Splunk Cloud Guarantees Uptime

Splunk Inc. today announced several updates to its cloud service for analyzing machine-generated Big Data.

Splunk Cloud now features what the company calls the industry's first 100 percent uptime service-level agreement (SLA), lower prices and a free online sandbox in which developers and users can play around with data files.

Posted by David Ramel on 08/05/20140 comments

Research Tackles Cloud-to-Cloud Networking

Scientists from three companies have combined to tackle the problem of cloud-to-cloud networking, emerging with technology that speeds up connection time from days to seconds.

The research that resulted in "breakthrough elastic cloud-to-cloud networking" technology was sponsored by the U.S. government's DARPA CORONET program, which studies rapid reconfiguration of terabit networks.

Posted by David Ramel on 07/30/20140 comments

New Tools Released for Cloud Orchestration, Disaster Recovery

GigaSpaces Technologies and RackWare each released new tools this week in 3.0 versions of their products that handle cloud orchestration and disaster recovery, respectively.

Cloudify 3.0 from GigaSpaces has been completely re-architected for "intelligent orchestration" of cloud applications, the company said. This intelligence provides a new feedback loop that automatically fixes problems and installs updates without human intervention needed. The company said this automatic reaction to problem events and implementation of appropriate corrective measures eliminate the boundary between monitoring and orchestration.

Posted by David Ramel on 07/30/20140 comments

Oracle Data Cloud Offers Marketing, Social Info Services

Oracle Corp. yesterday unveiled the Oracle Data Cloud, a Data as a Service (DaaS) offering that's initially serving up marketing and social information to fuel "the next revolution in how applications can be more useful to people."

Posted by David Ramel on 07/23/20140 comments

Surprise! SAP Backs OpenStack and Cloud Foundry, Releases Cloud Dev Tools

Surprising some industry pundits, enterprise software vendor SAP SE yesterday announced the backing of two cloud-based open source community initiatives, along with the release of cloud-based development tools for its HANA platform.

The German maker of traditional ERP and CRM solutions is sponsoring the OpenStack Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Cloud Foundry Platform as a Service (PaaS) projects.

Posted by David Ramel on 07/23/20140 comments

Self-Service Cloud Tackles IT/Developer Divide

RightScale Inc. announced a new self-service portal that lets enterprises set up cloud services brokerages to provide developers and other users with instant access to cloud infrastructure.

Using RightScale Self-Service, IT departments can define a curated catalog of different resources that can be used for scenarios such as application development, testing, staging and production; demonstrations by sales and others; training; batch processing; and digital marketing, the company said.

Posted by David Ramel on 07/16/20140 comments

Cisco, Microsoft Strengthen Cloud Pact

Eight months ago, Satya Nadella -- before he was named Microsoft CEO -- announced a cloud-based partnership with Cisco: "Microsoft and Cisco’s Application Centric Infrastructure, hello cloud!"

Posted by David Ramel on 07/16/20140 comments

Big Data Storms the Cloud

It's a perfect fit and it isn't a new trend, but Big Data's migration to the cloud seems to be accelerating recently.

The advantage of running your Big Data analytics in the cloud rather than on-premises -- especially for smaller companies with constrained resources -- are numerous and well-known. Oracle Corp. summed up some of the major business drivers in an article titled "Trends in Cloud Computing: Big Data's New Home":

Posted by David Ramel on 07/10/20140 comments

Red Hat Touts VMware Integration in OpenStack Release

Enterprise Linux giant Red Hat is pushing further into the OpenStack arena with the release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform 5.

The company touts integration with VMware infrastructure as a key selling point of its distribution of the OpenStack cloud OS/platform. That's just one of "hundreds" of reported improvements to the OpenStack core components: compute, storage and networking. Other enhancements include three-year support and new features such as configuration and installation enhancements designed to help enterprises adopt OpenStack technology.

Posted by David Ramel on 07/09/20140 comments

Some Cheerful Truths About Cloud Storage

Yes, Jon William Toigo makes some excellent points about lack of cloud storage management tools in his recent post, "Some Depressing but Hard Truths About Cloud Storage," but there has been some good news lately: dropping cloud storage prices.

Posted by David Ramel on 06/25/20140 comments

When Cloud Projects Fail

Enterprises moving to the cloud is a given, most will agree, but new research suggests it's a bumpy ride, with "staggering" project failure rates.

Even among the most well-known Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) providers, unexpected challenges derail many cloud implementations. These challenges include complicated pricing and hidden costs that erase expected cost savings, performance problems and more, according to the report: "Casualties of Cloud Wars: Customers Are Paying the Price."

Posted by David Ramel on 06/25/20140 comments

SSD Cloud Storage Latest Tool in Amazon vs. Google

Amid a battle for cloud supremacy involving alternating price cuts and feature introductions, both Amazon and Google introduced solid-state drive (SSD) storage options for their services this week.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) yesterday announced an SSD-backed storage option for its Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS), just one day after Google announced a new SSD persistent disk product for its Google Cloud Platform.

Posted by David Ramel on 06/18/20140 comments