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UPDATE: Microsoft COO: ‘We Are Going To Lead With the Cloud’

cloudtweaks — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 05:36:03 +0000

SAN FRANCISCO (Dow Jones)–Cloud computing tops a four-point plan Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) has developed for maintaining its position in the business-software market, Kevin Turner, the company’s chief operating officer, said Thursday.

“We are going to lead with the cloud,” Turner said at the Redmond, Wash. software giant’s analyst day. “It helps position Microsoft to sell more on-premise products.”

Microsoft plans to drive sales of its two key franchises, the Windows 7 operating system and the Office 2010 suite of business software, and hopes to improve customer satisfaction and expand market share.

Turner said that Dow Chemical Co. (DOW) and Hyatt Hotels & Resorts, part of Hyatt Hotels Corp. (H), are new customer wins for Microsoft’s cloud products.

“Both of those were very competitive bids against Google (GOOG) and IBM (IBM),” Turner said, calling out a slew of cloud competitors including Salesforce.com Inc. (CRM), VMware Inc. (VMW) and Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN). “Seventy percent of the wins in the cloud that we had in Q4 were new Microsoft customers.”

“Two years ago we were nowhere [in competition with VMware,] Turner added. “What’s Microsoft been able to do in just two years in this space? A 15.2% share gain per [International Data Corp.].”

Officials at VMware weren’t immediately available for comment.

Microsoft’s cloud customers include 13 of the top 20 global telecom firms, the company said, along with 15 of the top 20 global banks and 16 of the top 20 global pharmaceutical companies.

“The sweet spot we have for this company is right in the heart of providing IT as a service for customers,” Turner said. “Some of the biggest companies in the world are choosing Microsoft.”

A lot is expected from Thursday’s meeting as Microsoft struggles to redefine itself.

In recent months, Microsoft killed a high-profile mobile phone project less than two months after its launch, reorganized its entertainment division and saw its market capitalization slip below that of Apple Inc. (AAPL).

For investors, those events seem to have overshadowed that Microsoft is making lots of money and that Windows 7 has sold well. Turner said the latest iteration of the operating system was selling nearly eight copies every second. The company’s fiscal fourth-quarter profit climbed 48% to $4.5 billion.

But while Windows 7 is a big hit, all of Microsoft’s operating systems, as a group, have lost market share in recent years. According to an April estimate from market-watcher Gartner Inc., non-Windows operating systems, such as Linux and Apple’s Macintosh OS, have grown from 3.3% of the market in 2003 to 5.9% of the market currently.

Microsoft shares have dropped 15% so far this year. In early afternoon trading, Microsoft was up 0.3% at $26.21.

-By Jeanette Borzo, Dow Jones Newswires; 415-765-8230; jeanette.borzo@dowjones.com

DreamWorks signs cloud computing deal

cloudtweaks — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 13:24:35 +0000

DreamWorks SKG has signed a multi-year deal with Cerelink for cloud computing access.

Instead of rendering movies like How To Train Your Dragon on thousands of its own computer cores, DreamWorks will use elastic compute resources housed in Cerelink’s supercomputing-class facility at the New Mexico Applications Centre (NMCAC).

“Elastic” cloud computing allows clients like DreamWorks SKG to dynamically adjust technical capacity to meet their real-time business needs.

Cerelink is a high performance cloud computing (cloud HPC) provider to the motion picture industry. It provides private clouds for rendering and other content creation and management application, based on a combination of data center space, scalable high performance computing and networking, in the form of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS).

The Cerelink facilities include access to several thousand square feet of secure data centre space located in Rio Rancho, NM. That space is fed by redundant electrical power grids. It has access to LambdaRail (pdf), the 12,000 mile US coast-to-coast fast broadband network, and to a supercomputer at Encanto.

This offers a theoretical peak speed of 172 teraflops (peak theoretical speed) from its Altix ICE 8200 cluster, with 133 teraflops sustained operation. The ICE 8200 consists of 1,792 nodes (14,336 cores) of quad Xeon 3.0 GHz processors housed in 28 racks.

Cerelink’s private cloud computing service was used by DreamWorks Animation to render parts of Shrek Forever After and How to Train Your Dragon this year. Cerelink itself was founded by a group of ex-Intel managers in 2005.

James Ellington, its CEO, said: “We forecast growing our technical capacity by 20 times by the end of 2011 – this will create one of the largest cloud computing arrays for motion picture production in the world.”

This represents a threat to suppliers of in-house HPC compute and storage facilities to the movie rendering industry, such as BlueArc, DataDirect, Dell, HP, Isilon, and NetApp. If their customers start hiring rendering and animation HPC capacity from service suppliers such as Cerelink, then there will be less demand for in-house kit.

It is some distance from the movie mecca at Hollywood to New Mexico, raising the question of why the movie moguls should look at doing their rendering and animation in New Mexico?

The State offers film production incentives, like a 25 per cent tax rebate, for projects done in the state. Also, Cerelink and the NMCAC, in collaboration with the University of New Mexico, and the New Mexico Department of Information Technology, use an ultra-high-speed network link to link New Mexico to Hollywood.

Full Source: ChannelRegister

Facebook Selects Salesforce.com! As Cloud Computing Provider

cloudtweaks — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 15:22:08 +0000

World’s largest social networking service selects world’s leading enterprise cloud for CRM

SAN FRANCISCO, July 21 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM), the enterprise cloud computing company, today announced that Facebook (http://www.Facebook.com/facebook) has selected Salesforce CRM (http://www.salesforce.com/crm/sales-force-automation) to manage its fast-growing sales operations.

Facebook Looks to the Cloud to Increase Sales Process Efficiency

Facebook evaluated the pros and cons of enhancing its own system or selecting a cloud computing CRM system and went with the Sales Cloud 2 for the inherent benefits of cloud computing, particularly its quick implementation time and the ability to scale along with the company’s rapid growth.
Facebook has deployed the system across its sales operation teams along with its developer relations to automate complex workflow and approval processes. The system integrates with half a dozen existing systems.

Comments on the News:

Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer, Facebook commented: “Facebook and salesforce.com share a common vision for helping people connect and share information more efficiently. Salesforce.com’s cloud model was the perfect fit for us – with our current growth trajectory and future sales goals, we needed a product that will scale with our growing business.”
Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO, salesforce.com commented: “Facebook joins the thousands of companies managing their enterprise sales teams in the cloud, enabling them to focus on their fast growing business rather than the hardware and software to support it.”

Additional Resources:

More information on Sales Cloud 2 is available here: http://www.salesforce.com/crm/sales-force-automation/
Become a fan of salesforce.com at http://www.facebook.com/SALESFORCE
Follow @salesforce on Twitter

About salesforce.com

Salesforce.com is the enterprise cloud computing company. Based on salesforce.com’s real-time, multitenant architecture, the company’s platform and CRM applications (http://www.salesforce.com/crm) have revolutionized the way companies collaborate and communicate with their customers, including:

The Sales Cloud, for sales force automation and contact management
The Service Cloud, for customer service and support solutions
Chatter, for social collaboration
The Force.com platform, for custom application development
The AppExchange, the world’s leading marketplace for enterprise cloud computing applications

Salesforce.com offers the fastest path to customer success with cloud computing. As of April 30, 2010, salesforce.com manages customer information for approximately 77,300 customers including Allianz Commercial, Dell, Japan Post, Kaiser Permanente, KONE, and SunTrust Banks.

Any unreleased services or features referenced in this or other press releases or public statements are not currently available and may not be delivered on time or at all. Customers who purchase salesforce.com applications should make their purchase decisions based upon features that are currently available. Salesforce.com has headquarters in San Francisco, with offices in Europe and Asia, and trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “CRM.” For more information please visit http://www.salesforce.com, or call 1-800-NO-SOFTWARE.

Copyright (c) 2010 salesforce.com, inc. All rights reserved. Salesforce and the “no software” logo are registered trademarks of salesforce.com, inc., and salesforce.com owns other registered and unregistered trademarks. Other names used herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Facebook® is a registered trademark of Facebook Inc. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

SOURCE salesforce.com

STONEWARE, INC. Announces the Release of webNetwork 6.0

cloudtweaks — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 14:32:37 +0000

SOURCE: Stoneware, Inc.

Jul 15, 2010 10:30 ET

STONEWARE, INC. Announces the Release of webNetwork 6.0

INDIANAPOLIS, IN–(Marketwire – July 15, 2010) – Stoneware, Inc., a leader in private cloud computing, announced the release and immediate availability of webNetwork version 6.0. webNetwork 6.0 provides customers with the ability to create their own private cloud platform and the virtual web desktop to access it.

webNetwork 6.0 features include:

New virtual web desktop interface webOS-v6
Cutting-edge push technology for deploying events, actions, and applications to webOS users without browser plug-ins
Network “Aware” support makes the webNetwork private cloud cognizant of the underlying network infrastructure and capable of directing the quality of service based on an application or a user’s organizational role
New mobile file access and mobile printing capabilities. Supports all popular devices including the iPhone, Droid, and Blackberry
Integration of Microsoft’s Live ID (Software as a Service) offering into the webNetwork cloud platform
Implementation of webInflection’s webRDP client, for providing browser integrated access to remote desktop, Microsoft Terminal Server, and VDI solutions

“We are very excited about the release of webNetwork 6.0 and the initial feedback from our customers is extremely encouraging,” states Todd Gibbs, VP of Sales. “No other product on the market offers such a complete private cloud solution and this release clearly separates webNetwork from the rest of the industry. Cloud computing will have a desktop; it will be webNetwork.”

To learn more about webNetwork 6.0, go to www.stone-ware.com

About Stoneware

Headquartered in Indianapolis, Stoneware is a privately held corporation providing innovative software that defines an organization’s private cloud and the virtual web desktop to access it. The company services various sectors including education, manufacturing, healthcare, legal, and financial industries. For more information about Stoneware and the Stoneware product line, visit www.stone-ware.com, or call 888-473-9485.

Rackspace Open Sources Cloud Platform; Announces Plans to Collaborate with NASA and Other Industry Leaders on OpenStack Project

cloudtweaks — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 10:35:54 +0000

SAN ANTONIO, Jul 19, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) — Rackspace(R) Hosting (RAX 16.64, -0.66, -3.82%) today announced the launch of OpenStack(TM), an open-source cloud platform designed to foster the emergence of technology standards and cloud interoperability. Rackspace, the leading specialist in the hosting and cloud computing industry, is donating the code that powers its Cloud Files and Cloud Servers public-cloud offerings to the OpenStack project. The project will also incorporate technology that powers the NASA Nebula Cloud Platform. Rackspace and NASA plan to actively collaborate on joint technology development and leverage the efforts of open-source software developers worldwide.

“Modern scientific computation requires ever increasing storage and processing power delivered on-demand,” said Chris C. Kemp, NASA’s Chief Technology Officer for IT. “To serve this demand, we built Nebula, an infrastructure cloud platform designed to meet the needs of our scientific and engineering community. NASA and Rackspace are uniquely positioned to drive this initiative based on our experience in building large scale cloud platforms and our desire to embrace open source.”

OpenStack will feature several cloud infrastructure components including a fully distributed object store based on Rackspace Cloud Files, available today at OpenStack.org. The next component planned for release is a scalable compute-provisioning engine based on the NASA Nebula cloud technology and Rackspace Cloud Servers technology. It is expected to be available later this year. Using these components, organizations would be able to turn physical hardware into scalable and extensible cloud environments using the same code currently in production serving tens of thousands of customers and large government projects.

“We are founding the OpenStack initiative to help drive industry standards, prevent vendor lock-in and generally increase the velocity of innovation in cloud technologies,” said Lew Moorman, President, Cloud and CSO at Rackspace. “We are proud to have NASA’s support in this effort. Its Nebula Cloud Platform is a tremendous boost to the OpenStack community. We expect ongoing collaboration with NASA and the rest of the community to drive more-rapid cloud adoption and innovation, in the private and public spheres.”

Rackspace and NASA have committed to use OpenStack to power their cloud platforms, and Rackspace will dedicate open-source developers and resources to support adoption of OpenStack among enterprises and service providers. An OpenStack Design Summit hosted by Rackspace was held July 13-16 in Austin, where more than 100 technical advisors, developers and founding members joined to validate the code and ratify the project roadmap. More than 25 companies were represented at the Design Summit including AMD, Autonomic Resources, Citrix, Cloud.com, Cloudkick, Cloudscaling, CloudSwitch, Dell, enStratus, FathomDB, Intel, iomart Group, Limelight, Nicira, NTT DATA, Opscode, PEER 1, Puppet Labs, RightScale, Riptano, Scalr, SoftLayer, Sonian, Spiceworks, Zenoss and Zuora.

“OpenStack provides a solid foundation for promoting the emergence of cloud standards and interoperability,” said Peter Levine, SVP and GM, Datacenter and Cloud Division, Citrix Systems. “As a longtime technology partner with Rackspace, Citrix will collaborate closely with the community to provide full support for the XenServer platform and our other cloud-enabling products.”

“We believe in offering customers choice in cloud computing that helps them improve efficiency,” says Forrest Norrod, Vice President and General Manager of Server Platforms, Dell. “OpenStack on Dell is a great option to create open source enterprise cloud solutions.”

To download or contribute code and get involved, visit OpenStack.org. Follow OpenStack on Twitter @OpenStack.

About Rackspace Hosting

Rackspace Hosting is the world’s leading specialist in the hosting and cloud computing industry. The San Antonio-based company provides Fanatical Support(R) to its customers, across a portfolio of IT services, including Managed Hosting and Cloud Computing. For more information, visit www.rackspace.com.

About the NASA Nebula Cloud Program

NASA Nebula is a Cloud Computing service based at NASA Ames Research Center that provides high performance compute, network, and data storage services to NASA scientists and researchers. Nebula allows NASA to share and process large scientific data sets and was one of three flagship projects highlighted in NASA’s Open Government Plan. For more information, visit http://nebula.nasa.gov.

Forward Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions. If such risks or uncertainties materialize or such assumptions prove incorrect, the results of Rackspace Hosting could differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements and assumptions. All statements other than statements of historical fact are statements that could be deemed forward-looking statements, including any statements concerning expected development of the OpenStack project; the acceptance of OpenStack technology as an industry standard; anticipated operational and financial benefits from any development of the OpenStack project; the participation of other companies or individuals in the OpenStack project; any statements of expectation or belief; and any statements of assumptions underlying any of the foregoing. Risks, uncertainties and assumptions include the possibility that expected benefits from the OpenStack project may not materialize because the underlying technology is not reliable or generally compatible with industry standards; there are changes in technology that adversely affect the adoption of the standards, and other risks that are described in Rackspace Hosting’s Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2010, filed with the SEC on May 6, 2010. Except as required by law, Rackspace Hosting assumes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements publicly, or to update the reasons actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements, even if new information becomes available in the future.

Gartner releases cloud computing ‘rights and responsibilities

cloudtweaks — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 14:14:52 +0000

Analyst firm, Gartner, published a set of guidelines intended to ease relationships between cloud vendors and users. As cloud computing becomes more pervasive, the ecosystem (including vendors and analysts) is seeking ways to align expectations among relevant parties.

Gartner specified “six rights and one responsibility of service customers that will help providers and consumers establish and maintain successful business relationships:”

The right to retain ownership, use and control one’s own data - Service consumers should retain ownership of, and the rights to use, their own data.

The right to service-level agreements that address liabilities, remediation and business outcomes – All computing services – including cloud services – suffer slowdowns and failures. However, cloud services providers seldom commit to recovery times, specify the forms of remediation or spell out the procedures they will follow.

The right to notification and choice about changes that affect the service consumers’ business processes – Every service provider will need to take down its systems, interrupt its services or make other changes in order to increase capacity and otherwise ensure that its infrastructure will serve consumers adequately in the long term. Protecting the consumer’s business processes entails providing advanced notification of major upgrades or system changes, and granting the consumer some control over when it makes the switch.

The right to understand the technical limitations or requirements of the service up front – Most service providers do not fully explain their own systems, technical requirements and limitations so that after consumers have committed to a cloud service, they run the risk of not being able to adjust to major changes, at least not without a big investment.

The right to understand the legal requirements of jurisdictions in which the provider operates – If the cloud provider stores or transports the consumer’s data in or through a foreign country, the service consumer becomes subject to laws and regulations it may not know anything about.

The right to know what security processes the provider follows - With cloud computing, security breaches can happen at multiple levels of technology and use. Service consumers must understand the processes a provider uses, so that security at one level (such as the server) does not subvert security at another level (such as the network).

The responsibility to understand and adhere to software license requirements - Providers and consumers must come to an understanding about how the proper use of software licenses will be assured.

Readers interested in this topic should also see enterprise analyst, Ray Wang’s, Software as a Service (SaaS) Customer’s Bill of Rights. That document describes a set of practices to ensure consumer protections across the entire SaaS lifecycle, as indicated in the following diagram:

Story By : ZDnet

Microsoft Cloud Services Helps Service Providers Capture Opportunities

cloudtweaks — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 12:13:20 +0000

Microsoft software and services empower service provider partners to deliver enterprise-class solutions to small and midsize businesses.

WASHINGTON, July 14 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ – This week at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2010, Microsoft Corp. is highlighting market opportunities for hosting and communications service providers as adoption of cloud services among small and midsize business (SMBs) continues to rise. Microsoft is helping service providers take advantage of those opportunities through its software, services and programs that enable them to become trusted advisors and full-service IT providers to businesses.

“Microsoft sees service providers becoming more important as the cloud becomes more predominant. Given their experience in deploying and selling infrastructure and software as a service, businesses will depend on them for IT as a service,” said John Zanni, general manager of Worldwide Hosting for the Communications Sector at Microsoft. “The next step for service providers is to look beyond their current hosted offerings to become full-service IT providers and trusted advisors to businesses.”

The IT Needs of SMBs

According to Microsoft’s global SMB IT and Hosted IT Index 2010, a survey of nearly 3,200 SMBs across 14 countries, awareness of hosted services is increasing with 65 percent of SMBs using hosted software to some extent, while 73 percent of the remainder have considered it, compared with only 44 percent in the 2008 index. Of those respondents currently using hosted services, the business advantage attracted them: Almost 36 percent wanted to find ways to improve business productivity, while 31 percent did not have the resources to manage their IT. Surprisingly, only 25 percent of respondents said cost was a factor. In terms of opportunities for hosting providers, three out of four respondents have considered using hosting for IT tools. For instance, SMBs in China, one of the fastest-growing markets, are the most likely to have considered using hosted services for four different IT tools: backup, file-sharing and collaboration, e-commerce, and customer relationship management. In terms of the IT currently used by SMBs, e-mail is the most pervasive IT tool worldwide (95.6 percent), followed by backup tools (92.4 percent). However, this does not mean that these tools are used by every company worldwide, as the research shows that even in a heavily regulated industry, more than 7 percent of financial services companies worldwide do not have any backup tools. This represents an enormous opportunity for service providers to provide hosted IT services to SMBs.

Reducing Customer Churn by Attaching Cloud Services

For service providers, reducing customer churn is critical to revenue growth, profitability and market share. During the past several years, Microsoft has heard from its service provider partners that they were experiencing significantly lower churn rates among business customers using Microsoft Hosted Exchange, Microsoft Office Live Meeting and SharePoint when compared with those using basic POP or webmail services. In order to further understand the impact of service adoption and churn, Microsoft commissioned a study of 695 SMB executives and technology decision-makers in the United States and Europe in early 2010 and found that SMB customers that use enterprise-class e-mail and other online communication and collaboration services change providers half as often as those using basic POP or webmail. This dynamic presents service providers with an opportunity to combine their existing network service offerings with enterprise-class e-mail to better serve their customers and improve their bottom line. Microsoft recently published a white paper on the findings of the survey, which can be viewed at http://www.microsoft.com/hosting/en/us/resources/default.aspx.

Disaster Recovery

As the second most-used IT service among SMBs, backup tools represent another opportunity for service providers as SMBs continue moving toward the cloud. Microsoft partner and leading unified storage architecture provider NetApp is helping service providers expand their business by developing differentiated services to meet these customer needs. Through the Microsoft Dynamic Data Center Alliance, NetApp integrated its disaster recovery solutions with the Dynamic Data Center Toolkit, which provides sample code and guidance for building cloud services based on Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and Microsoft System Center. This gives hosting service providers the ability to offer enterprise-class data protection solutions for disaster recovery, clustered failover, and backup and recovery services to their SMB customers.

nGenX Corp., a provider of cloud computing and managed hosting solutions based in Overland Park, Kan., with customers in Chicago’s financial district, recently announced Guardian GeoCloud, an automated cloud service that will empower end users with complete control over their cloud-based infrastructures while lowering IT costs and management hassles. With the help of the Dynamic Data Center Toolkit, nGenX was able to work with NetApp to include enterprise-class disaster recovery in Guardian GeoCloud.

“A major concern of cloud computing among our customers is reliability, as downtime or lost data translates to lost revenue, a damaged reputation and halted productivity,” said Robert A. Bye, executive vice president at nGenX. “By integrating disaster recovery into Guardian GeoCloud, we are able to achieve the reliability that our customers demand, providing replication and failover of their virtualized environments to a remote datacenter. Moreover, our customers now have access to a level of disaster recovery and security traditionally only available to large enterprises, at a fraction of the cost.”

More information on the Dynamic Data Center Toolkit is available at http://www.microsoft.com/hosting/dynamicdatacenter/Home.html. Information for hosting providers interested in partnering with Microsoft is available at http://www.microsoft.com/hosting/en/us/default.aspx.

Hosting Solutions Partner of the Year

Microsoft also recently honored U.K.-based cloud computing company Outsourcery Ltd. as its 2010 Hosting Solutions Partner of the Year for the company’s work with Microsoft Communication Services. In the United Kingdom, companies operating across all sectors are increasingly relying on hosted solutions. Outsourcery provides advanced, integrated solutions that help businesses get in touch with colleagues right away via instant messaging, videoconferencing, audio conferencing, Web conferencing, Live Meeting, and desktop and document sharing, while monitoring users’ presence information and enabling them to choose the most effective way to communicate. Outsourcery solutions allow communications systems and devices to work hand in hand with Microsoft Office applications, Outlook e-mail, instant messaging and Windows Mobile-based devices. With Microsoft Communication Services, Outsourcery is able to take advantage of Microsoft branding to better market solution bundles to its customers.

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

SOURCE Microsoft Corp.

Akamai Appoints Chuck Neerdaels as Vice President of Engineering, Cloud Platforms

cloudtweaks — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 11:06:14 +0000

Industry-renowned expert to lead Company’s focus on cloud optimization

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., July 14 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Akamai Technologies, Inc. (Nasdaq: AKAM), the leading provider of cloud optimization services, announced today the appointment of Chuck Neerdaels as Vice President of Engineering, Cloud Platforms. A pioneer in the field of Internet technologies, Mr. Neerdaels possesses nearly two decades of experience building Internet caching, streaming, storage and content acceleration solutions. Neerdaels re-joins Akamai having most recently served as a vice president in the cloud computing group at Yahoo!. He will be based out of Akamai’s San Mateo, CA office, where he will lead the company’s Cloud Platforms engineering team.

Earlier in his career, Neerdaels held senior engineering roles at Netscape, Inktomi (now owned by Yahoo!) and Akamai, where he led the research and development of numerous product launches. Neerdaels is also one of the original authors of the federally-funded Harvest Information Discovery System, or “Harvest Project,” which evolved to become today’s popular Squid caching server.

“For over a decade, Akamai has helped companies leverage the power of the Internet by transforming it into a secure and reliable place for transacting business. Now, the same underlying technologies and solutions are needed to drive successful enterprise adoption of cloud computing,” said Harald Prokop, Senior Vice President of Engineering, Akamai. ”Chuck’s proven engineering expertise, combined with his reputation for innovation, makes him a tremendous asset to Akamai as we evolve our offerings in this dynamic and growing market.”

An alternative to centralized cloud infrastructure, Akamai’s cloud optimization services are built on top of an intelligent network of more than 65,000 servers distributed across 1,000 Internet service providers worldwide. This distributed network runs at the edge of the cloud, striving to transform the Internet into a high-performance platform where companies can confidently develop and deploy business-critical applications within a cloud computing environment.

“As more and more enterprises deploy applications on cloud platforms, the need for advanced optimization services has become critical to the success of their cloud initiatives,” says Neerdaels. ”I’m excited to be part of the Akamai team again and I look forward to leveraging my experience to advance Akamai’s mission of enabling enterprises around the world to pursue hybrid or full cloud strategies.”

Neerdaels received a B.A.E.M. in Aerospace Engineering and Mathematics from the University of Minnesota and completed extensive coursework toward a Master’s degree in Computer Science at the University of Southern California.

For more information about Akamai’s cloud optimization services please visit www.akamai.com/cloud.

About Akamai

Akamai® provides market-leading, cloud-based services for optimizing Web and mobile content and applications, online HD video, and secure e-commerce. Combining highly-distributed, energy-efficient computing with intelligent software, Akamai’s global platform is transforming the cloud into a more viable place to inform, entertain, advertise, transact and collaborate. To learn how the world’s leading enterprises are optimizing their business in the cloud, please visit www.akamai.com and follow @Akamai on Twitter.

Akamai Statement Under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act

The release contains information about future expectations, plans and prospects of Akamai Technologies, Inc.’s management that constitute forward-looking statements for purposes of the safe harbor provisions under The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by these forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors including, but not limited to, the effects of any attempts to intentionally disrupt our services or network by hackers or others, failure of our cloud-based services to perform as expected, and other factors that are discussed in the Company’s Annual Report on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, and other documents periodically filed with the SEC.

Contacts:
Liz Bradley	Noelle Faris
Media Relations	Investor Relations
617-444-2938	617-444-4676
ebradley@akamai.com	nfaris@akamai.com

Amazon Web Services Introduces Cluster Compute Instances For High Performance Computing

cloudtweaks — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 10:46:38 +0000

BusinessWire · Tuesday, Jul. 13, 2010

Amazon Web Services LLC, an Amazon.com company (NASDAQ:AMZN), today announced Cluster Compute Instances for Amazon EC2, a new instance type specifically designed for high-performance computing (HPC) applications and other demanding network-bound applications. Customers with complex computational workloads such as tightly coupled parallel processes, or with applications sensitive to network performance, can now achieve the same high compute and networking performance provided by custom-built infrastructure while benefiting from the elasticity, flexibility and cost advantages of Amazon EC2. To get started using Cluster Compute Instances for Amazon EC2, visit http://aws.amazon.com.

Prior to Cluster Compute Instances for Amazon EC2, organizations with advanced HPC needs have been required to fund expensive, in-house compute clusters by purchasing dedicated, purpose-built hardware. As a result, the demand for high-performance cluster computing often exceeds the capacity of many organizations, and many projects are cut altogether or wait in long queues to access shared resources. With Cluster Compute Instances, businesses and researchers now have access to the high-performance computing capabilities they need – with pay-as-you-go pricing, the ability to scale on-demand, and no upfront investments.

Cluster Compute Instances provide similar functionality to other Amazon EC2 instances but have been specifically engineered to provide high-performance compute and networking. Cluster Compute Instances provide more CPU than any other Amazon EC2 instance. Customers can also group Cluster Compute Instances into clusters – allowing applications to get the low-latency network performance required for tightly coupled, node-to-node communication (typical of many HPC applications). Cluster Compute Instances also provide significantly increased network throughput making them well suited for customer applications that need to perform network-intensive operations. Depending on usage patterns, applications can see up to 10 times the network throughput of the largest current Amazon EC2 instance types.

“Businesses and researchers have long been utilizing Amazon EC2 to run highly parallel workloads ranging from genomics sequence analysis and automotive design to financial modeling. At the same time, these customers have told us that many of their largest, most complex workloads required additional network performance,” said Peter De Santis, General Manager of Amazon EC2. “Cluster Compute Instances provide network latency and bandwidth that previously could only be obtained with expensive, capital intensive, custom-built compute clusters. For perspective, in one of our pre-production tests, an 880 server sub-cluster achieved 41.82 TFlops on a LINPACK test run – we’re very excited that Amazon EC2 customers now have access to this type of HPC performance with the low per-hour pricing, elasticity, and functionality they have come to expect from Amazon EC2.”

The National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is the primary high-performance computing facility supporting scientific research sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy. “Many of our scientific research areas require high-throughput, low-latency, interconnected systems where applications can quickly communicate with each other, so we were happy to collaborate with Amazon Web Services to test drive our HPC applications on Cluster Compute Instances for Amazon EC2,” said Keith Jackson, a computer scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. “In our series of comprehensive benchmark tests, we found our HPC applications ran 8.5 times faster on Cluster Compute Instances for Amazon EC2 than the previous EC2 instance types.”

MathWorks is a leading developer and supplier of software for technical computing and model-based design. The company now enables its customers, using MATLAB and Parallel Computing Toolbox on their desktops, to scale data-intensive computation problems up to access greater compute power with Cluster Compute Instances for Amazon EC2, which are running MATLAB Distributed Computing Server. “Cluster Compute Instances give MATLAB users the opportunity to test and run their high performance computing problems for data-intensive applications in the cloud at a price and performance level that allows us to continually innovate and meet customer needs,” said Silvina Grad-Freilich, Senior Manager Parallel-Computing at MathWorks. “We’re thrilled to allow our customers to leverage Amazon Web Services as an easily accessible way to meet their needs for increased compute power.”

Adaptive Computing provides automation intelligence software, powered by its Moab technology, for HPC, data center and cloud environments. Moab is the management layer for more than 50 percent of the resources at the top computing systems in the world. “The availability of Cluster Compute Instances on Amazon EC2 gives organizations access to on-demand and highly available HPC resources,” said Michael Jackson, COO and President of Adaptive Computing. “For years we’ve helped customers build and manage the world’s most complex large-scale computing clusters, and now with Cluster Compute Instances, customers can leverage Adaptive Computing’s familiar automation software tools to manage HPC resources on Amazon’s leading cloud infrastructure.”

David Patterson is a world-renowned expert, author and academic who has been recognized with more than 30 awards for research, teaching and service. He is the co-inventor of RAID, RISC and several other computer innovations and has taught computer architecture at University of California, Berkeley, since joining the faculty in 1977. “The high-performance networking of Cluster Compute Instances for Amazon EC2 fills an important need among scientific computing professionals, making the on-demand and scalable cloud environment more viable for technical computing,” said Patterson.

Cluster Compute Instances complement other AWS offerings designed to make large-scale computing easier and more cost effective. For example, Public Data Sets on AWS provide a repository of useful public data sets that can be easily accessed from Amazon EC2, allowing fast, cost-effective data analysis by researchers and businesses. These large data sets are hosted on AWS at no charge to the community. Additionally, the Amazon Elastic MapReduce service enables low-friction, cost effective implementation of the Hadoop framework on Amazon EC2. Hadoop is a popular tool for analyzing very large data sets in a highly parallel environment, and Amazon EC2 provides the scale-out environment to run Hadoop clusters of all sizes.

For more information on Amazon EC2 and Cluster Compute Instances, visit http://aws.amazon.com/hpc-applications.

About Amazon.com

Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN), a Fortune 500 company based in Seattle, opened on the World Wide Web in July 1995 and today offers Earth’s Biggest Selection. Amazon.com, Inc. seeks to be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online, and endeavors to offer its customers the lowest possible prices. Amazon.com and other sellers offer millions of unique new, refurbished and used items in categories such as Books; Movies, Music & Games; Digital Downloads; Electronics & Computers; Home & Garden; Toys, Kids & Baby; Grocery; Apparel, Shoes & Jewelry; Health & Beauty; Sports & Outdoors; and Tools, Auto & Industrial. Amazon Web Services provides Amazon’s developer customers with access to in-the-cloud infrastructure services based on Amazon’s own back-end technology platform, which developers can use to enable virtually any type of business. Kindle and Kindle DX are the revolutionary portable readers that wirelessly download books, magazines, newspapers, blogs and personal documents to a crisp, high-resolution electronic ink display that looks and reads like real paper. Kindle and Kindle DX utilize the same 3G wireless technology as advanced cell phones, so users never need to hunt for a Wi-Fi hotspot. Kindle is the #1 bestselling product across the millions of items sold on Amazon.

Amazon and its affiliates operate websites, including www.amazon.com, www.amazon.co.uk, www.amazon.de, www.amazon.co.jp, www.amazon.fr, www.amazon.ca, and www.amazon.cn. As used herein, “Amazon.com,” “we,” “our” and similar terms include Amazon.com, Inc., and its subsidiaries, unless the context indicates otherwise.

Forward-Looking Statements

This announcement contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Actual results may differ significantly from management’s expectations. These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that include, among others, risks related to competition, management of growth, new products, services and technologies, potential fluctuations in operating results, international expansion, outcomes of legal proceedings and claims, fulfillment center optimization, seasonality, commercial agreements, acquisitions and strategic transactions, foreign exchange rates, system interruption, inventory, government regulation and taxation, payments and fraud. More information about factors that potentially could affect Amazon.com’s financial results is included in Amazon.com’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K and subsequent filings.

Contacts

Amazon.com, Inc.
Media Hotline, 206-266-7180
www.amazon.com/pr

Big News! eBay and Microsoft Announce Cloud Computing Partnership

cloudtweaks — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 15:01:47 +0000

WASHINGTON — July 12, 2010 — Microsoft Corp. and eBay [NASDAQ: EBAY] today announced that eBay will be one of the first customers of Microsoft’s new Windows Azure platform appliance for cloud computing. The partnership is a significant joint engineering effort that will couple the innovation and power of the Windows Azure platform appliance with the technical excellence of eBay’s platform — to deliver an automated, scalable, cost-effective capacity management solution.

Microsoft also announced the limited production release of the Windows Azure platform appliance, the first turnkey cloud platform for large service providers and enterprises to deploy in their own datacenters. eBay will incorporate the Windows Azure platform appliance into two of its datacenters to further optimize its platform and achieve greater strategic agility and datacenter efficiency.

This partnership follows a successful pilot deployment by eBay of Microsoft’s public Windows Azure platform, which offers eBay the flexibility to deploy certain applications on a public cloud while maintaining the reliability and availability of eBay.com. eBay’s page for iPad listings — http://ipad.ebay.com— is hosted on the public Windows Azure platform.

“Microsoft’s focus on and investment in the Windows Azure platform appliance shows it is committed to world-class cloud computing solutions. eBay has the right blueprint for next-generation software-as-a-service-based applications with our platform’s architecture, scale and reliability, ” said James Barrese, eBay vice president of technology. “Joint engineering on the Windows Azure platform appliance with eBay’s massive, high-volume systems allows Microsoft to demonstrate its leadership in this space and helps eBay improve our user experience through a flexible, scalable and cost-effective solution.”

The Windows Azure platform appliance consists of Windows Azure, Microsoft SQL Azure and a Microsoft-specified configuration of network, storage and server hardware. The appliance is optimized for scale out applications and datacenter efficiency across hundreds to tens of thousands of servers.

“eBay has one of the world’s largest ecommerce platforms, and we believe the Windows Azure platform appliance provides the scalability, automation, datacenter efficiency and low cost of operations that eBay requires to meet the needs of its customers worldwide, ” said Bob Muglia, president of Server and Tools Business, Microsoft.

eBay and Microsoft will deploy the Windows Azure platform appliance this year.About eBay Inc.

Founded in 1995 in San Jose, Calif., eBay Inc. (NASDAQ:EBAY) connects millions of buyers and sellers globally on a daily basis through eBay, the world’s largest online marketplace, and PayPal, which enables individuals and businesses to securely, easily and quickly send and receive online payments. We also reach millions through specialized marketplaces such as StubHub, the world’s largest ticket marketplace, and eBay Classifieds sites, which together have a presence in more than 1,000 cities around the world. For more information about the company and our global portfolio of online brands, visit www.ebayinc.com.

About Microsoft

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

Note to editors: For more information, news and perspectives from Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft News Center at http://www.microsoft.com/news. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication, but may have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft’s Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at