Technologies and Citrix announced that they are partnering to “help enterprises and service providers increase agility and productivity by providing additional management and monitoring capabilities on top of Citrix cloud and desktop virtualization solutions.”

New Mobile Enterprise Solutions

Citrix unveiled the next phase of its strategy to enable the mobile enterprise. With the advent of consumerization, mobility and the cloud, an increasingly mobile workforce is looking for easier ways to work the way they want – with anyone, from any location, on any device. With today’s announcements, Citrix gives customers of all sizes the Power to Say Yes to consumer-inspired mobile workstyles with an expanding portfolio of solutions that give employees the freedom and flexibility they want, combined with the security and control businesses need. Today’s announcements make it easier for companies of all sizes to go mobile – empowering employees to interact securely with any combination of data, apps and devices – then bringing it all together in a seamless, integrated experience for end users.

Dell Desktop Virtualization Solutions with Citrix Products

Dell announced new additions and enhancements to its end-to-end cloud client computing portfolio. The solutions, which are specific to Citrix-based IT environments and now available in the US and Europe, are “…easy to select, deploy, and support, and deliver a cost effective and highly secure user experience to any device anywhere.”

Dell unveiled new vStart for VDI Citrix XenDesktop 5.6 reference architectures. Available in two configurations, vStart for VDI 50 and vStart for VDI 1000 are pre-engineered, pre-built and pre-integrated converged solutions that include Dell’s PowerEdge servers, EqalLogic or Compellent storage, PowerConnect or Force10 networking, Dell Wyse T10, Dell Wyse Xenith Pro and now Dell Wyse Xenith 2 thin- and zero-clients and management plug-ins. These VDI infrastructure solutions leverage XenDesktop and help organizations achieve benefits of desktop virtualization in a rapid, highly secure manner.

Dell is also updating its DVS Simplified Appliance this month to specifically address the cost and complexity challenges of virtual desktop adoption with new flexible server form factors, support for new hypervisors and additional new capabilities.

Citrix outlines strategy

Citrix unveiled the next stage of its strategy to help enterprises and service providers of all sizes deliver business-ready cloud services. Citrix revealed that Project Avalon will be delivered in two releases – code named Excalibur and Merlin.

The Excalibur release, available this quarter as a tech preview, will feature “…advancements in simplicity, scalability and rich multi-media services needed to deliver Windows apps and desktops to millions of new consumer style mobile devices. Excalibur will dramatically simplify the management of virtual apps and desktops, giving Citrix XenApp® and Citrix XenDesktop® customers a single unified way to design and deliver any mix of virtual applications and desktops from a common management console, and deliver them to end users with any mix of virtual delivery technologies.”

The Merlin release, available as a tech preview in the first half of next year, will “…bring cloud-style orchestration, self-service and deployment flexibility to XenApp and XenDesktop by integrating proven technology from products like Citrix CloudPlatform™ and Cloud Portal™. As a result, customers will be able to rapidly deploy personalized Windows apps and desktops in a flexible, private cloud environment across single or multiple sites, and utilize public clouds in a “capacity on demand” fashion to support fluctuating business needs.”


Amazon AWS, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, Data center, Hardware, Servers

Contrarian: Building, Colocating Your Own Servers, No Cloud Involved

Jeff Atwood has a great post at Coding Horror talking about his penchant for building his own servers to rack at a colo. It tries to compare to the Amazon Ec2 alternative, all the while admitting it’s pretty much apples and oranges.

I want to make it clear that building and colocating your own servers isn’t (always) crazy, it isn’t scary, heck, it isn’t even particularly hard. In some situations it can make sense to build and rack your own servers, provided …

  • you want absolute top of the line server performance without paying thousands of dollars per month for the privilege
  • you are willing to invest the time in building, racking, and configuring your servers
  • you have the capital to invest up front
  • you desire total control over the hardware
  • you aren’t worried about the flexibility of quickly provisioning new servers to handle unanticipated load
  • you don’t need the redundancy, geographical backup, and flexibility that comes with cloud virtualization

It’s worth reading in its own right, but also because he does a pretty good job of outlining the pros and cons of cloud versus self-hosting. It’s also good thing to remember that no matter how “virtual” we get there’s still gotta be a bunch of hardware somewhere to make it all go.


EHR, Electronic health record, iPhone, Medical, Mobile, Nuance, Nuance Communications, Speech recognition, Voice

Nuance Adds Voice to Epic Mobile Electronic Health Record Apps

Nuance Communications, Inc.  today announced that Epic electronic health record (EHR) customers can now use voice-enabled clinical information capture through Epic Haiku for the iPhone™ and Canto for the iPad™.

“Epic’s mobile applications provide valuable EHR access both inside and outside the hospital or clinic environment,” said Dr. Jeffrey Westcott, medical director, Cardiac Catherization Lab, Swedish Medical Center. “For me, it’s important to have the on-the-go accessibility provided by tablets and smartphones. Using voice recognition to document a note in Haiku or Canto allows me to seamlessly dictate the patient narrative into the electronic healthcare record using a workflow that suits my style and ensures my focus can remain on patients.”

Nuance’s cloud-based, medical voice recognition builds off of its proven success with the more than 450,000 clinicians worldwide who use Nuance’s Best-in-KLAS clinical documentation solutions on the desktop every day. By leveraging the existing desktop-focused interface, Nuance enables Haiku and Canto customers to connect to Nuance Healthcare’s voice recognition in the cloud. This connectivity will provide maintenance-free access and automatic updates of personal speech profiles, medical vocabularies and user-defined shortcuts. Customers can also enter progress notes, histories and physical exams via voice.

“Clinicians’ work lives are not conducive to a desk and chair; they need the flexibility of a mobile environment to support their workflow – between exam rooms, clinics and hospitals – and all at a moment’s notice,” said Janet Dillione, executive vice president and general manager, Nuance Healthcare. “Still, issues surrounding the adoption of mobile technologies remain, including limitations surrounding laborious touchscreen keyboards. With voice-enabled mobile EHR applications, clinicians can enjoy the benefits of the Nuance-powered functionality anytime, anywhere.”