Cloud Expo Silicon Valley: Delivering Windows Desktops as a Cloud Service

Citrix has announced a bold new project aimed at enabling enterprises and service providers to deliver Windows desktops and apps as a true cloud service: Project Avalon.
Project Avalon promises to revolutionize the delivery of IT services by enabling enterprise customers to build and leverage private, public and hybrid clouds to deliver access to desktops, apps and data anywhere.
In his session at the 11th International Cloud Expo, Thomas DeMeo, Sr. Director Product Management, Desktop Virtualization, at Citrix Systems, will discuss the foundational principles critical for next-generation, IT service delivery and what it means to offer Windows desktops and apps as a true cloud-enabled service.

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Cloud Expo Silicon Valley: A Risk-Based Approach to Continuous Monitoring

Organizations have become accustomed to accepting the inherent risk associated with point-in-time security assessments. With the emergence of new compliance regulations and the increasing ability to easily change environments through virtualization, we are shifting to a standardized approach to security assessment, authorization, and continuous monitoring. As we move to embrace a security model that requires us to detect and mitigate real-time persistent vulnerabilities and security incidents, it is important to take a risk-based approach to continuous monitoring.
In his session at the 11th International Cloud Expo, Dan Rojas, Director of Strategic Development at Coalfire, will share case studies that demonstrate how organizations prepare to transition to a continuous monitoring program – a program that allows them to deploy security controls that should remain effective over time, regardless of future changes that may occur on the cyber threat landscape.

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Stratogent Corporation to Exhibit at Cloud Expo Silicon Valley

Stratogent Corporation, an IT managed services company, announced it will exhibit again this year at the International Cloud Expo at the Santa Clara Convention Center from November 5-8.
“Stratogent is excited to return to Cloud Expo this year where Big Data and Cloud Computing are together giving Silicon Valley a rare look at these parallel trends.” said Chetan Patwardhan, CEO of Stratogent.
“We are the only service provider that installs and manages systems 24×7 in all 3 layers – in-office, in a private cloud and in the public cloud. Our customers have benefited immensely from this location and method agnostic strategy. With myriad of options to choose from, and coexistence of multiple applications in these 3 layers, companies are sometimes bewildered. And if they do end up making the right choice, managing the 3 layers across locations, time-zones, and applications remains a daunting task. Cloud Expo is a great opportunity for users to gain exposure to a plethora of solutions first hand in just a few hours of investment. At our booth 1034, we look forward to both educating novices and brainstorming with the experts. We are excited about this event and very much look forward to a great turnout!”

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Progress Software to Lead Cloud Application Presentations at Cloud Expo

Progress Software Corporation, a global software company that simplifies and enables the development and deployment of business applications, on Friday announced that the company will be giving a keynote speech on cloud applications as well as a general session on data connectivity at this year’s Cloud Expo, held November 5-8, 2012 in Santa Clara, California.
The Keynote session, “Cloud Applications: Some Assembly Required,” will be given by Dr. John Bates, CTO of Progress Software, on Wednesday November 7. The general session, “The Impact of Big Data and Cloud on Data Connectivity,” will be given by Jaime Meritt, director, product management, Progress Software, and Jesse Davis, director, DataDirect research and development, Progress Software, on November 6.

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Actuate, VMware to Deliver Faster Insights from Big Data in the Cloud

Actuate Corporation is partnering with VMware to provide a cost-effective way for companies to gain insight from any source of Big Data in hybrid cloud environments, by deploying seamless, dynamic and accessible business information solutions.

ActuateOne is designed to support private, public and SaaS (software as a service) cloud deployments by eliminating the need for hard-coded configuration, thereby enabling fast and easy deployment with VMware solutions. VMware solutions provide multiple benefits to IT administrators and users. VMware virtualization creates a layer of abstraction between the resources required by an application and operating system, and the underlying hardware that provides those resources.

Customers can extend the reliability and agility offered by the new VMware vFabric™ Data Director™ to their virtualized ActuateOne cluster, by provisioning and managing the data sources visualized in an Actuate dashboard as well as the vFabric Postgres database that manages the Encyclopedia Volumes of that ActuateOne deployment. This multi-layered coupling of ActuateOne upon VMware simplifies IT management tasks, while ensuring the highest levels of mission-critical availability, security and scalability for any Actuate / VMware deployment.

“We are pleased to be working with Actuate to provide our customers with a solution for analyzing and visualizing large data sets that reside in hybrid cloud environments,” said Fausto Ibarra, Senior Director, Product Management, VMware. “With VMware vFabric™ Data Director, VMware vFabric Postgres and ActuateOne, organizations can securely and efficiently extract actionable insights from their data to make informative business decisions.”

“Actuate’s technology scales linearly across any number of virtual instances, interfacing well with VMware solutions, and further delivering on the Actuate promise of better insights for better decision making by more people in the organization,” said Wenfeng Li, Vice President of Product Development at Actuate. “ActuateOne sources multiple instances of Big Data, merging it with traditional relational data via our data integration features, and then presents this blended content as interactive, customizable visualizations to large numbers of simultaneous users.”

ActuateOne – Actuate’s BI platform and suite of interactive applications built on open source BIRT – has already earned VMware Ready™ status. The VMware Ready designation signifies that ActuateOne has gone through VMware’s advanced testing and evaluation process to certify product compatibility. As part of the partnership, Actuate and VMware demonstrated linear scalability of ActuateOne in conjunction with VMware vSphere®, vFabric™ Data Director™, and VMware vFabric Postgres.

Together, the solution delivers three unique capabilities:

  • An efficient and secure approach to using shared infrastructure for
    servicing highly frequent requests
  • A standardized, portable, and extensible approach to enable workloads
    to be deployed across multiple clouds without manual configuration
  • Agile access to shared infrastructure for provisioning workloads in
    demand

 


Cbeyond VP Chris Ortbals to Speak on Cloud Security at Cloud Expo

Cbeyond Inc. the technology ally to small and mid-sized businesses, will address secure cloud and network integration strategies during Cloud Expo 2012 Silicon Valley, November 5-8, 2012, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, California.
Chris Ortbals, Cbeyond’s vice president of cloud services, will lead a breakout session under the Cloud Architecture, Security & Performance track from 08:15-9:00 a.m. on Tuesday, November 6, 2012.
Entitled “Having Data Security Nightmares? Fight the Monsters under your IT Bed with Secure Cloud and Network Unification”, Ortbals’ presentation will look behind the intersection of network and cloud technologies. It will also include tips to help businesses ensure their mission-critical data is protected all the way from the premise to the private or public cloud.

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SOA Software CTO Stresses API Management in the Cloud

Alistair Farquharson, CTO of SOA Software, a provider of Enterprise API Management and SOA Governance solutions, will be delivering a presentation on Best Practices of API Management at the 11th Cloud Expo at the Santa Clara Convention Center [Nov 5-8]. Farquharson’s session will focus on ways that IT departments can support business objectives through APIs that open access to core information systems to external developers.
Application Programmer Interfaces (APIs) expose enterprise systems to developers, including distributed, unknown third parties that create apps such as those that work on mobile devices. The goal of enterprise API management is to enable the business to realize success from APIs without inadvertently creating security and system management problems or running up unsustainable costs.

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How cloudy is the future for the UK government?

“Times are hard” was a phrase often used in my house as a child usually when begging my mother for the latest pair of Nike trainers.  

 

Fast forward 20 years and not much has changed as we continue to struggle through the worst economic crisis we have ever seen. The downturn has had a huge impact upon the public sector with many departments being forced to cut budgets to help reduce the government deficit.

One way departments are seeking to cut costs is by reassessing their technology needs, which has in more cases than not, resulted in the implementation of cloud computing solutions. The government’s ‘G-Cloud’ framework hopes to eliminate waste by more efficient IT procurement helping departments innovate, creating a better public service. The framework includes a list of approved suppliers and provides quick and easy access to cloud services. The cost benefits of cloud adoption in the …

Let’s Talk Global IT Innovation

I’m looking forward to Cloud Expo in Santa Clara next week.

Last year I flew from Manila, Philippines to be in attendance and announce the initial results of the Tau Index research that I’d been conducting with partners in Asia. This year, my flight will be only from Chicago, even as my Asian partners continue to expand the research.

We now cover 102 countries. The world’s top five are South Korea, Estonia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, and Finland. The bottom five are Libya, Cameroon, Cote D’Ivoire, Iran, and Algeria. The countries with the most untapped potential seem to be Vietnam, Ukraine, and most of Eastern Africa.

I’ve written extensively on the topic, so won’t repeat anything more here. One of our next steps is to bring some serious computing power to bear on the numbers, to bring them to life through data visualization. We can slice and dice the information through dozens of parameters, regions, income groupings, and combinations thereof. Our goal is to make them dance; we may be able to do this with the support of a university here in the Midwest with which we’ve been speaking.

Our research shines a light on many of the undiscovered gems in the world of global IT, and also reinforces the perceptions of many other countries with strong reputations. Given that IT innovation reaches most corners of the globe very quickly these days, we view our efforts as a way to further the growth of all global economies through the analysis and application of great technology.

If you’re looking for new markets, sources, or investments, try to speak to me next week at the show. I’d love to share what we’re doing with you.

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