Amazon
Amazon AWS Lowers On-Demand and Reserved Prices
Sep 2nd
Amazon AWS Lowers On-Demand and Reserved Prices
Effective immediately, we have lowered the On-Demand and Reserved prices for High Memory Double Extra Large (m2.2xlarge) and Quadruple Extra Large (m2.4xlarge) instances for Linux/UNIX and Windows by up to 19%. If you have existing Reserved Instances, your hourly usage rate starting 
September 1st will be lowered to the new usage rate and your estimated bill will reflect these changes later this month. We continuously strive to be more efficient, and are excited to pass cost savings on to you in the form of lower prices.
Beyond this price reduction, there are several other ways that you can save money when using Amazon EC2. Compared to On-Demand instance pricing, Reserved Instances enable you to reduce the cost of your instances by up to 56%. When using Reserved Instances, you pay a low, one-time fee and in turn receive a significant discount on the hourly usage charge for that instance during a 1 or 3 years period. After the one-time payment for an instance, that instance is reserved for you; you may choose to run that instance for the discounted usage rate for the duration of your term, or when you do not use the instance, you will not pay usage charges on it. Spot Instances also are available, which allow you to bid on unused Amazon EC2 capacity and run your instances for as long as your bid exceeds the current Spot Price. For customers who have flexibility in when they can run their instances, Spot Instances can significantly lower their Amazon EC2 costs.
You can find more detailed information about these options at http://aws.amazon.com/ec2.
Source Amazon
Related posts
10 Hot Cloud Reseller Partner Programs
Sep 1st
10 Hot Cloud Reseller Partner Programs
Here is a list of 10 Hot Cloud Computing Reseller Programs on the internet. If we missed you don’t worry about it I’m sure we’ll hear from you. You can expect this list to be updated regularly. so if you have a program that you believe is worthy of a mention, let us know and we’ll see what we can do.
Google Apps
The Google Apps Authorized Reseller Program offers IT solution providers the ability to take Google Apps – a cloud-based suite of email, calendar, IM, and collaboration tools – to new and existing customers. Watch the Quick Tour video. 
As one of the global leaders in SaaS, Google Apps has experienced accelerating adoption with thousands of businesses signing up daily and over 2 million companies already using this solution to improve their business with better messaging and collaboration tools. Hear why more and more companies are going Google.
SoftLayer Cloud
The SoftLayer Reseller Program provides qualified hosting resellers with exceptional benefits as well as confidence that they are delivering their end customers a service with the highest performance and reliability. With SoftLayer, “value-adding” hosting resellers can better fulfill their end customer’s needs and grow their own services on demand.
The program gives resellers non-exclusive rights to offer standard SoftLayer services as well as products not sold directly under the SoftLayer name brand. Resellers receive generous volume discounts on dedicated server and upgrade purchases, setup fees and more. Resellers also receive preferred services, including a customized customer portal and auto-provisioned server delivery within 2 to 4 hours on components in stock.
RedHat Cloud Partner Program
A Red Hat Certified Cloud Provider offers a trusted destination for Red Hat customers, ISVs, and partners to use Red Hat technologies in public clouds, and meets rigorous testing and certification requirements to ensure the delivery of a safe, scalable, supported, and consistent environment for enterprise cloud deployments.
Through the Certified Cloud Provider Program, Red Hat has established the industry’s first program to certify that vendors have tested the cloud and have support processes in place to quickly resolve problems should they occur.
OpSource Reseller Program
OpSource’s Distribution Partners provide systems integration and outsourced solutions that include cloud or managed hosting. These partners resell OpSource solutions. Distribution Partners, including systems integrators, MSPs and VARs must be generate more revenue from services rather than rely on decreasing margins on hardware and software. Cloud computing represents an opportunity to translate expertise in infrastructure, network and software solutions into cloud hosting services revenue.
Related posts
Practically Speaking about Amazon Web Services – Part 2: A Cloud Giant
Sep 1st
Practically Speaking about Amazon Web Services – Part 2: A Cloud Giant
We saw the various innovative cloud products and services offered by Amazon Web Services in Part 1. At this stage, it is quite natural that we have the business economics going on in our mind as how big is the cloud business industry and what part is being played by Amazon. Let us have a look at how Amazon Web Services has fared in analysts views. After all, before Amazon Web Services came along, Amazon was the least known for putting up a fight with IT Giants: such as: Microsoft, IBM, Google etc., where they not?
IDC, in a press release dated June 23rd,2010, says that global revenue of public cloud services which was around $ 16 Billion in 2009 will grow to $ 55.5 Billion in 2014. The research report further states that IT cloud services are crossing the chasm with modest revenue; fastest growth of about CAGR 27.4%.
-Reference: Worldwide and Regional Public IT Cloud Services 2010–2014 Forecast by IDC – (IDC #223549)
Another report released by UBS Investment Research analysts Brian Pitz and Brian Fitzgerald says that, for the type of cloud services offered by Amazon Web Services the market size can be pegged at around $ 15 to 20 Billion in the year 2014.
As per analysts, Amazon Web Services clocked revenue of about $ 0.5 Billion in 2010; could go up to $ 2.54 Billion in 2014. And this is about a 5% of total market share! And a market share of about 15% in similar services! Analysts predict that from the last quarter of 2010, Amazon Web Services revenue will have an impact on Amazon Inc., as a company. Well, not minding accuracy of these market share figures, one can clearly say that Amazon is an early pioneer player poised to grow big.
Related posts
Top 30 Cloud Service Providers Gaining Mind Share in 3Q 2010
Aug 31st
Top 30 Cloud Service Providers Gaining Mind Share
Article by: Ray DePena with Cloud Expo
Image Credit to incomingit.com
It has certainly been an exciting week in the Cloudsphere with Dell and HP battling it out over 3PAR. It’s clear who is on Dell and HP’s radar, and I’m looking forward to seeing the rest of 2010 Cloud acquisitions as the segment continues to consolidate.
Its been almost 2 quarters since the last report, though the BTC Logic team has done an excellent job in their Top Ten Cloud Companies in 2Q10 Report to pick up the slack. CRN released The 100 Coolest Cloud Computing Vendors list joining the The Top 150 Players in Cloud Computing, 85 Cloud Computing Vendors Shaping the Emerging Cloud, 50 of The Biggest and Best Cloud Computing Companies, The VAR Guy’s SaaS 20 Index, and even Congress has gotten into the Cloud game – Congress Holds Hearing on Cloud Computing.
With that M&A activity as background, here are my rankings for the Top 30 Cloud Service Providers Gaining Mind Share in 3Q 2010.
Related posts
Practically Speaking about Amazon Web Services – Part 1: The Evolution of Amazon AWS
Aug 30th
Practically Speaking about Cloud Computing – Series by Cloudtweaks
Practically speaking: Gartner declared that Cloud Computing is at its peak of the Hype Cycle with inflated expectations in 2010. We are witnessing the same in reality now. The talk is no longer about its definitions or security concerns. As cloud computing is entering into the offices of CIOs, CTOs, CFOs and CEOs with a bang, it is execution time. In this Practically Speaking Cloud Computing Series in Cloudtweaks, let us have information-exchange of practical knowledge and experience.
Practically Speaking about Amazon Web Services – Part I: “The Evolution of Amazon AWS”
Last week Amazon celebrated their fourth birthday of its Amazon Elastic Computing Cloud (Amazon EC2). No doubt that Amazon Web Services is the pioneer and poster child of cloud computing. It is quite appropriate that we take Amazon Web Services as first to go for Practically Speaking:
Cloudtweaks Cloud Computing talks.
If we have a look at Google Trends for cloud computing, we can note that the whole thing started in the year 2007. Since then, particularly in the past four years, 2009 and 2010 have been the years of peak. Almost all major hardware and software IT vendors announced their strategy and service offerings in these two years. They include Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, IBM, Google, HP, Dell, Intel and so many others.
Google Trends for cloud computing all regions_ Cloudtweaks chart.
However, Amazon Web Services started its Amazon EC2 Service from the year 2006 itself.
Google Trends for Amazon Web Services all regions Cloudtweaks Chart.
Related posts
The Week Ahead – 3 Part Series Called:”Practically Speaking about Amazon Web Services”
Aug 29th
CloudTweaks Update
In the coming weeks CloudTweaks will be going through some continued developments to offer our readers a more international perspective. We’ve added some new contributors to our team.
Malick and AWS expert from Chennai, India, will be adding a 3 Part Series called: “Practically Speaking about Amazon Web Services” starting on Monday.
Nimantha from Sri Lanka, is a very gifted technical writer and will be a very important part of this team. Some of his work can be found at: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/ws-cloudcomputing/
Vallabh is an assistant editor for an online technology newspaper. He will be covering Cloud Computing Events and doing interviews with key individuals in and around Bangalore, India.
Anthony Park, has been with us for awhile and is our contributing editor in North America.
He is a vital part of CloudTweaks and will be attending the HP Cloud Tech Day next week offering insightful information on the event. Anthony is also responsible for interviews with key executives in the industry.
Stay tuned for an exciting week…
CloudTweaks
Related posts
3PAR Determines HP Proposal Is Superior Offer At Roughly $2 Billion
Aug 28th
HP’s Bid Valued at Approximately $2 Billion
FREMONT, CA–(Marketwire – August 27, 2010) – 3PAR® (NYSE: PAR), the leading global provider of utility storage, today announced its board of directors has determined that the unsolicited proposal by Hewlett-Packard Company to acquire all of 3PAR’s outstanding common stock at $30 per share constitutes a “superior proposal” (as that term is defined in 3PAR’s previously announced merger agreement with Dell). The 3PAR board of directors notified Dell of its intention to terminate the merger agreement with Dell, immediately following the expiration of the three business day period contemplated by, and the satisfaction of the other conditions set forth in, the merger agreement with Dell, in order to enter into the merger agreement with HP on the terms set forth in HP’s acquisition proposal.
The terms of 3PAR’s merger agreement with Dell require the 3PAR board of directors to continue to recommend that 3PAR stockholders accept Dell’s cash tender offer, and tender their 3PAR shares pursuant to Dell’s tender offer, so long as the merger agreement with Dell remains in effect. Accordingly, at this time, since the merger agreement between 3PAR and Dell remains in effect, 3PAR’s board of directors continues to unanimously recommend that 3PAR stockholders accept the cash tender offer made by Dell and tender their shares of 3PAR common stock pursuant to such offer.
About 3PAR
3PAR® (NYSE: PAR) is the leading global provider of utility storage, a category of highly virtualized, dynamically tiered, multi-tenant storage arrays built for public and private cloud computing. Our virtualized storage platform was built from the ground up to be agile and efficient and to eliminate the limitations of traditional storage arrays for utility infrastructures. As a pioneer of thin provisioning and other storage virtualization technologies, we design our products to reduce power consumption to help companies meet their green computing initiatives and to cut storage total cost of ownership. 3PAR customers have used our self-managing, efficient, and adaptable utility storage systems to reduce administration time and provisioning complexity, to improve server and storage utilization, and to scale and adapt flexibly in response to continuous growth and changing business needs. For more information, visit the 3PAR Website at: www.3PAR.com.
Related posts
Eucalyptus 2.0 Major New Version of its Open Source Private Cloud Platform
Aug 25th
Delivers High Scalability and Flexibility for Private Cloud Computing
Santa Barbara, Calif. (PRWEB) August 25, 2010
Eucalyptus Systems, Inc., creators of the leading open source private cloud platform, today announced a major update of the open source Eucalyptus software. Eucalyptus 2.0 features increased scalability to support massive private and hybrid clouds as well as enhanced performance tuning and 
flexibility in deploying Eucalyptus without modification on existing IT infrastructure. Eucalyptus 2.0 is available immediately under the open source GPL license and can be downloaded at http://open.eucalyptus.com.
“Eucalyptus software is evolving rapidly to support private and hybrid clouds in a range of sizes and configurations,” said Marten Mickos, Eucalyptus Systems CEO. “Along with many new usability enhancements, Eucalyptus 2.0 today meets the scaling requirements of enterprise data centers and cloud service providers. We continue to benefit from our early lead in the market as we work closely with the open source community, customers and partners in perfecting our offering.”
Eucalyptus is infrastructure software that enables organizations to deploy scalable private and hybrid cloud computing environments within a secure IT infrastructure. With Eucalyptus, customers can make more efficient use of their computing resources, increase productivity, and deploy new applications faster, while protecting sensitive data and reducing capital expenditures. Eucalyptus supports the same application programming interfaces (APIs) as public clouds, and today Eucalyptus is fully compatible with the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud infrastructure.
Eucalyptus 2.0 Delivers High Scalability, Flexibility & Performance Tuning
Related posts
Cloud Computing is Changing the Way Business is Done
Aug 24th
Cloud Computing is Changing the Way Business is Done
The Old Model
Not too long ago hardly any one was using Google Apps for accessing and updating their documents, now it appears almost everyone uses Google docs when connected to the Internet instead of The Microsoft Office tools. Similarly some 2-3 years ago there were just a few top notch video games available on the Internet, but now users can play games without installing the software on their PC.
It’s real, Cloud Gaming is on the move!
In the near future almost everyone will be using online applications for their office and business purposes. Google, Amazon, Salesforce, IBM and Oracle are the main players in the market to offer their clients almost all types of IT infrastructure and business solutions. This concept of shared hardware and software resources among many users is the basis of cloud computing. These resources are owned and provided by vendors who charge the users on utility based methods.
The New Cloud Model
GLOBAL SHIFT
The shift in Cloud computing is actually a paradigm shift from the client-server technology. Cloud computing is completely changing the way computing work is done in the business world. The major IT giants have already prepared themselves for this inevitable shift. They have already built data centers, launched different cloud based technologies, offered PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service) and SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) to businesses around the world.
Doing Corporate Functions in the Cloud
Office workers will now be able to perform routine and new activities using PaaS and SaaS. This is more efficient not only in terms of time and money, but in quality and agility as well. Corporations will not need to worry about their increasing storage demands as Cloud computing offers economic and practical pricing model. These services are low priced, scalable, agile, and have utility based billing methods.
In Search of the Best Proportion
Concerns with the reliability, security and legal issues, there will still be a need for private clouds or at least private servers. Many financial and health related companies are bound by law to keep their client’s record personal and in their own storage locations. This limitation will force such companies to use hybrid cloud – a mixture of private and public cloud. Using hybrid clouds will let enterprises keep their confidential and desired data in their own private storage location.
By CloudTweaks
