Cray And Microsoft Bring Supercomputing To Microsoft Azure

Cray Inc. has announced an exclusive strategic alliance with Microsoft Corp. that gives enterprises the tools to enable a new era of discovery and insight, while broadening the availability of supercomputing to new markets and new customers. Under the partnership agreement, Microsoft and Cray will jointly engage with customers to offer dedicated Cray supercomputing systems in Microsoft Azure data centers to enable customers to run AI, advanced analytics, and modeling and simulation workloads at unprecedented scale, seamlessly connected to the Azure cloud.

Cray’s tightly coupled system architecture and Aries interconnect addresses the exponential demand for compute capability, real-time insights, and scalable performance needed by enterprises today. With this new partnership, Cray and Microsoft have made it easier for cloud customers to harness the power of supercomputing and multiply their problem-solving potential. Cray and Microsoft will also bring these advantages to a new set of customers who were previously unable to purchase or maintain an on-premise Cray system.

The availability of Cray supercomputers in Azure empowers researchers, analysts, and scientists with the ability to train AI deep learning models in fields such as medical imaging and autonomous vehicles in a fraction of the time. Pharmaceutical and biotech scientists driving precision medicine discovery can now perform whole genome sequencing, shortening the time from computation to cure. Automotive and aerospace product engineers can now conduct crash simulation, computational fluid dynamic simulations, or build digital twins for rapid and precise product development and optimized maintenance. Geophysicists in energy companies can accelerate oil field analysis and reduce exploration risk through superior seismic imaging fidelity and faster reservoir characterization. All performed in days and minutes, not months and weeks.

“Our partnership with Microsoft will introduce Cray supercomputers to a whole new class of customers that need the most advanced computing resources to expand their problem-solving capabilities, but want this new capability available to them in the cloud,” said Peter Ungaro, president and CEO of Cray. “Dedicated Cray supercomputers in Azure not only give customers all of the breadth of features and services from the leader in enterprise cloud, but also the advantages of running a wide array of workloads on a true supercomputer, the ability to scale applications to unprecedented levels, and the performance and capabilities previously only found in the largest on-premise supercomputing centers. The Cray and Microsoft partnership is expanding the accessibility of Cray supercomputers and gives customers the cloud-based supercomputing capabilities they need to increase their competitive advantage.”

“Using the enterprise-proven power of Microsoft Azure, customers are running their most strategic workloads in our cloud,” said Jason Zander, corporate vice president, Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Corp. “By working with Cray to provide dedicated supercomputers in Azure, we are offering customers uncompromising performance and scalability that enables a host of new previously unimaginable scenarios in the public cloud. More importantly, we’re moving customers into a new era by empowering them to use HPC and AI to drive breakthrough advances in science, engineering and health.”

As part of the partnership agreement, the Cray® XC™  and Cray CS™ supercomputers with attached Cray ClusterStor storage systems will be available for customer-specific provisioning in select Microsoft Azure data centers, directly connected to the Microsoft Azure network. The Cray systems easily integrate with Azure Virtual Machines, Azure Data Lake storage, the Microsoft AI platform, and Azure Machine Learning services. Customers can also leverage the Cray Urika®-XC analytics software suite and CycleCloud for hybrid HPC management.

Source: CloudStrategyMag

CloudJumper Powers WaaS Platform In Switch’s Tier 5® Data Centers

CloudJumper has announced the company has expanded its strategic relationship with ProfitBricks, a leading channel-focused cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) provider, to deploy nWorksSpace WaaS solutions within the Switch Tier 5® Data Center campus in Las Vegas. CloudJumper partners now have the ability to build highly competitive WaaS and cloud application delivery solutions on this premier brand of ProfitBricks infrastructure which has been recognized by the Uptime Institute for “enhanced availability and reliability.”[Switch, Switch Announces Its New Tier 5® Data Center Standard, June 8, 2017].

The Tier 5® Data Center Standard was introduced this year by Switch, a leader in data center design, development, and mission critical operations. With ProfitBricks cloud infrastructure operations located within Switch’s Core Campus in Las Vegas, CloudJumper will host a growing number of nWorkSpace accounts in this environment. The Switch Tier 5® Data Center Standard not only encompasses the resiliency and redundancy of other data center ratings systems, but also evaluates more than 30 additional key elements, such as long-term power system capabilities, the number of available carriers, zero roof penetrations, the location of cooling system lines in or above the data center, physical and network security and 100% use of renewable energy.

ProfitBricks is a next-generation cloud computing IaaS hosting service, addressing the needs of solution providers for high-performance and dedicated-core IaaS options that can be quickly scaled to variable levels of compute power and storage capacity. The ProfitBricks system employs an intuitive, easy-to-use management interface to configure and manage services delivered with a predictable and affordable fee structure. The combination is a cloud platform on which VARs, systems integrators, and managed service providers can build cloud-based solutions for their customers, as well as managed cloud practices. The company’s competitive advantages have been enhanced through partnership with Switch, a highest-rated data center provider whose core business is the design, construction, and operation of ultra-advanced data center facilities.

“The migration of IT service providers to the nWorkSpace platform continues to accelerate as partners regularly applaud CloudJumper’s channel-friendly business model, excellent margins, unmatched support, and choice of data center partners,” said Max Pruger, chief sales officer, CloudJumper. “We are excited to expand our involvement with ProfitBricks in the Switch Tier 5® data center campus because of the exceptional opportunities that will be made available to our partners in the design of their service portfolios.”

“IT service providers interested in building customizable, reliable, flexible, and scalable solution portfolios are discovering the advantages of ProfitBricks,” said Aaron Garza, vice president of Business Development, ProfitBricks. “The alignment with CloudJumper and ProfitBricks takes WaaS and cloud application delivery to a whole new level, allowing mutual channel partners to design and deliver cloud-based IT solutions that are aligned with market demands and industry requirements.”

Source: CloudStrategyMag

Zimperium® Deploys ZeroStack’s Private Cloud Solution

ZeroStack, Inc. has announced that Zimperium has deployed the ZeroStack Intelligent Cloud Platform to speed, streamline, and reduce the cost of its software development.

“We are continually enhancing our software-defined mobile threat defense products, and we need to empower our developers with self-service, cloud-based tools,” said Jerome Brock, senior DevOps Engineerat Zimperium. “By integrating ZeroStack’s Intelligent Cloud Platform onto our bare-metal servers, we have created a self-service DevOps environment that is cost-effective and easy to maintain.”

“Zimperium is the leader in mobile threat defense, and their position depends on their ability to continually enhance their software,” said Kamesh Pemmaraju, vice president of Product Management at ZeroStack. “The ZeroStack Intelligent Cloud Platform helps them empower their developers while retaining full control over their cloud resources.”
 

Source: CloudStrategyMag

VMware To Acquire VeloCloud™ Networks

VMware, Inc. has announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire VeloCloud™ Networks, Inc., provider of industry-leading cloud-delivered software-defined wide-area network (SD-WAN) technology for enterprises and service providers. Once the acquisition closes, VeloCloud will enable VMware to build on the success of its industry-leading network virtualization platform — VMware NSX® — and expand its networking portfolio to address end-to-end automation, application continuity, branch transformation, and security from data center to cloud to edge. This acquisition will also further enable VMware to lead the industry transition to a software-defined future, and help customers bring their businesses into the digital era with networking that is ubiquitous, open, programmable and secure by default.

The transaction is expected to close in VMware’s fiscal Q4 2018. There is no change to VMware’s previously provided fiscal 2018 guidance due to this transaction.

According to Gartner, “While WAN architectures and technologies tend to evolve at a very slow pace — perhaps a new generation every 10 to 15 years — the disruptions caused by the transformation to digital business models are driving adoption of SD-WAN at a pace that is unheard of in wide-area networking.¹

” VeloCloud cloud-delivered SD-WAN technology is deployed globally at-scale by more than 1,000 customers, both directly by enterprises and by Telcos and managed services providers serving enterprise customers. Service provider customers include AT&T, Deutsche Telekom, Macquarie Telecom, MetTel, Mitel, Sprint, TelePacific, Telstra, Vonage and Windstream. Enterprise customers include Bay Club, Brooks Brothers, Devcon, NCR, Redmond, Saber Healthcare Group, and Triton Management Services.”

“In the digital era, a new networking approach is required to solve the hyper distribution of applications and data, as we move from a model of data centers to one of centers of data at the edge,” said Pat Gelsinger, chief executive officer, VMware. “At the heart of VMware’s networking strategy is the belief in delivering pervasive connectivity with embedded security that connects users to applications wherever they may be. With the addition of VeloCloud’s industry-leading SD-WAN technology, we will be able to extend the VMware NSX approach of automated, secure, and infrastructure-independent networking to the WAN.”

“Enterprises are transforming how they architect and utilize their infrastructure, with a shift towards a cloud-delivered, software-defined model. This enables organizations to have a globally consistent infrastructure regardless of where it is deployed — from the data center and the cloud to the edge,” said Sanjay Uppal, CEO of VeloCloud Networks. “We look forward to helping VMware, the leader in software-defined infrastructure, in the next evolution of the company’s networking and NFV strategies.”

Leading with Cloud-Delivered SD-WAN
VeloCloud’s cloud-delivered SD-WAN combines the economics and flexibility of the hybrid wide-area network (WAN) with the deployment speed and low maintenance of cloud-based services. It dramatically simplifies the WAN by delivering virtualized services from the cloud to branch offices and mobile users everywhere. VeloCloud leverages intelligent x86 edge appliances to aggregate multiple broadband links at the branch office, and using cloud-based orchestration, connects the branch office to any of type of data center: enterprise, cloud, or software-as-a-service.

With VeloCloud, VMware will enable enterprises to support application growth, network agility, and simplified branch implementations while delivering high-performance, secure, reliable branch access to cloud services, private data centers and SaaS-based applications. SD-WAN technology is ideal for businesses looking to make the transition from static, complex, on-premises networking to the cost-effective, dynamic, and scalable cloud-delivered architecture of the digital era. The VeloCloud solution provides flexibility in network connectivity options that can augment MPLS and improves overall total cost of ownership for branch connectivity.

VeloCloud will enable VMware to help service providers increase revenue and service innovation by delivering elastic transport, performance for cloud applications and a software-defined intelligent edge that can orchestrate multiple services to meet customer needs. With SD-WAN becoming the primary function in virtual customer-premise equipment deployments, VMware expects to be able to simplify the deployment of virtual network functions (VNF) for applications such as security by combining the proven VMware vCloud® NFV platform with a cloud-delivered SD-WAN platform.

“Dell EMC and VMware are committed to digitally transforming branches, the wide-area network and the cloud edge,” said Tom Burns, senior vice president, Networking, Enterprise Infrastructure and Service Provider Solutions, Dell EMC. “We recently announced a partnership with VeloCloud that includes joint product validation, coordination with product roadmaps, simplified ordering, and coordinated sales and marketing to improve solutions for our mutual customers. We look forward to continuing this SD-WAN partnership with VMware upon closing to offer mutual customers best-in-class intelligent edge appliances.”

Guiding Customers to the Software-Defined Future
VMware’s software-based approach is delivering the networking and security platform that enables customers to connect, secure and operate an end-to-end architecture to deliver services to the application wherever it may land. Customers choose VMware NSX because it delivers network and security services closest to the application. With VeloCloud, VMware will bring the same properties to the WAN, resulting in visibility, security, automation with performance, and availability for enterprise and cloud applications.

“Digital transformation has brought about a growing dependency on the network as mobility, cloud, and social business erase many of the barriers pertaining to time and place in the enterprise. Advances in IoT are also driving dependency on the network,” said Matt Eastwood, senior vice president of IDC’s enterprise, data center, cloud infrastructure, and developer research. “The network is becoming more agile, enabled by a new generation of software-based platforms from companies such as VMware and VeloCloud. We see a positive synergy between the two companies, and the opportunity for VMware to build upon the software-based networking strategy the company has been executing on.”

1. Forecast: SD-WAN and Its Impact on Traditional Router and MPLS Services Revenue, Worldwide, 2016-2020, Gartner, November 7, 2016, Document: G00317430, https://www.gartner.com/doc/3505022?ref=ddisp

Source: CloudStrategyMag

ManageEngine Updates Its Cloud-Based Service Desk Software

ManageEngine has announced that it is bringing a unified approach to enterprise service management with an update to the cloud version of its flagship ITSM product, ServiceDesk Plus. With the ability to launch and manage multiple service desk instances on the go, organizations can now leverage proven IT service management (ITSM) best practices to streamline business functions for non-IT departments, including HR, facilities and finance. Available immediately, the ServiceDesk Plus cloud version comes loaded with built-in templates unique to various business processes, giving users the flexibility to perform codeless customizations for quick and easy deployment of business services.

Within any organization, employees consume services provided by various departments on a daily basis. While each department offers unique services, the processes and workflows associated with those services follow a pattern similar to that of IT service management. However, organizations often implement ITSM workflows only within their IT department, seldom leveraging these ITSM best practices to manage service delivery across other departments.

“Traditionally, the best practices of service management have only been available to the IT functions of an organization. Other departments, despite the mandate of servicing endusers, make do with processes and tools unique to their domain while not tapping into established standards followed by IT,” said Rajesh Ganesan, director of product management at ManageEngine. “ServiceDesk Plus takes the collective lessons from IT and brings an integrated approach to service management that cuts across different departments to deliver a consistent user experience and provide centralized visibility of all services.”

“Having separate service desk instances for IT, facilities and records allows us to track the issues separately while giving us access to the other departments’ resources. With the new version of ServiceDesk Plus, we feel like the firm’s support and administration departments are working together to provide assistance,” said Beverley Seche, network administrator at Stark & Stark, Attorneys at Law. “I love that it’s customizable, easy to use and available at a great price.”

Reimagining ITSM for Business Operations

Service operations by business teams closely align with fundamental service management processes. Unifying service operations across an organization helps provide a consistent experience for end users. Whether an employee requests information from HR or submits a work order to facilities, non-IT service requests often follow a similar workflow to that of any IT service request. So, instead of disparate applications and disjointed processes, organizations can use a centralized service desk to facilitate request logging and tracking, task automation and delegation as well as request fulfillment and feedback. With a unified service desk, each department can have its own service desk instance with templates and workflows inspired by existing IT service management processes.

Becoming a Rapid-Start Enterprise Service Desk

To date, ServiceDesk Plus has focused on providing ITSM best practices to the IT end of business. By discovering the common thread between the different service management activities within an enterprise, ServiceDesk Plus is now able to carry its industry-leading capabilities beyond IT. As an enterprise service desk, ServiceDesk Plus helps organizations instantly deploy ITSM solutions for their supporting business units by providing:

• Rapid deployment: Create, deploy and roll-out a service desk instance in less than 60 secs.
• Single enterprise directory: Maintain users, service desks, authentications and associations in one place.
• Unique service desk instances: Create separate service desk instances for each business function and facilitate organized service delivery using code-free customizations.
• Service automation: Implement ITSM workflows to efficiently manage all aspects of the business service life cycle.
• Built-in catalog and templates: Accelerate service management adoption across departments by using prebuilt templates and service catalogs unique to each business unit.
• Centralized request portal: Showcase all the services that endusers require using a single portal based on each individual’s access permissions.

Source: CloudStrategyMag

Cisco Updates Its SDN Solution

Cisco has announced updates to its Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI™), a software-defined networking (SDN) solution deigned to make it easier for customers to adopt and advance intent-based networking for their data centers. With the latest software release (ACI 3.0), more than 4,000 ACI customers can increase business agility with network automation, simplified management, and improved security for any combination of workloads in containers, virtual machines and bare metal for private clouds, and on-premise data centers.

The transitions occurring in the data center are substantial. Enterprises experience an unrelenting need to accelerate speed, flexibility, security and scale across increasingly complex data centers and multi-cloud environments.

“As our customers shift to multi-cloud strategies, they are seeking ways to simplify the management and scalability of their environments,” said Ish Limkakeng, senior vice president for data center networking at Cisco. “By automating basic IT operations with a central policy across multiple data centers and geographies, ACI’s new multi-site management capability helps network operators more easily move and manage workloads with a single pane of glass — a significant step in delivering on Cisco’s vision for enabling ACI Anywhere.”

The new ACI 3.0 software release is now available. New features include:

Multi-site Management: Customers can seamlessly connect and manage multiple ACI fabrics that are geographically distributed to improve availability by isolating fault domains, and provide a global view of network policy through a single management portal. This greatly simplifies disaster recovery and the ability to scale out applications.

Kubernetes Integration: Customers can deploy their workloads as micro-services in containers, define ACI network policy for these through Kubernetes, and get unified networking constructs for containers, virtual machines, and bare-metal. This brings the same level of deep integration to containers ACI has had with numerous hypervisors.

Improved Operational Flexibility and Visibility: The new Next Gen ACI User Interface improves usability with new consistent layouts and simplified topology views, and troubleshooting wizards. In addition, ACI now includes graceful insertion and removal, support for mixed operating systems and quota management, and latency measurements across fabric end points for troubleshooting.

Security: ACI 3.0 delivers new capabilities to protect networks by mitigating attacks such as IP/MAC spoofing with First Hop Security integration, automatically authenticating workloads in-band and placing them in trusted security groups, and support for granular policy enforcement for end points within the same security group.

“With ‘ACI Anywhere,’ Cisco is delivering a scalable solution that will help position customers for success in multi-cloud and multi-site environments,” said Dan Conde, an analyst with Enterprise Strategy Group. “ACI’s new integration with container cluster managers and its enhancements to zero trust security make this a modern offering for the market, whether you are a large Service Provider, Enterprise, or a commercial customer.”

Source: CloudStrategyMag

UKCloud Launches Cloud GPU Services

UKCloud has announced the launch of its Cloud GPU computing service based on NVIDIA virtual GPU solutions with NVIDIA Tesla P100 and M60 GPUs (graphics processing units). The service will support computational and visualisation intensive workloads for UKCloud’s UK public sector and health care customers. UKCloud is not only the first Cloud Service Provider based in the UK or Europe to offer Cloud GPU computing services with NVIDIA GPUs, but is also the only provider specialising in public sector and health care and the specific needs of these customers.

“Building on the foundation of UKCloud’s secure, assured, UK-Sovereign platform, we are now able to offer a range of cloud-based compute, storage and GPU services to meet our customers’ complex workload requirements,” said Simon Hansford, CEO, UKCloud. “The public sector is driving more complex computational and visualisation intensive workloads than ever before, not only for CAD development packages, but also for tasks like the simulation of infrastructure changes in transport, for genetic sequencing in health or for battlefield simulation in defence. In response to this demand, we have a greater focus on emerging technologies such as deep learning, machine learning and artificial intelligence.”

Many of today’s modern applications, especially in fields such as medical imaging or graphical analytics, need an NVIDIA GPU to power them, whether they are running on a laptop or desktop, on a departmental server or on the cloud. Just as organisations are finding that their critical business applications can be run more securely and efficiently in the cloud, so too they are realising that it makes sense to host graphical and visualisation intensive workloads there as well.

Adding cloud GPU computing services utilising NVIDIA technology to support more complex computational and visualisation intensive workloads was a customer requirement captured via UKCloud Ideas, a service that was introduced as part of UKCloud’s maniacal focus on customer service excellence. UKCloud Ideas proactively polls its clients for ideas and wishes for service improvements, enabling customers to vote on ideas and drive product improvements across the service. This has facilitated more than 40 feature improvements in the last year across UKCloud’s service catalogue from changes to the customer portal to product specific improvements.

One comment came from a UKCloud partner with many clients needing GPU capability: “One of our applications includes 3D functionality which requires a graphics card. We have several customers who might be interested in a hosted solution but would require access to this functionality. To this end it would be helpful if UKCloud were able to offer us a solution which included a GPU.”

Listening to its clients in this way and acting on their suggestions to improve its service by implementing NVIDIA GPU technology was one of a number of initiatives that enabled UKCloud to win a 2017 UK Customer Experience Award for putting customers at the heart of everything, through the use of technology.

“The availability of NVIDIA GPUs in the cloud means businesses can capitalise on virtualisation without compromising the functionality and responsiveness of their critical applications,” added Bart Schneider, Senior Director of CSP EMEA at NVIDIA. “Even customers running graphically complex or compute-intensive applications can benefit from rapid turn-up, service elasticity and cloud-economics.”

UKCloud’s GPU-accelerated cloud service, branded as Cloud GPU, is available in two versions: Compute and Visualisation. Both are based on NVIDIA GPUs and initially available only on UKCloud’s Enterprise Compute Cloud platform. They will be made available on UKCloud’s other platforms at a later date. The two versions are as follows:

• UKCloud’s Cloud GPU Compute: This is a GPU accelerated computing service, based on the NVIDIA Tesla P100 GPU and supports applications developed using NVIDIA CUDA, that enables parallel co-processing on both the CPU and GPU. Typical use cases include looking for cures, trends and research findings in medicine along with genomic sequencing, data mining and analytics in social engineering, and trend identification and predictive analytics in business or financial modelling and other applications of AI and deep learning. Available from today with all VM sizes, Cloud GPU Compute will represent an additional cost of £1.90 per GPU per hour on top of the cost of the VM.
• UKCloud’s Cloud GPU Visualisation: This is a virtual GPU (vGPU) service, utilising the NVIDIA Tesla M60, that extends the power of NVIDIA GPU technology to virtual desktops and apps. In addition to powering remote workspaces, typical use cases include military training simulations and satellite image analysis in defence, medical imaging and complex image rendering. Available from the end of October with all VM sizes, Cloud GPU Visualisation will represent an additional cost of £0.38 per vGPU per hour on top of the cost of the VM.

UKCloud has also received a top accolade from NVIDIA, that of ‘2017 Best Newcomer’ in the EMEA partner awards that were announced at NVIDIA’s October GPU Technology Conference 2017 in Munich. UKCloud was commended for making GPU technology more accessible for the UK public sector. As the first European Cloud Service Provider with NVIDIA GPU Accelerated Computing, UKCloud is helping to accelerate the adoption of Artificial Intelligence across all areas of the public sector, from central and local government to defence and healthcare, by allowing its customers and partners to harness the awesome power of GPU compute, without having to build specific rigs.

Source: CloudStrategyMag

Alibaba Cloud Joins Red Hat Certified Cloud And Service Provider Program

Red Hat, Inc. and Alibaba Cloud have announced that they will join forces to bring the power and flexibility of Red Hat’s open source solutions to Alibaba Cloud’s customers around the globe.

Alibaba Cloud is now part of the Red Hat Certified Cloud and Service Provider program, joining a group of technology industry leaders who offer Red Hat-tested and validated solutions that extend the functionality of Red Hat’s broad portfolio of open source cloud solutions. The partnership extends the reach of Red Hat’s offerings across the top public clouds globally, providing a scalable destination for cloud computing and reiterating Red Hat’s commitment to providing greater choice in the cloud.

“Our customers not only want greater performance, flexibility, security and portability for their cloud initiatives; they also want the freedom of choice for their heterogeneous infrastructures. They want to be able to deploy their technologies of choice on their scalable infrastructure of choice. That is Red Hat’s vision and the focus of the Red Hat Certified Cloud and Service Provider Program. By working with Alibaba Cloud, we’re helping to bring more choice and flexibility to customers as they deploy Red Hat’s open source solutions across their cloud environments,” said Mike Ferris, vice president, technical business development and business architecture, Red Hat.

In the coming months, Red Hat solutions will be available directly to Alibaba Cloud customers, enabling them to take advantage of the full value of Red Hat’s broad portfolio of open source cloud solutions. Alibaba Cloud intends to offer Red Hat Enterprise Linux in a pay-as-you-go model in the Alibaba Cloud Marketplace.

By joining the Red Hat Certified Cloud and Service Provider program, Alibaba Cloud has signified that it is a destination for Red Hat customers, independent software vendors (ISVs) and partners to enable them to benefit from Red Hat offerings in public clouds. These will be provided under innovative consumption and service models with the greater confidence that Red Hat product experts have validated the solutions.

“As enterprises in China, and throughout the world, look to modernize application environments, a full-lifecycle solution by Red Hat on Alibaba Cloud can provide customers higher flexibility and agility. We look forward to working with Red Hat to help enterprise customers with their journey of scaling workloads to Alibaba Cloud.,” said Yeming Wang, deputy general manager of Alibaba Cloud Global, Alibaba Cloud.

Launched in 2009, the Red Hat Certified Cloud and Service Provider Program is designed to assemble the solutions cloud providers need to plan, build, manage, and offer hosted cloud solutions and Red Hat technologies to customers. The Certified Cloud Provider designation is awarded to Red Hat partners following validation by Red Hat. Each provider meets testing and certification requirements to demonstrate that they can deliver a safe, scalable, supported, and consistent environment for enterprise cloud deployments.

In addition, in the coming months, Red Hat customers will be able to move eligible, unused Red Hat subscriptions from their datacenter to Alibaba Cloud, China’s largest public cloud service provider, using Red Hat Cloud Access. Red Hat Cloud Access is an innovative “bring-your-own-subscription” benefit available from select Red Hat Certified Cloud and Service Providers that enables customers to move eligible Red Hat subscriptions from on-premise to public clouds. Red Hat Cloud Access also enables customers to maintain a direct relationship with Red Hat – including the ability to receive full support from Red Hat’s award-winning Global Support Services organization, enabling customers to maintain a consistent level of service across certified hybrid deployment infrastructures.

Source: CloudStrategyMag

Edgeconnex® Enables Cloudflare Video Streaming Service

EdgeConneX® has announced a new partnership with Cloudflare to enable and deploy its new Cloudflare Stream service. The massive Edge deployment will roll out in 18 Edge Data Centers® (EDCs) across North America and Europe, enabling Cloudflare to bring data within a few milliseconds of local market endusers and providing fast and effective delivery of bandwidth-intensive content.

Cloudflare powers more than 10% of all Internet requests and ensures that web properties, APIs and applications run efficiently and stay online. On September 27, 2017, exactly seven years after the company’s launch, Cloudflare expanded its offerings with Cloudflare Stream, a new service that combines encoding and global delivery to form a solution for the technical and business issues associated with video streaming. By deploying Stream at all of Cloudflare’s edge nodes, Cloudflare is providing customers the ability to integrate high-quality, reliable streaming video into their applications.

In addition to the launch of Stream, Cloudflare is rolling out four additional new services: Unmetered Mitigation, which eliminates surge pricing for DDoS mitigation; Geo Key Manager, which provides customers with granular control over where they place their private keys; Cloudflare Warp, which eliminates the effort required to fully mask and protect an application; and Cloudflare Workers, which writes and deploys JavaScript code at the edge. As part of its ongoing global expansion, Cloudflare is launching with EdgeConneX to serve more customers with fast and reliable web services.

“We think video streaming will be a ubiquitous component within all websites and apps in the future, and it’s our immediate goal to expand the number of companies that are streaming video from 1,000 to 100,000,” explains Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO, Cloudflare. “Combined with EdgeConneX’s portfolio of Edge Data Centers, our technology enables a global solution across all 118 of our points of presence, for the fastest and most secure delivery of video and Internet content.”

In order to effectively deploy its services, including the newly launched Stream solution, Cloudflare is allowing customers to run basic software at global facilities located at the Edge of the network. To achieve this, Cloudflare has selected EdgeConneX to provide fast and reliable content delivery to end users. When deploying Stream and other services in EDCs across North America and Europe, Cloudflare will utilize this massive Edge deployment to further enhance its service offerings.

Cloudflare’s performance gains from EdgeConneX EDCs have been verified by Cedexis, the leader in latency-based load balancing for content and cloud providers. Their panel of Real User Measurement data showed significant response time improvements immediately following the EdgeConneX EDC deployments — 33% in the Minneapolis metro area and 20% in the Portland metro area.

“When it comes to demonstrating the effectiveness of storing data at an EdgeConneX EDC, the numbers speak for themselves,” says Clint Heiden, chief commercial officer, EdgeConneX. “We look forward to continuing our work with Cloudflare to help them deliver a wide range of cutting-edge services to their customer base, including Cloudflare Stream.”

Source: CloudStrategyMag

General Electric Names AWS Its Preferred Cloud Provider

Amazon Web Services, Inc. has announced that General Electric has selected AWS as its preferred cloud provider. GE continues to migrate thousands of core applications to AWS. GE began an enterprise-wide migration in 2014, and today many GE businesses, including GE Power, GE Aviation, GE Healthcare, GE Transportation, and GE Digital, run many of their cloud applications on AWS. Over the past few years, GE migrated more than 2,000 applications, several of which leverage AWS’s analytics and machine learning services.

“Adopting a cloud-first strategy with AWS is helping our IT teams get out of the business of building and running data centers and refocus our resources on innovation as we undergo one of the largest and most important transformations in GE’s history,” said Chris Drumgoole, chief technology officer and corporate vice president, General Electric. “We chose AWS as the preferred cloud provider for GE because AWS’s industry leading cloud services have allowed us to push the boundaries, think big, and deliver better outcomes for GE.”

“Enterprises across industries are migrating to AWS in droves, and in the process are discovering the wealth of new opportunities that open up when they have the most comprehensive menu of cloud capabilities — which is growing daily — at their fingertips,” said Mike Clayville, vice president, worldwide commercial sales, AWS. “GE has been at the forefront of cloud adoption, and we’ve been impressed with the pace, scope, and innovative approach they’ve taken in their journey to AWS. We are honored that GE has chosen AWS as their preferred cloud provider, and we’re looking forward to helping them as they continue their digital industrial transformation.”

Source: CloudStrategyMag