NTT Europe Announces First Phase of Global Rollout for Enhanced ...

NTT Europe is today announcing the launch of its Compute Cloud service to be offered under NTT Com's BizCITY(R) concept of providing secure access to enterprise services from anyplace at anytime. Further launches into new territories are expected in Q1 2011 to enhance NTT Com's desire to provide truly global product offerings with one contract, one SLA and one customer portal.

NTT Europe has successfully been providing private cloud (Global Virtualization Services: branded BizHosting Global inJapan) and public cloud (OpSource-powered Cloud Solution) solutions. The new Compute Cloud service will further complement these existing offerings. Customers will be able to redistribute network, compute and storage resources between multiple environments, on-demand whilst maintaining high levels of security and accountability. This function allows customers to meet the needs of different types of environments such as: Live/Production, Test/Pre-production, Customer Trials, Development Playgrounds/Sandboxes, Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery.

In order to control Compute Cloud, users will have a dedicated customer portal giving them the ability to remotely manage the Compute Cloud environment. Customers can deploy, configure and delete virtual machines as required, monitoring performance requirements in real time. Resources can be scaled for purpose at the click of a button, whilst a pay-as-you-go pricing structure ensures customers only pay for what they use.

Stephane Estevez, Product Marketing Manager of NTT Europe, said "The profile of the individual project or the application being put into the cloud determines the type of cloud service required. When it comes to IT infrastructure, there is always a balancing act, and it is very clear to us that it is the level of performance required of the application and its business sensitivity, not the size of the company, that determines which service is best suited. NTT Europe can design solutions of multiple cloud configurations helping customers to reap the benefits of each and manage the integration between them and existing in-house IT infrastructures."

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OpSource Cloud Under the hood

In business since 2002, OpSource sells hosting services, infrastructure services for Software as a Service (SaaS) companies, and now VMware-based cloud services in a bid to compete with Amazon Web Services. But how does it stack up?

The OpSource Cloud is made up of these components:

• Cloud Servers, or the virtual machines (VMs) or instances running in the OpSource cloud.
• Cloud Networks, or the private, cloud-based networks used for communication in the OpSource cloud. These private networks can be accessed via a Cisco VPN connection that OpSource offers for free (and in a very intuitive manner).

The OpSource cloud is fairly intuitive to use...and overall the performance is acceptable. Jason Langone, Contributor

Making assumptions from this graphic, one can assume that OpSource uses Dell servers running a VMware hypervisor, Cisco networking gear and both EMC and HP back-end storage for Cloud Files and the storage of the actual VMs.
OpSource also offers a 100% availability guarantee (which I'm not sure is even possible). After signing up for the OpSource cloud (a very straightforward process), the first step is to deploy a network.
OpSource Network

A network in the OpSource cloud is essentially a cloud-based LAN dedicated to a customer's environment. This cloud-based LAN is not accessible from the naked Internet; it requires the customer to establish a VPN connection into the cloud-based LAN. This network is the default network for VMs and allows the configuration of components such as firewalls, load balancing parameters, NAT rules and multicast networks.
For customers looking to host solutions with a publicly accessible address, a simple change to map a public IP address to an OpSource VM will allow anyone to hit the resource without requiring the VPN connection first.

OpSource Server
Once at least one network has been defined, it's now time to provision a VM or two. The list of available images is as follows:

• Red Hat 5 Standard
• 64-bit 1 vCPU
• 64-bit 2 vCPU
• 64-bit 4 vCPU
• Windows 2008 Server Standard
• 32bit 1 vCPU

At this time, there are no partner images available, although with OpSource allowing you to import your own VM, an argument could be made that the VMware Appliance Marketplace is a potential source of available images as well.

For this example, I deployed a Windows Server 2008 Standard Edition 32-bit with 1 vCPU, 2 GB of RAM and a 32 GB OS drive. The VM takes 10-15 minutes to fully build and customize. Once it is ready for use, it shows up in the "Servers" section of the user interface (UI).

More from Jason Langone: Reviewing bluelock vCloud ExpressWorking with Hosting.com, Logica and Melbourne IT Analyzing Terremark as a VMware vCloud Express provider

On first login to the VM, my first impression is that the "Preparing Desktop" phase of my Windows VM goes very quick. In other providers, I've seen this last approximately 60 seconds, but I was on my desktop in less than 10 seconds.

I also deployed a few other VM, including a 2 vCPU instance. A few basic tests were run; overall, the performance within the OpSource cloud is good but could also be characterized as "unpredictable." For example, a 2 vCPU server had low CPU utilization but high CPU % ready times and overall felt sluggish, while another VM ran effortlessly.

The OpSource Cloud experience: What's good
The OpSource cloud is fairly intuitive to use, OpSource users can import their own images, and overall the performance is acceptable. Establishing a VPN connection (via the Cisco-based solution) is very simple and worked flawlessly every time it was tested.

The OpSource Cloud experience: What's bad
The UI could use a "Tasks" area that shows pending, queued, active and completed tasks. When a user creates a VM, for example, they are clueless as to the level of progress. After 10-15 minutes, the VM shows up under "Servers," but I wasn't sure that it took properly the first time so I unnecessarily created a second. After that, I checked the logs to make sure my "create" task was working properly.
The user (if they had access) could certainly check the log to verify that the "create" task was executed, but right now there is no way to check and see how much longer it will take to complete. Finally, I occasionally received several "there has been a problem communicating with the OpSource cloud" messages when performing random tasks from within the UI.

How OpSource can improve its cloud experience
Other than what's noted in "the bad" section above, a few other changes would be nice.
First off, having the ability to hide the "VMware Tools" icon so that the underlying platform is less obvious to the end user. Along the same lines, the option to make it less obvious as to which version of the VMware hypervisor the OpSource cloud is using. Savvy customers will note the dated version of VMware tools.
It would also be beneficial to have a dashboard, similar to Vizioncore's vFoglight, to monitor all of a customer's VM in the OpSource cloud. This could certainly be a cost-based option, but if I was to move a large portion of my environment to the OpSource cloud, I would want a dashboard to monitor the health of my environment without having to tap into application programming interfaces (APIs) or other measures.
The argument could be made that an admin would monitor his OpSource virtual machines just like any other server in the environment; however, if this environment was on-premise in my own data center, I'd have vCenter or System Center to monitor my environment at a bird's eye level.

Finally, it would be great if, during a "delete" action on a VM, it was obvious that the underlying storage was zeroed out. Just because the VM's disk(s) have been deleted, it doesn't mean that the data is completely removed from the (assumedly) EMC or HP storage array(s). While the OpSource cloud meets a handful of industry compliance guidelines, it would still be nice to see and know that the underlying disks on the storage array(s) were overwritten with zeroes.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jason Langone heads virtualization, cloud computing and storage for MicroTech, a service-disabled, veteran-owned and 8(a) small business. Langone won the VMware Vanguard Award in 2007 and has architected some of the largest virtualization and cloud computing implementations to date.

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OpSource Named Top Cloud and Infrastructure Company on the ...

OpSource, Inc., the leader in enterprise cloud and managed hosting, today announced that OpSource has been named the top cloud and infrastructure company on the AlwaysOn Global 250 list.

The companies selected for the AlwaysOn Global 250 represent the top private companies that are demonstrating significant market traction and pursuing game-changing technology. The list is selected by AlwaysOn editors in collaboration with partners at Manatt, Morgan Stanley, the Blackstone Group, KPMG, Silicon Valley Bank, Sonnenschein, and Bridge Bank, as well as industry experts across the globe. Judges recognize honorees based on market opportunity, nature of innovation, media buzz and awareness, commercialization and ability to create stakeholder value.

http://www.sourcews.com/opsource-named-top-cloud-infrastructure


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OpSource Redefines Strategy and Extends Application Management and ...

OpSource, Inc., the leader in enterprise cloud and managed hosting, today announced that it has redefined its strategy to better address the needs of enterprises and the channel. OpSource has restructured its product portfolio and developed customized solutions to enable its customers to use both cloud and managed hosting services together to support more complex IT requirements. Additionally, the company has introduced the OpSource Partner Ecosystem partner program to deliver joint solutions.

"In order to be more flexible and cost-efficient, CIOs must be able to use cloud computing resources and SaaS applications as easily and securely as internally-managed resources," said Treb Ryan, CEO, OpSource. "More than 30% of our managed hosting customers with dedicated environments also use our pay-as-you-go cloud services. At the same time, more and more of our OpSource Cloud customers were asking for help to scale their mission-critical applications running on the cloud. It just made sense to integrate our product portfolio."

OpSource has reorganized its offerings into services and solutions.
Services now include:

• OpSource Managed Hosting: a bundled managed service including colocation, network connectivity, dedicated or virtual servers, operating system management, storage, firewalls, load balancers, and backup infrastructure
• OpSource Cloud Hosting: a pay-as-you-go service that includes a virtual server, Linux or Microsoft Windows operating system, CPU, RAM, storage and customer-configurable VLAN, firewall, and load balancer
• OpSource Application Operations: application management services including Database Management, Change Management, Performance Management, Application Optimization and Compliance
• OpSource Business Operations: business tools that simplify billing, analytics and customer support

Customized solutions include:

• SaaS ISV Solutions: Cloud and Managed Hosting services paired with Application Operations and Business Operations to scale operations and shorten time to market
• Telecom Solutions: White Label resale of the OpSource Cloud with Business Operations billing integration
• Cloud Platform Solutions: integration of the OpSource Cloud into Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) solutions

"Many enterprises are beginning to see the intrinsic value of sourcing both managed hosting, colocation and cloud infrastructure service from a single provider," said Ted Chamberlin, Gartner Research Director. "Managed service providers who understand this trend, and offer these services with a single pane of glass management tools, will be the long term winners in the hosting market."

To support its new focus, OpSource today announced the OpSource Partner Ecosystem, a comprehensive new partnership program. This program expands the company's commitment to its partners by providing benefits for: developers and consultants; cloud platforms; integrators and MSPs; telecoms; and distributors and resellers.

"OpSource really understands how to help its partners make the most of the cloud, offering customized solutions like white labeling," said NTT America Vice President of Products and Solutions Doug McMaster. "Working with OpSource we were able to quickly and easily build the NTT America Cloud, which not only brings our customers a leading cloud offering but also demonstrates our commitment to providing our customers with as complete and competitive hosting portfolio as possible."

Read more: http://andhranews.net/Business/2010/July/19-OpSource-Redefines-Strategy-Extends-29843.asp#ixzz0vRXvxu96

http://andhranews.net/Business/2010/July/19-OpSource-Redefines-Strategy-Extends-29843.asp


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OpSource Named Top Cloud and Infrastructure Company

OpSource, Inc., the leader in enterprise cloud and managed hosting, today announced that OpSource has been named the top cloud and infrastructure company on the AlwaysOn Global 250 list.

The companies selected for the AlwaysOn Global 250 represent the top private companies that are demonstrating significant market traction and pursuing game-changing technology. The list is selected by AlwaysOn editors in collaboration with partners at Manatt, Morgan Stanley, the Blackstone Group, KPMG, Silicon Valley Bank, Sonnenschein, and Bridge Bank, as well as industry experts across the globe. Judges recognize honorees based on market opportunity, nature of innovation, media buzz and awareness, commercialization and ability to create stakeholder value.

"After examining the companies that are on the AlwaysOn Global 250 list, it's obvious that innovation is not only alive and well in the Global Silicon Valley, it's accelerating in economic power and scope," said Tony Perkins, founder and editor of AlwaysOn. "The winners certainly represent some of the highest-growth opportunities around, and we're pleased to recognize OpSource for the great strides it has made in pioneering and developing the cloud infrastructure marketplace."

OpSource CEO Treb Ryan will be a featured speaker at the 8th Annual AlwaysOn & Stanford Technology Ventures Program (STVP) Summit at Stanford 2010, which is being held from July 27-29, 2010, at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif. Ryan will speak on a panel entitled "The Anatomy of a Successful Startup in 2010" on Tuesday, July 27, at 5:45 p.m., and on a panel covering "How are Hot Private SaaS/Cloud Companies Moving From Cloud 1.0 to Cloud 2.0" on Wednesday, July 28, at 12:45 p.m.

"OpSource is driving innovation in the cloud computing industry by bringing truly enterprise-class cloud hosting services to the market. We've gone beyond the commodity cloud value proposition to offer the strongest service level guarantees, game-changing security and control, and innovative channel programs," said Treb Ryan, CEO, OpSource. "We thank AlwaysOn for this great recognition, and look forward to accelerating our industry by helping enterprises and service providers to migrate mission-critical applications to the cloud."

Offering more than traditional hosting services, OpSource provides Application Operations, which includes database management, compliance management, change management, performance management and application optimization. In 2009, the company introduced OpSource Cloud Hosting, a cloud service offering pay-as-you-go flexibility, 100% availability as well as high security, control and support of multi-tenancy.
OpSource this week also announced the OpSource Partner Ecosystem, a comprehensive new program designed to enable integrators, developers, ISVs, cloud platform companies and telecom providers to offer integrated solutions for their joint customers. OpSource's unique offerings address the needs for high security, control, performance and ease of integration. OpSource believes that more than 50% of its revenue will come from the channel, and has redefined its strategy to better support the needs of enterprises and the channel. The OpSource Partner Ecosystem will speed enterprise adoption of the cloud by reducing the burden of integration, shortening time to market for new services, and lowering the total cost of implementation and ownership for both partners and customers.

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OpSource Takes On New Cloud Strategy

After officially launching its cloud computing channel program earlier this year, OpSource is altering its course slightly to bring more partners into the fold and offer more tailored cloud solutions and services

The Santa Clara, Calif.-based cloud provider is shifting its strategy and product portfolio to go beyond Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and is refining its focus by adding support for new customized solutions for high-growth segments and channels.

OpSource CEO Treb Ryan said the company has changed up its product portfolio and developed customized solutions that let customers use both cloud and managed hosting services together to support more complex IT requirements. Ryan said currently 30 percent of OpSource's customers have adopted cloud computing on top of managed hosting services, so it was a next logical step to offer cloud and services without managed hosting. In the past, managed hosting offerings and cloud offerings were sold only in bundles.

"No matter who you are you can buy cloud infrastructure," he said. "You don't have to be one or the other."
OpSource's new services offerings include OpSource Managed Hosting, a bundled managed service that includes collocation, network connectivity, dedicated or virtual servers, operating system management, storage, firewalls, load balancers, and backup infrastructure; OpSource Cloud Hosting, a pay-as-you-go service that includes a virtual server, Linux or Microsoft (NSDQ:MSFT) Windows operating system, CPU, RAM, storage and customer-configurable VLAN, firewall, and load balancer; OpSource Application Operations, application management services including database management, change management, performance management, application optimization and compliance; and OpSource Business operations, business tools for billing, analytics and customer support.

Along with the new services offerings, OpSource launched a trio of customized solutions: SaaS ISV Solutions, which are cloud and managed hosting services paired with Application Operations and Business Operations to scale operations and shorten time to market; Telecom Solutions, white label resale of the OpSource Cloud with Business Operations billing integration; and Cloud Platform Solutions, integration of the OpSource Cloud into PaaS solutions.

And to support the new offerings OpSource also launched a new partner ecosystem to give integrators, developers, ISVs, development platform companies and service providers the ability to sell integrated solutions to their customers. The new partner ecosystem builds upon the channel program that OpSource launched in January.

Ryan said OpSource foresees more than 50 percent of its revenue coming from the channel by next year and the new ecosystem will speed the adoption of cloud computing in enterprises and fuel sales for partners.
"The channel will be the prime deliverer [for OpSource cloud] as it is for other infrastructure solutions," Ryan said.

The new program, Ryan said, has distinct programs for five different categories of partners, including consulting and development, cloud platform, infrastructure, telecom and distribution. Partners can participate in three tiers: OpSource General Partner, OpSource Gold Certified Partner and OpSource Platinum Partner.
"The margin on cloud is so strong," Ryan said, adding that OpSource's new program will offer more aggressive discounts and incentives for partners. Ryan said depending on partner level benefits include co-marketing activities, tech support, referral compensation, training and certification.

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NTT Europe Announces Its OpSource-Powered Cloud Solution

Enables enterprises to build and deploy their own cost-effective and scalable IT environment

NTT Europe, an ICT solution partner and wholly-owned subsidiary of NTT Communications Corporation, on Wednesday announced that it is leveraging OpSource's cloud capabilities, the NTT Com Global IP Network and NTT Com data centre infrastructure to offer an enterprise-grade, public cloud solution to its customers in the European market. OpSource is a provider of cloud and managed hosting solutions.

NTT Europe's OpSource Cloud is a public cloud offering powered by OpSource. It provides enterprises the ability to rapidly build and deploy their own cost-effective and scalable IT environment, easily managed via a self-service portal from anywhere in the world. As an ICT solution partner NTT Europe's main focus is on providing customers with propositions that meet all of their business needs from a global network infrastructure, application management, systems integration and managed hosting to virtualization solutions or content delivery.

NTT Europe's OpSource Cloud offering is an extension of the company's suite of Cloud Computing and Virtualization Services based on the VMware virtualization platform. Satisfying the immediate needs of a public cloud offering for enterprise customers in Europe, this service offering complements NTT Europe's private cloud, known as Global Virtualization Services. NTT Europe's OpSource-powered Cloud is built to run enterprise-class software as a service (SaaS) and web applications, and is ideal for customers who are developing applications or seeking flexible solutions to deploy computing power on demand.

"We are very excited to offer OpSource's market-leading technology as the new public cloud service to our customers, as this demonstrates our commitment to providing them with a complete and highly competitive portfolio of hosting options and solutions," said Masaaki Moribayashi, Managing Director of NTT Europe. "With NTT Europe, our customers can be assured we have the products and services to meet their ICT solution needs and that we are continuing to invest in the latest platforms and technologies to deliver the quality and comprehensiveness they have come to rely on."

"The OpSource Cloud combines the flexibility, availability and community of the public cloud with the security, performance and control the enterprise needs," said Treb Ryan, CEO, OpSource. "By pairing OpSource Cloud's technology with NTT Europe's secure data centre infrastructure, companies can take advantage of a solution that is not only powerful and completely reliable but scalable, removing any remaining barriers to enterprises adopting cloud computing today. We are pleased to work with NTT Europe and look forward to seeing what companies accomplish with its new Public Cloud."

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OpSource Recognized as a Top Ten Cloud Computing “Leader to Watch”

OpSource, Inc., the leader in enterprise cloud and managed hosting, today announced that Datamation.com recently recognized the company as one of the top ten cloud computing "leaders to watch" in a list which also included IBM and others.
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AppZero and OpSource Partner

Server application virtualization pioneer AppZero and OpSource, a provider of enterprise cloud and managed hosting, on Wednesday announced a partnership that will make it easy for enterprises and independent software vendors (ISVs) to move their server-based Microsoft and SAP applications from the datacenter to the OpSource Cloud, a cloud service for companies requiring pay-as-you-go flexibility and 100% availability as well as high security and control.

"Our customers have been asking for a simple way to move Microsoft and SAP applications to the cloud quickly and cost-effectively, and we're pleased to team with AppZero to bring them the best solution possible," said Keao Caindec, SVP and Chief Marketing Officer, OpSource. "This partnership is an example of the powerful technology that can be built by taking an ecosystem approach to cloud-building."

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OpSource Names Senior VP and CMO – WHIR | My Host Today

OpSource Names Senior VP and CMO – WHIR | My Host Today

Google Alerts - opsource

Cloud and managed hosting provider OpSource (www.opsource.net) announced on Tuesday it has named telecom industry veteran Keao Caindec the company's senior vice president and chief marketing officer.

In this role, Caindec will focus on expanding the company's presence in the high-growth IT services sectors of cloud and managed hosting.

"OpSource has been serving the complex hosting needs of companies like Adobe and SAP for more than eight years," says Treb Ryan, CEO of OpSource. "As a result, we have developed the technology and know-how to scale and deliver mission-critical applications. The high-growth cloud services market represents a huge opportunity for OpSource. Keao has a proven track record in driving growth and adoption for emerging technologies and services, working closely with systems integrators, carriers and the channel to deliver complete solutions. We are thrilled to have him on board."

Caindec has 18 years of marketing leadership experience in managed services, telecommunications and Internet services companies.

At OpSource, Caindec is responsible for the company's worldwide marketing operations including marketing strategy, branding, communications and programs.

Prior to OpSource, Caindec served as chief marketing officer of IT services provider Reliance Globalcom.

Caindec was also CMO of managed data and application delivery firm Yipes Enterprise Services, and a principal and founder of content distribution firm Farallon Technology Resources.

He has also held executive and senior management positions in marketing and business development at British Telecom, MCI Communications, Internap, CyberCash and ATMnet.