Cloud Computing Articles
The recent public release of thousands of leaked U.S. State Department cables by WikiLeaks continues to shake up governments across the world. The information captured and sent out to the wild is not only an embarrassment to U.S. government officials whose candid assessments of foreign leaders were exposed but also to the fact that that the organization with the tightest and most comprehensive data security technologies, protocols, and policies in the world unknowingly fell victim to a massive data breach. Can private corporations or smaller government agencies with less-stringent security protocols and standards expect to do any better? Securing data is tough enough, and now, with the increase of initiatives such as virtualization and cloud computing, the odds of loss of control and proliferation of sensitive data become even greater.
Posted March 09, 2011
Precise, a provider of transaction performance management software, has announced the availability of Precise 9.0. "The focus of this release is real-time transaction performance management for cloud applications and especially Java applications running on the cloud," Precise executive vice president Zohar Gilad tells 5 Minute Briefing. "The old problems that prevent applications from scaling don't go away, and a new virtualization layer actually makes it a lot more difficult to find the origin of a problem once it happens," says Gilad. Additionally, he notes, "The cloud model is heavily dependent upon shared services which is a good thing, but the flip side of that is that you have a lot more possibilities for application contention on resources."
Posted March 08, 2011
Queplix Corp., a provider of data virtualization solutions, has announced two new product families to bring the benefits of data virtualization to ETL (extract, transform and load). According to Queplix, the VirtualETL and CloudETL families simplify the ETL process, enabling users to configure Queplix's Application Software Blades, providing easy connections to target applications and reducing the time required to integrate applications. The VirtualETL family includes enterprise-class VirtualETL, which allows ETL teams to connect any two enterprise applications together, and professional-class VirtualETL, which allows users to connect any two applications that use relational database management systems. With CloudETL, users can connect any two cloud-based applications or connect a cloud-based application with one that is on-premise.
Posted March 02, 2011
A new survey of 430 members of the Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG) reveals that organizations lack a sense of urgency about securing critical data, and the greatest challenges to securing application and data environments are primarily organizational and budget-related. The survey was conducted by Unisphere Research, a division of Information Today, Inc., in partnership with Application Security, Inc. (AppSec), a provider of database security, risk and compliance solutions, in December 2010. According to the OAUG's 2011 Data Security report, "Managing Information in Insecure Times," 53% of respondents stated that budget was the greatest impediment holding back information security efforts. Thirty-three percent claimed a lack of an understanding of the threats prevents them from rallying support for countermeasures. And more than one-quarter of respondents cited a disconnect between IT teams and executive management as a major impediment to implementing proper security measures. The study shows a serious lack of understanding and concern for data and application security in today's organizations, according to Thom VanHorn, vice president global marketing at AppSec. "My take-away from the study is that there is a lack of communication, there is a lack of buy-in at the highest levels, and there is not a focus on implementing best practices," VanHorn says.
Posted February 23, 2011
The SHARE conference convenes on February 27th in Anaheim, with an agenda packed with industry initiatives and knowledge-sharing on the latest best practices and technology trends. In this Q&A, SHARE president Janet Sun provides her vision for the IBM users group in the coming years. "We see the mainframe as the center of the enterprise IT universe. If you don't think so, try unplugging it," says Sun. "Our organization focuses on enterprise IT, and that includes the mainframe. Today's SHARE membership continues to strive to leverage advances in information technology, and SHARE is a great place to do that."
Posted February 23, 2011
SHARE convenes on February 27th in Anaheim, with an agenda packed with industry initiatives and knowledge-sharing on the latest best practices and technology trends. In this exclusive Q&A, SHARE president Janet Sun provides her vision for SHARE in the coming years.
Posted February 22, 2011
Oracle has introduced the Oracle Cloud File System, which is designed to help organizations deploy their applications, databases, and storage in private clouds. It delivers a cloud infrastructure that provides network access, rapid elasticity and provisioning for pooled storage resources that are the key requirements for cloud computing. With Oracle Cloud File System customers can use Oracle Database features to manage application data stored outside of an Oracle Database.
Posted February 17, 2011
Queplix Corp., a provider of data virtualization solutions, has introduced a virtual migration platform that enables users to rapidly migrate data from one application to another. The product, Queplix Virtual Migration Manager, is a new module of the Queplix Virtual Data Manager platform, and can reduce migration time from months to days, the vendor says. "Virtual Migration Manager uses the power of data virtualization to supercharge the ETL process," Michael Zuckerman, CMO of Queplix, tells 5 Minute Briefing. "We do this by eliminating much of the time and programming effort, and greatly simplifying the use of the Virtual Migration Manager toolset. Our object dashboard enables users to integrate multiple sources rapidly, relational, object or XML, and see them all converted into one view in a single dashboard."
Posted February 15, 2011
HP announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Vertica, a privately held, real-time analytics platform company based in Billerica, Mass. According to HP, the acquisition will enhance its capabilities for information optimization, adding sophisticated, real-time business analytics for large and complex sets of data in physical, virtual and cloud environments. Vertica's platform aims to help customers analyze massive amounts of data quickly, resulting in "just-in-time" business intelligence.
Posted February 15, 2011
Vormetric, a provider of enterprise system encryption solutions, plans to announce tomorrow Vormetric Data Security for Amazon EC2, which enables organizations to remotely apply and manage transparent file-level encryption on data in Amazon EC2 (elastic compute cloud) environments. Vormetric has seen a surge in customer interest in leveraging cloud-based services, Gretchen Hellman, vice president of marketing and product management, Vormetric, tells 5 Minute Briefing. "The cost benefit and the IT agility benefits of the cloud are completely apparent, and so the question is: Why aren't more enterprises moving to the cloud - and that definitely is because of security concerns."
Posted February 08, 2011
Verizon Communications Inc., a global telecom provider, announced it intends to acquire Terremark Worldwide Inc., a provider of managed IT infrastructure and cloud services, at a total equity value of $1.4 billion. Verizon expects to close the tender offer late in the first quarter of 2011. This transaction will accelerate Verizon's "everything-as-a-service" cloud strategy by delivering a portfolio of scalable on-demand solutions to business and government customers globally, through a unified enterprise IT platform and unique business cloud offerings that leverage the companies' collective strengths.
Posted February 07, 2011
SOA Software, an SOA and cloud services governance provider, announced the availability of an upgraded closed-loop service governance automation solution, designed to help ensure that fine-grained development-time policy decisions are automatically applied to the enterprise's operating environment and enabling users to enforce development policies at runtime. Repository Manager Version 6.3 also integrates with SOA Software's Policy Manager.
Posted February 07, 2011
Investing in cloud computing - primarily private clouds - is a top priority for IT organizations for 2011, according to polls conducted by Unisys. A recent Unisys poll which was completed on January 24 found that 44% felt that 44% of the people responding expect to make cloud computing their top IT investment priority in 2011. By contrast, 24% named support for mobile/end user devices as their primary IT investment focus.
Posted February 06, 2011
Over the past 3 years, the IOUG ResearchWire studies conducted by Unisphere Research have focused on Oracle technology as well as trends affecting data professionals, allowing IT professionals to benchmark where their organizations stand within their own technology environment. Executive Summaries of all IOUG ResearchWire reports are publicly available for free download and full study reports are also available to IOUG members at no charge when they sign in with their user name and password.
Posted February 02, 2011
IBM announced the latest release of the Informix database server, version 11.7, in October 2010, thus marking the fourth major release since Informix joined the company. One of the most exciting features in Informix 11.7 is the "Flexible Grid." Wouldn't you like to administer multiple servers as easily as a single server? Wouldn't you like to mix different hardware, operating systems, and versions of software? The Informix Flexible Grid provides this capability.
Posted February 02, 2011
Predixion Software, a developer of self-service predictive analytics solutions, and Neudesic, a Microsoft National Systems Integrator and Gold Certified Partner, are embarking on an 18-city seminar series to demonstrate how to quickly and cost-effectively deliver self-service predictive analytics utilizing the Microsoft Business Intelligence platform and Predixion's cloud-based predictive analytics solution
Posted February 01, 2011
Queplix Corp., a data virtualization software vendor, has introduced three new Application Software Blades in Virtual Data Manager enabling companies to integrate social media data with internal corporate systems. Companies can now automatically capture information from FaceBook, LinkedIn and Google Contacts and harmonize it with their own corporate data. According to Queplix, companies typically struggle with how to incorporate and leverage the data within social media communities for business gain. "The value of social media and its potential to enhance corporate initiatives is widely recognized, yet barely tapped," said Mark Cashman, chief executive officer, Queplix. With the new integration capability, Queplix allows organizations to combine data from social media sources with internal information, thus providing a new layer of intelligence to business-supporting functions.
Posted January 18, 2011
Teradata has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Aprimo, a provider of cloud-based integrated marketing software for approximately $525 million. The transaction is expected to close later this quarter. Aprimo will be integrated into Teradata's operations and will continue to market its products and services under the name Aprimo. Once the acquisition is complete, Aprimo will support the strategy of Teradata's analytic and applications business, including development, marketing, sales, and services going forward.
Posted January 18, 2011
Jaspersoft, a provider of business intelligence software today announced the general availability of Jaspersoft 4, a complete commercial open source BI suite designed for web applications.Jaspersoft 4 leverages a new modular UI architecture to deliver a best-in-class environment for building and deploying BI. By separating the content and presentation layers in line with today's web application standards, Jaspersoft 4 aims to accelerate the process of bringing BI to users. Featuring a new GUI for rich visual dashboarding and self-service features, this latest release of the Jaspersoft Business Intelligence Suite is intended to overcome traditional barriers to adoption of BI, the company says.
Posted January 11, 2011
IOUG ResearchWire has announced the winner of the 2010 IOUG Cloud Computing Survey sweepstakes - William Moshier, director of engineering, Absolute Analysis. Moshier, who has been a member of the IOUG for the past 5 years, will receive an Apple iPad 16GB with WiFi.
Posted January 05, 2011
Informatica Corporation, a data integration software provider, has launched Informatica Cloud Express, a cloud data integration service with usage-based pricing. Informatica Cloud Express pricing will start at $99 per month, which the company says will open the door for organizations of all sizes for access to data integration capabilities of Informatica Cloud. Informatica Cloud Express is initially targeted at Salesforce.com customers, Darren Cunningham, vice president of cloud marketing for Informatica, tells 5 Minute Briefing. "For more complex requirements, including Salesforce integration with ERP applications, we offer Informatica Cloud Basic, Standard and Enterprise. We may extend usage-based billing to these other editions and to other vendors over time, but our initial focus is Salesforce.com as that is where we've seen the most demand."
Posted January 04, 2011
SnapLogic has unveiled the new SnapCenter enterprise integration control center as well as improved performance and scalability in SnapLogicServer 3.1. This release continues SnapLogic's initiatives to meet the integration needs of the most demanding enterprises as they tackle "big data" problems driven the by the ever increasing adoption of cloud computing and mobile, distributed architectures. Separately, SnapLogic, which is led by Gaurav Dhillon, founder and former CEO of Informatica, also announced that it has raised $10 million in Series B funding led by Andreessen Horowitz and that Ben Horowitz has joined SnapLogic's board of directors.
Posted December 14, 2010
TwinStrata, Inc., a provider of data protection and iSCSI cloud storage solutions, has integrated Scality's RING storage platform into its family of CloudArray virtual and physical appliances. With the addition of Scality integration, CloudArray customers can now choose and deploy either a private cloud environment or connect with available public cloud providers powered by Scality RING, and receive off-site data protection and disaster recovery capabilities on a plug-and-play basis.
Posted December 13, 2010
At the recent Supercomputing 2010 conference, IBM unveiled details of a new storage architecture design created by IBM scientists that will convert terabytes of pure information into actionable insights twice as fast as previously possible. Ideally suited for cloud computing applications and data-intensive workloads such as digital media, data mining and financial analytics, this new architecture will improve the speed of complex computations without requiring heavy infrastructure investment. IBM won the Storage Challenge competition for presenting the most innovative and effective design in high performance computing with the best measurements of performance, scalability and storage subsystem utilization.
Posted December 09, 2010
Did you miss a webcast covering important information about technologies you need to learn more about? IBM offers replays on-demand of webcasts presented by IBM experts and partners.
Posted December 08, 2010
Red Hat has acquired Makara, a developer of deployment and management solutions for applications in the cloud. The company says that Makara's technologies will accelerate the development of its comprehensive platform-as-a-service (PaaS) solution as part of its Cloud Foundations portfolio.
Posted December 08, 2010
At the recent Supercomputing 2010 conference, IBM unveiled details of a new storage architecture design created by IBM scientists that will convert terabytes of pure information into actionable insights twice as fast as previously possible. Ideally suited for cloud computing applications and data-intensive workloads such as digital media, data mining and financial analytics, this new architecture will improve the speed of complex computations without requiring heavy infrastructure investment. IBM won the Storage Challenge competition for presenting the most innovative and effective design in high performance computing with the best measurements of performance, scalability and storage subsystem utilization.
Posted December 08, 2010
The Independent Oracle Users Group (IOUG) has just released the findings of a new survey of IOUG members that benchmarks the rapid evolution of cloud computing among Oracle users. The survey, consisting of responses from 267 IT professionals and data managers, was conducted by Unisphere Research, a division of Information Today, Inc., and sponsored by Oracle.
Posted December 01, 2010
The IOUG has completed a number of ground-breaking studies in 2010 through the IOUG ResearchWire program. Conducted among IOUG members by Unisphere Research, 2010 IOUG ResearchWire Executive Summaries are available to all on the IOUG website.
Posted December 01, 2010
The Independent Oracle Users Group (IOUG) has just released the findings of a new survey of IOUG members that benchmarks the rapid evolution of cloud computing among Oracle users. The survey, consisting of responses from 267 IT professionals and data managers, was conducted by Unisphere Research, a division of Information Today, Inc., and sponsored by Oracle.
Posted November 30, 2010
SQL Azure is Microsoft's cloud-based relational database service hosted in their data centers, and it's got some DBAs worrying about the future. The more I look at the technology, however, the more I see practical applications for it and the less I think people should be concerned.
Posted November 30, 2010
The year 2010 brought many new challenges and opportunities to data managers' jobs everywhere. Companies, still recovering from a savage recession, increasingly turned to the power of analytics to turn data stores into actionable insights, and hopefully gain an edge over less data-savvy competitors. At the same time, data managers and administrators alike found themselves tasked with managing and maintaining the integrity of rapidly multiplying volumes of data, often presented in a dizzying array of formats and structures. New tools and approaches were sought; and the market churning with promising new offerings embracing virtualization, consolidation and information lifecycle management. Where will this lead in the year ahead? Can we expect an acceleration of these initiatives and more? DBTA looked at new industry research, and spoke with leading experts in the data management space, to identify the top trends for 2011.
Posted November 30, 2010
Storage I/O bottlenecks present a major challenge for high performance, data-intensive environments that, until now, required big IT budgets to attempt to eliminate them, Asaf Somekh, vice president of marketing, Voltaire, tells 5 Minute Briefing. "If you look at the different emerging markets, especially cloud computing, and you look at their economics, their business model and the different parts of the data center, the one part that breaks their model is the storage part," he explains. "You see all of these relatively inexpensive, very powerful servers connecting to storage that is kind of yesterday's technology, but very expensive."
Posted November 29, 2010
Red Hat, which recently launched the latest major release of its flagship operating platform, has announced ecosystem support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 from leading independent software vendor (ISV) partners. With a simple certification model that allows partners to deploy applications in any environment - physical, virtual and cloud - with a single certification, Red Hat enables its ISV partners to deliver flexible and portable solutions to their customers.
Posted November 23, 2010
Red Hat, which recently launched the latest major release of its flagship operating platform, has announced ecosystem support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 from leading independent software vendor (ISV) partners. With a simple certification model that allows partners to deploy applications in any environment - physical, virtual and cloud - with a single certification, Red Hat enables its ISV partners to deliver flexible and portable solutions to their customers.
Posted November 23, 2010
Sentrigo, Inc., a database security software provider, has announced the latest version of its database vulnerability assessment and security scanning software solution. The new release, Repscan 4.0, available with more flexible pricing options, offers expanded support for cloud-based and open source database platforms, productivity enhancements for database administrators (DBAs), and added management capabilities.
Posted November 23, 2010
Talend, an open source data management software vendor, announced it has acquired Sopera, a provider of open source SOA and middleware platforms, creating a global company specializing in open-source middleware solutions.
Posted November 23, 2010
Pervasive Software, a provider of data integration solutions, has introduced a new release of its flagship product, Pervasive Data Integrator v10, Cloud Edition. Running on the new Pervasive DataCloud2 Fall Release, the hosted integration platform offers a new browser-based design interface and cloud connectivity.
Posted November 23, 2010
The Professional Association for SQL Server (PASS) held the annual PASS Summit last week drawing 2,814 delegates and 993 pre/post-conference attendees for a total of 3,807 registrations. It is the largest turnout since the inception of the conference, and represents a 25% increase in attendance over 2009. The SQL Server community is growing "and we are very much a part of that community," Rick Heiges, vice president of marketing, PASS, told 5 Minute Briefing. The record conference attendance was not a surprise, he added. "Last year, our numbers were down about 10% but that was actually fantastic because a lot of other shows were down as much as 50%. We knew that we had a strong base to build upon. We saw signs of the economy coming back so when we started to budget for this year we had a good feeling that we would be able to have record attendance because our community is just so passionate about being here and getting together each and every year."
Posted November 16, 2010
Netuitive, Inc., which provides a self-learning analytics platform for cloud management, has announced a new integration with IBM Tivoli, a provider of systems management tool for large enterprises. According to Netuitive, the enhanced, native integration is aligned with all of Tivoli's management features and significantly expands the ability of Netuitive to scale to the size of the IBM Tivoli estate. IBM Tivoli customers can now better leverage Netuitive for automated performance and capacity management in virtualized and cloud environments.
Posted November 15, 2010
OpTier has announced the release of OpTier BTM version 4, a solution for end-to-end business transaction management, from the end-user, cross-application, data center and cloud perspectives.
Posted November 15, 2010
Oracle CEO Larry Ellison has been notoriously critical of cloud computing - or at least of the way in which the term "cloud" has been applied. He often has expressed his frustration when "cloud" is applied to long established patterns such as software as a service (SaaS), especially when this is done by Salesforce.com. While there's widespread agreement that "cloud" has become a faddish, over-hyped and often abused term, some have speculated that Ellison's obvious frustration has been fueled by Oracle's inability to fully engage in the cloud computing excitement prior to the conclusion of the Sun acquisition.
Posted November 09, 2010
While public clouds have gotten much of the cloud computing attention over the past years, a new Independent Oracle Users Group (IOUG) survey, conducted by Unisphere Research, finds that private cloud formations are growing in many companies, often outpacing adoption of public cloud services.
Posted November 03, 2010
Sentrigo, Inc., a provider of database security software, has announced that Sentrigo Hedgehog Enterprise and vPatch solutions are now available on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) for database audit, protection and breach prevention. Sentrigo's database compliance and security solutions allow organizations to more easily run applications subject to PCI-DSS, HIPAA, SEC regulations and more on Amazon EC2.
Posted November 03, 2010
Microsoft Corp. is partnering with Cloud.com to provide integration and support of Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V to the OpenStack project, an open source cloud computing platform. The addition of Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V will provide organizations and service providers running a mix of Microsoft and non-Microsoft infrastructure with greater flexibility when using OpenStack.
Posted November 02, 2010
Sentrigo, Inc., a provider of database security software, has announced that Sentrigo Hedgehog Enterprise and vPatch solutions are now available on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) for database audit, protection and breach prevention. Sentrigo's database compliance and security solutions allow organizations to more easily run applications subject to PCI-DSS, HIPAA, SEC regulations and more on Amazon EC2.
Posted November 02, 2010
CA Technologies today announced CA Automation Suite, a package of new and enhanced products and solutions that offers dynamic deployment and elastic scaling of IT infrastructure and services by automating, orchestrating, integrating and standardizing the provisioning and management of physical, virtual and cloud resources.
Posted October 18, 2010
Compuware Corporation has announced a software-as-a-service (SaaS)-based application performance management (APM) solution that provides visibility from what it calls the "first mile" (the data center) to the "last mile" (the end user). Compuware's Gomez First Mile, together with Gomez outside-in monitoring, is intended to enable organizations whose businesses depend on web applications to quickly assess the business impact of a problem.
Posted October 18, 2010
IBM expanded its CloudBurst family of pre-integrated cloud service delivery platforms with a POWER7-based hardware appliance, as well as separately offering the software to run on currently installed IBM and non-IBM systems.
Posted October 18, 2010