Posts tagged announcement
CloudTweaks Event Partner “Cloud Symposium” Hosting World’s Largest SOA and Cloud Event
Aug 11th
This week the SOA & Cloud Symposium program committees announced an exciting free event to kick-start this year’s SOA & Cloud Symposium. The first conference day (Monday, October 4th) will be dedicated to hosting a Cloud Camp event, which is open for anyone to attend free of charge. Cloud Camp events are based on the “unconference” format whereby experts and attendees openly discuss and debate current topics pertaining to Cloud Computing. The Cloud Camp day is further supplemented by lightning talks also performed by attending Cloud Computing experts.
The Cloud Camp event, followed by the numerous Cloud-related sessions during the subsequent two conference
days, culminate in the delivery the Cloud Computing Specialist Certification Workshop, provided by SOASchool.com in Europe for the very first time. This post-conference workshop enables IT practitioners to achieve formal vendor-neutral accreditation in the field of Cloud Computing. To register or learn more about the Cloud Camp event and the Cloud Computing Specialist Certification Workshop, visit: www.cloudsymposium.com
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Cloud Web Hosting Services Powered by Amazon EC2
Aug 3rd
Web host SiteCloud.com (www.sitecloud.com) is entering the cloud hosting market with its proprietary cloud hosting platform built on top of Amazon’s Elastic Cloud, and featuring cPanel/WHM.
SiteCloud advertises twelve packages scaled within the cloud hosting architecture for the equivalent of shared, virtual private servers, dedicated hosting and reseller hosting services.
According to SiteCloud’s Monday announcement, its cloud hosting packages provides added flexibility for growing businesses.
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Amazon Web Services Introduces Cluster Compute Instances For High Performance Computing
Jul 13th
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
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IBM unit plans to hire 600 workers to help fill their 100,000-square-foot cloud computing center
Jul 9th
New RTP center may draw up to $7.8M in state incentives
DURHAM, Jul 09, 2010 (The Herald-Sun – McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) –
A subsidiary of IBM is planning to hire 600 workers and invest $3.7 million in a new process service center in Durham’s Research Triangle Park in the next two years.
As a result of the project, IBM Lender Business Process Services Inc., a specialty loan processing company, could receive up to $7.8 million in incentive payments from North Carolina state government during the next decade.
Gov. Beverly Perdue touted the jobs and facility announcement on Thursday, calling attention to IBM’s longstanding presence in the state.
“IBM has been a major employer in North Carolina providing thousands of skilled jobs for more than 30 years,” Perdue said. “We value this company’s ongoing commitment to North Carolina and Research Triangle Park.”
LBPS will begin hiring immediately for the 600 positions, with salaries averaging $50,000.
Employees in the new center will perform various business process outsourcing activities for financial industry clients.
The new center will be in one of IBM’s existing buildings at its sprawling campus in RTP. LBPS also will transfer its Charlotte office to the new facility, while continuing to maintain a presence in Charlotte, according to an IBM spokesman.
“IBM Lender Business Process Services is taking industry-leading steps to apply its broad and deep history of technology and business management capabilities to provide new and innovative solutions to our clients in the financial services industry,” said Bruce McConnel with IBM. “We are strengthening our commitment to business processing services, improving our clients’ flexibility, competitiveness and ability to manage their businesses more efficiently through ever changing dynamic market cycles.”
The new project was made possible by a state Job Development Investment Grant.
For each year the company meets the required performance targets, the state will provide a grant equal to 65 percent of the state personal income withholding taxes derived from the creation of new jobs.
Should the company create the jobs called for under the agreement and sustain them for 10 years, the agreement could yield as much as $7.79 million in maximum benefits for IBM, according to the governor’s office.
This is the most recent project undertaken by IBM in RTP.
In February, the Armonk, N.Y.-based computing giant opened a $362 million, 100,000-square-foot cloud computing center in RTP. Durham County is giving IBM $750,000 in incentives during seven years for the center.
At the same time, IBM also has been restructuring its global workforce, including in RTP.
In March, the company also reportedly began laying off 1 percent of its workforce or about 1,000 workers worldwide. The total number of workers affected in RTP is unknown.
In March 2009, the company disclosed that it had laid off 334 workers at RTP, where it employed about 10,000 people.
“The new services operation furthers our commitment to the state of North Carolina and our ongoing presence in Research Triangle Park,” Bob Greenberg, senior state executive of IBM’s North Carolina operations, said in an official statement on Thursday. “These skilled positions, coupled with our investment earlier this year in an energy efficient cloud-computing data center, demonstrate that as the marketplace demands new skills and technology, growth opportunities in North Carolina continue to be a hub of activity.”
Source TradingMarkets
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Mozy Announcement: Offers Cloud File Storage with Increased Security of HardDrive Backup with Mozy 2.0
May 18th
Cloud File Storage with Increased Security
If you’ve read our previous product release notes on our blog, you’ll notice that we always say that we’re excited to release a new version of Mozy. While this is true every time, it’s especially true this time, as we’re pleased to announce the general availability of Mozy 2.0 for Windows! Why are we so excited? Well, just take a look:
- Up to 25% faster upload speeds – we know that one of the difficulties of online backup is that it takes time to move data online. We’ve made some significant changes to our client that makes that process a lot faster.
- New interface – while we still have all the customizability and flexibility that power users have come to love and rely on to protect their data, we’ve made the Mozy client to be easier to configure, easier to understand, and easier to use for virtually everyone.
and last but not least…
- Mozy 2xProtect! – we’ve preached it for years, and now we’re helping you practice it! Mozy 2.0 now allows you to back up to an external hard drive as well as our online servers. This means that you can have the speed, convenience, and protection of a local backup, while enjoying the peace of mind and extra safety that Mozy online backup already offers. We call it Mozy 2xProtect. To learn more about Mozy 2xProtect and how it can make your data even safer, check out our 2xProtect page!
As you can see, Mozy 2.0 represents a dramatic step forward in our product. We’re thrilled to be offering you a better, safer backup experience.
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GoGrid Announces Version 2.0 – Cloud Computing Service
Aug 11th
GoGrid Announces Version 2.0
Today GoGrid, the Cloud Computing service from ServePath, released version 2.0 of its award-winning Cloud Computing Infrastructure solution. With this release, GoGrid users now have the ability to create personal server images, known as MyGSIs. MyGSI stands for “personal GoGrid Server Image,” a “Golden Master” server image that can be customized, saved and stored for future deployments. Users are now able to create new servers from stored MyGSIs via the GoGrid web portal or API quickly and easily.
We are extremely excited about this innovative new GoGrid release
This is an important development in the Cloud Computing marketplace, and further demonstrates our visionary approach to providing Cloud Computing functionality and features that our customers desire.
“We are extremely excited about this innovative new GoGrid release,” said John Keagy, CEO and Co-Founder of GoGrid and ServePath. “This is an important development in the Cloud Computing marketplace, and further demonstrates our visionary approach to providing Cloud Computing functionality and features that our customers desire.”
The creation of a MyGSI is an extremely simple 3-step process. First add an Image Sandbox, second, configure and prepare the Image Sandbox and third, save the Image Sandbox as a MyGSI. When a user needs to create a new Windows or Linux server based on the pre-configured MyGSI, they simply choose the saved image, fill in a few details, and instantiate the server in minutes within the GoGrid cloud.
There are several benefits and advantages of using a MyGSI to deploy servers within the GoGrid cloud:
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Will Microsoft Azure promote efficient software development?
Jul 16th
Microsoft’s announcement of Windows Azure pricing confirmed a lot of speculation about the nature of Azure and its target audiences.
First, Microsoft plans to compete directly with infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) vendors, especially market pioneer and leader Amazon Web Services. As CNET’s Ina Fried reported:
On a pure consumption basis, Microsoft said it will charge 12 cents per hour for computing, 15 cents per gigabyte for storage and 10 cents per 10,000 storage transactions. For network bandwidth, the software maker is charging between 10 cents and 15 cents per gigabyte.
Interestingly, The Burton Group noted on their blog that something is missing in Microsoft’s initial pricing for consumption:
As you might expect, the compute model is similar to EC2 in that the pricing is “per hour” and per GB. The missing part in the model is the size (or type in EC2 terms) of the compute platform. I would expect Microsoft to augment pricing for compute based-on the amount of compute resources an application requires.
Source
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Why the public sector is opening the doors to open source technology?
Jul 16th
With the public sector spending plans of all political parties coming under close scrutiny, IT is being labelled in equal measure as the cause and saviour of the current spending crunch that the public sector is facing.
However, it is not a simple either/or argument. It is not a case of should the country have an eGovernment strategy, but rather what that strategy should be.
The debate reached a new height this week with the Conservative Party’s announcement regarding its suggested alternative to the spiralling costs of the NHS database project. Moving on from general statements of intent, this was the one of the first acknowledgements that government technology purchasing is under the spotlight and seen to be an important part of a party’s manifesto.
The idea of moving NHS data into the ‘cloud’ through providers such as Google is a bold choice; however it mimics strategies that have been adopted across the private sector. There is no doubt that the landscape of public sector technology purchasing is changing and the adoption of open source/ open standards technology provides a more transparent, democratic approach to technology purchasing.
