Layer 7 Recognized as a Top Cloud Technology Vendor

Layer 7 Technologies has been named to SYS-CON’s Top 250 Players in the Cloud Computing Ecosystem list. SYS-CON, which publishes the Cloud Computing Journal and organizes the International Cloud Expo conference series, created its bi-annual Top 250 list to reflect the 250 most active vendors and service providers in the cloud ecosystem. Layer 7 was the only Cloud Gateway or Cloud Broker to be included on the list.

“Layer 7 CloudSpan Gateways help organizations securely connect to the cloud and gives service providers the ability to easily bring on enterprises,” said Paul Rochester, CEO of Layer 7. “Layer 7’s technology extends the boundaries of the enterprise, simplifying information-sharing across organizational boundaries and the cloud. Long recognized as an industry leader in security and integration, Layer 7 offers an unrivaled set of solutions for the cloud market.”“Layer 7 has been helping organizations secure and govern application services for a long while, and is now ‘changing the way organizations connect to, run in and publish services from the cloud,’” according to the entry on SYS-CON. “Layer 7 helps customers with integrating their cloud services—including not just SaaS, but also PaaS and IaaS—with on-premise data and applications. And it helps them protect those services.”

VMware' vFabric Hyperic Simplifies Monitoring of Zimbra Appliance

VMware announced that VMware vFabric™ Hyperic, is now offered as part of VMware Zimbra® Appliance, an enterprise-class email and collaboration solution delivered as a virtual appliance. This integration brings the award-winning vFabric Hyperic application performance monitoring technology to Zimbra Appliance administrators, providing them with a faster, more efficient way to ensure that critical email and collaboration services are always available to their end users. Integrated as part of Zimbra Appliance and requiring no additional setup, Hyperic gives Zimbra administrators the ability to more rapidly pinpoint, correct, and prevent application performance problems wherever they occur in the application infrastructure. As a result, administrators have up-to-the-minute insight into a comprehensive set of performance metrics related to availability, throughput and utilization that enables them to alert team members on a wide range of issues and to rapidly determine root cause.

“Contegix is committed to providing our customers with the best hosting services possible,” said Matthew Porter, CEO and co-founder of Contegix. “The combination of Hyperic and Zimbra® Appliance increases our visibility into how customers are using email and collaboration. It enables us to increase our productivity and efficiency in managing this critical part of this infrastructure, while simultaneously helping our customers make smarter business decisions.”

Laurus Technologies Announces New Cloud Computing Readiness Assessment Service

Laurus Technologies announced the availability of a new Cloud Readiness Assessment Service. The new service will help customers who are increasingly seeking guidance on managing their transition to cloud services. In Laurus Technologies cloud readiness assessment methodology, the firm will work with customers to discover and understand their business needs, help them identify and align the available cloud services. If requested, the firm can assist with the implementation. The firm’s methodology will include customer discovery, identification of applicable cloud services, gap analysis compared to industry best practices, an executive dashboard or report, and recommendations in each of the various potential cloud capabilities. Laurus Technologies can also help with building a business case and other TCO assessment needs.“Cloud computing is one of the most important trends in the IT industry today,” said John Udelhofen, CEO of Laurus Technologies. “However, customers tell us that they see conflicting information on how best to proceed. We look to fill the role as a trusted advisor to help them sort out the options and feel confident in their decision regarding the migration to cloud capabilities.”

Symantec publishes its 2010 Disaster Recovery Study

Symantec released the global results of its sixth annual Symantec Disaster Recovery Study, which demonstrates the growing challenge of managing disparate virtual, physical and cloud resources because of added complexity for organizations protecting and recoveringmission critical applications and data. In addition, the study shows that virtual systems are not properly protected. The study highlights that nearly half – 44 percent – of data on virtual systems is not regularly backed up and only one in five respondents use replication and failover technologies to protect virtual environments. Respondents also indicated that 60 percent of virtualized servers are not covered in their current disaster recovery (DR) plans. This is up significantly from the 45 percent reported by respondents in 2009.

Using multiple tools that manage and protect applications and data in virtual environments causes major difficulties for data center managers. In particular, nearly six in 10 of these respondents (58 percent) who encountered problems protecting mission-critical applications in virtual and physical environments reported this to be a large challenge for their organization. In terms of cloud computing, respondents reported that their organization runs approximately 50 percent of mission-critical applications in the cloud. Two-thirds of respondents (66 percent) report that security is the main concern of putting applications in the cloud. However, the biggest challenge respondents face when implementing cloud computing and storage is the ability to control failovers and make resources highly available (55 percent).

Xactly Corporation Delivers Xactly Express on Salesforce.com’s Force.com Platform

Xactly Corporation announced that Xactly Express is now available on Force.com, salesforce.com’s enterprise cloud computing platform. Xactly can now provide SMB customers the robust incentive compensation management functionality of Xactly Express on a comprehensive Cloud 2 foundation, regardless if the customer is currently a Salesforce CRM user or not. Xactly Express is a powerful self-service sales compensation application for SMBs, built natively on the Force.com platform. Available as a stand-alone solution or connected to Salesforce CRM, Xactly Express allows users to rapidly configure sales compensation plans, calculate commissions, and export payments to payroll, all from a single, easy-to-use application. With ability to automate traditionally taxing compensation functions and generate reports, Xactly Express customers can make more informed decisions that incent better sales performance and improve top and bottom line results.“Today’s SMB customers are under tremendous pressure to drive efficiencies and results, while minimizing cost,” said Christopher Cabrera, president and CEO, Xactly Corporation. “Our partnership with salesforce.com enables us to provide customers a cost-effective, complete, cloud-based compensation management solution, without the hassle and headache of making additional infrastructure investments.”