Rackspace is now offering free software that lets anyone build private clouds based on the same platform that runs its cloud hosting service.
Alamo, codenamefor the company's Rackspace Private Cloud Software, is now available as a free download. The release, issued this week, marks a key milestone in Rackspace's plan to transition its cloud portfolio from its proprietary infrastructure to OpenStack, the open-source project the company helped launch with NASA two years ago.
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Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on 08/16/20120 comments
Red Hat Software released the Technology Preview of its OpenStack software targeted at service providers and enterprises looking to build infrastructure as a service (IaaS) clouds based on the open source framework.
An early supporter of the two-year-old OpenStack project, Red Hat has kept a low public profile on its commitment to the effort. In its announcement Monday, the company pointed out it was the #3 contributor to the current Essex release of OpenStack.
"Our current productization efforts are focused around hardening an integrated solution of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and OpenStack to deliver an enterprise-ready solution that enables enterprises worldwide to realize infrastructure clouds," said Brian Stevens, RedHat CTO and vice president for worldwide engineering, in a statement.
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Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on 08/16/20120 comments
IT consulting giant Infosys this week launched its Cloud Ecosystem Hub, aimed at helping enterprises build, deploy and manage hybrid clouds.
The Infosys Cloud Ecosystem Hub combines the global company's consulting and development resources with the assets of more than 30 partners now in the program including Amazon Web Services, CA Technologies, Dell, Hitachi Data Systems, HP, IBM, Microsoft and VMware.
Enterprises using the Infosys service can implement cloud services up to 40 percent faster with 30 percent cost savings and a 20 percent increase in productivity versus going it alone, according to the company. Infosys said its self-service catalog allows enterprises to procure infrastructure and services to build and manage clouds running within an enterprise, through a cloud provider, while also enabling them to create a hybrid infrastructure.
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Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on 08/09/20120 comments
Neebula, a startup provider of software that maps hardware and software with business service requirements, next week plans to release a preview of its ServiceWatch solution as a SaaS offering.
ServiceWatch is used by a number of large enterprises for so-called business service management (BSM) and IT service management (ITSM). Simply put, it models systems with business requirements to ensure organizations are meeting specific objectives.
Neebula -- not to be confused with hot private cloud infrastructure startup Nebula, the company founded by OpenStack vet and former NASA CTO Chris Kemp -- is taking on some established players in the BSM field including BMC, CA Technologies, Compuware, HP, IBM, NetIQ and SAP. Its founders, who consist of veterans from BMC, EMC, and HP, launched the company in 2009.
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Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on 08/09/20120 comments
Nimbula is now offering what it claims is the first Apache Hadoop-based distribution designed to process Big Data in private clouds.
The private cloud operating system provider today said it is combining its Nimbula Director platform with MapR Technologies' M3 and M5 Hadoop distributions. The combined offering will lets organizations process and analyze large volumes of unstructured Big Data in private clouds.
Using MapR's Hadoop distros (M3 is a free edition while M5 is the subscription-based version for enterprise implementations) with Nimbula Director, a customer can set up a Hadoop cluster. The offering includes templates and test scripts.
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Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on 08/07/20122 comments
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak's prediction this past weekend that cloud computing may cause "horrendous problems" has gone viral but with due respect to the visionary inventor of the Apple I and II PCs: take his fears with a grain of salt.
Wozniak raised his concerns during off the cuff remarks after performing in Mike Daisey's theatrical presentation The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, which exposes the labor conditions at Foxconn, the key manufacturer of Apple products in China.
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Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on 08/07/20126 comments
Two years after publicly kicking off its effort to develop an open-source cloud computing platform and community, Rackspace can finally say its core infrastructure as a service runs on OpenStack.
As of August 1, Racskpace Cloud Servers, which offers Linux and Windows compute services, and Rackspace Cloud Databases, a database service powered by MySQL, run on the OpenStack platform. To administer the new open IaaS, Rackspace also released a new control panel. In the coming months, Rackspace will add an API-driven monitoring system, private software defined networks to create virtual interfaces to one's own datacenter and block storage.
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Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on 08/02/20120 comments
Hewlett-Packard has talked up its plans to offer a public cloud service for well over a year. Now the first two components of HP Cloud are generally available.
As of August 1, customers can purchase the company's HP Cloud Object Storage and CDN. HP is backing the service with a 99.95 service level agreement. If the service can't meet that SLA, HP will offer customers credits.
Compute services and subscriptions to its cloud-based MySQL remain in beta and while it is not generally available or backed by an SLA, customers can use them for production workloads, said Marc Padovani, director of product management for HP Cloud Services.
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Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on 08/02/20120 comments
Could yet another major public cloud be in the works? CRN is reporting VMware plans to build out a public cloud that would aim to compete with Amazon Web Services, Rackspace, Microsoft and Google.
While VMware said its policy is not to comment on speculation, the report cites multiple unnamed sources who say VMware has acquired significant datacenter facilities in Nevada for what is known as Project Zephyr. VMware has gone this route to light a fire under its hosting partners to build out public cloud services based on vCloud, according to the report.
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Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on 08/02/20120 comments
On the heels of VMware's bold $1.26 billion deal last week to acquire software-defined networking pioneer Nicira, Oracle Monday made its own SDN play with its agreement to purchase Xsigo for an undisclosed amount.
Venture-backed Xsigo, a San Jose, Calif.-based company founded in 2004, offers its Data Center Fabric portfolio. Simply put, Xsigo's network software and hardware connects virtual servers and storage with virtualized network infrastructure.
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Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on 07/31/20120 comments
VMware's striking move Monday to acquire SDN pioneer Nicira caps a string of events this month that piece together the company's go-forward mission of automating the datacenter and creating next-generation clouds.
Kicking off what could prove to be key milestones for VMware was its July 2nd announcement it is acquiring DynamicOps, a cloud automation provider renowned for its support of multiple virtual environments. Then came last week's shocking news that VMware CEO Paul Maritz, who has led the company through stellar growth during his four-year tenure, is stepping aside to become chief strategist of the company's parent EMC to be replaced by veteran Pat Gelsinger.
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Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on 07/26/20120 comments
While most cloud service providers have been reluctant to publicly disclose details that would better explain how they secure and ensure availability of their datacenters, some have pointed to Amazon Web Services as the most distinguished holdout. But Amazon this week took an important step toward discrediting that claim by documenting its security practices.
Amazon submitted a 42-page page document to the Cloud Security Alliance's (CSA) Security, Trust & Assurance Registry (STAR) that details its security practices. That Amazon has made its security practices is significant in its own right. However the fact that Amazon did so in line with the CSA's detailed questionnaire and filed it in the registry could motivate numerous other holdouts to answer the same questions. Cloud providers have dragged their feet on publicly disclosing their security controls seemingly because they didn't want to give away any competitive secrets. But the largest public cloud provider taking this step diminishes that rational.
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Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on 07/26/20120 comments