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Integrated Design Group Completes State-of-the-Art Financial Data Center in San Antonio
DALLAS, Texas —Integrated Design Group (ID), an architectural, engineering and planning firm focused on data center design, today announced the completion of a flexible, scalable data center for a large, financial institution in the San Antonio area.
The “Tier III Plus” data center was developed with a modular data center design that allows for raised floor data center space to be built using standard power and cooling building blocks for cost-effectiveness, energy efficiency, and design flexibility. Integrated Design Group describes a “Tier III Plus” data center as one that incorporates some design elements that are above and beyond Tier III requirements and into the Tier IV arena. According to the Uptime Institute, a Tier IV data center follows the most stringent design guidelines with fully redundant subsystems and compartmentalized security zones that are controlled by biometric access control methods.
“This project is an example of one of the many modular solutions our team of architects and engineers employs in data center design,” said Jack McCarthy, PE, DCEP, principal-in-charge of the project, referring to the pre-packaged pumping systems used in this data center project. “We see three major directions for modular data centers: modular systems within a traditional facility, containerized data centers and fully off-site constructed data center buildings.”
ID is currently designing projects that incorporate modular systems, containerized and off-site constructed data centers for financial services clients across the United States. Although the projects are currently confidential, Integrated Design Group is driving the industry’s dialogue about modular evolution. ID hosted its 3rd annual 21st Century Data Center Symposium in Dallas on April 26, which featured many presentations on modular data center design. The firm’s Boston office hosted a roundtable discussion on modular data center design on May 22, 2012.
About Integrated Design Group, Inc.
Integrated Design Group, Inc. is an architectural and engineering firm renowned for expertise in data center design. Promoting a truly collaborative environment, the firm brings together award-winning design architects and recognized engineers who create data centers and other building types that are custom, innovative, and sustainable. Integrated Design Group serves a roster of clients, both nationwide and internationally, who demand unique solutions to their problems and value good design. For more information, visit the company’s web site at www.idgroupae.com; to get inside their heads, access their blog at www.idgroupaeblog.wordpress.com; better yet, contact the firm at info@idgroupae.com.
SunGard Availability Services Managed Recovery Program Addresses Florida Hospital’s Life-Critical Recovery Needs
Wayne, Pa. -- SunGard Availability Services today announced Florida Hospital has subscribed to its Managed Recovery Program (MRP) service in which SunGard manages the hospital’s entire recovery lifecycle. SunGard MRP has enabled the hospital to lower costs, be more confident in its recovery capabilities and reduce risk by ensuring recovery processes stay current with technology and business changes.
“We are in a heavily regulated industry and experiencing growing use of electronic medical records and clinical applications,” said Carl Minear, director of information technologies, Florida Hospital. “If our IT systems are down then life-critical healthcare services may be compromised. SunGard MRP helps us effectively carry out our mission with patients.”
Florida Hospital, the nation’s largest healthcare provider in terms of patients seen every year in a Medicare facility, has a seven hospital campus with the largest in Orlando. Being in an area vulnerable to hurricanes has heightened the hospital’s commitment to disaster preparedness.
“If there’s a disaster at home that’s where you want your people – not at a distant data center working on recovery. SunGard’s experience gives us the confidence to keep our people back with their families and the systems that need attention. In addition to improving our applications recovery processes, SunGard MRP has helped us reduce travel costs needed to support recovery testing,” said Mr. Minear.
SunGard MRP provides a cross-discipline team with experts in each area of Florida Hospital’s complex network of IT systems which includes a mainframe, UNIX, Linux, WinTel and VMware environments. The SunGard team monitors the hospital’s recovery scripts on an ongoing basis – keeping plans current by noting areas which have to be changed and calling out new systems that need to be added. It is led by an assigned Service Delivery Manager who works as an extension of Florida Hospital’s staff on managing the recovery lifecycle.
“SunGard has provided us a strong team which knows our business and built relationships with our personnel which are vital in recovery processes,” said Robert Goodman, disaster recovery coordinator, Florida Hospital. “When you are working under the stress and strain of recovery, having established, productive relationships are essential to success.”
Adopting SunGard MRP is part of Florida Hospital’s commitment to recovery best practices. Previously, in the aftermath of experiencing multiple hurricanes, the hospital moved from a tape-based backup system to SunGard’s SAN-based replication solution. SunGard’s remote replication helped Florida Hospital cut recovery process times from multiple days to just four to six hours. However, even with this improvement, Florida Hospital still found recovery too taxing on internal resources.
“We didn’t have enough time or people, and the logistics were a huge strain on our IT staff. SunGard MRP works for us because SunGard has done hundreds of recoveries. That’s who you want – someone who has done it, and seen where other people had problems and fixed them. Drawing on those strengths is like having a set of recovery consultants on staff,” said Mr. Goodman.
About SunGard Availability Services
SunGard Availability Services provides disaster recovery services, managed IT services, information availability consulting services and business continuity management software. With approximately five million square feet of datacenter and operations space, SunGard Availability Services helps customers improve the resilience of their mission critical systems by designing, implementing and managing cost-effective solutions using people, process and technology to address enterprise IT availability needs. Through direct sales and channel partners, we help organizations ensure their people and customers have uninterrupted access to the information systems they need in order to do business. To learn more, visit www.sungardas.com or call 1-800-468-7483. Connect with us on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.
About SunGard
SunGard is one of the world’s leading software and technology services companies. SunGard has more than 17,000 employees and serves approximately 25,000 customers in more than 70 countries. SunGard provides software and processing solutions for financial services, education and the public sector. SunGard also provides disaster recovery services, managed IT services, information availability consulting services and business continuity management software. With annual revenue of about $4.5 billion, SunGard is the largest privately held software and services company and was ranked 480 on the Fortune 500 in 2011. For more information, please visit www.sungard.com.
HealthPlanOne Opens Call Center in Tampa and Hosts Hiring Open House on Tuesday June 26th, 2012.
TAMPA, Fla. -- HealthPlanOne (HPO), the nation's leading full-service Medicare and under-65 brokerage and member acquisition company, has recently opened a new Call Center and Brokerage in Tampa to accommodate the increased growth of its on-line healthcare business. The state-of-the-art Call Center will offer unmatched service and reliability and will also allow HPO to form strategic alliances with other companies to expand their sales capabilities.
"The opening of the Tampa office is a natural next-step in the evolution of HealthPlanOne. We're excited about the possibilities of expanding our product offerings to new clients and delighted to continue to deliver superior information to insurance-seekers," said William Stapleton, CEO of HealthPlanOne.
Offering a robust online platform for consumers to research and select from more than 40 national and most regional carriers, HPO provides both on-line and off-line support from nationally-licensed sales representatives who are trained to help consumers navigate the difficult process of selecting an insurance plan.
Colin Connor, Director of Sales - Tampa, is looking to build a team environment that challenges people to grow. With nearly half of the licensed agents hired, an Open House for those looking to join HPO's team of Medicare Sales Representatives will be held on June 26th from 9am – 7pm at the HPO offices located on 4042 Park Oaks Boulevard, Suite 110. http://www.medicaresolutions.com/careers.aspx
Connor, who joined HPO in February, was attracted by the company's compliant organization that isn't bound by structure. He describes HPO as being "on the forefront of a technologically-sound environment with deep leadership and the knowledge which allows me to grow as an individual and an employee."
He is pleased that each of the new employees exhibits prior sales experience from a range of backgrounds. Newly-hired agents are provided with two months of rigorous training with on-going coaching provided throughout their careers. "We help agents really understand their role in the sales process. We take people out of their comfort zone to become an advocate for their clients and themselves, and by doing so, we offer unlimited earning potential for those with an entrepreneurial spirit."
James Mitchell, who joined HPO in February, testifies to Connor's claims. "I'm only a couple of months in and already experiencing an uncapped earning potential and success beyond my initial expectation. I enjoy coming to work for a company that takes pride in not only the services offered, but a company that goes above and beyond to ensure the success of the people that work for them. HealthPlanOne is helping me realize a dream that I thought was truly only a dream."
"We are pleased to welcome HealthPlanOne to Tampa," said Rick Homans, President & CEO of the Tampa Hillsborough Economic Development Corporation. "By creating new jobs in one of our primary industry clusters, this dynamic company strengthens our local economy and serves as an asset to our community."
In addition to serving the consumer markets with Medicare Advantage, Supplement, Individual/Family and Small Group plans, the new technologically-advanced Call Center will also attract new business opportunities with companies in the healthcare and insurance industries.
The highly scalable Call Center, with a capacity of up to 10,000 calls per day, enables companies to utilize HPO's resources as a seamless extension of their sales force. In addition, the fully-integrated CRM, Telephony system and Reporting Platform deliver quality programming solutions and responsiveness to client's needs.
Chosen by INC. Magazine as one of the country's "INC. 500" companies twice in the last four years, the opening of the Tampa office not only provides on-going employment opportunities in the immediate region, but will deliver a thriving business with substantial growth projections for years to come.
About HealthPlanOne, LLC
Founded in 2005, HealthPlanOne offers the broadest portfolio of Individual, Family and Medicare eligible health plans from top-rated carriers nationwide. Holding licenses in all 50 states, the agency is appointed with all major national and regional carriers and offers nationwide assistance from knowledgeable, licensed insurance agents. For more information please visit: http://www.medicaresolutions.com/careers.aspx
DataBank Releases Specs for New Data Center
DataBank’s newest enterprise-class facility will initially be built out to 50,000 square feet, a planned expansion area will accommodate an additional 10,000 square feet of space. To meet DataBank’s high power requirements, the facility will have dedicated power delivery via dual 10MW utility feeds in a 2(N) configuration.
“We could not be more pleased with the new facility’s location,” said Tim Moore, CEO of DataBank. “To construct a facility that meets DataBank standards we needed a unique site combining ultra-high power availability and a dense concentration of fiber providers. Our partners at Digital Realty were able to provide us with a unique and premium property in a stellar data center park setting.” Moore continued, “DataBank’s product is anchored on a 100% uptime availability SLA for enterprise, hosting and cloud providers that make up the bulk of our client base. Also, this location allows us to duplicate our product in North Dallas.”
“DataBank approached Digital Realty looking for a solution that would give it complete control over its business and technical operations,” said David Caron, Senior Vice President, Portfolio Management at Digital Realty. “Our Powered Base Building data center solution supported DataBank’s vision to expand its business, how, when and where it was needed.”
DataBank is known for delivering a highly secure data center environment for clients, and plans for the facility to undergo audits including SSAE16 and PCI-DSS, are already underway. To meet compliance requirements, customers in the new data center will be able to take advantage of a variety of optional custom-layered security features for their deployments.
To learn more about DataBank, the company facilities, and the complete suite of service solutions, please visit www.databank.com.
O'Neil& Associates Reduce Cost, Complexity of Continuous Data Protection with TwinStrata CloudArray and Amazon S3
As part of its disaster recovery planning, O’Neil& Associates had implemented continuous data protection (CDP) to a secondary data center. Unfortunately, while eliminating the need for tape, that decision also increased demand for costly remote disk storage and its associated rack space, cooling and power requirements. The company needed a solution that could quickly expand capacity without the need for additional disk.
Since the company’s disaster recovery plan requires employees to access the secondary data center by VPN, the organization typically has significant idle Internet bandwidth. O’Neil& Associates recognized that its environment was ideal for cloud storage adoption.
The company decided to adopt Amazon S3 cloud storage to alleviate the demands of disk's capital and infrastructure costs. However, it still needed a way for that cloud storage to be available virtually as a local disk so that it was accessible to the CDP solution. After trialing a CloudArray virtual appliance from TwinStrata, O'Neil& Associates was convinced it had found exactly what it needed and purchased a CloudArray physical appliance.
“The time required to provision new storage hindered our ability to meet our data retention commitments,” said Dave Stackhouse, director of information systems at O'Neil& Associates. “With TwinStrata CloudArray, storage provisioning is a trivial matter, not the significant undertaking it used to be. We’ve reduced the provisioning time for retention log storage by at least 90 percent and eliminated the complex and demanding planning and commitment required of our IT group. TwinStrata CloudArray proved to be exactly what we needed.”
“Plug and play integration, enterprise-class security and local performance enable organizations to deploy CloudArray as a direct replacement for traditional storage infrastructure,” said Nicos Vekiarides, chief executive officer at TwinStrata. “O'Neil& Associates saw the opportunity to offload their rapidly growing off-site storage capacity. By integrating the CloudArray gateway solution into their disaster recovery plan, they are able to scale their storage at a moment's notice without the costs, complexity and maintenance life cycle they would have faced if they continued to grow existing capacity. We’re excited that O'Neil& Associates have been able to use CloudArray to meet their objectives of simpler and more scalable enterprise storage that meets their data retention needs.”
Arkeia Announces Arkeia Network Backup v10 for Hybrid Cloud
Arkeia Network Backup v10 enables “hybrid cloud” backups by overcoming the limitations of last-mile bandwidth—allowing overnight delivery of physical media to substitute for WAN bandwidth as needed. Arkeia introduces hybrid cloud “seeding and feeding” in which administrators can employ any combination of physical media and internet transport to replicate backup sets on a LAN to or from remote cloud storage. Arkeia makes it practical to replace tapes for off-site storage by allowing large backup sets like full backups to be moved on physical media and small backup sets like incremental backups to be sent over the wire.
“Any effective backup must include getting data off site to protect against natural or man-made disasters,” said Ashar Baig, Senior Analyst at Taneja Group. “Hybrid cloud backups, which back up data to the LAN and then replicate it over WAN links to the cloud, are an increasingly attractive way to move business-critical backups offsite. Arkeia’s ‘seeding and feeding’ features overcome the mid-market’s key challenge of expensive WAN bandwidth. Arkeia’s hybrid cloud approach is a great way for organizations to get their data off site without the complexity of using tapes on a daily basis by overcoming bandwidth limitations.”
Seeding and Feeding
Arkeia’s hybrid cloud solution moves beyond rudimentary “cloud seeding” in which the first backup is moved off-site on physical media, followed by incremental backups sent over the WAN. First, Arkeia allows incremental backups to be replicated by wire before the first full backup is received at the destination replication server, eliminating the exposure that occurs when incremental backups must be delayed waiting for the initial full backup to be delivered to the cloud. Second, physical media can also be used for “feeding”: transporting any backup set too large to be replicated conveniently over the WAN. Internet and physical media transfers can be combined in any combination, in any sequence.
Third, similar transfers of deduplicated backups can be used to restore one or multiple backup sets to the LAN from the cloud. Moving backup sets in deduplicated format accelerates recovery, especially when large numbers of machines must be recovered quickly. Fourth, Arkeia’s hybrid-approach saves organizations money because not all backup sets have to be replicated to the cloud, giving administrators the flexibility to pick and choose based on the cost of cloud bandwidth and cloud storage.
“The high cost of last-mile bandwidth is the major obstacle slowing the adoption of hybrid cloud backup by the mid-market. Organizations planning to replace tape and gain the benefits of moving their backups to the cloud will hesitate when they factor in the costs of bandwidth required,” said Bill Evans, Arkeia CEO. “Arkeia Network Backup v10 makes hybrid cloud backup practical by solving the problem of last-mile bandwidth. Our unique ‘seed and feed’ capabilities permit MSPs and other resellers to deliver hybrid cloud backup services to the mid-market. Any customer with enough WAN bandwidth to transport most incremental backups can enjoy the flexibility and reliability of cloud backup.”
Immediate Provisioning of Temporary 1Gbps WAN Links
Arkeia Network Backup v10.0 supports replication with USB-connected disk drives and disk arrays. Disk arrays in redundant RAID configurations allow large volumes of data to be reliably transferred in a single package. A disk array with 10TB of useable capacity delivered overnight is comparable to a 1Gbps WAN link—but available as-needed without provisioning delays or expensive monthly fees.
Arkeia VARs and MSP customers will inventory USB-connected arrays, providing them to end users as needed, upon first backup and infrequently thereafter. External storage is ideal because the disk drives are needed only infrequently and do not occupy valuable real estate in backup appliances, because they are available in redundant arrays, and because arrays can scale far beyond the capacity of a single drive.
“Arkeia’s v10 promises the perfect balance of data protection and cost containment for offsite storage of backups,” said Jean-Michel Castronovo, managing director of storage specialist S2mi near Paris, France. “This release gives us exactly the features we want, allowing us to leverage the convenience of WANs for nightly transmission of incremental backups and the high bandwidth of USB-connected disk arrays for full backups. Arkeia’s Progressive Deduplication makes this all possible by delivering compression ratios up to 90 percent. Deduplication helps our customers save money by reducing storage volume and network performance requirements while shortening backup windows. We evaluated Arkeia, Acronis, and Veeam to protect our customers’ virtual environments and selected Arkeia.”
Source Volume Pricing
Arkeia Network Backup v10 introduces source-volume pricing to simplify licensing. License prices are based only on the amount of data under protection and include unlimited target storage volume, unlimited agents for physical machines (e.g. Windows, Linux), and unlimited agents for hypervisors (e.g. VMware and Hyper-V).
“Source volume pricing improves customer satisfaction by making it easy to predict data protection costs,” explains Kevin Reynolds, CEO at Signal Computer Products in Westford, Massachusetts. Signal is an Arkeia partner and regional reseller of data storage solutions. “We appreciate that Arkeia is delivering capabilities to make it easier for resellers to deliver solutions quickly.”
Availability and Pricing
Arkeia Network Backup version 10.0 is scheduled for availability this summer. To participate in the beta program, visit www.arkeia.com/beta-test. The release is free to all Arkeia customers on current maintenance contracts.
For perpetual licenses, protection of the first terabyte of source volume costs $5,000 with unlimited agents. Prices of subsequent terabytes start at $2,500/TB, descending to $1,250/TB. Subscription licensing is also available. Arkeia’s agent-based pricing will co-exist with source-volume pricing during a transition period.
About Arkeia Software
Arkeia delivers data backup and recovery solutions to protect more than 100,000 networks in 70 countries. The Arkeia Network Backup Suite is designed for mid-sized organizations that require fast, easy-to-use, and affordable data protection. The company’s appliances, virtual appliances, and software back up critical data to disk, tape, and cloud storage. Arkeia protects all major virtual platforms including VMware, Hyper-V, XenServer, and more than 200 physical platforms including Windows, Mac, Linux, Netware, Solaris, AIX, BSD, and HP-UX. The company’s patented source-side Progressive Deduplication™ technology helps users realize better performance at a lower cost by reducing data volumes. Arkeia’s deduplication is crucial to accelerating replication of on-premise backups to private or public clouds.Products are sold through resellers and managed service providers worldwide. The company was founded in1996 and is headquartered in San Diego, California.
Arkeia and Arkeia Network Backup are trademarks or registered trademarks of Arkeia Software, Inc. All other trademarks or registered trademarks are the properties of their respective owners.
MetricStream Acquires TBD Networks vPanorama Technology, Extending Its Leadership in IT-GRC
leader in Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) solutions,
has acquired TBD Networks, a San Jose, California-based
cloud transformation company and its vPanorama cloud GRC
technology. By incorporating vPanorama into its IT-GRC
solution, MetricStream will enable customers to seamlessly
manage regulatory compliance, privacy requirements, security
threats, vulnerability risks, and performance metrics across
the entire spectrum of virtual assets in the cloud, as well
as on-premise virtual infrastructure. The latter constitutes
private clouds based on platforms such as VMware vSphere.
An increasing number of IT resources - including
business-critical applications and highly sensitive data -
are being moved into the cloud. While the cloud offers
significant benefits in terms of efficiency, scalability,
and economy, it also presents an entirely new set of
security risks that IT organizations are only beginning to
understand. In addition, the cloud increases the complexity
of the IT environment - today companies are using a
combination of both on-premise physical systems and
virtualized IT infrastructure in the cloud which, in turn,
may be private, public, or hybrid.
MetricStream offers IT security, risk, and compliance
managers a simple, action-oriented way to monitor the
virtualized environment alongside on-premise infrastructure.
vPanorama's groundbreaking technology provides granular
visibility into and control over security configuration
assessments, continuous controls monitoring, risk
management, and threat and vulnerability tracking. It also
helps meet compliance requirements around industry
standards, cross-border data transfer, service level
agreements (SLAs), segregation of duties (SoDs), and general
computer controls (GCC). The technology minimizes
inefficiencies, and enhances the reliability and performance
of the cloud infrastructure.
vPanorama, developed by TBD Networks under the VMware
Technical Alliance Partner Program, has been the building
block of some of the world's largest virtual environments,
including the US Air Force's global network environment.
"Traditional IT operations are based on physical asset
models and stable relationships between servers, networks,
and storage elements. But with virtualization, system
services and servers can be provisioned, replicated,
updated, and de-provisioned with a single click; network and
storage mappings are made fluid; VMs can be easily moved
across and between enterprises, by-passing all traditional
security controls," says Thomas Ludwig, CEO of TBD Networks.
"Virtualization and the cloud have fundamentally changed the
overall model of IT governance, and significantly impacted
security and risk. vPanorama is designed for this new
paradigm, and augments the MetricStream IT-GRC solution,
delivering a panoramic view and a fine-grained management
framework for heterogeneous virtual environments."
"With the acquisition of vPanorama, MetricStream breaks new
ground in IT security, risk, and compliance management. It
brings to market the only IT-GRC solution that enables the
highest and most consistent level of assurance and control
for both cloud infrastructure and on-premise systems," says
Shellye Archambeau, CEO of MetricStream. "Companies need to
relook at their IT-GRC strategies and incorporate cloud GRC
so that they can confidently embrace virtual infrastructure,
and fully harness the power of cloud computing. With the
help of MetricStream, customers, for the first time, can get
clear visibility into and exercise control over their
compliance status and risk posture in the cloud."
The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology
(NIST) and the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) view cloud GRC
as a critical issue. NIST recently released a draft of
Special Publication 800-144, "Guidelines on Security and
Privacy in Public Cloud Computing," which recommends steps
to be taken in nine topical areas: Governance, Compliance,
Trust, Architecture, Identity and Access Management,
Software Isolation, Data Protection, Availability, and
Incident Response.
The CSA makes similar recommendations in v2.1 of the CSA
Guide - "Effective governance and enterprise risk management
in Cloud Computing environments follows from well-developed
information security governance processes, as part of the
organization's overall corporate governance obligations of
due care." The report goes on to say, "The fundamental
issues of governance and enterprise risk management in Cloud
Computing concern the identification and implementation of
the appropriate organizational structures, processes, and
controls to maintain effective information security
governance, risk management, and compliance."
As part of the acquisition, the TBD Networks team will join
MetricStream to drive product innovation and R&D around how
enterprises should respond to emerging risks from
virtualized infrastructure, mobiles devices, reliance on
managed service providers, cloud applications, digital and
social media, and the resulting Big Data.
About MetricStream
MetricStream is a market leader in Enterprise-wide
Governance, Risk, Compliance (GRC) and Quality Management
Solutions for global corporations. MetricStream solutions
are used by leading corporations such as UBS, Constellation
Energy, Pfizer, Philips, BAE Systems, SanDisk, Cummins and
Sonic Automotive in diverse industries such as Financial
Services, Healthcare, Life Sciences, Energy and Utilities,
Food, Retail, Government and Manufacturing to manage their
risk management, quality processes, regulatory and
industry-mandated compliance and corporate governance
initiatives, as well as several million compliance
professionals worldwide via the www.ComplianceOnline.com
portal. MetricStream is headquartered in Palo Alto,
California and can be reached at www.metricstream.com.
Cyber Development Group launches its Third Enterprise Cloud Center
Mount Prospect, IL - Cyber Development Group International (“CDGI”) announces the launch of its third cloud based enterprise-computing center and dedicated workplace/operations recovery facility at its Mt. Prospect, IL campus. The new facility, Enterprise Cloud Computing Center 3 (“ECCC 3”), will deploy with SSAE 16 SOC1 and SCO2 in conjunction with PCI level-2 certifications. It contains Six (6) Tier 3 Enhanced HIPAA / PCI / ISO Certified Enterprise Data Centers (sized from 1,000 to 10,000 SF) with pre-built “just in time” 200%+ growth capability and a corresponding $3 Million uptime SLA.
The facility will house an NEC Corporation of America (NEC) disaster recovery facility and regional parts / service depot to launch the “Cloud in a Vault” Enterprise Computing Infrastructure as a Service solution.
“CDGI has an unprecedented track record of deploying state-of-the-art, enterprise-class computing facilities,” says Mike Mitsch, Vice President of the Enterprise Technology Group, NEC. “We are pleased to not only be working with CDGI to expand our mission critical computing infrastructure in North America, but to deliver the first fully integrated and virtualized server, storage, and networking architecture to the market under the ‘Cloud in a Vault’ infrastructure solution. Built upon NEC’s award winning ProgrammableFlow network infrastructure, CDGI and NEC are at the forefront of delivering the advantages of Software Defined Networking (SDN) to the hosting market - as a cloud service.”
CDGI’s CEO Jack Pressman adds, “NEC is a global giant in the premier infrastructure marketplace. Their commitment to our enterprise cloud-computing solutions allows CDGI to deploy absolute individual client platforms as dedicated PCI, HIPAA and ISO compliant Data Center-as-a-Cloud Service (“DCaaCS”) solutions.” Pressman continues, “CDGI’s partnership with NEC allows CDGI to deliver a true paradigm shift with respect to delivering enterprise data center solutions with direct pathways to support customer’s goals, transforming the enterprise processing platform to an absolutely true 100% dedicated ‘just in time’ ultra secure and compliant platform with ZERO capital expenditure.”
For more information about CDGI visit www.cyberdevgroup.com. To learn more about CDGI’s ECCC 3 facility, email jackp@cyberdevgroup.com.
Data2Logistics Completes Data Center Industry’s Top Examination
Fort Myers, Florida – Global freight bill advisor and processor Data2Logistics announces the successful completion of the American Institute of certified Public Accountants’ Statement on Standards for Attestation Engagements Number 16 (SOC 1 - SSAE No. 16) Type 2 examination. The examination scope was for Data2Logistics freight bill audit and payment services, conducted by BrightLine CPAs & Associates, Inc. Superseding the SAS 70 audit standard in mid-2011, SSAE 16 is an attestation standard that establishes the requirements and guidance for reporting on controls at a service organization relevant to user entities’ internal control over financial reporting. The controls addressed in SSAE 16 are those that a service organization implements to prevent, or detect and correct, errors or omissions in the information it provides to user entities. By engaging an independent CPA to examine and report on a service organization’s controls, service organizations can respond to meet the needs of their user entities and obtain an objective evaluation of the effectiveness of controls that address operations and compliance, as well as financial reporting at those user entities.
“We’re committed to operating our data centers and facilities at a level that meets or exceeds the highest industry and regulatory standards,” stated Gerry Burns, President and Chief Executive Officer, Data2Logistics.
Data2Logistics assists Global 1000, Fortune 1000 and SMB companies to reduce their shipping costs by providing an outsourced opportunity to efficiently process, audit account code and pay their freight at a significantly lower cost than internal processes, while also identifying more carrier overcharges than internal systems. The company provides actionable information to better manage and control transportation cost, and supports clients with their carrier bid preparation, benchmarking, proposal analysis and negotiation for all modes on a global basis. As a single source of information, Data2Logistics seeks to identify opportunities for savings, report the reasons for variances, and determine and report variances in trends and opportunities to make in modal shifts, consolidate shipments, improve carrier utilization and adjust shipment size, as well as monitor accessorial cost, and costs per kilometre/mile. Reviewing over $15 billion worth of freight bills from thousands of carriers annually, the company offers a single-source solution for all modes of freight.
For Data2Logistics services information, contact Harold Friedman, +1 609 577 3756 or harold.friedman@data2logistics.com.
EGENERA ANNOUNCES NEW IT MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE PRODUCTS
BOXBOROUGH, MA – Egenera, a pioneer in infrastructure management and automation, today announced the addition of PAN Cloud Director™ and PAN Domain Manager™ to its family of software products. PAN Cloud Director provides unique self-service cloud management, while PAN Domain Manager delivers scalability and support of mixed hardware environments. In addition to these new products, Egenera has also added new disaster recovery functionality and integrations with VMware Orchestrator to its flagship PAN Manager™ software.
PAN Cloud Director is a new self-service management portal that is the industry’s only cloud lifecycle automation product to support the consumption of applications running either in a native OS or virtual environment. The software provides increased flexibility and makes it simpler for service providers and businesses to manage and provision cloud services. The product gives users the ability to match IT services and configurations with resources that best fit the application requirements and end user budgets.
The product provides IT administrators with a powerful, easy to use interface for designing, tracking and billing for services. Using a role based structure, administrators and users can leverage PAN Cloud Director to quickly configure all aspects of a service, including pricing, margin, service levels and capacity. In line with Egenera’s commitment to openness, PAN Cloud Director supports all major hypervisors in addition to native servers.
PAN Cloud Director is fully integrated with PAN Manager so that organizations can bring reliability to cloud-based applications through PAN Manager’s high availability and disaster recovery automation functionality. In this way, PAN Cloud Director is aimed at data center administrators who need to provide end users with enterprise class cloud services that can be easily requested and consumed.
“Many IT organizations are seeking to implement Infrastructure as a Service to speed the provisioning process and to reduce the cost of service delivery,” said Donna Scott, VP and Distinguished Analyst, Gartner Research. “Key evaluation criteria include provisioning of both physical and virtual infrastructures, and avoiding lock-in to any one infrastructure vendor by enabling management across multi-vendor hardware. Moreover, increasingly customers seek to deploy mission critical applications as cloud services which require a focus on resiliency and disaster recovery.”
In conjunction with PAN Cloud Director, Egenera also introduced PAN Domain Manager software. PAN Domain Manger enables organizations to bring increased flexibility, scale and ease of use to their IT environments.
With PAN Domain Manager, Egenera continues to innovate in converged infrastructure management. In an industry first, PAN Domain Manager provides greater management flexibility and hardware choice by enabling converged infrastructures to consist of mixed hardware environments. This includes the ability to failover and perform full disaster recovery between blades from different server OEM’s.
In addition, PAN Domain Manager extends PAN Manager support up to 256 servers with 20Gb fabric throughput to each blade and an architecture allowing scaling beyond this in the future. The advanced storage management feature simplifies storage resource allocation through integration with industry and storage vendor technologies.
Finally, Egenera has provided some significant enhancements to PAN Manager, making it more efficient and cost effective to automate, manage and protect IT infrastructures. These include new granular many-to-one disaster recovery targeting as well as expanding its integration in the virtualization ecosystem with the availability of a VMware vCenter Orchestrator plug-in enabling access to PAN environments from VMware vDirector and vCloud.
“We are excited for the launch of PAN Cloud Director and PAN Domain Manager which bring greater simplicity, added flexibility and support for a diverse range of technologies to enterprises that are exploring the possibilities of cloud services,” said Scott Geng, senior vice president of engineering at Egenera. “PAN Cloud Director will provide our customers with increased flexibility and customization as they confidently move to the cloud, while the updates to PAN Manager come from consultation with IT administrators, who made it clear what they needed for the environments they manage.”
About Egenera
Converge. Unify. Simplify. That’s how Egenera brings confidence to computing. The company’s production-proven converged infrastructure data center solutions, powerful Egenera® PAN Manager® Software and professional services are trusted globally to deliver proven value through agility, reliability and availability. Egenera solutions and services guarantee wire-once, always-on, physical and virtual management across the data center with measurable savings. Headquartered in Boxborough, Mass., Egenera has thousands of production installations globally, including premier enterprise data centers, service providers and government agencies. For more information on the company, please visit www.egenera.com. Follow Egenera on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.
