Cloudant is a database platform built around Apache’s open source CouchDB framework. We have talked about it before but it has officially launched today after three years of hard work and a lot of VC money. Cloudant scales your database on the CloudDB framework but also provides hosting, administrative tools, analytics and support.
Cloudant focuses on scalability, flexibility, and high availability. Its method of data storage is ideal in any situation in which data is generated in a distributed way, such as with sensor networks, web servers, and mobile device service, in essence “small companies with big data.” Cloudant was founded by MIT Physics PhDs Alan Hoffman, Adam Kocoloski, and Mike Miller and recently received a seed round of $1 million dollars from Avalon Ventures.
The company currently has has 1,300 users and 10 paying customers and hopes to be the leading provider of CloudDB moving forward. Says founder Mike Miller about future plans, “There will be some huge changes in what web stacks will look like and we want to remain poised to be the cloud service that underlies those technologies.”
4delite has announced the launch of its cloud server based rich media publishing platform for advertisers who want to create powerful, yet unified, ad creative for cross-media purposes that mobile and web experiences provide.
For those of you who have not used 4delite, you can create banners for your website using their system. It’s a fast, fun, and very efficient way to make banners for your website. The cloud-based platform lets you drag-and-drop your own design for ad creative as well as embed whatever tracking URLs you require and takes only a matter of minutes.
The first public demo of the platform was held at a SF New Tech event in late August 2010 in San Francisco. 4delite was founded by Silicon Valley veterans Eugene Walden, Andy Laursen and Mary Ray, The company has developed a scalable publishing platform that is future-proofed for whatever emerges (or re-emerges) as the standard format for mobile and online advertising.
4delite is an angel-funded start-up, founded by a trio of Silicon Valley veterans: Eugene Walden, Andy Laursen and Mary Ray. Based in San Francisco, the company offers a cloud-based rich media publishing platform — the first self-serve solution for advertisers who want to create exportable rich media ads that work across mobile and web platforms, including the iPhone and iPad. Its board of advisors include: Mike Herring, Roger Lang, Will Price, Steve Cutcliffe and Jon Staenberg.
According to the release, the 3PAR board of directors has determined that HP’s revised proposal constitutes a “Superior Proposal” (as that term is defined in 3PAR’s merger agreement with Dell). Accordingly, 3PAR notified Dell of its intention to terminate its merger agreement with Dell immediately following the expiration of the three business day period contemplated by, and the satisfaction of the other conditions set forth in, its merger agreement with Dell in order to enter into a merger agreement with HP on the terms set forth in HP’s revised acquisition proposal.
This latest offer more than doubles Dell’s original bid for 3PAR, which was high to begin with. 3PAR provides a virtualized utility storage platform that enables customers to significant drive down cloud computing infrastructure, storage and associated management costs.
It looks like this bidding war is over, and it’s about time… I think I’m going to go grab me some cereal!
Sony announced their very own cloud-based digital music server. Sony’s Chairman and Group CEO, had to say about the upcoming service: “We are excited to offer our customers high quality, cloud-based entertainment experiences across many of Sony’s network-enabled devices. Services ‘powered by Qriocity’ will revolutionize the way that users play, listen, watch, share, communicate, learn, discover and create their digital entertainment content.”
This announcement of their very own cloud-based digital music server, named Qriocity was made this morning at the IFA conference in Berlin. It works much like iTunes or Steam, but with Sony’s touch.
Trend Micro has launched the public beta of a new cloud encryption product, claiming an industry first in the process. SecureCloud provides users with sole control over the encryption keys, meaning they decide when and where these keys are deployed.
Rik Ferguson, told IT PRO this is the first product on the market that hands over cloud encryption to the customer in this way. “Without control you don’t have security – that’s a given,” Ferguson said. “We need to make sure we offer technologies to businesses that allow them to retain control of their data, because when you take on board a cloud service provider you will, by definition, outsource a lot of control. But you can’t outsource accountability.”
The beta is available now and the product, which supports the Amazon EC2, Eucalyptus and VMware platforms, is expected to be released generally in the fourth quarter of 2010. Cloud Server Encryption will become a huge issue in the next couple months.
This is an Interview with Xsigo CEO Lloyd Carney by Elias Khnaser
Elias Khnaser: I’d like to start out by getting a little bit of background on you. What were you doing prior to Xsigo?
Carney: Let’s see. I was fortunate enough to be a part of two startups before this one. I was also Chief Operating Officer for Juniper Networks. I was Chairman/CEO of Micromuse that was sold to IBM about three or four years ago. I was running my own venture firm and then about two and a half years ago I joined Xsigo. The Xsigo founder – Kenton Murphy, ran all development for me at Juniper. I’ve been in technology my entire professional career.
I’m curious, how did the Xsigo come to be? Does it mean anything?
Well, it was trying to find a domain name that we didn’t have to pay a ridiculous fee for, and we went down the alphabet, you know every word in Webster’s dictionary has been domain named. So we made one up – it means nothing.
One of the things that constantly comes up is how do you pronounce the name Xsigo? Some say See- Go, others use Sy-Go, and then you have the X-I-Go. Can you clarify it for us once and for all?
The correct pronunciation is see-go.
How is Xsigo Funded?
Our major funders are Kleiner Perkins, Khosla Ventures, Greylock, North Bridge Ventures.
So you guys aren’t going anywhere anytime soon?
We’re well-funded, solid investor base, and you know, on our cart business plan we get to profitability and we still have about $20 million in the bank.
So I know there’s a big announcement that you want to make today, but before we get into that can you give me a brief description of what it is that Xsigo does?
NTT America announced that it is using VMware vCloud Director to offer cloud services to customers. VMware vCloud Director is software that extends the resource pooling capabilities of VMware vSphere to enable enterprises and service providers to create pools of compute, networking and storage resources with defined management policies and performance levels. This is helping establish a common model for provisioning IT services with consistent security, compliance and manageability across public and private cloud environments.
VMware vCloud enables NTT America to offer cloud services for its U.S.-based enterprise customers that empowers enterprises to leverage cloud resources globally to efficiently deliver resources to its internal organizations in a secure yet agile manner. Executives from NTT America will be on site to discuss the company’s virtualized offerings at VMworld 2010 (booth #331) in San Francisco, CA. from August 30th through September 2nd, 2010. NTT Communications is a silver sponsor of the event.
“We are pleased that NTT America adopted VMware vCloud Director to deliver enterprise-class services based on the industry-leading VMware platform,” said Dan Chu, vice president, Cloud Infrastructure and Services, VMware. “With VMware vCloud Director, NTT America will be able to bring customers increased datacenter efficiency and business agility by building secure, scalable, and cost-effective private clouds to deliver IT as a service.”
HP announced earlier today an all-in-one solution for deploying an open and flexible private cloud environment in a month’s time. HP CloudStart is capable of deploying a private cloud 30 days after deployment. It is designed to provide all the expertise needed for clients to transform their existing delivery approaches into more efficient shared-services models.
“To better serve the needs of their enterprises, clients are asking us to help them become internal service providers with the ability to deliver applications through a highly flexible private cloud environment,” HP technology services senior vice president and general manager Gary M. Budzinski said in a statement. “With CloudStart, HP is enabling clients to optimize applications for private cloud computing today, while providing a platform for a comprehensive, open and hybrid environment in the future.”
I wonder if HP is launching this because of of the recent 3Par acquisition that they are trying to get? It seems that Dell and HP are still trying to buy 3Par and then HP goes and launches something like this… I wonder if it has something to do with the acquisition that is trying to happen.
Will HP CloudStart or HP Cloud Start be a good thing for private clouds or a bad thing? The fast that you can launch your private cloud and have it up and deployed in 30 days is pretty sweet, but will it have everything that you need? Thoughts?
HP and Dell Keep Biddin On 3PAR. This has been going on for 2 weeks now. HP appears to have the edge right now, but the good news for whichever tech giant ultimately loses the battle for 3PAR is that there are other huge cloud storage providers out there.
HP raised its offer to $30 per share, a $3 increase over Dell’s bid, bringing the bidding to $2 billion. Dell had launched the opening salvo in mid-August when it had offered just over $1 billion to buy 3Par. As of this writing, 3Par had deemed HP’s bid “superior” and Dell was mulling over its response.
Egnyte announced today at VMworld the availability of its Enterprise Local Cloud solution on VMware. Egnyte ELC can be deployed as a virtual appliance on any VMware Virtual Machine, allowing organizations to deploy a hybrid cloud storage solution on existing infrastructure whether that includes big iron equipment, low-cost commodity servers, or a heterogeneous mixture of the two. Users can access company information in the cloud at Local Area Network speeds.
Egnyte’s merging of virtualization and cloud computing allows organizations of any size to deploy cloud storage solutions on existing hardware cost-effectively. Once the domain of smaller companies and departments, cloud storage allows large organizations to take advantage of the cost, deployment and management benefits of the cloud without replacing existing infrastructure. Enterprises have spent years building robust, reliable and secure storage environments, and now they can merge their existing infrastructure with the flexibility and accessibility of cloud storage solutions. Almost as important in today’s dynamic business environment, ELC lets organizations deploy cloud storage quickly and cost-efficiently.
“Egnyte Enterprise Local Cloud gives us LAN-like speeds in accessing our files,” said Piotr Malinski, IT Manager, Semperian Asset Management Ltd. “By deploying the software as a VMware VM, we are able to repurpose existing hardware, giving us the best of both worlds: access from anywhere using the Egnyte Cloud File Server, and fast local access using Egnyte Local Cloud.”
“Our larger customers needed a way for their distributed users to operate at LAN speeds,” said Vineet Jain, CEO of Egnyte. “Egnyte’s Enterprise Local Cloud gives organizations the ability to provide their users with fast, reliable access to documents while they’re on the road, in a branch office, or working from home — without dramatically re-engineering the entire storage environment. Earlier, large organizations were locked into big iron deployments. Now they can leverage virtualization to achieve low-cost file serving and cross-office collaboration.”
is a database platform built around Apache’s open source CouchDB