CA Layers Nimsoft Into Cloud Computing Mix

 CA Inc., today announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire privately-held Nimsoft, Inc.--a leading provider of IT performance and availability monitoring solutions for emerging enterprises and Managed Service Providers (MSPs)--in an all-cash transaction valued at $350 million. The acquisition significantly extends CA's ability to meet the unique IT management needs of emerging enterprises and MSPs, both of which are playing leading roles in the growth of cloud computing. CA estimates that emerging enterprises, which it categorizes as organizations with annual revenues from $300 million to $2 billion, will account for approximately a quarter of the software spending in CA's market space by 2013. By leveraging Nimsoft's market expertise and technology, CA expects to add an entirely new set of customers to its base, which historically has been comprised of large enterprises.

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Tags: Application Packaging, Virtualization

Google to Present at Cloud Expo East

 From internal collaboration to supplier and customer interactions, enterprises are discovering new ways of increasing productivity, process accountability, and connecting those challenging "white spaces" that exist between processes, ERP, and legacy systems. In his session at the 5th International Cloud Expo, Naveen Viswanatha, Lead Architect at Google Enterprise, will show how you can embark on quick-win opportunities that provide a demonstrable ROI, and address a complex or often broken process. For example, see how you can integrate your mail, desktop applications, and legacy systems/data with Google Apps and the Cordys Process Factory. Cloud Expo is the world's leading Cloud-focused event since 2007, and is held five times a year, in New York City, Silicon Valley, Prague, Tokyo and Hong Kong.

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Tags: Application Packaging, Virtualization

Cast Iron Promises Integration with Cloud Computing

 Cast Iron Systems, good as its name, wants to do the heavy lifting and synch applications running on-premise with those in the cloud, any kind of cloud. It says it can connect any combination of cloud and on-premise applications. And nobody has to leave its multi-tenant cloud environment although they could use a web-based on-premise or hosted virtual appliance or a physical appliance. They may not even know they’re using Cast Iron’s mojo since it’s letting ISVs rebrand it. Dell’s Integration Services folks, for instance, are selling it. Cast Iron is also providing the widgetry to Amazon’s EC2 customers. Cast Iron’s next-generation cloud integration platform fittingly dubbed OmniConnect promises data migration, process integration and UI mashups, effectively making it three integration products in one.

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Tags: Application Packaging, Virtualization

TIBCO Rolls Out Spotfire 3.1 with Spotlight on Predictive Analytics

 In a move to mainstream predictive analytics, TIBCO Software this week rolled out the latest version of its Spotfire platform. Dubbed Spotfire 3.1, the latest iteration promises a natural language statistical experience. Spotfire 3.1 aims to help anyone in an organization get fact-based answers to questions that help drive revenue. The company says its software is not just for analytics gurus but also marketing professionals, business development managers and others who need forward-looking business intelligence in a hurry.

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Tags: Application Packaging, Virtualization

SoftLayer Adds IPsec for Secure, Robust Remote Access

 SoftLayer Technologies, a provider of on-demand data center hosting and cloud services, has announced the addition of Internet Protocol Security (IPsec) to its best-in-class portal allowing customers to securely connect to their infrastructure environment through a Virtual Private Network (VPN). IPsec provides a framework of protocols for protecting transmissions over an IP network. This allows the creation of a secure VPN over the existing Internet, with data fully encrypted and secure when transferred between two points. IPsec resides at the network level and can be implemented regardless of applications used, giving remote users full access to their network and to robust data, voice, or video applications. “As we continue to enhance the SoftLayer customer experience, IPsec VPN services bring an additional option for remote access,” said Ric Moseley, SoftLayer Vice President of Network Operations. “IPsec provides customers an extremely robust pipeline for accessing information on their SoftLayer infrastructure. IPsec’s extensive level of access to remote applications makes it ideal for managing applications from a distance and increasing productivity.”

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Tags: Application Packaging, Virtualization

OpSource Co-Founder Featured on Cloud Computing Webcast

 OpSource, the leader in Cloud operations, on Wednesday announced that co-founder, CTO and industry insider John Rowell will take on the concept of "cross-border" clouds and their impact on enterprise cloud adoption in the third episode of CloudTV's "The Real Cloud" webinar series, which will air Tuesday, March 16th, at 2 p.m. ET and be accessible from https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/971080114. This month's guest is influential blogger Dave Rosenberg, who is best known for his seminal Software, Interrupted blog on CNET. Rosenberg is also the co-founder and former CEO of open source infrastructure software provider MuleSoft as well as an advisor to numerous open source and cloud start-ups.

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Tags: Application Packaging, Virtualization

David Skok Authors Startup and VC Blog on Ulitzer

 When I saw David Skok's name on recent Ulitzer authors page I was pleasantly surprised. David is one of the key figures in the technology space for the past two decades, including his venture capital activities. Throughout his long career, he successfully launched a number of companies. He is a general partner at Matrix partners since 2001. Last time I mentioned his name in one of my blog entries was here in 2004. I had an email exchange with David in October 2007 when we started architecting our revolutionary Ulitzer new media platform. David introduced me to Christian, a trusted enterprise developer who had invaluable input while we were making critical decisions in the selection of our development platform for Ulitzer.

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Tags: Application Packaging, Virtualization

The Best VAR Management Program in the World?

 How SolidWorks grew to $400m a year in revenues by helping their VARs become world class business leaders. SolidWorks was started back in 1993 with the vision of bringing solid modeling for mechanical design to the masses. Before SolidWorks entered the market, solid modeling was only available from PTC at $20,000 per seat, on expensive Unix workstations. Jon Hirschtick, the founder, set out to change all of that by offering a fully featured product at a fraction of the price. He also decided to use a reseller model to get the widest distribution at the lowest cost. This combination of features, price point, Windows OS and reseller channel, turned out to be wickedly successful, and within a few years SolidWorks had created a whole new mid-market and clearly established itself as the market leader. Today the company is one of Boston’s most successful startups, with revenues in excess of $400m, and an operating profit margin that would be the envy of the software industry if it were publicized.

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Tags: Application Packaging, Virtualization

SaaS Metrics – Measuring and Improving What Matters

 This article looks at the high level goals of a SaaS business and drills down layer by layer to expose the key metrics that will help drive success. Metrics for metric’s sake are not very useful. Instead the goal is to provide a detailed look at what management must focus on to drive a successful SaaS business. For each metric, we will also look at what is actionable. Before going any further, I would like to thank the management team at HubSpot, and Gail Goodman of Constant Contact, who sits on the HubSpot board. A huge part of the material that I write about below comes my experiences working with them. In particular HubSpot’s management team is comprised of a group of very bright individuals that are all very metrics driven, and they have been clear thought leaders in developing the appropriate tools to drive their business. I’d also like to thank John Clancy, who until recently was President of Iron Mountain Digital, a $230m SaaS business, and Alastair Mitchell, CEO and founder of Huddle.

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Tags: Application Packaging, Virtualization

Designing Startup Metrics to Drive Successful Behavior

 Great companies are almost always run by great management teams. And great management teams know that the only way to improve a process is to start by measuring it. Good metrics should also be actionable, and drive successful behavior. In this post I hope to help show how to figure out which metrics matter the most, and how to design them in such a way as to drive behavior that will lead to the results that you want. This post is applicable to any kind of business. In a follow up post, I will use this technique to walk through the design of a set of metrics for a SaaS company. Since SaaS businesses (or any other subscription-based business) are different from standard software businesses, there are some interesting elements that we will uncover.

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Tags: Application Packaging, Virtualization