Archivo de la categoría: News

Novosco Acquires NetDef

Cloud service provider Novosco has recently acquired NetDef, a security solution enterprise. This deal is expected to close for a few million dollars and will increase the workforce at Novosco to about 140 employees.This acquisition is intended to aid Novosco’s expansion into the English market.

NetDef will continue trade under its own name.

netdef

About Novosco:

Founded in 1994,  UK based Novosco provides cloud solutions, managed services, and consulting to cutomers by leveraging public, private, and hybrid clouds. With offices in Belfast, Cork, Dublin, and Manchester, Novosco provides services to a number of organizations including universities, health trusts, and housing organizations within the UK as well as many large organizations within the Republic of Ireland.

About NetDef:

Founded in 1996, Cheshire based NetDef currently employs 20 people. NetDef aims to provide technology awareness to the public as well as testing, developing, and supporting Open Source Software (OSS). It also provides open and testing of hardware and software.

Comments:

Dave Beesley, NetDef  Managing Director: ”The complementary expertise that we have will allow us to further enhance and deepen the services that we offer to existing and new clients.”

Patrick McAliskey, Novosco Managing Director: “NetDef is a well-established provider of network and security solutions to some of the UK’s most high-profile organisations, and its expertise and competence have seen it entrusted with data and projects of the utmost public sensitivity. Working with Dave Beesley and his expert team will provide Novosco with added scale, and an important new dimension to our service offering as we seek to further grow our business across the UK.”

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Telstra Acquires Readify

Telstra has recently announced the acquisition of Australian based Readify, a developer of Microsoft software applications. This acquisition adds to Telstra’s cloud portfolio, adding to earlier acquisitions of Kloud in January as well as O2 Networks, Bridgepoint Communications, and NSC.

About Readify:

Based in Melbourne, Readify has won several awards from Microsoft. Readify has approximately 200 staff members and 80% of staff members are software developers.

readify

Previous Acquisitions:

In January, Telstra aimed to expand its managed network application services by acquiring Australian based Kloud.  Kloud provides solutions for application development, cloud infrastructure, identity, productivity, and security. It also provides services to more than 80 government and corporate customers throughout the Asia Pacific region.

North Shore Connections (NSC) was acquired by Telstra in August of 2013. O2 joined Telstra in January 2014 for AU$60 million and data management provider Bridgeport was acquired in October 2014.

In March of 2016, Telstra announced a three software defined network (SDN) and network function virtualization (NFV) products in order to improve cloud security and global data center interconnection. The products introduced were Cloud Gateway Protection, Internet Virtual Private Network (VPN), and Data Center Interconnect.  

Cloud Gateway Protection is a virtual security application that aims to secure cloud services and internet access against cyber attacks.

Internet VPN aims to provide an encrypted office network over public internet for enterprises to utlize across a multitude of sites.

Data Center Interconnect, extends Telstra’s SDN PEN1 global data center interconnection by adding points of presence throughout the Australian region.  

 

Comments:

Michelle Bendschneider, Telstra’s executive director of Global Enterprise and Services: “As we know, apps and software in general are playing an increasingly important role in businesses. Readify is recognised globally for its innovative software solutions and will further help us create software-led digital transformations with our customers. Readify will provide application development and data analytics services, nicely complementing Kloud’s existing services. It will enable Telstra to add incremental value to customers in enterprise cloud applications, API-based customisation, and extensions, as well as business technology advisory services.”

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Amazon Launches New Cloud Region

Public cloud provider Amazon Web Services has recently announced the launch of a new cloud region in Mumbai, India. This marks AWS ’s 35th availability zone across 13 technology infrastructure regions.

This new region will provide services for over 75,000 active customers that have already begun to take advantage of the power of the platform. Launch of the region allows Indian enterprises, startups, etc. to harness the full power and scalability of the platform.

There are three edge locations in India currently: Mumbai, Chennai, and New Delhi and AWS has opened six offices in India to support it growing customer base within the country.

The region is set to consist of two separate availability zones that refer to two different distinct data centers. Most Indian tech startups create their businesses utilizing AWS and new cloud regions allows Indian companies to fully take advantage of the services Amazon has to offer. AWS is also offering training and certification programs to Indian developers that wish to take advantage of these technologies.

Comments:

Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon Web Services: “These same 75,000 Indian customers, along with others anxious to start using AWS, have asked for an AWS India Region so they can move their applications that require low latency and data sovereignty. We’re excited to make this available today, with the same pay-as-you-go pricing, ability to get started immediately without having to negotiate enterprise agreements or wait days for access, and unmatched functionality that customers enjoy in AWS Regions worldwide – all of which allows customers to go from idea to launch faster than ever before was possible”

Jagdish Belwal, CIO of Tata Motors Limited; AWS customer:”We have been working with AWS since 2012, steadily moving workloads to the cloud, such as test and development environments for our core enterprise systems, we run one of the largest CRM based Dealer Management implementations in the world, more than 90 Tata digital properties in production on AWS, and many other applications.”

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Oracle Pushing to Become Biggest Cloud Computing Company

Oracle is known as one of the top companies in the cloud computing space. Over the past year alone the company has made many moves to solidify its spot, such as unveiling a new hybrid cloud service.

Larry Ellison has reason to believe that his company will be first to reach $10 billion in combined platform-as-a-service and software-as-a-service. During the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call he said, “We think we’re going to be the first one there.”

Competition is Hot

Of course, there is a big difference between saying and doing. Oracle is well on its way to this mark, but there are other companies, most notably Salesforce.com, that are growing at a fast rate.

Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff has made it clear to investors that the goal is to reach $10 billion in revenue. Furthermore, he said the company is closing in on that goal.

During the last quarter alone, SaaS alone generated $1.92 billion, which was an increase of nearly 30 percent year over year.

How does this compare to Oracle? During the same period, the company “only” generated $690 million in revenue for its PaaS and SaaS businesses. In other words, Oracle has some catching up to do.

While the battle between Oracle and Salesforce.com is one to watch, don’t overlook the fact that other companies, including Microsoft and Amazon, are also vying to become the first $10 billion cloud computing company.

In Oracle’s fourth quarter earnings release, Ellison told investors that he expects the “SaaS and PaaS hypergrowth we experienced in FY16 will continue on for the next few years.” If this happens, Oracle, among others, are in position to continue to grow at a rapid pace.

There is a lot going on in the cloud, with Oracle one of the many companies out in front. It’ll be interesting to see how things play out as 2016 comes to an end and the calendar turns.

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Google Brings Cloud Technology to Students for Free

Many companies, such as Samsung, are doing their best to get more involved in the cloud services space.

Google, however, is out in front of the pack. While some see this company as nothing more than a search engine, those with advanced knowledge realize that it goes well beyond that.

According to a recent blog post by Alison Wagonfeld, Vice President of Marketing, Google Cloud & Google for Education, the company is happy to announce the Google Cloud Platform Education Grants program for computer science faculty and students.

As of June 21, 2016, faculty in the United States who teach computer science courses can apply for free credits, which can then be passed along to students. These credits provide access to a variety of Google Platform tools, many of which have come to be known as the best in the industry.

Google has high hopes for the program, believing that it can help students reach their full potential, both while in school and when they enter the job market.

Some of the many tools students will be able to access include:

  • Cloud Machine Learning
  • Cloud Vision API
  • Google BigQuery
  • Google App Engine

All of these tools offer something special, with Google noting that they “are unique among cloud providers.”

For example, the use of Cloud Vision API gives computer science students the opportunity to implement state-of-the-art image recognition capabilities into the development of a mobile apple website.

With grants available for use anytime during the 2016-17 academic year, computer science faculty are beginning to apply in great numbers. While the program is only available in the United States for the upcoming academic year, Google hopes to expand it to other parts of the world in the near future.

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Cisco to Buy CloudLock

Cloud giant Cisco has recently acquired cloud security startup CloudLock for $293 million. This $293 million includes cash as well as equity awards. CloudLock will be integrated into Cisco’s Networking and Security Business group under David Goeckeler. The deal is expected to close by November, 2016.

 

Cisco has utilized acquisition to build its security software and service sector; it paid $2.7 billion for Sourcefire, security hardware and software maker, in 2013 and $635 million for OpenDNS, which helps stop cyber attacks, in 2015. These acquisitions are similar to those of Microsoft, who purchased Adallom for $250 million, and Blue Coat, who purchased Perspecsys Inc.

 

About CloudLock:

Founded in 2007, Massachusetts based CloudLock currently has about 130 employees. It provides cloud access security broker (CASB) technology that allows enterprises to protect data within their cloud. This platform acts as a control point for users that are attempting to access cloud based applications such as Microsoft 365. This technology allows policies pertaining to data access to be established and enforced. It also allows security administrators to monitor third party applications that enterprise employees may be utilizing without expressed permission of the enterprise.

 

Essentially, CASB gives administrators a control point for cloud security and visibility. Because of these unique capabilities, the demand for CASB technology is expected to increase sharply in the coming years. This increase is driven by growing utilization of Software as a Service (SaaS) applications such as Office 365.

 

Comments:

Rob Salvagno, head of Cisco’s M&A and venture investment team: “‘Buy’ has been a key part of our innovation strategy, alongside significant internal product development, to drive towards a fully integrated security portfolio.”

Rob Salvagno, vice president of Cisco Corporate Development: “CloudLock brings a unique cloud-native platform and API-based approach to cloud security, which allows them to build powerful security solutions that are easy to deploy and simple to manage.”

Luke Burns, general partner at Ascent Venture Partners:”CloudLock rose to leadership in the cloud security sector with a pure-play approach of being cloud-native while leveraging other cloud platform APIs in a collaborative fashion. They were a trailblazer of this approach while the competition often focused their efforts on extending legacy methods.”

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Samsung Making its Move into the Cloud

samsungAt this point, there’s no denying the fact that Samsung is a major player in the smartphone space. Going head to head with Apple, the company has proved it can hold its own.

But now, the electronics giant is looking to make another big move. With its recent agreement to purchase Joyent, Inc., a well known public and private cloud provider, Samsung is positioning itself to become a major player in the cloud computing services space.

At this point, Samsung has plans to keep Joyent as a separate business, however, it will be able to use its experience and service to boost its own cloud based performance.

Is this a Good Move?

While some feel that Samsung should focus on its core, which at this point appears to be the smartphone industry, others realize that this is an opportunity for the company to expand its offerings and position itself for future success.

With this purchase, the company now has a platform that can be used across its mobile and Internet of Things services.

From a financial perspective, it’s still unclear as to how much money Joyent will generate for Samsung.

Why Now?

There are many reasons why Samsung decided to make this move right now, with a decrease in smartphone shipments likely being the primary driver.

While smartphone shipments have fallen off, the cloud computing marketing is growing by leaps and bounds. If Samsung wants to stay ahead of the game, it only makes sense for it to bury more resources into this industry.

In the months to come, it will be interesting to see if Samsung is able to get its mobile business back on track. Even if it continues to stall, the company has a big opportunity to compete with the top players in the cloud computing services space.

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Kstart Invests in ParaBlu

India’s leading venture capital firm Kalaari Capital’s seed program, Kstart, has recently invested $510k into cloud security startup ParaBlu. This funding will be used for both team expansion and marketing activities.

Kalaari Capital launched its Kstart program in February of 2016, allocating over $20 million for the program over the course of two years. ParaBlu marks Kstart’s fourth investment, following Affordplan, Active.ai, and Indee. Kstart plans to invest in over 40 startups over the next four years.

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About ParaBlu:
Founded in 2011, California based ParaBlu provides an award winning Cloud Access Security Broker data solution, among other cloud security solutions. The company provides Blukrypt, a secured cloud gateway, BlueSync, for secured data transfer, as well as two versions of its BlueVault solution.

Blukrypt is a CASB that allows users to manage their security policy whether the are utilizing public or private cloud.

With BlueSync, users are allowed to establish somewhat of a “mini-cloud.” These mini clouds allow different teams to operate underneath an enterprises singular large cloud network.

BlueVault comes in two versions: one for endpoints and one for servers. BlueVault for servers has the ability to backup files and databases from Windows servers.
Comments:
Vani Kola, MD, Kalaari Capital: “As cloud usage continues to increase within enterprises, there is tremendous opportunity ahead for ParaBlu’s unique product.”

Anand Prahlad, President, ParaBlu: “ParaBlu was founded with the singular vision of being the security vendor of choice for all enterprise data outside the firewall.The promise of that is already evident in our customer wins so far, and the investment from Kstart will help accelerate the realization of that vision. The experience and mentorship the Kstart team brings with them are without doubt among the best in the industry, and we’re excited to be able to take advantage of it.”

Ananda Rao Ladi: “Our solutions enable enterprises to become less dependent on in-house storage and adopt cloud with confidence. The association with Kstart will help us in expanding our product portfolio for global markets.”

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Samsung Acquires Joyent

Samsung Electronics has recently announced that it will acquire Joyent, a company that is important to the cloud hosting market, for an undisclosed amount. This acquisition marks Samsung effort to transition from just a device manufacturer; the company has begun to expand into software and services with things such as Samsung Pay. The acquisition of Joyent marks Samsung’s third major procurement of a US startup in two years. Acquiring Joyent allows Samsung to have another outlet of processing power, as it currently relies on Amazon and Microsoft for cloud services. As Samsung continues to delve into the realm of artificial intelligence and virtual reality, the extra computational service is much needed. Samsung also aims to use cloud services to collect and analyze data generated by its devices to create a more personalized experience for users.

samsung

Joyent will be integrated into Samsung’s mobile division. Joyent will keep both its name and top level management through this transition. Joyent will operate with a certain amount of independence from parent company Samsung. This acquisition allows Joyent to compete within the large, rapidly developing cloud market and will help Joyent’s worldwide expansion. As Scott Hammond, CEO, wrote on Joyent’s website, “ By bringing these two companies together we are creating the opportunity to develop and bring to market vertically integrated mobile and IoT services and solutions that deliver extraordinary simplicity and value to our customers. This will accelerate the speed of innovation for both companies in high growth market segments.”

About Joyent:

Founded in 2004, the Joyent team was among the first to experiment with public and hybrid cloud as well as to industrialize containers. San Francisco based Joyent has many industry leading but lesser known products and services such as Triton, containers as a service, and Manta, object storage solution. Similarly to Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure, Joyent allows customers to run their software on the cloud but Joyent also aids customers in constructing their own cloud like systems within their own data centers. Joyent has raised about $126 million in venture capital over the past eleven years.

Comments:

Senior vice president at Samsung’s Global Innovation Center Jacopo Lenzi: “As Samsung is increasingly focusing on software and services as part of its offering to users, it’s very important to build out our internal capabilities in cloud, not only in infrastructure but also in great talent. In Joyent we saw a combination of a proven platform that has been a leader in the forward-thinking elements of this space as well as a team that is world class.”

Joyent CEO Scott Hammond: “The partnership with Samsung gives us the global reach, the economic scale, the financial resources to not only innovate but to also extend our footprint globally. We’ll be building data centers around the globe.”

Chief technology officer of Samsung’s mobile division, “Big data is going to be a huge initiative for Samsung. Samsung devices will be increasingly intelligent, and big data is really a key component of intelligence and personalization.”

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China Shuts Down Cloud Storage Services for Pornographic Content

“Internet companies only provide the technology to build cyberspaces for online storage, but in the end, these spaces belong to China’s online territory and, hence, fall within the government’s jurisdiction,” Qin An, a cyber security expert at the China Institute for Innovation and Development Strategy. China has defined Cloud Storage as a territory of the Chinese government and therefore has the jurisdiction to regulate the content stored within Clouds, allowing for immense censorship.

Pornographic content is widespread on cloud services, with users uploading videos and then selling them. The government believes it should take necessary action to halt this “immoral” behavior.

President Xi Jinping has ignited a moral campaign that aims to tackle corruption within the country’s sprawling administration as well as crackdown on inappropriate online content. After the National Office Against Pornographic and Illegal Publications launched a campaign in March “to address the emerging practice of sharing and hosting pornography via cloud storage services.” Many companies cloud storage services have been shut down. The list includes interne giants Sina, Tencent and Kingsoft as well as DBank and Alibaba.

Alibaba announced in March a complete closure of the service but dates have not yet been specified. Sina soon followed on April 25 with their announcement to close cloud services. DBank has become the sixth company to close or reduce operations after this crackdown. DBank will close all services and delete all data on July 1st, 2016. . Sina and Xunlei, which operate Vdisk andKuaiPan storage services respectively, announced closure of free accounts on June 30.

Homemade videos may still be created and uploaded to personal accounts as long as the content is treated as private information.

Throughout the massive crackdown, few companies, such as search engine Baidu and Internet company Qihoo360, have no plans to suspend any operations.

This is not the first of mass censorship in China, as Google Drive, Dropbox, Apple iTunes, Walt Disney’s DisneyLife services, and many online streaming shows have been blolcked in China. The Chinese government has expanded the word pornography to include any material it finds to be objectionable, such as political criticism. What will be censored next?

 

Comments:

Xie Yongjiang, deputy director of the Institute of Internet Governance and Law at the Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications: “The government has the right to supervise and intercept illegal information spread online, while companies are also obliged to prevent such information from being uploaded online in the first place by using filtration technology.”

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