Earlier today I interviewed hot Cloud venture Appdirect, a company that offers a white label platform for implementing ‘Cloud Service Brokering’. This is one of the headline R&I focus areas for our road map. On the back of a $3.25m VC deal last year, Appdirect is one of a number of pioneers in this super hot […]
Global Cloud Readiness – Regional Variances: Cisco Infographic
As cloud-based applications grow and become more pervasive in our personal and business computing landscape, fixed and mobile networks will become even more vital as the platform that enhances the way we live, work, play and learn. Check out our new infographic to learn how region is currently equipped to handle basic, intermediate and advanced cloud services today.
NetSuite CEO: "All Companies are Cloud Companies"
«All companies, even non-technology companies, have realized they are cloud companies,” says Zach Nelson, CEO of NetSuite.
“To effectively transition their business to this new model of reaching customers, they need to build their enterprise around an application suite like NetSuite that was designed to support operations in the Cloud Age,” he adds.
NetSuite is not one of the larger cloud players, but did just report record quarterly revenues of US$69.3 million, up 30 percent from a year ago. It shows a positive cash flow and squeezed out profits of $4.1 million in its most recent quarter.
The company had a strong presence in the Philippines, where I was just based for three years, as it tackles a lot of unfun challenges in the financials, ERP, and related spaces. Nelson says the company most recent results are driven by continuing momentum “as companies large and small…(continue a) migration from legacy offerings like Microsoft Dynamics GP/Great Plains, Sage and SAP to NetSuite.”
I like it.
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Cloud Expo Keynote: ‘Mission-Critical Apps in the Cloud’ Myth or Reality?
The latest generation of cloud computing is now capable of addressing the needs of the enterprise mission-critical applications. These applications require computing infrastructure that is secure, optimizes performance, and is highly resilient.
In his Day 2 Keynote at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Henry Fastert, Chief Technologist and Managing Partner at SHI, will highlight how the latest cloud computing designs have evolved in terms of security, availability, and overall service quality to meet the needs of mission-critical applications.
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Wisdom of Crowds Business Intelligence Market Study
A new era of Business Intelligence is unfolding with users buying and deploying BI either with or without cooperation from IT. Because of this shift, users now have many choices and need to make the best decision when it comes to BI features, functionality and price.
Stay up to date on the ever-changing BI market by reviewing the findings of the 2011 Dresner Advisory Services Wisdom of Crowds BI Market Study™. Howard Dresner, report author and worldwide authority on BI, shares the latest market trends and provides true insight in to what is happening in the BI arena today. In addition, read why Actuate/BIRT is in the top position and how it exceeded its peer group and the overall sample average for all Technical Support and Product metrics by a wide margin.
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The Promise of Internet Scale Design and Architecture at Cloud Expo NY
Cloud computing revolutionized application design, and changed the way people think about infrastructure. The rise of cloud computing coincided with a new generation of applications and services that required scale. New architecture and design had to take into account low latency network connectivity, geographic distribution, large real-time data stores, the ability to meet demand (while not knowing exactly how much demand to handle), and so much more. We refer to this as Internet Scale. We see a market trend with prospects and customers asking for hybrid hosting environments that include public cloud, private cloud, dedicated servers, storage and managed hosting. Leveraging these products and services they want to architect and deliver a solution that is Internet Scale. From a technology perspective, what is Internet Scale? Is it really viable to build to Internet Scale in a hosted environment? What does it take to achieve true Internet Scale?
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Leveraging Hardware to Protect the Cloud
Today, security is undoubtedly the biggest risk and negative side effect to cloud computing. Fortunately, the status quo is about to change. The Trusted Computing Group (TCG), a not-for-profit organization that has developed open standards for computers, networks, storage and mobile devices to improve enterprise and personal security, is now focusing its attention on cloud computing security. The hardware basis of trust for many aspects of TCG’s standards is the Trusted Platform Module, or TPM. For a virtualized trusted platform, a virtual TPM (vTPM) and all the associated architecture have been defined to provide protection for virtual machines paralleling the hardware-rooted security offered on non-virtualized platforms. While the standard was only recently released, it represents the culmination of a decade-long effort by TCG members to increase financial, medical, government and other organizations’ trust in electronic information processing, communication and control.
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appzero to Demonstrate New zapp Application Migration Automation
appzero will be demonstrating its newly announced zapp migration at Impact 2012. The fastest and most flexible way to move server applications to any cloud, zapp automatically extracts Windows server applications from production environments and packages them for movement to any cloud, without re-engineering, change, or lock-in. The demonstration will show how zapp automation slashes the bulk of manual labor, time, costs, and error typically involved in on-boarding complex enterprise applications
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eircom, PGi Announce Alliance Offering Video, Web, Audio Conferencing Solutions
eircom, Irish provider of fixed and mobile telecommunications, and PGi, a provider of virtual meetings whose European headquarters are located in Clonakilty Co. Cork, today announced a new, multi-year strategic alliance.
With this new alliance, eircom will offer PGi’s full suite of video, web and audio conferencing solutions, including iMeet and GlobalMeet, to its business customers in Ireland. iMeet delivers secure, cloud-based video conferencing that enables up to 15 people to meet face-to-face online – anytime, anywhere, from their desktop, tablet or mobile device. GlobalMeet has an easy-to-navigate user interface, requires no software downloads for meeting guests and offers a unique “connect me” feature that automatically calls attendees, making dial-in numbers and passcodes obsolete.
Commenting on the announcement, Peter Smyth, director of marketing & product development for eircom said “eircom is committed to offering the most up to date technology and innovative solutions to our customers. We are delighted to work with PGi who are experts in delivering fully integrated web conferencing and audio conferencing solutions. The new range of products will be of huge benefit to our business customers and will undoubtedly lead to greater efficiencies for them. In today’s business environment where managing time and costs are key, more and more businesses are moving towards web and audio based meetings and our new services facilitate these requirements.”
“We are excited about our new strategic alliance with eircom,” said John Stone, PGi EVP Europe & Managing Director. “eircom has incredible scale and a strong enterprise customer base in Ireland, which is a solid complement to PGi’s deep expertise in the virtual meetings space. Together, we look to provide Irish companies with solutions that help them collaborate in more meaningful ways whilst increasing business productivity.”
Syncplicity Launches Group Sync, Sharing Capabilities for Businesses
Syncplicity today announced the beta rollout of first-of-its-kind Group Sharing and Permissions features for business users. With the launch, Syncplicity is the first solutions provider to make it easy to share and sync folders across large groups of users within an organization, while allowing them to organize their files the way they want on their own computers and devices, and seamlessly collaborate from anywhere. By enabling group-based folder sharing directly from a user’s local file system on their computer or mobile device, users can more easily collaborate with dynamic cross-functional teams, freed from checking files into rigid organizationally-aligned file servers or dragging and dropping them into a new place to share and collaborate from. At the same time, the new features give businesses the security, transparency, compliance and manageability they require.
“Group collaboration can now occur without hassle, marking a seismic positive change for the industry,” said Leonard Chung, Syncplicity Co-Founder and Chief Product Strategist. “IT Administrators need a solution to the chaos and security headaches introduced by unmanaged and uncontrolled sharing through consumer-grade solutions. We’ve answered the call with innovative group capabilities that maintain the business-class administrative, mobile, and security features today’s organizations require, while enabling users to safely and automatically sync and share files and folders easily on a large scale.”
Syncplicity speeds access to shared files and eliminates information silos by ensuring everyone in a group has seamless online and offline access to files in shared folders without the burden of sharing them with each new group member. With the new Group Sharing functionality, Syncplicity users and Admins can easily share folders with pre-defined, centralized groups of users along with individuals. Every member of the group gains immediate access to all the files in the shared folders and organizes them however they prefer on their own computer. As new users join the group the shared folders are automatically synced to their computers. And, when users leave the group they automatically lose access to those folders and the files can be automatically wiped from their synced locations for additional security.
Syncplicity’s Group sharing also dramatically reduces the time and cost of supporting users and protecting company data. As new users are added to the system, IT Administrators can easily add them with groups, giving group members immediate access to all folders, including shared folders from corporate file servers. This reduces end-user file server connectivity and permission issues and reduces the support cost of VPNs. Because groups are centrally managed, users who are removed from a group lose access to shared folders and files associated with that group immediately.
Additional key features of the Syncplicity group sharing and permissions beta include:
Admins can create an unlimited number of groups and easily add users
Admins can avoid complexity and uncertainty by having constant
visibility into what folders have been shared with the group and what
users are members of each group
Admins can share folders from on-premise file servers so members of
the group get online, offline, and mobile access to those folders
without having to map drives or configure a VPN
Folders can be shared with “read only” or “read-write” access to
protect files from inappropriate changes; Syncplicity determines an
individual user’s access rights based on permissions granted through
group membership and individual shares (e.g. a user can be granted
read-write access individually even if they belong to a group that
just has read-only access)
As an added protection, Syncplicity prevents data loss by not allowing
any user to permanently delete files unless they are the original owner
Synced group folders can be accessed online and offline— if offline,
changes are synced to the group as soon as the user connects and
Syncplicity automatically handles version conflicts
Syncplicity customers interested in participating in the beta program can register at https://syncplicity.wufoo.com/forms/m7x1s1/ for additional details.
