Category Archives: Cloud Hosting
OFFSITE Cloud Computing And Data Center Operator Announces Integration Of Palo Alto Security Platform To Its … – Yahoo Finance
KENOSHA, Wis., April 25, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --OFFSITE, an innovative cloud computing and data center hosting company, is integrating Palo Alto Next Generation Security Platform and firewalls into its network and private cloud infrastructure. This security platform will offer the industry leading threat protection with deep visibility and predictive analytics for OFFSITE network infrastructure and all clients that utilize it.
"Our approach to IT is to provide the best and most innovative platforms to serve our clients. As network threats increase, the Palo Alto Security Platform was the clear choice to continue providing our clients with the very best infrastructure available," said OFFSITE president, Steve Borucki. He added, "We build highly customized solutions for each client and the rich feature set of the Palo Alto platform allows us to deliver customizable and unique security solutions one client at a time."
Anthony Portee, OFFSITE chief technology officer said, "The fully customized private cloud solutions being envisioned and commissioned by our client base demand a highly scalable and efficient NGFW solution which can satisfy a wide range of business and security needs. From application inspection and content enforcement to executive reporting and traffic visibility, the Palo Alto solution satisfies all of the unique and challenging technical requirements our customers look to OFFSITE to resolve. The high performance and tightly integrated ecosystem provided by the Palo Alto product family fulfills a critical role for OFFSITE's customers."
About OFFSITE
OFFSITE redefines the data center experience for mid-tier IT organizations with its high performing environment for managing data operations. Operating since 2001, OFFSITE offers private cloud services, IaaS, colocation services, disaster recovery services, network operations center (NOC) services, and hosted and managed solutions. OFFSITE's spacious facilities and customized services enable mid-market businesses to solve their IT challenges and discover new managed services, hosting and private cloud computing solutions. OFFSITE is a privately held company headquartered at its own 50,000 square foot facilities in Southeastern WI with redundant data center operations in Chicago, Illinois. For additional information about OFFSITE, call 262-564-6400, email info@off-site.com, or visit http://www.off-site.com
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OFFSITE Cloud Computing And Data Center Operator Announces Integration Of Palo Alto Security Platform To Its ... - Yahoo Finance
The future for Cloud First industry reaction – Diginomica
SUMMARY:
Three leading cloud services providers to the UK public sector give their response to techUKs new report calling for Cloud First to be more prominent on the government tech agenda.
As part of its new report Cloud First: Policy Not Aspiration technology industry association techUK calls for greater communication between public sector buy-side and cloud services vendors on the sell-side to support greater adoption of cloud computing in the UK public sector.
It also queries whether the Cloud First message of several years ago still resonates as strongly and is being pushed as hard as it was by central government policy makers.Sue Daley, head of cloud, data, analytics and artificial intelligence at techUK, says:
The next wave of our digital revolution is being powered by the internet of things, big data analytics and artificial intelligence cloud computing underpins all of these developments. Given the importance of this technology to the UKs digital future, it is vital that users understand the security benefits of the Cloud and that advice delivered today addresses the users concerns. We want to take away all the confusion around cloud and highlight that cloud services can actually offer much greater levels of security and resilience as required by users.
diginomica asked a number of UK public sector cloud providers for their own views on the techUK report and its conclusions, beginning with Simon Hansford, CEO of UKCloud, whos a big supporter of the Cloud First mantra:
Cloud First is a policy that has served us well and should not be dropped. It conveys a simple message one that with the right support can gain traction and act as a catalyst for transformation just as we have seen with exemplar projects from HMRC to DVLA. Theres a lot more to do though with thousands of workloads that are virtualised and would be cheaper and better run in the cloud.
Typically, you find poor leadership and oversight behind failures to implement cloud first. Without a champion or widespread support you can struggle to overcome resistance resulting from a lack of education to benefits of cloud. After all we still see people moving to Crown Hosting or issuing tenders to build data centres.
That said, Hansford is also supportive of the emergence of the Cloud Native message alongside Cloud First:
Cloud Native is equally important and becoming the new mantra for many, but its a much harder message to convey and requires a lot more education. Cloud Native means that the application is written for the cloud from the ground up its not a just a virtualised app. Knowing what is involved 12 Factor App, etc. requires enough understanding to see beyond the headline or sound bite. If youre not careful, you run the risk of ending up with a Cloud Native app that is locked in to a cloud vendors propriety technology stack and therefore falls foul of open government and government procurement policies.
Gavin Mee, Senior Vice President and Head of UK, Salesforce, picks up on the skills aspect of the techUK report:
The TechUK report highlights the issues government faces in rolling out cloud services and echoes theGovernment Digital Service Advisory Boardfinding that the internal skills of employees is a significant challenge to governmentsdesire to move away from legacy IT systems. Whatever the technology involved, culture and employee adoption are critical success factors for any tech project.
At Salesforce we recognise that a gap in digital skills is a key barrier to the adoption of cloud technology, in both the public and private sectors. This is why we believe that the education and upskilling of the entire workforce is of the upmost importance, not only for the success of each organisation, but more widely for the sake of innovation and the future of Britain.
Beyond giving employees the skills they need to succeed, its up to leadership to build a culture of innovation and cloud confidence where employeesat all levels and experience have the tools and culture to learnWe should be empowering all public sector workers, to feel confident using cloud and other technologies to better serve citizens. Its about putting the tools and resources in their hands to boost digital innovation in the public sector.
MeanwhileStuart Provan, Head of UK Public Sector, Oracle, points to the progress that the UK public sector has made in its cloud adoption to date, but adds:
To continue this strong momentum, public sector bodies must ensure that not only are they implementing cloud technologies, but also adapting their business models, processes and organisational culture alongside this change. In doing this, they will be able to fully realise the benefits of cloud particularly when it comes to leveraging cost savings, the latest technical updates and security patches.
Its also vital that the public sector is vocal about, and builds on, the successes it has already seen when using sloud. By highlighting the myriad of use cases for cloud, the benefits for other organisations within the sector will become clear and encourage more to adopt the technology take and advantage of it.
Its a small sample, but cloud services providers to the public sector are clearly supportive of the Public Cloud First message that was set down several years ago. Its up to the buy-side to engage in conversations with the sell-side to ensure that the promise of cloud computing is fully realised in public services delivery.
Image credit - freeimages.com
Disclosure - At time of writing, Oracle, Salesforce and UKCloud are partners of diginomica/government.
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The future for Cloud First industry reaction - Diginomica
Vocareum Deploys Cloud-Based Online Learning Lab With University Of Notre Dame To Educate The Next Generation … – PR Newswire (press release)
Embedded within the curriculum for Notre Dame's new online Master of Science in Applied and Computational Mathematics and Statistics: Data Science Specialization, Vocareum will be used for multiple aspects of student learning and assessments including: creating practice problems, hosting homework sets, recording grades in the Learning Management System (LMS), and communicating grades and feedback to students.
By using Vocareum, Notre Dame will be able to deploy its online classes much faster and more cost effectively until recently, the big challenge in supporting such classes has been the cost and complexity of setting up labs and compute clusters to meet the need for an up-to-date range of programming languages and analytics tools. Student work, big data sets, computation and visualization environments all present additional administrative burdens. Now with Vocareum, Notre Dame faculty and graduate students get everything in one place.
"We need learning solutions that are current, easy to use, and scalable across a large number of technical disciplines. Vocareum really fits the bill," says Elliott Visconsi, Chief Academic Digital Officer at the University of Notre Dame. Professor Steven Buechler, Faculty Director of Notre Dame's new online data science graduate program, adds that "we were attracted to Vocareum because it offers an extensive set of utilities built on top of AWS, giving us the flexibility to configure a cost-effective computing hub for the diverse tools we'll be teaching across our Data Science program."
About VocareumVocareum is a learning management system (LMS) built specifically for coding instruction. With capabilities like grading automation, plagiarism detection and learning analytics that are missing in horizontal LMS offerings, Vocareum significantly improves assessment efficiency, student engagement, collaboration strategies and learning analytics. By moving student work to the cloud and leveraging cloud computing resources, we make it possible to deliver cost-effective and current computing labs to our partners.
Learn more about Vocareum.
About Notre Dame's Online Masters of Data ScienceThe online Master of Science in Applied and Computational Mathematics and Statistics: Data Science Specialization program from the University of Notre Dame is designed to prepare graduates for immediate career growth and long-term success as data scientists. Shaped by Notre Dame's mission to be a force for good in the world, the 21-month degree program, offered at half-time pace to fit the schedule of working professionals, features the flexibility of online learning, small classes led by Notre Dame faculty and exclusive in-person weekend immersions with faculty, industry experts and thought leaders at Notre Dame and in Silicon Valley. In addition to essential foundation courses in statistics, mathematics and computer science, the multidisciplinary curriculum also features data science ethics, storytelling and communications; data science as a business process; behavioral data science; case studies; and practical applications drawn from industry. Offered by the Department of Applied and Computational Mathematics and Statistics, with the collaboration of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, the Mendoza College of Business and the Department of Psychology, this degree program is designed to prepare graduates for careers as data scientists in a wide range of industry fields including management, marketing, information technology, government policy, health care, finance, education and scientific research.
Learn more about Notre Dame's online data science graduate program.
Media Contact:David Lin VP Business Development david@vocareum.com +1.408.471.4114
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Avid Announces Strategic Cloud Alliance with Microsoft for the … – GlobeNewswire (press release)
April 22, 2017 14:02 ET | Source: Avid Technology, Inc.
Comprehensive multi-year agreement includes technology collaboration, co-development and go-to-market cooperation that will set the pace for the industry in bringing media enterprises, creative teams and individual artists into the cloud
Companies will work closely together on cloud-based solutions and cloud services based on Avids market-leading creative tools and media workflow solutions, and Microsoft Azure cloud platform and media services
LAS VEGAS, April 22, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- AVID CONNECT --Avid (Nasdaq:AVID), a leading global media technology provider for the creation, distribution, and monetization of content for media organizations, enterprise users and individual creative professionals, today announced that it has entered into a strategic alliance agreement with Microsoft Corp. to cooperatively develop and market cloud-based solutions and cloud services aimed at the media and entertainment industry. As part of the agreement, Avid has chosen Microsoft Azureas its preferred cloud hosting platform, and will develop and launch a range of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offerings powered by the Avid MediaCentral Platform, the industrys most open, tightly integrated and efficient platform designed for media. A technology demonstration of the Microsoft Azure hosted Avid MediaCentral Platform with select Avid tools and media workflow solutions will be shown at the Avid booth during NAB 2017 (Booth #SU902).
With a cloud-based offering built on Avids portfolio of the industrys best and most comprehensive creative tools and media workflow solutions, the strategic cloud alliance will enable media organizations and creative professionals to quickly and easily leverage the efficiencies, flexibility and agility that the cloud enablesmade possible by Avids flexible approach to licensing, deployment and commercial options. The cloud will also enable innovation by the companies around new media workflows, new operational capabilities and new business opportunities. While Avids hosting and services offering will be based exclusively on Microsoft Azure, the companys commitment to openness will allow customers to make their own cloud hosting decisions.
The foundation of the alliance is a comprehensive, multi-year strategic agreement in which both companies will make significant mutual commitments and investments in technology, product development and go-to-market efforts. Under the technology and product development cooperation elements of the agreement, to support Avids product development efforts and investments, Microsoft will invest additional resources and funding to help accelerate time-to-market for targeted cloud-based solutions and specific Azure-based cloud services for the media and entertainment industry. As part of the commercial cooperation, Avid will offer Microsoft Azure hosting and media services exclusively as an integral part of its own portfolio of cloud-based solutions and cloud services. In addition, the companies will work in close cooperation on the overall go-to-market approach, which will help clients migrate to the cloud easily and more cost-effectively, and allow them to work with both companies seamlessly.
We at Avid are very pleased to be entering into this strategic cloud alliance with Microsoft, and believe this will be big for the industry, and even bigger for our clients. The combination of these two strong technology innovators will set the pace for the industry, said Avid Chairman and CEO Louis Hernandez, Jr. The depth and breadth of this technical and commercial collaboration will drive significant value for our mutual clients and help them successfully navigate their own journey to the cloud.
Scott Guthrie, Executive Vice President Cloud and Enterprise Group at Microsoft Corp. added, With the industrys preeminent global community of media enterprises and creative professionals that make up Avids client base, the companys unique platform approach and its extensive domain knowledge, combined with our own powerful Azure cloud platform, we believe that this unique alliance is well-positioned to lead the media industry into the cloud. Microsoft is pleased to collaborate with such a market leader in media and entertainment, and feel strongly that together our companies will produce something powerful for the industrycreating an intelligent, media-savvy cloud solution.
With a trusted company like Microsoft leveraging decades of enterprise experience to design a unique and unmatched enterprise cloud experience, combined with a full spectrum of capabilities and extensive media services available through 38 Azure regions across the globemore than any other major cloud providerAzure is exceptionally positioned to meet the needs of media enterprises and creative professionals across the globe. Azure provides flexible deployment options between public-cloud, private-cloud or on-premise datacenter, empowering media customers to plan their own migration in a way, and at a pace that best fits their specific needs.
"Our competitive evaluations of the leading cloud providers showed that Microsoft Azure is the most open, trusted and global cloud platform that also enables true hybrid-cloud computingwhich we believe is very important to media enterprises. This will give our customers maximum flexibility to move at their own pace and orchestrate workflows across on-premise and cloud-hosted environments, which will unleash a new generation of capabilities for distributing and optimizing media, continued Hernandez, Jr. With Microsofts strategic alliance and our joint investments to accelerate cloud development and innovation, this cooperation will give our joint customers a competitive edge.
Hernandez, Jr. added, Avid is making a major play in the cloud, which is a significant step for the company. This represents the culmination of our Avid Everywhere vision and strategy for the industry, which will open up significant growth prospects for the company as it looks to maximize on the opportunities that the media industrys migration to the cloud will unlock.
The alliance between the companies is expected to deliver a continuous stream of hosting and services offerings over the next 18 months, with the first wave of offerings slated for a phased release during the second half of 2017.
About Avid ThroughAvid Everywhere, Avid delivers the most open and efficient media platform, connecting content creation with collaboration, asset protection, distribution and consumption.Avids preeminent customer community uses Avids comprehensive tools and workflow solutions to create, distribute and monetizethe most watched, loved and listened to media in the worldfrom prestigious and award-winning feature films,to popular television shows, news programs and televised sporting events, and celebrated music recordings and live concerts. With the most flexible deployment and pricing options, Avids industry-leading solutions include Pro Tools, Media Composer, Avid NEXIS, Interplay, ProSet and RealSet, Maestro, PlayMaker, and Sibelius. For more information about Avid solutions and services, visitwww.avid.com, connect with Avid onFacebook,Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, or subscribe toAvid Blogs.
2017 Avid Technology, Inc. All rights reserved. Avid, the Avid logo, Avid Everywhere, and MediaCentral are trademarks or registered trademarks of Avid Technology, Inc. or its subsidiaries in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Product features, specifications, system requirements and availability are subject to change without notice.
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Avid Announces Strategic Cloud Alliance with Microsoft for the ... - GlobeNewswire (press release)
Business Cloud Hosting Solutions For Improved Efficiency – HostReview.com (press release) (blog)
Business Cloud Hosting Solutions For Improved Efficiency
As every market analysts and experts say, cloud is here to stay and it is the future technology. Given its advantage over the traditional technologies, many organizations have adopted cloud to enhance their business productivity. One of the major benefit of cloud technology is that it improves business efficiency. Unlike the traditional solutions, cloud services are deployed quickly and is ready to use in minutes. Some reports claim that nearly 90% of organizations have moved their data to the cloud and many are willing to invest in the solution. There are a lot more benefits of cloud solution for enterprises. Here are a few of them.
Promotes Agility
An agile business tends to do work more quickly and efficiently than the other way round and agility can be achieved from high levels of automation. As cloud services are automated and self-provisioned, it enables users to scale their resources up and down as per requirement conveniently. This means the end-users do not require any human intervention to scale compute resources as all that can be done automatically. With better agility, organizations perform better and address customer requirements quickly, thus enhancing service and responsiveness.
Runs on existing infrastructure
Cloud services don't require you to replace the entire hardware infrastructure as it can run on the existing instance, reducing the expenses here. Organization can shift from their current environment to cloud without any costly upgrades or hardware addition.
Lowers operational issues
Using standardized cloud solution can decrease operational complications considerably, which boosts business continuity and enables organizations to focus more on important things than internal issues and defects. Cloud solutions let you install the same service repeatedly without any changes to the outcome.
Efficient use of resources
As cloud improves business agility and cuts down operational problems, it allows employees to focus on essential activities and spend their time on more important things, which will directly result in improved productivity. This advantage may fluctuate with every business, but employees are one of the most valuable business asset and with cloud solutions, you'd be able to use your asset more effectively.
Apart from this, cloud service provider use physical resources more efficiently and cuts down energy usage compared to the legacy technology.
Portable applications
In case of a cloud environment, organizations can move their applications and data from the traditional instance to cloud instance and back again easily, this provides organization the required flexibility to use and manage data. This further lets enterprises to take advantage of both the environment.
Reduces capital expenses
With easy scalable features, organizations can keep their expense low and spend only as per business demand. Moreover, cloud solutions move IT overhead from capital expenditure (CapEx) to operational expenditure (OpEx), which makes it easier for the IT managers to keep a better record of the expenses.
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Web Werks is an India-based CMMI Level 3 Web Hosting company with 5 carrier neutral data centers in India and USA. Started in 1996, Web Werks has served several Fortune 500 companies with successful projects in the areas of Web Hosting, Data Center Services, Dedicated Servers, Colocation servers, Disaster Recovery Services, VPS Hosting Services, and Cloud Hosting.
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Business Cloud Hosting Solutions For Improved Efficiency - HostReview.com (press release) (blog)
Your Business Resource for Greenville Metro and Upstate South Carolina – Greenville
Green Cloud Technologies (Green Cloud), a 100% channel only, Cisco-Powered cloud provider, was recently named the Best Cloud Hosting Provider by The Cloud Awards program. Celebrating the brightest and the best in Cloud Computing, The Cloud Awards are the first and largest recognition platform of its kind for companies across the globe.
Green Cloud Technologies was founded in 2011, and today is the largest independent channel-only cloud IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-Service) provider in the country. Experiencing a 5-year growth rate in excess of 6,700% since it was founded six years ago by Greenville based telecom veterans, Green Cloud helps channel partners bring their customers to the cloud with turn-key, cloud-based infrastructure solutions and world-class data center facilities built on industry-leading platforms such as Cisco, VMware, and Tintri.
Green Cloud offers an innovative portfolio of virtual server, backup, and recovery solutions that define the future of data protection, and following the acquisition of Atlanta-based Cirrity in Feb 2017, today Green Cloud has 65 employees and over 500 partners that resell its infrastructure.
In 2016, Green Cloud was ranked 73rd on Inc. Magazines 35th annual Inc. 5000, the most prestigious ranking of the fastest-Growing private companies. Green Cloud also received recognition in 2015 as the #1 SC Fastest Growing Company, an annual competition of the 25 most dynamic and successful companies in South Carolina.
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Your Business Resource for Greenville Metro and Upstate South Carolina - Greenville
Kona Grill Embraces Cloud Computing for Versatile, Secure File Storage and Sharing – Hospitality Technology
| April 20, 2017
Kona Grill first opened its doors in 1998 in Scottsdale, Arizona, welcoming guests to enjoy its global menu of contemporary favorites, awardwinning sushi and specialty cocktails in an upscale casual atmosphere. Growth plans have positioned Kona Grill as one of the fastest growing restaurant companies in the United States, with annual revenues of approximately $143M. The company owns and operates 45 locations, in the United States and Puerto Rico, and employs more than 3,000 people. Recently, the IT team at Kona Grill, led by Glen Holroyd, director of information technology, found itself in a transitional period. The company wanted to move from a traditional data center model, with many employees using VPN to transfer files, to a cloud-based environment. Our VPN was becoming very difficult to manage, we had file storage at the data center, and we definitely didnt want to continue to maintain a data center at Kona Grill. The overall hosting of applications and managing a data center was becoming outdated, and we needed to sort out the best way forward to embrace the cloud, while still having a versatile and secure file storage solution, Holroyd explains. Restaurant general managers were spending a lot of time scanning and downloading reports, and then individually emailing these files to the home office. These files contained sensitive data and managers struggled to find the most secure way to send reports. Employees used FTP services and other workarounds for file transfer and storage such as thumb drives and Dropbox, but these temporary solutions were adding additional costs and weren't standardized. As Kona Grill prioritizes international expansion, the training, design and development teams had an especially pressing need for a more efficient file sharing solution. Employees were also losing data and information if their hard drives failed and could not be restored, and information needed to be organized to better collaborate across all locations. Essentially, we needed to look at how we did business. To open new restaurant locations, we access training materials, and large files such as architectural and CAD drawings. Restaurant general managers work with our POS systems and upload daily reports to the home office. We needed these development, design and training files to have an intuitive filing system, with fast access to large files, as well as determine an efficient way for our general managers to spend less time on reports and more time ensuring our guests were happy, Holroyd adds. Kona Grill tried some temporary fixes with Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive, but these solutions were not robust enough and didnt have the features the company required. To begin to exit the data center world, the IT team began consulting with colleagues about possible market solutions that would allow for a smooth transition. Kona Grill looked at options from Box, Dropbox and Citrix ShareFile, but Egnyte was ultimately chosen. The company piloted Egnyte Connect first with its development and IT teams for a couple months to test the solution and to see how best to rollout Egnyte across the rest of the company. Once the entire company began to use it, Kona Grill quickly saw some specific benefits: Collaboration and Sharing: Employees at the home office and in the field can upload files to Egnyte quickly to share with both internal and external groups. Instead of now sending files via email or FTP, a link can be sent to access a particular Egnyte folder. Many teams are collaborating with outside consultants and agencies as new properties are acquired and developed and Egnyte has streamlined processes for launching new restaurants, rolling out new menu concepts, or analyzing financial reports. Greater Efficiency and Speed: Restaurant managers spent a lot of time in the past generating and sending daily reports. The IT team estimates a time savings of 30 percent for many employees, including the IT team itself, which is now fielding far fewer support calls. Egnyte features such as Web Edit have also enabled employees to work on files locally much faster, while saving changes in the cloud. Data Security: Many reports and documents shared within the company at Kona Grill contain sensitive financial or proprietary information. Having a secure way to not only share and collaborate with external groups, but also a way to securely send daily reports gives great peace of mind. Sharing data with an Egnyte link that will expire after a set time also ensures greater monitoring and control. Kona Grill has realized numerous benefits since deploying Egnyte. Employees are now able to share an Egnyte to share files, with the option for the link to expire. Users can use any device, including iPads to access a variety of files, such as videos, training materials and menus. Financial information is more secure, and reports like SOC audits can be accessed through a link to a particular folder. Instead of sending a file with a password for gift card numbers, this information lives in a secure Egnyte file and can be shared with outside distributors securely and easily. Collaboration and file sharing have been made much simpler, especially for teams such as development who often share files with outside contractors and consultants. Files are no longer lost due to Egnytes snapshot and versioning technology. While employees in the past sometimes lost hours of work, the Egnyte solution enables staff to easily retrieve accidentally deleted files or to locate misplaced files seamlessly and quickly. The culinary teams can now upload menus and training instructions to use on site at new locations or to introduce new menu items. While restaurant general managers had to upload payroll, sales reports, and inventory counts, now these reports are easily saved in shared folders and accessed by the home office more readily. Managers are saving hours in the office and are able to enhance guest experiences and spend more time in the front of house.
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Kona Grill Embraces Cloud Computing for Versatile, Secure File Storage and Sharing - Hospitality Technology
iland Named a Leader in Cloud-Based Disaster Recovery Report by Independent Research Firm – Benzinga
Report finds iland receives highest scores possible in the categories of data security, pricing, service levels and contract terms
Houston, Texas (PRWEB) April 20, 2017
iland, an award-winning global cloud service provider of secure and compliant cloud hosting, disaster recovery (DR) and backup services, today announced that it has been named a "leader" in Forrester Research, Inc.'s report, "The Forrester Wave: Disaster-Recovery-As-A-Service Providers, Q2, 2017."
The Forrester report states, "[Infrastructure & Operations] leaders are increasingly responsible for supporting their firms' digital businesses and are often measured by the effectiveness of customer engagement. DRaaS promises to help I&O pros build a resilient technology infrastructure so they can deliver always-on services where downtimes are either imperceptible or last just a few seconds."
In Forrester's evaluation, iland received the highest scores possible in the categories of data security, pricing, service levels and contract terms.
The Forrester report states, iland DRaaS services are delivered "using Double Take, Veeam, and Zerto. Its self-service console integrates the underpinning replication solutions and makes it easy for customers to perform all operations on a single console. The iland Secure Cloud Console automatically measures the RPO and displays it over time - customers can set alerts in the event of a breach of a pre-set service-level agreement - and offers embedded security and compliance reporting. Once failover is executed, systems are scanned regularly for viruses, vulnerabilities, file integrity, firewall events, web reputation, application control, and intrusions. Upon failover, customers immediately gain access to built-in seven-day backups, providing additional resiliency. [It] works with [Business Continuity] consultants that evaluate DRaaS options and provider recommendations. It also has an impressive roadmap."
The iland Secure DRaaS solutions are part of a suite of Secure Cloud services, which include cloud backup and cloud hosting (IaaS) delivered to a global customer base from data centers in the Americas, Europe and Asia. Customers can replicate both virtual and physical environments to the production-quality iland cloud and perform non-intrusive testing and recovery.
"The economies of iland's DRaaS cost model, inexpensive bandwidth, and advanced replication technologies have made enterprise grade DR available to the masses. As a result, many organizations are new to cloud-based DR, so it's critical that we guide our customers to deploy cloud-friendly architectures and follow best practices," said Brian Ussher, president and co-founder of iland. "Every iland customer is assigned a project manager and an experienced technical team of DRaaS and network specialists skilled in managing the most complex deployments. Additionally, iland continues to invest in our Secure Cloud Console to increase the visibility, security and reliability of our DRaaS offerings. We are proud of this recognition by Forrester and honored by our customers' and partners' continued loyalty and support."
Last month, iland announced the latest release of their Secure Cloud Services, which encompassed support for Model Contract Clauses and the U.S. and U.K. Privacy Shield Frameworks that address the challenges of the constantly changing cloud compliance and data privacy regulations in addition to new features to help customers obtain more visibility into cloud billing and performance management functionality.
For more information on iland's disaster recovery and other secure cloud services:
About iland iland is a global cloud service provider of secure and compliant hosting for infrastructure (IaaS), disaster recovery (DRaaS), and backup as a service (BaaS). They are recognized by industry analysts as a leader in disaster recovery. The award-winning iland Secure Cloud Console natively combines deep layered security, predictive analytics, and compliance to deliver unmatched visibility and ease of management for all of iland's cloud services. Headquartered in Houston, Texas and London, UK, iland delivers cloud services from its data centers throughout the Americas, Europe, and Asia. Learn more atiland.com.
Media Contact Touchdown PR iland(at)touchdownpr(dot)com
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iland Named a Leader in Cloud-Based Disaster Recovery Report by Independent Research Firm - Benzinga
Opinion: Why the cloud is good news for peak – eDelivery
System downtime for retailers can be disastrous, its effects rippling through the supply chain, so how can cloud computing help, particularly in peak period asks David Jack, CIO of MetaPack.
It is widely acknowledged that the tricky Peak season with its huge demands on retail systems has become a much more efficient operation over the last two years. Its no coincidence that during that period, more retailers have moved at least part of their IT infrastructure onto the cloud facilitating easier scalability to cope with the rapid rise in order volumes and deliveries.
But in the fast-moving world of technology, where cloud computing has been adopted readily by many market segments, the retail industry has been noticeably reticent.
There are a number of reasons for this, not least what retailers stand to lose from even the slightest glitch in their systems. An hour of downtime for a retailer selling online can result in millions of pounds-worth of lost revenue. With the exception of financial services and high-frequency trading, this is not the case for most other markets, where downtime is annoying and disruptive but not immediately damaging to the bottom line.
In retail, there has been a tendency for organisations to rely on systems that are under their own control and can be managed internally or maintained in a traditional data centre. The perceived stability and security of DC service level agreements and contracts, by comparison with those offered by cloud platforms, was, for a long time, reassuring for retailers.
So, understandably, CIOs have taken an if it aint broke, dont fix it approach, unwilling to disrupt the entire operation in order to move from a stable data centre-hosted environment. Without a compelling reason, such as price or better systems integration, why would they make such a major change?
Data storage costs
When serious retail cloud computing broke cover around five years ago, many early adopters were attracted by the seemingly low costs to host their systems. However, when it came to storing or transferring data the same appealing rates did not apply. For eCommerce operations, particularly with the rapid growth in omnichannel retailing, the cost of data storage and movement was, and still is, a huge consideration and this alone skewed the economic drivers for migrating to the cloud.
Data was also a challenge for another reason residency. For eCommerce retailers operating in mainland Europe or in the UK, data protection regulations, or even their own terms and conditions, dictate where that data can be held and managed. Because cloud platforms can sometimes blur the jurisdictions in which data actually resides, especially during fail over scenarios, there could be serious ramifications for the retailer if they simply cant be sure where their data is.
Maturing cloud
So, what has prompted the shift in retailer attitudes that has seen many more migrating their systems onto the cloud in the last two years? Put simply, cloud vendors have pivoted and have developed their solutions to meet the exacting needs of high transaction operations, not just online retailing, but financial trading systems too.
A new generation of specialist cloud application and platform providers are able to offer tougher platforms, multi-level authentication and improved security. They have taken seriously the doubts of organisations with sensitive data and the criticisms regarding insufficient cloud computing contracts. In addition, cloud offerings have matured, so pricing, not just for hosting systems, but also for flexible data storage has become much more competitive.
A secondary market for monitoring, alerting and instrumenting in the cloud has evolved, allowing retailers to quickly identify and address issues that arise, and giving them the control they want to ensure their service to customers is always-on and always delivering optimum performance.
The other major factor is peer and supplier influence. We know from our own experience that when we moved our services out of data centres and onto the cloud, it was challenging to convince our retail customers that it was safe. But they have benefited from our change, and they see other retailers moving in the same direction, and as a result, the conversations we are increasingly having with retailers revolve around them gaining those same benefits for their own operations.
The Peak question
But one of the most convincing reasons we are seeing greater take-up of cloud computing in retail is the Peak season. Still the most challenging time in the eCommerce calendar, those few pre-Christmas weeks of trading require phenomenal levels of agility in the retail supply chain. The difficulties of Black Friday in 2014, in particular, alarmed retailers to such a degree that major changes had to be made. What we have seen over the subsequent two Peak seasons is that those retailers who are on a cloud platform have had the flexibility to scale up their services in the approach to Peak, or to specific promotions, and scale down easily when online traffic falls away. The cloud facilitates retailers abilities to manage 100 times the traffic load for a few seconds, in a way that data centre-based systems simply could not.
As an industry, eCommerce is still in the early stages where cloud adoption is concerned. It is still primarily the largest retailers who have made that change, and it is much harder for the smaller operations who are already under pressure to deliver between 40 and 100% year on year growth. Increasingly however, cloud hosting costs will become even more competitive, levels of security will be sufficiently high across the board, and the ability to scale to meet customer demands will be so compelling that it becomes just a matter of time.
David Jack is CIO of MetaPack
Image credit: Fotolia and MetaPack
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Opinion: Why the cloud is good news for peak - eDelivery
Salesforce eyes regional growth after Australian Amazon Web Services cloud deal – The Australian Financial Review
Salesforce CFO Mark Hawkins says Australia is the starting point for a concerted push across Asia.
The chief financial officer of cloud computing giant Salesforce has said a local presence for hosting data will help charge the company's growth as its focus rests on Asia.
Salesforce CFO Mark Hawkins, a top lieutenant of exuberant chief executive Marc Benioff, was talking to The Australian Financial Review about the longer term repercussions of a long-awaited announcement last month that its Australian customers' data would no longer be hosted offshore.
The company signed a deal with Amazon Web Services to host its Intelligence Customer Success Platform in AWS' Sydney data centres, ending years of speculation about when the company would lay down some local roots.
The $US58.5 billion ($77 billion) valued company, which has been the highest profile and fastest growing pioneer of the cloud-hosted software as a service revolution, is looking to the Asian region to be a key driver of its plans to push its revenue well past the $US10 billion mark, having completed last year at $US8.4 billion.
Last year Salesforce's vice-chairman, president and chief operating officer Keith Block told The Financial Review it was planning to make its Australian operations the hub of its plans, and Mr Hawkins said the recent AWS deal was an example of barriers to further growth coming down.
"I think it's just one more example of us investing in Australia, which is really the cornerstone of our strategy in Asia," Mr Hawkins said.
"We're hiring people, we are growing our capabilities ... Australia is like the launch pad for all of Asia for us. We see it very, very strategically."
Mr Hawkins said that during the last completed quarter Salesforce's Asia Pacific operations had grown at a rate of 29 per cent, generating $US749 million in revenue, but that the region represented the biggest growth trajectory for the company worldwide.
His comments echo those recently made by Google's regional boss Karim Temsamani, who said the tech giant had recognised Asia Pacific was becoming the centre of the world in terms of being a leading indicator of consumer behaviour, and provided a far more lucrative growth profile than the US or Europe.
"I do think Asia-Pacific is the land of opportunity. I've spent a lot of time in Asia throughout my career and it's a huge opportunity and that's why we've been investing," Mr Hawkins said.
"Our headcount has grown 27 per cent on a compound annual growth rate the last three years across Asia Pacific, and while the company as a whole will be growing in the 20 per cent range for the foreseeable future in my opinion Asia-Pac will be leading the pack."
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Salesforce eyes regional growth after Australian Amazon Web Services cloud deal - The Australian Financial Review