All posts by Richard

Dell, M&A Activity, Quest, SonicWALL

Dell Acquiring Quest Software

Image representing Dell as depicted in CrunchBase

Dell and Quest Software today announced they have entered into a definitive agreement for Dell to acquire Quest, an IT management software provider offering a broad selection of solutions that solve the most common and most challenging IT problems.

Dell recently announced the formation of its Software Group to build upon its existing software expertise. The Dell Software Group will add to Dell’s enterprise solutions capability, accelerate strategic growth and further differentiate the company from competitors by increasing its solutions portfolio with Dell-owned intellectual property.

Quest’s family of software solutions and key technologies are strongly aligned with Dell’s software strategy. The acquisition provides critical components to expand Dell’s software capabilities in systems management, security, data protection and workspace management. In addition, Quest’s software portfolio is highly complementary to Dell’s scalable design approach to develop solutions that scale with customer needs. Some examples include:

  • The Quest One Identity and Access Management solution family adds to
    Dell’s very strong set of security assets with SonicWALL and
    Secureworks, creating a comprehensive set of security solutions to
    address important customer needs.
  • Quest’s Performance Monitoring solutions for applications, networks
    and databases address a rapidly growing need for our customers.
    Industry analysts have consistently ranked Quest Foglight as a leading
    application performance monitoring solution. Businesses of all sizes
    are looking to reduce their IT complexity and automate workloads for
    their IT departments. Customers worldwide leverage Foglight to
    continually monitor their IT environments, proactively identifying and
    remedying performance issues before they become bigger problems.
  • Quest’s Windows Server Management solutions complement Dell Services’
    rapidly growing application modernization practice with recently
    acquired Clerity Solutions and Make Technologies.
  • Effective database management is critical to the successful operation
    of most organizations. Quest’s Database Management capabilities offer
    a strong complement to Dell’s enterprise offering. Today, millions of
    DBAs, developers, and analysts around the world rely on Quest’s
    database management tools to simplify their work.

Quest has a diversified software portfolio and generated $857 million in global revenue based on its fiscal year 2011 results at gross margins of 86 percent and operating margins of 11 percent. Quest supports heterogeneous and next-generation virtualized environments across leading platform vendors. The addition of Quest, including its 1,500 software sales experts and 1,300 software developers, to Dell’s existing software expertise in systems management, security and cloud integration, is the foundation of a $1.2 billion software business, based on annual revenue.

Quest, established in 1987, is headquartered in Aliso Viejo, Calif. and serves more than 100,000 customers worldwide, including 87 percent of the Fortune 500. The company has approximately 3,850 employees and operates 60 offices in 23 countries.


Amazon AWS, Amazon Web Service, Outage Alert, Power outage, Service Health Dashboard

AWS Power-related Outage in Older Data Center Ends, Once Again Hits Single Center Customers

From the AWS Service Health Dashboard:

9:32 AM PDT Connectivity has been restored to the affected subset of EC2 instances and EBS volumes in the single Availability Zone in the US-EAST-1 region. New instance launches are completing normally. Some of the affected EBS volumes are still re-mirroring causing increased IO latency for those volumes.

As happened earlier this month the failure was apparently triggered by power systems failures. The US-EAST-1 data center in Virginia is Amazon’s oldest.

As in the past, the outage hurt customers relying on a single center.

Related articles


Amazon AWS, AWS Outage, Outage Alert, US-EAST-1

AWS US-EAST-1 Troubles

From the AWS Service Health Dashboard this morning:

7:45 AM PDT We are investigating possible connectivity issues for a small number of instances in a single Availability Zone in the US-EAST-1 Region.

8:11 AM PDT We can confirm network connectivity issues for some EC2 instances in the US-EAST-1 region. Customers may be experiencing network impairment or connectivity issues to their EBS volumes performing read/write operations. We are actively working to resolve this issue.

8:37 AM PDT We can confirm network connectivity issues for some EC2 instances in a single Availability Zone in the US-EAST-1 region. Customers may be experiencing impaired read/write access to their EBS volumes. New instance launches are also delayed. We are actively working to resolve this issue.


Health care provider, LifeWatch, Medical, Medicine, Mobile, Smartphone

LifeWatch V: Smartphone with Healthcare Sensors Built In

LifeWatch AG, a wireless cardiac monitoring service and home sleep test provider in the U.S.,  today released LifeWatch V, a healthcare smartphone. The smartphone allows patients as well as health- and wellbeing-conscious consumers to self-operate a wide range of embedded medical sensors, wellness-related applications, cloud-based services and 24/7 call center support.

By using the barely visible sensors on the phone’s frame, patients as well as health- and wellbeing conscious consumers can track, capture, collect and analyze their health and medical measurements anywhere anytime. The features include ECG, body temperature, blood glucose, heart rate, blood oxygen saturation, body fat percentage and stress levels (heart rate variability). All collected data can be retrieved from the cloud for a follow-up anytime anywhere. Users can thus take corrective action, plan their diets and activities, securely share the information with a health provider or family member, trend and analyze the data and more. Patients are also able to program the unit to remind them of their drug type, dose and intake time.

LifeWatch V was designed with a flexible service-product ecosystem in mind, allowing easy integration of services. The LifeWatch V handset unit includes a service enablement platform to support the transmission of medical data to be analyzed, evaluated and communicated to health professionals and call center personnel around the clock. The device wirelessly interacts with a cloud-based environment allowing users direct access to a wide range of valuable complementary medical and wellness related services.

LifeWatch intends to launch the healthcare solution smartphone world-wide. In the initial markets LifeWatch has identified several local partners to enter into strategic partnerships.


Backup, Disaster Recovery, Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity

Infographic: How Critical is a Business Backup?

BUMI, a provider of managed online backup and recovery solutions for small to mid-sized businesses,  announced the findings of its annual industry survey, which analyzed current approaches to data backup and recovery. The survey, which polled CEOs, business owners and IT professionals at small- to mid-sized firms, found that 98 percent of respondents felt that more than one day to restore data after an incident was unacceptable even though almost a quarter of respondents did not regularly check the restore process of their data backup operations.

Click for Original

 

“Backing up your data is only the first step in protecting your organization. What really counts is how quickly and effectively you can recover your information,” said BUMI CEO, Jennifer Walzer. “A common misconception is that once backups are put into place, you’re all set. Unfortunately, data backup is not a flawless process. Glitches occur and hardware fails. It’s important to routinely test backups so that you can catch problems before they become disasters, but most organizations just don’t have the time or resources.”

Survey Highlights:

  • A large number of organizations test their restore process infrequently if at all. Nearly 24 percent never test and 17 percent only test yearly. Of the organizations that test more regularly, 27 percent do so quarterly, 19 percent monthly, 12 percent weekly, and less than one percent test on a daily basis.
  • More than one-third (36%) of respondents have no idea how much an hour of downtime costs their organizations. Of the organizations that were able to place a dollar amount on downtime, 31 percent estimated the cost at thousands of dollars per hour. The rest valued it at hundreds of dollars (26%), hundreds of thousands of dollars (6%), and one million dollars or more (less than 1%), respectively.
  • Thirty percent of respondents felt that business continuity was the most important consideration in backing up their data. Twenty percent listed disaster recovery as their top priority, while the same number ranked compliance the highest. The remaining participants were mainly concerned with security (16%) and redundancy (13%).
  • Virtualization is playing a role in many of the survey participants’ disaster recovery methods. Forty-one percent of respondents already use virtualization and 31 percent plan to in the near future. The rest do not currently use virtualization and do not plan to.


Application programming interface, Business Processes, DocuSign, Electronic Signature, Partnerships

DocuSign Speeds Integration with New eSignature REST API

Image representing DocuSign as depicted in Cru...

DocuSign today launched a new eSignature REST API for its industry leading DocuSign Global Network. This innovative, visually driven API makes connecting with DocuSign’s eSignature Transaction Management platform faster and easier for customers and partners. Organizations leveraging the API can offer DocuSign eSignature convenience from existing or new business processes in just hours of development time instead of weeks – accelerating speed to results, reducing costs, and delighting customers.

“More developers are using DocuSign’s open eSignature integration framework to integrate into their existing business solutions and apps than any other eSignature solution,” said Grant Peterson, chief technology officer, DocuSign. “The release of our new eSignature REST API standard and toolkit dramatically shortens the time it takes to integrate and deploy DocuSign – no matter what systems or devices customers use to run their business.”

“The eSignature REST API is visually stunning and ready for enterprise use,” said Dave Messinger, community architect, Appirio. “We were encouraged with how quickly we were able to integrate DocuSign into our CloudSpokes architecture – taking us days to prototype solutions instead of weeks or months. It just works. We’re excited and encourage CloudSpoke’s developers to take a look.”

DocuSign’s new eSignature REST API standard is built to be open and extensible, and was developed in collaboration with a number of the world’s leading cloud-based companies, including Appirio, Box, Mashery, salesforce.com, and others. This new industry standard will continue to be enhanced based on developer, partner, and customer feedback.

“DocuSign’s new eSignature REST API will enable salesforce.com customers – as well as developers in our partner ecosystem – to quickly and easily integrate with DocuSign,” said Mike Rosenbaum, senior vice president, AppExchange & Force.com Operations, salesforce.com. “Enterprises are accelerating their move to the cloud with architectures built around open APIs, instead of dealing with servers and software.”

As an integral component of the DocuSign Cloud Partner Program, the DocuSign Developer Program provides resources to facilitate integrations of all kinds, including technical evangelists, a complete API, online community, and a developer program described by ProgrammableWeb as “the strongest of all the [electronic signature] providers researched.”

DocuSign’s new eSignature REST API Toolkit includes:

  • Step-by-Step
    API Walkthroughs     – A detailed, step-by-step
    visualization of the API call flows, function code examples, and
    detailed explanations of every step.
  • API
    Explorer     – Developer onboarding tool powered by Mashery
    I/O Docs that provides the specific methods and code needed to execute
    tasks and workflow.
  • Online Documentation – Robust documentation of the REST API and
    how it can be used to accelerate development.
  • Community Forums – Fully monitored and supported community site
    to get questions answered quickly. In addition, DocuSign will
    establish set ‘Office Hours’ during June and July to further support
    developers.

“Offering developers an API Explorer to get started quickly is a key element of DocuSign’s full-dimensional API program,” said Neil Mansilla, director of platform evangelism & partnerships, Mashery. “DocuSign did an extensive integration using Mashery I/O Docs. DocuSign’s impressive code contributions back to the project will benefit developers and the open source community.”

“We already have more than 5,000 active developer accounts using our existing APIs today,” said Roger Erickson, vice president for customer success, DocuSign. “The speed-to-value equation of our new standard is truly amazing, and we view our eSignature REST API as a ‘crossing the chasm’ moment for embedding DocuSign eSignature and workflow management into any business process or system.”

Customers and partners are already using DocuSign’s eSignature REST API to help accelerate transaction cycle times to increase speed to results, reduce costs, and enhance customer satisfaction with the easiest, fastest, most secure way to send, sign, track, and store documents in the cloud. “DocuSign has really made a step forward in helping developers with the new eSignature REST API,” said Martin Davey, executive vice president of Industry Solutions, Thunderhead.com. “The API walkthrough area provides a quick and simple introduction to using the services and the REST API allows us to send out documents for signature, get real-time status updates, and embed DocuSign within our apps.”

Companies and developers interested in learning more about the new eSignature REST API standard and toolkit, upcoming webcasts, and other API resources should visit the DocuSign Developer Center at www.docusign.com/developer-center.


Coalfire, Federal Information Security Management Act of 2002, Government, HITRUST

Coalfire Accredited as FedRAMP Third Party Assessment Organization

Coalfire Systems, Inc. announced today that it has achieved accreditation as a FedRAMP (Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program) Third Party Assessment Organization (3PAO).

The FedRAMP program supports the U.S. government’s objective to enable U.S. federal agencies to use managed service providers that enable cloud computing capabilities, and Coalfire is one of the first ten accredited 3PAO firms. With this certification, Coalfire is the only assessment firm authorized to conduct cloud assessments for the federal government (3PAO), healthcare industry (HITRUST certified) and the payment card industry (Qualified Security Assessor).

FedRAMP provides a standardized approach to security assessment, authorization, and continuous monitoring for cloud products and services. As a part of the FedRAMP process, cloud service providers (CSPs) must use a FedRAMP approved third party assessor to independently validate and verify that they meet the FedRAMP requirements.

“Moving to the cloud raises numerous security concerns for any business,” said Tom McAndrew, executive vice president, professional services at Coalfire. “For government agencies, these concerns can be even more sensitive since national security can be at risk. This accreditation further validates Coalfire’s expertise in cloud security and risk assessment and we look forward to working with CSPs on their FedRAMP initiative towards receiving an authority to operate (ATO).”

Receiving the accreditation of 3PAO means Coalfire will be able to validate the security and control implementations that CSPs must provide in order to work with and provide cloud services to federal agencies. 3PAOs are critical to the FedRAMP program, as they demonstrate the independence and competency of CSPs that host the government’s most crucial data.

In addition to demonstrating the requisite technical competency in FISMA and independence and quality management to achieve 3PAO accreditation, Coalfire has diverse leadership experience in additional vital compliance fields – in cloud and virtualization environments – such as PCI, HIPAA/HITECH and GLBA; backed with expert staff that includes former CIOs, CTOs and auditors. Coalfire staff are heavily experienced in those respective industry regulations and are located across the U.S. Coalfire has offices in seven major markets in the U.S. including the Washington, D.C. area.

FedRAMP implementation began earlier this month and will be done in phases – starting with 3PAOs assessing CSPs. Coalfire has already begun preparing agencies and cloud service providers for testing. The wave of activity is growing and includes assessments and penetration tests with interested CSPs this month. Inquiries for FedRAMP services can be made with Coalfire at 877-224-8077 or at http://coalfire.com/FedRAMP-3PAO.

For those interested in learning more about the FedRAMP certification process, Coalfire will be conducting a free webinar on July 10, 2012 at 2:00pm EDT / 11:00am PDT. Click here to register.


Linux, Open Source, Red Hat, Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Red Hat Delivers Advanced Tooling, Community Resources to Software Developers

Image representing Red Hat as depicted in Crun...

Red Hat, Inc. today announced it has expanded its Red Hat Enterprise Linux Developer Program with enhancements to its Developer Suite, including a new toolset for software developers worldwide. Through the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Developer Suite, Red Hat delivers the latest, stable open source developer tool versions at an accelerated cadence than that of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Developers now have access to a robust suite of tools with synchronized availability on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat OpenShiftTM, allowing developers to deploy applications freely to either environment.

“For Linux programmers, having ready access to the latest, stable development tools is key to taking advantage of new Linux advancements,” said Jim Totton, vice president and general manager, Platform Business Unit, Red Hat, Inc. “The Red Hat Enterprise Linux Developer Program makes it easy for developers to access industry-leading developer tools, instructional resources and an ecosystem of experts to help Linux programmers maximize productivity in building great Red Hat Enterprise Linux applications.”

Designed for many types of Linux developers, including Independent Software Vendors (ISVs), software solution providers, Systems Integrators (SIs), enterprise, and government software developers, the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Developer Suite enhances developer productivity and improves time to deployment by providing affordable access and updates to essential development tools. The latest, stable tooling can be used to develop applications on Red Hat Enterprise Linux whether on-premise or off-premise in physical, virtual and cloud deployments, and on OpenShift, the leading open Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS).

The Red Hat Enterprise Linux Developer Suite includes:

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux, variants, and related Add-On software for
    development use including Red Hat Enterprise Linux, High-Availability
    Add-On, Load Balancer Add-On, Resilient Storage Add-On, Scalable File
    System Add-On, High-Performance Network Add-On, Extended Update
    Support, and MRG Real Time and Smart Management Add-on.
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux Developer toolset, a collection of
    development tools to create highly scalable applications. Delivered as
    part of the Developer Suite, Red Hat plans to accelerate the release
    cadence of these tools to deliver the latest, stable open source
    developer tool versions on a separate life cycle from Red Hat
    Enterprise Linux releases.

The first version of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Developer Suite includes a toolset that makes developing Linux software applications faster and easier by allowing users to compile once and deploy to multiple versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Using the developer toolset, software developers can now develop Linux applications using the latest C and C++ upstream tools. These tools include the latest GNU Compiler Collection (GCC 4.7) with support for C and C++; the latest version of the GNU Project Debugger (GDB 7.4) with improvements to aid the debugging of applications; and the GNU binutils collection of binary developer tools, version 2.22, for the creation and management of Linux applications.

“The velocity of development is as high today as it has ever been, which means that developers are putting a premium on a toolchain that is current from libraries to compiler,” said Stephen O’Grady, Principal Analyst with RedMonk. “With its expanded Red Hat Enterprise Linux Developer Program and toolset, Red Hat aims to provide developers with just that.”

The self-supported Red Hat Enterprise Linux Developer Suite and the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Developer Support Subscriptions are available immediately worldwide. Red Hat customers and partners can join the developer online user group on Red Hat’s award-winning customer portal to access the extensive knowledgebase and recommended practices.


Florida, Government, Health Care, Health insurance, HIX, Medical, Partnerships, Xerox

Xerox to Build Health Insurance Marketplace for Florida Health Choices

Florida Health Choices, a corporation established by the state to improve access to health care, has selected Xerox to administer its Insurance Marketplace, a program designed to give small business and eligible individuals more flexibility in finding affordable health insurance and other services. The nine-year contract is valued at $68 million.

With partner CHOICE Administrators Exchange Solutions, Xerox will provide a cloud-based Web portal and online plan selection tool to give consumers and employers more information when making health insurance selections. The solution preserves the benefits of employer-sponsored insurance and eases the administrative burden for small businesses.

“We’re designing and supporting programs that increase access to health coverage for consumers,” said Will Saunders, group president, Government Healthcare Solutions, Xerox. “The solution we create in Florida will serve citizens and small business owners and help position the state as a leader in establishing a competitive and voluntary health insurance marketplace for small employers.”

Xerox will also provide eligibility determination and enrollment management services for the program, and operate a customer contact center to share information on marketplace offerings. These services will help Florida Health Choices handle the massive amounts of information involved with the marketplace quickly, efficiently and securely.

“We need a partner who can get a fully functional marketplace setup that is designed to serve Floridians now and into the future – delivering on both our short and long-term goals,” said Aaron Bean, chairman, board of directors, Florida Health Choices. “We’re confident Xerox will support us in establishing our marketplace quickly, while helping us to increase healthcare access to small business employees – one of our key priorities.”

Xerox has more than 40 years of experience working with government health agencies to enhance the efficiency of health programs and help ensure the health of citizens.


DataCore, Hosting, IT Management, IT service management, Partnerships, service provider, Storage hypervisor, Storage virtualization, VMware

DataCore Software Announces Pay-as-You-Serve Cloud Service Provider Program for Hosted IT Services

DataCore Software today announced that providers of hosted IT services may now rent DataCore’s SANsymphony-V storage hypervisor through the company’s Cloud Service Provider Program. Under the program, Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) pay for the use of the software monthly based on the amount of storage they serve versus having to purchase it outright. This allows participating providers to reduce capital expenditure and better align costs to revenue.

DataCore’s storage hypervisor software manages and protects hosted IT environments, providing a high performance, highly scalable, automatically tiered storage infrastructure upon which providers can confidently build and offer their hosted IT services.

The DataCore Cloud Service Provider Program goes a step further in the direction of “on demand” infrastructure with its “Pay-as-You-Serve” proposition to hosted IT service providers—they pay for the software as they use it, based upon the storage they serve to their subscribers.

“In order to offer the most competitive pricing for their services, CSPs and other hosting companies seek to lower capital expenditures and keep expenses and their timing aligned to revenue-producing activities,” said Carlos M. Carreras, vice president of alliances and business development, DataCore Software. “The DataCore storage hypervisor ‘software advantage’ gives us the unique ability to offer the kind of service provider program that other leading software companies, like VMware, have developed, but apply it to the storage-side of the infrastructure. Ideally tailored for the flexibility, efficiency and predictable expenses they seek.”

New cutting edge technologies will also be of interest to CSPs. These innovations designed to satisfy large scale, Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) requirements crucial to building robust cloud storage infrastructures are packaged in the company’s newest product, SANsymphony-V R9.0, aptly described as “The Storage Hypervisor for the Cloud.”

The storage hypervisor’s powerful storage management capabilities and interchangeable hardware design empowers hosters with great cost-savings flexibility, new levels of automation for increased resource productivity and a storage infrastructure that easily incorporates the industry’s latest innovations.

“The new DataCore CSP pricing model reduces our upfront costs – thereby enhancing our margins,” comments Philippe Merckel, CEO, MERCKEL SAS. “DataCore understands that as data centers move to the cloud in the form of virtual, private data centers, cloud platforms need the storage virtualization functionality that DataCore brings to the table with its storage hypervisor. The key, however, for CSPs lies in making the adoption of this technology cost-effective. That is what this Cloud Service Provider Program does. It makes it far easier for us to standardize on DataCore for storage virtualization because we pay as we go rather than paying for everything upfront. It fundamentally suits our own business model whereby our own clients lease our cloud platform.

The DataCore Cloud Service Provider Program is currently open only to providers of hosted IT services located in Europe; the program will be expanded to include North America and additional geographies over the next 90 days. For more up-to-date information about program eligibility and the program itself, please visit: http://www.datacore.com/Partners/cloud-service-providers/CSP-Program.aspx.