November 21, 2013 News Thursday: New Windows Azure Updates and More Cloud and Enterprise News...
by C&E Blogger
Get the latest Windows Azure updates
Continuing to deliver on its commitment to offering choice and cost savings as well as the best possible experience for developers, Microsoft announced another wave of updates for Windows Azure this morning. Updates include the general availability of Windows Azure Traffic Manager, Windows Azure BizTalk Services and app access enhancements. New previews, including the preview of the paid service for Windows Azure Active Directory are also now available.
For a full list of updates and additional information, please visit Scott Guthrie’s blog.
Mind Palette Switches from Amazon Web Services to Windows Azure, Saves 20%
Tokyo-based cloud services vendor Mind Palette saved almost 20 percent on database costs by switching its Linux environment from Amazon Web Services (AWS) to Windows Azure. Mind Palette develops and markets Snapeee, a picture-sharing app that lets users personalize pictures and share them on Facebook, Twitter and other social media. Since the app’s release in 2011, the user base has steadily grown to five million active users, causing data volumes and operating costs to rise with AWS. When considering alternatives, Mind Palette chose Windows Azure for Microsoft’s experience in enterprise computing, breadth of service offerings and extensive partner network.
Read the Openness Blog to learn more about Mind Palette’s story and how it’s using Windows Azure.
Microsoft joins InfiniBand® Trade Association steering committee
Microsoft announced this week it is joining the steering committee of the InfiniBand® Trade Association (IBTA), a global organization well-known for guiding the InfiniBand™ specification, which provides high-throughput, low-latency communication links commonly used in high performance computing environments. As an active member of the IBTA, Microsoft will help drive RDMA (Remote Direct Memory Access) specifications and standards to enable performance gains and reduce networking overhead on the CPUs in large, mainstream datacenters.
To learn more about this news, please visit The Windows HPC Team Blog.
Ipeer to Offer Hosted Cloud Solutions Based on Windows Azure Pack
Swedish Cloud provider Ipeer was selected to beta test Microsoft’s Windows Azure Pack technology and deliver it through the Parallels Automation cloud platform. This solution will allow Ipeer to offer hosted public and hybrid cloud solutions with functionality consistent with that provided by Windows Azure
The new Windows Azure Pack is built on Microsoft’s latest datacenter software, Windows Server 2012 R2 and System Center 2012 R2, allowing Ipeer to deliver Windows Azure-consistent services from the Ipeer datacenter.
Read the press release for more information on the Ipeer’s cloud solutions.
Huawei Announces Open Cloud Fabric and Ecosystem Strategy
Global information and communications technology solutions provider Huawei announced its Open Cloud Fabric and Ecosystem strategy for data centers at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2013. Huawei’s collaboration with Microsoft allows the company to offer Software Defined Networking (SDN) and virtualization technologies to provide customers with open and elastic data center solutions. Enterprises can reap the benefits of SDN through integration of Huawei CloudEngine platforms with System Center and Windows Server.
Read the press release for more information.
Share your expertise using Curah!
Microsoft’s new content curation site, Curah! is a simple and fun place to help others find great content on the internet. This curation service enables you to share expertise with others by collecting links to content that is truly helpful, accurate and trustworthy, and adding your own notes and guidance.