Reaching customers and employees with cloud applications when they are located in emerging markets (such as Russia, Indonesia, Brazil and China) poses a major challenge. This is especially true for China, which has not only the largest Internet user base (twice that of the US and growing fast) but a lack of modern Internet infrastructure as well as licensing and regulatory hurdles, including the “Great Firewall.”
In his session at the 11th International Cloud Expo, Jerry Miller, Vice President of Technology at CDNetworks, will discuss the various challenges to serving this market and how a CDN (Content Delivery Network) can help you not only deliver a fast download of your website and web applications even in China, but can also help you manage content and regulatory issues. You will hear how a major European-based financial trading platform saved millions of dollars a day in lost revenue by eliminating dropped trades caused by latency in China. You will also hear how a major UK-based luxury retail platform is now reaching China’s growing luxury market with fast page loads and ecommerce transactions. In addition, hear how Silicon Valley based SEMI is serving 26 websites in China and other emerging markets with 100% uptime and superfast load times. This session will be full of benchmarks, case studies, examples, and charts.
Dell to Fund Storage Start-Ups
Dell has set up a $60 million Fluid Data Storage Fund to back early-stage storage start-ups, a combination of build and buy. Jim Lussier, managing director of Dell’s venture capital business, says it is looking for mid-level widgetry hoping to find the “next big thing.” Apparently that means cloud storage, memory-based storage and next-generation-storage architectures.
It figures to put a modest $3 million-$5 million per round in five to 10 promising start-ups in exchange for equity and access to the IP.
Of course they’d have to play to Dell architecture.
Dell says it’s “looking to change the economics of the storage industry by doing two things – bringing high-end enterprise features to the broad mid-market and solving enterprise problems at a midrange price point.”
Microsoft Trots Out Cloud-ified Office for Windows 8
Microsoft wheeled out a customer preview of its new Johnny-come-lately, touch-sensitive, cloud-oriented, browser-based version of Office at a last-minute press conference in San Francisco Monday.
The stuff is meant for Windows 8, which is supposed to come out at the end of October. Microsoft was hazy about whether this new version of Office 365 will come out at the same time though it stands to reason that’s the idea. It’s supposed to work on x86-based Windows 8 PCs, tablets and phones as well as newfangled ARM-based Windows NT devices, specifically Microsoft’s own Nvidia ARM-based Surface gismos. It’ll be bundled on ARM devices. It’s supposed to be a full-blown Office.
Preparing Public Data for Analysis With R
In most data science applications, preparing the data is at least half the job. Finding where the data lives, figuring out how to access it, finding the right records, filtering, cleaning and transforming the data …all of this has to be done before the statistical analysis can even begin.
Top Ten Reasons Why Startups Should Consider Cloud
As a passionate Cloud Evangelist, I always believe that Cloud is the best companion of the startups. While the Silicon Valley startups are the biggest adopters of the Cloud, it may not be the case in India and other parts of Asia. I am prompted to write this article after a long debate I had […]
HP’s Cloud Object SLA: 99.95% uptime or your money back
The cloud uptime debate rumbles on with Hewlett Packard promising their Cloud Object storage service will have at least 99.95% availability, with customers receiving service credits if it’s down.
The credits, as one would expect, increase the longer the cloud is down.
Customers who experience between 99.95% and 99.9% uptime get 5% of their bill credited; anything above 99.5% gets one tenth credited; while 99.0% gets one fifth of their bill back and if the Object Cloud is down more than 1% of the time, users get 30% of their bill credited.
Hewlett Packard discussed the variation to their service level agreement (SLA) as part of an overall announcement that their Cloud Object Storage and Cloud Content Delivery Network (CDN) was moving to general availability.
Gavin Pratt, senior cloud product manager, said that HP “continuously monitor[s] for downtime”.
“We are deeply committed to …
Cloud Economics, US DoD’s Cloud Plans, Microsoft Office Cloud, and More…
The US Department of Defense has released a four-step plan to expand its use of cloud computing, according to this Federal Times article. The DoD will incentivize the use of cloud computing and train new professionals on how to procure cloud services, in addition to incorporating cloud software and hardware into their data centers. The plan allows for the purchase of both government and commercial cloud solutions.
The next version of Microsoft Office will include social and cloud computing features, according to this PCMag article. Microsoft Office 2013, which will work with touch-screen devices run on Windows 8, will save documents to Microsoft’s SkyDrive and enable access to files from mobile devices.
RightScale acquired the Scottish cloud computing cost forecasting website ShopForCloud, according to this SYS-CON article. The site allows users to access the current pricing of many of the most popular cloud services and shows what a business’s cloud will cost with various architecture models and usage patterns.
Cloud Computing: Encrypting Data in an Infrastructure Cloud
“We do network encryption for data in motion. We have figured out a way to do network encryption without creating point-to-point tunnels and that has profound implications for the performance of the network,” noted Jim Doherty, CMO and SVP of Marketing at Certes Networks, in this SYS-CON.tv interview with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan at the 10th International Cloud Expo, held June 11–14, 2011, at the Javits Center in New York City.
Cloud Expo 2012 Silicon Valley, November 5–8, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA, will feature technical sessions from a rock star conference faculty and the leading Cloud industry players in the world.
Cloud Cruiser to Exhibit at Cloud Expo Silicon Valley
SYS-CON Events announced today that Cloud Cruiser, the leading provider of cloud cost intelligence solutions, will exhibit at SYS-CON’s 11th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on November 5–8, 2012, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
Cloud Cruiser delivers a comprehensive suite of applications to map and measure resource usage independent of computing environment, allocating costs based on IT-defined criteria, and providing flexible and in-depth reporting of that usage. Cloud Cruiser enables business intelligence from many different levels and perspectives to give you the optimization and chargeback information that you require for your cloud. No matter where your data resides – on a legacy system, co-location, private cloud, public cloud, or hybrid – or who you are – a cloud provider, cloud manager, financial analyst or end user – Cloud Cruiser is the single solution for your cloud.
Cloud Automation, Real Infrastructure
“Our customers are very varied – we have customers in over 150 countries – and for the software companies we provide the Infrastructure as a Service. I like to work with the customers one-on-one to tailor solutions for them,” stated Mike Carpenter, VP of Business Development at CARI.net, in this SYS-CON.tv interview with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan at the 10th International Cloud Expo, held June 11-14, 2012, at the Javits Center in New York City.
Cloud Expo 2012 Silicon Valley, November 5–8, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA, will feature technical sessions from a rock star conference faculty and the leading Cloud industry players in the world.