The company claims that its container-based infrastructure allows it to offer the “world’s fastest hosting” for both WordPress and Drupal. Its platform includes workflow and collaboration tools, continuous integration, performance monitoring, and scaling tools to reduce the excess resources web development teams often put into systems administration and infrastructure management.

“Pantheon is leading the revolution in web hosting,” Pantheon CEO and co-founder Zack Rosen said in a statement. “This new funding and the explosion of our partner ecosystem demonstrates confidence in our approach and the market’s adoption of our platform. Pantheon takes the heavy lifting out of building, launching, and managing websites for digital agencies and corporate web developers. Our website management platform provides the development tools and scalable infrastructure teams need to build amazing web experiences, launch faster, and maximize their efficiency.”

Pantheon added Niall Hayes as vice president of engineering, and appointed Twitter vice president of data strategy to its board of directors this year, and released enterprise services last September.

This news comes on the heels of several WordPress-related announcements and launches from competitors in the open-source CMS hosting market.

Source: TheWHIR

IT services in the region are expected to bring in $7.78 billion in 2016, up from $6.46 billion in 2015. Data center services remain the source of almost half of the sector’s regional revenue, but its compound annual growth rate is lower than any of the other services examined, including cloud computing, big data and analytics, mobility, and managed security services. Managed security revenues are predicted to grow by 18.4 percent from $580.2 million in 2015 to $687.5 million this year.

“One of the biggest hurdles to the mass adoption of potentially disruptive technologies is security,” Frost & Sullivan Digital Transformation Consultant Leandro Scalize said in a statement. “No matter which technology is in focus, without a well-drawn security strategy, there is little chance of long-term success.”

READ MORE: Drowning in Data: How Channel Providers Help Customers Make Sense of the World of Information Around Them

Rising awareness and deployment of SaaS and IaaS in Latin America is contributing to a rapidly maturing cloud computing segment, the report says, predicting it will surpass $2 billion in 2016.

A report produced earlier this year by 451 Research showed public cloud is more expensive in Latin America than any other global region.

A previous Frost & Sullivan report, released in 2015, showed significant adoption of cloud services among Brazillian companies. Since then, however, Latin America’s largest country has been continuously wracked by recession, corruption, and political division.

Source: TheWHIR

In a statement, Microsoft said: “We obviously welcome today’s decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. The decision is important for three reasons: it ensures that people’s privacy rights are protected by the laws of their own countries; it helps ensure that the legal protections of the physical world apply in the digital domain; and it paves the way for better solutions to address both privacy and law enforcement needs.”

Privacy protections for information stored on paper should persist as data moves to the cloud. This decision helps ensure this result.

— Brad Smith (@BradSmi) July 14, 2016

The warrant’s legality was previously upheld by an appeals court in April 2014. Microsoft appealed that decision in December 2014, after risking contempt of court in a procedural dispute. The tech giant launched a website to promote its position, sued the Department of Justice, and has publically acknowledged a need for cloud providers, particularly in the U.S., to win consumer trust.

The second appeal has been upheld by a panel of three judges sitting for the US Court of Appeals Second Circuit, who ruled that: “(Subsection) 2703 of the Stored Communications Act does not authorize courts to issue and enforce against U.S.‐based service providers warrants for the seizure of customer e‐mail content that is stored exclusively on foreign servers.”

Representatives for lobby groups including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the i2Coalition, and for tech companies including Rackspace, Apple, Amazon, Cisco, Hewlett-Packard, and Verizon, as well as for Ireland the European Parliament all submitted briefs in supported of Microsoft’s position.

“We conclude that Congress did not intend the SCA’s warrant provisions to apply extraterritorially,” the judges said in the ruling (PDF). “The focus of those provisions is protection of a user’s privacy interests. Accordingly, the SCA does not authorize a US court to issue and enforce an SCA warrant against a United States‐based service provider for the contents of a customer’s electronic communications stored on servers located outside the United States.”

The ruling also pointed out that Microsoft had already produced “non-content information” that was stored in the U.S.

The Seattle Times reports speculation by lawyers following the case that the government would appeal the appellate decision if it lost.

Source: TheWHIR

“Our customers come to Rackspace for Fanatical Support and our standard is to serve those customers with 100 percent AWS certified technologists,” Chris Cochran, senior vice president and general manager of AWS at Rackspace said in a statement. “To meet customer demand, we have more than doubled the number of Rackspace AWS certifications since the launch of our offering in late 2015.”

Rackspace began offering Azure and Office 365 through its partner network earlier this month, on the heels of a report suggesting Azure is gaining market share rapidly on AWS. Rackspace also began offering managed Magento environments on AWS in June.

Managed services, particularly on AWS, have driven growth for Rackspace since Fanatical Support for AWS was launched less than a year ago, although the company also recently moved 90 employees from public cloud to other areas.

Source: TheWHIR

“Lex is well prepared for this new role, where he’ll be focused on increasing LeaseWeb USA’s rapid growth in the U.S. market while bringing the spirit of the Amsterdam company to our customers there,” Con Zwinkels, global CEO of LeaseWeb said in a statement. “Lex’s extensive experiences as an entrepreneurial technology leader will help us continue to bring our winning formula of secure, affordable cloud-hosting solutions to our customers.”

“LeaseWeb USA is backed by one of the world’s largest hosting providers, but operates in the United States as an agile provider of innovative solutions,” said Boost. “It’s been a tremendous opportunity to work in a place with that mix of boldness and capacity. I look forward to continuing to use my entrepreneurial passion and knowledge of the U.S. market to lead LeaseWeb USA toward greater accomplishments.”

LeaseWeb appointed an internationally advisory board in late 2015, and launched in vCloud service in Asia in April as part of its global expansion.

Source: TheWHIR

“Cloud business strategy” could mean many things, so James Lippie of Clarity Channel Advisors will help service providers identify what it really does, and should, mean to them. Kyle York of Dyn will explain how to leverage internet performance management to maintain control of business application delivery.

A panel featuring prominent women in the hosting industry, moderated by Virtuozzo Director of Channel Marketing Elisabeth Kurek, will discuss how to leverage regional groups supporting women in technology to recruit female talent and make organizational diversity a strength.

There are also sessions in the track covering opportunities in new storage technology, the advantages of culture over strategy, and new approaches to mitigating the limitations of virtual infrastructure, along with issues and trends speed roundtables.

The industry-leading, vendor-neutral conference and trade show is only a less than two weeks away, so register now so you don’t miss out!

Source: TheWHIR

“We set out on a mission to build a simple and robust cloud computing platform so that engineering teams can spend less time configuring and automating their infrastructure and more time focused on software development,” Ben Uretsky, co-founder and CEO, DigitalOcean said. “By adding a highly performant Block Storage offering to our platform, developers can easily deploy and manage their SaaS applications and businesses as they scale. This is one step closer to building the next generation platform.”

The launch is a response to customer requests for a storage solution from the company, and was tested by more than 15,000 beta users. It is available now in DigitalOcean’s NYC1 and SFO2 regions, and will launch in Europe “in the coming weeks.”

DigitalOcean says it is up to 700,000 registered customers with 18 million Droplets, having experienced continued growth since the company was declared the second largest cloud computing platform by customer facing websites and apps a year ago by Netcraft.

Summer 2016 has been packed with DigitalOcean announcements, including the opening of a data center in Bangalore, India, and naming former Akamai and VMware VP Julia Austin chief technology officer in June.

Source: TheWHIR

Pano Xinos of Red Hat Cloud Innovation Practice will talk about the rise of OpenStack and how to take advantage of it on Wednesday morning, and DreamHost VP of Brand & Community Brett Dunst will share a case study in attention-grabbing messaging.

There is also insider insight into successful partnerships, inbound content marketing, leveraging security through targeted marketing, and trends critical to long-term success, as well as the speed roundtables.

A Strategic Marketing Bootcamp has also been announced, a special add-on session plus networking luncheon to help unlock the sometimes difficult-to-realize potential of the right market strategy. Separate registration is required for this three-hour session.

The final preparations are under way with less than two weeks left until HostingCon Global. Passes are still available and there are a few exhibitor booths remaining, but time is running out so register today.

Source: TheWHIR

Among UK companies, one-fifth say they have “no understanding” of GDPR, and another 42 percent say they have “looked into some aspects” of the regulation, but not the recommended pseudonymisation tools. (“Pseudonymisation” is defined in the GDPR as “the processing of personal data in such a way that the data can no longer be attributed to a specific data subject without the use of additional information.”)

Two of five German companies have studied the regulations but are having trouble understanding them, and only 21 percent say they fully understand the requirements.

French companies are relatively confident in their knowledge, but 38 percent saying they understand regulations they will have to meet in two years should still be concerning to the industry and those who regulate it.

SEE ALSO: The Post Safe Harbor Era: New Opportunities for Service Providers

“When it comes to protecting personal information, data masking and hashing represent the de facto standard for achieving pseudonymisation,” Iain Chidgey, VP International at Delphix said in a statement. “Take the unprotected personal information that is often freely available in the non-production environments that are used for software development, testing, training, reporting and analytics. By replacing this sensitive data with fictitious yet realistic data, businesses can neutralise data risk while preserving its value. Data masking irreversibly transforms sensitive data to eliminate risk and allows organisations to demonstrate compliance with the pseudonymisation requirements in the GDPR.”

The survey showed that roughly one-third of data held in France is masked, compared to a quarter of that held in the UK and Germany.

A fear of project delays was the most common reason given for not masking data (36 percent), just ahead of lack of control of data (34 percent). The survey also showed that while responsibility for data protection is held at the C-level, plans vary as to which specific role will take on the responsibility, and most businesses surveyed have neither a chief data officer nor a chief privacy officer.

As far back as the beginning of 2015 concern began to mount about corporate preparedness for new regulations. The challenges could create risk for companies and consumers, but also an opportunity for service providers.

Source: TheWHIR

“As we know, apps and software in general are playing an increasingly important role in businesses. Readify is recognized globally for its innovative software solutions and will further help us create software-led digital transformations with our customers,” Telstra Executive Director Global Enterprise and Services, Michelle Bendschneider said. “Readify will provide application development and data analytics services, nicely complementing Kloud’s existing services. It will enable Telstra to add incremental value to customers in enterprise cloud applications, API-based customisation and extensions as well as business technology advisory services.”

Readify acquired Huegin Consulting in September, and its team includes 160 software developers and about 40 other staff. The announcement seems to imply that they will be integrated with the Telstra team, which has been the company’s tendency over a string of recent local acquisitions.

Australian cloud companies Telstra has acquired since 2013 include migration provider Kloud in January of this year, network integrator and consultancy O2 Networks, information security, data management, and network integration company Bridge Point Communications, and unified communications and call center technology integrator NSC.

Telstra acquired the Singapore and Hong Kong-based data center and submarine cable network operator Pacnet for nearly $700 million in early 2015. It subsequently broke the company up and sold its holdings in Singapore and Thailand for $4.4 million. The company also invested in Chinese cloud storage firm Qiniu early in 2016, and has been ramping up its cloud capabilities to serve not just its domestic market, but the whole region.

To that end, Telstra launched a multi-cloud managing gateway in April.

Source: TheWHIR