Amazon AWS, AppSpot, Azure, Dashboard, Google, Icloud, Internet Pulse, Joyent, Microsoft, Rackspace, salesforce.com

Introducing Cloud Service Dashboard of Dashboards

We’ve added a one-stop “dashboard of dashboards” that displays all the major cloud service dashboards on one page.

The page contains a “window” for each service status page or dashboard, with live, up-to-date info at a glance. Scroll for specific applications or locations, or click the link to jump to the full status page itself.

We included these services initially:

  • Amazon AWS
  • Google Apps
  • AppSpot
  • Microsoft Azure
  • RackSpace
  • Apple iCloud
  • Salesforce.com
  • Joyent
  • internet Pulse

Have we missed any? If we have leave a comment with the URL and we’ll try to add it.


Sin categoría

Intelligent Infrastructure: Clouds for Commercial Real Estate

If they plan to remain viable in today’s markets, now is the time for real estate firms to make some dramatic changes by offering intelligent amenities in their commercial properties.
How do we prop up our dying shopping center?
How do we develop and maintain more business for our stadium?
How do we raise our commercial properties’ occupancy from 45% to 85%?
These questions are being asked more and more in the commercial real estate industry as the economy remains in a slump in many locations. Many executives are baffled because their usual management techniques are not working. In addition, assessments and property appraisals that overlook or discount technology within the property’s infrastructure are inadequate at best, and totally erroneous at worse.

read more

Sin categoría

Cloud Expo Silicon Valley: Truth and Lies about Cloud in Europe

Are you aware of the new reality that cloud computing is bringing to bear? Cloud is not as global as you might think.
The global acceptance of cloud computing has caused a spike in demand for multi-national cloud capability. As a result, cloud companies are facing an intimidating next step – expanding to new international markets. The Netherlands is the leading cloud hub in Europe that can address this process specific to transatlantic cloud expansion and how to intelligently establish the highest performing Cloud environment between North America and Europe.

read more

Sin categoría

Creating a Self-Defending Network Using Open Source Software

A coworker and I put a couple pieces of open source software (OSSEC and Snort) together to respond to certain types of automated attacks we were seeing in our IDS (we use Snort in this case). Prior to this, an engineer would manually respond to alerts by logging into our firewall and blocking the IP address causing the alert. This process was tedious, repetitive, and time consuming. By the time the firewall change would be pushed, generally the scan (it was usually a scan) was over and the attacker had moved on. So we took advantage of a feature in OSSEC called “active response”, which is used to react to events on the network. OSSEC was configured to watch for Snort alerts, and would run a script on our Internet routers (running Vyatta core 6.3) to block the IP for 10 minutes. This response runs almost immediately. We hand selected alerts that we had associated with simple scans, such as FTP Brute Force attacks, and set them up to block the addresses. But this wasn’t enough for us.

read more

Sin categoría

IBM Arms ‘Sparta’ for Big Data & the Cloud

IBM will be adding another one of its Oracle Exa-like converged PureSystems in a webcast from Boston on October 9.
AllThingsD broke the news in a piece that has mysteriously disappeared from the Wall Street Journal’s site.
It said the thing – which IBM is advertising as an integrated solution for Big Data and the cloud – was developed under the codename Project Sparta, which makes some sense since the first PureSystems – PureFlex and PureApplications – announced in April, were reportedly codenamed Project Troy.

read more

Authentication, two-factor authentication

New SafeNet Authentication Service Designed for Service Providers

SafeNet, Inc. today announced the immediate availability of SafeNet Authentication Service, a new cloud-based authentication service. The cloud authentication solution was designed and engineered specifically for the service provider environment and allows service providers to rapidly introduce authentication-as-a-service to their enterprise customers. By doing so, it enables service providers to increase their average revenue per user (ARPU), significantly reduce the cost and complexity associated with offering and implementing strong authentication, and strengthen their security and compliance posture.

SafeNet Authentication Service extends the company’s portfolio of two-factor authentication solutions, providing enterprise and government organizations with  choice and flexibility to best customize their authentication solutions to meet current and future security needs.

SafeNet Authentication Service’s automated, customizable cloud platform can reduce authentication-related operational costs through the elimination of manual tasks associated with the provisioning, administration, billing, and management of users and tokens. Service providers can manage their customers from a multi-tier, multi-tenant platform that is vendor-agnostic and will work with an organization’s existing token technology, enabling a quick migration to a centralized cloud environment with minimal disruption to end users. In addition, the service can be white-label branded and completely customizable to the service provider’s needs, enhancing the service brand and overall awareness. In addition, the platform is highly scalable, which enables service providers to accommodate a growing number of customers added to the service without requiring costly infrastructure upgrades.

Strong authentication has also become a major challenge for today’s “extended enterprise,” in which remote employees, partners, customers, and other third parties require access to an organization’s systems, applications, and data. With no infrastructure required, enterprises can quickly turn to service providers for SafeNet Authentication Service to simplify the implementation of strong authentication in this environment—providing “security without borders” from a fully automated, high-assurance, trusted cloud environment.

In addition, SafeNet Authentication Service enables service providers to free up their customer’s IT staff to focus on higher-value activities. By doing so, this automation facilitates real-time policy application to ensure regulatory compliance and improved business efficiency.

According to Chris Morales of the 451 Research Group, “The consumerization of IT, the adoption of mobile computing and SaaS applications, and the incipient growth of desktop virtualization places identity front and center of emerging security and management concerns. As identity assumes more centrality for IT (in terms of both industry and organizational function) in coming to terms with these trends, securing the integrity of the identity assertion, characterizing it in terms of risk assessment, and supplementing (or supplanting) user name and password comprise the initial set of security hurdles. Also, as enterprises and organizations assess the requirements for authentication against the cost and flexibility of the options available from incumbent vendors, authentication-as-a-service, and new form factors or channels such as smartphone tokens and one-time passwords delivered as an SMS have gained in appeal.”

SafeNet Authentication Service reflects the combined offering resulting from SafeNet’s acquisition of Cryptocard in March 2012. This new service combines SafeNet’s market-leading authentication solutions with Cryptocard’s innovative, scalable, and flexible platform.


Apica, Apica WebPerformance, AppDynamics, Application programming interface, Google Analytics, Performance testing, SPDY, Tools

Apica WebPerformance Now Supports HTML5, Integrates with AppDynamics, Cloud Services, and Google Analytics

Enhancements to Apica WebPerformance portal, introduced today, include integration with AppDynamics and Google Analytics, HTML5 support, real browser monitoring from leading browsers, and provides an API solution for advanced monitoring capabilities.

Apica WebPerformance monitors the delivery of all web content and application functionalities from more than 100 locations worldwide, providing a controlled perspective on application performance. Using Apica WebPerformance’s powerful analytics, users can drill down to the code level to better understand the capacity, scalability, and responsiveness of their applications; troubleshoot bottlenecks; and take measures to proactively improve performance.

The latest enhancements to Apica WebPerformance include:

  • Integration with AppDynamics and Google Analytics. Real-time data
    from third-party accounts is fed directly into the Apica
    WebPerformance portal to provide deeper insight into the correlation
    of performance and traffic from a single location.
  • Websockets/HTML5 and SPDY standards support. To optimize the
    performance of live, rich media content such as real-time game
    updates, stock feeds, and status indicators, Apica WebPerformance
    includes Kaazing support, a commercial full-duplex communication
    server using Websockets and HTML5.
  • HTML5 GUI. The entire Apica WebPerformance portal now supports
    HTML5, which means that it can be accessed from laptops, smartphones,
    or tablets. The interface adjusts itself to the chosen platform so
    customers can keep track of their web performance wherever they are
    located.
  • Expanded real browser monitoring. Apica
    WebPerformance now supports browser checks from Google Chrome, in
    addition to Internet Explorer and Firefox. This provides a true
    end-user view of performance from the most popular browsers used today.
  • API access. Developers can embed monitoring results and
    performance check summaries into native programs using real-time data
    from Apica’s
    global network of monitoring agents.
  • Self-service functionality. Users can easily record scripts on
    their own and immediately begin reviewing and analyzing the
    performance of their website.

“Consumer demand for high-performing websites and applications is constantly increasing. Fast response times are no longer a luxury; they are expected,” says Sven Hammar, CEO of Apica. “Performance testing as part of the development process, not just after launch but prior to launch as well, is necessary to avoid problems that can cost businesses time, money, and poor brand reputation. We’ve enhanced our WebPerformance solution with more standards support and integration so users can correlate data from multiple instances and locations across the globe to get a transparent look at application performance and improve the end-user experience. We give businesses the power to optimize their web performance and identify issues before they impact customers.”


Sin categoría

Cloud Computing: Rackspace Cloud Institute Launched

Rackspace has unveiled a new global open cloud initiative, dubbed the Rackspace Cloud Institute, to train and certify an “army of thousands of technicians, engineers and developers” on the fundamentals of OpenStack, the open source cloud platform it put in play.
Rackspace, the first company to commercialize OpenStack, has been beta testing a training course for the last year and has educated 300-350 people from about 50 mostly end-user companies in Australia, China, South Africa and the US so far, with Israel and Hong Kong scheduled soon.

read more

Sin categoría

Cloud Expo Silicon Valley: Storage Performance in the Cloud

It is no secret that one of the main challenges for applications in the cloud is storage performance. The storage performance problem in the cloud has multiple facets. It is not just low vs. high performance, but also the fact that performance varies over time and one customer can impact the performance of others. There is also the issue of storage performance monitoring. How does one know if an application is running slow because of storage performance or because of other factors like networking, IO concurrency, latencies, etc.?
In his session at the 11th International Cloud Expo, Nelson Nahum, CEO & CTO of Zadara Storage, will discuss how a new cloud storage architecture is needed – one that is not based on “scale out,” but it is more similar to the compute cloud.

read more

Business Processes, Content Management, Customer Relationship Management, GlobalSCAPE, Mobile device, Salesforce, salesforce.com

TappIn Pro Edition Includes Salesforce.com Integration

TappIn, Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of GlobalSCAPE, Inc. announced today the launch of the new TappIn Professional Edition. TappIn’s Professional Edition offers 10 GB of secure transactional cloud storage, enhanced secure mobile access features, integration with Salesforce, and group management capabilities designed for professional users, businesses, and an increasingly mobile workforce, by creating a go-to service for remote access to all content regardless of where it resides.

“The increasingly mobile nature of today’s workforce, coupled with the rapid diversification of content sources and storage repositories, has forced a re-envisioning of how IT manages the access device landscape,” said Maureen Fleming, analyst with IDC. “Content is no longer stored on just a computer or server, it’s stored across collaboration platforms like Salesforce and Microsoft Exchange, on NAS drives, and in cloud repositories—public, private, and personal. As mobile devices put our lives at our fingertips, businesses and their employees will look for solutions that also streamline access to these content sources, increasing efficiency and eliminating the need for redundant copies and storage.”

“If we have learned anything from the BYOD revolution, it’s that people are looking for the simplest way to manage and access everything they need via a mobile device,” said Chris Hopen, President of TappIn, Inc. “TappIn Professional Edition is the next evolution of our approach to access and management, allowing users to go to a single place on their mobile device and securely access or share all of their important content—whether it resides on a home computer, business server, or SaaS application such as Salesforce. TappIn is the one place they can go for access to all of their content without having to move it all to one place.”