10 Must-Have Features for Every Virtualization Backup and Disaster Recovery Solution Virtualization platforms are different from physical platforms. The virtualization benefits extend to management and support for tightly integrated backup and recovery solutions. Solutions designed exclusively for virtual infrastructure backup provide a host of key benefits and should be leveraged whenever possible. The nature of virtualization means that hosting several different guest virtual servers running everything from Windows to Linux to custom appliances is not only possible but so much easier than on bare metal. It also means that the ability to centralize backup at the host level is going
SaaS

Cloud Apps of the Week: What You’ll Want for the New Year As we close out 2011, here’s some information on a few last-minute applications that are sure to improve how you experience twenty twelve. Animoto Every season of winter holidays provides an avalanche of fodder that only an attractive video can capture best. But what to do if you haven’t won an Oscar for best editing? Turn to Animoto, an app that seamlessly creates vivid slideshows for the technologically challenged. Via the cloud, Animoto stores its customers’ videos for them to access from any device. Comparisons between this app
Cloud Computing on Capitol Hill Wars. Feuds between world leaders. The frozen-in-motion bull of Wall Street, and the solemn Washington Mall on Capitol Hill. Clouds from nature elegantly rise above it all. They’re too occupied with floating to tend to the political dramas taking place beneath them. For better or worse, the cloud formed by gifted human ingenuity might be lassoed down to Earth’s governmental concerns sooner than we think. The White House’s current Chief Information Officer, Steven VanRoekel, has spearheaded Washington’s move into the assets of cloud computing. On December 8, VanRoekel announced the Obama Administration’s plans to integrate
Cloudability Closes $1.1 Million Investment Round Led by Trinity Ventures and Walden VC, Seed Financing Will Enable Cloudability to Meet a Growing Demand for the Management of Cloud Costs and Services PORTLAND, OR – December 22, 2011 – Cloudability, the easy way to manage and monitor all of your cloud costs in one place, today announced that it has closed a Seed investment round of $1.1 million, led by Trinity Ventures and Walden VC. The round also includes $255K in funding from a local consortium of Portland –based angel investors, or over half of the angel money in the round.
Deutsche Bank Conquers the Cloud Considering the dynamic, constantly-changing nature of cloud computing, “conquering” it may be an exaggeration; however, that was the title bestowed onto Deutsche Bank by its peers in the Open Data Center Alliance (ODCA). Late last month, the ODCA announced that Deutsche Bank won the “Conquering the Cloud Challenge,” a competition to identify best practices for cloud and data center solutions. The ODCA is an independent IT consortium comprised of several reputed companies who have come together “to provide a unified customer vision for long-term data center requirements.” It has twelve members on its Board –









