Cloud Computing Articles
At OpenWorld, Oracle's annual conference for customers and partners, John Matelski, president of the IOUG, and CIO for Dekalb County, Georgia, gave his perspective on the key takeaways from this year's event. Matelski also described the user group's efforts to help the community understand the value of Oracle's engineered systems and deal with the broad implications of big data, and how the IOUG is supporting Oracle DBAs in their evolving roles.
Posted December 12, 2012
Progress Software, a provider of software for connecting business applications to data and services, has released DataDirect Connect and DataDirect Connect XE for ODBC 7.1. The releases provide fast, reliable, secure and scalable connectivity for Apache Hive, as well as expanded support for cloud databases including Microsoft SQL Azure. DataDirect Connect and DataDirect Connect XE for ODBC 7.1 also offer new features for IBM DB2 10.1, IBM DB2 pureScale 9.8, Teradata 14, and Microsoft SQL Server 2012.
Posted December 11, 2012
Compuware Corporation, a technology performance vendor, announced that REALTECH AG, a provider of software solutions for enterprise-wide IT management and SAP consultancy, is incorporating Compuware APM - dynaTrace Data Center Real User Monitoring (DC RUM) - into the latest release of its IT service management software, theGuard! ServiceManagementCenter. This will enable REALTECH to enhance application performance driven by end user experience across SAP, web, non-web and cloud applications. "With today's complex application environment, it is impossible to manage and control IT service quality with traditional operational management products," according to Blair Drenner, vice president of strategic business development for Compuware's APM business unit.
Posted December 10, 2012
Xerox and Cisco have announced a collaboration in which Xerox will employ Cisco's Unified Computing System to deliver its cloud based managed print services (MPS) offering. Cisco reports that its system supports hundreds of thousands of transactions per second on behalf of Xerox. "By using Cisco UCS to support our global MPS delivery network, we can quickly respond to the changing needs of our customers and offer them simplified data, new applications, and faster service," says Andrew Morrison, senior vice president for Xerox MPS Business.
Posted December 10, 2012
HP announced a range of new enhancements to its Converged Storage portfolio, intended to address storage management issues within virtualized, cloud and big data archive environments. The refresh of the company's storage portfolio includes new HP 3PAR StoreServ Storage, HP StoreAll Storage, and HP StoreOnce Backup product offerings. With the understanding that the storage sprawl at many organizations is unsustainable, the goal of the updated HP storage portfolio is to simplify the overall experience within customer environments, Craig Nunes, vice president of worldwide marketing, HP Storage, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted December 10, 2012
In response to growing demand for MultiValue data in the cloud, Pick Cloud, Inc. has been launched by Mark Pick. Pick Cloud aims to provide its clients with a safe, secure hosted environment that guarantees 99.999% uptime, automatic file-saves, backups, and 24x7 support. In addition, Pick Cloud offers database-as-a-service (DBaaS) as an option.
Posted December 06, 2012
Oracle is planning a new event series called Oracle CloudWorld which is aimed at allowing senior Oracle executives, customers, partners and industry thought leaders to share how they drive business transformation using the Oracle Cloud. The debut of Oracle CloudWorld follows the expansion of the Oracle Cloud services portfolio at Oracle OpenWorld 2012. Oracle president Mark Hurd will kick off Oracle CloudWorld on January 15, 2013 in Dubai.
Posted December 05, 2012
Attunity Ltd., a provider of information availability software solutions, has officially launched Attunity CloudBeam, a fully-managed data transfer SaaS platform for Amazon Web Services (AWS) Simple Storage Service (S3). With its beta completed, the high-performance data transfer solution was unveiled and demonstrated live at the AWS re: Invent Customer and Partner Conference from in Las Vegas, NV. "This is aimed at folks today that are using AWS or will be using AWS for all kinds of use cases where data is core to their strategy," Matt Benati, vice president of Global Marketing at Attunity, tells DBTA. "All these use cases demand the movement of data and it really has to be a frictionless movement of data at scale. That is what Attunity does best."
Posted December 04, 2012
Amazon Web Services Inc. has announced the limited preview of Amazon Redshift, a managed, petabyte-scale data warehouse service in the cloud, which aims to enable customers to increase the speed of query performance when analyzing data sets using the same SQL-based BI tools they use today. "Over the past 2 years, one of the most frequent requests we've heard from customers is for AWS to build a data warehouse service," says Raju Gulabani, vice president of Database Services, AWS.
Posted November 28, 2012
Cloud database startup NuoDB, Inc. has announced the availability of their Release Candidate 1 (RC1) for immediate download, marking the end of the company's year-long private beta trial. SQL-compliant, NuoDB guarantees ACID transactions and scales elastically in the cloud or on premises. Offering high performance and efficient resource utilization, the solution uses an asynchronous, peer-to-peer model. NuoDB will be offered in two editions: Community and Pro. The Community Edition is a free-forever version for smaller-scale applications, while the Pro Edition is designed to support applications with that require high levels of transactions per second and currency, as well as in databases in which uptime is essential.
Posted November 27, 2012
Jeff West, president of Quest International Users Group, joined by Jonathan Vaughn, Quest's executive director, talked with DBTA at Oracle OpenWorld about what's ahead for 2013. The group has launched smaller, product-concentrated events to support JD Edwards and PeopleSoft users' specific areas of interest, and expanded its range of online offerings for users who may not be able take advantage of in-person conferences. Plans are underway to help members learn about PeopleSoft 9.2 coming in March and to prepare for the looming end of support for JD Edwards World. As always, says West, Quest continues to help get information to members from Oracle and their peers. "It is always about return on investment and aligning IT with the business. That is always on the top of people's minds."
Posted November 27, 2012
Cisco disclosed two impending acquisitions intended to boost its offerings in the cloud management space. The vendor announced its intent to acquire privately held Cloupia, a Santa Clara, Calif.-based software company, for $125 million. Cloupia automates converged data center infrastructure - enabling enterprises and service providers to simplify the deployment and configuration of physical and virtual resources from a single management console. In a separate announcement, Cisco also said it intended to acquire privately held Meraki Inc., a cloud networking provider, for $2.1 billion.
Posted November 26, 2012
Oracle, which in September acquired substantially all of the assets of Skire, a provider of capital program management and facilities management applications, has completed the integration of the new Skire products into its Primavera product line, Mike Sicilia, senior vice president and general manager, Oracle Primavera, tells 5 Minute Briefing. The combination is aimed at helping organizations manage their projects with more predictability and financial control, improving profitability and operational efficiency.
Posted November 21, 2012
Oracle said it has made a strategic minority investment in Engine Yard, a cloud development platform that supports popular web development languages, Ruby, PHP and Node.js. The Engine Yard platform-as-a-service (PaaS) automates the configuration, deployment and on-going maintenance of cloud environments to enable application developers to rapidly build, deploy and manage cloud applications.
Posted November 21, 2012
At Enterprise World, OpenText's annual customer conference, the company unveiled OpenText Cloud, which aims to provide all OpenText software as cloud-based offerings, in addition to the existing on-premises products. OpenText provides enterprise information management software that enables companies to manage, secure and leverage their unstructured business information. OpenText Cloud provides customers with anytime, anywhere access to OpenText's EIM solution portfolio in the cloud, including more than 20 ready-to-use applications and services.
Posted November 16, 2012
Companies are facing serious external challenges managing aging IT infrastructures and application portfolios. To decrease costs and risks while increasing flexibility and innovation, many are turning to cloud technologies. By adopting cloud platforms, companies enable the delivery of "everything as-a-service." This empowers the workforce with faster any-device access to solutions that are available, affordable and ready to use. However, in order to realize cloud computing benefits, organizations must first transform and modernize their applications portfolios. Modernization is a key to business success and a significant challenge for chief information officers (CIOs).
Posted November 13, 2012
Entrinsik, Inc., has announced that its Informer self-service reporting and business intelligence software is now listed on SugarCRM'sSugarExchange and can integrate directly with SugarCRM implementations. Through the integration between Entrinsik and SugarCRM, users can log into Sugar and access real-time reporting, data analysis and interactive dashboards. "It allows users to integrate multiple sources of data without even leaving the Sugar instance and without having to set up a separate data store or data cube which they would typically have to do in order to access data from multiple data sources," Sharon Shelton, vice president of marketing at Entrinsik, tells DBTA.
Posted November 13, 2012
Data integration software provider Informatica has announced Informatica Cloud 2013, the latest release of its cloud-based integration and data quality applications. Informatica Cloud Winter 2013 provides a revamped cloud integration interface that improves end user productivity. "We've added a lot of enhancements around search, making it easier for relevant information to be available to the end user. The simplicity and ease of use continues to be our number-one differentiator and a key reason why we built our cloud solution in the first place," Darren Cunningham, vice president of marketing at Informatica, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted November 13, 2012
RackSpace has launched a WordPress CMS installer within its Cloud Sites control panel, providing customers with a faster and easier way to install WordPress on newly created sites.The introduction of the WordPress CMS installer within the Cloud Sites control panel addresses an obvious need for Cloud Sites customers, Chris Spencer, a product manager at RackSpace, tells 5 Minute Briefing. "Roughly 20% of the sites we host use WordPress today."
Posted November 12, 2012
Oracle has announced general availability of Oracle Solaris 11.1 and Oracle Solaris Cluster 4.1. Oracle Solaris 11 is the first operating system built for cloud, Charlie Boyle, senior director of Solaris product marketing, tells 5 Minute Briefing. "We have taken lessons learned from our customers and feature requests and built those into Solaris 11.1 to enhance our cloud platform." In addition, Oracle Solaris Cluster 4.1 extends high availability and disaster recovery capabilities of Oracle Solaris and includes virtual cluster features supporting efficient application consolidation.
Posted November 07, 2012
BI Software provider MicroStrategy rolled out MicroStrategy Cloud Express, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution designed for "do-it-yourself" business analytics, mobile intelligence and data publishing. According to the company, the new solution enables any business person - regardless of technical skill - to access and analyze data on their own, as well as design and share mobile apps data-driven mobile apps without writing code.
Posted November 01, 2012
Mark Clark, president of the Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG), spoke with 5 Minute Briefing at the recent Oracle OpenWorld conference about issues facing Oracle Applications users and the OAUG's plans for the year ahead. Helping members understand the significance of the cloud, Fusion applications, and EBS 12.2 are key issues, as the OAUG continues to provide education, networking opportunities, and a voice for members to Oracle, says Clark, who is also a senior partner at O2Works.
Posted October 30, 2012
A new software as a service solution from HP, Service Anywhere, aims to help organizations more quickly resolve IT incidents, while ensuring availability of critical IT systems. HP Service Anywhere provides service desk capabilities, including handling of inbound requests and IT service configuration as well as incident, problem and change management.
Posted October 29, 2012
Kognitio is allowing companies to download a fully functional copy of its software at no charge, and with no time restrictions. The company, which made the announcement at O'Reilly Strata and Hadoop World conference, said it is offering a full-featured, perpetual use license of up to 128 gigabytes without an expiration period or other limited functions normally found in "trialware." This capability gives companies the ability to do in-memory analytics on, for example, more than 500 million customer records at once.
Posted October 25, 2012
At SAP TechEd 2012 in Las Vegas, SAP unveiled its plans for SAP HANA Cloud, a next-generation cloud platform based on in-memory technology. As part of SAP HANA Cloud, the company also announced the general availability of SAP NetWeaverCloud, an open standards-based application service, and SAP HANA One, a deployment of SAP HANA certified for production use on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud, as the first offerings based on SAP HANA Cloud.
Posted October 24, 2012
Cloudant, the provider of a globally distributed "data layer as a service," has announced upgrades to its cloud database service that include integrated, full-text indexing and search powered by Apache Lucene. With Search 2.0, developers using Cloudant can improve mobile and web apps through high-performance indexing and analysis of textual documents.
Posted October 16, 2012
Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Release 2 was recently introduced with capabilities for deploying and managing business applications in an enterprise private cloud, such as Java platform-as-a-service (PaaS), enhanced business application management, and integrated hardware-software management for Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud. According to Oracle, "engineered-together management" is especially important for a consolidation platform such as Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud, where multiple business applications need to run reliably and securely. In addition, as a result of demand from customers leveraging Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c, a new IOUG Management Special Interest Group (SIG) has been created.
Posted October 16, 2012
SnapLogic, a provider of enterprise cloud integration tools, announced new enterprise platform features intended to help lower the effort to integrate with traditional data sources. Meeting the needs of enterprise IT architects, the latest release of the SnapLogic Integration Platform provides high availability and rollback support, smarter server shutdown options, and a more intuitive interface for administrative tasks. "This release, like most other SnapLogic releases, is for both private and public clouds," Zeb Mahmood, principal of product management for SnapLogic, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted October 15, 2012
Technology performance company Compuware announced two new solutions aimed at reducing complexity in the data center and the cloud. Compuware APM for Mainframe provides transaction management capabilities, intended to help administrators more rapidly resolve performance problems, reduce MIPS costs, postpone hardware upgrades and accelerate time-to-market for new applications. In addition, a second new solution, Outage Analyzer, tracks cloud and third-party web service outages with instant notification of cause and impact. Outage Analyzer is available now as a free service.
Posted October 10, 2012
CA Technologies launched a new book called "Service Virtualization: Reality Is Overrated" at Oracle OpenWorld. Co-authored by CA CTO John Michelsen and CA LISA director of product marketing Jason English, the book explains how deploying service virtualization to simulate the behavior, responsiveness and data of dependent systems can help remove constraints in the existing software environment, and help increase the speed, performance, and agility for the development of enterprise application software.
Posted October 10, 2012
SAP AG announced the general availability of the SAP Enterprise Performance Management OnDemand solution. With mobile-ready applications powered by the SAP HANA application cloud, the solution enables business users to gain real-time insight into what is happening and adapt on-the-fly. "Built on the SAP HANA application cloud, SAP EPM OnDemand offers our customers another deployment option for extreme performance applications powered by SAP HANA. It's also complementary to — and extends the value of — the 10.0 version of SAP solutions for EPM with focused applications that are designed to be up and running quickly and help a broad set of users overcome particular business challenges," says John Schweitzer, senior vice president and general manager, Analytics, SAP.
Posted September 26, 2012
MicroStrategy, a provider of business intelligence (BI) software, has introduced a new release of the company's core platform. MicroStrategy 9.3 includes new capabilities and improvements to MicroStrategy's data discovery software, Visual Insight; increased support for advanced analytics from 'R' - the open source language for predictive analysis; and improved connectivity to Hadoop. In addition, MicroStrategy 9.3 delivers a high speed "Google-like" search experience and introduces an innovative, new administration product, MicroStrategy System Manager, for automating manual, multi-step processes.
Posted September 25, 2012
Business analytics provider Birst Inc. has released a free cloud-based analytics edition of Birst available to business users, called Birst Express. Users can connect directly to Salesforce.com for sales analytics that span Salesforce.com and their own data sources, as well as visualize data and deliver analysis in a cloud-based environment. Users can then share their analyses and access their insights anywhere, on their desktop or mobile device.
Posted September 25, 2012
Oracle announced this week that it has entered into an agreement to acquire SelectMinds, a provider of cloud-based social talent sourcing and corporate alumni management applications. SelectMinds' applications enable recruiters, hiring managers and employees to leverage social connections to distribute job opportunities, source higher quality referrals, market their employment brand and manage corporate alumni relationships.
Posted September 19, 2012
In recent years, the networks of developers, integrators, consultants, and manufacturers committed to supporting database systems have morphed from one-on-one partnerships into huge ecosystems in which they have become interdependent on one another, and are subject to cross-winds of trends and shifts that are shaping their networks. Nowhere is this more apparent than the huge ecosystem that has developed around Oracle. With Oracle's never-ending string of acquisitions, new functionality, and widespread adoption by enterprises, trends that shape this ecosystem are certain to have far-reaching effects on the rest of the IT world. Concerns that percolate through the ecosystem reflect — and influence — broad business concerns. New paradigms — from cloud computing to big data to competing on analytics — are taking root within the Oracle ecosystem long before anywhere else.
Posted September 19, 2012
Serena Software announced advancements to its "Orchestrated IT" solution set, now designed to help enterprises take full advantage of mobile, social and cloud technologies. Serena's solutions are designed to help IT stakeholders to automate the continuous delivery of applications on-premise and to the cloud, as well as enable users to view release activity, analytics and key metrics from mobile devices, such as smart phones and tablets.
Posted September 17, 2012
Splunk Inc., a provider of operational intelligence software, has released a cloud service offering for organizations that develop and run applications in the public cloud using services such as Amazon Web Services, Heroku, Google App Engine, Rackspace, and others. Splunk Storm enables users to diagnose and troubleshoot application problems instantly, attain rapid insight into cloud-based applications, as well as monitor vital business metrics to achieve more effective operational intelligence.
Posted September 11, 2012
Attunity CloudBeam, Attunity's recently introduced SaaS platform for Amazon Web Services (AWS), has expanded its services to provide a new data replication-as-a-service solution for AWS' Simple Storage Service (S3). Currently available for testing, the service provides replication and synchronization of big data stored in S3 across AWS cloud regions to enable business-critical initiatives, including disaster recovery, backup and data distribution. "Amazon Web Services has a replication capability but it is far less efficient and performant than ours and this is one of the reasons that AWS is so happy to have this capability," Matt Benati, vice president of global marketing, Attunity, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted September 10, 2012
Enterprise PaaS company rPath has unveiled a new adoption model for enterprise IT and managed service providers to help decrease risk in cloud projects and assure better business outcomes. The framework, which offers insight into the sequence and implications of each successive investment in cloud maturity with a focus on starting points, traps, and destinations, is founded on the principle that an effective cloud must standardize and automate both infrastructure and application platforms. The primary target with the framework is large enterprises with their own private clouds and secondarily, service providers, Shawn Edmondson, vice president of product strategy at rPath, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted September 06, 2012
Enterprise Linux distribution provider SUSE has released SUSE Cloud, an OpenStack-based private cloud solution. This automated cloud management platform enables the rapid deployment and management of an infrastructure as-as-service (IaaS) private cloud, improving resource utilization and delivery of services by managing and provisioning workloads across a secure and compliant cloud environment. SUSE Studio and SUSE Manager are also included, allowing users to easily build and manage cloud-based applications.
Posted September 04, 2012
LogicMonitor, provider of SaaS-based IT infrastructure monitoring for physical, cloud, and hybrid environments, has partnered with cloud management vendor RightScale Inc. to provide a comprehensive, automated monitoring solution for managed public, private, and multi-cloud/hybrid cloud deployments, spanning their premises-based infrastructure.
Posted September 04, 2012
IBM announced an updated mainframe server configured to meet the heightened performance demands of cloud computing, as well as providing enhanced security. The zEnterprise EC12 mainframe server also offers support for operational analytics that can help clients sift through large volumes of raw data and transform it to gain knowledge that can be used for competitive advantage. The EC12 is the result of an investment of over $1 billion in IBM R&D, and the work of more than 2,500 development engineers across 18 labs worldwide, says Rod Adkins, senior VP of IBM's Systems and Technology Group.
Posted September 04, 2012