CloudJumper Named A 2017 Gartner ‘Cool Vendor’ In Unified Workspaces

CloudJumper has announced that the company has been included in the Gartner report titled Cool Vendors in Unified Workspaces, 2017, by Michael A. Silver, Nathan Hill, Federica Troni, Manjunath Bhat, and Stephen Kleynhans. This is the first Cool Vendor report for unified workspaces by Gartner, Inc. and notes the disruptive nature of this technology for IT service providers and the clients they serve.

According to the report¹, “The traditional desktop environment that organizations are deploying to users is old and tired. It prevents organizations from being agile, and limits the creativity and innovation of users. In the digital workplace, users need to be able to consume IT-provided applications from different sources, on whatever device they choose. They need to have the ability to innovate using devices and applications that the organization’s IT department has not done a full analysis and regression test on, yet IT must ensure that new ways of working won’t prevent the legacy and well-tested applications they use from being deployed. In our inquiries with clients, organizations are asking how to solve this problem. Unified workspaces allow the mix of IT-provided and user selected technologies to coexist in peace, harmony and productivity.”

nWorkSpace is CloudJumper’s Unified Workspace or Workspace as a Service (WaaS) platform which includes everything required for highly reliable, scalable and efficient service delivery. The solution is widely deployed by channel partners worldwide and allows for the management and monitoring of all client accounts from a single interface. CloudJumper provides IT service providers with all of the software, infrastructure and services necessary to quickly and easily deliver WaaS to end-customers of every configuration.

nWorkSpace allows partners to scale their services based on the client employee count or the unique operational requirements presented to them across customer locations. The high level of workflow automation in nWorkSpace allows CloudJumper delivery partners to shift their resources from the management of the platform to more important strategic activities, including business development and revenue generation.

“Vendors in the unified workspaces market can help organizations provision applications and data across multiple devices in a user-centric manner. I&O leaders responsible for mobile and endpoint strategies should identify innovative products that will help realize their unified workspaces vision,” stated the report².

“CloudJumper is proud to be named as one of Gartner’s ‘Cool Vendors’ for 2017,” said Max Pruger, chief sales officer, CloudJumper. “We believe this acknowledgment recognizes our dedication to IT service provider-focused WaaS solutions and reinforces our vision of cloud-based workspaces for organizations across every sector. With the upward trajectory of unified workspaces and our industry-proven platform, we look forward to building upon this achievement in 2018 and beyond.”

1.Gartner, Cool Vendors in Unified Workspaces, 2017, May 25, 2017, ID: G00327743, https://www.gartner.com/doc/3729317?ref=SiteSearch&sthkw=CloudJumper&fnl=search&srcId=1-3478922254

 2. ibid

Source: CloudStrategyMag

Users review the top cloud data integration tools

As the world of cloud computing becomes more globalized, IT professionals need multiple levels of security and transparency to manage cloud relationships. Using a cloud data integration solution, an enterprise can configure a number of disparate application programs sharing data in a diverse network, including cloud-based data repositories. This allows enterprise tech professionals to manage, monitor and cleanse data from various web-based and mobile applications more effectively.

IT Central Station users have identified agile data transformation, a clear, customizable dashboard and efficient data replication as valuable features when looking for a cloud data integration solution. According to their reviews, the IT Central Station community has ranked Informatica Cloud Data Integration, Dell Boomi AtomSphere,  IBM App Connect and SnapLogic as leading cloud data integration solutions in the market.

Here is what our users have to say about working with these solutions, describing which features they find most valuable and offering insight on where they see room for improvement.

Editor’s Note: These reviews of select cloud data integration tools come from the IT Central Station community. They are the opinions of the users and are based on their own experiences.

Informatica Cloud Data Integration

Valuable Features

Data Replication and Data Sync

Hardik P., an Architect at a pharma/biotech company, writes about how Informatica’s data replication and data sync capabilities impact his company:

“I particularly value data replication and data sync jobs. Replication allows us to fully replicate all objects from Shop Floor Data Collection (SFDC) to in-house/on-premises database in one job. I also appreciate the flexibility of the reset target option to reflect the source object structural changes to be implemented on the target database table side.”

Flexible Integration

For this Director, Informatica’s most valuable feature is how it can integrate different applications in a flexible way:

“With recent versions of cloud-based products in use for all applications, it provides flexibility in integrating the different applications. With AWS S3 and Informatica, integration is flexible and loosely coupled. It is quite useful and flexible compared to other vendors in terms of cost of implementation and use case.”

Cloud Mapping Designer

Nick J., a Solution Architect at a software R&D company, highlights Informatica’s Cloud Mapping Designer as particularly useful for his company:

“With my firm, our use of Informatica Cloud is primarily to implement a set of financial integrations from various accounting systems into a Salesforce environment. By leveraging Informatica Cloud Mapping Designer, we were able to create sets of reusable templates that were source agnostic. This made supporting the integration for hundreds of customers feasible with just a small team of integration specialists.”

Room for Improvement

This Oracle Applications Project Manager at a tech services company finds that Informatica’s error reporting and debugging have room for improvement:

“Error reporting and debugging need improvement. They need to improve on the upgrade testing process from their end so that it does not cause any issue to existing functionality/setup.”

Read more Informatica Cloud Data Integration reviews on IT Central Station.

Dell Boomi AtomSphere

Valuable Features

Easy Workflow Creation

In his review, Kevin O., a System Analyst / Programmer at a logistics company, describes different ways Dell Boomi makes it easier to create workflows:

“It is easy to create workflows from one system to another, drawing on multiple systems at the same time. For example:

• Creating a process from EDI transmissions to WMS
• Creating marriages of data from multiple systems (time clock/payroll/HR/WMS/financial) to create reports
• Taking information from one system to update it to another system (legacy EDI to WMS, payroll to financial, time clock to payroll, WMS to Legacy)”

Great alternative to ESB

Aman S., a Enterprise Integration Specialist at a tech services company, writes how Dell Boomi is a good alternative for Enterprise Service Bus solutions:

“I have worked with ESBs, such as MuleSoft. However, based on the usage and the end-user requests, we moved to Dell Boomi. It is mainly a carrier and it provides an integration platform as a service. This, in itself, provides the solution for an easy and mature way to communicate.”

Room for Improvement

He also points out how Dell Boomi can benefit from custom connector options:

“They should create a custom connector option. With this, they could improve where the user can create the connector, based on their usage.”

Read more Dell Boomi AtomSphere reviews on IT Central Station.

IBM API Connect

Valuable Features

Graphical Developer Interface

This System Engineer at a financial services firm discusses the value of IBM API Connect’s graphical developer interface:

“Because it has a graphical developer interface, we can quickly develop solutions that are connecting to anything on the cloud, without having to build those connectors ourselves.”

Reliability and Scalability

Deb W., a Development Manager, IT Business Applications at a tech company, writes about IBM API Connect’s reliability and scalability:

“Its reliability and the large number of endpoints for connectivity are valuable features. It scales well. We are considering moving to the cloud version, as only one or our endpoints is local and all the others are SaaS endpoints.”

Room for Improvement

She also points out where IBM API Connect can improve:

“I would like the ability for more than one developer to work on the same project (source control/branch merge). If the project has more than one orchestration, you should be able to have different people working on each.”

Read more IBM API Connect reviews on IT Central Station.

SnapLogic

Valuable Features

Faster Connections

Evan H., Director – Digital Media and Data Products at a retailer, points out how SnapLogic’s connectors impact his company’s productivity:

“My teams can connect to new partners and data sources in hours, not days. We complete more work and integrate faster, allowing us to prove ROI quicker on new ideas.”

Automatic Contracts

This Business Systems & Operations Manager at a manufacturing company highlights SnapLogic’s ability to send contracts automatically as particularly valuable:

“It automatically sends contracts from Salesforce to Workday, so there was no need for manual data entry. By the end of the year, I had created integrations that saved multiple roles worth of time. This allowed the employees to be effective in other areas.”

Room for Improvement

He also suggests that SnapLogic add more canned integrations:

“The product can include more canned integrations that can be used. In the field of integration apps, I see a spectrum of apps where one side is point-and-click with zero technical ability needed, and the other side is a platform where you basically write code. SnapLogic sits somewhere in the middle. It doesn’t offer enough easy canned integrations for its users like some of the easier to use integration apps.”

Read more SnapLogic reviews on IT Central Station.

To learn more from what real users have to say about other leading solutions in the market, you can read additional cloud data integration reviews by IT Central Station users.

Source: InfoWorld Big Data

Faction Partners With CoreSite

CoreSite Realty Corporation has announced that Faction has partnered with CoreSite in both the Northern Virginia and Silicon Valley markets to deliver expanded multi-cloud service offerings to its customers.

Faction chose to partner with CoreSite based on its scalable data center platform, strategic locations and high-performance interconnection solutions that allow Faction to optimize the delivery of its multi-cloud service offering by providing low-latency connectivity to leading cloud and network service providers. Faction will leverage connectivity to the CoreSite Open Cloud Exchange to deliver high-performance and cost-effective VMware based clouds with Administrator-level access to VMware vCenter that offers unprecedented control, flexibility, and integration capabilities for hybrid & multi-cloud deployments.

Along with Faction’s leading enterprise-class private cloud and Veeam backup solutions, Faction is launching a multi-cloud NetApp storage solution and Managed VMware on AWS offering that is enabled by leveraging the low-latency cloud on-ramps within the CoreSite portfolio.

“CoreSite provides the facilities, high-performance interconnection solutions and close proximity to the major public cloud providers, which are key to enabling our multi-cloud solutions and go-to-market strategy,” said Luke Norris, Chief Executive Officer at Faction. “We are committed to providing our customers with maximum control in an unmatched multi-cloud environment, and CoreSite enables us to deliver a differentiated customer experience.”

The CoreSite Silicon Valley market is comprised of seven operational data centers, providing colocation solutions to one of the largest concentrations of Internet and technology companies in the world. More than 185 international and national carriers, social media companies, cloud computing providers, media and entertainment firms, and enterprise customers connect to do business in CoreSite’s Silicon Valley data center market.

The CoreSite Northern Virginia data center market currently includes three highly scalable facilities — one in Washington, D.C. and two on its Reston, VA campus (VA1 and VA2). CoreSite recently announced the expansion of both its Reston and Washington, D.C. campuses, all of which will now total over 1,097,000 sq ft of colocation data center space upon full build out. CoreSite’s customer community includes a diverse mix of government, financial services and cloud service providers, as well as domestic and international networks providing a direct connection to U.S. and European markets. With the growing importance of Northern Virginia as a communications and enterprise hub, CoreSite’s Reston campus provides flexible colocation and hybrid-cloud deployment solutions for customers located in Washington, D.C. and the greater Northern Virginia area.

“We are pleased that Faction has partnered with CoreSite to expand the reach of their VMware-based private cloud and Veeam backup solutions. Additionally, their multi-cloud service offering is a valuable addition to the ecosystem, and through the CoreSite Open Cloud Exchange, Faction is able to deliver a true hybrid-cloud experience without compromising security or performance,” said Steve Smith, senior vice president, sales and marketing at CoreSite. “Faction provides enterprises with unique and customized cloud solutions built on a powerful and well-adopted VMware environment, and we look forward to supporting their future growth.”

Source: CloudStrategyMag

Stream Data Centers And Megaport Partner

Stream Data Centers has announced that it has signed a partnership agreement with Megaport (USA), Inc., the U.S. subsidiary of Megaport Limited to deliver secure, direct consumption-based connectivity services to enterprises.

The Megaport Software Defined Network enables Stream customers with the ability to right size their capacity, by scaling bandwidth up and down, with a consumption-based payment model. Customers can access multiple service providers over the ecosystem and manage direct, multi-cloud connectivity through the Megaport API or via the Megaport portal.

“A primary mission for Megaport is to reduce the barrier of entry for enterprises adopting cloud services,” said Nicole Cooper, executive vice president, Americas, Megaport. “Our industry-leading SDN brings a powerful set of capabilities in which to execute a network and connectivity strategy that aligns to cost and performance goals. Stream’s U.S. data center portfolio complements our neutral networking model extremely well. It enables further expansion of our footprint in the United States as we help accelerate cloud service adoption in emerging cloud markets.”

“We are excited to partner with Megaport to enable flexible cloud connectivity for our enterprise customers,” said Eric Ballard, vice president of network and cloud at Stream Data Centers. “Megaport is a market leader in the elastic cloud connectivity space and is redefining how our customers can grow and scale cloud, multicloud, and hybrid cloud connectivity. The Megaport partnership enriches the value to our customers by bringing a substantial ecosystem of service providers to our industry-leading data centers. It expands the horizons of network connectivity and what we can offer our customers.”

Megaport brings direct, private connectivity to the top five cloud service providers. In particular, this partnership will take advantage of a new Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute gateway. It will offer a direct connection to Microsoft Azure services as well as a low-latency private link to customer-resources located in the nearby Azure South Central region. All of these services will now be available at Stream’s San Antonio data center.

Ross Ortega, partner program manager, Microsoft Azure Networking, Microsoft Corp., said, “The cloud is driving transformation through new business models, global expansion and accelerated innovation, along with an enhanced customer experience. Collaborating with Megaport to bring ExpressRoute to customers is a core part of these attributes and values.”

The Megaport and Stream partnership will launch in San Antonio for customer availability in 4Q17. Following the launch, Stream and Megaport plan to continue expansion of their partnership to other Stream data centers in Houston and Minneapolis.

Source: CloudStrategyMag

IDG Contributor Network: Cloud data warehouse: The technology no one knows about

We’ve all heard of exciting new technologies in the data warehouse world—tools like Amazon Redshift, Google BigQuery, and more recently Azure SQL Data Warehouse. What would you call this category of tools?

Well, of course, “cloud data warehouse.” Check out the Google Trends graph for this search term. Explosive growth.

Gilad David Maayan

But look at this:

Gilad David Maayan

The red graph represents searches for “Amazon Redshift,” compared to “cloud data warehouse.” It is growing much more rapidly, and appears many times larger, than the category it represents.

In fact, according to Google, there are only approximately 300 people per month over the past year in the entire world who searched for the term “cloud data warehouse.” (By comparison, “Amazon Redshift” is searched 14,800 times per month worldwide.)

Ha, you might be thinking, “they must be searching for other things, maybe ‘data warehouse on the cloud.’” As someone who has done several rounds of market research in this field, I can tell you assertively there are no larger search terms that describe the category.

In fact, the category does not exist.

In search of a label

I know it sounds funny to say the cloud data warehouse category doesn’t exist. After all the market is hot, tools are popular and growing rapidly. But the fact is—what comes to people’s minds is the tools, the brands; not the category.

But wait a minute. Data warehouses have been around for ages. As far back as the 19th century Thomas Edison stored the results of his electricity experiments in a (legacy) data warehouse, installed on the highly scalable Kinetoscope Platform in his Menlo Park laboratory.

So surely there must be searches for just “data warehouse?”

Gilad David Maayan

Yes there are. They’re declining. But look at the comparison between “data warehouse” in blue and “amazon redshift” in red. Redshift’s 14,800 are a drop in the ocean compared to “data warehouse.” That term alone is searched 90,500 times per month globally, and there are many other related search terms. “Data warehouse” is huge.

’Plain’ data warehouse is much bigger than cloud

Let show you another data point. I went through the laborious exercise of gathering all the possible search terms people have used recently, around “plain” data warehouse, vs. the three leading cloud data warehouses (Hey I used that phrase! That’s 301 mentions worldwide).

We’re not just talking about the brand name “Amazon Redshift” or “BigQuery” but any possible combination – what is Redshift, Redshift architecture, Redshift clusters, etc.

Excluding Redshift the cosmological phenomenon of course.

Here are the results:

Gilad David Maayan

In words: every month there are around a half a million people, probably wannabe data engineers, expressing interest in “data warehouse” or any variation of that. Compared to 38,000 searching for Redshift, 26,700 for BigQuery, and a measly 13,000 for Microsoft’s SQL Data Warehouse.

Opium for the masses

Hundreds of thousands of people search for “data warehouse.” They are only now making their first steps in the data warehouse world. They want to learn basic things like what data warehouses are for, how they work, how much they cost. But their eyes are closed to the truth of cool new products and architectures.

This is what Google gives them (see diagram #1). You are warned, it’s not a pretty sight. A circa 2008 diagram (yes, I checked) of the “Enterprise Data Warehouse.”

Wow. That’s miles away from shiny technology from Amazon and friends—see diagram #2. 

Those half a million people will never (well, not really, but please allow me some dramatic effect) see diagram #2. They’ll see diagram #1 and move on to read about solutions like Oracle and Teradata. Not to knock those products, they’re great. But how many of this audience could be interested in the new generation of tools on the cloud with unlimited scalability and blazing fast query speeds?

There’s money lying on the table

Let’s sum it up:

• Apparently no one is aware of a category called “cloud data warehouse”
• Lots of people know about specific brands like Redshift
• But there are about 10X more people who don’t. They simply search for “data warehouse”
• And what they get is old architectures and old-guard solutions
  Redshift, Google, Microsoft, and friends aren’t there
• If they were there, maybe their market share would be 5X by now

Does that make sense to you? Let me know in the comments. IMHO there is a huge missed opportunity here, a market education gap that none of the big players has noticed or seems to care about. Hundreds of thousands who are lost in Thomas Edison Land with little chance of graduating to the new and cool.

This creates a lot of room for smaller players, such as Snowflake, which is going head to head with the big players, and Panoply’s self-optimizing data warehouse, which differentiates itself by making data ingestion, preparation, and query optimization much easier (disclaimer: I am an advisor for Panoply). They can, and will, use this opportunity to grab market share from the unsexy “old guard.” Instead of fighting very hard to grab it from Amazon, Google, and Microsoft.

This article is published as part of the IDG Contributor Network. Want to Join?

Source: InfoWorld Big Data

MapR Orbit Cloud Suite Extends Analytics And Applications Across Clouds

MapR Technologies, Inc. has announced the MapR Orbit Cloud Suite. Offering a comprehensive set of cloud computing capabilities for the MapR Converged Data Platform, MapR Orbit enables organizations to build data fabrics for the first time that manage data across one or more clouds, hybrid clouds, or to the edge. It also includes advanced features specifically useful to cloud builders and cloud service providers.

Organizations today are looking to take advantage of the economics and business agility that the cloud promises but are encountering several challenges such as the “component” approach to building applications that draws on multiple services which has led to a crisis of complexity for companies, and the incompatibility between cloud providers which creates lock-in. Additional challenges include the inability of cloud services to fully reach the edge resulting in data silos and the ongoing balance of in-country cloud requirements with geographically distributed data and applications. 

MapR is addressing these cloud challenges with the new MapR Orbit Cloud Suite. Optimizing the MapR Converged Data Platform, MapR Orbit simplifies analytics and application deployment across clouds and takes advantage of business agility and cloud-scale economics such as object tiering.

“In addition to being a global cloud IaaS provider, Outscale offers the entire MapR Converged Data Platform to provide fast access to data stored in files, databases and event streams for performing real-time analysis on business critical, operational applications,” said Rob Rosborough, CEO, Outscale Inc. “Whether a business seeks to deploy MapR as a Service or stand up a business continuity solution, Outscale can deliver a public, hybrid or private Cloud solution through our network of global data centers. Many of our customers already benefit from existing multi-tenancy capabilities provided by MapR. We look forward to leveraging future innovations from MapR in this area and others, as they become available.”

The new MapR Orbit Cloud Suite is designed to address complexities for a variety of cloud use cases, including the following four major use cases:

Cloud-Native Data Management and Object Tiering to Public Cloud: MapR Orbit includes new product capabilities and offerings for companies looking to deploy MapR in a public cloud like AWS or Azure.

• Object tiering for the automatic, secure archiving of data to cloud object stores based on “data temperature,” while keeping the metadata in the MapR global namespace so that it is available for any application, anywhere.
  – Cloud-native cluster management for seamless operations of MapR in the cloud, including installation and cluster scaling. Uniquely customizable to support any cloud architecture, capability, or provisioning framework.
  – Integrations with major cloud object storage systems, including AWS S3, Azure Blob Store, OpenStack Swift, and Google Cloud Storage simplify the movement of data between the MapR platform and native cloud stores.

Build Multi-Cloud/Hybrid Data Fabrics: MapR Orbit also includes rich capabilities for synchronizing data between different cloud providers or between on-premises installations and the cloud. These features let customers build distributed, global applications and data fabrics for analytics, operations, and streaming.

Seamless Bridge to the Edge: Edge-to-Cloud file migration to automatically move files from MapR Edge to the cloud in real-time to power hybrid edge/cloud applications. MapR Orbit Cloud Suite includes capabilities for gathering and processing data close to the source, while moving and replicating this data to cloud or on-premises environments.

A Single Platform to Build Converged Clouds : MapR Orbit empowers companies building private clouds or regional public clouds to provide cross-cloudoperational, analytic, and streaming services to their own customers. Cloud-scale multi-tenancy allows cloud builders to provide converged data services to all end customers on a single shared platform, increasing resource utilization and simplifying operations. In addition, a plugin for Openstack Manila that allows the OpenStack cloud operating system to provision MapR file resources in a multi-tenant way, enabling MapR to be the file storage medium for private or public clouds.

“After speaking to numerous customers over the years it’s clear to me that the growth of data in the cloud has its challenges. MapR lays the foundation to remove the barriers to scale and is designed to enable companies bring their cloud strategies to reality,” said Tom Fisher, CTO, MapR Technologies. “With MapR Orbit Cloud Suite, data access across multiple clouds and cloud types as well as Edge Computing are simply treated as another seamless tier for analytics. The future is leveraging data, no matter where it is persisted, and its use, in real-time, for delivery through the next generations of applications.”

Source: CloudStrategyMag

iland Expands DRaaS Services To Support VMware Vcloud Availability

iland has introduced iland Secure DRaaS℠ powered by VMware. With this new service, iland adds support of VMware vCloud® Availability for vCloud Director® to their mature portfolio of DRaaS services.

Faced with ongoing and increasing risks to IT systems from cyber-attacks such as ransomware and other threats, having a secure and robust disaster recovery solution in place is a priority for many companies. The benefits of using familiar VMware technology and management frameworks in the cloud enhances iland’s IaaS customers experience, and will now be extended to disaster recovery solutions with this new offering from iland and VMware.

“iland has always been an earlier adopter of VMware’s cloud-enabled technologies. Once again, they have demonstrated the value of the VMware Cloud Provider Program by becoming one of the first cloud providers to offer support of VMware vCloud Availability,” said Geoff Waters, vice president, Global Cloud Sales, VMware. “VMware vCloud Availability enables VMware Cloud Providers to offer simple, cost-effective cloud-based disaster recovery services that seamlessly support their customers’ VMware vSphere® environments by leveraging native vSphere replication capabilities.”

iland Secure DRaaS powered by VMware is designed for organizations running on-premises vSphere environments or outsourced private clouds with other cloud providers that want to natively protect their virtual workloads in the cloud by leveraging VMware vSphere replication. In the event of a live or test failover, customers can view and manage their workloads through a single pane of glass in iland’s Secure Cloud Console.

“With over ten years of experience providing DRaaS solutions, we’re always looking to expand our solutions portfolio to reach new customers and help them to protect their IT environments,” said Justin Giardina, chief technology officer, iland. “As one of the first VMware Cloud Providers, we are expanding our disaster recovery footprint to incorporate a new VMware offering designed specifically for VMware Cloud Providers. iland Secure DRaaS powered by VMware leverages vCloud Availability, enabling VMware vCenter® server based organizations to protect VMs from their local datacenter to a cloud, natively integrating the replication with the underlying virtualization technology.”

vCloud Availability leverages native VMware vSphere Replication™ to track block changes to virtual disks (VMDKs) of running virtual machines and providing replication in regular intervals to the target environment depending on the required RPO. Using vCloud Availability, customers can achieve RPOs as low as 15 minutes to recover applications and maintain business continuity.

Customers that operate on-premises or in a co-located VMware ecosystem may not have a disaster recovery plan in place, or lack a secondary location for that purpose. The challenge around disasters, whether a natural catastrophe, system failure or even malicious software isn’t about keeping secure copies of information, but being able to react quickly to lessen the impact of an outage. DR testing is a critical component of a well-designed business continuity plan. iland Secure DRaaS powered by VMware will allow for non-intrusive, self-service testing. The benefits of this are twofold, organizations are enabled to test more frequently without disrupting business operations, and they will have more confidence in a well-tested disaster recovery solution.

iland Secure DRaaS powered by VMware Features:

• Support for full failover, partial failover, and failback
• Encryption in-motion and at-rest
• Straightforward implementation using VMware vSphere
• Simple pricing model based on the amount of replicated storage and number of VMs, with hourly compute rates upon failover
• Replication to and from the cloud, including iland and VMware Cloud™ on AWS
• Simplified on-premises installation using a single virtual appliance (vSphere Replication)
• Simplified built-in connectivity between the tenant and iland (no need for VPN)

Analyst recognition of iland as a Leader in DRaaS:

• iland was positioned by Gartner Inc. in the “Leaders” quadrant of the June 2017 “Magic Quadrant for Disaster Recovery as a Service.” In the Magic Quadrant for this market sector, Gartner analysts evaluated 23 service providers offering DRaaS based on the criteria of ‘ability to execute’ and ‘completeness of vision.’
• iland is also ranked as a leader in Forrester Research, Inc.’s report entitled, “The Forrester Wave™: Disaster-Recovery-As-A-Service Providers, Q2 2017.” In addition to being recognized for “an impressive roadmap”, iland received the highest scores possible in the categories of data security, pricing, service levels and contract terms.

Source: CloudStrategyMag

Rackspace To Deliver Fanatical Support® For Vmware Cloud On AWS

Rackspace® has announced from VMworld® in Las Vegas that it intends to offer Fanatical Support® for VMware Cloud on AWS through VMware’s Managed Service Provider (MSP) program early next year.

VMware Cloud on AWS brings VMware’s enterprise class Software-Defined Data Center software to the AWS Cloud, and enables customers to run applications across VMware vSphere®-based private, public and hybrid cloud environments, with optimized access to AWS services. Delivered, sold and supported by VMware as an on-demand and subscription service, IT teams manage their cloud-based resources with familiar VMware tools, and work with their partners of choice such as Rackspace.

With this announcement, Rackspace will build on its relationship with VMware to offer mutual customers:

• Multi-Cloud Choice: Mutual customers will have more choice across multiple cloud environments. Rackspace will help enable mutual customers to run their VMware workloads out of the datacenter and in the best-fit location, whether in Rackspace datacenters or VMware Cloud on AWS.
• VMware and AWS Expertise: Rackspace is recognized as a global, at-scale provider of managed and professional services for VMware and AWS. The company is a leading VMware Cloud Provider Partner and runs one of the largest vSphere footprints in the world. In addition, Rackspace has achieved Premier Consulting Partner status, the highest tier within the AWS Partner Network (APN), and is an audited AWS Managed Service Partner for its Fanatical Support for AWS offering.
• Managed Services: Through Fanatical Support for VMware Cloud on AWS, Rackspace will provide architecture, provisioning and management guidance, as well as assist customers with capacity management and workload mobility between Rackspace data centers and AWS data centers.

“With the same architecture and operational experience on-premises and in the cloud, customers can quickly derive business value from a hybrid cloud experience based on AWS, Rackspace and VMware,” said Ajay Patel, senior vice president and general manager of Product Development for Cloud Services at VMware. “Rackspace has extended its Fanatical Support to VMware technologies for more than 10 years, and VMware Cloud on AWS presents another opportunity to help mutual customers architect, manage and optimize their existing and future VMware-based applications. We’re excited to take this next step and collaborate with Rackspace as they grow and evolve with VMware to meet our mutual customers’ needs.”

“VMware Cloud on AWS is a strong collaboration between two of the leading technology providers in the industry, and will deliver high value to customers who want to run their VMware workloads in the best-fit environment,” said Peter FitzGibbon, vice president and general manager of VMware at Rackspace. “Operating across multiple cloud deployments is relatively new to many organizations, however, and some mutual customers will want support to operate VMware Cloud on AWS effectively. As a leading VMware Cloud Provider Partner and a Premier Consulting Partner in the AWS Partner Network, Rackspace is uniquely positioned to provide multi-cloud expertise and identify customer needs. We’re excited to deliver Fanatical Support for VMware Cloud on AWS to customers and look forward to continuing our work with VMware to support the managed service provider model for VMware Cloud on AWS.”

Source: CloudStrategyMag

Trend Micro Announces Support for VMware Cloud On AWS

Trend Micro Incorporated has announced its market-leading Trend Micro Deep Security™ server security product is available to customers of VMware Cloud™ on AWS. VMware Cloud on AWS brings together VMware’s enterprise-class Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC) software and the dedicated, elastic, bare-metal infrastructure of Amazon Web Services (AWS) to give organizations a consistent operating model and application mobility for private and public cloud. The addition of Deep Security provides seamless visibility and security for virtualized workloads across the SDDC, whether on-premises or in the new VMware Cloud on AWS environment.

Organizations undergoing cloud transformation projects can face a range of operational challenges and regulatory considerations that must be addressed. Trend Micro enables security tool consolidation and streamlined regulatory compliance with a single security product that can consistently secure workloads across the hybrid cloud, including physical,virtual, cloud, & container environments. Leveraging multiple security techniques and deep integration with VMware and AWS, workloads can be automatically secured as they are launched, including vulnerability scanning & policy application to ensure that attacks like WannaCry and Erebus won’t be successful. With a consistent approach to securing all environments, operational costs can be reduced while taking advantage of the cost-benefits of the cloud.

“Trend Micro’s long history of innovation with both VMware and AWS makes us well-suited to provide security for our mutual customers’ data center and cloud workloads,” said Steve Quane, executive vice president of network defense and hybrid cloud security for Trend Micro. “With millions of secured VMs and nearly 2.5 billion protection hours in the cloud, we have unparalleled experience and expertise to help our customers as they take advantage of the new VMware Cloud on AWS offering.”

VMware Cloud on AWS technology partners enable customers to deploy the same proven solutions seamlessly in both the public and private cloud. VMware simplifies deployment and eliminates the need for partners to refactor solutions for VMware Cloud on AWS. If a partner solution works on-premises in a VMware vSphere® environment, it will easily support VMware Cloud on AWS. VMware technology partners complement and enhance native VMware Cloud on AWS service and enable customers to realize new capabilities.

“VMware Cloud on AWS provides customers a seamlessly integrated hybrid cloud offering that gives them the SDDC experience from the leader in private cloud, running on the leading public cloud provider, AWS,” said Mark Lohmeyer, vice president, products, Cloud Platforms Business Unit, VMware. “Solutions such as Trend Micro’s Deep Security enable IT teams to reduce cost, increase efficiency, and create operational consistency across cloud environments. We’re excited to work with partners such as Trend Micro to enhance native VMware Cloud on AWS capabilities and empower customers with flexibility and choice in solutions that can drive business value.”

Source: CloudStrategyMag

IDG Contributor Network: Letting go: trusting AI to do its thing while humans do theirs

Not even a year ago, businesses across industries were still fairly united in their skepticism of artificial intelligence. It took Salesforce announcing its AI platform Einstein for them to really take note of and accept that AI was not only officially here, but here to stay.

Businesses that have since adopted AI quickly realized that part of the unwritten contract is surrendering control of data-related tasks and decision-making to a machine—either at the tactical or entire process level. They’re also learning to let go of their need to interpret and act on data insights. As a result, the decisions they’re making post-AI adoption are drastically different in nature than the ones they were making pre-AI. But somewhere in between AI adoption and full AI integration, these companies are having to cope with their fear of relinquishing control to a machine.

This fear has been here since day one, but as businesses become more educated about how AI works, the “letting go” narrative is now more prolific than ever—even among those who are already using AI to unprecedented success.

The fact of the matter is that humans, by our very nature, want to be in control. I’m sure there’s some Darwinian self-preservationist reasoning behind our need to carefully choreograph the elements around us; something to do with eliminating threat and carrying on as a species. But when it comes to surrendering control to AI—specifically as it relates to machines that automate overwhelmingly complex, data-oriented business processes—it’s likely that our ability to surrender control will influence our ongoing success, rather than prevent it.

In business, AI’s role is to maximize our productivity by taking away the minutea created by data, freeing humans to work on higher-level strategic tasks, thereby making businesses and the individuals behind them “fitter”—in the Darwinian sense—over time.

It’s important to recognize that many people’s resistance to giving up control isn’t just a garden variety power struggle or even their need to micromanage a given situation. It’s a matter of being cautious and establishing a foundation of trust, rather than going in blindly. Having worked with dozens of brands at varying phases of the AI adoption process, there are a few common themes that invariably unfold among them, offering insight into how man and machine can effectively work together, and how to make the ‘letting go’ process easier. 

Humans don’t want to do robots’ jobs—or for robots to do theirs

To opponents of AI, machine is the competition. From this perspective, AI is either going to take man’s jobs completely or AI is a literal competitor that must be competed with (and won against).  The current trajectory of AI adoption in business reveals neither to be true.

Businesses that take a hybrid approach to the division of responsibilities are seeing better results from AI and humans working together, than either one working independently. When it comes to data gathering, analysis and insights, man trying to keep up with robots is a losing proposition. Man can attempt to become robot, or robot can be forced to adopt the unique characteristics of man: creativity, reasoning, emotion and intuition. But the better approach is for them to work together and produce the best outcome possible as a result.

Humans need proof, and quickly

In my experience working specifically with marketers, they are very interested in AI when they’re introduced to it through the lens of the day-to-day tasks it will alleviate for them. Their enthusiasm dissipates, however, when they realize that the AI tool taking over these tasks for them is going to do it in a way they don’t understand. They don’t want to actively manage and implement the nitty gritty tasks, but in order to give them up they need to know that that the technology will do execute those tasks better than they or their teams can.

One way of combatting their fears here is to introduce highly-targeted, quick turnaround programs as trials that allow the AI to show what it’s made of. (Depending on the solution, “quick” could be a weekend or six months.) The sooner the machine can demonstrate its ability to not only understand what seems to be a complex problem, but also out-produce man’s ability to solve it manually, the sooner humans will be able to relinquish control.

Transparency into what the machine is doing is imperative

Giving up day-to-day execution is a lot easier for humans than giving up their decision-making privileges. For marketers, relying on a wholly autonomous AI to process data and then act on its insights without bothering to ask for its human colleague’s thoughts on approach is the biggest obstacle to letting go of control.

This is important for AI providers to consider as they design the outputs shared with businesses. As it turns out, humans don’t necessarily need or want to be involved decision their AI is making, but they do want to understand how and why the AI made them. It would, of course, be impossible for a human to keep up with the pace of a machine’s decision-making processing, but making them privy to key insights goes a long way in creating trust between robot and man. It also creates a foundation for collaboration and idea sharing, as the human learns from the AI’s insights, and is able to complement the AI’s work as a result.

Ultimately, it is this type of collaboration that makes man and machine allies rather than competitors. It’s also what establishes trust, so that humans can rest assured they’re evolving, rather than endangered.

This article is published as part of the IDG Contributor Network. Want to Join?

Source: InfoWorld Big Data