Friday 03 September 2010
NetApp (NASDAQ: NTAP) and Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) today announced a new three-year agreement that deepens product collaboration and technical integration, and extends joint sales and marketing activities to customers worldwide. Under the new agreement, the two companies will collaborate and deliver technology solutions that span virtualization, private cloud computing, and storage and data management, enabling customers to increase data center management efficiencies, reduce costs, and improve business agility.
“Microsoft is committed to driving highly scalable dynamic datacenter solutions with innovative partners like NetApp,” said Bob Kelly, corporate vice president of infrastructure server marketing, Server and Tools Business at Microsoft. “Through the deeper integration of server, virtualization, management and storage technologies, Microsoft and NetApp customers can expect data center solutions that help them reduce costs, increase performance and reach new levels of efficiency.”
“The NetApp and Microsoft alliance has helped thousands of enterprise customers around the world do more with less,” said Tom Georgens, president and CEO of NetApp. “We are excited about the opportunity we have to build on this success and together help our mutual customers design and implement truly dynamic data centers that can dramatically reduce costs and increase availability, flexibility, and ease of use.”
As part of the new strategic alliance agreement, NetApp and Microsoft will expand product collaboration and technical integration activities, including the following areas:
* Virtualized infrastructure solutions based on Windows Server 2008 R2, Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2, Microsoft System Center and NetApp® storage systems. These solutions can provide reliable data availability and streamlined data management, and can help maximize server and storage utilization by using 50 percent less storage compared to a baseline of traditional storage.(1)
* Storage and data management solutions for Microsoft Exchange Server, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, and Microsoft SQL Server that improve communications and collaboration, enable faster, better-informed decision making, and greatly accelerate software development and testing.
* Efficient and flexible cloud computing and hosted services solutions that provide integrated data protection, “always on” data access, and a flexible, cost-effective infrastructure.
In addition, NetApp and Microsoft will enable customers to experience firsthand the value of joint solutions at the Microsoft Technology Centers around the world and at industry events. Both companies will participate in engagements with channel partners and industry-leading systems integrators, offering technology solutions that are comprehensive and easy to use.
As further proof to the collaboration between both companies, NetApp, the 2009 Microsoft Storage Solutions Partner of the year, utilizes a variety of Windows Server platform technologies to improve storage system management and streamline backup, recovery, and remote replication in Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V environments. In addition, integration with the Microsoft System Center family of products and additional application-integrated NetApp products help maximize uptime for a wide variety of application environments, including Microsoft Exchange Server, SQL Server and SharePoint Server.
For more information about the partnership, available solutions, demos and customer testimonials, visit Microsoft.com and NetApp.com.
About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.
About NetApp
NetApp creates innovative storage and data management solutions that accelerate business breakthroughs and deliver outstanding cost efficiency. Discover our passion for helping companies around the world go further, faster at www.netapp.com.
3Tera®, the leading provider of
cloud computing technology, announced today general availability of version
2.7 of the award-winning AppLogic(TM) cloud computing platform which reduces
the cost of cloud operations by adding automatic diagnostics, system
self-healing, and other enhancements to improve service availability.
AppLogic 2.7 integrates server, storage and networking virtualization,
hardware operations, volume management via highly-available integrated IP SAN,
advanced network security, orchestration and multi-service operations into one
turn-key cloud computing system. Because of this integration, AppLogic offers
the industry’s lowest cost of operation available for enterprises and
datacenter operations.
“With more than three years in operation with service provider partners, we’ve
amassed a great deal of information about how to operate a cloud,” said Bert
Armijo, SVP Marketing and Product Management, 3Tera, Inc. “AppLogic 2.7 puts
that knowledge to work to reduce the cost of service operation and improve
service availability.”
“Even compared to open source solutions, AppLogic has the lowest cost of
ownership,” shares Peter Green, CTO, Agathon Group. “Every new version comes
loaded with features and capabilities, which actually reduces the cost of
operation. In the last year we were able to triple the number of servers
running on AppLogic and grow internationally in three new datacenter locations
without adding IT personnel.”
“When we broke down the value of the services being provided, AppLogic is
thousands of dollars cheaper over the course of a year for us,” said Damien
Howley, co-founder and CEO, CellFrog, a phone conference and collaboration
services company. “Most importantly, AppLogic gives us the most modern,
world-class IT infrastructure and the ability to grow dynamically as our
business grows. As we scale, so do our savings.”
“After running AppLogic 2.7 we’re impressed with the simplicity to operate,
the advanced features and maturity of application management”, said Stephen
Hurford, communications director, DNS Europe, a 3Tera partner with hosting
operations in several European countries. “Going forward with our cloud
service offerings we feel confident to grow our business with such a robust
and potent platform.”
AppLogic - Main Features
AppLogic is the first turnkey cloud computing platform for service providers
and enterprises that can run and scale existing applications.
With AppLogic, datacenter operators can:
– Provide IaaS, PaaS, and Virtual Datacenter services from a single
platform
– Add or remove resources and storage without disrupting users
– Manage and scale remote resources easier than operating a single
server
today
– Handle hardware failures automatically without losing data and with
minimal downtime
– Provide comprehensive resource usage metering for billing and
charge-backs
With AppLogic, IT cloud users can:
– Deploy and scale existing Web applications without changing code and
architecture
– Integrate, monitor and scale applications and infrastructure using
just
a browser
– Package distributed systems for easy operation and portability
– Securely exchange date between multiple servers in the cloud
– Replicate Web applications between multiple datacenters
Significant new features in AppLogic 2.7
– Automatic-diagnostics and self-healing
– Storage health monitoring: AppLogic now monitors and detects hard
drive issues and reports them even before they result in
degradation. Operators can use this information to migrate volumes
and replacing hardware before there is any potential for data
loss.
– Automatic volume repair: AppLogic’s integrated IP SAN
automatically
schedules and performs volume repair to maintain data
availability.
– Controller soft restart: The AppLogic system itself can completely
restart without impacting the operation of subscriber’s
applications. This reduces the operator workload and associated
maintenance windows.
– Improved server isolation: AppLogic can now fully eliminate failed
servers to prevent them from interfering with the cloud’s
operation.
– New Catalog Appliances: AppLogic 2.7 adds over 30 new infrastructure
components, appliances and application templates, bringing the total
count of available free catalog components to slightly above 100. The
new appliances include:
– Infrastructure: new VPN with IPSec and IPv6 support, gateways,
port
switch, proxy and Web cache appliances, replicated NAS for
implementing disaster recovery (DR)
– 64-bit OS Support - Microsoft Windows 2003 Server, OpenSolaris
– Middleware: 64-bit MySQL replicated database appliance, several
new
appliances for Microsoft Windows (including scalable IIS and
SQLServer database)
– Application stacks and application templates - in addition to the
scalable multi-tier LAMP stack, AppLogic catalog now has Microsoft
ASP.NET application stack, simple and scalable 2-tier Windows
application and newer versions of the popular CRM system SugarCRM
and the enterprise collaboration wiki platform TWiki.
Availability
AppLogic 2.7 is available immediately to new and current customers and
partners. The release is backward compatible with all prior versions of
AppLogic and catalog appliances and applications. A detailed list of features
and notes is available at
http://doc.3tera.com/AppLogic27/ReleaseNotes-2-7-8.html.
About 3Tera, Inc.
3Tera, Inc. is the leading innovator of cloud computing technology and
utility computing services, simplifying the deployment and scaling of online
applications. Named “Cool Vendor in IT operations, 2008″ by Gartner Group,
3Tera offers AppLogic(TM) , the first commercially available cloud computing
platform that completely removes the cost and complexity associated with
infrastructure. Available both for building in-house private clouds and as a
platform for cloud computing services, AppLogic allows IT professionals to
develop and deploy online applications in minutes instead of weeks, using only
a browser to manage and scale on demand fully distributed systems and deliver
security and business continuity for all applications, while fully controlling
their cloud computing environment. For more information, visit www.3tera.com
3Tera, the 3Tera logo, AppLogic, the AppLogic logo, Cloudware and Cloud
Computing without Compromise are trademarks or registered trademarks of 3Tera,
Inc. in the United States and other countries. Other company names and marks
belong to their respective owners.
SOURCE 3Tera, Inc.
Essy Nickolova of 3Tera, Inc., +1-949-305-0163, essy@3tera.com; or Ryan
Greives of BLASTMedia, +1-317-806-1900, ext. 120, ryan@blastmedia.com, for
3Tera, Inc.
Clustering Systems
Join our free, live webinar to gain a comprehensive insight on the two concepts governing the present and the future, respectively, of the IT industry – the already established and proven technology used in clustering systems today and the newer trend of cloud computing:
http://www.axigen.com/webinars/cluster-cloud_18/
By attending this interactive webinar, you will:
- Discover the answers to some of the most important questions revolving cluster and cloud deployments: measurable benefits that they deliver for service providers and enterprises (including in what overall costs, performance, scalability, productivity or security are concerned), challenges that they pose, speed of adoption etc.
- Learn our expert opinion on the effects that they hold on the evolvement path of email systems in general and our messaging solution in particular. With Axigen Mail Server being cluster, cross-platform, cross-architecture and SaaS (Software as a Service) ready, the move towards cloud computing represents the next step in the future of our technology.
The webinar will be held in English, on two different dates, to accommodate your busy schedule.
- Tuesday, August 25, 2009 – 09:00 GMT (UTC); London – 10:00 a.m; Prague – 11:00 a.m; New Delhi – 2:30 p.m; Singapore – 5:00 p.m.
- Thursday, August 27, 2009 – 16:00 GMT (UTC); San Francisco – 9:00 a.m; Dallas – 11:00 a.m; Rio de Janeiro – 01:00 p.m.
Participation to this live webinar is free of charge, but the number of participants is limited. To register for this webcast now, please visit:
http://www.axigen.com/webinars/cluster-cloud_18/#register
About Gecad Technologies and Axigen
Gecad Technologies SA is the vendor of Axigen, a professional messaging solution that ensures an efficient and secure worldwide communication environment and business growth for both service providers and companies of all sizes. Our cutting-edge products, based on proprietary architectures such as Axigen GrowSecure™, Axigen SmartProcessing™ and Axigen UltraStorage™, are currently distributed internationally by over 200 partners from 80 countries, managing email traffic for more than 11,000 companies with 6 million end-users. For further details, please visit www.axigen.com
This post was submitted by Cristina Zainea.
Press Release Contacts
Cristina Zainea, Marketing Specialist, cristina.zainea@axigen.com
Interoperability is about a frictionless and reliable set of standards to allow users to write once/run anywhere so they can build applications and deploy them internally to Amazon.com, RackSpace or you get the picture. Interoperability is not automation, but it dramatically eases the automation process. Workload redistribution is about being able to move an existing process from one cloud to another in a seamless and relatively quick set of steps. It relies on interoperability, but it goes beyond that with a set of tools to enable users to move their workloads to the cloud environment that makes the most sense for financial, performance or other reasons. Tools are being developed to support this. Cloudkick is a Y Combinator-funded company with support for Amazon Web Services and Slicehost that is working on Cloudshift, a multicloud migration tool.
Another startup that may be working on something for workload management is CloudSwitch, which claims to move workloads back and forth within the enterprise, as opposed to the concept of a cloudburst, which implies a unidirectional flow. Monitoring and scaling automation for clouds is a bit more mature, with RightScale leading the pack. IBM and Hewlett-Packard are also adding cloud monitoring to their systems management suites. The cloud automation space is likely to be very interesting for the foreseeable future, and based on the comments of OSCON attendees, the demand is real.
What’s unique about the Windows Azure platform is that Microsoft manages the complexity, which allows partners to focus on what matters most for their business - building innovative services solutions and driving new revenue.” With those words, Bob Muglia (pictured), president of the Server and Tools Business at Microsoft, today announced how Microsoft’s entry into the cloud computing marketplace aims to drive down total cost of ownership by up to 60 percent for certain workloads during a three-year period.
Marco Nalli, marketing manager for Samsung Canada based in Mississauga, Ont., said that Samsung wanted to utilize its product portfolio in flat panel monitors and market position to get into the rapidly emerging market of desktop virtualization. To this end, Samsung partnered with Burnaby, B.C.-based Teradici Corp., a developer of PC over standard IP networks. Teradici product enables the channel to offer customers a way to connect end points such as a monitor to the data centre through a desktop portal device and a host card. The host card or chipset is on a blade server in the data centre and through an Ethernet cable it can send applications and data to the desktop portal device, which looks like a fat external hard drive.
According to Nalli, IT organizations will look at this solution because it reduces tech support since all the support resides back at the data centre. “One of the key advantages of this is if the user has any issues you just have to swap in a new monitor and the user is up and running in a short amount of time,” Nalli said. Security is another issue this combined Samsung/Teradici solution tries to solve. Users are unable to steal data because it is stored elsewhere. Last fall VMware chose PCoIP from Teradici as its protocol for desktop remoting allowing companies to virtualize desktops, divide a server into multiple virtual PCs and remote the desktops to multiple users with PCoIP technology.
SpamTitan, a leading producer of email security solutions, today announces its exciting new cloud computing initiative with VMware to deliver on-demand email security virtual appliances in the cloud. This makes good business sense as Anti-Spam filtering has fast become a commodity application, and commodity applications are logical expenses to outsource versus managing within ones own IT infrastructure. Businesses small and large are embracing cloud computing for inbound email filtering such as handling Anti-Spam and Anti-Virus cleansing of high volumes of incoming mail.
It ensures customers have the opportunity to use email security and anti-spam solutions in the cloud, not in the SaaS model but as their own dedicated on demand application — benefiting from the redundancy, scalability and failover associated with virtualization and cloud computing.” SpamTitan’s unique approach in utilizing next-generation virtualization software eliminates the need for unwieldy hardware, giving customers unparalleled flexibility, versatility and capability but at an affordable price. Integrating best of breed technologies, SpamTitan provides an easy to install, easy to manage and highly secure email gateway. SpamTitan, a division of CopperFasten, is a global company with headquarters in Galway, Ireland. For further information visit, www.spamtitan.com.
SpamTitan for VMware is a complete operating system and virtual email security software suite designed to run on VMware that enables businesses to run SpamTitan on any server irrespective of the operating system. Users can simply click a link to automatically generate a SpamTitan virtual appliance in the cloud as well as having log on access to explore their own SpamTitan application.
As of Sunday, it’s been revealed that thousands of electronic devices containing sensitive and historically important data are missing from the nation’s most important public repository. While IT tends to have a knee-jerk reaction in favor of traditional data centers, the situation at the National Archives shows the sense of false security they impart.
What is clear is that if the most important archival system in the country can’t protect its data centers, it’s likely that the enterprise is going to have problems too. The similarities between enterprise data management and the agency run deep. With facilities in 20 states, the National Archives deal with the entire spectrum of nightmare situations when it comes to data security. What if, instead of a chaotic jumble of devices and data centers, the Archives simply put everything in the cloud? True, it would be vulnerable in many ways. But they’d be different ways than what plagues them now. It’s hard to steal the server holding someone’s social security number when you have no real idea where it is.
At this point, it might be ludicrous for anyone to put their most sensitve data in the cloud as a security measure. But the dire straits at the National Archives should stand as a warning for those who think traditional data security measures are without vulnerability.
The Government has asked all public sector bodies to make future IT purchases consistent with cloud computing so that it can move all its digital services into a private, secure ‘cloud’ called ‘G-cloud’ for government bodies. In its Digital Britain report the Government said that it wanted the public sector to reap the benefites of scalable, speed of provisioning and flexible pricing that it says cloud computing can bring. While it consults with an IT trade body the Government has told all departments to make sure that all IT procurement from now on is compatible with cloud computing. “All those Government bodies likely to procure ICT services should look to do so on a scaleable, cloud basis such that other public bodies can benefit from the new capability,” said the Digital Britain report. Cloud computing is the use of massive central computing resources for IT work, with more modest computers connected to servers by networks. With the increasing ubiquity of broadband internet access cloud computing has become increasingly widespread.
The Digital Britain report outlined the phenomenon as has been observed in the consumer world. “The ‘public’ cloud – where services can run on any server anywhere in the world – has attracted attention from industry commentators,” it said. “Achieving it, would be a first around the world for Digital Britain.”
The strategy study has established a route-map towards the creation of a G-Cloud, as part of the rationalisation of data centres used by Government and the wider public sector,” it said. “This would both allow Government to benefit from the core attributes of Cloud Computing e.g. enhanced user experience, flexible pricing, elastic scaling, rapid provisioning, advanced virtualisation while also maintaining the appropriate levels of security, accountability and control required for most Government systems, and lead to substantial savings in costs
