IBM Named A Leader in Gartner's Magic Quadrant For Its Flash Storage Solutions

IBM has been recognized as a Leader for Flash Storage in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Solid-State Arrays (SSA).¹

According to Gartner, “Vendors in the Leaders quadrant have the highest scores for their Ability to Execute and Completeness of Vision. A vendor in the Leaders quadrant has the market share, credibility, and marketing and sales capabilities needed to drive the acceptance of new technologies. These vendors demonstrate a clear understanding of market needs; they are innovators and thought leaders; and they have well-articulated plans that customers and prospects can use when designing their storage infrastructures and strategies. In addition, they have a presence in the five major geographical regions, consistent financial performance and broad platform support.”

IBM’s position as a leader comes after it announced the expansion of its FlashSystem portfolio, including DeepFlash and Storwize products, to help clients more quickly extract value from data for competitive advantage. Among the 380 patents that differentiate IBM’s flash products and services are its FlashCore and MicroLatency technologies. Clients rely on these technologies to quickly access the mounting volumes.

For example, Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital (Henry Mayo), a not-for-profit community hospital and trauma center in Valencia, California, needed to implement a storage solution that would deliver faster access to patient data for their electronic health records (EHRs) system. Henry Mayo required a solution for its medical teams who perform a wide range of healthcare and outpatient surgical services.

After thorough testing of information systems software, MEDITECH, Henry Mayo selected a combination of IBM flash technologies. To quickly access EHRs, the hospital selected IBM’s FlashSystem® V9000 all-flash array. The solution also includes the VersaStack™ converged infrastructure platform by IBM and Cisco using IBM’s Storwize® V7000 hybrid storage array. Key to its decision was that the IBM arrays would provide security through hardware level encryption and deliver the hospital’s database administrators a single dashboard into its storage assets.

“From arrival to aftercare, our medical teams are constantly viewing and updating EHRs, so delays or interruptions to retrieving data can directly affect their care, which is why we were committed to MEDITECH and wanted to deploy its latest release,” said Cindy Peterson, vice president/CIO, Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital. “It was therefore particularly important to implement IBM’s FlashSystem V9000, which our testing proved could be relied upon for quick access of patient information.”

Physicians at Henry Mayo are now able to access patient records more quickly, which helps them make faster, high-quality clinical decisions without delay. As a result, they may be able to spend more time with patients, leading to enriched patient care and improved outcomes.

“Whether it’s a hospital or retail organization, organizations across the globe understand the value that fast and reliable access to data will provide,” said Michael Kuhn, vice president of offering management, Storage Solutions. “Achieving this requires technology found in IBM’s FlashSystem portfolio, which is proven to dramatically accelerate the movement of data when and where it is needed, while delivering the reliability and availability to keep data always accessible.” We believe client testimonials like this help support the Gartner recognition.

1. Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Solid-State Arrays, August 22, 2016

Source: CloudStrategyMag

Platform9 Introduces High Availability For OpenStack Users

Platform9 has released its High Availability capability for OpenStack users, supporting both traditional and cloud-native workloads. Platform9 will be showcasing this industry-first capability in its booth #649 at VMware’s VMworld, taking place August 28 – September 1 in Las Vegas.

“High Availability is fundamental to enterprise customers looking to run production workloads on OpenStack. Given the massive demand we’ve seen from enterprise customers, we are excited to provide a solution with the industry’s first High Availability capability for both traditional and scale-out workloads,” said Madhura Maskasky, co-founder and vice president of product at Platform9. “This new capability makes it possible for customers to migrate to OpenStack for mission-critical workloads without sacrificing the powerful, enterprise-grade High Availability capabilities they’ve come to expect.”

“For production workloads, High Availability is a critical capability and we have had to run those workloads on VMware vSphere thus far. With this update to Platform9 Managed OpenStack, we can now use OpenStack and KVM for all workloads,” said Rob Horstmann, Manager of Technical Operations at Moz, Inc.

Traditional applications need support from the infrastructure layer to be highly available. Historically this capability has only been available in VMware vSphere and not with OpenStack. Because of these limitations, enterprise customers have found it challenging to run production workloads on OpenStack, and instead have relied on expensive VMware ELAs for such scenarios.

Likewise, cloud-native workloads need support from the infrastructure layer. While these workloads are designed to “scale-out” across multiple-nodes, they are only highly available if the infrastructure is distributing the worker nodes across failure domains (such as hosts, racks, or data centers). Until now, there has not been an out-of-the-box solution for workloads that require both programmatic scale-out (using auto-scaling-groups) and High Availability awareness.

Today, cloud architects can use the concept of availability zones — already in OpenStack — to automatically configure groups of servers that represent a zone of availability, such as a rack or a data center. Platform9’s newly announced High Availability capability automatically configures liveness detection among servers that are in such a zone. When a server in a zone fails, the capability orchestrates the recovery of workloads running on that server onto other servers in that zone. In addition to recovering traditional workloads, scale-out workloads that are being spawned by auto-scaling-groups can be distributed across availability zones, mitigating the risk of simultaneous failure.

This High Availability capability is available in Platform9 Managed OpenStack Enterprise Edition. Platform9 is also open sourcing this capability, making it freely available via a Github repository where the code, documentation and demonstrations reside.

Source: CloudStrategyMag

Cloud Foundry Foundation CEO Sam Ramji Appointed To Teradici Board

Teradici® has announced prominent cloud and open source visionary, Sam Ramji, CEO of the Cloud Foundry Foundation, has joined its Board of Directors. Ramji’s addition rounds out an already impressive board that includes previous CEO of Sana Security and Openwave and Cisco executive, Don Listwin; Peter Charbonneau, former CFO of Newbridge Networks; Tarkan Maner former CEO of Wyse (acquired by Dell) and now CEO of Nexenta; and Steve Munford previous CEO at Sophos.

A 20+ year veteran of the Silicon Valley and Seattle technology scenes, Ramji is the founding CEO of Cloud Foundry, the industry standard cloud application platform. Prior to Cloud Foundry, he was chief strategy officer for Apigee (APIC), designed and led Microsoft’s open source strategy, and drove product strategy for BEA WebLogic Integration. Previously he held a range of software engineering positions at firms including Broderbund, Fair Isaac, and Ofoto. He is a member of multiple industry advisory boards and served on the World Economic Forum’s Industrial Internet Working Group.

“Sam’s work has placed him at the epicenter of everything cloud — applications, architecture, open source, technology development, and emerging business models,” said Dan Cordingley, CEO of Teradici. “As a highly regarded visionary throughout the industry, we are thrilled to have Sam join our effort to clearly establish Teradici PCoIP as a leading technology for cloud delivered applications.”

 “Teradici has some of the most innovative and disruptive technology for enabling enterprises and ISVs to move mission critical apps to the cloud. I am excited to help the company unlock this tremendous potential,” said Ramji. “Wherever there’s a screen, it needs client software; with PCoIP you can move the client to the cloud. As the proliferation of screens accelerates across the world, Teradici is the natural choice to connect them all to the cloud.”

Source: CloudStrategyMag

Red Hat Releases Red Hat Virtualization 4

Red Hat, Inc. has announced the general availability of Red Hat Virtualization 4, the newest release of its Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) -powered virtualization platform. Red Hat Virtualization 4 challenges the economics and complexities of proprietary virtualization solutions by providing a fully-open, high-performing, more secure, and centrally managed platform for both Linux- and Windows-based workloads. It combines a powerful updated hypervisor, advanced system dashboard, and centralized networking for users’ evolving workloads. Built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat Virtualization 4 is designed to easily integrate with existing IT investments while providing a foundation for emerging technology deployments, including containerized and cloud-native applications.

“Our customers continue to rely on virtualization as a vital part of their data center modernization efforts while also using it to help bridge to new cloud-native and container-based workloads. Red Hat Virtualization provides the economics, performance and agility needed across both traditional and new infrastructure initiatives,” said Gunnar Hellekson, director, product management, Linux and Virtualization, Red Hat.

While virtualization remains a key element of data center infrastructure, customer needs around the technology are rapidly evolving. Enterprises just embarking on a virtualization deployment may want a complete, agile platform that embraces efficiency and open standards of interoperability, while enterprises who have already deployed virtualization technologies may become increasingly concerned about their investment due to costs, performance limitations, or incompatibility. Red Hat Virtualization 4 is designed to address these emerging scenarios with a platform built on open standards, providing a powerful, flexible solution for new deployments and helping existing virtualization users migrate to an open, extensible solution.

Red Hat Virtualization 4 includes both a high-performing hypervisor (Red Hat Virtualization Host) and a web-based virtualization resource manager (Red Hat Virtualization Manager) for management of an enterprise’s virtualization infrastructure. Specifically, Red Hat Virtualization 4 introduces new and enhanced capabilities around:

• Performance and extensibility
• Management and automation
• Support for OpenStack and Linux containers
• Security and reliability
• Centralized networking through an external, third-party API

Performance and Extensibility

Red Hat Virtualization 4 introduces a new powerful and smaller footprint hypervisor co-engineered with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.2. The new hypervisor helps streamline the installation of system packages and driver updates, simplify the deployment of modern technologies, and provide better hardware support configuration management integration. Additionally, Red Hat Virtualization can now be installed via Anaconda, the common installer for both Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat Virtualization hypervisor.

The new platform also includes support for advanced network functionality, helping to simplify the process of adding and supporting third party network providers via a new open API. This feature allows for the centralization and simplification of network management systems by enabling Red Hat Virtualization Manager to communicate with external systems to define networking characteristics that can be applied to a virtual machine’s network interfaces.

Management and Automation

To improve overall virtualization management, Red Hat Virtualization 4 offers an advanced system dashboard that provides a comprehensive view of virtualized resources and infrastructure. This enables administrators to better diagnose and remediate problems before they impact operations. Additional automation functionality includes:

• A storage image uploader, which provides a browser-based interface to upload existing KVM Virtual Machine files directly or via a remote URL, placing the image in the storage domain without requiring third party tools.
• Advanced live migration policies to enable users to fine-tune granular migration characteristics of hosts, down to an individual VM or cluster level, enabling faster operations and overall performance.

OpenStack and Linux Containers

While virtualization as a technology is mature, Red Hat Virtualization 4 provides key support features for Linux container-based workloads as well as OpenStack private and hybrid cloud deployments. For containers, Red Hat Virtualization 4 supports Red Hat Enterprise Linux Atomic Host as a configurable guest system and allows guest agents to be run as, and report on, containers on the Atomic Host VM.

Red Hat Virtualization 4 also provides native support for Red Hat OpenStack Platform Neutron. This enables organization to streamline shared services and minimize their operational footprint by deploying services more seamlessly across traditional and cloud-enabled workloads.

A More Secure Virtualization Environment

These newly-introduced features in Red Hat Virtualization 4 complement the security assets brought to Red Hat Virtualization through its base in Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Red Hat Virtualization 4 includes and supports sVirt, which applies Mandatory Access Control (MAC) for greater VM and hypervisor security. This helps to improve overall security and harden the physical and virtual environment against vulnerabilities that could be used as an attack vector against the host or other VMs.

Red Hat Virtualization is also integrated with Red Hat Satellite, Red Hat’s systems management solution. Red Hat Virtualization standardizes infrastructure and virtual machine guest provisioning through existing Red Hat Satellite 6 implementations. It also provides visibility into the host and virtual machine errata details to ensure patch compliance across a physical and virtual environment.

Source: CloudStrategyMag

Bedrock Data Names Thor Johnson CEO

Bedrock Data™ ha announced that Thor Johnson has joined the company as chief executive officer (CEO). The announcement comes on the heels of marked growth and success across all facets of the company over the past 12 months, including a more than doubling across three key metrics: month-over-month bookings, number of SaaS platform connectors and connector depth.

John Marcus, co-founder, will assume the position of chief product evangelist for the company. “Adding Thor to our executive team positions Bedrock Data to further accelerate our company and product momentum. Bedrock Data more than doubled across every key measurable in the past year, serves hundreds of customers with tens of millions of continually synchronized data records. We have a partner portfolio that includes HubSpot, Marketo, ConnectWise, NetSuite, and Microsoft, along with a truly exceptional investor and advisor group. Bringing Thor in now ensures that we will expand on this progress and continue to shape our industry in the future,” said Marcus.

A strategic visionary with a proven track record of creating category leaders, Johnson brings more than two decades of SaaS experience, together with marketing, sales, finance and operations management expertise to Bedrock Data. Prior to Bedrock Data, Johnson served as chief marketing officer of Intralinks and as chief marketer for Eloqua Corporation, a leader in SaaS marketing software, now part of Oracle (NYSE: ORCL).

Johnson explained, “SaaS opens the door to many more software buyers who are buying best-of-breed point solutions. Unfortunately, most of these departmental systems don’t talk to each other effectively, or at all. Bedrock Data elegantly and simply automates complex and costly manual integration, cleans disparate data across multiple systems and connects departments to each other’s information.”

According to a recent Gartner press release, “The worldwide public cloud services market is projected to grow 16.5 percent in 2016 to a total $204 billion, up from $175 billion in 2015.” “Cloud application services (SaaS) is expected to grow by 20.3% in 2016, to $37.7 billion.”

Johnson continued, “The market opportunity for Bedrock Data is enormous. The first-class team has created a product, already in its second generation. We have excellent partners and investors. I am proud to be part of this company and its extremely promising future.”

Bedrock Data’s investors include .406 Ventures together with a who’s who of industry software icons, including Mike Volpe, angel investor and former HubSpot CMO, who noted, “Bedrock Data solves an important problem with cloud applications. Even with business leaders purchasing best-of-breed, point solutions, companies lose their ability to stay aligned around a single view of the customer. Bedrock Data automates the expensive, manual systems integration task that cloud proliferation has created.”

Source: CloudStrategyMag

New OpenVPN Licensing In AWS Marketplace Simplifies Managing Remote Access And Cloud Security

OpenVPN Technologies Inc. has launched a new product licensing model available in Amazon Web Services Marketplace (AWS Marketplace), giving any size company worldwide access to a Virtual Private Network (VPN) solution. This provides employees safe and secure remote access to their private networks. 

Security and Privacy on the Cloud

Technology has created a plethora of connection choices and with this IT, pain points can arise for business owners, or anyone else trying to manage company-owned and private devices connecting in the office or at home. Employees working remotely need flexibility and typically use their own devices, including laptops, desktops, tablets and cell phones, for work tasks. They are connecting over home broadband or Wi-Fi hotspots, each presenting potential security challenges.

OpenVPN provides the ability to create a secure platform for all device connections across public or private networks and addresses the end point security risk. By encrypting and tunneling traffic with OpenVPN, customers limit the size of the user access area and the overall security footprint decreases. This makes monitoring and securing company resources more manageable.

“Expanding into new distribution channels like AWS Marketplace increases the OpenVPN geographic footprint, helping us to better serve our clients around the world as they migrate to the AWS Cloud. This change really fits with our blueprint for enterprise-grade cloud VPN services, targeting small to large enterprises,” says said Francis Dinha, CEO of OpenVPN Technologies Inc.

“Customers today want not only the cost-savings and scaling benefits of shifting their network infrastructure to the cloud, but also secure management of their data,” said Barry Russell, general manager, global business development, AWS Marketplace and Catalog Services. “OpenVPN’s new licensing model via AWS Marketplace combines rapid procurement and deployment with an easy-to-use, cost-effective method to migrate and scale business on the AWS Cloud, while leveraging the security that AWS and OpenVPN offer via the shared responsibility model.”

Source: CloudStrategyMag

Masergy's Unified Enterprise Security Solution Honored With SaaS Award

Masergy Communications Inc. has announced that the 2016 SaaS Awards Program has selected the company’s Unified Enterprise Security (UES) solution as the Best SaaS Product for Business Intelligence or Analytics.

Recently recognized for Most Innovative Security Strategy by Light Reading and honored with a 2016 Stratus Award, Masergy’s UES continues to impress industry experts with its advanced behavioral analytics and machine learning that collects, analyzes and predicts abnormal network traffic patterns that are indicative of cyber security threats. In addition, the multiple award-winning solution offers:

• Advanced persistent threat management
• Integrated vulnerability scanning & IDS/IPS system
• Security threat intelligence dashboard
• Managed firewalls

“Cyber security methods needed a fresh approach to better protect corporate assets and quickly detect the growing array of advanced threats,” said Craig D’Abreo, vice president of security operations, Masergy. “Masergy’s security solutions offer proven methods to mitigate the risks of attacks. We are proud our offering continues to be validated by technology experts.”

Source: CloudStrategyMag

CloudJumper Expands Sales Team

CloudJumper has announced the appointment of Scott Bechtold as channel sales manager. Scott reports directly to Max Pruger, chief sales officer for CloudJumper and is responsible for developing new channel partners throughout North America. Bechtold’s position at CloudJumper follows a 31-year history in information technology where he has focused on sales and management in the software and managed services space.

Formerly the CEO of Agility IT, an MSP based in the Atlanta metropolitan area, Scott Bechtold’s charter at CloudJumper is to build relationships with MSPs and telco partners, helping them create and grow successful cloud businesses on the nWorkSpace WaaS platform. Bechtold will support the sales efforts of CloudJumper to expand its base of IT service providers seeking to deliver high margin WaaS solutions.

Bechtold has long been interested in the cloud. While running Agility IT, Bechtold white labeled the CloudJumper WaaS solution, marketing it to his customer base. He chose the CloudJumper solution after working with several very small and unreliable cloud providers. When the opportunity arose to join CloudJumper, Bechtold chose to sunset Agility IT and market the CloudJumper solution to companies similar to his own. 

Prior to Agility IT, Bechtold was CEO of cloud service provider Insource Technologies where he was responsible for starting, running, building, and maintaining the startup MSP/CSP from its founding to profitability. During his tenure at Insource Technologies he oversaw all sales management activities for the organization and maintained business relationships that led to substantial growth. Before Insource Technologies, he held the position of director at First Data in Atlanta where he managed the mobile commerce professional services division, all services personnel, and initiated successful client engagements worldwide.

According to new data by Transparency Research, The global WaaS market is projected to register a 12.10% CAGR between 2015 and 2022, and anticipated to reach a value of US$18.37 billion by the end of 2022. The North American continent is projected to lead in terms of deployments over the next several years, owing to the easy availability of developed telecommunication and IT infrastructure. WaaS solutions aid in boosting employee productivity, allowing greater access to critical applications and data, irrespective of location. [Transparency Research, Growth of Global WaaS Market Shifts into High Gear with Expanding Enterprise Mobility, Expected to Reach US$18.37 billion by 2022].

This continued shift toward cloud-based workspaces is increasing demand among organizations that are making the switch to WaaS to improve business mobility and IT infrastructure efficiency. IT service providers, including managed service providers (MSPs) and telecommunication providers, have eyed this emerging market and begun complementing their service portfolios with cloud-based workspace solutions. CloudJumper nWorkSpace is a comprehensive, yet easy to deploy, offering for IT service providers seeking fast entry into the WaaS market with a white label platform that can be customized to meet the needs of any size customer.

“As analysts have forecast, the WaaS market will be an area of growth over the next several years,” said Bechtold. “CloudJumper is positioned to succeed and lead in this market with an increasing number of MSPs and telcos who understand the opportunity and advantages of partnering with a pioneer in the space.”

“In the evolving managed services business, IT service providers are faced with new challenges on a regular basis, including the identification of simple yet profitable cloud solutions for business consumption,” said Pruger. “As the former owner of an MSP himself, Scott brings the kind of experience we need to support the education of our markets. We are pleased to have him join with CloudJumper in these efforts and to help our partners achieve greater financial success.”

Source: CloudStrategyMag

Information Builders Named A Visionary In Gartner's 2016 Magic Quadrant For Data Integration Tools

Information Builders has announced that the company was positioned in the Visionaries Quadrant of Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Data Integration Tools. The recognition is based on Gartner’s evaluation of the company’s iWay integration tools as well as the Omni-Gen data management platform. 

Information Builders’ data integration solutions facilitate rapid time to market for vital operational, business intelligence and analytical initiatives, allowing organizations to be agile and retain a competitive advantage. The company’s Omni-Gen platform provides a single toolset for generating applications that combine data integration, data quality and master data management. With Omni-Gen, customers gain seamless access to any application or data store to speed creation of integration architectures with the greatest breadth and depth.

Information Builders’ iWay offerings simplify big data management and equip organizations with comprehensive data, application and B2B integration capabilities. Using iWay, customers can easily integrate traditional data with big data such as mobile information, social media and sensor data from the Internet of Things (IoT). Information Builders delivers a modern, native approach to Hadoop-based data integration that ensures high levels of capability, compatibility and flexibility — giving organizations the ability to more quickly respond to business requirements.

“Data is only as good as a company’s ability to have a unified view of it. In the age of information, as new data sources continue to be introduced into the enterprise, data integration has never been more important. We’re honored by our position as a Visionary in the Gartner Magic Quadrant, as we believe it underscores our ongoing vigilance in anticipating the needs of our customers and ensuring we equip them with the tools needed for successful information management strategies,” said Gerald Cohen, president and CEO, Information Builders.

Access the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Integration Tools here.

Source: CloudStrategyMag

Rackspace Expands Multi-Cloud Security To Microsoft Azure

Rackspace® has announced from Rackspace::Solve that Rackspace® Managed Security for Microsoft® Azure® is now available in early access. This means that companies using Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS)™, Rackspace Dedicated Hosting, and Rackspace Managed VMware® Cloud can now benefit from the additional security protections provided by Rackspace Managed Security to detect and respond to security threats across leading cloud platforms.

With Rackspace Managed Security for Microsoft Azure, Rackspace customers leveraging the Aviator service level of Fanatical Support® for Azure can layer additional active security on their Microsoft Azure cloud platform to identify and respond to advanced cyber threats. Whereas most managed security service providers only notify customers about a breach, leaving it to the customer to respond, Rackspace Managed Security utilizes pre-approved actions to promptly remediate many security issues. This level of security strengthens customers’ environments beyond the operational network and infrastructure security provided by most cloud providers. Rackspace Managed Security also complements the strategic planning, architectural guidance and 24x7x365 operational support available through Rackspace Fanatical Support for Azure.

“In today’s cybersecurity landscape, organizations are no longer asking if they should have a security solution in place, but rather whether they should do it themselves or partner with a trusted managed security service provider,” said Brannon Lacey, general manager of Rackspace Managed Security. “We are proud to extend this security solution to Azure, as it represents the continued growth of our Managed Security capabilities and aligns with the overall Rackspace mission to provide the best expertise and service across the world’s leading clouds.”

Rackspace launched Rackspace Managed Security in September 2015 to help provide greater business resiliency by helping protect customer data and respond to cyber attacks before they are able to impact customers’ businesses. This approach lessens customer burden on budget and in-house expertise. Rackspace Managed Security provides host and network security, 24x7x365 monitoring and response from Rackspace experts in the Customer Security Operations Center (CSOC) as well as compliance assistance guidance to ease the burden of achieving and maintaining compliance.

According to a cloud security survey from ESG, 32% of enterprise cybersecurity and IT professionals said “their organization finds it challenging to monitor cloud-based network traffic patterns to detect anomalous/suspicious behavior. This could be related to monitoring weaknesses and/or skills deficiencies, but either way it makes organizations more vulnerable to cyber-attacks.”¹ Furthermore, 33% of enterprise cybersecurity and IT professionals said “their organization finds it challenging to maintain regulatory compliance while using cloud infrastructure. This certainly restricts organizations’ ability to maximize cloud computing business benefits.”²

“With Rackspace Managed Security, Rackspace addresses and solves for security needs in organizations that use multiple cloud providers. This is particularly a challenge for organizations facing a cybersecurity skills shortage,” said Dan Conde, analyst from ESG Research. “Top challenges for cloud security includes the ability to provision security controls, assessing the security status, monitoring workloads and maintaining regulatory compliance across clouds. As Rackspace expands its security capabilities across multiple cloud platforms, such as Microsoft Azure, they address the security needs and improves the velocity for on-boarding to a multi-cloud world.”

1. Source: ESG Blog, Cloud security challenges, April 2016
2. Source: ESG Blog, Cloud security challenges, April 2016

Source: CloudStrategyMag