Parallels New Solutions Uniquely Enable Business Transformation Through the Cloud

Parallels, a leading hosting and cloud services enablement provider, introduced its newest offerings to address the evolving cloud computing opportunities for small to medium businesses (SMBs) at Parallels Summit 2014. According to Parallels recently released SMB Cloud Insights™ research, the global market for SMB cloud was $62 billion in 2013 and is projected to grow by 26% CAGR to more than $125 billion by 2016. The growth is largely being driven by increased use of cloud services, from 5 services in 2013 to more than 9 services by 2016.

Businesses are getting their services from many providers, which results in more time and resources spent managing IT and service providers not maximizing their opportunities. In order to capture these opportunities, hosters and service providers need to have the right underlying platform to be able to deliver a relevant, integrated and easy-to-use set of services to their customers. Parallels makes that possible.
Parallels Automation with APS 2 is the leading platform for SaaS delivery with more than 500 services available through private, public and hybrid clouds. Now, Parallels Automation with APS 2 is also the leading platform for IaaS delivery. With Parallels Automation, a single platform now manages and provisions IaaS based on the leading Cloud Management Platforms and leading Virtualization and Storage solutions. This gives Parallels partners the choice they need to take advantage of market growth with the technologies customers prefer to support a diversity of use cases - including virtual data centers, business applications, enterprise applications, e-business hosting, test and development, batch computing, and SaaS applications.
Parallels Plesk is the leading Web Management solution designed for shared hosting businesses, designers, digital agencies, SMB IT professionals and application developers – each optimized to how they use Plesk on a day-to-day basis.

“Right now, businesses everywhere are moving to the cloud faster than ever,” said Birger Steen, chief executive officer, Parallels. “For the first time in history, critical business technology is as accessible for the florist on Main Street as it is for the behemoths of Wall Street. As a result, the SMB cloud industry is growing 30-40% year over year. Service Providers working with Parallels are able to tap into this growth with a proven platform and approach to make the cloud work for all types of businesses, small and large.”
New Cloud Services Solutions

• Parallels Plesk 12 provides a new security core with Atomicorp ModSecurity rules that provide powerful server-to-site security right out of the box, and a new WordPress toolkit that will help hosters mass-manage and secure multiple wordpress installs, including all plug-ins and themes, in their infrastructure. This will provide a better and more secure customer experience.
• Windows Azure Pack APS Package enables service providers to rapidly deploy Microsoft’s Windows Azure Pack services through the APS for Parallels Automation. The Windows Azure Pack helps service providers to offer the advanced cloud capabilities of Windows Azure services based on their own infrastructure. These technologies include the ability to offer IaaS and hosted databases with virtual networks, high-density scalable web sites, as well as an enterprise service bus. The Parallels Automation environment allows for seamless provisioning of these new services, as well as the consolidated billing with other offerings in the service provider’s environment.
• Flexiant Cloud Orchestrator APS Package enables the rapid deployment of highly differentiated public infrastructure as a service (IaaS) cloud offerings based on the Flexiant Cloud Orchestrator (FCO) with automated billing, provisioning and customer management provided by Parallels Automation. When the Flexiant APS Package is deployed with Parallels Automation, FCO provides compute, network and storage orchestration; end user self-service control panels; APIs; and support for a full range of virtualization technologies including Parallels Cloud Server.
• APS Packaged IaaS offerings now available from IBM/Softlayer and Hostway. For service providers who want a low barrier to entry and fast time to market IaaS solution, both IBM/Softlayer and Hostway have APS packages to enable syndication of their infrastructure through Parallels Automation.
• IDSync® APS package from InnerApps enables hybrid cloud scenarios by leveraging the APS 2 Service Bus. Utilizing the IDSync Open AD™ integration methods, ISVs can build on two-way Active Directory® data integration, advanced provisioning, and automated service discovery and configuration for any cloud offering which exploits the unique features of APS 2. This creates exciting new opportunities for service providers to offer unique upselling experiences based on discovery of compatible services, while at the same time providing unified login capabilities.
• Parallels Cloud Server, the only complete solution for cloud virtualization and cloud storage, is now integrated with Flexiant Cloud Orchestrator (FCO) to enable service providers using Flexiant Cloud Orchestrator to deploy cloud infrastructure based on high-performance, high-density Parallels Cloud Server virtualization and storage. Parallels Cloud Server combines Parallels Cloud Storage with Parallels Containers and Parallels Hypervisor to dramatically improve server performance, reliability and profitability.

Nexenta Delivers Next Generation Software Defined Storage Solutions

Nexenta (@Nexenta), the global leader of Software Defined Storage (SDS) (#softwaredefinedstorage) solutions, today announced the latest release of NexentaStor, the award-winning SDS solution and a key building block of the Software Defined Data Center. The announcement was made today at Cloud Expo Europe 2014 in London. This release of NexentaStor will be available in Q2, 2014.

NexentaStor has strategically impacted the storage industry to lower TCO, and with the imminent release of NexentaStor 4.0 the business and technology benefits will exceed basic economics. NexentaStor is the leading commercial-grade SDS implementation, and SDS is key components of the mounting shift towards a Software Defined Data Center.

"The volume and type of data being collected by enterprises today is moving storage to the forefront of CIO and IT agendas," according to Donna Taylor, Research Director, IDC. "This data deluge is creating very real and very pressing issues to organizations struggling to keep up. In such environments, storage is becoming a strategic company-wide issue and companies are eager to find solutions that balance security, price, performance and reliability."
Today, Nexenta shares the continued innovation of its industry-leading NexentaStor open storage solution. Enhancements include:

• 50% reduction in HA failover times
• Embedded intelligence in the Fault Management Architecture (FMA) which detects and resolves issues around failing hardware to reduce performance impacts
• Improved problem isolation that provides better reliability and visibility
• Reduced latencies to end users with the addition of Server Message Block (SMB) 2.1 support
• Simplified administration with the new wizard-driven storage pool with configuration and deployment tools
• Dramatic improvement in performance with support for 512GB memory
• Significant replication improvements with a highly improved AutoSync service
• Numerous additional SNMP MIBs and Traps for increased observability and monitoring
• Code base migration to Illumos open-source operating system, for improvements in security, management and monitoring
• Improves stability and supportability
• Seamless upgrade from all existing NexentaStor versions

"Software Defined Data Center is the future in IT; and Nexenta is at the forefront of this movement," said Tarkan Maner, Chairman and CEO of Nexenta. "Our Software Defined Storage solutions have already changed the traditional storage management approach with our fast-growing customer and partner ecosystem. With today's announcement of NexentaStor 4.0, we are extending our substantial TCO advantages by adding disruptive technology capabilities along with additional business benefits for organizations who are sick and tired of the IT status quo."

With NexentaStor 4.0, enterprises can continue to liberate themselves from the traditional hardware-centric storage approach and have a fully featured, unified solution that scales to meet growing storage requirements on any platform. NexentaStor offers enterprise capabilities for data integrity and workload performance, providing customers the flexibility to select their storage operating system independently from the hardware on which it runs, while commodity storage hardware tends to lack defense against silent data corruption, is difficult to manage, and suffers in performance as storage needs grow.

Piston OpenStack 3.0: The Last OpenStack Product You'll Ever Try

Piston Cloud Computing, Inc., the enterprise OpenStack company, today announced, in conjunction with an Intelemage customer announcement, a new release of Piston OpenStack, a turn-key software product that uses advanced systems intelligence to orchestrate an entire private cloud environment using commodity hardware.

"Piston delivered the first commercial OpenStack product to market, and over the last two years, we've seen incredible customer success. To date, dozens of companies, from leading financial services organizations and medical research labs to global service providers and federal government agencies, have deployed Piston OpenStack, at scale, in diverse production environments," said Jim Morrisroe, CEO of Piston. "With Piston OpenStack 3.0, our customers can stop worrying about their IT infrastructure and spend more time growing their business." 

Piston OpenStack 3.0: The Last OpenStack Product You'll Ever Try
Piston has taken the OpenStack framework and integrated it with best-of-breed technologies to create a complete private cloud solution. Including a highly-secure Micro Operating System, Piston OpenStack installs directly onto commodity hardware with no per-server configuration. Using a hyper-converged architecture, Piston delivers virtualized compute, storage, and network capabilities from every server, making it truly the most efficient model of private cloud delivery. 
With Piston OpenStack, customers achieve the business agility of cloud computing, with the security of an on-premise solution, at less than a third of the cost of public cloud. New features and benefits of Piston OpenStack 3.0 include: 

• Enhanced Storage: Fine-grained configuration of multi-tier storage pools for improved performance and cost-efficiency.
• Enhanced Networking: A wide range of software-defined networking (SDN) options including Juniper Contrail, PLUMgrid, and VMware NSX.
• Moxie Runtime Environment (RTE) Access: Now customers can leverage Piston's distributed systems orchestration, Moxie RTE, to deploy third party services and run any infrastructure service as highly-available and disaster-proof.
• New Cluster Management APIs and Tools: Richer tools for node health monitoring and cluster management.
• Remote Technical Support Access: One-click secure access to customer support.
• Redesigned Dashboard: New user interface (UI) for improved usability.
• Multi-Region Management: New dashboard interface makes it easy for users to consume clouds of 10,000 servers distributed over multiple geo-locations through a single API.

"We are the OpenStack vendor who doesn't have a dog in your fight," said Joshua McKenty, CTO and co-founder of Piston. "From our close partnerships with every major vendor of SDN, SDS, orchestration tools, hardware and PaaS, Piston has the only OpenStack solution certified to run everything you care about. We believe your solution should be built from the best-of-breed at every tier, beginning with Piston OpenStack. We have no secret agenda."

Availability, Professional Services and Pricing
Piston OpenStack 3.0 is available now, and may be downloaded free for 90 days at http://www.pistoncloud.com/start. After the 90-day free trial period, Piston OpenStack is available through an annual software subscription license, which includes an automated, online update service and access to 24×7 customer support.

Tilera Launches Open Virtual Switch Solution (OVS) to Accelerate NFV and SDN

Tilera Corporation, the leader in high-performance, power-efficient computing, today announced the availability of TILE-OVS, an optimized Open vSwitch (OVS) offload solution for network functions virtualization (NFV) deployments in data center and telco networks. Powered by Tilera's TILE-Gx manycore processors and deployed in a PCI Express form factor, the solution delivers up to 80Gbps of OVS processing with additional headroom to spare for many other sophisticated networking applications such as deep packet inspection (DPI), network analytics and cyber security processing.

In software defined networking (SDN) and NFV paradigms, networking functions are deployed as virtual machines on x86 servers rather than running on purpose-built appliances. However, due to the computational complexity of networking functions, virtual switching, and the ever-increasing rate of IP traffic, these workloads consume a significant portion of the x86 server's compute capabilities. With TILE-OVS, high-throughput networking, switching, and security functions are handled by TILE-Gx processors with direct coupling to the Ethernet I/O, dramatically offloading the x86 server.

"Offloading Open vSwitch from x86 host CPUs provides several benefits for NFV," said Matthew Mattina, CTO, Tilera Corporation. "OVS is computationally demanding on x86 machines, especially when dealing with high throughput, high packet rates, and tunneling protocols like NVGRE that leave fewer cycles to run the desired virtual functions. By offloading OVS to a Tilera data-plane adapter, our customers are able to free up more cycles for host-side applications resulting in NFV capable servers that are power and cost efficient, and support OpenFlow controllers."

"At ZTE, we create solutions to address the needs of our customers deploying next-generation solutions using NFV," said Xiong Xiankui, ZTE Central Research Institute chief engineer. "The TILE-Gx processors from Tilera deliver the right combination of features, performance-per-watt and programmability to create application offload solutions such as Open vSwitch and other compute-intensive networking offloads."
The TILEncore-Gx Intelligent Application Adapters incorporate more than enough computing power for OVS at 20 to 80Gbps, with the headroom to perform other NFV data plane offloads such as deep packet inspection (DPI) or intrusion detection and intrusion prevention (IDS/IPS) functions. Tilera's high performance PCIe interface with SR-IOV (single root-IO virtualization) enables peak data transfer rates between the host and TILEncore-Gx adapter. The OVS solution leverages open source software and Tilera's Multicore Development Environment (MDE) software tool suite with a standards-based Linux and C/C++ programming environment and scales with full software compatibility across the entire family of TILEncore-Gx adapters.

Tilera will demonstrate its TILE-OVS capabilities at RSA 2014 in San Francisco at the Moscone Convention Center, February 24-27, 2014 in South Expo booth #2320.

Catbird Partners With Trapezoid to Meet Control Requirements for Security, Privacy and Compliance in Enterprise Cloud Environments

Catbird, the leader in security policy automation and enforcement for private clouds and virtual infrastructures, announced today it has entered into a partnership with Trapezoid, an enterprise cloud cyber security company focused on the development and deployment of dynamic security and compliance postures based on platform integrity data, including Intel Trusted Execution Technology (TXT). The combined solution dramatically increases security and compliance in the key areas of asset inventory, logical segmentation, continuous monitoring, and policy enforcement.

"Customers have been asking for root-of-trust capabilities to meet dozens of requirements in FISMA, FedRAMP," said Edmundo Costa, CEO of Catbird. "Trapezoid integration delivers unique security and audit capabilities to monitor integrity, boundary and trust information to meet FISMA Controls such as SC-11: Trusted Path and PE-18: Location of Information Systems. Catbird and Trapezoid are the only vendors able to offer continuous monitoring and enforcement to FISMA, FedRAMP and other leading standards for virtual and private cloud infrastructure."

"I am very excited that we are bringing together Catbird's granular understanding of the virtual network environment with Trapezoid's Intelligent Views of the integrity and identity of cloud platform infrastructure," said Robert Rounsavall, President & Cofounder of Trapezoid, Inc. "Catbird's comprehensive security, compliance, and policy enforcement engine leverages Trapezoid's integrity, boundary, and trust events for real-time enforcement actions and alerts to policy violations creating mechanisms for potential remediation actions based on the integrity and trust degradation of the cloud platform that is hosting the assets Catbird is monitoring," continued Rounsavall. "Catbird users can now diagram, configure, and secure their Catbird TrustZones not only by data flow, but also by the trust, integrity, and location of all systems and networks in the cloud provided by the Trapezoid Trust Visibility Engine."

The combined solution will leverage Trapezoid Marker to meet twenty-four FISMA controls across eight control areas by enabling workloads to be securely migrated among hybrid cloud environments and distributed data centers. With it, Catbird can take into account platform attestation, safer hypervisor launch, and geo-location restrictions to enhance security and compliance enforcement. Trapezoid also enhances Catbird's visualization, automation, and reporting of virtual infrastructure by providing new integrity, boundary, and trust data.

For more information, please visit both Catbird and Trapezoid at the RSA Conference 2014, February 24-28 at Moscone Center in San Francisco. Catbird can be found in Booth #2505 and at the session "Shifting Roles in the SDDC"; Trapezoid can be found in Intel North Hall, Booth #3213, Kiosk #13, Demo Location #19.

CenturyLink Cloud delivers Hyperscale service for web-scale workloads, big data and cloud-native apps

CenturyLink, Inc. today announced the commercial availability of Hyperscale high-performance server instances offered through the CenturyLink Cloud platform. The new service is designed for web-scale workloads, big data and cloud-native applications.
CenturyLink Cloud includes dozens of self-service features that help enterprises run their mission-critical and business applications in the public cloud with ease. With Hyperscale, developers can now use the same platform to launch and manage advanced next-generation apps.

"New applications are crucial to delivering a competitive advantage for enterprises, and Hyperscale is the ideal service for these workloads," said Jared Wray, CenturyLink Cloud chief technology officer, CenturyLink Technology Solutions. "CenturyLink continues to bring developers and IT together with this new capability. Developers get self-service and lightning-fast performance for popular NoSQL platforms, and IT can easily use our cloud management platform for governance and billing."

Hyperscale combines CenturyLink Cloud's high-performance compute with 100-percent flash storage to deliver a superior experience for web-scale architectures built on Couchbase, MongoDB and other NoSQL technologies. Users of the service will consistently see performance at or above 15,000 input/output operations per second (IOPS) for a diverse range of workloads. Hyperscale also is ideal for big data scenarios and serves as a complementary offering to CenturyLink's existing Big Data Foundation Services.

Global Public Cloud Expansion Continues
CenturyLink today also announced expansion plans for the CenturyLink Cloud network of public cloud data centers, growing from nine to 13 locations in the first half of 2014. Starting in March, customers will be able to deploy virtual resources in Santa Clara, Calif., and Sterling, Va., with locations in Paris and the London metro market coming online in the second quarter of 2014. All CenturyLink Cloud services, including Hyperscale, will be available in these new locations.

This broad footprint offers more choice and flexibility for geo-targeted solutions and for boosting performance while ensuring data sovereignty. Customers can also deploy advanced IT configurations through the interoperability of public cloud, colocation, managed services and network solutions available through the CenturyLink Technology Solutions portfolio.

Toshiba Cloud Storage Array Service Offering Debuts In Japan, Based on the Zadara Storage as a Service (STaaS) Platform

Zadara Storage, Inc., provider of enterprise-class cloud storage as a service (STaaS), today announced that Toshiba is launching the Toshiba Cloud Storage Array Service offering in Japan, based on Zadara’s Virtual Private Storage Array (VPSA) platform for providing service providers with elastic block and file repository storage that is billed on a flexible, pay as you go basis. The deployment represents yet another expansion of Zadara’s award-winning offering – a solution that has been proven for two years in worldwide deployments. The Toshiba Cloud Storage Array Service will be available March 1.

As service providers seek to attract more enterprise applications to move to the cloud, the Toshiba Cloud Storage Array Service offering represents a significant endorsement of Zadara’s unique approach to providing high Quality of Service (QoS), elastic and enterprise-grade cloud storage for live repository, archive, and disaster recovery storage needs without a hardware purchase.

“Demand remains exceptionally high in Japan for solutions to address the rapid increase in data volumes while avoiding the need for purchasing storage hardware and paying for all the attendant floor space, maintenance and ongoing costs associated with it,“ said Koichi Kagawa, General Manager, ICT Cloud Service Division at Toshiba. “As an investor in Zadara we have watched the company’s rapid growth, its large-scale deployments, and its capability managing Toshiba’s state-of-the-art HDDs and SSDs. We are so impressed with its performance that we knew it was a natural fit for our own strategic cloud initiatives.”
Zadara’s VPSA architecture allows cloud-delivered QoS to remain exceptional, even for massive data volumes. Zadara’s technology approach uniquely provides dedicated disks, virtual controllers, and separate networking to achieve single-tenant, predictable performance at a multitenant price. Cloud providers using the Toshiba Cloud Storage Array Service can offer each of their customers a private management interface from which to add or eliminate drives, switch from disk to SSDs and back, adjust controller performance, and fine tune other storage needs on the fly – allowing flexibility and control.

“We’re delighted that Toshiba, with its exacting standards of quality and performance, has embraced the Zadara VPSA storage-as-a-service approach as part of its commitment to innovation in enterprise data center solutions,” said Nelson Nahum, CEO of Zadara Storage. “Competitive hype obscures the fact that most cloud storage offerings today expose enterprises to performance degradation from ‘noisy neighbors’ and cannot support essential data storage features that are commonplace in on-premise deployments. Using our technology, the Toshiba Cloud Storage Array Service and its service provider customers can help more enterprises to achieve cloud economics, agility and scalability with truly private storage, highest QoS, and the flexibility of a pay as you go model.”

Android Open Source Project (AOSP) ROM Builder Now Available on AWS Marketplace

Code Creator, a leading Connecticut-based high tech software and SaaS (software as a service) development company announced a new Android server is now available on the AWS Marketplace, which provides a convenient, fast way to locate, purchase and immediately start using application services on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud.

Android is the leading, open source, Linux-based operating system that powers millions of devices including smart phones, tablets, home appliances, vehicle systems, and more. The Android "ROM" is the Android operating system. This is the User interface (Sense UI in HTC phones) and the file system for maintaining contacts etc. It is composed of a Linux kernel and various add-ons to achieve specific functionality.
Compiling custom Android ROMs, modifying Android's core framework or enhancing the default user interface has never been easier and faster thanks to Code Creator's new cloud based ROM builder.
Code Creator's AOSP ROM Builder is a full-featured Android Build environment, pre-configured with all the software needed to build the Android Open Source Project, create custom ROMs, or just build for one of the included devices. The server also contains the AWS Command Line Interface (CLI) tool to easily copy an AOSP image to Amazon S3 once compiled. Harness the power of AWS by launching a high CPU core instance and build Android in record time.

Fusion-io Launches ioVDI Software to Speed the Deployment of VMware Horizon View Persistent Virtual Desktops

Fusion-io today announced the general availability of Fusion ioVDI software  for VMware Horizon View  hosted virtual desktop environments. Fusion ioVDI software speeds the deployment of VMware Horizon View virtual desktops by intelligently combining the stateless cost economics of server flash performance with the manageability benefits of installed shared storage required for persistent desktops.
"We're committed to bringing a great user experience to our increasingly mobile workforce," said Paul Tradewell, senior systems engineer at National Marrow Donor Program. "Fusion ioVDI helped us solve this challenge with its cost-effective server-side approach that worked with our existing storage in a solution that our desktop team could manage."

Fusion ioVDI software is a virtual desktop solution that offers Write Vectoring, a patent-pending technology that monitors and directs session-based desktop writes uniquely to server-side flash. By limiting shared storage interaction to the small number of writes that persist between login sessions, Write Vectoring preserves the use of VMware value-added features such as vMotion, HA, DRS, and SRM that require shared storage while substantially reducing SAN or NAS performance dependencies.
"Many customers would prefer the performance and flexibility of persistent desktops if they could solve the cost and complexity involved with shared storage," said John Webster, senior partner at Evaluator Group. "The idea of viewing a desktop operating system as a unique application opens up some intriguing possibilities for supporting shared storage without being held hostage to it."

Fusion ioVDI software also accelerates reboot times with a patent-pending technology called Transparent File Sharing, which allows many hosted virtual desktops to simultaneously share common files. As VMware Horizon View Storage Accelerator can use up to 2GB of RAM, Transparent File Sharing optimizes performance by rapidly sharing common files throughout the VDI infrastructure. Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) testing  of ioVDI found that caching further offloads shared storage by up to 87 percent so that VDI success no longer requires expensive storage or network upgrades.
"In many ways, virtual desktops are the litmus test of application acceleration expertise," said Lee Caswell, Fusion-io vice president, Virtualization Products Group. "Every desktop user is a hypercritical judge of performance, and every desktop administrator is looking to simplify the scaling of centralized desktops to minimize both capital and operating expenses."

The ESG Lab Validation testing of Fusion ioVDI  also reported that the solution delivered consistent microsecond response times for workloads of one thousand data-intensive VDI desktops, as well as fast, consistent boot times averaging less than ten seconds. With its unique approach to integrating with existing shared storage, Fusion ioVDI software is complementary to any storage products and allows resellers to eliminate shared storage cost and complexity as a selling obstacle.
"Fusion ioVDI with VMware Horizon View™ can help simplify and accelerate the adoption of hosted virtual desktops," said Mason Uyeda, senior director, technical marketing, End-User Computing, VMware. "We are pleased to work with Fusion-io to help our customers speed their deployment times in a cost-effective manner."

Fusion ioVDI software is available now as stand-alone software and as an integrated solution featuring ioVDI software and Fusion ioMemory flash through Fusion-io channel partners at a manufacturer's list price of $50 USD per desktop. Fusion-io will be exhibiting in booth 409 during the VMware Partner Exchange Summit at the Moscone Center in San Francisco from February 10 – 13, 2014. Visit Fusion-io at the Partner Exchange Summit or on our website to learn more about transforming virtualization with flash-optimized performance.

Leading Healthcare Network Selects Nexenta Software Defined Storage and VMware Virtualization Solutions to Deliver Innovative Private Cloud

Nexenta (@Nexenta), the global leader in Software Defined Storage (SDS) (#softwaredefinedstorage), today announced that Yale New Haven Hospital, one of the nation's leading healthcare innovators, has selected NexentaConnect as their storage solution for the innovative private cloud deployment.
The VMware Horizon View, Cisco UCS and NexentaConnect solution provide Yale with one platform, one architecture, one solution for an innovative cloud deployment. This integrated offering has been validated in the Cisco IVT (Interoperability Verification Testing) Lab, and demonstrated increased desktop density, thereby eliminating crippling I/O bottlenecks. This integrated offering delivered a solution that met Yale's aggressive budget expectations.

Nexenta worked with ePlus, a leading provider of advanced technology solutions and a valued partner of both VMware and Cisco, to successfully deploy thousands of virtual desktops across multiple industries and organizations.

"We were faced with a significant challenge at Yale," said Dave Franco and Matt Openshaw, System Managers, Yale New Haven Hospital. "We needed a solution that was high performance, scalable and cost effective. With an Integrated Solution including NexentaConnect we were able to have a single architecture that met the needs of our users. We were very pleased with both the solution and the support we received from all the vendors in this project."

"Working with Nexenta to meet Yale's requirements has been a great experience," said Mason Uyeda, Senior Director, End-User Computing-Solution Marketing and Management, VMware. "Yale has a great reputation of being at the leading edge of technology adoption. Their implementation of Horizon View was a great endorsement of our solution and the NexentaConnect assures that storage challenges will not be an issue."

Jim Fitzgerald, Vice President of Business Development, Nexenta states, "NexentaConnect delivers on all the promise of Software Defined Storage. The NexentaConnect deployment tool allowed Yale to define their storage needs, which then enabled the software to intelligently synch the storage and desktops for deployment, and monitor the storage with real-time feedback to synch the entire environment. Software Defined Storage for desktop virtualization and all applications is the future and Yale is showing the way in the healthcare industry."

NexentaConnect provides a 38x physical SAN data retrieval reduction, a 2.5x SAN write I/O reduction and a 72 percent increase in VM density per host. It is able to do this by effectively utilizing compression, de-duplication and advanced caching methods that are core design characteristics of NexentaConnect. Additionally, NexentaConnect's application defined deployment tools are the industry's first implementation of true Software Defined Storage, allowing the IT manager to define the needs of the applications and then having NexentaConnect automatically deploy the storage for the maximum performance and benefit.

Dell Introduces Secure, Cost-Effective Thin Client and Infrastructure Support for Windows Server 2012 R2 and Dell vWorkspace

Dell today announced expansion of its cloud client solutions to incorporate support for Windows Server 2012 R2 and Dell vWorkspace, combining existing infrastructure offerings for Windows Server 2012 R2 and for vWorkspace into a single, end-to-end Hyper-V based desktop virtualization solution. Starting at under $250 per seat including datacenter infrastructure, licensing and a three year Dell ProSupport subscription, the new reference architecture is designed to provide organizations with integrated infrastructure options that deliver performance, agility and efficiency, while ensuring enterprise-level VDI features for one of the lowest price-per-seat solutions available today.
Dell Wyse Datacenter for Microsoft VDI and vWorkspace is a highly flexible and cost-effective solution that can scale from ten to tens of thousands of seats. It is ideal for organizations wishing to leverage their datacenter investment and existing expertise in Microsoft infrastructure to provide workers secure and flexible access to data and applications, while simplifying management and improving data security, control and compliance.
The solution also supports a greater range of audio and graphics applications enabling IT departments to virtualize more applications, including unified communications on Microsoft Lync 2013 and virtualized shared graphics with AMD FirePro S9000, S7000 and W7000 cards. The centrally hosted virtualized environment means that users experience no difference between applications running locally or virtualized. IT managers are able to optimize IT resources while providing a more effective application and system support and data security, all from a single management console.
Features include:

• Support for Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows 8.1 and Intel Ivy Bridge processors delivers user density up to 225 users per R720 server, set up either as RDSH, pooled or persistent Windows 8.1 VMs
• Support for Microsoft RemoteFX (RDP), with support for a broad range of RDP 8.0 features
• Support for affordable personal desktops with a persistent profile, taking advantage of Windows Server 2012 R2 built-in active data deduplication feature
• Unified communications support with the Microsoft Lync 2013 VDI plug-in for Microsoft Windows 7 and Windows 8 end points increases user productivity without affecting server user density
• Virtualized shared graphics using AMD FirePro S9000, S7000 & W7000 server GPUs providing up to 85 Shared Graphics users per R720 server
• New VDI features for Windows Server 2012 R2 Remote Desktop Services including support for iOS, Mac OS and Android end points
• Enhancements through RemoteFX, DirectX, quick reconnect and visual application appearance
• Optional vWorkspace 8.0 MR1 desktop virtualization software for expanded client support, legacy applications and OS’s, and performance monitoring

Cost efficiency
Dell enables a low cost per VDI seat through high-user density, optimized licensing price structure, data deduplication in Windows Server 2012 R2, reduced storage space requirements by up to 93 percent on persistent desktops and low IOPS requirements. With vWorkspace HyperCache and HyperDeploy, IT can provision 150 Windows 8.1 Virtual Machines in only 26 minutes, resulting in significant infrastructure savings while increasing speed of deployment.
Greatest flexibility and usability
The Wyse Datacenter offers support for end points running most operating systems, making it ideal for true BYOD. It provides a choice of application virtualization delivery mechanisms without the need for forklift conversion, as the solution works on Windows Servers 2003 to 2012 R2.
The Wyse Datacenter comprises Dell PowerEdge R720 servers, a choice of Dell EqualLogic 1G iSCSI PS4100E/PS6100E/PS6100XS storage arrays, Dell Networking S55 1G Top of Rack switch, Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1/2012 R2 including Hyper-V, vWorkspace 8.0 MR1 virtualization software, Dell ProSupport Services for hardware and support for software, and highly secure Dell Wyse end points with new ThinOS 8 and qualified with RemoteFX capable models including Dell Wyse 3012-T10D, 5012-D10D (both highly secure with new ThinOS 8), D90D8, D90Q8, Z90D8, Z90Q8 and X90m7.
The optional vWorkspace component is highly recommended for increased scalability for deployments up to tens of thousands of seats. It allows customers to quickly troubleshoot VM problems with built-in diagnostics and monitoring functions (formerly Foglight for Virtual Desktops). It speeds VM deployments and reduces storage costs and comes with additional support for Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008, and Windows Server 2012 R2 with Hyper-V. It also adds support for extended end-point connectors and multi-tenancy with no AD Trust Requirements. Finally, vWorkspace installs seamlessly using the same hardware configuration used for Windows Server 2012 R2.
New powerful yet affordable dual-core Dell Wyse ThinOS thin client
Dell also announced the addition of the Dell Wyse thin client desktop 3012–T10D featuring a unique combination of high performance, security, and economy in a compact thin client certified for the new Windows Server and vWorkspace infrastructure. The new thin client delivers an outstanding Citrix, Microsoft, VMware and Dell vWorkspace VDI user experience and an instant-on experience from power-on to fully functioning desktop in less than 9 seconds. Featuring completely “hands-off” out-of-box automatic setup, configuration and management, the 3012-T10D runs Dell Wyse ThinOS, the premiere virus- and malware-immune thin client OS with AES disk encryption and zero attack surface.
The new 3012-T10D is the world’s first ARM SoC thin client that is Microsoft RemoteFX certified with support for RDP 8.0 features and delivers impressive performance in an affordable offering, with features including:

• Marvell PXA2128 1.2 GHz Dual Core ARM SoC processor
• Certified for Microsoft RemoteFX (RDP), supporting a broad range of RDP 8.0 features
• Optimized Citrix HDX Receiver provides an excellent user experience including remote and work from home users. 4GB Flash and 2GB DDR3 RAM memory
• Connections including dual DVI, four USB ports, Gigabit Ethernet and optional dual band Wi-Fi 802.11 A/B/G/N with up to 300 Mbps connection speeds
• Built-in media processor to deliver smooth multimedia, bi-directional audio and Flash playback.
• Multiple management options including cloud-based management with remote imaging through the Dell Wyse Cloud Client Manager, enterprise management with the optional Dell Wyse Device Manager, and the simple and easy to use file system configurations provide robust and flexible management and configuration choices.
• Flexible mounting options enable vertical, horizontal, desk, wall or behind display positioning, and a VESA stand is included standard.

Dell Wyse Datacenter for Microsoft VDI and vWorkspace and the Dell Wyse thin client desktop 3012-T10D are available today via direct and channel partners in 48 countries worldwide.

Microsoft: Power BI Office 365 Launch Means Analytics for All

Big data-driven power to the people? Microsoft's self-service business intelligence platform officially goes live.
Microsoft has officially released Power BI for Office 365, the company's answer to the big data skills shortage.

The product first debuted during the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in July. It enables Office 365 users to explore data and derive potentially business-boosting insights in Excel. The draw, according to the company, is that everyone, not just data scientists or trained specialists, can perform big data analytics.

"Democratizing data availability to users" is Microsoft's goal, Julia White, general manager of Office product marketing, told eWEEK during an interview. Currently, few employees—an estimated 10 percent—have access to business analytics, but "a lot more can benefit from it," White said.

Microsoft is "bringing BI to a billion users," she said. The company boasts a billion-strong Office user base.

Power BI for Office 365 leverages cloud computing to help power its data analysis and visualizations tools. Organizations can leverage its Data Management Gateway to link on-premise data sources, schedule refreshes and keep their workers current with the latest reports.

The cloud also powers BI Sites, the product's collaboration piece. The Web- and mobile-friendly dedicated workspaces and resource centers allow authorized users to save, share and search for reports, visualizations and data queries created in Excel's Power Query tool.

Capping off the user-friendly feature set is natural language support. Taking a cue from modern search engines, including the company's own Bing offering, Power BI for Office 365's Q&A features encourage users to "type questions they have of the data in natural language and the system will interpret the question and present answers in the form of interactive visualizations," said the company in a blog post.

During an online demo, Ari Schorr, Office product marketing manager, showed how a user can explore data and generate reports by simply asking Power BI. Using data from New York City's 311 non-emergency help and information service, he was able to quickly generate visualizations showing the number of calls and complaints logged by the system during the recent Super Bowl weekend.

Taking things further, Schorr overlaid the 311 data over an interactive map of the city to show how hotspots rose and waned over time—all without a lick of code or specialized software. These "geospatial insights" and other easily-digestible interactive experiences are more engaging than "just looking at flat data," he added.

Easy-to-use self-service analytics and rich visualizations also make it more likely that employees will share their discoveries, said Schorr. Power BI for Office 365 lays the groundwork for employees "taking what they already know and extending it out in an organization," he asserted.

Practically any employee can leverage the technology to become a knowledge worker, White said. "I use Power BI and this experience on a daily basis," she said. Business intelligence and big data analytics is "not in the hands of data wonks anymore," she added.

Big data-driven power to the people? Microsoft's self-service business intelligence platform officially goes live.

Microsoft has officially released Power BI for Office 365, the company's answer to the big data skills shortage. The product first debuted during the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in July. It enables Office 365 users to explore data and derive potentially business-boosting insights in Excel. The draw, according to the company, is that everyone, not just data scientists or trained specialists, can perform big data analytics. "Democratizing data availability to users" is Microsoft's goal, Julia White, general manager of Office product marketing, told eWEEK during an interview. Currently, few employees—an estimated 10 percent—have access to business analytics, but "a lot more can benefit from it," White said. Microsoft is "bringing BI to a billion users," she said. The company boasts a billion-strong Office user base. - See more at: http://www.eweek.com/enterprise-apps/microsoft-power-bi-office-365-launch-means-analytics-for-all.html#sthash.Hy8HxNkY.dpuf

Windows Server 2012 R2 Private Cloud Virtualization and Storage Poster and Mini-Posters

Microsoft is making available a number of posters that provide a visual reference for understanding key private cloud storage and virtualization technologies in Windows Server 2012 R2.  The posters focus on understanding storage architecture, virtual hard disks, cluster shared volumes, scale-out file servers, storage spaces, data deduplication, Hyper-V, Failover Clustering, and virtual hard disk sharing.

Note: There are multiple files available for this download. When you click Download, you will be prompted to select the files you want. The posters include:

Windows Server 2012 R2 Private Cloud Virtualization and Storage Poster (whole poster) and a set of mini-posters:

• Virtual Hard Disk and Cluster Shared Volumes Mini Poster
• Virtual Hard Disk Sharing Mini Poster
• Understanding Storage Architecture Mini Poster
• Storage Spaces and Deduplication Mini Poster
• Scale-Out and SMB Mini Poster
• Hyper-V and Failover Clustering Mini Poster

To download the above posters, visit Windows Server 2012 R2 Private Cloud Virtualization and Storage Poster and Mini-Posters

HPC Cloud Anatomy 101

High Performance Computing workloads are not web applications.  This is why it's important that your cloud is designed to run them, rather than generic web services.  Today we'll learn how an HPC Cloud is architected, and why...

Jobs versus Instances

It would be silly to dive into architecture without examining HPC workloads a bit more, and how they differ from other applications:

• HPC jobs process data (often times, Big Data), and return results.  In other types of clouds, Instances run when launched and listen for requests.  Instances are later shut down after some time when they are no longer needed.
• HPC jobs "shut down" as soon as they finish.  In a pay-per-use model, the end user need not worry about managing the infrastructure in order to save money, as the infrastructure charges the end user only for the processing cycles their jobs consume.
• Instances tend to be virtual machines with entire operating system stacks on them.  HPC jobs run best on bare metal, where they can take full advantage of the high performance hardware underneath them without having to waste cycles dealing with an abstraction layer in a hypervisor.   HPC jobs also spend far less time "starting" than instances do, again, due to their non-virtualized nature.  In a pay-per-use model, this means less money spent on non-productive computing overhead.

HPC Cloud Job Scheduling

All clouds have "Cloud Controllers", no matter what type of work they do.  At a high level, Cloud Controllers put resources to work, and often feature load balancing and metering capabilities.  An HPC Cloud uses a Job Scheduler to assign work when requested.  Basically, this puts work in queues for future execution on appropriate resources.  If resources are available right away, jobs run right away.

Queuing versus Oversubscription

When resources are not available, the cloud is busy, and the Cloud Controller has a decision to make.  An HPC Cloud Controller will queue the work for later execution.  This is also known as "batch queuing".  Since the job has all the parameters and data it needs, there is no need for the user to "watch" it run.  In fact some jobs take hours or days to run, even if resources are immediately available.  The end user submits the request, and later gets notified with the results.  The HPC Cloud Controller runs the job as soon as resources become available for it, without the user having to "resubmit" or even care.
In other clouds, Instances suffer a much less desirable fate when resources are not available: oversubscription.  This is in fact one way "web services" clouds make money - by putting more jobs to work than what their hardware can handle.  When instances are virtualized, the end user has no visibility into how busy their resources actually are, other than drastically reduced performance.  This is because overloaded hypervisors have to "time slice" between instances, since there is not enough hardware to run in real time.  Depending on SLA, the cloud may even reject the instance altogether, asking the user to try again later!
An HPC Cloud, on the other hand, ensures deterministic, real-time performance for all work submitted, even if some of the jobs may queue until resources are available.  A well designed HPC Cloud will alert operators of resource shortfalls ahead of time so they can anticipate and expand accordingly.

Scalability and Elasticity

Elasticity is a key element of Cloud Computing as a way to scale applications for large scale processing.  An HPC Cloud supports jobs that span across many physical nodes, without requiring that the job itself configure the infrastructure underneath.  The Nimbix Cloud, for example, supports both distributed and parallel HPC application models, leveraging 56Gbps FDR Infiniband technology.  At this speed, applications can pass up to 137 million messages per second between parallel runs!  Compare that to up to around 1 million messages per second on commodity web services clouds.  Since parallel HPC applications may run millions of data processing iterations during a job, they must be able to communicate quickly to finish faster.  Since you are paying for compute cycles, this makes a big difference on your bottom line.  The faster the job runs, the less it costs, all other things being equal.
Commodity web service clouds also require end users to configure parallel or distributed communication themselves, since they don't typically offer a workload manager that orchestrates this automatically.  That means more time spent configuring, less time spent doing productive work - and the end user pays the cloud provider regardless.

API and Portal

Most clouds offer end users self-service through both a web portal and an API.  An HPC Cloud offers a "processing API", where other clouds offer a "machine API".  A processing API allows end users to submit jobs, parameters, and data.  A machine API requires end users to start and stop instances, so they can later install applications inside of them to do work.  Obviously a processing API is key for an HPC Cloud since users shouldn't be expected to configure their own infrastructure before they can even do work.
While the API allows programmatic orchestration of cloud resources for automation, the web portal gives end users a convenient way to submit work for processing.  In HPC Cloud terms, this means kicking off complex jobs with just a few touches on your tablet or smartphone, as opposed to "spinning up" virtual servers, logging into them, and typing Linux commands.
Traditional HPC clusters do not offer API nor portals, instead requiring end users to write and submit "batch scripts".  This is by no means "self-service" in the spirit of the NIST Cloud Computing Definition.  Imagine writing a batch script on your smartphone, or even learning how to write batch scripts in order to get work done?  A real HPC Cloud requires both an API and a portal!

Summary

Not all clouds are created equal.  Sure, they all have Cloud Controllers, which assign work to various types of resources.  They all bill users for cycles consumed, and allow self-service.  They all offer elastic scalability, through API and/or web portal.  An HPC Cloud optimizes all this for data processing jobs, not "web services".  As not all workloads are created equal either, why would you try to run your HPC applications on a "web services" cloud?

Dell Ships First Secure, Managed Ultra-Mobile Cloud-Access Device

Dell today announced the availability of Dell Wyse Cloud Connect, an ultra-compact and highly mobile cloud-access device that instantly delivers desktop virtualization and personal cloud services to any HDMI- or MHL-enabled display. The pocket-size device delivers a full-HD experience with enterprise-level security, manageability and reliability. Organizations of any size can now deliver streaming cloud services and IT solutions in a cost-effective, mobile offering for work, home and on the go.
“Cloud Connect is among the most cutting-edge mobile thin client solutions that we have tested at our labs,” said Joseph Korah, Senior Director and Head of Kochi Operations, Cognizant. “With its ability to work seamlessly with Citrix, Microsoft and VMware environments, the solution holds great potential for the futuristic enterprise that is looking for ways to improve productivity at work and on the go for its enterprise workforce.”
“IT organizations want to be able to deliver a rich user experience through cost-effective and reliable devices without sacrificing security and manageability,” said Bob O’Donnell, Founder and Chief Analyst at TECHnalysis Research. “At the same time, many end users want an easy, simple way to get access to their corporate applications and data wherever they happen to be. Cloud Connect is an innovative solution to address these customer needs.”
An Entirely New Smart Connected Device
Cloud Connect represents a new end-user device category that bridges thin clients and mobile devices as part of Dell Cloud Client-Computing’s end-to-end desktop virtualization solutions portfolio. The extremely compact, secure, cloud-managed device with a low total cost of ownership (TCO) supports multiple use cases including mobile workers, students, digital signage, kiosks and other space-constrained environments. Specific customer benefits include:

• Quick and secure access for mobile and remote workers to virtual desktops and a variety of cloud assets including content, applications, virtual desktops and IT support
• Easy remote connections to personal computers running Microsoft Windows OS or Apple Mac OS to access data, content or applications
• Plug-and-play interactive presentations run in full-HD directly from the cloud or device, on any compatible display
• Pocket-size, battery-free alternative in the event of loss, theft, or failure of primary devices
• Cost-effective virtual desktop for the education market, extending application and data access in classrooms, libraries, labs or at home
• Digital signage solution with simplified, remote management for airports, retailers, hospitality, or other organizations
• Personal cloud access to online entertainment, gaming, apps and rich content on large displays

“Cloud Connect is very compact, merely the size of a wireless network card, but it is powerful enough to project a virtual desktop on any TV screen with a HDMI or MHL controller, using any ordinary tablet or mobile device,” said Wang Jing, General Manager of New Energy Division, State Grid Information & Telecommunication Company Ltd., State Grid Electric Power Research Institute, China. “We find this extremely useful in our delivery of refined product terminals. Moreover, we are now using Cloud Connect as an entrance portal to support our various projects, especially those around which we are researching methods such as tracing end-data queries to ensure product quality, displaying our new products at user terminals, etc.”
According to IDC, the smart connected-device market grew 30.4 percent in 2012 and global shipments are expected to surpass 1.7 billion by 2014. By 2017, IDC expects that shipments will surpass 2.3 billion units and revenue will reach $748.6 billion¹. These numbers illustrate a powerful and ongoing disruption in how users communicate and interact with their professional and personal content, driven by trends such as BYOD, mobile app development, social media and cloud computing.
Cloud Connect represents a new category of smart connected device and is the only device of its kind that is seamlessly integrated into a secure, controlled, end-to-end desktop virtualization portfolio that includes:

• Software for mobile device and application management and control with Dell Wyse Cloud Client Manager
• Flexible desktop virtualization solutions from Dell partners Citrix, Microsoft and VMware
• Personal cloud access to files and apps through Dell Wyse PocketCloud
• Global customer support expertise through Dell ProSupport for Cloud

“Small, smart and secure; Cloud Connect is a disruptive device,” said Steve Lalla, vice president and general manager for Dell Cloud Client-Computing. “We unlock new options for our customers to access their data and applications by combining mobility, manageability and security with a powerful user experience at an affordable price-point.”
Pricing and Availability
Cloud Connect is $129 per unit. Complementary Dell accessories including MHL-capable displays and Bluetooth keyboards and mice are also available. Cloud Connect is available immediately with documentation and support in global English in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, China, India, Japan, Brazil, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. To order Cloud Connect please visit, www.dell.com/cloudconnect.

CenturyLink Technology Solutions uses IO technology to open multi-megawatt data centers in Phoenix market

CenturyLink and IO today announced a strategic agreement to expand the CenturyLink Technology Solutions colocation footprint using IO's Intelligent Control technology platform, with initial deployments at IO Phoenix and nearby IO Scottsdale.
CenturyLink Technology Solutions, which formerly operated under the name Savvis, will enter the Phoenix market as a hosting and colocation provider, making up to 9 megawatts of additional capacity available to its clients through rapidly deployable IO technology. CenturyLink has a deep understanding of the Phoenix market, where it maintains a substantial network services business and employs more than 1,700 employees.
The IO Intelligent Control technology platform consists of IO.Anywhere® data center modules and the integrated IO.OS® data center operating system, which provides integrated control, data collection and business intelligence across data center infrastructure, IT equipment, applications and users of the data center. In the CenturyLink data center space, IO's technology will be complemented by CenturyLink's broad set of colocation, managed services, cloud and network offerings. Clients will also gain access to CenturyLink's ClientConnect, an online gateway for businesses to expand their capabilities by locating, connecting and sharing services with other businesses residing across CenturyLink's global data center footprint.
"CenturyLink continues to invest in expanding our global data center footprint into key markets like Phoenix and extending our hosting capabilities through new technologies like IO's Intelligent Control platform," said Jeff Von Deylen, president of CenturyLink Technology Solutions. "The pioneering IO technology enhances our product mix with the latest options for delivering flexible hybrid IT solutions. IO's energy-efficient data center technology platform can be deployed just-in-time, helping us to preserve capital and enabling our clients to reduce costs and operate more efficiently."
"With its immense global footprint, world-class data center capabilities and Savvis legacy, CenturyLink Technology Solutions is a major force in the industry," said George D. Slessman, IO chief executive officer and product architect. "We believe CenturyLink's substantial commitment to IO technology further validates that our Intelligent Control platform can meet the demands of large-scale, global service providers."
"Armed with IO's prefabricated modular technology and proprietary data center operating system, CenturyLink is rounding out its digital infrastructure offering by combining a sophisticated, agile and intuitive data center platform with its deep stack of IT services, optimizing customer scalability and management capabilities," said Michael Levy, data centers senior analyst at 451 Research.
This strategic agreement with IO follows recent CenturyLink announcements regarding investments in its hosting capabilities, including the acquisitions of Tier 3 and AppFog and data center construction projects in Toronto and Minneapolis. CenturyLink operates more than 50 data centers worldwide, with more than 2.5 million square feet of gross raised floor space throughout North America, Europe and Asia.

Cisco's Expanded, Industry-Leading Cloud Portfolio To Enable Open and Highly Secure Cloud Experiences

Cisco today extended its industry-leading cloud portfolio with new products and services – including a breakthrough hybrid cloud solution, dubbed Cisco InterCloud, which is intended to lower the total cost of cloud services ownership for IT organizations and pave the way for interoperable and highly secure public, private and hybrid clouds. The expansion of the portfolio also broadens Cisco's commitment to openness and shows the unique value in the company's partner-led model.
The new products and services in Cisco's extended cloud portfolio will include:

• Cisco InterCloud
• Cisco Validated Design (CVD) for Cisco/Red Hat integrated Cloud Management and Provisioning
• Cisco Services for Cloud Strategy, Management, and Operations
• Cisco Intelligent Automation for Cloud (IAC) 4.0

"Cisco introduced the concept of the ‘World of Many Clouds' two years ago, and since then, we and our partners have been enabling an ever-expanding world of highly secure clouds, helping organizations shape their own unique cloud journeys," said Robert Lloyd, Cisco president of development and sales. "Now, as brokers of IT services, organizations can add value by dynamically combining, integrating, and tailoring the delivery of cloud services – whether public, private, or hybrid – to best meet their business needs. Today marks a key step in the evolution of cloud computing – cloud workload portability will deliver immense benefits to cloud providers and cloud customers, paving the way toward an open and highly secure cloud ecosystem that delivers greater levels of agility, transparency, and speed of deployment."
Cisco InterCloud
Cisco InterCloud, part of the Cisco One platform, is infrastructure software that will support hybrid clouds by allowing organizations to combine and move workloads – including data and applications – across different public or private clouds as needed, easily and very securely, while maintaining associated network and security policies.
By deploying Cisco InterCloud, enterprises and cloud providers will be able to create an interoperable and highly secure hybrid cloud environment across multiple public and private clouds and between premises-based applications and public clouds while maintaining associated network and security policies. On-demand flexibility and workload portability will allow organizations to cost-effectively select their optimal cloud strategy.
Cisco continues to embrace an open, standards-based approach that offers cloud users and providers the opportunity to utilize a robust ecosystem of industry-leading technologies and avoid being locked into a single vendor or platform. An extension of Cisco's commitment to openness, Cisco InterCloud is expected to be able to move workloads to and from participating cloud providers with Cisco Powered services, such as BT, CSC/ServiceMesh, CenturyLink Technology Solutions, and Virtustream. The adoption of Cisco InterCloud by other cloud providers through the InterCloud Provider Enablement Platform will give users even more choice and flexibility. In addition, Cisco InterCloud has been designed to move workloads to and from multiple public clouds, including Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Azure.
Cisco InterCloud will provide workload mobility and is intended to integrate with cloud management solutions such as Cisco IAC, as well as CSC/ServiceMesh's Agility Platform, Red Hat CloudForms, and other products from Cisco's ecosystem partners.
Other leading technology partners supporting Cisco InterCloud include EMC, Citrix, Denali Advanced Integration, Microsoft, NetApp, Rackspace, VCE and Zerto.
"Our customers rely on the BT Cloud Compute portfolio of services to design and operate cloud solutions that are tailored to meet their needs," said Neil Sutton, vice president, Portfolio at BT Global Services. "BT welcomes Cisco's InterCloud announcement as it aligns to our vision. The open standards approach of this new solution makes it even easier for our customers to reap the benefits of hybrid cloud solutions and migrate traditional IT workloads to the cloud. Cisco's support for the Citrix Cloud platform builds on our long-standing partnership with Cisco, Citrix and NetApp. This collaboration continues to open new opportunities to bring innovative cloud services to meet the business needs of our customers."
"Microsoft's Cloud OS vision encompasses on-premises data centers, Windows Azure, hosted services, and hybrid implementations, and we recognize that heterogeneous environments are a reality in today's IT," said Brad Anderson, corporate vice president, Cloud and Enterprise, Microsoft. "Our close work with Cisco on InterCloud exemplifies how our two companies can deliver interoperable public, private and hybrid clouds based on leading platforms and management portfolios, including Windows Server, System Center, and Windows Azure. InterCloud will help customers quickly and easily move applications and services to Windows Azure."
Part of the Cisco ONE technology solution, Cisco InterCloud will be integrated into higher-level management frameworks, such as Cisco IAC or other leading cloud management solutions provided by Cisco's partner ecosystem.
Cisco Validated Design (CVD) for Cisco/Red Hat integrated Cloud Management and Provisioning
Cisco and Red Hat are working together on several key initiatives to extend OpenStack and enable open, interoperable cloud environments. These include Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) offerings designed to allow customers to manage both legacy and web-scale cloud environments. For example, the companies are integrating Cisco Prime™ network management and the Cisco IAC Service Catalog with the Red Hat OpenShift platform to provide dynamic scaling, tenant-level security, and integrated management and provisioning.
New Cisco Services
Cisco Services for Cloud Strategy, Management, and Operations provide organizations with business flexibility and agility designed around an open and highly secure infrastructure. This is based on three critical success factors for evolving an organization's cloud strategy: a choice in consumption models, reduced exposure to risks, and the ability to intelligently help secure and automate a cloud environment.
New portfolio capabilities include Cisco Cloud Consumption Services, to help unlock the benefits and manage the risks of hidden cloud usage; Cisco Domain Ten 2.0 framework for IT transformation, which helps companies to strategically evaluate their business priorities and readiness to develop their cloud strategy/roadmap and make better IT sourcing decisions; and Cisco Services for OpenStack, for open and very secure cloud deployments tailored to unique organizational needs.
Available direct from Cisco or collaboratively with channel partners, Cloud Consumption Services help companies understand current corporate usage and spending on various cloud services (including hidden usage and "shadow IT"). This service also helps companies manage potential business risks associated with multiple cloud providers. Customers gain greater visibility and control of cloud usage across their enterprise, allowing them to better manage cloud costs and security while providing IT a way to open discussions and show increased value to their business stakeholders.
"Cisco Cloud Consumption Services harness network intelligence to analyze cloud usage, risk profile, and cloud spend, which enables us to make informed decisions to better manage our risks and costs, and offer better services to taxpayers," said Christian Couturier, chief information officer for the Government of New Brunswick, Canada. "This robust new cloud portfolio allows us to start reaping the benefits of our cloud initiative faster. Cisco's cloud support services are playing a key role in guiding our staff in assessing opportunities as we execute our unique cloud strategy."
Cisco Domain Ten Framework 2.0 helps customers drive better strategic decisions related to their cloud sourcing and strategy. By adding Cisco Consulting Services for Cloud to the Framework, it provides for greater focus on business outcomes, provides deeper analysis of hybrid cloud implications; and extends the framework beyond data center and cloud to include all IT transformation initiatives.
Cisco also offers Cisco Services for OpenStack to help customers understand, strategize, pilot, design, install and/or integrate an OpenStack cloud operating system in their networks. Cisco provides unique insights into what a customer's cloud requires from its OpenStack platform. These services include: strategy and assessment; validation; design and deployment; software and application platform integration; and optimization.
Cisco Intelligent Automation for Cloud (IAC)
Cisco Intelligent Automation for Cloud 4.0 delivers a comprehensive cloud management solution for enterprises and cloud service providers to deploy private, public, or hybrid clouds. This new software release provides enhanced service catalog features for ordering, provisioning and managing the lifecycle of any type of IT service from a user-friendly, self-service portal. New integration between Cisco IAC and Cisco UCS Director provides the ability to rapidly provision both virtual and physical infrastructure for cloud deployments on Cisco UCS and Nexus, as well as third-party hardware.
IAC 4.0 also provides new functionality for the automation of virtual network services through the integration with Cisco Prime Network Services Controller. And new multi-cloud management capabilities in IAC 4.0 allow customers to orchestrate multiple cloud environments, including Amazon EC2, OpenStack and VMware. Together with InterCloud, Cisco IAC will enable new hybrid cloud management use cases such as advanced application placement, policy driven workload mobility, and consistent service lifecycle governance across many clouds.
"What Cisco offers is the automation and orchestration of cloud, strongly integrated with the network, which is quite complex," said Mirko Santocono, enterprise VAS product manager, FASTWEB S.p.A., a leading Italian telecommunications operator and cloud provider owned by Swisscom. "Cisco Intelligent Automation for Cloud offers ready-to-use IaaS services, such as ‘provision a new virtual data center' that can be customized to fit different business requirements, "It's also easy to create brand new services when you need them, unlike some other cloud orchestration platforms that are pretty rigid. With the Cisco portal, catalog, and automation tools customers can set up their own virtual data centers in just a few clicks. Delivering cloud over our Cisco platform helps us to stand out, and Cisco's new innovations in cloud management will help accelerate that competitive advantage."

CohesiveFT Unveils VNS3 3.5 with Docker Technology For The Co-Creation of Customizable, Flexible Cloud Network Platforms

CohesiveFT, the original cloud networking company, today announced the availability of VNS3 version 3.5 alpha with Docker integration. VNS3 3.5 now provides the ability to co-create customizable, flexible networks with Docker containers built in, and tailor virtual networking functionality to specific use cases when extending corporate and data center networks to public, private and hybrid clouds. VNS3 3.5 delivers a new way for partners and customers to collaborate on the creation of custom network functions - including proxy, reverse proxy, WAN optimization, load balancing, and more - giving IT teams more control over network security and connectivity.
VNS3 version 3.5 - now available in private alpha for over 20 public, private and hybrid clouds - also allows customers to:

• Work with partners and customers and easily share information about tunnel logging and display (to share network information such as SPIs, lifetimes, throughput, etc);
• Create network workflows, manage multiple IPsec tunnels, and access the single API interface from a dramatically easier to use web-based UI;
• Manage role-based security features to ensure identity access and security regardless of network, location, and role;
• Release notes: find out more about the technology behind the VNS3 3.5 update at www.cohesiveft.com/support/vns3-release-notes

Customer Value:
"With the latest updates in version 3.5, customers can co-create customizable and flexible network platforms to take advantage of network features needed per application and integrated at the cloud network transport layer," said CohesiveFT CEO, Patrick Kerpan. "The VNS3 virtual appliance can be used as a container for adding in additional network functions all within one or more virtual appliances, for ease of management and a reduction in cost. Essentially, if you're connecting to, through and across the clouds, make sure it's a Cohesive connection."
"With the new 3.5 version, we were able to create a much more secure client configuration with the security control needed to work with large, complex network configurations. VNS3's LAN customization settings ensure we get the signing authority, cipher choice, and key length," said Peter Rung, CEO at I.D. Rank Security, Inc. "With this implementation our myKryptofon voice encryption solution goes beyond the high level commercial security standards our customers experience today, to meeting the extended security requirements as defined by DISA and the NSA for many U.S. government agencies."
Availability:
VNS3 3.5 is available for qualified customers in an alpha version. Contact CohesiveFT for access: www.cohesiveft.com/vns3/alpha

Citrix Reports 2013 Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year Financial Results

Citrix Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CTXS) today reported financial results for the fourth quarter and fiscal year ended December 31, 2013.
FINANCIAL RESULTS
For the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2013, Citrix achieved revenue of $802 million, compared to $740 million in the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2012, representing 8 percent revenue growth. For fiscal year 2013, Citrix reported annual revenues of $2.92 billion, compared to $2.59 billion for fiscal year 2012, a 13 percent increase.
GAAP Results
Net income for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2013 was $139 million, or $0.74 per diluted share, compared to $114 million, or $0.60 per diluted share, for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2012. Annual net income for fiscal year 2013 was $340 million, or $1.80 per diluted share, compared to $353 million, or $1.86 per diluted share for fiscal year 2012.
Non-GAAP Results
Non-GAAP net income for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2013 was $195 million, or $1.04 per diluted share, compared to $169 million, or $0.90 per diluted share for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2012. Non-GAAP net income excludes the effects of amortization of acquired intangible assets, stock-based compensation expenses and the tax effects related to these items.
Annual non-GAAP net income for fiscal year 2013 was $568 million, or $3.02 per diluted share, compared to $543 million, or $2.87 per diluted share for fiscal year 2012. Non-GAAP net income excludes the effects of amortization of acquired intangible assets, stock-based compensation expenses and the tax effects related to these items.
“We continued to see strong growth in our networking business for both the quarter and for the full year,” said David Henshall, acting chief executive officer and chief financial officer. “In the mobility space, XenMobile, while still early stage, also showed strong momentum. We are well positioned to help our customers embrace enterprise mobility by providing infrastructure and cloud services to build and manage secure, mobile workspaces.”
In addition, Citrix announced today that the company’s chief executive officer, Mark B. Templeton, will be returning from his previously announced leave of absence to resume his role as CEO. Mr. Templeton intends to retire within the next year, subject to the naming of his successor. The board of directors has formed a committee of independent directors to lead a search process to identify the next CEO.
David J. Henshall, who has been serving as acting CEO, has been promoted to chief operating officer and will retain a portion of the executive responsibilities that he assumed during Mr. Templeton’s absence. Mr. Henshall will continue in his roles as executive vice president and chief financial officer, with responsibility for the company’s finance and accounting organizations.
“I would like to express my deep appreciation to the board of directors for allowing me time to support my family,” stated Mark Templeton. “I remain fully committed to Citrix until my successor is named and the CEO transition is complete.”
Citrix Chairman Thomas F. Bogan said, “Speaking on behalf of the entire board, we are excited to welcome Mark back as CEO. I also would like to acknowledge the important role that David Henshall has played in leading Citrix during Mark’s absence. We look forward to Mark and David’s continuing leadership and contributions to our company.”
Q4 Financial Summary
In reviewing the results for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2013, compared to the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2012:

• Product and license revenue increased a half of a percent;
• Software as a service revenue increased 13 percent;
• Revenue from license updates and maintenance increased 11 percent;
• Professional services revenue, which is comprised of consulting, product training and certification, increased 28 percent;
• Net revenue increased in the EMEA region by 14 percent, increased in the Americas region by 8 percent and decreased in the Pacific region by 12 percent;
• Deferred revenue totaled $1.4 billion as of December 31, 2013, compared to $1.2 billion as of December 31, 2012, an increase of 18 percent; and
• Cash flow from operations was $230 million for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2013, compared with $227 million for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2012.

During the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2013:

• GAAP gross margin was 83 percent and non-GAAP gross margin was 86 percent, excluding the effects of amortization of acquired product related intangible assets and stock-based compensation expense;
• GAAP operating margin was 20 percent and non-GAAP operating margin was 30 percent, excluding the effects of amortization of acquired intangible assets and stock-based compensation expense; and
• The company repurchased 4.4 million shares at an average price of $57.84.

Annual Financial Summary
In reviewing the results for fiscal year 2013 compared to fiscal year 2012:

• Product and license revenue increased 7 percent;
• Software as a service revenue increased 14 percent;
• Revenue from license updates and maintenance increased 16 percent;
• Professional services revenue, which is comprised of consulting, product training and certification, increased 17 percent;
• Net revenue increased in the Americas region by 14 percent, increased in the EMEA region by 14 percent and increased in the Pacific region by 3 percent; and
• Cash flow from operations was $928 million for fiscal year 2013 compared with $819 million for fiscal year 2012.

During the year ended December 31, 2013:

• GAAP gross margin was 83 percent and non-GAAP gross margin was 86 percent, excluding the effects of amortization of acquired product related intangible assets and stock-based compensation expense;
• GAAP operating margin was 13 percent and non-GAAP operating margin was 24 percent, excluding the effects of amortization of acquired intangible assets and stock-based compensation expense; and
• The company repurchased 7.0 million shares at an average price of $62.40.

Financial Outlook for Fiscal Year 2014
Citrix management expects to achieve the following results for fiscal year ending December 31, 2014:

• Net revenue is targeted to grow by approximately 8 percent to 10 percent.
• GAAP gross margin is targeted to be in the range of 81 percent to 82 percent. Non-GAAP gross margin is targeted to be in the range of 84 percent to 85 percent, excluding 3 percent related to the effects of amortization of acquired product related intangible assets and stock-based compensation expense.
• GAAP diluted earnings per share is targeted to be in the range of $1.58 to $1.69. Non-GAAP diluted earnings per share is targeted to be in the range of $2.85 to $2.95, excluding $0.75 related to the effects of amortization of acquired intangible assets, $1.05 related to the effects of stock-based compensation expenses, and $(0.43) to $(0.64) for the tax effects related to these items.
• GAAP tax rate is targeted to be in the range of 19 percent to 20 percent. Non-GAAP tax rate, which excludes the effects of amortization of acquired intangible assets and stock-based compensation expenses, is targeted to be in the range of 24 percent to 25 percent.

The above statements are based on current targets. These statements are forward-looking, and actual results may differ materially.
Financial Outlook for First Quarter 2014
Citrix management expects to achieve the following results for the first quarter of fiscal year 2014 ending March 31, 2014:

• Net revenue is targeted to grow by approximately 8 percent to 10 percent.
• GAAP gross margin is targeted to be in the range of 81 percent to 82 percent. Non-GAAP gross margin is targeted to be in the range of 84 percent to 85 percent, excluding 3 percent related to the effects of amortization of acquired product related intangible assets and stock-based compensation expense.
• GAAP diluted earnings per share is targeted to be in the range of $0.24 to $0.26. Non-GAAP diluted earnings per share is targeted to be in the range of $0.57 to $0.60, excluding $0.19 related to the effects of amortization of acquired intangible assets, $0.26 related to the effects of stock-based compensation expenses, and $(0.09) to $(0.14) for the tax effects related to these items.

The above statements are based on current targets. These statements are forward-looking, and actual results may differ materially.

SolarWinds Survey Reveals That BYOx Threatens to Disrupt the IT Landscape and the IT Skill-Set Must Adapt Accordingly

SolarWinds, a leading provider of powerful and affordable IT management software, today released the results of its New IT Survey, which sheds light on the evolving role of the modern IT professional in today’s technology-driven business environment. Specifically, the survey results reveal that the consumerisation of IT, namely the emergence of BYOx (where x is anything from apps, data to the latest mobile devices), is having a significant impact on business operations and the strategic implementation of emerging technologies.

One in four survey respondents indicated that BYOx is the emerging technology most likely to cause disruption, in terms of its impact on the business and the time and energy IT professionals dedicate to solving related issues. The results also reveal that IT professionals are playing an increasingly valuable role in the strategic decisions that lead to the implementation of such emerging technologies, with 97 per cent of those surveyed being relied upon to extend their responsibilities and make informed business decisions.

“The days of IT’s limited impact on business are long gone, replaced by the modern era of almost complete reliance on technology, especially the emerging technologies that threaten to disrupt the status quo,” said Lawrence Garvin, Head Geek, SolarWinds. “The shifting expectations from employees, who want to use consumer devices and applications in the workplace, are leaving an indelible mark on business processes. As a result, more businesses recognise that IT holds an important key to success, particularly when it comes to the implementation of disruptive technologies. Likewise, IT professionals can no longer be content to stay within their traditional role. Instead, they must be prepared to take on new levels of responsibility within strategic business initiatives.”

Fielded in November 2013, the survey yielded responses from 214 IT practitioners, managers and directors in the UK from small, mid-size and enterprise companies.
Survey Findings:
The evolution of technology means that IT professionals must adapt their skill-sets and levels of responsibility in order to cope with the demands of emerging and disruptive technologies.

• One in four of those surveyed suggested that BYOx is the emerging technology that is most disruptive to business
• Mobility, cloud computing, data analytics and compliance round up the top five emerging technologies
• Over 50 per cent of respondent suggest that cloud/SaaS and information security are the top IT skill-sets that will be in high demand over the next three to five years, followed by mobile apps and device management

Foremost among the results of this evolution, modern IT professionals are now expected and must be prepared to help their companies make informed, strategic business decisions with regard to emerging technologies.

• 97 per cent of all IT pros are confident that they can provide the guidance and expertise necessary to help their company make informed decisions with regards to emerging technologies
• While 97 percent of survey-takers said they feel at least somewhat confident in their ability to provide such advice, only one-third of those are completely confident in doing so
• To feel more empowered to provide strategic advice, slightly more than half of respondents said they need more training in their area(s) of responsibility, and nearly 40 percent said they need a better understanding of their company’s overall business

Technology’s rise in importance as a core business component may have only been outpaced by the complexity it created. This increasing infrastructure complexity has affected the role of nearly all IT professionals.

• Over half (53%) of all IT departments now manage virtualisation, mobility, compliance, data analytics, SDN/virtual networks, BYOx, cloud computing and self-service automation
• 40 per cent of respondents said increasing complexity has greatly affected their responsibilities over the past three to five years, and an additional 49 per cent said it has somewhat affected their role