Rackspace has slashed the price of its cloud bandwidth and content delivery network (CDN) services by 33%. It’s also implementing tiered pricing for its OpenStack products, starting with Cloud Files, its object storage service.
Most of the new pricing will kick in over the next few weeks.
The bulk of Rackspace’s revenues still come from hosting. In its last quarter its cloud sales, which compete with Amazon’s, were up 49% year-over-year to $87.3 million. As good as that might sound for the last five quarters its cloud sales have been on a downward trajectory. For instance, year-over-year cloud revenue rose 69% in Q2 but only 57% in Q3.
The Wall Street Journal concluded that the company isn’t delivering on its high valuation. Its growth depends on how quickly its OpenStack Infrastructure-as-a-Service is adopted.
Creating classrooms and learning in the cloud
Patrick Fogarty with some of his students
Guest blog by Patrick Fogarty
Faculty Advisor of Technology and Teacher at Xaverian High School
When I tell my students they need to be learning the skills for jobs that don’t even exist yet, I’m speaking from personal experience. As Xaverian High School’s Faculty Advisor of Instructional Technology, I find myself frequently defining an ever-evolving job I more or less made up for myself.
My responsibilities change with the needs of our students and institution, and that’s why cloud storage has proven to be one of the most invaluable weapons in our arsenal of tech tools.
I work at one of the first iPad one-to-one schools in the United States, which means each and every student and teacher is provided with an iPad and expected to utilize it in the everyday business of teaching and learning. It’s worked …
The best cloud companies and CEOs to work for in 2013
Hiring great people and creating a culture of achievement that is fun, focused and able to get challenging tasks done is not an easy task.
Keeping that culture strong and focused on the customer takes a unique leader that consistently earns trust and respect. Those are the qualities I think of whenever I’m asked to recommend the best cloud computing companies to work for.
Using the scores from Glassdoor.com I’ve put together the table below comparing cloud computing companies and when available, the percentage of employees who approve of their CEO.
If you’re not familiar with Glassdoor, it’s a website that gives employees the chance to rate their companies and CEOs anonymously, along with reporting salaries. Friends in the Human Resources community tell me it’s an effective recruitment site as well.
Cloud computing companies are sorted based on the percentage of employees would recommend …
Parallels named 2013 IBM Beacon Award Finalist for Best Industry Solution for Telecommunications
Parallels today announced it was named an IBM Beacon Award Finalist in the “Best Industry Solution for Telecommunications” category. This prestigious honor is awarded each year to a select number of IBM Business Partners to recognize information technology excellence, commitment to skills attainment, industry knowledge and innovative solutions based on IBM products and services.
The Beacon Awards are an important element of IBM’s Business Partner recognition program. Chosen from among hundreds of nominations by leading industry journalists, analysts and IBM executives, Beacon Award winners have set the standard for business excellence, innovative technology solutions, industry knowledge and client satisfaction. The IBM Beacon Awards provide a wide range of industry recognition, increased visibility and promotional opportunities to award winners and finalists.
Being a Beacon Award Finalist in the Telecommunications category is quite an honor to Parallels. It highlights our commitment to IBM as well as our joint efforts to provide the telecommunications industry with technical solutions and expertise for launching and managing cloud services. We look forward to continuing to work with IBM to drive success in the cloud for our joint customers.
For more information about the IBM Beacon Awards, including information about winners and finalists, please visit the IBM Beacon Awards site.
A Love Story: Devices and Cloud – Perfect Together
We’ve heard about Google Glasses. And we’ve heard about Apple iWatch. And yes, we’ve heard about people embedding cellphones into shoes [1]. Once again, the term “wearable computing” is becoming a hot topic in news and literatures. Some have even announced that the age of wearable technology is here [2]. The world is surely changing fast. Aren’t we still debating who makes the best smartphones and the best tablets? What’s going on here?
The foreseeable booming of wearable computing is just another chapter of the unstoppable fusion process between cyber space and reality. Eventually, machine computing will become ubiquitous, and the boundary between human bodies and devices will fade away. This is a vision shared by many scientists, innovators, entrepreneurs and Hollywood writers. It’s becoming a reality faster than we might have expected. Devices will no longer be just peripheral augmentations, but be inextricably intertwined with human lives.
Cloud Computing Is Simplifying Things
“You need two groups when dealing with cloud compliance,” explained Rob LaMear IV, CEO and Founder of Fpweb.net, in this exclusive Q&A with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan. “First,” LaMear continued, “you need a provider that is willing to operate transparently and work with you and your auditors. Most seasoned providers are well aware of this symbiotic relationship and are open to getting it out in the open early.”
Cloud Computing Journal: The move to cloud isn’t about saving money, it is about saving time. – Agree or disagree?
Rob LaMear: Agree. Time is money. Focusing your team on strategic initiatives gives you a competitive advantage. You get to market faster and can deliver something truly special before your competitors. First one to market typically owns 70–80% of the market share. Think Apple.
Rackspace Cuts Prices
Rackspace has slashed the price of its cloud bandwidth and content delivery network (CDN) services by 33%. It’s also implementing tiered pricing for its OpenStack products, starting with Cloud Files, its object storage service.
Most of the new pricing will kick in over the next few weeks.
The bulk of Rackspace’s revenues still come from hosting. In its last quarter its cloud sales, which compete with Amazon’s, were up 49% year-over-year to $87.3 million. As good as that might sound for the last five quarters its cloud sales have been on a downward trajectory. For instance, year-over-year cloud revenue rose 69% in Q2 but only 57% in Q3.
The Wall Street Journal concluded that the company isn’t delivering on its high valuation. Its growth depends on how quickly its OpenStack Infrastructure-as-a-Service is adopted.
Do You Know the Top Threats to Cloud Security?
Where computing goes, trouble follows — in the form of hackers, disgruntled employees, and plain old destructive bugs. And as computing is moving to the Cloud (it says so right there in our logo!) that’s where some of the newest threats are emerging.
The Cloud Security Alliance has identified The Notorious Nine, (registration required) the top nine cloud computing threats for 2013.
Data breaches, data loss, account and traffic hijacking, insecure interfaces and APIs, denial of service attacks, malicious insiders, cloud “abuse” (using the power of the cloud to crack passwords), lack of due diligence, and shared technology platforms leading to shared vulnerabilities.
New PCI DSS Cloud Computing Guidelines – Are You Compliant?
This month the Cloud SIG of the PCI Security Standards Council released supplemental guidelines covering cloud computing. We’re happy to see APIs included as a recognized attack surface. As this document makes clear, responsibility for compliance for cloud-hosted data and services is shared between the client and the provider. API providers moving to the cloud should pay close attention to this document: Section 6.5.5 covers Security of Interfaces and APIs, while Appendix D covers implementation considerations that include API-related topics. For cloud-hosted systems, an API gateway can simplify implementation, secure PII and PAN data in motion, provide compliance and ensure auditability in these areas.
Rackspace Acquires DBaaS Provider ObjectRocket
“Databases are the core of any application and expertise in the most popular database technologies will be critical to us delivering Fanatical Support in the open cloud,” said Pat Matthews, SVP of corporate development at Rackspace Hosting, as it was announced that Rackspace has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire ObjectRocket, a MongoDB database as a service (DBaaS) provider.