Amazon Cloud: Is the Sky Really Falling?

I’ll keep this story short, so as not to strain the cloud unduly.

Amazon’s latest, unfortunate outage has brought out the Chicken Littles for a return appearance – gloating pullets who take seeming pleasure in mocking cloud computing and its potential.

Of course, electricity is still out in many places where AWS is back in. Losing electricity can be said to be more of an inconvenience than losing Netflix, yet few people are calling for a return to candles and natural breezes as the way to light and cool our homes.

I wonder how many private datacenters went down in the recent mid-Atlantic storm, and how many companies had their bacon saved – or kept their bacon – in outsourced redundant systems. How many times did cloud computing save non-cloudy companies over the week-end, versus the number of cloud systems that went down?

In the end, I will bet my 40 acres and a mule that lack of redundancy was once again the root problem here. Too many companies seem to want cloud on the cheap – no insurance needed as the made a mad dash toward the bottom line. Amazon in the past has implied that its failures stemmed from a lack of failover provisioning by stingy customers. Will it do more than imply that this time around?

It takes a long time for technological change to make itself complete. I had a boss in the late 80s who refused to allow voicemail in the office because he thought it made people hide behind their phones. A major hardware chain in the Northeast didn’t even have phones at that time because its management thought they made people lazy.

Amazon’s recent troubles are embarrassing, are fortuitously timed for Google to offer an allegedly more reliable alternative, and provide ample fodder for media know-nothings and knowledgeable industry revanchists.

To me, the troubles point out once again that you can’t do this stuff on the cheap. The opportunity cost of sticking with less elastic systems is tougher to measure than costs associated with outages, but nevertheless, far more companies have been sunk by opportunity costs over the decades than by an overly aggressive move to technology.

Cloud computing will be just fine, even as it leaves nay-sayers in the dust, shaking their fists at all this dad-gummed change.

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Cloud vs Cloud

You’ve either read about or lived through the massive storm that hit the Mid-Atlantic coast last week. And, by the way, if you are going through a loss, damage or worse, I do hope you can recover quickly and wish you the best. The weather took out power for millions including a Virginia ‘cloud’ datacenter which hosts a number of entertainment and social media sites. Many folks looking to get thru the candle-lit evenings were without their fix. While there has been confusion and growing pains over the years as to just what ‘cloud computing’ is, this instance highlights the fact that even The Cloud is still housed in a data center, with four walls, with power pulls, air conditioning, generators and many of the features we’ve become familiar with ever since the early days of the dot com boom (and bubble). They are physical structures, like our homes, that are susceptible to natural disasters among other things. Data centers have outages all the time but a single traditional data center outage might not get attention since it may only involve a couple companies – when a ‘cloud’ data center crashes, it could impact many companies and like last week, it grabbed headlines.

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Local File Server + Cloud-Based Team Folder

Local File Server for team collaboration is a very familiar use case. Typically a local IT administrator set up a file server in a Local Area Network(LAN) environment, such as in a branch office. The whole office then use network shares to share files. For example, below is a picture of a Shared folder in Windows File Server 2008. The local folder’s name is TeamFolderLocal and it is published as a network share.
Cloud-based team folder is also a very familiar use case. In Gladinet Cloud, the administrator can setup a team folder so anyone that has assigned read/write permission can access the team folder. Below is a picture of a team folder inside web browser.

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VIUX™ offers Parallels Plesk Panel 11

 

Parallels® Plesk Panel 11 is scheduled for release on 6/26/12. ViUX Systems will be among the first Web Hosting Providers to offer Plesk 11 – fully integrated with our Shared Cloud Hosting, VPS / Cloud Servers, and Dynamic Dedicated Servers.

 

Over the coming weekend maintenance window we will be upgrading our Hosting Automation Ssystem, Parallels Business Automation Standard (PBAS), to version 4.2.0 to add support for Plesk Panel 11.

 

VIUX™ Hosting currently makes use of Plesk 10.4.4 on all servers. When we roll out Plesk 11 on 6/26/12 it will be initially just on newly deployed servers; however all existing servers will be scheduled for upgrade to Plesk 11 over the weeks following its release. Plesk 11 adds many new features and improvements, so we are very excited about being an early adopter of Parallels® Plesk Panel 11 and to participate in its launch events.

 

ViUX™ originally selected Plesk as our Control Panel back in 2005 after reviewing it at HostingCon that same year. A primary factor in our selection of Plesk over cPanel (and several other contenders) was that it supported both Linux and Windows – thereby allowing us to roll out a single Control Panel System to ALL of our customers. This then lead us to become a Parallels® Partner and to select Virtuozzo and PBAS to complete our Hosting System.

 

Plesk 11 combined with our new Cloud Hosting System and the latest versions of Virtuozzo and PBAS will take ViUX™ Hosting to new levels of ease-of-use and performance!

 

Eastern US Storms Also Disrupted the Technology Cloud

The New York Times has an interesting article on new concerns over Cloud Computing (that is to say, AWS) reliability in the wake of recent outages caused by the weather.

The interruption underlined how businesses and consumers are increasingly exposed to unforeseen risks and wrenching disruptions as they increasingly embrace life in the cloud. It was also a big blow to what is probably the fastest-growing part of the media business, start-ups on the social Web that attract millions of users seemingly overnight.

As someone who was involved during the pre-cloud era in private data centers and later colocation facilities for startups, small and medium-sized companies, I have a question:

Does anyone really think they can do any better on their own?

Read the article.


Conference Guru Named “Media Sponsor” of Cloud Expo Silicon Valley

SYS-CON Events announced today that Conference Guru has been named “Media Sponsor” of 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.
Conference Guru reviews thousands of conferences to find great conferences and establishes partnerships with the organizers that enable us to offer a limited quantity of conference passes at a great price. Conference Guru – Great Conferences. Great Deals.
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.

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Cloud Computing: Dell Gets Quest for $2.36 Billion

Dell has won the bidding war for Quest Software agreeing to pay $28 a share, a 50 cent improvement on its last bid.
That brings the price to $2.36 billion, which is what JPMorgan claimed the company was worth weeks ago.
Insight Venture Partners, which offered $23 a share back in March, had to bring in Vector Capital, another private equity firm, to offer a financed cash bid of $25.75 a share. Dell retorted with $27.50 or about $2.32 billion. That’s where things were last Monday with the ball in Insight’s court.
The equity boys had Quest CEO Vinny Smith, who owns 34% of the company, on their side. He reportedly preferred their deal because he could keep running the systems management company but they couldn’t put the financing together according to the Wall Street Journal.

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Sony Computer Entertainment Acquiring Interactive Cloud Gaming Company

Image representing Gaikai as depicted in Crunc...

Sony Computer Entertainment today announced that it entered into an agreement to acquire Gaikai Inc.,  an interactive cloud-based gaming company, for approximately USD 380 million. Through the acquisition, SCE will establish a new cloud service, ensuring that it continues to provide users with truly innovative and immersive interactive entertainment experiences.

“By combining Gaikai’s resources including its technological strength and engineering talent with SCE’s extensive game platform knowledge and experience, SCE will provide users with unparalleled cloud entertainment experiences,” said Andrew House, President and Group CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. “SCE will deliver a world-class cloud-streaming service that allows users to instantly enjoy a broad array of content ranging from immersive core games with rich graphics to casual content anytime, anywhere on a variety of internet-connected devices.”

“SCE has built an incredible brand with PlayStation and has earned the respect of countless millions of gamers worldwide,” said David Perry, CEO of Gaikai Inc., “We’re honored to be able to help SCE rapidly harness the power of the interactive cloud and to continue to grow their ecosystem, to empower developers with new capabilities, to dramatically improve the reach of exciting content and to bring breathtaking new experiences to users worldwide.”

Established in 2008 and headquartered in Aliso Viejo, California, Gaikai has developed the highest quality, fastest interactive cloud-streaming platform in the world that enables the streaming of quality games to a wide variety of devices via the internet. With this acquisition, SCE will establish a cloud service and expand its network business by taking full advantage of Gaikai’s revolutionary technology and infrastructure including data centers servicing dozens of countries and key partners around the world.
The transaction is subject to certain regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions.
SCE will continue to aggressively expand a new world of entertainment through the introduction of innovative technologies and the delivery of amazing experiences.


Avnet Aquiring Magirus Group

Avnet, Inc. announced today that it has agreed to acquire the Magirus Group (Magirus), a leading pan-European distributor of data center solutions and services. Magirus is a leading value-add distributor of software, systems and related services encompassing virtualization, storage management, cloud computing, security, intelligent networks and information life-cycle management services. Through its professional services portfolio and knowledge of the IT sector, Magirus enables business partners to take new technologies to market in eleven markets throughout Europe and the Middle East. The transaction, which is subject to normal regulatory approvals, is expected to close in October 2012.

Phil Gallagher, president of Avnet Technology Solutions, Global, commented, “The acquisition of Magirus will significantly enhance our competitive position in Europe and the Middle East by expanding our suite of solutions in high-growth technologies. Magirus increased its revenue 20 percent in calendar 2011, delivering powerful, flexible and cost-effective data center solutions from a breadth of suppliers, including Cisco, VMware and EMC. We welcome the knowledge and expertise of their talented management team and staff, who will allow us to further enhance the value we provide to our customers and suppliers.”

Founded in 1981, Magirus has 400 business and technical professionals that help over 4,500 resellers, system integrators and IT service providers develop and deploy IT infrastructure solutions that bring together traditional server, storage and network operations so that constantly changing business requirements can be supported more efficiently. Its services span demand generation, pre-sales, consultancy, training, certification, implementation as well as support from its pan-European, multi-lingual support center. Magirus generated revenue of approximately US$530 million in the 2011 calendar year, and will be integrated into Avnet Technology Solutions’ EMEA business.

Graeme Watt, president, Avnet Technology Solutions EMEA added, “Magirus is a high quality focused business and represents an excellent expansion to our current operations as it adds complementary product lines across the region while meaningfully increasing our scale in important markets including Germany and France. Magirus’ position with market-leading suppliers in high growth technologies will bolster our solutions practices and create significant cross-selling opportunities in the combined customer base. Its business model is a strong fit with our strategy to provide more value-add services, and the combined expertise of both organizations will enable us to accelerate the success of our customers and suppliers.”


Tegal Corporation Acquiring CollabRx, Inc.

Tegal Corporation today announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire CollabRx, Inc., a privately held technology company in the rapidly growing market of interpretive content and data analytics for genomics-based medicine.

CollabRx offers cloud-based expert systems that provide clinically relevant interpretive knowledge to institutions, physicians, researchers and patients for genomics-based medicine in cancer and other diseases to inform health care decision making. With access to approximately 50 clinical and scientific advisors at leading academic institutions and a suite of tools and processes that combine artificial intelligence-based analytics with proprietary interpretive content, the company is well positioned to participate in the $300 billion value-added “big data” opportunity in the US health care market (as reported by McKinsey Global Institute), over half of which specifically targets areas in cancer and cancer genomics.1

The Chief Executive Officers of the two constituent companies, Thomas Mika of Tegal and James Karis of CollabRx, plan to serve as co-CEOs of the combined, publicly traded company, with headquarters in San Francisco, CA. Tegal entered into an employment agreement with Mr. Karis that will become effective at the closing, and Mr. Karis will also be appointed to Tegal’s Board of Directors. Tegal will continue to operate under its current name and ticker symbol for the time being, but plans to seek stockholder approval at its upcoming annual meeting in September 2012 for an amendment to its Certificate of Incorporation, changing its corporate name to CollabRx, Inc.

Originally founded in 2008 by Silicon Valley Internet pioneer Jay (Marty) Tenenbaum, CollabRx has developed clinical advisory networks, expert systems, proprietary tools and processes, and a pipeline of commercial data products and applications (“apps”) for cancer. CollabRx Therapy Finders™, its first commercial product, provides sophisticated, credible, personalized, and actionable information to physicians and patients for rapidly determining which medical tests, therapies, and clinical trials may be considered in cancer treatment planning with a specific emphasis on the tumor genetic profile.

CollabRx Therapy Finders™ are web-based apps that serve as one type of user interface to access proprietary CollabRx content. CollabRx content is dynamically updated and organized in a knowledgebase that includes information on molecular diagnostics, medical tests, clinical trials, drugs, biologics and other information relevant for cancer treatment planning. Capturing how highly respected practicing physicians use this information in the clinical setting further refines the knowledgebase.

Upon the acquisition’s closing, Tegal will issue an aggregate of 236,433 shares of common stock, representing 14% of Tegal’s total shares outstanding prior to the closing, to former CollabRx stockholders in exchange for 100% of the capital stock of CollabRx, Inc. Tegal and certain former CollabRx stockholders will enter into a Stockholders Agreement providing for, among other things, registration rights, transfer restrictions and voting and standstill agreements. Tegal also will assume $500,000 of existing CollabRx indebtedness through the issuance of 5-year promissory notes in substitution for outstanding notes previously issued by CollabRx. In addition, Tegal will grant a total of 368,417 RSUs and options as “inducement grants” to newly hired management and employees, all subject to four-year vesting and other restrictions.

“Medicine is entering a new era of low cost genome sequencing and the proliferation of personalized treatments based on specific genetic mutations,” said James Karis, CEO of CollabRx. “With the technology platform and expert system leadership position that CollabRx has developed over the past few years, we believe that the new company is in a position to lead the market for accurate, credible and current genomic information in the cancer space. We are excited to be joining the Tegal management team in a well-resourced, publicly-traded entity.”

“This acquisition marks both the successful conclusion of a transition process and the beginning of a new chapter for Tegal Corporation,” said Thomas Mika, Tegal’s Chairman, President and CEO. “We are excited to help drive the rapid growth of this market while we meet a critical and consequential human need. This is a mission Tegal’s board has embraced wholeheartedly. I am very pleased to be working with James Karis as Co-CEO and fellow director, and look forward, along with the entire team at CollabRx and Tegal, to building a dynamic company in a new era of genomic medicine.”


The cloud news categorized.