Talkin' Cloud

Chris Talbot

Email ctalbot@gmail.com

Articles by Chris Talbot

Skyhigh Networks Secures $20M to Expand Cloud Sales, Marketing, R&D

Cloud visibility and control vendor Skyhigh Networks is looking to expand its sales, marketing and engineering organizations in a big way after securing $20 million in Series B financing.

Appcara to Drive Turnkey SME Cloud App Management Through Channel

Appcara has announced a new appliance designed to provide "cloud app management in a box" for small and medium enterprises. The AppStack Express Appliance is meant to be a turnkey appliance enabling simple management of cloud applications that is exclusively sold through channel partners.

LogMeIn AppGuru IDaaS Aims to Redefine IT's Role

LogMeIn has launched a preview of its AppGuru identity-as-a-service (IDaaS) offering that is intended to help IT professionals redefine their roles in a cloud-centric work environment by putting into place easy onboarding and offboarding of employees, as well as centralized user management.

Amazon Web Services Gains FedRAMP Compliance for GovCloud

Amazon Web Services has scored a big win within the federal government that could result in the ramping up of AWS cloud services deployments by U.S. federal government agencies. AWS GovCloud (U.S.) and all AWS U.S. regions have received an Agency Authority to Operate (ATO) from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) under the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP).

Spanning Cloud Turns to Channel with Reseller Program

Spanning Cloud Apps is looking to the channel to continue its expansion. The company, which is responsible for Spanning Backup for Google Apps, has launched a channel reseller program to work with VARs and systems integrators to build its marketing and sales.

Dell to Drive Public Cloud IaaS Through Partners

For the next step in its cloud strategy, Dell is looking to work with partners. The company has launched the Dell Cloud Partner Program to deliver its public cloud IaaS offering through the channel.

Tech Data Adds Intermedia Hosted PBX and Cloud Server to Offerings

Tech Data is beefing up its TDCloud portfolio with the addition of Intermedia's Hosted PBX and Cloud Server offerings. Aimed at small and medium businesses (SMBs), the cloud solutions are now available to Tech Data's solution providers.

iWeb Unveils Fully Managed Cloud Hosting Service Based on OpenStack

IaaS provider iWeb has released a fully-managed cloud hosting service based on OpenStack. According to the company, cloud service provides guaranteed disk speed as a key element of overall system performance.

Google Compute Engine Takes on AWS with General Availability

Amidst the launch of Google Play Music All Access, Google Play Game Services, updates to Google Maps and a variety of other consumer-driven product announcements, the news about the general availability of Google Compute Engine seems to be getting lost. Or maybe nobody is simply not surprised, as this is something the industry has been expecting for some time.

Walmart Acquires Cloud Startups OneOps and Tasty Labs

The Silicon Valley technology subisidary of Walmart, @WalmartLabs, has acquired two cloud computing startups to further boost its capabilities.

Rackspace Makes Investment in Cloudant for NoSQL DBaaS

Rackspace is the latest company to make an investment NoSQL database-as-a-service (DBaaS) provider Cloudant. The Rackspace investment of an undisclosed sum follows three months after Samsung Ventures made a similar strategic investment in the company.

Google Apps Scores Over Microsoft Office 365 with NARA, CBC Wins 1

Google has scored two more government wins over Microsoft. The National Archives and Record Administration (NARA) has completed its migration of 4,500 employees over to Google Apps for Government.

GigaSpaces' New Cloudify Player Designed for OpenStack

GigaSpaces has launched its Cloudify Player testing and development service on its own Cloudify platform, as well as on HP Cloud Services. The service was designed to support OpenStack-based clouds.

Google I/O: How Will Google Take On Competitors?

Google may well finally announce the general availability of Google Compute Engine, a cloud platform aimed at taking on Amazon Web Services the company announced a year ago at the last Google I/O conference. A year later, Google Compute Engine still hasn't been given the general availability okay, but there are rumors surfacing that I/O 2013 could be the big unveiling.

Desktone Desktop Virtualization Appliance Enables Public, Private Cloud Flexibility

Desktone is taking its cloud-hosted desktop platform to the on-premise world with a cloud-managed virtual desktop appliance capable of hosting up to 100 clients. The company aims to enable cloud services providers to give end-customers the flexibility of both cloud and on-premise IT solutions.