Cloud Services, Parallels Summit, Parallels Summit 2013, Partner Awards, service provider

Parallels Partner Awards Winners Announced at Parallels Summit 2013

 

 

The winners of the 2012 Parallels Partner Awards have been announced! Each of these winners recognize were able to make the best use of the assets Parallels provides and were able to innovate and differentiate their service in the rapidly-expanding small and medium business (SMB) cloud services market.

 

“On behalf of Parallels and personally, I’d like to congratulate both the finalists and recipients of this year’s Parallels Partner Awards. They are leading and innovative cloud service providers and technology companies, and each one of them has done something outstanding in 2012,” said Birger Steen, CEO of Parallels. “Parallels is proud to be a catalyst to a growing and powerful partner ecosystem designed to help service providers grow and profit from the cloud. We are delighted to acknowledge these partners at Parallels Summit 2013.”

 

The recipients of the 2012 Parallels Partner Awards are:

 

 

Congratulations to all the winners and finalists!

 

Bessemer Venture Partners, hybrid cloud, Norwest Venture Partners, Ravello, Ravello Systems, Sequoia Capital, Venture Funding, Virtualization

Ravello Systems Gets $26 Million for Hybrid Cloud Hypervisor

Ravello Systems today announced that it has closed its second round of funding bringing the total amount of funds raised to $26 million. Ravello is now backed by Sequoia Capital, Norwest Venture Partners and Bessemer Venture Partners. Founded in 2011 by Rami Tamir and Benny Schnaider, the founding team behind the now standard KVM hypervisor, Ravello is positioned to change the game in the hybrid cloud market by delivering the industry’s first Cloud Application Hypervisor.

“Enterprises cannot use the public cloud the way that they would like to which is to be able to rent capacity on demand and simply spill-over bursty workloads,” said Tamir, CEO, Ravello Systems. “That’s not possible today because the public cloud environment is completely different from the enterprises’ internal data center. The industry needs a solution to normalize the application environment across the private and public cloud, so that enterprises can truly begin using the public cloud.”

“We have developed a Cloud Application Hypervisor that encapsulates multi-VM applications along with their entire environment including the VMs, networking, storage etc. so that enterprises can run any application in any cloud without making any changes,” said Schnaider, president and Chairman of the Board, Ravello Systems. “Unlike other solutions in the market that adopt a management only approach, Ravello’s Cloud Application Hypervisor normalizes the application environment so that it can run on the private or public cloud.”

BigData, Business Intelligence, Computer security, E-Government, Government, Project management, Webinar/Webcast/Presentation

FOSE 2013: Cloud, Virtualization, Cybersecurity, Mobile Government, Big Data Featured

Cloud and Virtualization; Cybersecurity; Mobile Government; Big Data and Business Intelligence; and Project Management will be the featured tracks at FOSE 2013, each providing cutting-edge technology insights, policy updates, case studies and expert guidance to optimize the efficiency and effectiveness of government programs. FOSE 2013, the largest and most comprehensive event serving the government technology community, will take place May 14-16 at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C.

“Late last year we surveyed our government and industry attendees to gauge the topics that are of most interest,” said Mike Eason, Vice President, Public Sector Events, 1105 Media, Inc. “Not surprisingly, cloud, mobile, big data/analytics and cyber came in at the top. It’s our job to ensure we are offering the education that supports the government’s needs around these issues. We are once again structuring our program to highlight these key trends, and will be drawing on the expertise of agency executives that have real past performance in the five areas to serve as speakers.”

Each track provides an in-depth look into the given topic, including:

  • Cloud and Virtualization will feature best practices and insights on technology trends, case studies and leading practices on planning, implementation and benefits realization.
  • Cybersecurity will examine the business of cyber, including detecting complicated malware and adversaries – insider and outsider, determining what data left the organization, developing defensive and preemptive measures to keep attacks from happening and managing risk-based compliance.
  • Mobile Government will offer tools, strategies and insights into hot issues such as BYOD, security, APIs and mobilizing enterprise systems, as well as achieving the goals of the Digital Government Strategy.
  • Big Data and Business Intelligence will focus on how to extract meaning from bits and bytes to reach business objectives, featuring case studies from federal agencies that have found useful intelligence from data, examine toolkits being used and highlight the management and policy challenges that come up in the process.
  • Project Management, developed in conjunction with the Project Management Institute, will provide best practices and trade secrets of agile project management to help the government professional advance their career.

A selection of confirmed session topics includes:

For more information and to keep up-to-date on the full program agenda, visit www.fose.com. To see how FOSE addresses the technology road ahead, view the FOSE 2013 infographic at www.fose.com/techtrends.

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Leveraging Cloud and Virtualization for Disaster Recovery

With cloud computing, more users and an increase in data bring with it the challenges associated with disaster recovery and business continuity. All distributed systems have to be checked and the data points must all be monitored. In working with these more complex data centers, many administrators are turning to the cloud and virtualization to help them create a more robust DR plan, according to an article on DataCenterKnowledge.com.
A well-planned out cloud and virtualization solution can truly help any organization create a more agile environment. There are inherent benefits to working with specific types of cloud models and virtualization platforms. A large part of IT is creativity – that’s why using new types of technologies can help reduce management costs and keep an environment running longer.
One way to prepare for disaster is using cloud for replication. Site-to-site replication has become easier with the utilization of both private and public cloud technologies. With better storage systems and more control over the WAN, organizations are able to better replicate their environments. This can be entire virtual machines, specific databases or just data points.

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Four key factors to consider when choosing cloud backup delivery platform

by, Pavan Vyas, Product Marketing Manager, Asigra Inc

 

Making the right choice for cloud backup delivery platform – Why is it important?

 

When you are deciding to expand your practice to include backup and recovery services, the first and most important decision you face is choosing the right cloud backup platform.

 

This single decision governs the entire spectrum of possibilities related to the business – the service options that you can provide your customers, flexibility in supporting multiple sites and deployment models, competitive pricing options, and the support you can expect in promoting your services to the marketplace.  

 

This may seem like an exaggerated claim to you. However, having worked with service providers for over 26 years now in a 100% channel focused model and having supported them in building their businesses, we at Asigra can assure you that this is very much the case.

 

Your ability to support your customers’ backup and recovery needs, providing them the assurance that you can, not just backup all their enterprise data across their various devices, data centers and operating platforms, but can also recover the data in the event that they need it, is totally dependent on the platform that you choose. You also need to consider that your   customers will want the flexibility of different cloud deployment models – public, private or hybrid based on the changing needs of their business.  One size fits all may not be the best approach so you will want to have this flexibility.  Also, you will want to be able to support multitenant operations, set and achieve SLAs, and support varied operating platforms, therefore, the underlying platform needs to provide you with the flexibility and scalability to do so.

 

Your choice of cloud backup platform will also dictate the resources that you will need, the investments that you will need to make and the pricing that you can command for your services. All of these considerations will have a direct impact on the returns that you can expect on your investments and the profitability that you can enjoy by extending cloud backup and recovery services to existing and new customers. Finally and most importantly, you also need support beyond just technology capability to get to market quickly and easily with this new offering – and it is important for you to have the support of a larger marketing and business partnership to help you promote and grow your business.  A good platform provider will look to support you with extensive marketing and sales resources.

 

In short, 4 key factors to consider while choosing a cloud backup platform are:

  1. The platform needs to offer flexibility and scalability by offering support for multiple operating systems, databases, devices and hardware environments.
  2. The ability to offer different cloud deployment models – public, private and hybrid.
  3. A vendor who wants to be your business partner providing extensive sales and marketing resources.
  4. A vendor that lets you set your own margins.

 

This blog post just scratches the surface of what the decision entails and what you should be looking for. We know that you will want to know a lot more and may have a number of additional questions. To help you with that process, we have put together a resource for you on some of the things that you should look for and the questions that you should ask of your cloud platform provider. Download the free guide titled “How to choose a cloud backup delivery platform”.

 

 

 

 

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The Death of Username and Password: ten truths to strike fear into the heart of service providers!

by, Brian Spector, CEO, Certivox

 

When my team started to work on a paper about the vulnerabilities of usernames and passwords recently, I decided we would defy typical cryptography vendor behaviour. Instead of a technical whitepaper full of architecture diagrams and mathematical notation, I told my team I wanted them to do wide-ranging research to argue a cause, in order to support a business case. The material they researched became The Death of Username and Password, a unique new study launched exclusively at Parallels Summit 2013.

 

Tenfold shame

The paper explores ten core truths that show the weaknesses of username and password so clearly, that when I found out what they had unearthed, I frightened myself.

Did you know, for example, that the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers) – one of the most respected organisations in the world – lost over 100,000 user logins to hackers because it was storing username and password information in a file on its website? And that the areas of the site that were compromised potentially included sensitive Western military engineering data?

And had you considered that the speed and ease with which hackers can now access username and password files has so increased the volume of confidential user data being illegally traded online that this data now sells for next to nothing? (European credit card data, for example, will sell for around $3 per card on the internet – US and Canadian, a mere $1). Like I said, scary stuff.

 

Not just a consumer story

But it was the data on users’ real-world experience of actually using passwords that really made me wince, because its consequences aren’t restricted to consumers or hobbyists. Rather, it’s an issue for every single internet and cloud user, from the provisioning supplier to the individual end-user – and every party in between.

Users forget passwords. Consider this:

  • ·         64% of end users have written down their password at least once
  • ·         70% of people do not use a unique password for each website

More worryingly, users routinely pick passwords that are laughably weak, in an effort to increase their memorability. A recent security breach at Yahoo, for example, showed that thousands of users’ passwords were either “password”, “welcome”, “123456” or “ninja”!

 

What gives?

The world is perpetuating a login method that is inherently weak, has been repeatedly compromised, is single-handedly responsible for making the thousands of dollars’ worth of credit tradable on the internet for less than the price of a packet of cigarettes – and that everybody hates and finds difficult to use anyway.

Why? Well, read the paper first. You can download it here: https://certivox.com/death-username-password/ Then come and find me on Booth 704 and tell me.

Because I’m still none the wiser.

 

Our partner theatre/developer track

Come and hear what we’ve got to say here:

  • ·         Partner Theatre –  5th Feb  at 12:45 – Growing Your Revenues with Single Sign-On, Multi-Factor Authentication for the Cloud and Mobile  – Frank Boening (CertiVox)
  • ·         Developer Track – 6th Feb at 10:30 – Extending APS packages with Single Sign-On – Brian Spector and Gene Myers (CertiVox)
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Cloud Computing: New Relic Raises Whopping $80 Million

SaaS-based application performance monitoring start-up New Relic, which has already raised $34.5 million in venture capital, has gotten a whopping $80 million in mezzanine financing to move into native mobile applications, open an office in Europe, add staff and prepare to IPO.
The handsome sum, which gives it a total of $115 million and a reported valuation of $750 million, comes largely from Insight Venture Partners and T Rowe Price, marking the first time since Twitter that the pair has funded a start-up together.
Other participants include Dragoneer Investment Group, Passport Ventures and the company’s existing investors Allen & Company, Benchmark Capital, Trinity Ventures and Tenaya Capital.

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Code 42 Software to Exhibit at Cloud Expo New York

SYS-CON Events announced today that Code 42 Software, the creator of CrashPlan, CrashPlan PRO, and CrashPlan PROe award-winning onsite, offsite and cloud backup solutions, will exhibit at 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.
Starting out as a software development company in 2001, Code 42 Software is the creator of CrashPlan, CrashPlan PRO, and CrashPlan PROe award-winning onsite, offsite and cloud backup solutions for home, businesses, and enterprise.

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Key Management and Encryption in VMware-Based Clouds

VMware is without a doubt a major platform for private as well as public cloud deployments. But as in any other cloud-based system, data security, and more specifically cloud encryption and key management are fundamental building blocks.
We have found that external users have many of the same security requirements, whether the cloud is public or private: from an external user’s point of view, the differences between public and private clouds are technical details, and the user requires the same guarantees from the provider.

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