Systems integrator CSC has filled a key hole in its cloud service portfolio by agreeing to acquire ServiceMesh, a key cloud service automation provider that facilitates running various apps on multiple public cloud services.
The deal gives CSC the ServiceMesh Agility Platform, software that automates the deployment and management of enterprise apps running on public, private and hybrid clouds. The ServiceMesh policy engine provides governance, compliance and security of enterprise information running in various cloud environments, the company said.
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Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on 10/31/2013 at 1:24 PM0 comments
In a move aimed at broadening the enterprise reach of its application marketplace, Salesforce.com on Thursday launched its Salesforce Private AppExchange. The new exchange lets IT organizations roll out their own apps, which can be accessed on mobile devices and Web-based clients.
Built on the foundation of its existing Salesforce AppExchange, the new private iteration lets enterprise customers build and distribute internally developed software that can be accessed via the single sign-on service the company announced earlier this month called Salesforce Identity. The private enterprise marketplace is designed to let IT organizations consolidate access to applications and give employees broader choices of tools that are on the common platform.
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Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on 10/31/2013 at 1:21 PM0 comments
Remember when EarthLink was the Internet service provider many people used if they didn't want to rely on AOL for their dial-up access?
EarthLink, which has a formidable communications backbone these days, is also looking to make its mark as a cloud infrastructure service provider.
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Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on 10/24/2013 at 10:13 AM2 comments
Cloud Technology Partners is best known for its consulting services. But the company has a new business aimed at making it easier for developers to migrate their .NET and Java applications to different cloud service providers.
The company's new PaaSLane tool aims to remove the time-consuming and labor-intensive process of evaluating software source code to ensure an application can work properly in a cloud environment. That's especially important as providers roll out new services and update existing ones.
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Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on 10/24/2013 at 10:51 AM5 comments
The OpenStack Foundation on Thursday released the eighth version of its open source cloud infrastructure operating platform.
The new OpenStack Havana release has 400 new features, but the most noteworthy are support for monitoring, orchestration and global cluster support with the platform's new object storage system.
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Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on 10/17/2013 at 12:12 PM2 comments
At this week's VMworld 2013 Europe conference in Barcelona, VMware announced key updates to several of its products. Most important is improved performance monitoring of Hyper-V, SQL Server and Exchange within VMware vCenter Operations Management Suite 5.8. VMware also updated its vCenter Log Insight analytics tool.
The vCenter Operations Management Suite was able to monitor and manage Hyper-V workloads as a guest OS by placing its Hyperic agent in the box. But now, through Microsoft's System Center Operations Manager or VMware's Hyperic management packs for vCenter Operations Manager, it can manage Hyper-V hosts and virtual machines. It also adds support for Amazon Web Services (AWS) EC2 infrastructure as a service (IaaS).
The new version collects data on the CPU, network, memory and other components, and feeds that into its analytics engine to separate normal performance behavior from unhealthy activity and then provides alerts.
Expanding support for Hyper-V is a smart move that will be welcomed by VMware and Microsoft customers alike, says Pund-IT principal analyst Charles King. "By expanding its support for and visibility into Hyper-V and public cloud services like AWS, VMware is highlighting its continuing technical leadership," King said. "Since these new features are also coming with no additional premium, adding them also enhances the value proposition of VMware's solutions and services."
In tandem with the vCenter Operations Management Suite upgrade, VMware also updated its recently launched vCenter Log Insight analytics tool. The new Log Insight 1.5 release provides real-time analytics to provide searchable information and dashboards. Released in June, the Log Insight upgrade supports "content packs" for specific systems such as Exchange Server and SQL Server, as well as products from Hytrust, EMC, NetFlow and VMware's own Nicira software-defined networking platform, said Mark Leake, director of product marketing in VMware's cloud management business unit.
"These new out-of-the-box capabilities enhance the discovery and topology," Leake said. "So you get deeper discovery of app instances and components and you can apply the analytics that we have in vCenter Operations Manager to them."
Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on 10/16/2013 at 4:49 PM0 comments
Amazon Web Services (AWS) on Thursday launched a program for startup customers to use its cloud service, which includes training, developer resources and a community aimed at bringing other startups and third parties together. Called AWS Activate, it also gives startups credits to use its cloud service.
The AWS Activate offering consists of two packages. The Self Starter package is available for any startup. It includes an AWS Free Usage Tier, one month of support for developers, technical training, credit for one AWS training lab and access to Amazon's Startup Forum, AWS evangelist Jeff Barr said in a blog post.
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Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on 10/10/2013 at 3:48 PM2 comments
Verizon plans to offer a new cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) that will allow enterprise customers to provision compute and storage capacity.
Already a major provider of cloud IaaS with the Terremark service it acquired over two years ago for $1.4 billion, Verizon is poised to offer a more configurable set of services with its new offering. The company laid out plans to roll its new Verizon Cloud Compute and Verizon Cloud Storage services on Thursday at the Interop trade show in New York.
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Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on 10/04/2013 at 11:42 AM0 comments
The U.S. government has certified that Microsoft's Windows Azure cloud service meets the FedRAMP Joint Authorization Board (JAB) Provisional Authority to Operate (P-ATO).
That means Windows Azure meets the security requirements of federal agencies looking to use public Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS), said Susie Adams, chief technology officer for Microsoft Federal, in a blog post Monday.
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Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on 10/02/2013 at 12:07 PM0 comments
Two years after launching a registry that lets cloud providers reveal the security controls they have in place, the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) is now enabling them to get third-party certification of those claims.
The CSA, joined by BSI Group, on Thursday said it will offer the STAR Certification program.
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Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on 09/26/2013 at 2:03 PM0 comments
Red Hat this week disclosed plans to deliver on its OpenShift Platform as a Service (PaaS) portfolio, aimed at letting developers build modern, composite and mobile apps to public, private and hybrid cloud environments.
The company outlined its new JBoss xPaaS services for OpenShift suite, based on its development environment for enterprise Java and middleware. In addition to providing new tooling for developers to build modern and mobile apps for PaaS clouds, Red Hat officials said the new suite will help developers connect existing legacy apps to cloud environments without recoding them.
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Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on 09/26/2013 at 1:26 PM2 comments
Cloud service provider Nirvanix stunned its customers early this week telling them they have two weeks to find another home for their terabytes -- and in some cases petabytes -- of data because the company is shutting down.
First reported on Monday by the U.K.-based Web site Information Age, the sudden collapse of one of the largest cloud storage providers has left customers scrambling, especially those with huge amounts of data stored. Among them are National Geographic and Fox, which use Nirvanix to store their data, according to published reports. Many major providers, including Dell, HP, Riverbed, Symantec and TwinStrata, sourced their cloud storage from Nirvanix when offering their own services, according to StorageReview.com.
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Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on 09/19/2013 at 3:49 PM2 comments