Industry News

It’s All Over Between Dell and EMC

Mon, 24 Oct 2011 08:00:00 EDT

Dell and EMC have finally split after a profitable 10-year run. Dell’s not going to resell anymore EMC products like its Clariion SAN arrays, Celerra NAS servers, Data Domain deduplication appliances and VNX NAS/SAN combo arrays. Instead it will sell its own widgetry in competition with EMC. The Dell-EMC relationship started coming apart in 2007 when Dell bought EqualLogic. Dell’s attempt to buy 3PAR last year strained it some more and it’s buying Compellent Technologies a few months later for its Clariion-competitive mid-range storage really tore it. There’s been expectations of a divorce ever since.

China & Cloud Computing: Is Harbin's "Cloud Valley" a Threat?

Tue, 25 Jan 2011 06:30:00 EST

In the feedback to my article about whether China was “friend or foe” to global Cloud Computing vendors, the topic of China's nascent “Cloud Valley” in the city of Harbin came up. Late in 2010, China announced that it would be building a datacenter and unspecified other Cloud accoutrements in this far northeastern city, probably best-known currently for the spectacular ice sculptures found during its winter festival. I've seen estimates of about $150 for the datacenter, and $500 million for the entire project, which is scheduled to be completed in three years. Hard to gauge precisely, given the mystery of the Chinese currency's true value, and local labor and materials costs. We'll assume this is a major commitment. It's C-c-c-old There The People's Daily notes how “the world's largest cloud computing data centers are mostly located between 40 degrees north latitude and 50 degrees and Harbin's location is similar to that.” The apparent logic is that high latitudes, with their cold climates, are ideal for minimizing the air-conditioning costs associated with high heat-producing datacenters. Harbin's latitude is similar to that of Chicago, the site of a couple of massive datacenters, but its winter climate is more akin to that of Fairbanks, Alaska. Its climate is less similar to other datacenter hotspots such as Miami, San Antonio, Taiwan, and Qatar. Whatever. Even in China, people are sometimes allowed to believe what they want to believe. Harbin is also said to have the electric power resources available for Cloud Valley's ambition. There You Go Again I wonder why people throughout the world can't just develop their tech areas without the obligatory comparison to, and riffing on the name of, Silicon Valley. This meme, which pre-dated the Worldwide Web, was first applied to Boston, New York, and Illinois in the US (among other places), then to Scotland, Taiwan, at least two places in France, and to Hsin-Chu Park in Taiwan. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev recently talked about doing this after a recent visit to Silicon Valley. It's been noted so many times that Silicon Valley itself provides a unique combination of urban location, leading universities, venture capital, almost apolitical climate, and great weather. Why note it again? So What's Going to Happen? In any case, China plans to include a business incubator and innovation center as part of this project. It will be fascinating to see if entrepreneurial activity in China, long considered a province of the south, can spring to life in tundric Harbin. Cloud vendors—whether selling hardware, virtualization software, SaaS, or more extensive Cloud services—will no doubt keep a close eye on Harbin. It would seem the most likely scenario will be that a big datacenter gets built and serves Chinese customers, and some logistics software will be developed to meet the country's need to modernize its IT systems to keep up with its manufacturing and exporting prowess. But what if the thinking is that this area can develop Cloud software and elastic services—whether by hook or crook—that competes domestically (and perhaps internationally) with US and European Cloud vendors? In this case, where is the upside of established Cloud vendors aggressively going after the China market today, only to see their prowess leveraged against them down the road? Lucy has pulled the football away from Charlie Brown in many industries in China, according to any number of Western companies. Will she try to do it again?

Rackspace Hosting and Akamai to Partner

Fri, 14 Jan 2011 05:15:00 EST

Rackspace Hosting and Akamai Technologies announced on Wednesday a strategic relationship that will enable Rackspace to offer Akamai's web acceleration and cloud optimization services as part of its dedicated and cloud hosting portfolio. Responding to the needs of its customers, Rackspace will work to integrate key features from Akamai such as CNAMEs, Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), and CDN delivery for Cloud Files, a Rackspace service that provides highly scalable online storage for files and media. Additionally, Rackspace will resell a range of essential Akamai site and application acceleration services to its customers. The goal is to create a one-stop shop for hosting, cloud, and acceleration services for web content and applications.

What if You Could Transform IT Your Way Using Cloud 2.0?

Wed, 22 Dec 2010 09:00:00 EST

As much as information technology has changed in the last 10 years, the next decade promises even more significant change. As cloud technology becomes more prevalent, IT enterprises will be driven to reconsider the status quo around just about everything we know, and ask "what if?" when it comes to transforming their enterprise IT systems. In his general session at Cloud Expo Silicon Valley, Sam Gross, Vice President of Global IT Outsourcing Solutions at Unisys Corporation, showed how to address the right questions and envision how you can move from where you are today, to where you need to be tomorrow, leveraging cloud's capabilities.

Abiquo Secures $10 Million in Series B Funding Led by Balderton Capital

Tue, 30 Nov 2010 10:45:00 EST

Abiquo, the Enterprise Cloud Management software provider, on Tuesday announced that it has raised approximately $10 Million in Series B funding led by Balderton Capital, a leading venture capital firm in Europe. Existing investors Nauta Capital and Eurecan also participated. The funding will be used to expand Abiquo’s global sales and marketing efforts, customer support and senior team. Abiquo also announced that Bernard Liautaud, a Partner at Balderton Capital, will join the Abiquo Board of Directors. Liautaud was the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Business Objects, the enterprise software company that was acquired by SAP in 2007 for $6.8 billion. Abiquo is the leading provider of Cloud management software that enables Enterprises and Service Providers to extend the capabilities of virtualized environments and to create and manage private, public and hybrid Clouds. Abiquo’s unique approach combines autonomous Virtual Enterprises with Global Infrastructure Management and extensive Business Policy to fully empower users and increase agility, significantly improve utilization and reduce cost, while strictly adhering to the governance, compliance and security needs of the organization.

SoftLayer Receives New Product Innovation of the Year Award

Tue, 23 Nov 2010 16:47:00 EST

SoftLayer Technologies, the innovation leader in on-demand web hosting and data center services, on Tuesday received the 2010 North American New Product Innovation of the Year Award in the field of Cloud Infrastructure Solutions from Frost & Sullivan. The award cited CloudLayer’s core capabilities—including full integration with SoftLayer dedicated servers to create hybrid computing environments and the “Build Your Own Cloud” offering—as unique advantages that help enterprises overcome many of the scalability challenges and fixed service package restrictions of other cloud solutions in the market.

Cloud Expo 2011 East To Attract 10,000 Delegates and 200 Exhibitors

Thu, 07 Oct 2010 17:45:00 EDT

SYS-CON Events announced today that the 8th International Cloud Expo will take place June 6-9, 2011, in New York City. The International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo series is the world's leading Cloud-focused event and is held three times a year, in New York, Silicon Valley and in Europe. Over 600 corporate sponsors and 10,000 industry professionals have participated in Cloud Computing Expo since its inception, more than all other Cloud-related events put together.

Lock the Front Door for Cloud Computing Security

Wed, 07 Apr 2010 13:15:00 EDT

Enterprises continue to expand the use of cloud computing, and particularly software-as-a-service applications (SaaS), to achieve operational performance enhancements and efficiencies. Implementation of these technologies introduces several challenges related to identity management, such as administration and delegation of account authentication and authorization. A new approach to identity is required to ensure the continued growth and success of cloud computing: we call this Identity 2.0. One of the most critical challenges is the need to accurately identify and manage users of these services. Yet at the same time, users are demanding greater control, convenience, and security. The challenges faced by a greater emphasis on the cloud are ones of both centralization and de-centralization: the centralization of computing resources combined with the decentralization of identity, authentication and authorization. Identity 2.0's challenge is how to cope with these two competing forces while avoiding the pitfalls of the past. During this session, Fran Rosch will address whether Identity 2.0 is prepared for an explosion of cloud computing, or do we need some other model?

Cloud Computing Identity: Calm in the Storm

Tue, 06 Apr 2010 10:30:00 EDT

Enterprises are asking their architects to create and enact plans for the future, in a time when protocols are proliferating, services are moving to the cloud, and perimeter security has been left behind. It is a time of change - can the chaos be made to serve you rather than the other way around? The best solutions will minimize application change, maximize business flexibility, and monetize the benefit of cloud services. In this session Ping Identity CTO Patrick Harding will discuss the strengths and weaknesses of today's technology and third-party service options and give insight into the future trends on the horizon.

The Case for Storage Success with Cloud Computing

Thu, 01 Apr 2010 23:10:00 EDT

Cloud storage promises many benefits, but where does it actually fit? This vendor-neutral session will examine a number of real-world storage use cases and their technical and business requirements. It will then draw some conclusions about which use cases can work and benefit from a cloud storage environment and what features are necessary to insure a good fit. Chris is responsible for coordinating all product-related initiatives, including product strategy, direction, and marketing, as well as business model and go-to-market process definition at Zetta. Prior to joining Zetta, he was acting GM and Senior Director for Symantec Protection Network, Symantec's Software as a Service platform. Prior to joining Symantec, Schin launched and ran a highly successful consulting practice helping technology startups with market research, strategy creation, TCO and competitive analyses. He has also served as director of product management at both Blue Titan Software and Intersperse Software.

What Does Cloud Computing Mean for Investors?

Thu, 01 Apr 2010 06:59:00 EDT

As companies search for ways to eliminate costs, reduce the complexity of their IT environments, and improve efficiency in their data centers, Cloud Computing will likely continue to gain prominence. Unlike other major technology industry shifts, such as the shift from Mainframe Computing to Client Server computing, which required massive investment, the Cloud Computing paradigm requires little incremental infrastructure spend, as enterprise computing can be provisioned over the Internet.

Multi-Tenancy Not Required for SaaS, Cloud Computing

Fri, 26 Mar 2010 14:00:00 EDT

Virtual Ark can manage dedicated instances of the application for specific customer needs as if they were "one" application instance. In our view, the security, integration and performance requirements of our target market, large enterprise customers, are ill-suited to multi-tenant solutions. We think this is a key reason why SaaS has not been taken up more strongly by this market segment, and why many ISVs have not modified their applications to be multi-tenant. Virtual Ark sees this as an important differentiator in its value proposition.

Oracle Goes "All In" at Cloud Expo in New York - I

Wed, 24 Mar 2010 09:15:00 EDT

Oracle is not only the sole Diamond Sponsor at Cloud Expo at the Javits Center in New York April 19-21, it has stepped up to participate in no less than eight sessions during what will be, by far, the largest show about Cloud Computing produced to date. (The exhibit floor alone is larger than all other Cloud events combined.) Here is a review of four of the Cloud Expo sessions that feature presenters from Oracle: Essential IaaS Security Speaker: Glenn Brunette Date: April 19, 2:40 pm-3:25 pm In this session, Cloud Expo delegates will learn essential concerns, best practices and techniques to help better maximize the security posture of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) deployments. The session will feature specific architectural models, configuration ideas, and deployment techniques that will help reinforce your services from attack.

Questions, Questions, Questions About Cloud Computing

Wed, 24 Mar 2010 03:40:00 EDT

This session will discuss a critical question that arises when considering hosting applications in the cloud: What are the attributes that attract applications to public clouds? Why implement private clouds? When is it appropriate to use both in a Hybrid Cloud approach? Can legacy applications be moved unchanged to the cloud or do they have to be re-written as Web 2.0 apps? What are the implications regarding the application data migration? How will latency change when applications are moved to the cloud? What about Identity and Access Management? How will data be secured between cloud tenants?

BI and Cloud Computing Are an Optimal Match

Tue, 23 Mar 2010 16:00:00 EDT

Gentile notes that "business Intelligence programs have been getting gradually better about delivering on their promise of instant analytics to support business decisions. Today's BI platforms have more functionality than ever with dashboards, customizable reporting and more data flexibility. " That's the good news. The bad news, according to Gentile is "only 15% of the knowledge workers who could be using BI are using these new tools. With such low penetration numbers, how intelligent are businesses really becoming?" Gentile urges enterprises to work with technology vendors. "While the payoff for delivering BI in the cloud may be obvious, going it alone into the cloud can be challenging," he says. "By cooperating with technology partners, developing a fully-functional BI stack — one that's truly affordable — is possible.

Cloud Computing: You're Virtualized; Now What Do You Do?

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 12:00:00 EDT

You have a virtualized environment, now what do you do? Well, hey, that's a good question! It's probably a question that's being asked of IT managers and CIOs from uncomprehending top execs all over this world. It's also the title of a session at Cloud Expo, to be presented by Daniel Weis, Director of IT Management Advisory Support. I liked the title, so I read what Daniel has to say on the topic so far:

New GITEC Report Says Feds Lacking Cloud Computing Vision

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 08:00:00 EST

Market Connections, Inc., a leading provider of full-service government market research services in the mid-Atlantic region, conducted the survey in February on behalf of the Government Information Technology Council (GITEC). GITEC is a group of senior-level government executives organized to support the delivery of high-quality and cost-effective IT services to their customers. Market Connections released the findings at the GITEC annual summit, a forum for government leaders, industry and academia to share ideas, challenges and successes surrounding the implementation, management and use of Information Technology. Lisa Dezzutti, president of Market Connections, said, "The findings show real progress in some emerging technology and application areas. But technology engines don't seem to be revving to keep up with needs. When asked if innovations have found their way into daily applications, more federal decision-makers compare their agencies to vintage cars rather than today's hybrids." The majority of the 223 survey respondents serve in management, operations, or IT/MIS roles, with 39% of them employed in defense/military agencies and 61% employed in federal civilian or independent agencies.

GroundWork Open Source Announces New $59 Linux Virtual Appliance

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 11:00:00 EST

“SUSE Linux Enterprise is one of the most popular platforms on which to run GroundWork Monitor and previous virtual appliances accounted for 40 percent of downloads,” said David Dennis, Sr. Director Marketing & Business Development, GWOS. “By using SUSE Studio from Novell to customize the SUSE Linux Enterprise operating system, the Enterprise Quickstart virtual appliance has a 74 percent smaller download size. The pairing of GroundWork Monitor Enterprise with SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 in a virtual appliance gives customers a fully supported enterprise-class Linux, enterprise-class monitoring, and turnkey ease of use, all at a radical price point.”

4th International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo Starts Today

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 08:10:00 EST

A round-up of the wide range of important issues and timely topics due to be discussed by over 130 industry experts at SYS-CON's 4th International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo, opening today at the Santa Clara Convention Center, November 2-4, 2009. From Building Scalable and Extensible RIAs in the Cloud to Yahoo! Cloud @ Internet Scale.

EMC Reports Third-Quarter 2009 Financial Results

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 08:45:00 EDT

Joe Tucci, EMC Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, said, "I am very pleased with EMC's solid financial performance in a challenging economic climate. While remaining closer than ever to customers, we made additional progress optimizing our cost structure, expanded our product portfolio, strengthened our partner ecosystem and positioned EMC to capitalize on four of the higher-growth, multi-billion-dollar market opportunities around fully virtualized data centers, cloud computing, virtualized desktops and clients, and next-generation backup and recovery. I am extremely proud of the EMC and VMware people around the world who achieved these results."

ParaScale Named “Bronze Sponsor” of Cloud Computing Expo

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 13:15:00 EDT

SYS-CON Events announced that ParaScale, the leader in cloud storage software, was named "Bronze Sponsor" of SYS-CON's 4th International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo (www.CloudComputingExpo.com), which will take place on November 2 - 4, 2009, Santa Clara Convention Center, in Santa Clara, California. The event is expected to attract over 1,500 developers, engineers, architects, IT managers, and hardware and software professionals of every stripe.

The Growth of Government Clouds

Sun, 04 Oct 2009 23:00:00 EDT

Now that the Obama administration has pegged cloud computing as the next evolution in government technology, it's important to understand the entire scope of the cloud computing spectrum from storage to security. Scott Ryan, CEO of Asankya, will look at the technology behind cloud acceleration and the methods to deployment within the federal space in a breakout session to be given at SYS-CON's 1st Annual Government IT Conference & Expo (GovITExpo).

Cloud-Cast Named to Amazon Web Services Solution Provider Program

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 19:00:00 EDT

Focused on the growing market for cloud computing and virtualization services, Cloud-Cast delivers cloud computing solutions to government and commercial markets. Leveraging service providers such as AWS, Cloud-Cast offers a full range of cloud computing implementation services, including leveraging AWS for disaster recovery purposes, dynamic provisioning of web farms and offloading high-power compute applications to the cloud framework.

Deputy CIO of the CIA to Keynote 1st Annual GovIT Expo

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 08:00:00 EDT

SYS-CON Events announces that Jill Tummler Singer, Deputy Chief Information Officer at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), will be delivering the opening keynote at the 1st Annual Government Conference & Expo (www.GovITExpo.com) on October 6th in Washington DC. Ms Singer was appointed in November 2006 and is responsible for ensuring CIA has the information, technology, and infrastructure necessary to effectively execute its missions. Prior to her appointment as Deputy CIO, Ms. Singer served as the Director of the Diplomatic Telecommunications Service (DTS), United States Department of State, and was responsible for global network services to US foreign missions.

SYS-CON.TV: Cloud Computing Expo Power Panel

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 11:00:00 EDT

With an ever-increasing number of companies now buying computing, storage, and networking power as they need it from the cloud, SYS-CON.TV recently invited four leading industry thought leaders to discuss how Cloud Computing brings the economics of the Web to Enterprise IT and where the move to the cloud will take the industry overall. The participants are Amazon.com VP & CTO, Werner Vogels; Rackspace CTO, John Engates; Booz Allen Hamilton Principal, Rod Fontecilla; and Sun's CTO of Global Sales & Services, Hal Stern.

Kace Spiffs Up its Application Virtualization

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 18:45:00 EDT

Kace claims to have elbowed its way to the forefront of application virtualization innovation with the latest version of its Virtual Kontainers technology, its way of handling the application lifecycle. It’s only been in the application virtualization business a few months and the field is notorious for its high cost and complexity but Kace CTO Marty Kacin says that notion is a misconception – or at least it is with Kace’s stuff.

VMware Announces Broad Customer Adoption of VMware View

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 08:00:00 EDT

VMware has announced broad customer adoption of VMware View, a desktop virtualization solution. With more than 1 million seats estimated across 7,000 customers, VMware View is establishing itself as the standard of choice to centralize desktop management, lower costs and deliver rich, personalized user experiences. VMware View(TM) has been widely adopted across industries -- including financial services, healthcare, education, manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, telecommunications and the public sector. In addition, organizations are accelerating large scale deployments across broader use cases as they may realize strong total cost of ownership (TCO) savings of $600 or more per end user in less than six months.

Dell Has Some Good News & Some Bad News for Wall Street

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 19:30:00 EDT

Ahead of a meeting with analysts Tuesday Dell said that year-over-year demand for its wares seems to have stabilized, and that it expects to report a slight sequential revenue increase in its fiscal second quarter, which ends July 31. That's the good news. However it's also anticipating a "modest decline" in gross margins, because of higher component costs, competitive pricing, and an unfavorable mix of product and business-segment demand. That's the bad news.

VMware Delivers New Products

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 13:00:00 EDT

VMware Monday was set to announce two new products well as a major release of its vCenter Lab Manager 4. The new products are vCenter AppSpeed, derived from VMware’s acquisition of Beehive, and Chargeback, developed in-house. According to Raghu Raghuram, general manager of VMware’s server business unit, “If the first wave of the virtualization revolution was about reducing capital expenditures, the next is innovative virtualization management capabilities that allow IT to extricate itself from mundane tasks, become more productive, and reduce IT operating costs.” The new vCenter products are supposed to provide greater efficiency in the data center, more control over service levels and greater flexibility.

Kace Tears Down Barriers to App Virtualization

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 19:00:00 EDT

Kace claims it has torn down the barriers to application virtualization. Aside from price that largely means complexity, which in turn means it’s largely a boon to administrators.

AMD Plants Spin Out

Mon, 02 Mar 2009 23:00:00 EST

AMD, which closed its long-sought manufacturing spin-out deal on Monday, has tapped Bruce Claflin to be chairman of its board. Claflin replaces Hector Ruiz, who retired to chair the spun-off Foundry Company.

Virtualization Security: VMware Crosses the Rubicon

Sun, 01 Mar 2009 12:43:00 EST

VMware has made a stunning announcement when it comes to virtualization security. The question now is: will it awaken the security industry?

The Lights Flicker at Dell

Sat, 28 Feb 2009 08:00:00 EST

Dell’s earnings were down 48% to $351 million, 18 cents a share, on revenues down 16% to $13.4 billion and units down 12% in the January quarter, three of the single worst months since PCs were invented. Dell’s gross margin dropped from 18.7% to 17.2%.

Virtualization Wars: Citrix Makes Bomb Run on VMware

Mon, 23 Feb 2009 10:00:00 EST

Citrix is making an all-out strategic strike on VMware. It’s going to stop selling XenServer 5 – the open source virtual infrastructure that it’s added a bunch of proprietary features to since it acquired XenSource last year – and offer it to all comers for free. It says VMware sells the equivalent technology for $50,000 for a 10-server environment.

Citrix XenApp Now Runs in the EC2 Cloud

Mon, 09 Feb 2009 13:00:00 EST

Apps from the Cloud frequently means limited function browser based web apps that may be OK for personal use but don’t cut it in the business world. Citrix as an industry leader delivering full featured enterprise windows apps to business has now enabled the Cloud to provide the delivery system. As a public demonstration Citrix has posted a pre-built XenApp Server in Amazon’s Xen based EC2 offering.

Sun Announces Energy-Efficient Disk Arrays

Fri, 06 Feb 2009 05:00:00 EST

Sun Microsystems has announced the expansion of its disk storage portfolio with two new high-performance disk storage arrays that enable customers to consolidate workloads within the same data center footprint for greater efficiency. The new Sun Storage 6580 and 6780 modular arrays complement a range of server architectures, including Sun SPARC Enterprise T5440 systems running the Solaris Operating System. The Sun Storage 6580 and 6780 Arrays help enterprise customers upgrade their storage infrastructure to scale storage needs within the same power and space envelope. The new Sun Storage 6580 and 6780 arrays are ideal for midrange and high-end enterprise and throughput-intensive workloads that target database and enterprise-email applications and add enterprise management tools at no cost through the Sun StorageTek Common Array Manager software. Customers have already started to leverage Sun’s upgrade and trade-in programs, which uncover hidden equity in a customer’s current IT infrastructure by giving trade-up allowances for both Sun and competitor products. New Storage Arrays Bring Value, Investment Protection to the Market: Sun Storage 6580 Array: Offers improved response time remains versus previous generations; includes these product specifications: up to 256 disks (256 TB), eight 4Gb FC host ports, 8GB Cache, 16 expansion trays per controller, an intermix of SATA and FC drives and support of RAID 6. Sun Storage 6780 Array: Positioned above the Sun Storage 6500 line, the Sun Storage 6780 offers two times the IOPS and four times the throughput performance over the 6500 class of arrays. Product specifications include up to 448 disks (448 TB), eight or 16 4Gb FC host ports, 16GB cache, 28 expansion trays per controller, an intermix of SATA and FC drives and support of RAID 6.

Cloud Computing & Virtualization - IT's Top Two Topics

Mon, 02 Feb 2009 03:59:00 EST

Another confirmation that virtualization, cloud computing and service-based application delivery is set to form an integral part of software application development infrastructures in the decade to come is evident from the shape of an IT event in Las Vegas, Nevada, that starts today. Adrian Bridgwater previews the event in this exclusive report for SYS-CON's Virtualization Journal.

JumpBox Releases Open Source Virtual Appliances

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 01:00:00 EST

JumpBox has announced the release of 38 Open Source applications to the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) service. The release enables server application deployment, configuration, and management almost completely independent of any user hardware. JumpBox offers small to mid-sized organizations a library of Open Source applications packaged as pre-built, pre-configured virtual appliances through JumpBox Open, its annual subscription service. Public Amazon Machine Images (AMI) for twelve JumpBox applications, including Ruby on Rails

Firstservis to Offer Cloud Computing Solutions Powered by 3Tera’s AppLogic

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 10:15:00 EST

Firstservis and 3Tera have announced that 3Tera has chosen Firstservis as the first reseller and distributor of 3Tera's AppLogic cloud computing platform for Australia and New Zealand. Beginning immediately, Firstservis will resell, support and offer cloud computing solutions and services using 3Tera's AppLogic. "Firstservis' approach to IT is very compatible with 3Tera's vision and market goals," said Bert Armijo, senior vice-president, Sales, Marketing and Product Management, 3Tera, Inc. "Their unique knowledge of the Australian IT market and vast consulting experience with organizations of all sizes makes Firstservis a great partner to educate and deliver cloud computing based solutions in the region.

Cloud Envelops Exchange & SharePoint

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 10:15:00 EST

Microsoft on Monday pushed multi-tenant SaaS versions of Exchange and SharePoint out of the beta nest. Some 7,000 concerns participated in the beta. Now the stuff’s available to all comers. Exchange Online will cost $10 per user a month; SharePoint Online will cost $7.25. Eventually a browser-only Exchange/SharePoint combo will go for $3 and a Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) with e-mail, instant messaging, web conferencing and SharePoint for $15. The IM component is still missing.