Friday 03 September 2010
According to the announcement, developers are now able to copy, implement and modify the specifications. The company says it worked directly with developers in an open community to create the specifications and has now released them through the not-for-profit Creative Commons organization. According to Engates, one potential outcome of the move is the general adoption of any kind of standard across cloud computing systems.
Along with open sourcing the APIs for its Cloud Files and Cloud Servers products, the company said Thursday that it had also released its Cloud Files language bindings for Java, PHP, Python, C# and Ruby under the MIT license. The source code for the bindings is available at the public software versioning system GitHub, along with a technical guideline for Cloud Servers language bindings, which will enable developers to build bindings for Cloud Servers in a variety of languages. Companies looking to boost revenues are finding Verio’s Free VPS promotion the right fit for getting started as Hosting Reseller.
Does this mean Google wants to be in the software development game or the web hosting business? What’s the company’s vision for App Engine, and where does it fit in the cloud computing landscape? SearchCloudComputing.com caught up with Mike Repass, product manager for Google App Engine, during a recent trip to California. here are lots of people carving out bits of the public web and fencing it off. We’d like to keep it open and App Engine is a way to encourage that. We’re saying, let’s build a business that supports web advocacy, even though it may be low margin, let’s make it easy for people to build on the web. We’re never going to get to the level of Microsoft, in terms of the number of people we have in support and training and all of that, but maybe we can think up some novel solutions for that.
Hosting is a commodity business. Adwords, is the highest margin business of all time, and we’ll never get that margin off App Engine. It’s the same for Saleforce.com on their core business, selling CRM as a service, versus Force.com. They are really pushing Force.com, but perhaps for promotional purposes or lead generation, it’s a loss leader and perhaps we are in the same boat. The question gets at, what are Google’s core competencies? We know how to deal with hundreds of thousands of machines. All our hardware is custom built and not something we could easily serve up at a raw level in a way that makes sense to people. Infrastructure as a service would be a play against Google’s core competencies.
Earlier this year the company announced their partner status in the Microsoft Hosting BizSpark program in addition to the release of a cloud package for the enterprise. This month they were recognized by the Gartner Magic Quadrant, which listed them as a “Niche Player” for Web Hosting and Cloud Infrastructure Services (On-Demand). Each company in the Magic Quadrant was reportedly evaluated on its completeness of vision and ability to execute within: self-managed hosting, mainstream-managed hosting, highly complex managed hosting, global solutions portfolio, and enterprise applications hosting.
CloudLayer, SoftLayer’s set of cloud services and, in this case, recognition winner, includes a Content Delivery Network (CDN), Storage and Computing. All of these are available as standalone services or fully integrated with all other SoftLayer offerings. In my opinion, being evaluated in this report is proof that our unique approach is redefining hosting,” said Lance Crosby, CEO of SoftLayer. “Of course, our greatest pride and core goal is to provide solutions and scalability that make an impact on our customers’ business. But to me, being in the Magic Quadrant shows that we’re making a difference throughout the industry.
Ektron’s CMS400.NET content management system is now also cloud-friendly, thanks to their eSync technology that can do bi-directional synchronization with the cloud. Hosting is also part of the offering. Ektron is using the Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) as a hosting option, allowing customers to run and manage their production, development and staging environments in the cloud, in any combination. Ektron’s eSync technology can be used for bi-directional synchronization between the cloud and a customer’s local environment for the entire web site, specific pages or select pieces of content; giving developers the ability to code locally and sync up with the cloud.
Ektron says it will provide a set of free Amazon Machine Images (AMIs), on which customers can deploy their CMS400.NET instances. Using these Ektron-provided AMIs, new virtual machines can be provisioned with CMS400.NET. Developers can take advantage of the provisioning and automated software deployment.
Rackspace Hosting Inc.’s (RAX) flight into cloud computing has hit some turbulence, as a couple recent service outages have knocked down the high-flying stock, but the manager of corporate data is seen resuming its ascension. Since early last year, the San Antonio-based company has spent nearly $290 million, or more than half its 2008 revenue, on equipment to build up its hosting and cloud computing services, which allow companies to access computing tasks through the Web. The spending has put Rackspace in a favorable position, even against bigger rivals, in an increasingly competitive market and has contributed.
LegalTorrents provides a complete hosting and distribution solution for impendent artists and media producers for broadcast quality media. This service uses cloud-computing infrastructure and peer-to-peer distribution to dramatically reduce the cost for distribution of digital entertainment media, such as music, movies, television, podcasts and books and other content. LegalTorrents will end its beta testing and launch the service to the public using the Joyent Cloud. LegalTorrents has picked Joyent to provide a flexible, powerful infrastructure for low cost media distribution. Future plans for the community include expanding the amount of hosted content, adding capacity to the network for distribution, and increasing the size and involvement of the community members participating in content selection and discovery.
Matson Systems is a California based technology company, with offices in San Francisco and Palo Alto that builds community-oriented web-based systems focused on peer-to-peer (P2P) technologies, data sharing, and informatics. They implement white-label distribution solutions for fully automated, ultra-low-cost video and media distribution as a direct alternative to streaming technologies. Joyent provides on-demand applications, compute, storage, and services to teams around the world. The ease with which Joyent’s solution scales to meet increased server demands allows end-user, startups and developers to focus on their business instead of their servers. Founded in 2004 and headquartered in Marin County, California, Joyent serves customers around the globe in multiple languages and time zones.
Many of the services we use now will eventually be web-based or “in the cloud.” People who use services like MobileMe will increasingly see more of their data and “work” being done out there in the cloud. Last year’s event sold out, so be sure to check out the event details soon. We’d love to have you. Register here ( http://structure09.eventbrite.com/?discount=GIGAOM60) now, and we’ll give you a $60 savings on your ticket. Check out our speakers and topics here ( http://events.gigaom.com/structure/09/ ).
The GigaOM Network will be hosting the second annual Structure conference in San Francisco on June 25. The CEOs of Salesforce.com and Akamai, among dozens of other speakers, will talk about what the capabilities of platforms like MobileMe will be in the near future.
Instead of making an upfront investment for perpetual licenses, the new monthly licensing model allows SaaS ISVs to scale their investment in Oracle technology with their company growth and end-user demand. Committed to providing the leading technology platform for Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Cloud Computing partners, Oracle today launched a new commercial licensing model that enables Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) to purchase license and support for components of the Oracle Platform for SaaS on a monthly basis.
The new monthly option, called SaaS for ISVs, is available to any ISV interested in delivering a SaaS application in a one-to-many commercial deployment on Oracle Database, Oracle WebLogic Server and Oracle Application Server. The Leading Platform for SaaS and Cloud-Based Services The Oracle Platform for SaaS includes Oracle Database, Oracle Fusion Middleware, Oracle Enterprise Manager, and Oracle VM, and is a comprehensive, open and integrated set of technologies that allows ISVs to build, deploy and manage SaaS and cloud-based applications. This software platform uses Oracle Grid Computing technologies to enable ISVs to deliver SaaS and cloud-based services to multiple enterprise customers, while fully delivering on their requirements of scalability, high performance, high availability, integration, security and customization. ISVs, hosting service providers and system integrators also receive business and technology support via a designated Oracle SaaS Program for partners.
“Oracle has been active in the SaaS market for several years, selling our own SaaS offerings and working closely with an extensive ecosystem of SaaS partners - including ISVs, SIs and Managed Hosting Partners,” said Judson Althoff, Senior Vice President, Worldwide Alliances & Channels at Oracle. “With the new monthly licensing model, not only can ISVs leverage the leading platform for SaaS, they can also scale their investment to meet the evolving demands of their business. The combined Oracle Platform for SaaS and licensing options deliver the power and flexibility ISVs need to compete and win in today’s global SaaS marketplace.”
Netfirms for Google Apps
Netfirms, one of the world’s largest web hosting and domain name registrars today announced the launch of Netfirms for Google Apps™, a suite of communication and collaboration tools including the newly released Google Apps Sync for Outlook powered by Netfirms 24/7 customer service.
“We are delighted to announce Netfirms for Google Apps solution for business customers. Our tightly integrated solution is a significant win for our customers in the United States and Canada,” said Thomas Savundra, CEO of Netfirms. “As one of the world’s largest service providers with plenty of real-world experience assisting customers with their hosting, domain and IT needs, we are confident we add significant value to make Google Apps work seamlessly for businesses. We make this process simple — from registering a domain all the way to getting their new ‘Office 2.0′ setup with Google Apps Premier Edition.”
With Google Apps Premier Edition, Netfirms customers can use applications such as Gmail™ webmail service (without any advertising), Google Talk™ instant messaging service, Google Calendar™ calendaring service, Google Docs™ program, Google Sites™ intranet/extranet web application, and Google Video™ for business on their own domain to work together more effectively. Best of all, you have 24/7 service and support provided by Netfirms for Google Apps, so there’s no additional HR requirements to download, install or maintain the application.
“Over the past 10 years, Netfirms has been offering ‘Fortune 500′ capabilities at a small business price. This new offering supports this philosophy, extending Netfirms services into the rich email, collaboration and communication space, alongside our well established Grid Hosting offerings.” said Thomas Savundra, CEO of Netfirms.
Other benefits of Google Apps with Netfirms include 99.9% uptime guarantee, 25GB of email storage, mobile phone support (Blackberry, iPhone, Windows Mobile and Android), built in Postini spam and filtering tools, SAS70 Type II compliance certification for security, custom branding in your company name, and future service upgrades at no additional cost, and dedicated expert 24/7 support for your account from Netfirms.
“We continue to hear from our larger customers a need to significantly reduce their IT costs,” says Dan Kershaw, General Manager of Netfirms. “These same customers are telling us — why continue to dedicate staff and resources to maintaining dozens of servers and fighting spam when those resources could be pointed at revenue generating projects or go straight to the bottom line? With Netfirms providing Google Apps and the new Google Apps Sync for Outlook we can now help organizations make such a migration.”
Netfirms received training, support and deployment services from Google, as well as a clean integration of Google Apps into the Netfirms Hosting Control Panel. This allows Netfirms staff to provide additional service and support when needed. The customers of Netfirms using Google Apps will benefit from the additional attention to their specific needs. For more information on Google Apps and Google Apps Sync for Outlook program please visit
United States: http://www.netfirms.com/googleapps and
Canada http://www.netfirms.ca/googleapps
To learn more about Netfirms visit http://www.netfirms.com.
Netfirms, Inc., founded in 1998, provides hosting solutions and Grid Hosting technology to successful small and medium-sized businesses, start-ups, entrepreneurs and individuals worldwide. Netfirms hosts over 1,200,000 websites and is headquartered in Toronto, Canada. For more information about Netfirms. Come Visit http://www.netfirms.com.
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