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Medidata Solutions to Show New Clinical Cloud Products, Enhancements at DIA

English: Medidata Solutions Logo

Medidata Solutions will showcase new products and features that broaden its clinical cloud platform at the upcoming Drug Information Association’s (DIA) Annual Meeting, June 24-28 in Philadelphia, Pa. Addressing new industry regulations, the need for broad safety reporting and improvements to site monitoring processes, these enhancements to Medidata’s comprehensive solutions will offer drug developers new capabilities for overcoming key research challenges.

“Sponsors are under more pressure than ever to cut costs, improve efficiency and adhere to increased regulations, requiring innovation and real-time operational analytics across the clinical research chain from concept to conclusion,” said Glen de Vries, president of Medidata Solutions. “We are continuously broadening our solution set to empower sponsors to improve their research clinical systems at every point in the clinical process, including trial planning, monitoring, site payments and safety.”

From booth #3101, Medidata will be providing demos of key products and new features to enable sponsors to achieve key goals, including:

  • Driving a New Monitoring Paradigm
    The company’s first
    solution for managing site quality and the latest addition to the
    Medidata Insights™ family of clinical business analytics offerings, Medidata
    Insights SQM™ combines advanced data visualization with seamless
    real-time data availability with the rest of Medidata’s platform to
    deliver turnkey site quality management – further enabling the
    industry’s shift to simplified remote monitoring of site and data
    quality resulting from the 2011 FDA clarification on source document
    verification (SDV).
  • Automating Safety Processes with Electronic Adverse Event Transfer
    To
    help drug developers meet post-marketing expedited reporting
    obligations within the new European pharmacovigilance legislation, Medidata
    Rave Safety Gateway™ expanded its capabilities for sites to
    electronically transfer non-serious safety case data – in addition to
    serious safety case data – to sponsors’ safety systems, eliminating
    paper-based manual processes, reducing query cycles between sites and
    sponsors’ safety groups and minimizing reconciliation between safety
    and clinical databases.
  • Ensuring Timely Investigator Payments
    Due to the
    complexity of triggering investigator payments from sponsor-set
    milestones, site payments are often delayed. The out-of-the box
    integration of Medidata
    CTMS™ and Medidata
    Rave® electronic data capture (EDC) improves the
    efficiency of clinical operations, streamlining workflows in areas
    such as site monitoring and site payments. Now, Medidata Rave EDC data
    is pulled into Medidata CTMS™ monitor reports, increasing the accuracy
    of reporting and timeliness of payment triggers.
  • Assuring Market Value Compliance and Faster Budget Agreements
    Designed
    for sponsors receiving investigator-sponsored proposals from sites, Medidata
    Grants Manager Investigator Initiated™ offers drug developers
    clarity and uniformity in judging pricing and conduct of their
    submitted funding requests.
  • Ensuring the Right Randomization Approach to Meet Study GoalsMedidata
    Balance™ now provides the block randomization methodology in
    addition to dynamic allocation randomization, extending its use to new
    segments of the life science industry by permitting researchers to use
    the approach that best suits their study goals.


F5 Announces New IP Intelligence Service

F5 Networks, Inc. today announced a cloud-based service that enables organizations to safeguard their infrastructures by detecting and stopping access from IP addresses associated with malicious activity. By identifying relevant IP addresses and leveraging intelligence from cloud-context security solutions, F5’s new IP Intelligence service combines valuable information on the latest threats with the unified policy enforcement capabilities of the BIG-IP® application delivery platform. The BIG-IP system’s ability to seamlessly combine subscription-based services from F5 with external services provides customers with a compelling new way to enhance overall security.

“Organizations are looking for security solutions that can dynamically synthesize information from a variety of sources to give infrastructures the maximum level of protection against sophisticated cyber attacks,” said Mark Vondemkamp, Sr. Director, Product Management, Security at F5. “At the same time, enterprises must preserve the flexibility to customize their systems and add safeguards as network and access conditions change, and as new types of threats emerge. F5’s IP Intelligence service enables customers to pool disparate threat detection capabilities, block malicious IP addresses, and tailor performance to specific needs by leveraging F5’s powerful BIG-IP Application Security Manager and iRules® technologies.”

Companies delivering today’s rich Internet content are exposed to a variety of attacks from rapidly changing IP addresses and other variables. In addition, inbound and outbound botnet traffic and malware activity can penetrate security layers and consume precious resources. Typically, organizations deploy point solutions such as IP reputation services to block malicious activity and sites, but unless these solutions are integrated with an Application Delivery Controller, they are not able to offer comprehensive, dynamic protection. Plus, enterprises can reduce their overall security spend by taking advantage of the BIG-IP solution’s ability to deliver unified services on a single platform.

Leveraging a frequently updated list of threat sources and high-risk IP addresses, F5’s new IP Intelligence service delivers contextual awareness and analysis of IP requests to identify threats from multiple sources across the Internet. The service draws on the expertise of a global threat-sensor network and IP address database to detect malicious activity, and can offer protection throughout the application delivery infrastructure with F5’s unified BIG-IP architecture.

F5’s new IP Intelligence service enables customers to:

By intelligently evaluating the reputation of Internet hosts, F5’s new service can prevent attackers from stealing data, compromising corporate resources, or otherwise disrupting business functions. F5’s new service denies access to IP addresses known to be infected with malware, in contact with malware distribution points, and with low reputations. Active IP addresses offering or distributing malware, shell code, rootkits, worms, or viruses are denied access. In addition, F5 helps organizations guard against many of today’s most prevalent web attacks, such as cross-site scripting, SQL injection, DDoS, and other threats associated with botnets. As an added benefit, this ability to detect and deny access stemming from unwanted requests results in increased infrastructure performance, since IT systems do not need to spend valuable cycles addressing requests from bad sites.

Deployed as part of the BIG-IP system, F5’s IP Intelligence service leverages data from multiple sources to effectively gather real-time IP threat information and block connections with those addresses. The service reveals both inbound and outbound communication with malicious IP addresses to enable granular threat reporting and automated blocking, helping IT teams create more effective security policies to protect their infrastructures. Even when a BIG-IP device is deployed behind a content delivery network (CDN) or other proxies, F5’s IP Intelligence service provides protection by looking at the real client IP addresses as logged within the X-Forwarded-For (XFF) header, helping IT make informed decisions about which IP addresses should be allowed.

F5’s IP Intelligence service alleviates the burden of repetitive, manual configuration tasks for network and security professionals, yielding greater overall efficiency. Global threat data is refreshed in the cloud to update the BIG-IP system as frequently as every five minutes. This provides an evolving database that minimizes the chance of exposure, protecting both the organization and its reputation. The IP Intelligence service’s automatic updates dynamically keep systems protected, and BIG-IP products can be easily configured to receive real-time updates for convenient security management across the application delivery environment. F5’s iRules capability provides a significant complement to this service, as organizations can seamlessly roll out additional commands that direct how BIG-IP systems handle certain types of traffic and specific requests.


CloudBerry Lab Updates Cloud Backup Windows Tools

Image representing CloudBerry Lab as depicted ...

CloudBerry Lab has released CloudBerry Backup version 2.9, an application that allows users to backup their data online to their cloud storage accounts such as Amazon S3, Windows Azure and Google Storage.

Disaster recovery planning is often times an afterthought that comes to light when disaster strikes. Very seldom do companies fully recover from loss of critical data which could lead to loss of business. CloudBerry Backup provides a powerful online Backup and Restore software designed to leverage Amazon S3 reliable and secure online storage to make your disaster recovery plan simple, reliable, and affordable.

The latest version of CloudBerry Backup comes with an option to estimate cloud storage costs. The users can set up cost estimates per storage account and specify a limit in GB or in dollar equivalent. When the limit is reached the backup will stop. The software will automatically calculate the costs based on the current storage price offered by the storage provider. Currently Amazon S3 charge 0.125/GB per month. The software will also send an alert to the users when the storage is about to reach the limit.

Another important feature is an option to write Events on backup completion (success and failure) to the Windows Event log. This feature makes it easier to deploy CloudBerry Backup along with the popular monitoring and management systems such as Microsoft System Center Operations Manager (SCOM), HP OpenView, BMC Patrol, Quest Foglight and a few others that come with a capability to process Windows Event Log and apply certain rules.

With the latest release you can configure Pre- and Post actions that will run before and after the actual backup is running. This feature will make it easier to back up applications such as SQL Server and Exchange. You can set up a Pre-action to back up SQL Server and then you can set up a POST action to clean up the SQL Server backup directory from the older backup files.

Finally, CloudBerry Backup prevents computer from going to sleep mode, so that back up will continue running. With this feature users are assured that the backup will complete on time without interruption.

CloudBerry Backup is also available as a Windows Home Server 2011 and Small Business Server 2011 Essentials add-on. It integrates with the WHS console and offers scheduled backup to cloud storage, hosted on Amazon S3.

CloudBerry Backup is designed to work on Windows XP/Vista/7 and Windows Server 2003/2008. Command line interface allows partners and advanced computer users integrate backup and restore plans with other routines.

CloudBerry S3 Backup for Windows costs $29.99(US) for a single-user license. Volume discounts are available. CloudBerry Backup will be offered without charge to students, educational institutions and non-profit organizations. You will continue to pay Amazon directly for their S3 charges.

For more information & to download the evaluation copy, visit http://www.cloudberrylab.com/backup 
CloudBerry Backup for Windows Home Server is available at http://www.cloudberrylab.com/default.aspx?page=backup-whs


Cloudreach announces launch of Salesforce Connector Tool

 

Image representing Salesforce as depicted in C...

Cloudreach announced the launch of its Salesforce connector tool at the Gartner Application Architecture, Development & Integration Summit 2012. This new tool is designed to automatically sync data between customers’ Salesforce and Google accounts, making wasted time and missed opportunities a thing of the past for sales teams.

AluminaConnect, the first in the Alumina Tools series from Cloudreach designed to improve connections in the Cloud computing space, has been developed in conjunction with clients to help them work more effectively, accurately and seamlessly. Teams will be able to work between apps, by synchronising mail, contacts and calendar over any device with their Google accounts. Automation of mundane tasks via a 2-way sync will bypass any duplication of effort, allowing sales teams to be more productive and focus on converting opportunities into sales. AluminaConnect is enterprise grade, which means that businesses benefit from a resilient and reliable tool that is fully secure and compliant.

Pontus Noren, CEO of Cloudreach, said: “We have worked with clients to develop and optimise AluminaConnect for numerous individual requirements. At Cloudreach we recognise that sometimes the simplest solutions are the best and we have been careful to keep this tool simple and easy to use. Further, AluminaConnect is cost effective and promises users an even greater return on their Salesforce and Google investments as it will be enhanced from a reporting to a delivery tool.”

As a ‘Bring Your Own Device’ set-up has become increasingly popular with British businesses a lack of linked apps can be problematic. Windows of opportunity can bypass sales teams, and agents can wind up red-faced after calling contacts a colleague dialled hours earlier. This Salesforce connecting tool is set to help British businesses streamline their operations.


Scenios Launches Free Version of Cloud Platform for Film, Video Production

Scenios LogoScenios now offers a free version of its secure, cloud-based platform for film and television production.  The free version allows film, TV and commercial producers to manage every aspect of their production, including 5 GB of cloud storage and an unlimited number of users.

Studios, networks and production companies can use Scenios as a comprehensive “virtual production office” to manage all aspects of their productions, and to collaborate more effectively online with their teams. Scenios provides a set of online, real-time collaboration tools that significantly streamline the production process, and that help reduce costs for many people working in the industry.  Key features of the Scenios platform include the ability to:

  • Write the script in your web browser, and collaborate on it in real time.
  • Create your budget in Scenios, and restrict who sees it by setting access permissions.
  • Distribute call sheets and other documents instantly.  Send them to individuals, departments, or to the entire production team.
  • Share professional HD video files, and do reviews and approvals in your web browser.
  • Set up video conferences in Scenios for up to 10 people, for things like virtual production meetings and virtual table reads.
  • Customize Scenios to match your workflow, by creating and organizing your own production-related apps.

The free Scenios plan also allows users to connect to one other production that they aren’t managing.

“Many aspects of the production process now require complete flexibility, and our secure, cloud-based platform helps productions operate more efficiently in a real-time, location-based environment,” said CEO Mark Davis. “This new free option will provide the TV and film industry with an innovative, time and cost saving way to manage a production.”

In addition to the free service, additional account options include:

  • SCENIOS PLUS: allows users to manage 2 productions, to connect to 2 other productions, and to get 100 GB of cloud storage ($19 per month)
  • SCENIOS PRO: allows users to manage an unlimited number of productions, to connect to an unlimited number of productions, and to get unlimited cloud storage ($49 per month)
  • SCENIOS ENTERPRISE: provides 10 Pro seats, plus the Enterprise Control Dashboard, and unlimited cloud storage for $299/month. Add more Pro seats for $39/month each.

For more information go to http://www.scenios.com


AppNeta Acquires Tracelytics

AppNeta, provider of end-user-centric performance management solutions for business critical applications, today announced the acquisition of Tracelytics, an  provider of full-stack, SaaS-delivered Application Performance Management (APM) solutions. With the addition of Tracelytics, AppNeta will deliver a SaaS portfolio that includes a broad suite of End-User Experience monitoring capabilities, innovative APM services built on full-stack application tracing technology, and unprecedented application-aware network performance insight.

“Tracelytics’ APM technology brings the next critical piece of the puzzle to our cloud SaaS environment and is setting a new standard for application performance management,” said Jim Melvin, CEO of AppNeta. “Their technology is a perfect companion to our network performance management solutions. Together we are providing unmatched insight to application and network operations teams that they do not have today. By coupling Tracelytics’ technology with our existing cloud services platform, we are accelerating time to value for our ever-increasing customer base.”

The acquisition of Tracelytics strengthens AppNeta’s breakthrough approach to application and network performance management as it is the only solution to offer a 360o view into the network and the key applications running on it. AppNeta’s award-winning, cloud-delivered PathView Cloud service offers integrated insight from every element of the network performance stack: path, packet, flow and device. This complete, integrated suite delivered from the cloud offers thousands of global customers the fastest time to resolution in the industry and superior End- User Experience monitoring.

“With the steadily increasing use of highly distributed Web-based applications, network performance insight is critical to assuring successful application delivery and a quality end-user experience,” said Jim Frey, managing research director at Enterprise Management Associates (EMA). “Few APM solutions today offer the depth of visibility from the network perspective that is required for this level of end-user experience monitoring.”

Founded in 2010, Tracelytics has developed the next generation of APM technology. The innovative SaaS solution provides deep, detailed visibility into Web applications, identifying where issues and bottlenecks are occurring and providing actionable data for quick problem resolution. Tracelytics delivers a unique combination of immediate time-to-value with full-stack application tracing, providing real time visibility and management into Web applications with any level of complexity.

“We are excited to bring our customers full-stack performance insight to both the core application performance and the end-user’s experience for today’s distributed application architectures.” said John Vigeant, CEO of Tracelytics. “But without the corresponding deep network performance visibility, they can’t fully understand and solve problems in the complete application delivery chain. Together with AppNeta, we can now answer these questions.”


Video Guidance, Connecting Point Partner for Video Conferencing in the Dakotas

Bloomington, Minn.-based Video Guidance, a visual communications company, has formed a strategic partnership with Watertown, S.D.-based Connecting Point Computer Center, which provides IT solutions to businesses, schools and government agencies throughout the Dakotas. The partnership will help Video Guidance grow by increasing its sales presence in its current markets and expanding its geographic reach across North and South Dakota.

“Our joint partnerships utilize and maximize resources to offer more comprehensive collaboration and visual services to businesses and organizations,” said Michael Werch, president of Video Guidance. “The program is designed to help value-added resellers (VARs) succeed in the highly lucrative video conferencing market, enabling them to take advantage of high-margin sales opportunities with our best-in-class video conferencing solutions.”

Since 1979, Connecting Point (www.ConnectingPoint.biz) has helped organizations of all sizes deploy and manage servers, desktops and notebooks from a centralized location. With off-site backup and cloud computing, the company is regarded for its proactive, preventative approach to IT management that stops problems before they affect a network. Connecting Point also offers Cisco Unified Communications solutions, which connect people, information and teams to help them collaborate more effectively.

“We are excited to partner with Video Guidance to expand our collaboration portfolio,” said Bryan Waege, president of Connecting Point. “Together with Video Guidance, we will maximize our customers’ technology investments to help them meet their business objectives rather than react to IT problems.”

Strategic partners help Video Guidance – through its cloud-based services — create a more visually collaborative workspace for its customers. In the last decade, Internet, mobile and broadband technologies have redefined our way of life, and visual communication tools have become critical to a business’ efficiencies. And in an era of dispersed teams and reduced travel budgets, enhanced, strategic collaboration and applications are essential to maximizing the benefits of today’s sophisticated technology.

Founded in 1999, Video Guidance is privately held and headquartered in Bloomington, Minn. Video Guidance is an independent partner of Cisco, Polycom and LifeSize, and maintains strategic alliances with Conference Plus, On Stream Media Corporation, VQ Communications, VBrick, and Accordent. For five consecutive years, Video Guidance has been named to the “Inc. 5,000″ list of the nation’s fastest growing private companies, and is one of the top privately held companies in Minnesota and one of the top 150 telecommunications companies in the nation. In addition, Video Guidance has been named by The Business Journal as one of the “50 Fastest Growing Privately Held Companies” in the Twin Cities, and by Minnesota Business magazine as “One of the Best Companies to Work For.”


Amazon AWS Adds First Austrailian Edge Location for CloudFront, Route 53

Amazon AWS has announced the launch of their newest edge location in Sydney, Australia to serve end users of Amazon CloudFront and Amazon Route 53.

According the AWS, “This is our first edge location in Australia and with this location Amazon CloudFront and Amazon Route 53 now have a total of 33 edge locations worldwide. Each new edge location helps lower latency and improves performance for your end users. We have launched 8 new edge locations in 2012 and we plan to continue to add new edge locations worldwide.”

“An edge location in Australia has been frequently requested by our customers so we are excited to add this location to our global network. If you’re already using Amazon CloudFront or Amazon Route 53, you don’t need to do anything to your applications as requests are automatically routed to this location when appropriate.”


Bitcasa Gets $7 Million for “Infinite” Cloud Storage

Bitcasa, the cloud storage company that integrates infinite storage, sync, backup and share into desktops and across devices, announced today that it has raised $7 million in its Series A funding round, bringing the total funding to $9 million. Pelion Venture Partners, an existing investor, and Horizons Ventures, a new investor, led the round, with Andreessen Horowitz, First Round Capital, CrunchFund, and Samsung Ventures participating. Funds will be used to further accelerate the company’s impressive growth, shorten the time-to-market for upcoming storage and data management offerings, and expand sales and marketing. The company’s service offering is also now officially in open beta, and users can sign up at http://www.bitcasa.com.

In the past few months, Bitcasa users in 120 countries saved more than 4 petabytes of data and uploaded more than 1 billion files to Bitcasa. The service uses client-side encryption, compression, and deduplication technologies to seamlessly integrate infinite storage into all of the devices. Users can now store, sync, backup and send infinite amounts of data without having to worry about management and capacity constraints. During the beta program, they can take advantage of the service for free; after beta, they can continue the access to infinite storage for only $10 a month.

“As the seed investor, we have been impressed with Bitcasa’s efforts to solve the storage challenges that consumers and small and medium businesses face,” said Carl Ledbetter, managing director at Pelion Venture Partners and a Bitcasa board member. “Bitcasa’s infinite storage solution solves space, management, and security challenges for today’s users and has been well-received by the tens of thousands who have tried the service during its beta period. Bitcasa’s solution goes far beyond services that provide only backup, synchronization, or large file sharing or movement; Bitcasa is the first and only service that provides unlimited storage of all of a user’s files in the cloud, making the cloud-based virtual desktop a reality. This is the way we will all connect to our online, tablet, mobile, and PC-based environments in the near future, and Bitcasa is the defining step.”

“I am glad to see the continued commitment of our initial investors, as well as the involvement of our new investors,” said Tony Gauda, co-founder and CEO of Bitcasa. “This funding round shows that our investors recognize the potential that we have in this market and have been pleased with our progress. It is exciting to see the users’ increased adoption of our infinite storage solution that helps them store and share more data than they could have ever imagined. We are working on more amazing features and are currently looking to bring on great talent to join our team.”


ShoreTels Cloud Division Announces Unified Communications for iOS, Android, Blackberry

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ShoreTel today announced the release of ShoreTel Mobility for customers of ShoreTel’s M5 cloud division. The solution extends the voice and unified communications (UC) applications businesses love to the smartphone. The initial launch will support iPhones and subsequent releases over the summer will add support for other smartphone and tablet devices including Android and Blackberry. Users are able to leverage a single converged device for both business and personal communications, and access deskphone and UC capabilities on their iPhone without having to learn a new interface.

In addition to offering users a dual persona, ensuring easy separation of personal and business identities on a single mobile device, ShoreTel Mobility automatically and securely selects the best available network – Wi-Fi or cellular – without any action by the user. The solution is available to ShoreTel’s Cloud Division clients for a monthly fee per user.

“I’m really looking forward to getting my hands on the ShoreTel Mobility application. I’ve been wanting this for 4 years now and I’m glad that M5, as part of ShoreTel, will be one of the first in the market. I have no doubt that true corporate mobility will improve productivity for our remote and traveling employees,” said Derek Stewart, Finance and Operations manager at Foursquare.

“The way people work has changed. Instead of fighting the trends of mobility and bring-your- own-device, we are empowering our clients to embrace them by extending our cloud phone system capabilities to the device that users love the most – their own,” said Dan Hoffman, ShoreTel Cloud Division President. “The solution represents a win-win, giving our customers the ease of using the device that is already in their pocket and giving the enterprise a way to reduce costs, while maintaining a consistent corporate identity and caller experience.”

Users enjoy the following benefits:

  • Identity – Business calls to and from any ShoreTel Mobility
    user are made using their business phone number, not their personal
    mobile number. This means corporate identity is maintained and the
    company, not the employee, owns the contact relationship. Employees no
    longer need to reveal personal mobile phone numbers and can instantly
    tell if an incoming call to the mobile device is personal or work
    related.
  • Convenience – Users can leverage all of the benefits of the M5
    cloud business-phone system that they enjoy when using a deskphone
    including: transferring calls to other employees and utilizing
    four-digit dialing. Coaching tools such as barge and whisper are
    available to management.
  • Metrics – Mobile calls are no longer omitted from the phone
    system’s business intelligence. Records for business calls made to and
    from the mobile device are included along with deskphone calls, giving
    management true visibility into employee performance and the health of
    the business.
  • Network Flexibility – ShoreTel Mobility can significantly
    reduce direct dial and international roaming charges on the smartphone
    by utilizing software that switches networks automatically,
    intelligently and securely between wireless and cellular for the best
    available coverage at any given moment.

For more information about ShoreTel Mobility in the cloud, the M5 Unified Communications Suite, or other products, please visit www.m5.net.