Daily Archives: February 15, 2011

HP and VMware today announced their intent to collaborate on developing and marketing next-generation Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) solutions designed and optimized for VMware vSphere®-based virtual and cloud environments.

Extending HP’s Converged Infrastructure strategy, the collaboration is designed to build on the success of the existing HP TippingPoint IPS solution for VMware vSphere deployments, taking current integrations to new levels.

The companies aim to advance customer protection by integrating HP TippingPoint IPS with VMware vShield™ and VMware vCloud Director®. Integrating the products will help enable pervasive security in the cloud by delivering unified security management, and by automating the processes of scanning, identifying threats and blocking attacks. As a result, security policies will become easier to maintain while delivering greater protection for traditional, virtualized and cloud infrastructure.

“With the growth of virtualization and cloud computing, security requirements have never been more complex and critical to our clients,” said Alan Kessler, vice president and general manager, Security Products Organization, HP. “Building upon HP’s global strategic alliance with VMware, this expanded relationship is designed to deliver additional innovative security technology for a converged infrastructure, providing protection that is automatic and seamless for our clients.”

The companies also announced they are jointly marketing a hardware and software solution that combines HP TippingPoint vController with VMware vShield App and Edge protection to simplify enterprise security. The HP TippingPoint IPS vController and VMware vShield solution is a comprehensive firewall and IPS security offering that protects across physical and virtual environments.

The combined solution enables customers to deploy security policies that automatically adapt to changes to virtual environments, such as introducing a new virtual machine. It offers continuous protection of both the physical and virtual landscape from a single, integrated offering.

Additionally, the solution incorporates increased intrusion protection intelligence from HP’s security research and development organization Digital Vaccine Labs (DVLabs), delivering filters that guard against the industry’s latest malicious attacks on an ongoing basis.

The HP TippingPoint IPS vController and VMware vShield solution will be demonstrated live at the RSA Conference 2011 in San Francisco in HP booth 1324.

“Our customers demand a security solution that is tailored for the new requirements of virtual and cloud environments,” said Allwyn Sequeira, chief technology officer and vice president, Security and Networking Solutions, VMware. “We are pleased to work with HP TippingPoint to optimize today’s solutions and collaborate to jointly deliver the next generation of cloud-enabled security.”

HP Converged Infrastructure is central to an Instant-On Enterprise. In a world of continuous connectivity, the Instant-On Enterprise embeds technology in everything it does to serve clients, employees, partners and citizens with whatever they need, instantly.

Pricing and availability

The joint HP TippingPoint IPS vController and VMware vShield solution is available today as the security layer for HP and VMware’s proven reference architectures that have been developed for Converged Infrastructure, client virtualization and cloud computing.

These solutions are integrated and supported through HP Services’ global security consultants and support engineers, with services for cloud and virtual infrastructure and security, architecture design, product implementation as well as support. The solutions and services may be purchased through HP or from an HP-authorized channel partner.

More information about VMware solutions is available at www.vmware.com.

More information about HP TippingPoint solutions is available at www.hp.com/go/networking

Facilitates Ecosystem of Trust Among Organizations and Service Providers by Delivering Cloud-based Security and Compliance Services

RSA, The Security Division of EMC today announced the RSA™ Cloud Trust Authority, a set of cloud-based services designed to facilitate secure and compliant relationships among organizations and cloud service providers. By enabling visibility and control over identities, information and infrastructure, the RSA Cloud Trust Authority will foster the trust necessary for organizations to adopt cloud computing for mission-critical applications and sensitive information. To further support and strengthen this requirement, EMC announced the new EMC Cloud Advisory Service with Cloud Optimizer from EMC Consulting, which helps customers create a balanced cloud strategy extending from legacy architectures through cloud service providers at the lowest cost while achieving trust objectives.

“Surveys show that lack of trust in cloud computing is slowing broader adoption of cloud services,” said Art Coviello, Executive Chairman, RSA, the Security Division of EMC. “While cloud computing offers tremendous benefits in cost and agility, it breaks down some of the traditional means of ensuring visibility and control of infrastructure and information. Forcing enterprises to develop trusted relationships individually with each cloud service provider they wish to use is cumbersome and will not scale. New thinking in security and compliance is required to provide a future in which organizations can consume services from a wide variety of cloud service providers on-demand and for all their application needs.”

Organizations will be able to manage relationships with cloud service providers via the RSA Cloud Trust Authority console making it easy to configure and deploy cloud-based security services. The system is being architected to greatly streamline the ongoing management of trusted relationships eliminating the need for multiple point-to-point integrations involving custom code with both organizations and service providers. The RSA Cloud Trust Authority will make it easier for organizations to adopt cloud computing and will give cloud service providers the opportunity to deliver classes of applications that previously would be off-limits due to security or compliance concerns.

“Today, enterprises wanting to leverage one or more cloud service providers have to create secure access methods, establish compliance measurement and data controls and solve a number of other security challenges,” said Drew Simonis, Group Information Security Officer, Willis Group Holdings, plc. “The complexity and cost of establishing trusted relationships with each provider erodes the value of cloud computing by slowing down the ability to provision new providers as part of the total IT portfolio. The approach RSA is taking with the RSA Cloud Trust Authority holds promise for changing that by creating an intermediary for hosted security and compliance services and will move the burden of establishing trusted cloud computing from the customer to the cloud.”

“The fundamental value of the RSA Cloud Trust Authority approach to services providers is that it helps eliminate a key source of friction slowing down adoption of cloud computing—the requirement to ensure security and compliance across their enterprise IT resources and their outsourced cloud-based resource,” said Ken Owens, Vice President of Security and Cloud Technology, Savvis. “Byoffering an elegant model for customers to establish trusted relationships with service providers more rapidly, RSA’s approach will accelerate the adoption of our services by a wider set of customers for security-sensitive applications.”
Cloud Trust Authority Initial Offerings

Identity Service:Among the highlights of the RSA Cloud Trust Authority’s inaugural set of capabilities is its Identity Service. This service will be powered by VMware’s forthcoming Project Horizon, a cloud-based management service with the mission of delivering simple, secure end-user access and provisioning to applications and data across the widest range of end-user devices. The Identity Service will be designed to enable a customer to manage secure user access and user provisioning to multiple cloud providers via federated single sign-on and directory synchronization. It will be engineered to enable federated identity management among an enterprise and its cloud service providers, oramong multiple cloud service providers themselves with options for strong authentication using RSA SecurID® technology.

Compliance Profiling Service: Leveraging the RSA Archer® GRC platform, the Compliance Profiling Service will be engineered to enable customers to view the trust profiles of various cloud providers against a set of common benchmarks developed by the Cloud Security Alliance among other security frameworks. This first-ever cloud compliance solution is a step towards more automated compliance for cloud services. By providing centralized access to security profiles of various cloud providers against a common benchmark, RSA will make it easier for enterprises to rapidly add capabilities and on-board new cloud service providers, dramatically lowering the barriers to trusted cloud computing.

“Security remains top of mind for organizations that wish to leverage the public cloud more extensively” said Jim Reavis, Executive Director of the Cloud Security Alliance. “The standards and recommendations developed by the Cloud Security Alliance are most effective when they are put into practice by the security industry. RSA has contributed actively to the Cloud Security Alliance standards and was among the first to embrace the Cloud Security Alliance standards within its products. With the RSA Cloud Trust Authority, RSA is taking another decisive step towards delivering comprehensive and innovative solutions for securing the cloud. The approach of delivering cloud security services spanning identity, information, and infrastructure will address key concerns that limit the adoption of the cloud.”
Expertise to Prepare Customers for the Cloud

The RSA Cloud Trust Authority is part of a more complete portfolio of offerings being created by EMC to simplify the customer journey to cloud computing. Announced today, EMC’s new Cloud Advisory Service with Cloud Optimizer is a strategic offering by EMC Consulting to assist customers in evaluating workloads for suitability to move to cloud models: private, public and hybrid. The new service helps customers develop a strategy for optimizing the placement of workloads by looking at three factors – economics, trust and functionality – to maximize cost savings and business agility. Working with the customer, EMC Consulting helps to create a transformational plan including people, process, and technology required for customers to successfully move to a balanced cloud model and experience up to 24% savings.
Beta Program

A beta of the RSA Cloud Trust Authority will be available in the second half of 2011, and will include both Identity and Compliance offerings. “The Cloud Trust Authority is a very strategic investment area for RSA, one with direct involvement of virtually every technology team across the division. We will be actively engaging with both enterprises and cloud service providers right away in shaping the future of this solution,” said Tom Corn, Chief Strategy Officer, RSA. “Trusted relationships only work with the active engagement of all parties. We see enterprises and service providers as participants in shaping the RSA Cloud Trust Authority. The beta program will lay the foundation for broad-based rollout of these services.”
Partner Program

Through the RSA Cloud Trust Authority, RSA is building an ecosystem of cloud service providers who will collaborate with RSA to enable secure and compliant cloud computing. RSA is establishing a partner program for cloud service providers who wish to participate in the Cloud Trust Authority.

For more information on the Cloud Trust Authority and early access program, please visit the web site at http://www.rsa.com

iWave Software, an independent provider of Data Center Orchestration, Automation and Cloud Management software, today announced a new alliance to simplify the automation of Cloud Service Management processes for private cloud and on-demand environments. iWave Software is collaborating with NetApp to help customers reduce cloud implementation and ongoing management costs by providing enterprise orchestration on NetApp® unified storage solutions. Customers can now orchestrate an end-to end virtual environment with storage service management processes, which include self-service provisioning, disaster recovery, fault remediation and workload management.

iWave Orchestrator provides Global 1000 organizations, IT Outsourcers (ITOs) and Managed Service Providers (MSPs) a proven, enterprise orchestration platform and management fabric for automating cloud service management functions. Masking workflow complexity and linking embedded application-based process automation, iWave Orchestrator supports heterogeneous vendor environments and offers a layer of abstraction between user interaction and infrastructure components. This approach helps reduce ongoing maintenance costs and provides flexibility in upgrading hardware and software applications to meet changing business needs.

“NetApp has a broad ecosystem of partners that help us deliver on our mission to help customers to a flexible and efficient shared IT infrastructure” said Patrick Rogers, vice president of Solutions and Alliances at NetApp. “iWave Software’s participation in the NetApp Alliance Partner Program will enable customers to simplify how they manage cloud services and reduce the ongoing administrative costs of managing storage provisioning within the cloud”

The new NetApp storage adapter adds to the over 50 prebuilt, available for third-party data center applications including service desk, event, configuration and change management, storage, provisioning, virtualization, CMDBs and line of business applications including SAPTM.

“Storage is the central component that binds the core cloud service management processes” said Ron Smith, Vice President of Marketing & Strategic Alliances at iWave Software. “iWave offers customers an alternative to purchasing expensive “turnkey” cloud stacks by allowing organizations to leverage their existing infrastructure (servers, storage, network), service management tools, and internal staff expertise. With our membership in the NetApp Alliance Partner Program, customers will benefit immediately from prebuilt workflows that automatically orchestrate the provisioning of NetApp storage infrastructure to fulfill self-service IT requests or meet peek demands of end-user activity”

For more information on iWave Orchestrator CSM solutions and the NetApp adapter, please visit www.iwavesoftware.com or call iWave Software at (866) 92-iWave.

About NetApp Alliance Partner Program
The NetApp Alliance Partner Program provides qualified infrastructure and application providers with access to NetApp solutions, software development kits, technical support, training, certification, product information, and marketing and sales assistance. Customers benefit by having access to best-of-breed partner solutions that are tested to work with NetApp storage. Additional information on the NetApp Alliance Partner Program is available at www.netapp.com/alliances.

About iWave Software
iWave Software is the leading independent provider of Data Center Orchestration and Cloud Management software. Used by Global 1000 organizations, IT Outsourcers (ITOs) and OEM partners to reduce IT operating costs, increase business agility and improve service levels, iWave’s award-winning solutions move organizations beyond the limits of inward-facing ITSM integration products. iWave’s high-performance automation platform and process modeling framework simplifies orchestration of complex tasks such as disaster recovery, cloud management, provisioning, and fault remediation in today’s on-demand enterprise IT environments.

iWave Software LLC was founded in 1993 and is a privately-held subsidiary of the Hall Financial Group. The company is headquartered in Frisco (Dallas), Texas and maintains offices in London, England and Moncton, Canada. For more information, please visit www.iwavesoftware.com or call iWave Software at (866) 92-iWave.

4PSA, the developer of multiple software solutions for cloud computing, best known for its leading edge VoipNow Cloud Computing Unified Communications solution, has announced today the availability of a new online presence, as well as of back-end automation and global branding solutions that emphasize both the company culture and the marketing strategy.

The two dominant colors of the 4PSA brand are now green and orange and they reflect 4PSA’s vibrant energy and commitment to the core values of life. The company translates these concepts in its innovative software products that optimize the use of vital resources through cloud computing and allow people to stay in touch and collaborate with the help of Unified Communications.

The company website available at www.4psa.com has been redesigned, optimized, and simplified. Visitors can now locate information even more easily, while customers can log in to powerful portals that allow them to manage their business and technical relationship with 4PSA. The website is also leveraging the automation technologies developed by the company to provide customers with an enhanced experience.

“Thanks to our latest back-end development, we have streamlined and optimized many internal flows and resources that normally required human intervention or monitoring. While it might not be obvious, one the most important things we wanted to improve is customers’ ability to locate the information relevant to their business. Usually, this issue is not covered by software automation products because they gather most of their intelligence from the provider’s perspective. We believe that focusing on the customer is critical for business success,” stated Bogdan Carstoiu, 4PSA’s CEO.

The new management portals available for 4PSA customers and partners are called Business Zone and Support Zone. “One of the most important things we’ve learned while studying our customers’ behavior is that business people have different requirements than technical people and what’s obvious for them might not be so obvious for the others and vice-versa. That’s why we have designed a portal where business people can manage software licensing, billing information, orders, invoices, provisioning etc. and another portal where technical people can get in touch with our support engineers, access the Knowledge Base and technical documentation, review the history of the incidents they came across with us etc. These two portals are different in design and flow.” Mr. Carstoiu added.

While the two portals, Business Zone and Support Zone, vary in form and concept, they can be managed from a single point by the customer representative. Together with the back-end systems, they will allow the company to launch new services in the months to come.

About 4PSA

4PSA is a leading innovative software development company, specialized in applications that run on computer clouds. The company provides, under the 4PSA brand, solutions that help service providers and enterprises better manage their IT infrastructure, automate processes, and deliver improved communication services.

The 4PSA flagship solution is VoipNow Platform, a suite of software applications designed to accelerate Unified Communications adoption by businesses and end-users. The products are built around cloud computing and provide unrivaled performance with the most comprehensive features, massive scalability, and the ultimate in automation. 4PSA’s success is based on excellence, innovation, and customer-driven processes. The company’s business processes are supported by the ISO 9001:2008 Quality Management System certified by TUEV CERT.

For more information, please visit www.4psa.com