The networking industry has gone through different waves over last 30+ years. In the '80s, the first wave was all about connecting and sharing; how to connect a computer to other peripheral devices and other computers. There were many players who developed technology and services to address that, e.g. Novell, 3Com, Sun, IBM, DEC, Nortel. Across the industry, small islands of various protocols were created with multiple gateways to bridge them. In 90's and 00's, Cisco dominated the industry and did a brilliant job of pushing the industry towards a common approach built on Ethernet.  They built a hugely successful business and ecosystem and even created new markets like VoIP on the proposition that networking should be on a common highway. We also saw isolation of networks from the rest of the IT infrastructure, in the sense that software innovations continued in the se... (more)

An Introduction to Windows Azure Features

Windows Azure is a cloud OS. It is an infrastructure with computing, networking, and storage capacities; a global service publishing and distribution vehicle; and a security and system management framework capable of bridging and extending on-premise resources with those deployed in the cloud. With IaaS combined with the many features Windows Azure offers, the opportunities for enterprise IT as well as small and medium businesses are real and exciting to employ cloud as a delivery platform for LOB services including media and phone apps. Windows Azure combined with Windows Server 2012 and System Center 2012 SP1 provide many options for IT to transition and transform existing establishments into a cloud-friendly, cloud-ready, and cloud-enabled environment. Deploying resources, migrating workloads, and expanding Active Directory to cloud have never been easier with so... (more)

Big Data and Politics: Influencing Both Sides of the Aisle

Data has always had a place in politics. Politicians have relied on polls, voter interests and demographics for years. In 2008, the Obama campaign was recognized for its data-driven campaign, but it wasn’t until the 2012 election, when the tools became available, that big data was used to target voters and win a presidential election using methods that had never been used before. Much like businesses, political parties have collected a lot of data over the years, but that data has been siloed into various categories: donations, website visits, social media comments. While each of these categories are useful, the ability to combine and analyze all of this data together creates new opportunities to target each individual voter, but until recently it was much too costly to do so. Now with the creation of Hadoop and Hadoop as a Service vendors, big data is being used b... (more)

Schuberg Philis Delivers Mission-Critical IT Services with Opscode

SEATTLE, Aug. 19, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Opscode®, the foundation for the coded business, today announced that Schuberg Philis, a Netherlands-based leader in IT outsourcing, is automating the entire application stack for its sophisticated hybrid cloud with Opscode Enterprise Chef™. Using Enterprise Chef, Schuberg Philis has automated configuration management of CloudStack compute services and NexentaStor ZFS-based storage as well as application delivery across a large-scale hybrid cloud infrastructure, delivering 100 percent functional uptime for its customers' mission-critical application infrastructures. "Obviously ensuring 100 percent functional uptime for our customers' business critical application infrastructures is essential to maintain our 100 percent customer satisfaction," said Funs Kessen, Mission Critical Engineer, Schuberg Philis. "With the commoditizati... (more)

Infonetics Research: Virtual Solutions Open Door for Growth in Application Delivery Controller Market

Market research firm Infonetics Research released market share and preliminary analysis from its 3rd quarter 2013 (3Q13) Data Center Network Equipment report. (Full report published December 10.) ANALYST NOTE “We believe that virtual solutions will continue to move the application delivery controller (ADC) market forward, and while the shift to virtual products might brake top line revenue growth in the short term due to lower ASPs versus their hardware-based counterparts, it’s likely to be margin neutral,” notes Cliff Grossner, Ph.D., Infonetics Research’s directing analyst for data center and cloud. Grossner continues: “Longer term, we expect virtual solutions to open the door for ADC penetration in small- to medium-sized business accounts, growing the size of the overall market and creating new opportunities for vendors.” 3Q13 DATA CENTER MARKET HIGHLIGHTS In 3Q... (more)

Fusion ioControl Hybrid Storage Appliance Now Verified for the Citrix Ready VDI Capacity Program

SALT LAKE CITY, April 17, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Fusion-io (NYSE: FIO) today announced that the Fusion ioControl Hybrid Storage Appliance completed the Citrix Ready® VDI Capacity Program Verified for Citrix XenDesktop®. The Citrix Ready VDI Capacity program addresses the storage needs of customers who already have, or are considering, VDI using XenDesktop. Fusion ioControl successfully completed the VDI Capacity test environment that contains the necessary compute resources needed to generate a 750-user reference XenDesktop deployment. "VDI environments require consistent performance, a challenge that is exacerbated in shared storage environments," said Chris McCall, Fusion-io Senior Director of ioControl Marketing. "By using Fusion ioControl flash first hybrid storage as the storage infrastructure for Citrix XenDesktop, small to midsize enterprises benefit from flex... (more)

Elephant Talk Provides Shareholder Update

OKLAHOMA CITY, April 22, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Elephant Talk Communications Corp. (NYSE MKT: ETAK) ("Elephant Talk" or, the "Company"), a global provider of Software Defined Network Architecture (Software DNA™ 2.0) platforms and cyber security solutions, today announced that Grupo Iusacell S.A. ("Iusacell") in Mexico is currently on schedule to transition its entire customer base of over 8 million subscribers onto the Company's mobile outsourcing platform by the end of 2014. As part of this transition, legacy systems from a global information technology (IT) products and services company are being replaced with the outsourcing platform services offered by Elephant Talk. Mr. Steven van der Velden, Chairman and CEO of Elephant Talk, stated, "We expect that our monthly recurring revenue base, which achieved margins of approximately 82% in the fourth quarter of 2013, wi... (more)

ARM Server to Transform #BigData to #IoT | @CloudExpo #IIoT #AI #ML #DX

A completely new computing platform is on the horizon. They're called Microservers by some, ARM Servers by others, and sometimes even ARM-based Servers. No matter what you call them, Microservers will have a huge impact on the data center and on server computing in general. What Is a Microserver...and What Isn't Although few people are familiar with Microservers today, their impact will be felt very soon. This is a new category of computing platform that is available today and is predicted to have triple-digit growth rates for some years to come - growing to over 20% of the server market by 2016 according to Oppenheimer ("Cloudy With A Chance of ARM" Oppenheimer Equity Research Industry Report). According to Chris Piedmonte, CEO of Suvola Corporation - a software and services company focused on creating preconfigured and scalable Microserver appliances for deployin... (more)

WebRTC Summit at Cloud Expo Agenda Announced

Click here to follow ▸@WebRTCSummit Registration for  the First International WebRTC Summit (@WebRTCSummit) is now open. WebRTC Summit will take place Nov 6-7, 2013, at the Santa Clara Convention Center, Santa Clara, CA. WebRTC (Web Real-Time Communication) is an open source project supported by Google, Mozilla and Opera that aims to enable browser-to-browser applications for voice calling, video chat, and P2P file sharing without plugins. Its mission is "To enable rich, high quality, RTC applications to be developed in the browser via simple Javascript APIs and HTML5." Register FREE for WebRTC Summit here ▸ http://bit.ly/1exOL9h WebRTC Journal ▸Home A survey by TokBox found that the WebRTC adoption rate among small organizations is growing quickly where over 25% of developers say it is important for their work. WebRTC Summit will feature two full days of technical... (more)

Microsoft-Nokia: An Open Letter from Ballmer and Elop

In an Open Letter published yesterday, September 2, 2013, on The Official Microsoft Blog at Microsoft's TechWeb site, Steve Ballmer and Stephen Elop wrote to Microsoft stakeholders the following: "Nokia and Microsoft have always dreamed big – we dreamed of putting a computer on every desk, and a mobile phone in every pocket, and we’ve come a long way toward realizing those dreams. Today marks a moment of reinvention. Nokia has an identity spanning 150 years of heritage, innovation, excellence, and change which began and will continue in Finland and around the world. From humble beginnings as a paper mill factory, to manufacturing rubber boots and car tires, and then to mobile phones, reinvention is in Nokia’s blood. Nokia will now write its next chapter, focused on enabling mobility through its leadership in networking, mapping & location, and advanced technologies. For... (more)

Cloud Expo New York: Best CIO Practices Shared from SHI’s Customers

Cloud Expo New York $500 Savings here! In his session at the 12th International Cloud Expo, Richard Taggart, CTO of SHI, will share a collection of best Information Technology Practices and Innovation Programs that have been proven to work in real life situations. These practices are some of the best ideas taken from SHI's database of customer submissions. These programs include those designed to solve business to technology alignment issues, technology effectiveness, and new ways to stimulate true innovation in IT. Taggart is the former SVP and Corporate CIO of the Walt Disney Company. Explore Cloud Expo Sponsorship & Exhibit Opportunities ! Speaker Bio: Rich Taggart is CTO at SHI. He has over 25 years of experience in a variety of roles in IT and management. Prior to joining SHI, he was the Senior Vice President and Corporate CIO at the Walt Disney Company in Burb... (more)