Category Archives: Amazon AWS

Amazon AWS, Amazon Web Services, AWS, New York Times, Outage Alert

Eastern US Storms Also Disrupted the Technology Cloud

The New York Times has an interesting article on new concerns over Cloud Computing (that is to say, AWS) reliability in the wake of recent outages caused by the weather.

The interruption underlined how businesses and consumers are increasingly exposed to unforeseen risks and wrenching disruptions as they increasingly embrace life in the cloud. It was also a big blow to what is probably the fastest-growing part of the media business, start-ups on the social Web that attract millions of users seemingly overnight.

As someone who was involved during the pre-cloud era in private data centers and later colocation facilities for startups, small and medium-sized companies, I have a question:

Does anyone really think they can do any better on their own?

Read the article.


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.


Amazon AWS, Amazon CloudFront, Amazon Route 53, Amazon Web Services, Asia/Pacific Rim, Australia, CloudFront, Hosting, Sydney

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.”


Amazon AWS, Amazon Web Services, AWS, MySAP All-in-One, Partnerships, SAP, Windows Server 2008 R2

AWS, SAP Announce Cost-saving AWS Infrastructure for SAP Business All-in-One Solutions

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Amazon Web Services today announced the expansion of SAP certified solutions on AWS including SAP Business All-in-One solutions for both Linux and Windows, and expanded certification for SAP Rapid Deployment solutions and SAP Business Objects business intelligence (BI) solutions to include Windows Server 2008 R2. Today’s announcements provide customers the flexibility to rapidly deploy SAP solutions on the scalable, on-demand AWS platform without making long-term commitments or costly capital expenditures for their underlying infrastructure. As more enterprises seek to understand cost savings of cloud deployments, Germany based consulting firm, VMS AG has also announced industry research that finds running SAP applications on AWS provides infrastructure cost savings of up to 69% compared to the same solution on-premises. For more information on deploying SAP solutions on AWS as well as detailed research on infrastructure cost savings of running SAP solutions on AWS, visit http://aws.amazon.com/sap

“LIONSGATE is a $2 billion diversified global entertainment corporation that produces feature films and television programming to a worldwide audience,” said Theresa Miller, Vice President, Information Technology, LIONSGATE. “Faced with IT challenges including expanding infrastructure and costs, and increased enterprise application workloads, LIONSGATE began using AWS in 2010 to avoid acquiring additional data center space, saving an estimated $1M+ over three years. Now utilizing SAP solutions in a Windows environment, LIONSGATE has migrated their SAP development, test and QA systems to run on the AWS cloud.”

Emergency Medicine Business Intelligence (EMBI) provides HIPAA compliant analytic tools for hospital emergency departments to monitor productivity, utilization and patient care. “Cloud computing allows hospitals the ability to buy mission critical software and hardware as a service instead of trying to manage demand internally,” said Scott Richards, CEO at EMBI. “Deploying SAP Business Objects BI solutions on AWS, with solution provider DecisionFirst, allows us to leverage industry-leading business intelligence toolsets to provide our customers web-based, on-demand, key performance metrics they need to manage their operations and business. With these solutions our emergency department clients are able to focus on providing a higher level of service to their customers.”

Merrifield Garden Center, one of the largest and most complete garden nurseries in the US, is using SAP Business All-in-One on AWS to manage inventory, purchasing and accounts. “Our IT operations were simply not keeping pace with the rapid growth of our business,” said Bryan Moore IT Director at Merrifield Garden Center. “Running our SAP Business All-in-One solution on AWS, with systems integrator Savantis and managed services provider Protera, provided dependable infrastructure and offered an affordable solution that enhanced security and the flexibility needed to scale up and scale down during seasonal demand swings.”

Leveraging its industry-leading intelligence VMS AG has developed detailed cost analysis of running SAP solutions on AWS using the best practices of more than 2,600 SAP environments. The research found infrastructure savings of up to 69%, on AWS, compared to an SAP Business All-in-One system running on-premises.

“Customers have experienced tremendous success when running their SAP applications on AWS,” said Kevin Ichhpurani, senior vice president, Ecosystem and Channels, SAP. “Today’s announcement offers enterprises and midsized companies alike the flexibility to deploy SAP applications and analytics solutions quickly and scale up as the business grows.”

“We have seen a rapid increase in businesses deploying SAP solutions on AWS,” said Terry Wise, Director of AWS Worldwide Partner Ecosystem. “Whether it’s running SAP applications for development and testing or production applications, businesses can take advantage of the AWS pay-as-you-go model and quickly scale capacity both up and down as needed, paying only for the resources used.”

To learn more about cost savings of running SAP solutions on AWS, visit http://bit.ly/IVsXYI


Amazon AWS, Business Processes, CDC Software, Enterprise resource planning, ERP

CDC Software Launches Ross 7.0, Its Next Generation Suite of ERP Applications

CDC Software, an enterprise software provider of on-premise and cloud technologies, today announced the general availability of Ross ERP 7.0, the major release of its next generation of ERP applications offering improved interoperability, increased collaborative capabilities, enhanced usability, new mobility features and more advanced traceability that can lead to higher productivity, faster decision-making, and reduced costs and risk – all with a low total cost of ownership.

Ross ERP 7.0 takes ERP to the next level in enterprise visibility, collaboration, reporting, mobility and social manufacturing with new functionality featured in Enterprise Viewer, Document Connect, Event Management Framework, and Ross Mobile 2.0. Advanced collaborative techniques found in Facebook and Google were incorporated into Ross Enterprise Viewer and EMF. For example, utilizing “Subscribe and Follow” techniques, Enterprise Viewer allows sales reps to subscribe to a sales “widget” then follow the sales of their own customers on their dashboards. As another example, EMF delivers real-time alerts to the sales rep whenever one of their customers exceeds certain credit limits. Continuing Ross’ focus on vertical-industry needs for the process manufacturer, Ross 7.0 offers deeper functionality in traceability, pricing, product costing and quality control.

We are very excited to launch our next generation of Ross Enterprise that was designed in partnership with our customers and various industry associations,” said Sherri Rodriguez, president of Ross Systems, a business unit of CDC Software. “Ross ERP 7.0 takes an intuitive, social networking, collaborative and proactive approach to information management that can transform a process manufacturer into an agile business with broad visibility into its operations. Notably, with the new, extensive enhancements in the core modules, Ross 7.0 also offers one of the market’s most comprehensive and feature rich quality management application available today.“

Highlights of Ross ERP 7.0:

  • Enterprise Viewer. This new user interface employs “widgets” to push
    relevant, real-time information to users. A “widget” displays specific
    information about customers and products, such as “Orders Due To Ship
    Today” and “Inventory Availability.” After subscribing to a given
    “widget,” a user can then follow their selected customers or products,
    with the ability to execute drill downs and key commands directly from
    the widget, helping to increase user productivity and customer service
    levels.
  • New Document Connect. This new feature allows users to drag and drop
    documents, including videos, directly into Ross ERP screens from their
    desktops, then later access these same documents from the screens,
    eliminating the need to manually store and retrieve documents on one’s
    file server. The feature automatically stores and indexes
    transactional documents in a preconfigured SharePoint file structure.
  • Event Management Framework’s (EMF) alert engine. This new feature
    delivers real-time, actionable alert messages to users’ dashboards,
    emails and mobile devices. In addition to exception conditions, users
    can be alerted to non-events, such as no response to a purchase order
    or an overdue delivery.
  • Ross Mobile 2.0. This new native mobile application offers access to
    customer, sales, inventory and other key enterprise information on
    iPhone and Android devices, helping to expedite one’s decision-making
    and improving customer service.
  • Enhanced TraceExpress. New enhancements included in Ross ERP 7.0
    reduce the number of product trace paths and allow users to review the
    details of a Lot Trace within a certain Date Range, helping to
    expedite product recall notifications and facilitate compliance even
    further.
  • Ross Reporting Services. Based upon Microsoft’s SQL Server Reporting
    Services, this new feature offers embedded graphical objects and
    transactional links within its report templates to generate
    interactive reports in a variety of formats across the ERP modules.


Amazon AWS, Amazon Web Services, AWS, AWS Marketplace, CA ARCserve, CA Technologies

CA ARCserve Now Available on Amazon Web Services Marketplace

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CA Technologies today announced that CA ARCserve Backup and CA ARCserve D2D are now available on Amazon Web Services (AWS) Marketplace.

AWS Marketplace is an online store that makes it easy for customers to find, buy, and immediately start using the software and services that they need to build products and run their businesses. CA Technologies software products sold on AWS Marketplace are fulfilled on and billed by Amazon Web Services (AWS), simplifying customer deployment of CA ARCserve Backup and CA ARCserve D2D.

“AWS Marketplace offers IT buyers a great way to quickly zero in on the products they need to meet their business technology challenges,” said Steve Fairbanks, vice president of product management at CA Technologies. “By making CA ARCserve available on AWS Marketplace, CA Technologies is making it as easy as possible for customers to access a complete solution for protecting data across both conventional and cloud-based environments.”

Customers can purchase multiple data protection functionalities of CA ARCserve Backup and CA ARCserve D2D with a single license based on the total amount of data they need to protect. They also can acquire the products through traditional licensing models.

“It’s a pleasure to work with CA Technologies and we are excited for their participation in AWS Marketplace,” said Terry Hanold, VP of New Business Initiatives at AWS. “Combining CA Technologies data protection products with AWS’s highly scalable, secure and flexible platform provides our joint customers an easy way to use CA ARCserve software on the AWS platform.”


Amazon AWS, Amazon Web Services, AWS, AWS Marketplace, CA ARCserve, CA Technologies

CA ARCserve Now Available on Amazon Web Services Marketplace

Image representing Amazon Web Services as depi...

CA Technologies today announced that CA ARCserve Backup and CA ARCserve D2D are now available on Amazon Web Services (AWS) Marketplace.

AWS Marketplace is an online store that makes it easy for customers to find, buy, and immediately start using the software and services that they need to build products and run their businesses. CA Technologies software products sold on AWS Marketplace are fulfilled on and billed by Amazon Web Services (AWS), simplifying customer deployment of CA ARCserve Backup and CA ARCserve D2D.

“AWS Marketplace offers IT buyers a great way to quickly zero in on the products they need to meet their business technology challenges,” said Steve Fairbanks, vice president of product management at CA Technologies. “By making CA ARCserve available on AWS Marketplace, CA Technologies is making it as easy as possible for customers to access a complete solution for protecting data across both conventional and cloud-based environments.”

Customers can purchase multiple data protection functionalities of CA ARCserve Backup and CA ARCserve D2D with a single license based on the total amount of data they need to protect. They also can acquire the products through traditional licensing models.

“It’s a pleasure to work with CA Technologies and we are excited for their participation in AWS Marketplace,” said Terry Hanold, VP of New Business Initiatives at AWS. “Combining CA Technologies data protection products with AWS’s highly scalable, secure and flexible platform provides our joint customers an easy way to use CA ARCserve software on the AWS platform.”