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NetApp announced it acquired StackPointCloud, a leader in multi-cloud Kubernetes as-a-service and a contributor to the Kubernetes project. The combination of StackPointCloud with NetApp creates NetApp Kubernetes Service, the industry's first complete Kubernetes platform for multi-cloud deployments and a complete cloud-based stack for Azure, Google Cloud, AWS, and NetApp HCI. NetApp will also benefit from the knowledge and experience of StackPointCloud's CEO Matt Baldwin and other members of the team.

NetApp Kubernetes Service is immediately available at cloud.netapp.com for customers to deploy and manage clusters and applications across the clouds. NetApp customers will be able to more easily manage data and applications in the cloud and across clouds, they can put the data where it needs to be.

Talari Networks today announced its new ‘Cloud Connect' solution for today's hybrid multi-cloud enterprise networks. Talari's multi-tenant Cloud Connect platform ensures businesses maintain MPLS-class reliability and Quality of Experience (QoE) when accessing multiple SaaS and public cloud services. Mirroring the reliability benefits of Talari's failsafe SD-WAN site-to-site connectivity, Cloud Connect helps enterprises avoid the time and cost burden around standing up and managing cloud infrastructure. This cloud-first approach helps enterprises realize cost savings and independence from proprietary carrier lock-in.

Cloud Connect prevents carrier service lock-in with reliable and predictable multilink, multi-path access to SaaS and cloud-based services. Talari's solution enables cost-effective and efficient high QoE connectivity to Software as a Service (SaaS), Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS), cloud service gateways, and managed Network as a Service (NaaS) offerings through a new high-availability connection called a Cloud Conduit. Underlying the immediate commercial appeal of the Talari Cloud Connect solution, Talari is announcing the support of several leading UCaaS, NaaS and Cloud Service providers (CSPs). Technology partners including RingCentral, Evolve IP, Pure IP, Meta Networks and Mode are the first to offer Cloud Connect support. Value added reseller partners endorsing Cloud Connect include Avant, Bridgepoint and Teneo.

"Prior to working with RingCentral and Talari, our firm's cloud services were dependent on separate and expensive dedicated circuits for messaging, voice, video, meetings and conferencing," said Jason Kasch, CIO at Structural Group. "The addition of Talari's new Cloud Connect solution within RingCentral's Unified Communication offering helps boost service reliability while simplifying cloud management and network troubleshooting."

Article Written by Sally Perkins

These days, carrying a physical wallet seems almost a thing of the past. As credit card processing systems have improved and the availability of smartphones has broadened, more consumers have done away with physical wallets. Fewer people than ever before choose to carry cash and not very many people use checkbooks.

Most people pay with credit or debit cards for the average transaction. With a few extra steps, you don't even need to carry the card with you, thanks to the availability of digital storage on the cloud. Setting up an e-wallet can let you pay quickly and conveniently with your mobile device.

Store all of your payment options digitally on the cloud

Scale Computing has partnered with APC by Schneider Electric to deliver a Micro Data Center in a Box solution.

By utilizing Schneider Electric's award-winning Micro Data Center portfolio of infrastructure solutions, the Micro Data Center in a Box is able to deliver a fast, cost effective and resilient solution for channel partners, MSPs and end users while meeting the distinct challenges of big data and IoT faced by many businesses today.

The joint platform is built on a highly simplified but extremely effective and adaptable infrastructure. Micro Data Center in a Box offers a range of shared automated virtualization, compute, storage and power management resources. Under the terms of the agreement, Scale Computing supplies its HC3 HyperCore software while APC delivers a self-contained and secure enclosure. This solution allows organizations to simply and efficiently deliver a complete and highly energy efficient IT solution that is pre-tested, optimized and able to be rapidly deployed. This allows for a reliable and robust environment to leverage the best of on-premise and multi-cloud infrastructures.

The Micro Data Center in a Box requires minimal IT expertise and no additional infrastructure software. Instead, it is a highly available, self-managing platform for running applications at the edge. The added pay as you grow flexibility enables organizations to start small and grow their IT as and when needed. In addition, it has built-in redundancy to provide business continuity, even in remote edge locations. The solution is pre-packaged and ships ready to be deployed, providing a quick, turn-key and simple IT infrastructure, optimized to immediately support edge computing needs.

5nine, a provider of security and management solutions for the Microsoft Cloud, today announced major enhancements to its 5nine Unified platform, the first hybrid cloud management and security platform that unifies the critical functions of system monitoring, management, backup and recovery, security and migration into one seamless interface. Integrating these critical functions in the hybrid cloud environment significantly improves operational efficiency and cost savings, two key factors that are driving growing numbers of customer to hybrid solutions.

The 5nine platform allows enterprise, mid-market and small-to-mid-size businesses to reinforce their Microsoft cloud infrastructure by extending their Hyper-V on-premise environment through integration with public cloud infrastructure service functionality. For instance, customers may want to extend to Azure for replication or backup purposes or extend their DevOps environment by leveraging Azure VMs. 

Enhancements to the 5nine Unified platform include: 

Shifting weather patterns across the globe force us to re-evaluate data protection practices in locations we once thought immune from hurricanes, flooding and other natural disasters.

Offsite data replication combined with advanced site recovery methods should top your list.

In this webcast and live demo, you'll learn about:

• Software-defined storage services that continuously replicate data, containers and virtual machine images over long distances
• Differences between secondary sites you own or rent vs. virtual destinations in public Clouds
• Techniques that help you test and fine tune recovery measures without disrupting production workloads
• Transferring responsibilities to the remote site
• Rapid restoration of normal operations at the primary facilities when conditions permit

Attend live for a chance to win a $200 Amazon gift card!*

Written by David Marshall

In its latest forecast for the worldwide public cloud services market, analyst firm Gartner said it expects revenue to continue to grow by 17.3%, topping $206 billion next year.  That's up from $175.8 billion in 2018. 

The analyst firm points out that the fastest-growing segment of the market is cloud system infrastructure services (Infrastructure-as-a-service or IaaS), which includes the bulk of the public cloud services offered by companies such as Amazon Web Services Inc., adding that it will remain the fastest-growing individual segment in the market, growing by 27.6% in 2019 to reach $39.5 billion, up from $31 billion in 2018.

Moreover, Gartner said it expects that by 2022, 90% of organizations purchasing public cloud IaaS will do so from a company that integrates these offerings with platform-as-a-service products, using both capabilities from the same provider.

BlueData, provider of the leading container-based software platform for AI and Big Data workloads, today announced the general availability (GA) of its BlueData EPIC software on Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure. This makes BlueData the only unified solution for Big-Data-as-a-Service and AI-as-a-Service with the flexibility to support all three major public cloud services as well as on-premises and hybrid cloud deployments.

Public cloud services continue to be an increasingly popular option for many workloads in the enterprise - including applications for distributed analytics, data science, machine learning, and deep learning. But most enterprises today want the ability to deploy these applications quickly and easily regardless of the infrastructure, either on- or off-premises. They want self-service, elastic, automated, and secure environments for machine learning and analytics - whether the underlying compute and data storage is hosted in one public cloud or another, in their own data centers, or in a hybrid architecture.

Leveraging the inherent infrastructure portability of Docker containers, BlueData is committed to supporting these multi-cloud and hybrid cloud options for Big Data and AI deployments. Last fall, BlueData introduced the initial directed availability of BlueData EPIC on Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and Microsoft Azure - adding to its existing GA support for Amazon Web Services (AWS). And over this past year, BlueData has introduced additional new capabilities for AI, machine learning, and deep learning applications in multi-cloud and hybrid models.

Zscaler, Inc., a leader in cloud security, announced that Zscaler Private Access (ZPA) is the first zero trust architecture to achieve Amazon Web Service (AWS) Security Competency status.

The ZPA zero trust architecture securely connects authorized users and devices to named, internally managed applications without exposing the Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) to the internet. With ZPA, applications connect to users via inside-out connections, making them invisible to unauthorized users and reducing the risk of internet-based attacks. Enterprises using ZPA can create micro-segmented architectures without virtualizing the security stack and creating complex firewall policies.

ThinPrint Cloud Services, a subsidiary of the endpoint print management expert ThinPrint, today released the newest version of ezeep, the leading printing solution for coworking spaces and universities. RFID-based printing is now fully integrated into ezeep, making it the ideal solution in markets where users share multiple printers. In addition to this highly user-friendly set up, the new updates eliminate the need for IT administrators to spend time on printer assignments or printer driver management.

Printing in coworking spaces or universities has historically been challenging for both users and IT administrators. Users are tasked with selecting and gaining access to the correct printer and clicking through widely-varying user interfaces, while admins are burdened with assigning the correct printers to the users, as well as managing printer drivers.

The new version of ezeep eliminates the need for users to have to choose among several printers on a list. Instead, they simply select the virtual ezeep printer, go to the printer they find most convenient and initiate the printout by holding any RFID card against the RFID scanner connected to it. A fitness club ID can be used just as easily as an employee or library card. The only requirement being that the card must be RFID-enabled. In addition to simplifying the process, ezeep now ensures unauthorized persons cannot accidentally or intentionally take a printout from the printer.