April 15, 2010

BASKING RIDGE, N.J. – As more companies move to embrace cloud computing, Verizon Business is enriching its on-demand, global cloud computing solution – Verizon Computing as a Service, or CaaS. The enhancements provide business customers with better control and flexibility over their computing environments.

Based on customer demand, Verizon recently added the following features to CaaS:

* Server Cloning – Provides IT administrators with the option to customize the configuration of a CaaS virtual server and then create a golden, or reference, server image. This eliminates the need to manually create the same server image multiple times and enables the rapid deployment of server clones supporting the same corporate application.
* Application and Operating System Expansion – The SUSE Linux operating system is now supported on the Verizon CaaS platform as a standard service offering. Linux software is used with commonly deployed enterprise resource planning packages. In addition, Microsoft SQL Server 2008 has been added as a “click-to-provision” database server option.
* Expanded Networking Flexibility – Enterprises now have expanded and streamlined networking options – virtual router and shared virtual private networks, including Verizon Private IP – for connecting back-end systems to Verizon CaaS via the online portal. In addition, customers can purchase metered, burstable bandwidth up to 1Gbps to meet immediate requirements for temporary computing capacity.

In addition to adding new features, Verizon has successfully completed the first annual SAS 70 Type II examination of controls for its CaaS data centers. SAS 70, a widely recognized auditing standard performed by a third party accounting firm, is conducted in compliance with the standards set by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants for examining specific areas such as access to facilities, logical access to systems, network services, operations and environmental safeguards. This examination demonstrates that Verizon Business has controls and processes in place to manage and monitor its CaaS platform, as well as customers’ critical applications and infrastructure, helping to ease concerns customers may have about migrating to the cloud for the delivery of critical IT services.

“Verizon CaaS was widely recognized as one of the industry’s most comprehensive cloud-based computing solution for enterprises when it was launched last June,” said Joseph S. Crawford, executive director – IT solutions, Verizon Business. “With the addition of new features and the completion of the SAS 70 Type II data center audit, we are continuing the investment in our flagship cloud offering as enterprise clients increasingly look to cloud computing to fundamentally change the way they consume IT resources.”

Gartner Inc., a leading industry analyst firm, “estimates the current market for cloud services is $46.4 billion. By 2013, the market will reach $150.1 billion.”

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Salesforce.com the enterprise cloud computing company,announced it is accelerating the market shift to the next cloud computing paradigm, Cloud 2. The first phase of cloud computing was about leveraging technologies that were low cost, fast and easy to use on your desktop. Cloud 2 represents the next generation of cloud computing, one that is inherently social, collaborative and delivers real-time access to data and information across new mobile devices.

To meet the overwhelming demand for social enterprise apps, and to accelerate the shift to Cloud 2, salesforce.com has extended the Salesforce Chatter private beta program to more than 500 companies, including customers like Enterasys Networks and Saatchi & Saatchi. In addition, the company launched the AppExchange 2, with the ChatterExchange, a new category for social enterprise applications.

More Info Here

Thur, 08 April 2010 21:43:50 PST

SANTA CLARA, CA — ServiceMax today announced it has launched a new app on salesforce.com’s ChatterExchange, helping to accelerate the market shift to Cloud 2, the next cloud computing paradigm. ServiceMax Suite and ServiceMax Volume are among the first apps to leverage the social components of Chatter now available in the Force.com platform. These new apps can all be found on the ChatterExchange, a brand new category for social enterprise apps that is now part of AppExchange 2.

Salesforce Chatter provides a rich suite of social collaboration components including profiles, status updates, and real-time feeds that developers and partners are now using to build new social enterprise apps. The ChatterExchange, a new category on AppExchange 2, provides a single location for customers to try and buy these new solutions that can extend the benefits of cloud computing and social-enabled business applications throughout the enterprises. The new ChatterExchange can be found at www.appexchange.com/chatter.

“By adding Chatter to the Force.com platform, Salesforce has once again raised the bar in the Platform as a Service business. Chatter transforms the way employees collaborate and execute,” said Dave Yarnold. “We’re able to apply our industry leading domain expertise, and rapidly deliver Chatter innovation as part of our award winning field service suite. Through AppExchange, we’re making these ServiceMax Chatter innovations available to all organizations.”

ServiceMax Chatter transforms the way your company collaborates around service topics, and includes three specific chatter innovations – Product Chatter, Chatter Volume, and Chatter Maps. Product Chatter uses “phone home” technology to automatically send chatters from products deployed in the field when customer systems are not functioning properly, or require preventative maintenance. Chatter Volume and Chatter Maps tell you where the buzz is loudest in your organizations. ServiceMax Chatter is included with the ServiceMax Suite.

ServiceMax Volume for Chatter is also available as a separate offering on AppExchange 2. Available for free, Volume for Chatter can be used across any function to tune into where employees and systems are buzzing the loudest.

“ServiceMax is a leader in using cloud computing to transform the field service industry, said Kendall Collins, chief marketing officer, salesforce.com. “By making ServiceMax available via the ChatterExchange on AppExchange 2, they are delivering compelling new social enterprise applications in a complex industry like field service. By building their applications on Force.com, ServiceMax is focusing 100% of its development effort on delivering new field service functionality and innovation instead of managing infrastructure.”

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Toronto – April 13, 2010 – VM6 Software, Inc., provider of the only all-in-one IT virtualization infrastructure software, today announced that it has closed a $4 million series A round of investment with RBC Venture Partners and Ignition Partners. The investment will further accelerate VM6 Software’s customer expansion, future software development and marketing and sales efforts worldwide. Additionally, industry veteran Stephen Pollack has joined VM6 Software’s board of directors, along with Richard Fade from Ignition Partners and Jean-David Begin from RBC Venture Partners. 

VM6 VMex software offers small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) an all-in-one IT infrastructure solution that is designed to fully leverage the benefits of virtualization to manage, provision, consolidate and protect distributed servers and desktop environments at a fraction of the cost of traditional solutions. The VM6 VMex solution eliminates the need for SMBs to centralize the infrastructure, hire and train specialized experts, and integrate expensive multi-point solutions for server and desktop virtualization, high availability, storage and management. 

Pollack is a seasoned entrepreneur and industry expert with more than 25 years of experience in the high-technology market.  His most recent success started in 2003 with the founding of PlateSpin Ltd., a recognized industry leader in the virtualization market, which was purchased by Novell.

“VM6 Software has a unique position in the marketplace as the strongest vendor with a single solution that addresses the barriers to entry for those who have yet to virtualize certain parts of their IT infrastructure,” said Stephen Pollack. “VM6 Software not only addresses the technological barriers, but also the costs and complexities that often deter or slow down the adoption of virtualization.”

San Mateo, CA/April 13, 2010 – 3Crowd Technologies, a provider of management tools for cloud-based services, today announced it has secured $6.62 million in Series A financing from Canaan Partners and Storm Ventures.

The financing demonstrates the continued interest in cloud-computing models and now the effective management of those increasingly popular services.

“We are building toward a series of products and services which allow for the effective deployment, management and operation of cloud-based services,” said Barrett Lyon, CEO of 3Crowd and creator of the Opte Project, an Internet mapping project, founder of Prolexic Technologies and co-founder of BitGravity. “We have launched a product targeted at cloud resource management and are now, with this funding, embarking a journey which will disrupt and define a new era of Internet data delivery.”

3Crowd has developed a series of management tools that give enterprises greater controls over content delivery and other cloud services, enabling them to use multiple services at once and thereby command new pricing and performance dynamics.  3Crowd’s flagship product, CrowdDirector, effectively unifies any services that are based on web protocols, so they can be monitored, managed and deployed as a single service.

“3Crowd represents a proto-typical investment for Canaan: an extraordinary market and technology vision of a proven entrepreneur combined with a solid operational plan to execute against that vision,” said Maha Ibrahim, general partner at Canaan. “We look forward to working with Barrett and his team to leverage our experience to realize the potential for 3Crowd.”

With the investment, Ms. Ibrahim will join Mr. Lyon, his co-founder Chris Wallace, and Ryan Floyd of Storm Ventures on the 3Crowd Board of Directors. The company received initial financing from Storm Ventures, Revision3 co-founders, Kevin Rose and Jay Adelson, and Greenwich Technology Associates.

Cloud Computing will not only change how we purchase IT resources it will change how Executives and managers make business decisions. It will do this by simplifying how resources are managed and limit the downside capital risk of almost all changes to an organization. The time saved by what will be almost instant deployment of applications and workloads in the cloud will allow business decisions to becomes more about relationships and less about technology.

Reducing provision cycle times from weeks to minutes will transform the way market feedback is calculated and ultimately give businesses better ability to manage and deploy capital and ideas. Businesses primary focus can be on their mission rather than traditional development efforts and the flexibility of “the Cloud” will allow for more efficient lifecycle management of not the IT resources but the Ideas and strategies of Executives and managers.

Rich Alessandro

Below is an Email Steve Ballmer Sent to his Staff at Microsoft.

Today, I spoke to a group of students and faculty at the University of Washington to discuss how cloud computing will change the way people and businesses use technology.

My goal was to challenge people to look at the cloud more broadly and understand the multidimensional nature of the cloud transformation happening today. Other companies have defined the cloud in a narrow, one-dimensional way. Although these companies provide some interesting components, Microsoft is uniquely delivering on a wide range of cloud capabilities that bring increasingly more value to our customers.

In my speech, I outlined the five dimensions that define the way people use and realize value in the cloud:

• The cloud creates opportunities and responsibilities
• The cloud  learns and helps you learn, decide and take action
• The cloud enhances your social and professional interactions
• The cloud wants smarter devices
• The cloud drives server advances that drive the cloud

This view fuels our investments across  the entire company, from datacenters to cloud platform technologies to cloud-based development tools and applications. Today, nearly every one of our products has, or is developing, features or services that support the cloud. As I said today, when it comes to the cloud, we are all in. We are all in across every product line we have and across every dimension of the cloud.

Of course, this is not news to any of you. We have been making huge investments in the cloud for the past decade. Nearly five years  ago, Ray’s “Services Disruption” memo provided the outline for what we needed to do as a company, and with the delivery of Windows Azure at the recent PDC, we have made huge strides in making this vision real.

To keep our momentum, it is critical that  every Microsoft employee works to deliver the full benefits of the cloud to our customers.

As a part of this, I request that you do the following:

• Watch the speech on demand here
• Learn more about our cloud offerings and how they relate to our overarching software plus services strategy here
• Review your commitments to ensure you are landing our vision with customers and partners.

Of course, there is more work to do. We have strong competitors. We need to be (and are) willing to change our business models to take advantage of the cloud. We must move at “cloud speed,” especially in our consumer offerings. And we need to be crystal clear about the value we provide to all our customers.

To drive our message home even further, today you will see an ad campaign in the U.S. focused on our commercial and government businesses, a new website with consolidated content and case studies, and ongoing emphasis on the cloud from me and other members of the SLT in our upcoming speeches and presentations.

We have an enormous opportunity in front of us. We have great products and services in the market today and a range of new ones on their way.

All of our products make the cloud better, and the cloud makes our products better.

Thanks,

Steve

Free Version of Innovative Software Appliance Moves VMware-based Applications to the Amazon EC2 Cloud

Burlington, Mass. — March 1, 2010 — CloudSwitch, Inc. today announced that it has launched its beta program for CloudSwitch Explorer. For the first time, enterprises can move existing, multi-tiered applications to the Amazon EC2 cloud with point-and-click simplicity and no modifications. CloudSwitch’s innovative software bridges the enterprise data center with cloud computing services, extending enterprise security and control into the cloud. With CloudSwitch, applications remain tightly integrated with enterprise data center tools and policies, and are managed as if they were running locally.

CloudSwitch Explorer is a free, downloadable software appliance that installs easily into VMware environments. It supports a single user and up to five Windows and Linux virtual machines in the Amazon EC2 cloud. IT professionals and developers who want to explore the cloud simply and securely can do this starting today with CloudSwitch.

“We want any enterprise that’s interested in exploring the cloud to feel confident that they can do this easily, without re-engineering their applications,” said John McEleney, CEO at CloudSwitch. “The cloud offers a fast, scalable and low-cost alternative to traditional corporate data centers, and our goal at CloudSwitch is to extend the internal IT infrastructure to a wide range of cloud services in a simple and secure way.”

Growing Beta Program

CloudSwitch has been working closely with early beta customers and partners since late 2009. The private beta program included several mid-tier and large enterprises in the telecommunications, healthcare and pharmaceuticals industries, among others. Based on this feedback, CloudSwitch has continued to develop and improve its beta offerings, and is making the CloudSwitch Explorer version available for free so a broad range of customers can access the cloud with no risk. At the same time, the CloudSwitch Enterprise commercial version is available in an expanded beta program for enterprises that are ready for larger cloud deployments, with multiple users and groups.

Both the Explorer and Enterprise versions are built on CloudSwitch’s patent-pending Cloud Isolation Technology™ that secures all data and communications end-to-end and automatically maps applications into the target cloud. Once the CloudSwitch software appliance has been deployed in a virtualized environment, the customer can select Windows and Linux applications and move them to the cloud easily, with no engineering efforts. CloudSwitch eliminates the changes to applications, networking and management tools that were previously required to use the cloud, and protects customers from cloud lock-in.

“CloudSwitch has arrived in the market at the right time and place,” said William Fellows, Principal Analyst at the 451 Group. “Experimentation with basic applications in the public cloud and planning for eventual bridging of internal and public clouds is happening across most industry segments, and CloudSwitch is well-positioned to drive enterprise cloud adoption.”

Pricing and Availability

CloudSwitch Explorer and CloudSwitch Enterprise beta versions are available now at www.cloudswitch.com. Explorer is always free, while Enterprise pricing begins at $25,000 for an annual license including basic support and up to 20 virtual machines under management in the cloud. Cloud usage fees are paid separately to the cloud provider. Additional pricing for scaling cloud deployments is available. CloudSwitch provides a 15-day free trial version of the Enterprise version for customer evaluations. To learn more about both the Explorer and Enterprise versions, please call (866) 578-6127 or contact us at info@cloudswitch.com.

Hand Out Copies of Your Own Mini-Datacenter

CloudShare Pro is intended for individuals and small teams who want to run complete, networked systems in the cloud and share copies with other colleagues for collaboration. A smaller version of  CloudShare’s Enterprise SaaS offering, CloudShare Pro provides a quick and easy way to create, share, manage and track multiple complete, virtual IT environments.

While in public Beta, CloudShare Pro is FREE (and by that we mean that it costs nothing, zero, nada – Cloudshare only asks for your cooperation in improving it, and that you click a ‘renew’ button every 15 days so they know you’re still interested). Only your name and email address are required to start using it.

Each CloudShare Pro environment includes the following:

• Up to six VMs – Linux or Windows machines (licensing included)
• Flat network (each VM gets its own internal IP)
• Outbound access to the Internet
• Drag & drop file sharing from your desktop
• On-demand environment snapshots
• Private environments, accessible only to the author and invited peers
• Up to 10 monthly peer invites
• Invited peers can upgrade to become authors too, starting with the environment to which they were invited!

Support is provided ….

What can I do with CloudShare Pro?

Sign Up…………Below………It’s Free

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Is managed Hosting right for your Company? Managed Hosting provides a ready to use IT stack including hardware and infrastructure software for the deployment of applications, all accessed over the internet.

Research by Gartner, Forrester and CIO magazine show that companies can lower the total cost of infrastructure ownership 25-60% with managed hosting.

Hosting helps you be efficient with your cash

· Removes the need for big capital outlays on hardware and data centers
· Frees up your funds for primary business expenses
· Offers affordable and predictable monthly costs
· Lets you pay as you grow rather than over purchase capacity upfront
· Delivers a faster return on your investment

Hosting helps you extend your resources

· Reduces your labor costs
· Provides you with access to a deeper pool of experts
· Concentrates your people on core business needs
· Supplies staff instantly for the “what if” scenario
· Lets you take advantage of latest technologies without hiring the expertise

Hosting limits your business risk

· Keeps capital on hand
· Allows you to quickly and efficiently change plans
· Guarantees you stay online
· Implements your solution quickly
· Places your focus back on growing your business
· Gives you latitude to pursue new revenue-generating ventures

Things to Consider When Choosing a Hosting Provider:

1. Is the company financially sound? Profitable?
2. Do they deliver, not just guarantee, the uptime you need?
3. How much are they investing in new products & services?
4. How meaningful and clear are their guarantees to your business?
5. What experts will they make available to you?
6. Do they offer a range of hosting services to meet all your needs?
7. Do they provide unlimited support 24×7x365 or fee-based support?
8. Do they support the compliance standards that are critical to you?
9. Are they growing and upgrading their infrastructure?

Host Your Websites & Applications with the Power of Cloud Computing