All posts by Richard

Amazon AWS, Amazon S3, Amazon Web Services, amazonglacier, CloudBerry Lab, Glacier, Storage

CloudBerry Explorer Adds Amazon Glacier Support

CloudBerry Lab today released CloudBerry Explorer v.3.6, an application that allows users to manage files in Amazon S3 just as they would on their local computers.

In the new release CloudBerry S3 Explorer comes with support for Amazon Glacier, the recently introduced extremely low-cost storage.

From the new release CloudBerry S3 Explorer users can access and manage Amazon Glacier storage. Users can create vaults, move data to vaults and request to download them back to their computer. Users can create vaults in any of the available AWS regions.

Amazon Glacier is supported by both versions of CloudBerry Explorer: Freeware and PRO. Freeware version offers basic storage management capabilities such as browsing, creating, and deleting files, archives, vaults and uploading content from your PC to Glacier storage and vice versa. CloudBerry Explorer Freeware is available for download at http://www.cloudberrylab.com/free

PRO version offers some advanced features over Freeware version. It costs $39.99 per license and available for download at http://www.cloudberrylab.com/pro


Open Source, OpenStack, OpenStack Foundation, Rackspace, VMware

OpenStack Launches as Independent Foundation

OpenStack  today announced the launch of a new, independent OpenStack Foundation that will continue to promote the development, distribution and adoption of the OpenStack cloud software. As the independent home for OpenStack, the Foundation has already attracted more than 5,600 individual members, secured more than $10 million in funding and is ready to fulfill the OpenStack mission of becoming the ubiquitous cloud computing platform.

The goal of the OpenStack Foundation is to serve developers, users, and the entire ecosystem by providing a set of shared resources to grow the footprint of public and private OpenStack clouds, enable technology vendors targeting the platform and assist developers in producing the best cloud software in the industry.

“The launch of the OpenStack Foundation is not only an important milestone for our community, but a defining moment for the open cloud movement,” said Jonathan Bryce, Executive Director of the OpenStack Foundation. “When you look at what this community has done to innovate and make cloud technologies accessible, as well as make open source synonymous with cloud computing, you understand why huge technology industry leaders and users across the world are placing their bets on OpenStack. The opportunity for OpenStack to become the open source standard for cloud computing is real.”

Like the software, membership within the OpenStack Foundation is free and accessible to anyone. Members are expected to participate in the OpenStack community through technical contributions or community building efforts.

Growth of the OpenStack platform continues on an upward trajectory. Founded in July 2010 by Rackspace and NASA with the support of 25 companies and a few dozen developers, OpenStack has since grown to more than 180 participating companies and 550 contributing developers producing six software releases in a little over two years.

To date, Rackspace has been leading and investing in community management activities, but a year ago the company announced plans to establish an independent Foundation, recognizing the community was thriving and ready for a permanent home. Rackspace has now transitioned management activities and contributed the OpenStack trademark to the new Foundation, creating even greater opportunity for diverse contributors and a vibrant ecosystem necessary for long-term success.

“Since its inception, we knew a foundation was the ultimate goal for OpenStack,” said Lew Moorman, President of Rackspace. “Today, we are proud to finalize the process by donating the assets, handing over community management and giving the OpenStack trademark to the OpenStack Foundation.”

In April 2012, intended Platinum and Gold Member companies formed a Drafting Committee to produce a set of Bylaws and legal documents for community review. In July 2012, 5,000 individuals and eighteen companies ratified the Foundation Bylaws and legal documents by signing up as members. Currently, the Foundation has eight Platinum Members including AT&T, Canonical, HP, IBM, Nebula, Rackspace, Red Hat and SUSE, and thirteen Gold Members including CCAT, Cisco, Cloudscaling, Dell, DreamHost, Mirantis, Morphlabs, NetApp, Piston Cloud Computing, Yahoo!, with Intel, NEC and VMware joining in September. Additional new companies who have begun supporting the Foundation as corporate sponsors include Brocade, eNovance, Gale Technologies, GridCentric, Huawei, Internap, Metacloud, PayPal, RiverMeadow Software, Smartscale Systems, Transcend Computing and Xemeti.

The Individual, Gold and Platinum members each make up a third of the Board of Directors, which provides strategic and financial oversight of Foundation resources and staff. Alan Clark, Director of Industry Initiatives, Emerging Standards and Open Source at SUSE, was elected Chairman of the Board, and Lew Tucker, Vice President and CTO of Cloud Computing at Cisco, was elected Vice Chairman of the Board.

“Our priorities and vision for the Foundation include strengthening the ecosystem, accelerating adoption and empowering the community to deliver the best cloud software out there,” said Alan Clark, Chairman of the Board. “OpenStack’s popularity and industry momentum calls for a solid operational foundation. The new board of directors is feverishly working to ensure that the Foundation is structured with the right executive leadership, staff, fiduciary models and controls all while looking to the priorities and vision for the Foundation. I am honored to serve and support this tremendously innovative community.”

“The OpenStack Foundation represents a new era of establishing open source standards for cloud computing based on multi-vendor collaboration,” said Lew Tucker, Vice Chairman of the Board. “The evolution of OpenStack to an independent foundation is a landmark achievement that reinforces the growing momentum and industry support that has galvanized around this organization and its mission.”

Separate of the Board, the fully elected OpenStack Technical Committee – an evolution of the Project Policy Board – will steward the technical direction of OpenStack software development and includes elected Project Technical Leads from each of the core software projects. Tim Bell, Operating Systems and Infrastructure Services Group Leader at CERN, was appointed by the Board of Directors to help establish a new User Committee, created to represent a broad set of enterprise, academic and service provider users with the Technical Committee and Board of Directors.

Led by Executive Director, Jonathan Bryce, the Foundation is hiring 10-12 employees who, under the strategic direction of the Board, will help carry out the OpenStack mission. Specific responsibilities include coordinating the project’s infrastructure, such as systems for testing the software at scale, community building activities, and managing the OpenStack trademark, which was transferred from Rackspace following the first board meeting.

Meet the new community leaders and learn more about the Foundation at the next OpenStack Summit, October 15 – 18, in San Diego, CA.


Customer Relationship Management, Dashboard, Sales intelligence

Cloud9 Simplifies, Secures Sales Reporting

Cloud9 today announced Cloud9 Sales Reports and Dashboards.

Either scheduled and delivered automatically, or accessed on-line, Cloud9’s Sales Reports and Dashboards delivers a broad range of sales reports – including those reports that are difficult to get from the CRM system. Cloud9 delivers a library of pre-defined reports, or users can create any type of customized sales report or dashboard. Reports include a complete history of every bit of sales data a customer cares to track.

As part of the Cloud9 Sales Performance Suite, Sales Reports and Dashboards leverages the single data warehouse Cloud9 pulls from corporate CRM, financial and incentive compensation systems, as well as other data records to provide secure historical and operational reporting with frequent refreshes and snapshots.

“Reporting is regarded as a necessary evil by many sales teams,” said Jim Burleigh, chief executive officer of Cloud9. “It’s a cumbersome process of knitting together data from separate corporate systems, which requires hours of administrative and management time better spent on focusing on future deals. Cloud9 Sales Reports and Dashboards simplifies the reporting process to put the historical information sales leaders need to make the right decisions to identify risk in the pipeline and to deliver on the forecast.”

Cloud9 Sales Reports and Dashboards is built on the Cloud9 analytics platform and takes full advantage of Cloud9’s patent-pending technology for storing and analyzing the full history of data from multiple sources. Cloud9 Sales Reports and Dashboards incorporates Cloud9’s unique tools for seeing historical trends in sales data into a reporting product that provides the following capabilities:

  • Pre-defined and customized sales reports: Saves time with a
    comprehensive library of pre-defined reports and templates – leverage
    Cloud9 to create any type of customized sales report and dashboard,
    automatically. Distributes reports and dashboard to provide unified
    sales intelligence and keep all stakeholders aligned.
  • Custom layouts and design: Provides simple but powerful design
    capabilities including a rich component library and rule-based
    formatting, so you can easily feature tables, charts, pivot tables,
    graphics and custom formulas in sales reports and dashboards. Single
    and multi-page dashboard reports offer unlimited custom layout
    possibilities.
  • Visualization of historical and operational data: Illustrates
    history, trends and patterns of success and failure to sales teams to
    drive performance at all levels of the organization. Brings
    information to life and turns it into actionable insight for business
    decision-making with vivid data visualization, including a wide array
    of graphical representations including column, line, pie, bar, area,
    scatter, contour, doughnut, bubble, radar and embedded sparc lines in
    both 2D and 3D.
  • Secure access to sales intelligence: Gives administrators
    fine-grain control over security and sharing of sales reports and
    dashboards to provide regulated, auditable cross-functional access for
    anyone in the organization. Leverage powerful subscription management
    capabilities for unlimited reports, users and schedules. Automatically
    monitor report availability and adoption patterns.

Cloud9 will be demonstrating its Cloud9 Sales Reports and Dashboards as well as its full Sales Performance Suite at this year’s Dreamforce 2012 conference, being held Sept. 18 – 21 at Moscone Center North, South and West 747 Howard St., San Francisco, Booth No. 500.

For more information about the Cloud9 Sales Reports and Dashboards, please visit http://www.cloud9analytics.com/products/sales-reports-and-dashboards.


Evolve IP, M&A Activity

Evolve IP Acquires Managed Communications Provider IPiphany

Evolve IP today announced that it has acquired the assets of IPiphany, a managed communications provider headquartered outside of Chicago, in Rolling Meadows, Ill.

Since 2001, IPiphany has been delivering managed IT, voice, and data services to the Midwest marketplace, and the company’s complementary products will allow for seamless customer integration without service interruption. After migrating to Evolve IP’s award-winning virtual private cloud, IPiphany customers will gain access to new cloud services such as virtual private cloud infrastructure, hosted VDI, data back-up, and cloud-based unified communications.

“We’re pleased to acquire an organization that shares our vision of delivering integrated cloud services via a single provider,” says Thomas Gravina, Chairman, Chief Executive Officer, and Co-Founder of Evolve IP. “We are actively looking to acquire companies like IPiphany, and will move quickly as opportunities present themselves.”

“Acquiring IPiphany will expand Evolve IP’s footprint by adding a local presence and heavy concentration of customers in the Midwest,” says Guy Fardone, COO and General Manager of Evolve IP. “We look to immediately and extensively grow this region with our award-winning cloud platform and product set.”

“We see this next step with Evolve IP as a major milestone in the company’s evolution,” says Pete Langas, President of IPiphany. “It will strengthen our ability to offer customers a best-in-class solution, while still allowing them to work with the same IPiphany team members they have come to trust. After migrating our services to Evolve IP’s award-winning virtual private cloud, customers will be on a platform that is directly owned and controlled by Evolve IP, providing them with greater stability, flexibility, and more services than ever before.”

For more information about Evolve IP’s suite of cloud services, visit www.EvolveIP.net. For more discussion about how cloud services can improve business, visit Cloud IQ.


AutoDesk, Business Intelligence, Business Processes, Jitterbit, Partnerships

Autodesk, Jitterbit Partner for Cloud Access to Product Lifecycle Data

 

Image representing Autodesk as depicted in Cr...

Autodesk, Inc. and Jitterbit have partnered to provide Autodesk PLM 360 the ability to integrate with on premise and cloud business applications. The relationship further strengthens Autodesk PLM 360’s position as the next generation cloud-based alternative for product lifecycle management.

Jitterbit’s cloud integration platform is a key component of a new suite of integration tools called Autodesk PLM 360 Connect, which helps customers to integrate their PLM and other cloud and enterprise business applications into one, seamless environment. The ability to easily move data across multiple systems further strengthens the value of Autodesk PLM 360, making the benefits of PLM available to anyone, anytime, anywhere.

“The combination of Autodesk PLM 360 and Jitterbit’s next generation cloud integration solutions allows companies of all sizes to realize a greater return on their technology investments in ERP, CRM or other proprietary business applications,” said George Gallegos, CEO at Jitterbit. “Companies will now have the ability to gather, analyze and utilize product or project data in a far more efficient manner than previously possible.”

“Autodesk PLM 360 Connect is a straightforward and cost-effective way to keep Autodesk PLM 360 tightly connected with data from other critical business systems,” said Buzz Kross, senior vice president, Design, Lifecycle and Simulation at Autodesk. “Jitterbit is a natural partner to match our nimble cloud-based approach. Our customers require integration that is powerful, quick, easy-to-use, and affordable.”

The combination of cloud-based PLM with a cloud-based enterprise application interface platform makes it easy for customers to map, build and manage an elegant integration solution in any application environment. Jitterbit’s intuitive graphical user interface means no software coding is required for integration. This “no coding” approach makes connections simple and easy to build and maintain for business analysts and administrators alike.

For additional information about the new suite of integration tools, Autodesk PLM 360 Connect, visit www.autodeskplm360.com.


Content Management, Font, Graphics, International Typeface Corporation, OpenType

Cloud-Based Font Solution Lets You Rent Your Typefaces

Monotype, a provider of typefaces, technology and expertise for creative applications and consumer devices, has introduced in beta its SkyFonts™ service, a revolutionary solution that expands creative freedom through cloud-based, rental access to fully functional fonts. Users are able to try thousands of fonts for free within any desktop application and rent selected fonts for as long as they’re needed.

“We believe customers will find SkyFonts to be very flexible, fluid and economical, with the ability to try fonts within actual jobs and then rent them for however long is necessary,” said Chris Roberts, vice president and general manager of Monotype’s e-commerce group. “Instead of the traditional approach of buying a perpetual license for a font that might be used only once for a single project, users now have the freedom to use any font for as long as they determine. SkyFonts has the potential to completely change the way people buy and use fonts.”

A video introduction of the SkyFonts service is available at www.skyfonts.com.

Based on patent-pending technology, SkyFonts consists of a system extension, which runs in the background of Macintosh® or Windows® machines to activate and deactivate OpenType® fonts downloaded from the SkyFonts portal. Users are able to see and select from thousands of Monotype® typefaces listed on the portal. More than 1,500 fonts from the company’s Monotype, Linotype®, ITC® and Bitstream® libraries are available during beta, with more fonts to be added over time. Rented fonts can sync automatically to up to five machines registered to a single SkyFonts account.

The SkyFonts service operates on a credit-based system, whereby credits are used to rent fonts on a daily or monthly basis. Users can also try fonts for free for five minutes. When the trial or rental period expires or if the fonts are not renewed, they’re removed automatically from the user’s system. Beta participants will receive credits free of charge that will expire at the conclusion of the beta, at which point SkyFonts credits will be available for purchase. Pricing information will be released in the coming months.


Gmail, Google, Google Chat, Messaging

Gmail Support: When You Don’t Have Chat in Gmail

Image representing Gmail as depicted in CrunchBase

This is perhaps off topic but I wanted to post it for others to find when they have the same problem I did.

Problem: you can’t get chat to open in Gmail.

Even if the icon for it is showing, clicking it does nothing.

The icon, usually in the lower left of the page:

Google Chat Icon

 

 

Google the problem and the best you will come up with is this page, which was no help to me.

Solution: close and reopen gmail. Then click the icon. BTW that can fix a lot of problems in gmail or calendar. I find both  can responding after a few days of being open in Chrome for OS X.


Citrix Systems, Facebook, Filesharing, Research, Social networking service, Twitter

Citrix Survey Shows Most Don’t Know What Cloud Computing Is

It should come as no surprise that when the general public doesn’t recognize or fully understand what’s behind a tech industry buzzword, and a recent survey on behalf of Citrix is a reminder:

A majority of Americans (54 percent) claim to never use cloud computing. However, 95 percent of this group actually does use the cloud. Specifically, 65 percent bank online, 63 percent shop online, 58 percent use social networking sites such as Facebook or Twitter, 45 percent have played online games, 29 percent store photos online, 22 percent store music or videos online, and 19 percent use online file-sharing. All of these services are cloud based. Even when people don’t think they’re using the cloud, they really are.

Read more.


Apprenda, Free, PaaS, Tools

ApprendaCloud Launches as a Free PaaS for .NET Developers

Image representing Apprenda as depicted in Cru...

Apprenda today launched a free, cloud version of its private Platform as a Service (PaaS) for .NET enterprise applications. With ApprendaCloud, .NET developers always have access to a free environment for individual projects or to experiment with the Apprenda platform without requiring a download and install of its private PaaS.

“On ApprendaCloud, developers always have a PaaS solution to build next-generation applications or cloud optimize existing enterprise applications,” said Sinclair Schuller, CEO of Apprenda. “At ApprendaCloud’s core is an easy way to educate the developer community on building cloud architected applications.”

Apprenda has made it dead simple for developers to familiarize themselves with a private PaaS solution, trusted by enterprises like Honeywell, AmerisourceBergen and Quest Software. ApprendaCloud includes easy, interactive tutorials that guide developers through building world-class enterprise applications as well as the most common PaaS scenarios – deploying an application, scaling application components, and more.

When applications on ApprendaCloud are market ready, users can download an on-premises install of Apprenda’s private PaaS. The Apprenda platform can be consumed as a downloadable installer, virtual machine images, licensed product or PaaS service.


appMobi, iOS, Mobile, PhoneGap, Tools

appMobis privateStack Gives Enterprises a Secure Cloud Backend for Mobile HTML5

 

Image representing appMobi as depicted in Crun...appMobi today announced privateStack, a licensable enterprise version of its industry-leading mobile HTML5 app development and cloud services stack. privateStack was created in response to overwhelming interest from businesses, organizations and government agencies that require complete end-to-end control of mobile app deployments for security reasons.

With the recent explosion of mobile smartphone and tablet devices, many enterprises want to create hybrid and Web-based mobile apps for a variety of audiences – sales staff, service technicians, executives, operations personnel and customers. Unfortunately, CTOs have legitimate concerns about data security, service quality and the difficulty of distributing corporate apps in public app stores. Unless they wanted to build it themselves, CTOs were forced to hold off on participating in this exciting trend. privateStack was created to address this need.

“While the consumer market for apps has skyrocketed along with explosive smartphone and tablet sales over the past few years, enterprises and government agencies who wanted to develop mobile apps with data security and deployment control have had no real way to do so,” said Dave Kennedy, appMobi CEO. “privateStack provides enterprises the mobile application management capabilities to develop and deploy apps using the same technology appMobi uses in its commercial cloud services. Ironically, privateStack illustrates how open Web technologies like HTML5 and the mobile Web can be used to create highly secure mobile solutions that can’t be duplicated in closed, vendor-owned mobile ecosystems such as those of Apple and Google.”

privateStack gives enterprise CTOs the ability to support native-quality, HTML5-based, cross platform mobile apps with complete control over hosting geography, security, gateways into corporate data silos and user authentication. For enterprises, hybrid apps are very appealing because they greatly simplify app creation and deployment. Unlike native app development, which requires programming in arcane languages like Objective C, existing corporate Web development teams can create hybrid apps using HTML5. Using privateStack, those apps can be built into iOS and Android store-ready apps or they can be deployed on secure corporate intranets, avoiding the complications of commercial app stores.

In addition to appMobi’s HTML5 development tools, which support hybrid app development using appMobi or PhoneGap, privateStack incorporates the entire appMobi cloud services platform which includes:

  • Authentication
  • Rich Media Push Messaging
  • Mobile App Analytics
  • Remote App Updates
  • In-App Purchasing
  • Gamification – Badges and Leaderboards
  • Social Network Interfaces

appMobi offers privateStack as an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) that gives enterprises world-class uptime and instant, effortless scalability. privateStack is the first mobile HTML5 backend to be offered on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) store as an installable AMI, and it is available in both managed and custom configurations. For customers who want to host privateStack in their own corporate data centers, enterprise source licensing is also available. More information is available at www.appmobi.com/privatestack.