Microsoft Names its RT Partners

Microsoft disclosed in a blog post Monday that Asus, Dell, Lenovo and Samsung will be selling ARM-based Windows RT widgets alongside Microsoft’s own Surface tablets, the software giant’s first foray into computers.

It’s the first time Microsoft has named its RT OEMs.

Toshiba is missing from the list because it couldn’t get some unidentified parts in time for launch. It will be going with more conventional Windows 8 x86-based machines, according to Bloomberg.

read more

Turkey’s National Airline Transforms Global Network With Juniper Networks

Juniper Networks o Tuesday today announced that Turkish Airlines, Turkey’s national airline with over 200 global locations, has upgraded its global network and standardized on Juniper Networks’ integrated portfolio of software, switching, security and routing products. Turkish Airlines’ new network has simplified and centralized the airline’s infrastructure, delivering an estimated cost savings of approximately $9.5 million in five years in employee resources, $6 million in telecommunication costs and $3.1 million in support services.

read more

Numira Biosciences, Penguin Computing Partner for Cloud Pre-Clinical Imaging

Penguin Computing and Numira Biosciences announced a partnership to bring graphics-intense data on-demand to Life Sciences customers. The platform will leverage a convergence of enabling technologies from Penguin Computing’s HPC as a Service offering, POD; Numira Biosciences’ AltaPortal product; and Nvidia’s GPU technology to deliver advanced pre-clinical imaging services to researchers at pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies around the globe.

Researchers will benefit from the cutting edge graphics, GPU power, global accessibility and reliability of Penguin Computing’s HPC as a Service platform, POD. Numira’s AltaPortal product provides a secure web interface for managing projects and exploring datasets, media and documents. By leveraging POD, AltaPortal will enable researchers to interactively navigate rich 3D data from microCT scans with overlaid analytics customized to the task at hand. The data will be delivered as a media stream to the client’s web browser, eliminating the need to transfer large and potentially proprietary datasets over networks, and allowing them to be secured in a central location.

“Penguin has enjoyed steady growth in the genomics sector with its POD offering. Adding Numira’s medical imaging software and services to our POD partner portfolio will enhance our breadth in the bioinformatics market and further establish POD as a destination for that set of users” said Matt Jacobs, SVP of Corporate Development for Penguin Computing.

“At Numira we’ve built our reputation delivering rich quantitative analytics for preclinical medical imaging. With our AltaPortal web service, we’re taking it to the next level; our customers will be able to interactively explore and quantitatively assess their preclinical imaging data with our custom 3D visual analytic tools. Penguin’s POD service offers the ideal platform for our rendering-on-demand engine,” said David Weinstein, Numira’s Chief Technology Officer.


Zyantus OS Records System Helps Meet Federal Requirements

Zyantus has  launched Zyantus OS Records system, a cloud-based electronic health records (EHR) system. Zyantus OS Records provides electronic storage of patient records and their secure transmission among health care facilities, health information organizations and government agencies according to national standards.

Zyantus OS Records system has earned the federal government’s Complete EHR Certification, which officially deems the EHR software capable of enabling providers to qualify for funding under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). The certification, provided by the Drummond Group ONC-ATCB program, ensures EHRs meet the meaningful use criteria for eligible provider technology.

When fully implemented, EHR’s, such as Zyantus OS Records, should result in lower record keeping costs and improved care by facilitating shared access to consistent patient records among health care providers and facilities across the nation.

“We have been in this industry for twelve years and understand the importance of EHR in maximizing the efficiencies of a medical practice,” said Zyantus President Adam Schwindt. “We take pride in always being a step ahead and evolving our services in this ever-changing industry. Health care providers can now leverage Zyantus OS Records to not only make significant care improvements but also achieve meaningful use and qualify for incentive funds under ARRA.”

Since 2000, Zyantus has served the health care industry by specializing in management solutions for medical offices of all kinds. In that time, the company has built a reputation for easy-to-use programs, comprehensive services and rapid response to customer needs.

The Zyantus OS Records system was developed from the ground up by medical personnel who understand office management and the importance of maintaining office productivity while transitioning to new management systems. Zyantus OS Records was designed with Health Information Exchange (HIE) parameters in mind from the beginning, and will securely store and readily share health care information with new HIE systems as they are built.

Health care providers must prove their medical records systems achieve meaningful use in order to qualify for government reimbursement for their investment. The software features a simplified meaningful use section to aid medical offices seeking attestation in order to qualify for incentive payments. In addition, Zyantus OS Records already meets a number of proposed stage 2 meaningful use requirements.

As a cloud-based system, Zyantus OS Records provides a high level of security and is easily implemented across multiple sites, including Mac and PC platforms, smart phones and tablets. No additional hardware is needed to implement the system as it is hosted by the Amazon EC2 HIPAA-compliant cloud with unlimited storage capacity. There are no hidden or additional fees for support. Zyantus OS Records also features friendly, customer-service oriented personnel training and implementation and free e-Prescribe for patient medications.


GovCloud: Cloud Computing for the Business of Government “Update and Outlook”

Press Briefing II at the National Press Club,
Washington, D.C.
18 September 2012, 8:30 -11:00 AM
GovCloud: Cloud Computing for the Business of
Government “Update and Outlook”
Open to Government, Contractors & the Press
The United States Government is the world’s largest consumer of
information technology, spending over $76 billion annually on more than 10,000
different systems. Fragmentation of systems, poor project execution, and the
drag of legacy technology in the Federal Government have presented barriers to
achieving the productivity and performance gains found when technology is
deployed effectively in the private sectors.

All that is changing as the Administration obliges federal departments to
look to Cloud computing to cut costs and solve many of the problems that have
plagued IT deployment for decades. The problem, however, is how do federal IT
managers and those controlling the budgets go about deciding what is best for
them.

Leading experts from
Government and Industry will update the press and attendees on …
  • Status
    of government Cloud initiatives
  • Future
    Plans and Outlook

  • Challenges
    and Opportunities
Speakers – Additional Speakers/Panelists to be announced:
·        
Mary Lewin,Program Manager, Federal Cloud Computing Initiative, Office of Citizens.
Services and Innovative Technologies General Services Administration
·        
KeithBarber,  Director, National System for Geospatial-Intelligence
Expeditionary Architecture Integrated Program Office National
Geospatial-intelligence Agency
 
·        Kevin Jackson, Vice President & General Manager, Cloud Services at NJVC
GovCloud Press
Briefing One:  Held in March of 2011 – also at the National Press Club
Attendees at that
briefing represented….
  • Federal
    agency offices of CIO and IT Planning
  • Air
    Force – Army – Navy
  • Bloomberg
    Financial Press
  • Wall
    Street Journal
  • Federal
    News Press
  • Major
    Integrators and Cloud Suppliers
  • Federal
    data center managers
Registration Fee:
Government:  No charge
Corporate:  $95.00
To register or ask questions, call (703) 622-1187 or email  customer.service@GovernmentTrainingInc.com
 
Bookmark and Share

Cloud Musings on Forbes

( Thank you. If you enjoyed this article, get free updates by email or RSS – © Copyright Kevin L. Jackson 2012)




read more

Mind the Gap – Transitioning Your IT Management Methodology

At the recent GreenPages’ Summit, I presented on a topic that I believe will be key to our (for those of us in IT management) success as we re-define IT in the “cloud” era.  In the past, I have tried to define the term “cloud,” and have described it as anything from “an ecosystem of compute capabilities that can be delivered upon demand from anywhere to anywhere” to “IT in 3D.”  In truth, its definition is not really that important, but how we enable the appropriate use of it in our architectures is.

One barrier to adopting cloud as a part of an IT strategy is how we will manage the resources it provides us.  In theory, cloud services are beyond our direct control.  But are they beyond our ability to evaluate and influence?

IT is about enablement.  Enabling our customers or end users to complete the tasks that drive our businesses forward is our true calling.  Enabling the business to gain intelligence from its data is our craft.    So, we must strive to enable, where appropriate and effective, the use of cloud services as part of our mission.  What then is the impact to IT management?

There are the obvious challenges.  Cloud services are provided by, and managed by, those whom we consume them from.  Users utilizing cloud services may do so outside of IT control.  And, what happens when data and services step into that void where we cannot see?

In order to manage effectively in this brave new world of enablement, we must start to transition our methodologies and change our long-standing assumptions of what is critical.  Sure, we still have to manage and maintain our own datacenters (unless you go 100% service provider).  However, our concept of a datacenter has to change.  For one thing, datacenters are not really “centers” anymore. Once you leverage external resources as part of your overall architecture, you step outside of the hardened physical/virtual platforms that exist within your own facilities.  A datacenter is now “a flexible, secure and measurable compute utility comprised of delivery mechanisms, consumption points, and all connectivity in between.”

And so, we need to change how we manage our IT resources.  We need to expand our scope and visibility to include both the cloud services that are part of our delivery and connectivity mechanisms, and the end points used to consume our data and services.  This leads to a fundamental shift in daily operations and management.  Going forward, we need to be able to measure our service effectiveness end to end, even if in between they travel through systems that are not our own to devices we did not provision.

This is a transition, not a light-switch event.  Over the next few blogs I hope to focus some attention on several of the gaps that will exist as we move forward.  As a sneak peak, consider these statements:

Consumerization of technical innovation

Service-oriented management focus

Quality of Experience

“Greatest Generation” of users

Come on by and bring your imagination.  There is not one right or wrong answer here, but a framework for us to discuss what changes are coming like a speeding train, and how we need to mind the gap if we don’t want to be run over.

Always-On Digital Government

Here is our latest white paper, a document co-authored by myself and one of our Technology Strategy Board members Alan Gin, CEO of ZeroNines. Download: Always On Digital Government (15-page PDF) Always On Cloud Architecture We were inspired to write this paper following the recent data centre outage in Calgary a few weeks back. The impact was  severe, […]

read more

The cloud news categorized.