Daily Archives: March 16, 2010

Novell announced the availability of a hosted version of Novell Conferencing. This new conferencing solution enables users to conduct virtual meetings, demos and Webinars using a Web browser. With this Web conferencing technology, organizations can significantly reduce the cost and time required for face-to-face travel by instantly sharing documents, desktops, applications, Web pages, whiteboards, audio, video—even record meetings—without installing any software.

Novell Conferencing is simple to use with a powerful interface and offers a cost-effective alternative to other Web meeting solutions on the market. Through a new agreement with Dimdim, the easy, open and affordable Web conferencing solution company, this Web conferencing technology improves the Novell collaboration portfolio and offers integrations with products like Novell GroupWise for seamless collaboration.

Availability and pricing
A hosted version of Novell Conferencing will be available in April with an on premises version available later this year. Novell Conferencing is available at a fraction of the cost of competitors’ conferencing solutions, beginning at US$120 per user/year for a 20-participant room with pricing available for a 50 and up to a 1,000 participant room.

For more information, visit www.novell.com/conferencing

Webvanta, the powerful Software as a Service CMS that enables web designers to easily and quickly build hosted dynamic websites, today announced the preview of a new release of the Webvanta platform that gives designers even more control and flexibility to design and manage sophisticated, database-driven websites for their clients without needing a programmer. Webvanta 2.0 will provide more power and flexibility than other hosted CMS solutions, which typically do not support custom databases, and is a more reliable, easier-to-use alternative to open-source offerings such as WordPress, Joomla! and Drupal. Webvanta is the first hosted CMS that enables professional designers to switch to a SaaS solution for high-end business sites.

“As the web has evolved, building sophisticated, content-rich sites demands an ever-broadening range of technical skills. Most web CMS designers are no longer able to build such sites on their own, but must call on programmers to deal with CMS setup and database features. They’ve flocked to WordPress as a simple solution, but they’re hamstrung by its constraints,” said Michael Slater, Webvanta CEO and co-founder. “Webvanta is the first solution that gives them back the power to build leading-edge web sites autonomously, while lowering costs and making it easier to realize their creative visions. We bring the SaaS model to business web sites, which have been stuck in an increasingly strained self-hosted paradigm.”

The Webvanta Solution
Launched just last Fall, after a year of hands on beta testing, Webvanta is a SaaS (software-as-a-service)-based solution designed to alleviate a designer’s ongoing frustrations while enabling them to deliver better business results for themselves and their clients. Designers build pages using their favorite tools, then easily integrate their HTML, CSS, and JS code into the Webvanta system to construct the site. This brings additional layers of capability, such as a full blog system, commenting, photo galleries, calendars, RSS feeds, a membership system, as well as fully customizable database-driven content.
Webvanta’s streamlined administrative interface, in-place editing, and form-based content creation make it easy for clients to make updates on their own, enabling site owners to keep their sites fresh while keeping their costs down and preserving the integrity of their sites’ design.
Webvanta’s hosted CMS eliminates all the hassles of software updates, security risks, backups and systems administration, so designers can focus on design while being assured of reliability.
According to designer Charlie Magee, “Webvanta is the perfect fit for my business. I get the control of using my own CSS and HTML combined with the power of Webvanta’s door into the world of database-backed websites. It’s a win-win for me and for my clients.”
Availability
Webvanta 2.0 is now in private beta, with general availability in late March. See the preview page at http://www.webvanta.com/v2. Pricing starts at as little as $15 monthly for use of the CMS and database system, site hosting, monitoring, and top-notch support.
About Webvanta
Founded in 2007 by two former Adobe executives, CEO Michael Slater and CTO Christopher Haupt, Webvanta is at the forefront of the SaaS/web design revolution for business websites. Created for web designers by web programmers, Webvanta’s mission is to provide a radically different type of CMS that marries a powerful back-end system with an easy-to-use hosted service, optimized for the needs of the design community. Every day Webvanta designers are expanding their business, sharing information, and building the next phase of the Web. See how web CMS design is joining the SaaS revolution at: Webvanta.com

How green is your hosting platform? An environmentally-sound enterprise hosting solution now exists! AISO.net introduces Touchcloud – the green alternative for hosting. Touchcloud’s 100 percent solar-powered data center in California’s Palm Desert provides clean hosting of files and software, including live streaming, video, music, digital downloads, web sites, enterprise software and more. Partnering with Thunkinc.com, AISO.net has created a scalable web-hosting platform product that can be the data muscle behind the next eco-friendly social network, video sharing website, or sitcom. The challenge is to switch from one provider to another without downtime, Touchcloud works with you to make sure all security measures, content, and databases work perfectly before live deployment. Touchcloud is also announcing a 100% uptime network SLA which allows their customers to have assurance their data is live on the solar data network 24/7.

Many don’t realize it, but hosting large files like webcasts and video at a datacenter requires lots of energy, and currently, carbon-dioxide-producing fossil fuels such as coal, petroleum, and natural gas power most data centers. As the world demands greater bandwidth to view live sports broadcasts, movies, television, videos, and other entertainment online, we run the hidden risk of continuing our polluting ways.

“We are focusing on the entertainment industry because it is a perfect fit. They have large files that stream to millions of people and they also are concerned about non-destructive methods to get their craft to their audience. Any organization with a green mission knows by now that carbon credits is just a bunch of paperwork,” said James Tucker, vice president of marketing and sales for AISO.net. “We are the only data center in the world who is doing it the right way by using trusted and secure technologies on top of the most reliable energy source we have: the sun.”

Touchcloud has the capacity to take a big bite out of the destructive carbon footprint that data centers leave by generating their own energy on-site with two solar arrays in the Palm Springs desert. Rich media files are in high demand and, with home and office bandwidth speeds nearly the same, web users are pulling massive amounts of energy from data centers just to keep large files accessible. For video streaming, Touchcloud can handle over 200,000 simultaneous video streams using the company’s AISO.net data center. In 2004, the company streamed the LiveEarth concerts.

“It’s time to power 21st century ideas with 21st century technology. Other data centers consider themselves green because they pay for certificates after they use dirty fuels, but Touchcloud is the leading provider of truly green broadcasting,” said Phil Nail, Chief Technology Officer. “With Touchcloud, the only nonrenewable energy possibly needed to host large files is what powers the user’s own computer – that’s it.”

“Being able to offer a 100% uptime network SLA is a huge advantage,” Tucker said. “Because we have no energy overhead, we will be able to offer more aggressive pricing and also be able to provide fixed pricing over a long term because our energy cost will be the same in 10 years – zero.”

Speed is another key component. Touchcloud is about to launch a file sharing application called solarsendit.com that shows how fast the Touchcloud solution works from upload to download. With a maximum of 300 megabytes per file, the public can use this as a smarter way to send large files that do not need to use fossil fuels to send around the world. The only energy used to send a 300 megabyte file are the computers on either end.

NetApp announced that it has expanded its Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) and Data Center Bridging (DCB) product offerings with help from solution partners Brocade, Emulex, and VMware. NetApp customers now have even more options to build complete end-to-end FCoE infrastructures and unify their Ethernet and Fibre Channel architectures.

NetApp, a pioneer and leader in Ethernet storage, continues to advance the technology by expanding its product portfolio with support from its solution partners. As part of this expansion, NetApp will begin reselling a new Converged Network Adapter (CNA) from Emulex, and is among the first storage vendors to support VMware® vSphere™ 4 in an FCoE host environment. NetApp has also augmented its FCoE portfolio from Brocade. In addition to offering Brocade’s CNAs, FCoE blade for the DCX, and the top-of-rack 8000 FCoE switch, NetApp is now introducing a DCB-only version of the Brocade 8000.

“In our recent testing, the NetApp storage system did a wonderful job handling FCoE, iSCSI, and other storage protocols simultaneously in a single solution and is a very compelling proposition for customers looking to consolidate their data centers or move to FCoE” said Dennis Martin, president of Demartek, a provider of lab validation reports and vendor-neutral product comparison research reports for software and computer infrastructure products. “Being first to market and having a robust partner ecosystem that provides their customers with a host of options to build end-to-end solutions makes NetApp a true leader in the 10 Gigabit Ethernet and FCoE space”

“Emulex is proud to partner with a leader in the Ethernet space to help bring the best possible Ethernet-driven network convergence solutions to our joint customers” said Steve Daheb, chief marketing officer and senior vice president of business development at Emulex. “Emulex brings a powerful network convergence connectivity architecture to NetApp’s end-to-end FCoE infrastructure with its OneConnect Universal Converged Network Adapters (UCNAs), and together we help our customers maximize cost and hardware efficiencies in their data centers without compromising performance”

With NetApp and its solutions partners, customers can build end-to-end FCoE infrastructures while still supporting existing Fibre Channel investments and take a phased approach to consolidating their data centers around Ethernet. By using Emulex OneConnect UCNAs, customers can run both FCoE and IP traffic through the same port and on the same wire, eliminating the need for and expense of separate SAN and LAN adapters and cables. Emulex OneConnect UCNAs provide maximum performance, regardless of the mix of network traffic, and outperformed other vendors’ CNAs in recent testing by IT Brand Pulse. Now customers can build out their Ethernet infrastructure over time while maintaining maximum performance and protecting previous infrastructure investments.

“NetApp’s philosophy and strength has always been to offer a unified, multiprotocol storage portfolio that gives customers the benefit of both efficiency and performance” said Patrick Rogers, vice president of Solutions and Alliances at NetApp. “By working closely with our solutions partners like Brocade, Emulex, and VMware to push the envelope of what’s possible with Ethernet storage, we’re able to offer customers more options than ever before to help them simplify and unify their infrastructure and achieve business breakthroughs”

The foundation technology of FCoE is 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE). As a pioneer and leader in 10GbE Storage, NetApp has shipped nearly 14,000 10GbE ports since first offering them in 2006 and, as the technology bloomed, has seen an 85% increase over the last seven months. As customers look to consolidate data center resources, they can increase value and efficiency by sharing the bandwidth of a high-performance 10GbE network infrastructure. The increased bandwidth and added enhancements to support FCoE make 10GbE the ideal interconnect for modern data centers.

For more information about NetApp Ethernet storage solutions, visit:
www.netapp.com/us/company/leadership/ethernet-storage/

RAID Inc., an end to end high-performance solution provider, announced today the Xanadu 220, its latest launch into enterprise class scalable storage with exceptional performance of up to 6GB/s. The Xanadu 220 is ideal for environments that store vast amounts of data and is utilized for high-bandwidth programs and complex application processing such as computational analysis, data-intensive research, rich media, 3-D computer modeling, seismic processing, data mining and large-scale simulation. Demands of multiple terabytes per second are required to minimize the I/O cycles of large-scale clusters.

The Xanadu 220 solution comes in two host connectivity options; Direct InfiniBand [8 x DDR Ports] or Fibre-Channel [16 x 8Gb FCPorts]. This gives HPC users configuration options that fit their individual needs.

The Xanadu 220 provides superior density and cost savings with a 4U drive enclosure that supports up to 60 SATA drives that are all accessible from the front, reduced operational costs up to 35% and footprint up to 65% reduction for capacity-intensive applications. The Xanadu 220 also has the option of a 3U drive enclosure that supports intermixing high-performance SSD and FC drives with high-capacity SATA drives.

“No single point of failure and a wide array of Enterprise class features unmatched density and performance make this product unique in the Storage Industry,” stated Bob Picardi, CEO of RAID Inc.

About RAID Incorporated
Since 1994 RAID Inc. has provided true 100% customized storage and computing solutions that best meet the unique requirements of HPC centers, corporations, government entities and educational institutions worldwide. From supercomputing to grid computing, RAID Inc. ensures the availability of critical digital content in real-time, all the time. The company guarantees this with the “RAID Approach,” the industry’s only concierge service and support model that assures the highest level of personalized support and resolution to any issue. StorageWatch®, the industry’s only real-time monitoring and managed storage service offering which lowers total cost of ownership while increasing data availability, was developed as part of the “RAID Approach” to better serve its customers. RAID Inc.’s guaranteed “customer first” approach has made them an industry leader in true 100% customized storage and the best service and support. For more information about RAID Inc. visit www.raidinc.com or call 800-330-7335.

Rackspace® Hosting (NYSE:RAX), the world’s leader in the hosting and cloud computing industry, has announced the launch of Rackspace Media Services.

This Enterprise-level solution will provide an open source, direct-to-consumer (D2C) web infrastructure for music recording labels and other media segments that need to accelerate content delivery online, scale rapidly to respond to fan demand, and create new revenue streams.

Artists’ websites are becoming increasingly complex with eCommerce, user generated content, social media and custom applications, forcing record labels to act as IT “experts” and distracting them from their core business. As a result, many artists are turning to third-party digital solution providers for online music distribution, merchandise sales and concert ticket promotion – cutting record labels off from significant revenue and branding opportunities.

Working closely with industry leaders and experts, and utilizing extensive experience building and managing complex web infrastructures, the Rackspace Media Services solution exists specifically to address the business and technology needs of this industry.

“Music recording labels have traditionally focused their resources on non-differentiating IT tasks or have outsourced their D2C applications to third parties in an attempt to support hundreds of Artists’ complex sites and infrastructures. Rackspace gives labels the freedom to focus on differentiating their businesses via application development and the support of business processes to meet the needs of both the Artist and the fan,” said Wes Laird, Director of Rackspace Media Services, Rackspace Hosting.

Rackspace Media Services’ flexible, open source architecture, scalable platform and stable pricing model make this a unique solution for the music recording industry. Specific components include:

Rackspace Strategy and Implementation Team: A dedicated team that delivers a scalable D2C website infrastructure backed by URL uptime service level agreements.
Web Scale Engineering: The industry’s best LAMP technology professionals with years of training and “in-the-trenches” experience on the job 24x7x365 to assist with root-cause analysis and remediation and to keep websites online.
Real-time 24×7 Proactive Monitoring and Consultation: URL and Device Monitoring provide alerting and troubleshooting capabilities along with proactive trend analysis to prevent website outages. Advanced website reporting and analytics are included.
Release Engineering, Change Management and Load Testing: A structured process to identify and prevent application performance problems prior to live production allowing for seamless push of code changes and simplified rollback.
Optional Server Burst Architecture: Additional infrastructure capacity to quickly address the inevitable unplanned traffic spikes that come with success and growth.
About Rackspace Hosting

Rackspace Hosting is the world’s leader in the hosting and cloud computing industry. The San Antonio-based company provides its customers Fanatical Support® in their portfolio of hosted IT services, including Managed Hosting, Cloud Computing and Email and Apps. For more information, visit www.rackspace.com.

Demand for mobile access to Web 2.0 applications and services will see related annual revenues from these services hit $18.9 billion in 2014, a new report from Juniper Research has found. Presence-enabled communities, such as mobile voice-over-IP (VoIP), will be the primary market driver, followed by rapid growth in the social Web – which encompasses social networking, user-generated content (UGC) and mobile dating, chat & professional applications. Geolocation will also be an important enabler, and is forming part of an increasing number of Web 2.0 mobile mash-up service offerings.

The mobile social web report found that despite pricing models and monetisation of Web 2.0 presenting a significant challenge for many online service providers, numerous opportunities exist in the mobile market based around advertising, messaging, premium services and virtual economies, coupled with the strategic micro-billing capability of mobile.

Although there are significant revenue opportunities for players across the service delivery chain, the size and complexity of the Web 2.0 mobile market should not be underestimated. There are multiple routes to market, and there is fragmentation at all levels. “A confluence of Web 2.0 concepts and end-user behaviour exploiting both the Web and the mobile phone as delivery platforms is driving mobile Web adoption and shaping industry development,” says report author, Ian Chard. “Yet the distinction between service provider roles is becoming less clear-cut, meaning some commercial allies are finding themselves increasingly polarised as the market progresses.”

Other key findings from the mobile social web research include:

Off-portal applications and OTT (over-the-top) services – such as mobile IM and VoIP, SMS and social network-based ‘in-mail’ – represent a significant threat to operator revenues
Smartphones, app storefronts, and Web 2.0 applications are driving demand for cloud computing, and innovation in the service delivery environment – including Telecom Web Services, open APIs, and PaaS (platform as a service) and SaaS (software as a service)
This study published today is the first of two reports focusing on mobile web 2.0:

1. Mobile Social Web 2.0: Forecasts, Challenges & Regulations 2010-2014

2. Mobile Web 2.0: Business Models, Geolocation & Presence 2010-2014

Mobile social web whitepaper and further details of the two studies can be freely downloaded from www.juniperresearch.com