Cloud Storage

Object Storage for Big Unstructured Data

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 08:30:00 EST

Big Data is Big, but it also causes a lot of confusion. Big Data is used for anything related storage these days, so people don’t know anymore what it exactly is. Is it Hadoop? Is it analytics? It doesn’t need to be that complicated though. There are two kinds of Big Data: Big Data (for analytics) and Big Unstructured Data. Big Data for analytics is a paradigm that became popular in the previous decade. A lot of innovation was done for research projects. New technology enabled researchers in many different domains to capture data in a way they had never been able to do before. In agriculture, for example, ploughs would get sensors that would send little bits of information to a central system (over satellite). Every couple of feet these sensors would measure what’s in the ground (minerals for example), how humid the ground is etc. Based on that, large agriculture companies would then be able to make better decisions on where to grow which crop. The problem was that traditional systems to store this massive amount of small data (relational databases) were no longer adequate to store this information. Systems like MapReduce and Hadoop were created as an alternative and would store these massive volumes of files as concatenated “Big” files. Big Data was born, Big Data for semi-structured data.

Red Hat Puts Gluster Appliance on Amazon

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 06:45:00 EST

Red Hat is putting its bought-in Gluster scale-out NAS storage technology, acquired in October, on the Amazon cloud. It’s styled Red Hat Virtual Storage Appliance for Amazon Web Services and other clouds are supposed to follow in short order.

Total Number of Objects Stored in Amazon S3 Hits 762 Billion

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 09:00:00 EST

"As of the end of 2011," reports Jeff Barr on the official Amazon Web Services blog, "there are 762 billion (762,000,000,000) objects in Amazon S3. We process over 500,000 requests per second for these objects at peak times."

Cloud Storage Gateway Market Starting to Catch Fire

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 04:30:00 EST

You may have seen Amazon’s announcement of the AWS Storage Gateway beta. Truth be told, the cloud storage gateway market is starting to catch fire. Amazon’s move validates the need for an iSCSI cloud storage gateway to easily deliver cloud storage into business environments and acknowledges that integration through APIs is not a process businesses will easily embrace. The deeper implication is that gateways facilitate the adoption of cloud storage as an alternative to on-premise or off-premise traditional storage, helping Amazon tap into a large multi-billion dollar data storage market. Does this mean more cloud providers may want to offer a gateway in the future? You bet.

Amazon's Cloud Storage Gateway Reviewed

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 07:00:00 EST

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has announced the beta of their new storage gateway functionality that enables access of Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Services) from your different applications using an appliance installed in your data center site. With this beta launch, Amazon joins other startup vendors who are providing standalone gateway appliance products (e.g. Nasuni, Certa, etc) along with those who have disappeared from the market (e.g. Cirtas).

Cloud Expo Speaker Profile: James Thomason - Gale Technologies

Mon, 07 Nov 2011 09:45:00 EST

With Cloud Expo Silicon Valley (9th Cloud Expo) starting today Monday November 7 at the Santa Clara Convention Center, CA, let's introduce you in greater detail to the distinguished individuals in our incredible Speaker Faculty for the technical program at the conference... We have technical and strategy sessions for you every day from Nov 7 through Nov 10 dealing with every nook and cranny of Cloud Computing, but what of those who are presenting? Who are they, where do they work, what else have they written and/or said about the Cloud that is transforming the world of Enterprise IT?

Ten Crucial Purchasing Questions for Cloud Storage Service Providers

Wed, 05 Oct 2011 07:30:00 EDT

Even if a potential cloud services vendor gives full assurance that you, as the customer, retain ownership of your data, there are a variety of additional challenges to deal with, including essential legal and technical data transferability questions. This expert guide highlights 10 “must-ask” questions when contemplating a cloud storage investment.

EMC Successor: It's Pat! Or Not...

Fri, 08 Jul 2011 19:53:00 EDT

EMC CEO Joe Tucci still plans to step down next year. A few internal candidates, including former Intel CTO and current EMC President Pat Gelsinger, are still in the running. And the company faces, as do all major technology companies, a serious responsibility in adapting itself sufficiently to the emerging demand for cloud computing. A Bloomberg News story earlier today focused on Gelsinger and a few other internal candidates, their respective strengths, and the likelihood of them assuming the top job. Nothing new here, really. I've never heard a bad word about Pat Gelsinger, and have found him to be quite intelligent (as expected) and gracious, in both formal presentations and in person. I was impressed years ago when I saw that he listed his two-year Associate's degree in his academic credentials. Even with an MS from Stanford, the man has a humility about him that's not necessarily associated with very top executives. EMC's core storage business is one of brutal competitiveness and hard feelings. Reading the online debates among storage analysts and partisans can seem like a triathlon of jousting, muay thai, and a knife fight. Yet one of EMC's severe critics (who works for the competition) has said he wished Gelsinger worked for his company instead of the hated EMC. Storage lies at the core of cloud computing – virtualization started there, years ago, and the deployment and management of storage resources that adds even more complexity to cloud structures than the processing end. So EMC will face severe, unending challenges in a business that has seen the per-gigabyte price of its product drop about 99.999% in recent years, as demand has become ever more insatiable. Oh, and EMC is majority owner of VMWare, one of the icons of cloud computing, but a company with its hypergrowth years behind it, now facing the challenge of maintaining established market leadership while convincing major markets in Asia to embrace its vision and products. One also suspects we haven't reached the end of the storyline with the token-hacking scandal involving RSA Security, now also owned by EMC. Was Lockheed Martin breached or not? How many other defense contractors have been attacked? How many successfully? How bad is this token compromise story after all? The fact of several internal EMC candidates competing for the CEO's job is not a story. There are mony months left for passive-aggressive internal fighting, naked competition, and the intrusion of outside candidates into the mix. As with all technology companies today, the final decision will hinge on whether the Board of Directors feels a techie, a beancounter, or a car salesman will be the best fit for the future. Given the complexity of the cloud computing challenge and the potential problems in cleaning up the RSA mess, I'd bet on the techie, were I a betting man.

Cloud Computing: Who Currently Owns Your Cloud-Based Storage?

Fri, 20 May 2011 09:15:00 EDT

We’ve been talking with our customers for some time about the convergence of identity, security, and storage. There are a number of factors driving this union of technologies and cloud storage provides a great case study to highlight our point of view. If you caught the recent news on Dropbox, you can understand a CIO’s queasiness about cloud storage on shared, multi-tenant resources. A complaint filed with the FTC alleges that the file-sharing service has been misleading users regarding the security and privacy of their files. The latest scandal revolves around Dropbox.com's use of deduplication – a common practice in many large storage systems. Nearly all of the top storage solutions offer some sort of deduplication, and companies like DataDomain (now a subsidiary of EMC), that has licensed Likewise technology, have made it their key value proposition. Basically, Dropbox.com would keep only one copy of a given file if it was uploaded by more than one user. In order to make this happen, one unique file would have to be shared between more than just the user who initially uploaded it.

‘No Man Left Behind’ Doesn’t Apply to Amazon

Wed, 27 Apr 2011 01:15:00 EDT

Some people caught in the Great Amazon Cloud Burst of 2011 are finding that like Humpty Dumpty no matter what all the king’s horses and all the king’s men do they’re not going to get put back together again. Amazon’s been talking about “stuck EBS volumes” for a couple of days now on its Service Health Dashboard – EBS meaning Elastic Block Storage – and ultimately it decided that – despite all its efforts – “0.07% of the volumes in our US-East Region will not be fully recoverable.” It said it’s “in the process of contacting these customers.” It’s unclear how much 0.07% represents, but there were a lot more sites on Amazon’s bollixed North Virginia Availability Zone than most people imagined. Anyway it said Tuesday (Day 6) on its status board that “We’re closing this thread out by telling you that the team is working very diligently on the root causes and learnings from this event, and will share the post mortem shortly. If you are experiencing issues that you feel are still related to this event, please contact us.” Ahead of Amazon’s post mortem, RightScale CTO Thorsten von Eicken came up with one of his own. “It appears that a major network failure was the initial cause of problems,” he blogged, “but that the real damage happened when EBS volume replication was disrupted. We did some extrapolations and concluded that there must have been on the order of 500k EBS storage volumes in the affected availability zone. It appears that a significant fraction of the volumes concluded

No More Iron in the Cloud

Tue, 12 Apr 2011 14:28:00 EDT

Iron Mountain, the well known information management company, is exiting the cloud storage business. The company announced yesterday that they will be phasing out their basic cloud storage services by 2013. Iron Mountain isn’t the first provider to turn its … Continue reading →

VMware Acquires EMC's Mozy

Tue, 05 Apr 2011 03:00:00 EDT

"Today it is my pleasure to announce that VMware has hired the team and acquired assets behind EMC’s Mozy cloud-based data protection service," wrote VMware CTO and former Cloud Expo keynoter Steve Herrod Monday, as VMware continued its quest, through strategic acquisitions if necessary, to bring the enterprise hybrid cloud to its customers and partners.

"VMware will operate the Mozy service on behalf of EMC without interruption," Herrod continued, adding: "However, the strategic relevance of today’s news is what this group brings to VMware. Over the past 5 years, Mozy has built one of the best examples of a globally distributed, large-scale cloud offering. We believe that, by being directly engaged with the delivery of such a service, VMware will further ramp our own cloud-related learning and accelerate new IP, scale, and capabilities into the products that we provide to our customers and public cloud partners."

Cloud Computing From "Agile Cloud Integration" to "Zero Latency"

Sat, 19 Feb 2011 05:00:00 EST

Delegates, speakers, sponsors and exhibitors will be traveling from all over the world to New York this coming June 6-9 to attend 8th International Cloud Expo in New York City, co-located at the Jacob Javits Convention Center with 11th Virtualization Conference & Expo. Here is an early sneak-peek at some of the many Cloud & Virtualization themes and topics due to be discussed in the breakout technical sessions scheduled in the course of the four days.

Mozy Abandons All-You-Can-Eat Online Storage

Wed, 02 Feb 2011 08:00:00 EST

Its eye obviously on costs, Mozy, EMC’s online backup subsidiary, is going to stop offering its MozyHome customers unlimited storage for $4.99 a month. From now on it’s going to charge $5.99 a month for 50GB or $9.99 a month for 125GB. The move doesn’t affect its business backup but may carry with it implications for the cloud in general.

Rackspace Launches UK Cloud

Wed, 19 Jan 2011 10:00:00 EST

"We’re delighted to launch our UK cloud today and we already have over 500 customers in beta," said Lanham Napier, President and CEO of Rackspace, as the Texas-based hosting and cloud computing powerhouse announced the launch of its cloud infrastructure to provide customers with a European-based infrastructure for their cloud-based data footprint.

My Top Five Cloud Computing Predictions for 2011: John Savageau

Mon, 10 Jan 2011 02:30:00 EST

Enterprise service bus as a service will begin to emerge within enterprise clouds to allow common messaging within applications among different organizational units. This will further support standardization within an enterprise, as well as reduce lead times for applications development.

One Day the Cloud Really Will Be Big: The Economist

Mon, 03 Jan 2011 07:30:00 EST

"One day the cloud really will be big..." concludes an article in this week's international print edition of The Economist, an intriguing article that sets out to quantify the size of the three main layers of the cloud computing ecosystem.

Cloud Storage for Your File Server

Tue, 21 Dec 2010 04:30:00 EST

As I was explaining Gladinet CloudAFS to a group of IT people as a file server with cloud storage attached, one question I got was: "How much bandwidth you need to run file server with cloud storage?"

Data Danger Lurking in Public Cloud Contracts

Tue, 30 Nov 2010 07:00:00 EST

There is an exhaustive new study out that should give enormous pause to organizations considering or already using public cloud services, especially for storing data and documents. The research was conducted by The Centre for Commercial Law Studies at Queen Mary, University of London and it examines the “Ts&Cs” in the service agreements from a who’s who of cloud service providers, from Akamai to Zoho. The survey covers many different aspects of the agreements, including things like jurisdiction, fair use, arbitration, etc., and it finds many troubling details and patterns that lead the authors to conclude: “The main lesson to be drawn from the Cloud Legal Project’s survey is that customers should review the Terms and Conditions of a Cloud service carefully before signing up to it.”

The Top 250 Players in the Cloud Computing Ecosystem

Thu, 28 Oct 2010 06:45:00 EDT

In the run-up to the next Cloud Expo, 7th Cloud Expo (November 1-4, 2010) at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Silicon Valley, it's time to give my earlier list a complete overhaul. Here, accordingly, is an expanded list of the most active players in the Cloud Ecosystem.

Hitachi Stakes Out Cloud Storage with Advanced New Products

Tue, 26 Oct 2010 15:30:00 EDT

Hitachi Data Systems has announced a pair of new offerings to simplify and accelerate cloud adoption by distributed IT organizations and IT service providers. The Hitachi Content Platform v4 for "content-focused" storage can hold up to 40 petabytes and brings simplified and automated replication, improved multi-tenancy, and charge-back capabilities, allowing for more flexible and less expensive cloud-based data management, especially for unstructured data. And, the oddly-named Hitachi Data Ingestor serves as an "on ramp" to the Content Platform, providing a premises-based intelligent storage cache that makes cloud-based storage appear as if it were being served locally with NFS or CIFS file system access. Together, the two products are being aimed at top-down, storage-as-a-service applications offered by cloud service providers and at bottom-up data collection and consolidation applications for distributed IT organizations.

Fujitsu Makes Non-Cloud Cloud Sale to China Mobile

Fri, 15 Oct 2010 04:39:00 EDT

We know that Fujitsu has committed to an aggressive Cloud Computing strategy, as I learned in an interview with Fujitsu Executive SVP Kazuo Ishida back in April. But the company is being modest with respect to this major major announcement with China Mobile, with a China-based Fujitsu executive noting dryly only that ""We have been steadily expanding our server and storage business in China by offering customers high-quality products, leading-edge technologies, and superior services." China Mobile has more than 500 million customers. It is 40-percent owned by the Chinese government, and also listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), where it currently has a market cap of more than $200 billion. (This is 25% higher than AT&T's market cap and more than twice that of Verizon, a close business partner of China Mobile.) So this announcement, as Joe Biden might say, is a big honkin' deal. But Fujitsu has gone the straightforward route, to a fault. It's the first big non-Cloud Cloud announcement that I've seen. Anti-hype in action. I love it.

Tiny Company Solves Giant Problems in Cloud-Based Document Management

Tue, 12 Oct 2010 07:00:00 EDT

There are lots of different cloud-based document management services already out there, and virtually all of them force customers to store documents in the cloud and tightly couple storage with management and access functions into web-based applications. This approach is fine for some purposes, but for others it can be costly, complex, and even illegal. CloudPointe eschews the applications-oriented approach in favor of a middleware model that preserves existing storage infrastructure, enhances security and control, and enables easy integration with web sites and apps.

Popular Dropbox Store-Sync-Share Cloud Service Morphing Into Middleware

Thu, 23 Sep 2010 21:42:00 EDT

Dropbox, one of many cloud-based services for storing, syncing and sharing files, yesterday announced updates for their Android and Apple editions, a new version for Blackberry, and that there are now more than one hundred apps that have incorporated their API. Updates - natch. Blackberry - cool. 100+ apps - hold the phone! Dropbox is already one of the slicker consumer cloud storage providers, but it is locked in a perpetual feature race with Box.net and other popular services for supremacy in an unsustainably crowded field of similar offerings. What sets Dropbox apart is its API, the strategy behind it, and the runway ahead of it. It enables many different kinds of applications to use Dropbox as a data source, destination, or transfer mechanism, forming a sort of interactive data communications fabric in the cloud. Until now, syncing/sharing has been either a stand-alone service available from many different providers, or a captive capability embedded within many different individual applications. By making its API freely available to app developers, Dropbox frees them from rolling their own sync/store capabilities and it makes them a marketing channel for its own subscription service, giving it a significant leg up on its direct competitors. And, most importantly, it enables subscribers to use the Dropbox service to enable transparent data sharing between multiple applications, which is a new thing in the cloud.

Cloud Storage Becoming a Commodity

Wed, 25 Aug 2010 18:00:00 EDT

Hard drive is a commodity. Whether it is IDE, EIDE or SATA, you buy the right one and you can plug it directly into your computer. On the service providers front (service providers are the biggest cloud storage service providers), they may not all create cloud storage services themselves. For example, AT&T and Peer1 are using EMC Atmos. Verizon and Planet are using Nirvanix. As time goes on, we will see the same provider using multiple backend solutions to satisfy different need. Also when service providers merge, the merged company may be using backend solutions from multiple vendors. On the cloud storage vendor front, more and more are conforming to the Amazon S3 API. We saw Google Storage for Developers, Eucalyptus, Dunkel and Mezeo all creating S3 compatible APIs for their cloud storage solutions. On the other hand, Rackspace is pushing the OpenStack project. All are trying to create a unified interface.

How to Pick a Cloud Storage Service?

Mon, 16 Aug 2010 01:30:00 EDT

This year, there are so many choices when it comes to picking a cloud storage vendor, such as Amazon S3, Windows Azure, AT&T Synaptic Storage, Nirvanix, Peer1 CloudOne, EMC Atmos, Mezeo, Google Storage and etc. If you are seriously thinking about expanding your IT infrastructure with Cloud Storage Services, who do you pick and what are the factors to consider?

Asigra Announces Next-Generation Cloud Backup Platform

Thu, 10 Jun 2010 05:45:00 EDT

Asigra Inc., a leading cloud backup and recovery software provider since 1986, today announced Asigra Cloud Backup™ v10. The latest edition extends the reach and performance of the Asigra platform across the broadest range of computing environments, from small businesses to the Global 100. Advancements now include comprehensive protection for laptops, desktops, servers, data centers and cloud computing environments with tiered recovery options to meet the most stringent Recovery Time Objectives (RTOs).

Improving Enterprise Acceptance of Cloud Storage

Tue, 01 Jun 2010 11:43:00 EDT

Cloud storage (IaaS) services like Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) or Rackspace CloudFiles have become part of the IT vocabulary these days, with S3 now storing over 124 billion objects as of the second quarter of 2010. Paying 15 cents per gig per month, with no up front capex investments required and practically unlimited ability to scale and amazing reliability (AWS claims they build for 99.999999999) is obviously attractive.

Storage Management: Is it a Copy or a Backup?

Mon, 31 May 2010 07:00:00 EDT

As anyone who’s involved in storage management can tell you, it is business needs and business decisions that must govern a storage management policy, and make technology work for it, not the other way around. Accordingly, much of what we do in the storage management world has to do with policy and procedure, rather than the technology itself. One of the big questions in the storage world has to do with backups, and to what degree backups play a role in storage management.

The conventional backup paradigm suggest that a snapshot of data in a given instant is what qualifies as a backup for purposes of retention and data archiving. Backups are kept in an archival format, as opposed to the original format. There are those in the storage world, however, that are asking the question: can a file copy serve the same purpose as a backup?

Certainly the lines are blurring, and with good reason. Our storage management technology gives us more options today than ever in terms of how we choose to archive data. As such, it’s important to determine at what point a copy becomes a backup for purposes of archiving and/or compliance.

Here are the basic ideas we can start to work from:

1. Start with the basic definition of a copy. A copy is, in the most basic sense, a copy of a set of data.

2. Copies may or may not be protected. Copies may be vulnerable to overwriting or corruption. In some cases, a copy may disappear when the primary data set disappears.

3. For a copy to serve as a backup, it should be separate from the primary data set. Physically, the copy should be stored in a distant fashion, and it should be protected logically within the system.

4. Because a copy is not encapsulated in an alternative format, it may simplify restoration.

5. Copies should receive the same kind of attention that backup receives, including a management process, logs, performance monitoring, indexes and the like.

6. Copies should not affect either the performance or the usability of the primary data set.

Along the way, it’s important to identify the possible benefits of copy-based backup, including:

• Data in its original format is inherently more useful. This speeds the restore and re-indexing process.

• When backup targets are disk-based, they’re more accessible than alternative media. Backups don’t run the risk of unknown media failure.

• Disk-based copy backup lets you use replication or cloud computing solutions to move your data off-site, leading to greater disaster recovery and business continuity readiness.

While it’s not likely that a disk-based copy backup scheme will replace more traditional tape backups and the like, it’s certainly something that the storage management professional should keep on the radar.

Rethinking Business Continuance: Driving data availability up and cost down.

Almost every business organization understands that successful operations depend on the continuous availability of its applications. Most companies rely on internal applications – ranging from enterprise resource planning to payroll systems – to keep the wheels of the organization turning. They also depend on external-facing applications for everything from selling products to their customers to automating the supply chain with suppliers and partners. The failure of any of these business-critical applications could be catastrophic to a company.

Download white paper

Introducing CloudBerry Explorer for Google Storage

Fri, 28 May 2010 09:59:00 EDT

Note: this post applies to CloudBerry Explorer for Google Storage 1.0 and later.

Google Storage for Developers is a RESTful service for storing and accessing your data on Google's infrastructure. The service combines the performance and scalability of Google's cloud with advanced security and sharing capabilities.

Following the Google’s announcement CloudBerry Lab decided to support Google Storage in their CloudBerry Explorer product line. CloudBerry Explorer for Google Storage will have all of the functionality of CloudBerry S3 Explorer taking into account Google Storage specifics.

Google Storage is currently in private beta but if you are one of those lucky individuals who got an invitation you can now work with your storage using CloudBerry Explorer.

Note: CloudBerry Explorer for Google Storage is currently in beta.

You get your Access and Secret key on the Key Management section of Google Storage website:

You register your Google Storage account in exactly the same way as you register Amazon S3 accounts.

Now you can enjoy one of the many features of Google Storage:

* Register and connect to any number of Google Storage accounts

* Work with any number of Google Storage accounts simultaneously

* Create, browse, and delete Google Storage files

* Create, browse, and delete folders

* Copy and move files between Google Storage and your local computer

* Create Buckets

* List Buckets

* Delete Buckets

* Upload/ Download files

* Copy/ Move files

* Delete files

* Rename files

* View files

* Generate URL for files

* View files properties

* Copy/Move in background

* Synchronize folders

* Copy files from Windows Explorer

* Remember user settings

* Built-in feedback form

* Automated check for updates

In addition to CloudBerry Explorer, CloudBerry Backup will also have a version designed for Google Storage. Stay tuned!

CloudBerry Explorer for Google Storage is a Windows freeware product that helps managing Google Storage. You can download it at http://www.cloudberrylab.com/default.aspx?page=explorer-gs

CloudBerry Explorer PRO for Google Storage is a Windows program that helps managing Google Storage. You can download it at http://www.cloudberrylab.com/default.aspx?page=explorer-gs-pro It is priced at $39.99 .

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Industry Trends and Perspectives: Tiered Storage, Systems and Mediums

Thu, 27 May 2010 04:30:00 EDT

This is part of an ongoing series of short industry trends and perspectives blog posts briefs.

These short posts compliment other longer posts along with traditional industry trends and perspective white papers, research reports, solution brief content found at www.storageio.com/reports.

Two years ago we read about how the magnetic disk drive would be dead in a couple of years at the hand of flash SSD. Guess what, it is a couple of years later and the magnetic disk drive is far from being dead. Granted high performance Fibre Channel disks will continue to be replaced by high performance, small form factor 2.5" SAS drives along with continued adoption of high capacity SAS and SATA devices.

Likewise, SSD or flash drives continue to be deployed, however outside of iPhone, iPod and other consumer or low end devices, nowhere near the projected or perhaps hoped for level. Rest assured the trend Im seeing and hearing from IT customers is that some will continue to look for places to strategically deploy SSD where possible, practical and affordable, there will continue to be a roll for disk and even tape devices on a go forward basis.

Also watch for more coverage and discussion around the emergence of the Hybrid Hard Disk Drive (HHDD) that was discussed about four to five years ago. The HHDD made an appearance and then quietly went away for some time, perhaps more R and D time in the labs while flash SSD garnered the spotlight.

There could be a good opportunity for HHDD technology leveraging the best of both worlds that is continued pricing decreases for disk with larger capacity using smaller yet more affordable amounts of flash in a solution that is transparent to the server or storage controller making for easier integration.

That is all for now, hope you find this ongoing series of current and emerging Industry Trends and Perspectives interesting.

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz - Author The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
twitter @storageio

UnboundID Identity Management Platform Supports Cloud Computing

Wed, 26 May 2010 09:31:00 EDT

At the GlueCon Conference, UnboundID Corp., a developer of identity management software for Internet-driven, consumer-facing architectures, today announced the release of Version 2.2 of its Directory Services platform, which includes the UnboundID Directory Server, the UnboundID Directory Proxy Server, and the UnboundID Synchronization Server. The new platform enables customer-centric identity architectures and provides enhancements designed to support cloud computing and subscriber-based services, including large-scale business-to-consumer applications.

Angst, Fear, Uncertainty in the Cloud

Wed, 26 May 2010 07:00:00 EDT

As humans, we hate negative emotions. It’s so much nicer to focus on the pleasant. But sometimes you can’t ignore “bad” feelings. And it seems there’s plenty going around amongst IT pros when it concerns the cloud and security. A new survey says IT people are just plain scared that putting their data on the cloud [...]

Zetta Chooses Equinix to Launch On-Demand Enterprise Storage Solutions

Tue, 25 May 2010 08:12:00 EDT

Equinix, Inc. (Nasdaq:EQIX), a provider of global data center services, announced that Zetta, a provider of on-demand enterprise storage solutions, is using Equinix’s Silicon Valley International Business Exchange (IBX) data center to ensure secure, uninterrupted service to its customers. Zetta chose Equinix to support the successful launch of its on-demand enterprise storage solutions in 2009 based on Equinix’s ability to deliver reliable service, network-neutral connectivity and the opportunity for cost-effective expansion.

Intercept Chooses 3PAR Utility Storage for High Performance Server

Tue, 25 May 2010 04:00:00 EDT

3PAR, the leading global provider of utility storage, announced today that Intercept, a leading UK provider of IT services and hosting, has deployed both 3PAR InServ T-Class and InServ F-Class Storage Server models to support its online and virtualization offerings. Intercept replaced an inefficient, poorly performing network of six devices with these two resilient, high-performance 3PAR Utility Storage arrays. In doing so, the cloud computing service provider has simplified storage administration, reduced its storage footprint by 67%, and halved storage-related power consumption across its virtual server and desktop infrastructure. In addition, by choosing 3PAR, Intercept's storage environment now delivers 40% faster performance.

Google Storage Enters the Cloud Storage War

Mon, 24 May 2010 06:45:00 EDT

Google Storage for Developer was announced at the recent Google I/O event. A closer look at the Google Storage API reveals that it is similar to Amazon S3’s API. This means direct competition between Google Storage and Amazon S3.

The Journey to the EMC Atmos Cloud

Mon, 17 May 2010 06:00:00 EDT

For Small and Medium businesses (SMBs), having hundreds of public clouds to pick from is a very good news. Businesses can continue to drive the infrastructure cost down by leveraging the clouds and focusing on the key competency of the business. As shown below, AT&T Synaptic Storage is one of the biggest public cloud built on EMC Atmos technology. Anyone can sign up for an account and start using it immediately

Tutorial: CloudAFS in the Cloud Gateway Mode

Sat, 15 May 2010 07:00:00 EDT

Since we launched Gladinet Cloud Gateway beta last October (2009), thousands of users have downloaded and registered for the beta license while more than ten thousands downloaded the Gladinet Cloud Desktop. Based on user feedback, we have since released the CloudAFS as a sequel to the Cloud Gateway, with CIFS/NFS support, with Active Directory integration and with Cloud Backup functionalities to a file server. The functionality has exceeded what a cloud storage gateway is so the product name thus becomes CloudAFS – Cloud Attached File Server.

CloudFucius Says: AAA Important to the Cloud

Thu, 15 Apr 2010 10:00:00 EDT

While companies certainly see a business benefit to a pay-as-you-go model for computing resources, security concerns seem always to appear at the top of surveys regarding cloud computing. These concerns include authentication, authorization, accounting (AAA) services; encryption; storage; security breaches; regulatory compliance; location of data and users; and other risks associated with isolating sensitive [...]

Industry's First Cloud Standard to Be Used for Interoperable Cloud Storage

Mon, 12 Apr 2010 08:01:00 EDT

The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) announced today at SNW Spring 2010, the formal approval of the Cloud Data Management Interface (CDMI) as a SNIA Architecture standard. This milestone marks the first industry-developed open standard for cloud computing and will allow for interoperable cloud storage implementations from cloud service providers and storage vendors.