SYS-CON Events announced today that Skyera Inc., an emerging provider of enterprise solid-state storage systems, has been named “Bronze Sponsor” of SYS-CON’s 12th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on June 10–13, 2013, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York.
Skyera Inc. is an emerging provider of enterprise solid-state storage systems designed to enable a large class of applications with extraordinarily high performance, exceptionally lower power consumption and cost effectiveness relative to existing enterprise storage systems. Founded by the executives who previously developed the world’s most-advanced flash memory controller, Skyera is backed by key technology and financial partnerships designed to position it at the forefront of the hyper growth in the solid-state storage sector. The company was featured in the Gartner report “Cool Vendors in Storage Technologies, 2012,” was chosen by Flash Memory Summit as a Best of Show award winner for 2012 in the category of Most Innovative Flash Memory Enterprise Business Application, and won the Visionary Product Award at Storage Visions, 2013.
Cloud Computing: IBM Cuts Price to Push into the Cloud & Big Data
IBM is out to push its Power-based servers into Big Data and the cloud.
Its problem is the cheap commodity servers sold by HP and Dell.
Its answer Tuesday was to cut the price of its proprietary hardware by as much as 50%.
That was the day it unveiled a line of eight Power 7+-based servers running AIX or Linux whose price starts a shade under six grand, the same neighborhood where comparable x86 boxes live, a first for IBM.
They’re supposed to be fitted with technology borrowed from Big Blue’s super-smart Watson supercomputer, the one that beat human contestants on the Jeopardy game show. The Watson widgetry will let users analyze Big Data and run Hadoop and set up a private cloud at a cheaper cost.
Healthcare IT and the Cloud
Over the last few weeks I’ve been hearing a lot of discussion around HIPAA. When we speak about HIPAA, invariably the two components of data security and data privacy arises.
In the traditional data centers database managers and data owners know where their data reside and implement the necessary processes to preserve privacy, and audit access.
However when we move to the cloud, the cloud being all about data, we are looking at servers, network, and storage which are abstracted. What this raises concern is that data owners may not necessarily know where their data sets physically reside and we are looking a Cloud Service Provider (CSP) employees who will be handling confidential patient data or Personally Identifiable Information (PII).
Data Optimization in Cloud Storage
The promise of “the cloud” is that cloud storage delivers users seamless “just in time” storage scalability to handle growth and quickly respond to peak loads. The economics and business impact of cloud storage also delivers a compelling financial proposition in today’s budget constrained IT environments. To the IT consumer shifting what was a capital expense and a fixed cost to a variable cost operating expense is financially compelling. Additionally, the ability to function in a “just in time” mode versus a “predictive” model for consumable storage also changes the CAPEX impact further assisting in justifying an already strong value proposition for adopting cloud storage.
IDC forecasts that cloud-based storage will represent a $15.6B market by 2015 with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 32%. They also predict 10,000 service providers will focus on cloud storage with a data protection emphasis. The economics of this market transition will continue to evolve and accelerate as costs of delivering cloud services are optimized by service providers that become more efficient – ever mindful of the cost of their plant/facility, operating expenses and business margins.
Microsoft JV Buys Start-Up’s AzureOps Widgetry
Avanade, the global enterprise IT services company started by Accenture and Microsoft in 2000 to focus on Microsoft widgetry, has acquired the software written by a young 15-month-old SaaS operations start-up by the name of Opstera that helps manage cloud solutions, the underlying platform and dependent cloud services.
The price it paid is unknown.
The pair has reportedly been working together on a public cloud management service for Azure. The technology provides application monitoring and management of Windows Azure apps.
The start-up said in a FAQ that “There is a strong need in the enterprise for comprehensive managed services that can guarantee a high level of availability and operational efficiency of the infrastructure similar to what they are used for on-premises solutions. Opstera software will be an addition to an already strong portfolio focused on cloud managed services.”
Dropbox API Allows Developers to Get Sync With Less Effort
Dropbox today announced a new application programming interface for in-app synch. The new API is intended to lure developers to Dropbox by making programmers’ life easier by letting their native iOS/Android apps treat users’ cloud-based files as if they were stored locally.
“Give your app its own private Dropbox client and leave the syncing to us.”
Learn more at Dropbox.
Virtualization Security in Cloud Computing
2011 ended with the popularization of an idea: bringing VMs (virtual machines) onto the cloud. Recent years have seen great advancements in both cloud computing and virtualization. On the one hand there is the ability to pool various resources to provide Software as a Service, Infrastructure as a Service and Platform as a Service. At its most basic, this is what describes cloud computing. On the other hand, we have virtual machines that provide agility, flexibility, and scalability to the cloud resources by allowing the vendors to copy, move, and manipulate their VMs at will. The term virtual machine essentially describes sharing the resources of one single physical computer into various computers within itself. VMware and virtual box are commonly used virtual systems on desktops. Cloud computing effectively stands for many computers pretending to be one computing environment. Obviously, cloud computing would have many virtualized systems to maximize resources.
Cubby cloud sync, storage service From LogMeInOut of Beta
LogMeIn Inc. announced the general availability of its new cloud sync and storage service, Cubby. An easy-to-use, secure cloud service for sharing files across devices and with other people, Cubby offers the flexibility to turn any number of PC or Mac folders into ‘cubbies’ that can be accessed from Android phones and tablets, iPads and iPhones, as well other PCs and Macs from virtually anywhere in the world.
People can quickly share individual files or entire folders with others via a simple one-click link, or can choose to invite friends, colleagues, clients, and business partners into their ‘cubbies’ to collaborate across shared files and projects. The free version, Cubby Basic, includes Cubby’s signature sync-in-place flexibility (any folder can be a ‘cubby’), free desktop and mobile apps, 5GB of cloud storage, and the ability to share files via the cloud.
A premium version, Cubby Pro, builds on this by offering the flexibility to share content across computers with or without the cloud (via Cubby’s distinct DirectSync™ mode), additional controls for sharing your most sensitive content, multi-user accounts, and 100GB or more of cloud storage.
Run Your Own On-Premise Elastic Cloud Infrastructure
“Enterprise organizations across industries, web application providers and service providers increasingly are asking for a private elastic cloud infrastructure solution to support new applications in order to modernize their infrastructure,” said Michael Grant, CEO of Cloudscaling, as the self-styled “elastic cloud infrastructure” software company today released Open Cloud System (OCS) 2.0 for general availability in production deployments.
“As a production-grade elastic cloud solution, Open Cloud System is positioned to capitalize on this trend.”
Run Your Own On-Premise Elastic Cloud Infrastructure
“Enterprise organizations across industries, web application providers and service providers increasingly are asking for a private elastic cloud infrastructure solution to support new applications in order to modernize their infrastructure,” said Michael Grant, CEO of Cloudscaling, as the self-styled “elastic cloud infrastructure” software company today released Open Cloud System (OCS) 2.0 for general availability in production deployments.
“As a production-grade elastic cloud solution, Open Cloud System is positioned to capitalize on this trend.”