Industry News Desk

Telepresence – The Face of the Cloud

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 03:30:00 EST

As you can imagine given the ongoing economic challenges, and the demand for green technologies, businesses are seeking all viable means to cut expenses, including travel, while still conducting their business face to face; and cloud computing coupled with converged communications provides a way to meet that need.

What's Under the Hood of Cloud Computing?

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 03:00:00 EST

This coming Tuesday, December 8, at 2:00PM EST, SYS-CON.TV will be broadcasting live from its 4th-floor studio overlooking Times Square in New York City a very special "Power Panel" in which Cloud Computing Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan and three top industry guests will be looking “under the hood” of the fastest-growing new trend in all of Enterprise IT – Cloud Computing.

SugarCRM Announces General Availability of Sugar 5.5

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 17:15:00 EST

SugarCRM, the world’s leading provider of open source customer relationship management (CRM) software, today announced the general availability of Sugar 5.5 which includes a new web services framework, platform improvements, the ability to create custom themes, and enhanced mobile features. To sign-up for a free trial of Sugar 5.5, please visit: http://www.sugarcrm.com/crm/ondemand_eval.html. “Sugar 5.5 is the product of the guidance, testing and feedback from tens of thousands of customers, partners and developers who comprise the SugarCRM community,” said Clint Oram, co-founder and vice president of product management of SugarCRM. “The quality and depth of Sugar 5.5 demonstrates the power of the open source business model and advances SugarCRM’s mission of providing the most open, flexible and easy-to-use CRM in the market.”

Cloud Expo New York Diamond and Platinum Sponsorships Sold Out

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 16:30:00 EST

SYS-CON Events announced today that the "Diamond" and "Platinum" sponsorship opportunities for the upcoming Cloud Expo New York sold out the same day the "show prospectus" for the 5th International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo (www.CloudComputingExpo.com) was sent to more than 100 sponsors and exhibitors. 5th International Cloud Expo will take place April 19-21, 2010, at the Jacob Javits Convention Center in New York City with more than 5,000 delegates and over 100 sponsors and exhibitors participating in the conference. Cloud Expo is the world's leading Cloud-focused event and is held five times a year, in New York, Silicon Valley, Europe, Japan, and Brazil.

Cloud Expo Show Prospectus to Reach 10,000 Marketing Managers on Monday December 7

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 16:30:00 EST

SYS-CON Events announced today that the "show prospectus" for the 5th International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo is now shipping. 5th International Cloud Expo will take place April 19-21, 2010, at the Jacob Javits Convention Center in New York City with more than 5,000 delegates and over 100 sponsors and exhibitors participating in the conference. Cloud Expo is the world's leading Cloud-focused event and is held five times a year, in New York, Silicon Valley, Europe, Japan, and Brazil. Over 200 corporate sponsors and 10,000 industry professionals became part of Cloud Expo since its inception, more than all other Cloud-related events put together worldwide. "Cloud Expo was announced on February 24, 2007, the day the term ‘cloud computing' was coined," said Fuat Kircaali, founder and CEO of SYS-CON Events. "Cloud has become synonymous with ‘computing' and ‘software' in two short years, and this event has become the new PC Expo, Comdex, and InternetWorld of our decade. By 2012, more than 50,000 delegates per year will participate in the Cloud Expo."

Google Chrome OS Brings New Era in Cloud Computing

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 16:15:00 EST

More good news for cloud computing! Google last week released its once mysterious Chrome Operating System to open source. Chrome OS, available in 2010 – is a web-based operating system that promises to boot up super-fast on a netbook – way faster than the time it takes to start your basic PC. And Chrome has web applications (competing with Microsoft Windows Azure) that will run on application tabs. Users can access with one click and manage in a series of windows.

How to Send Diagnostic Info With CloudBerry Backup

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 15:45:00 EST

In CloudBerry Lab we are striving to make our customer service better. In this competitive market with the abundance of free offerings this is the only way to stay afloat. One of the ways to keep customers happy is to be very responsive when it comes to support request resolution. Should you delay the request and the customer will turn to a competitor. Sometimes it takes a lot of time to understand what the issue is and what caused it. This is very diagnostic log helps dramatically. In the new version of CloudBerry Backup we made it even easier to send us the diagnostic information.

Microsoft Cloud Patent Application Not What It Seems

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 14:45:00 EST

InformationWeek stumbled on a Microsoft patent application dating back to 2006 deceptively titled “Migrating Data to New Cloud,” which makes it sound like a way out of vendor lock-in, one of the chief drawbacks to cloud computing. Well, it’s not according to Vordel CTO Mark O’Neill. Vordel’s got a unique cloud service broker in beta that should resolve the cloud lock-in issue.

No Shirt, No Shoes, No HTTP Service

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 14:15:00 EST

But on the web, access to services is implicit in the fact that the business is offering the service. If the HTTP service is accessible, it’s implicitly allowing connections and providing service without any standard criteria for access. This results in access by more than just customers and potential customers. Bots, spiders, and miscreants are afforded the same access to business services as more desirable visitors. This can unfortunately lead to compromise, theft, and corruption of data via myriad injection and attack methods – many of them automated. While gating access to services that comes from offering a service is likely not the best solution (although it is a solution), there has to be a way to at least mitigate the automated abuse of open access to services by miscreants that leverage scripting to attack sites.

Korean Government To Invest $172m in the Cloud

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 12:45:00 EST

The Korean government is going to sink around $172 million into cloud computing next year under a still fuzzy plan that the Ministry of Knowledge Economy, the Ministry of Public Administration and the Korea Communications Commission (KCC) are backing to reduce overlapping investments and discordant approaches, according to the Korea Times quoting an official announcement. Apparently they mean to integrate cloud solutions with Internet protocol television (IPTV) and wireless Internet networks as well as connect to the government’s previously announced energy-saving projects involving “smart grid” systems, low-power Internet data centers, thin client-based gaming centers and SaaS R&D. The government is also working with the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) and other universities to build a cloud test bed, called CII:U, that the schools can use for training and research.

Microsoft, HP & Citrix Form Taiwan Cloud Alliance: Report

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 12:00:00 EST

Microsoft, HP, Citrix and some local service providers have formed a Taiwan cloud alliance to create customized private clouds for local businesses, according to DigiTimes quoting an official announcement. Apparently there are supposedly simplified solutions called MCloud for SaaS, PaaS and IaaS that integrate Microsoft virtualization and management with HP hardware and support along with Citrix’ virtual desktop.

IDC Sees Cisco & IBM Clouds in Our Future

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 11:45:00 EST

IDC’s New Year predictions include a general-purpose iPad tablet from Apple with an eight- or 10-inch screen that kicks Kindle’s butt, IBM’s acquisition of Juniper, upscale $700 netbooks, 300,000 iPhone applications, 50,000-75,000 Android apps and public clouds from IBM and Cisco.

Virtualization Expo Call for Papers Deadline December 15

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 11:00:00 EST

Delegates will leave Virtualization Expo with a full understanding of the interaction between virtual servers and the rest of the data center infrastructure. Indeed our overall aim is to ensure that all attendees leave the Jacob Javits Convention Center with abundant resources, ideas and examples they can apply immediately to leveraging Virtualization in their own corporate datacenter, on the desktop, and elsewhere. If you wish to submit a speaking proposal for the 8th Virtualization Expo, April 19–21, 2010, then you can do so right here

Intel and the Incredible Shrinking Cloud

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 11:00:00 EST

Intel has built an experimental fully programmable 48-core chip that it’s nicknamed the Single-Chip Cloud Computer (SCC) and means to build at least a hundred more to pass out to industry and academic partners to use to develop new software applications and parallel programming models. Microsoft, ETH Zurich, the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Illinois already have one and researchers from Intel, HP and Yahoo’s Open Cirrus initiative have already begun porting cloud applications to the widget using Hadoop, the Java software framework that supports data-intensive distributed applications.

Cloud Computing Comes to Hong Kong

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 10:15:00 EST

CSL Limited (CSL) and SIMtone Corporation, provider of one of the first Universal Computing Platforms for the telecommunications industry, today announced the signature of a broad based, exclusive licensing agreement to develop groundbreaking cloud computing services for use over CSL’s Award-winning Next G wireless network to CSL customers in Hong Kong.

Norwest Raises Big Fund

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 10:12:00 EST

Despite the times, Wells Fargo affiliate Norwest Venture Partners has pulled together a $1.2 billion investment fund, its largest ever. Its last fund, which closed in ’06, was only $650 million. Norwest backed Rackspace Hosting, one of the rare IPOs last year. It’s apparently looking at opportunities in China and India.

Cloud Expo New York Call for Papers Deadline December 15

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 06:45:00 EST

Cloud computing is a game changer. The cloud is disrupting traditional software and hardware business models by disrupting how IT service gets delivered. Entrepreneurial opportunities abound as this classic disruptive technology begins to proliferate, so it is no surprise that SYS-CON's industry-leading International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo series is going from strength to strength.

Is Monitoring Virtual, Physical and Cloud Assets Easy?

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 05:45:00 EST

up.time makes it easy, right out-of-the-box: Deep Virtual Server Monitoring: CPU ready, Memory Balloon, Memory Zero, and many more granular Metrics; monitor Physical, Virtual, and Cloud: Services, applications, servers and more. Onsite/remote datacenters, hybrid environments, outsourced infrastructure; real World Cost Savings: Per-Physical-Server Licensing. Reduce costs up to 90%.

Marc Benioff Takes Us Behind the Cloud

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 04:00:00 EST

Salesforce.com Co-Founder, Chairman and CEO, Marc Benioff, shares untold details of how the company went from idea to billion-dollar phenomenon and revolutionized an industry. Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM), the enterprise cloud computing company announced the availability of "Behind the Cloud," a new book by Founder and CEO Marc Benioff and published by Jossey-Bass, an imprint of Wiley. "Behind the Cloud" will, for the first time, offer a personal insider's view of the creation of a cloud computing giant and tell the story of how salesforce.com brought businesses into the cloud in an era dominated by mass consumer cloud services like Facebook, Google and Twitter. Benioff shares personal stories of the pivotal situations that salesforce.com encountered on its ascent.

New SOA Modeling Book

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 17:45:00 EST

Michael Bell, founder of Methodologies Corporation, the leading service-oriented modeling company, announced the completion of a new modeling book titled "SOA Modeling Patterns for Service-Oriented Discovery and Analysis". The book will be available for orders in book stores and on Internet book sellers' Web sites on January 7, 2010. Michael Bell is an industry recognized expert on advanced and innovative software modeling implementation, methodologies, and strategies. This book is Mr. Bell's third book on service-oriented architecture modeling, which is devised to guide business and IT practitioners to foster business agility and promote software elasticity.

Broadcom to Expand Its Large Scale Cloud Computing

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 17:30:00 EST

Dune Networks' Highly Scalable Switch Fabric Technology Expands Broadcom's Product Portfolio for Data Centers and Large Scale Cloud Computing. Broadcom Corporation (Nasdaq: BRCM) announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Dune Networks, a privately-held company that develops switch fabric solutions for data center networking equipment. Data centers are scaling to provide significantly more bandwidth to meet the requirements of cloud computing, where computing resources, products and services, such as Software as a Service (SaaS), can be delivered real-time over the Internet. Dune Networks has developed a scalable chipset that supports bandwidth speeds of up to 100Gbps per port and can connect more than ten thousand servers (ports) in a single deployment.

Security Report Predicts Cloud Computing Attacks in 2010

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 17:00:00 EST

M86 Security, a leading global provider of Web and messaging security products, released Predictions 2010, a report on its expectations for Web and messaging-based threats for the coming year. The report is based on M86 Security Lab’s extensive research into the current trends in threats over the past year and its views on the major vulnerabilities facing organizations. The report highlights the increasing sophistication of traditional threats such as botnets, scareware, compromised legitimate Web sites and blended threats. However, it also projects what the company sees are new threat vectors coming from open API’s in Web 2.0 applications, the increased use of shortened URLs and the advent of non-Latin based domain names.

JetBrains TeamCity 5.0 on EC2 Cloud Computing Platform

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 16:15:00 EST

JetBrains, creators of intelligent, productivity-enhancing development tools, announced the public availability of TeamCity 5.0, the company's distributed build management and continuous integration tool. TeamCity offers easy setup and delivers out-of-the-box continuous unit testing, sophisticated code quality analysis, and early reporting on build problems. It has a gentle learning curve, so you can quickly improve your release management practices by gradually adopting its advanced features and capabilities.

Intel Demos Cloud Computing Chip

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 16:15:00 EST

Researchers from Intel Labs demonstrated an experimental, 48-core Intel processor, or “single-chip cloud computer,” that rethinks many of the approaches used in today’s designs for laptops, PCs and servers. This futuristic chip boasts about 10 to 20 times the processing engines inside today’s most popular Intel Core-branded processors. The long-term research goal is to add incredible scaling features to future computers that spur entirely new software applications and human-machine interfaces. The company plans to engage industry and academia next year by sharing 100 or more of these experimental chips for hands-on research in developing new software applications and programming models.

Crystal Reports Founders Aim Cloud Computing

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 16:00:00 EST

The founders of Crystal Reports and veterans of Microsoft, Symmetrics and Business Objects have launched a start-up out of Vancouver called Indicee that’s developed a cloud-based reporting application meant to give SMBs frustrated with cutting and pasting data into spreadsheets a faster way to mash data and create reports. The company sees itself as bringing reporting and analysis to the masses. The widgetry eliminates manual spreadsheet data manipulation; consolidates data from different systems, reports and spreadsheets; bypasses direct access to information locked up in corporate databases; and processes queries in plain English.

Forrester: Security Concerns Hinder Cloud Computing Adoption

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 15:15:00 EST

Concerns about the security of cloud computing environments top the list of reasons for firms not being interested in the pay-per-use hosting model of virtual servers, according to the latest Enterprise And SMB Hardware Survey, North America And Europe, Q3 2009, by Forrester Research, Inc. (Nasdaq: FORR). Forty-nine percent of survey respondents from enterprises and 51 percent from small and medium-size businesses (SMBs) cited security and privacy concerns as their top reason for not using cloud computing. The survey of more than 2,200 IT executives and technology decision-makers in Canada, France, Germany, the UK, and the US is Forrester’s largest annual survey of emerging hardware trends for both enterprises and SMBs. The survey is part of Forrester’s Business Data Services (BDS) series, which provides an extensive data set for B2B Market Research professionals’ go-to-market strategy assessments.

Extending SOA to Cloud Computing

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 15:00:00 EST

WSO2, the open source SOA company, today announced the launch of the WSO2 Cloud Platform. Available today, the new WSO2 Cloud Platform features a family of WSO2 Cloud Virtual Machines; WSO2 Cloud Connectors for enabling fast, secure cloud services; and the multi-tenant WSO2 Governance-as-a-Service. All WSO2 Cloud Platform services are based on open software standards, and they support all applicable interoperable protocols, as well as relevant open data standards. Additionally, they allow users to take complete control of their data, ensuring that enterprises can protect and preserve their information.

Sourcefire Announces 3D System 4.9 and VMware-Based Virtual Appliances

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 17:00:00 EST

Sourcefire’s innovative Adaptive IPS automates key intrusion prevention functions, such as IPS tuning, impact assessment, user correlation and network discovery. With the 4.9 release, Sourcefire has raised the bar by offering the industry’s first Policy Layering capability, enabling organizations with multiple detection policies to construct them in “building blocks,” making it easy to create and modify policies by geography, site, department, or even by user. Sourcefire has also added a Custom Analysis Widget to its portal-like dashboard affording even greater flexibility, and it has expanded its application detection capabilities by adding new detectors for Oracle, Firefox, Gnutella, Timbuktu, and more. Along with the 3D System 4.9 release, Sourcefire is now shipping its first VMware-based virtual appliances, including the Sourcefire Virtual 3D Sensor and Sourcefire Virtual Defense Center. Compatible with VMware’s ESX and ESXi platforms, the Virtual 3D Sensor offers IPS protection from 5 to 500Mbps and can be monitored and managed by physical or virtual Defense Center management consoles. These new virtual appliances afford enterprises, managed security service providers (MSSPs), and cloud computing providers with the same Snort-based IPS protection as their physical 3D Sensor counterparts.

Veriplace Enables Cloud Location Service for Facebook

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 15:45:00 EST

WaveMarket's Veriplace Location Aggregation Platform is a cloud-based platform that enables developers of Facebook, Web, mobile Web, SMS, and voice applications to remotely locate tens of millions of feature phones and smartphones via Veriplace's direct connections into multiple Tier One carrier networks. Veriplace already counts nearly 1,000 developer partners building successful location-aware services on the platform as the Veriplace developer community and Veriplace carrier coverage continue to grow rapidly.

Thunderbird Connector for Open-Xchange Now Available

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 14:00:00 EST

Now, the open source Mozilla Thunderbird client software can be used with Open-Xchange collaboration software. The "Community OXtender for Thunderbird" software connector gives users full access to appointments and contacts stored in the Open-Xchange Server and enables them to use Thunderbird as a rich PIM (Personal Information Management) client to access data online and offline. The software packages and documentation are available at www.open-xchange.com/oxpedia#ThunderbirdOXtender.

Broadcom to Pay $178 Million for ‘Cloud’ Chip

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 12:15:00 EST

Broadcom is paying $178 million and mostly cash for nine-year-old privately held Israeli-based Dune Networks and its “cloud” chipset, which can connect upwards of 10,000 servers (ports) at bandwidth speeds of 100 Gbps a port. That’s supposed to be Google-scale, which indicates where Broadcom is placing its bets, having failed to secure Emulex this summer. The widgetry is supposed to extend the lifecycle of packet platforms from three years to more than 10.

Morph Labs Announces Private Cloud Trial Kit

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 10:00:00 EST

Morph Labs, a leading provider of enterprise cloud computing technology, today announced an introductory trial of the Morph CloudServer, an open, standards-based server IT organizations can use to rapidly model and evaluate their cloud implementations. A miniature "Cloud Environment in a Box," the system will include the Morph Cloud Controller, a complete cloud management and provisioning platform that leverages the Amazon AWS API, and a Virtual Machine Server pre-configured with 10 VMs. Evaluators who require a bigger environment can add a VM server, as needed. Morph Labs also offers an option for a fully hosted starter kit trial.

Telecom Service Assembly Standards in the Cloud

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 09:30:00 EST

Comptel Corporation announced that BT and Progress Software will be participating in the second phase of the Service Model Catalyst, as it explores the creation of new converged services that include cloud-based Software as a Service (SaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) components. The collaborative effort brings together business use cases from BT and Qwest as co-sponsors, with BT providing cloud brokering and cloud assurance services on Amazon Web Services' EC2 platform, Comptel providing a consolidated product and service catalog, Network Cadence providing systems integration with a service fabric broker for fulfilment and assurance orchestration, and Progress providing a management tool for the canonical data model.

IBM To Build E-Government Cloud for Ho Chi Minh City

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 19:30:00 EST

IBM says it’s been hired to build an e-government cloud for Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City, the one-time capital of South Vietnam. As a first step it’s supposed to consolidate all of the city government’s e-mail systems and web sites. The work will apparently be done in collaboration with something called Quang Trung Software City (QTSC), which let IBM the contract. QTSC will evidently run the new data center.

Cloud Expo Sponsor Secures $10M in Series C Funding

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 19:00:00 EST

SOASTA, the leader in cloud testing, today announced the successful close of $10 million in Series C funding as it prepares its global expansion. The round was led by UV Partners, and included participation from all existing investors Canaan Partners, Formative Ventures and The Entrepreneurs’ Fund. The company’s growth plan includes the opening of offices in Europe, broadening of the reseller channel and increasing its technology roadmap with product enhancements to address the growing demand for SOASTA’s cloud-based testing service.

How the Enterprise Cloud Affects the Datacenter

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 08:45:00 EST

There are a variety of applications that support numerous business lines across an enterprise. These applications exhibit a wide range of operational characteristics as they service the diverse business demands. That diversity is the key to business success, but it has consequences. Ask an enterprise application architect about how IT should run a data center and you will find that the range of behaviours exhibited across the portfolio of applications cannot be run on one set of standard platform configurations. Most critical applications have extreme operational requirements that require specialised adjustments to operating environments.

rPath Refines Release Automation Platform

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 14:00:00 EST

rPath today announced enterprise-focused productivity and management enhancements to the rPath release automation platform. The upgrades refine the functionality and user experience of the fully version controlled release automation solution, meeting the needs of each stakeholder in the enterprise release management process. These upgrades are the first product delivery against “Project Javelin,” which extends rPath’s system version controlled management model into the broader data center automation market.

Apparent Networks Updates PathView Cloud Service

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 10:45:00 EST

Apparent Networks today announced that it has released an updated version of PathView Cloud, its hosted network management service. The new version includes unique features for managing end-to-end network performance in virtualized environments. With PathView Cloud’s virtualization-enabled analytics, IT and operations teams can, for the first time, understand network performance from the perspective of applications running on virtual machines. With this extended visibility, PathView Cloud lets IT teams quickly find and fix network performance problems, regardless of whether they occur in physical or virtual infrastructure.

Kindle Breaks Record for Sales in a Single Month During November

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 05:00:00 EST

Amazon.com today announced that November is already the best sales month ever for Kindle, even before Cyber Monday. Kindle continues to be the most wished for, the most gifted, and the #1 bestselling product across all product categories on Amazon. The latest generation Kindle – just released in October – is $259 and available for immediate shipment today at www.amazon.com/kindle.

CloudBench Applications Reports Q3 2009 Results and Business Highlights

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 17:15:00 EST

CloudBench Applications, Inc. announced its financial results for the three months and nine months ending September 30, 2009. All amounts are stated in Canadian dollars unless otherwise noted. Revenues from BasicGov, the Company's cloud computing solution for local government, grew to $66,649 in the third quarter, a 140% increase from $27,822 in the same quarter of the prior year. The Company's annualized committed recurring revenues, a non-GAAP measure, increased 220% to US$288,000 compared to US$90,000 for the same period last year.