Cloud News: Amazon Offers AWS Certification

News from the cloud computing sector includes developments from Pengiun Computing, Software AG and Amazon:

Amazon launches AWS certification program. Amazon (AMZN) announced the launch of the new AWS Certification Program with the first of several exams that will made available in 2013. The new AWS Certification Program helps to fill this need to recognize IT professionals that possess the skills and technical knowledge necessary for building and maintaining applications and services on the AWS Cloud. To earn an AWS Certification, individuals must demonstrate their proficiency in a particular area by passing an AWS Certification Exam. Individuals looking to prepare for an exam can attend courses through AWS Training to help gain proficiency with AWS services. “AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate Level" is the first exam available, which tests skills for technical professionals and solutions architects involved in the design and development of applications on AWS. "With cloud computing being quickly adopted by organizations of all sizes around the world, in-depth training programs as well as certifications for individuals who have demonstrated competence with AWS are increasingly important," said Adam Selipsky, Vice President, Amazon Web Services. "The AWS Certification Program helps organizations identify that the employees, partners and consultants they depend on for their AWS solutions are well-versed in the best practices of building cloud applications on AWS and have the skills to help them be successful."

Penguin Computing Icebreaker Cloud CS storage. Penguin Computing announced the immediate availability of the Icebreaker CS storage platform for large scale-out cloud storage deployments. The Icebreaker CS is a fully integrated and pre-configured appliance that incorporates Scality’s RING Organic Storage software. It will be available directly from Penguin as well as through Scality. Based on its Icebreaker 4860 storage server the Penguin Computing Icebreaker CS offers 240TB of raw data in a 4U form factor. It is powered by an Intel Xeon E5-2600 processor and configured with 128GB of RAM. Organizations with multiple sites can achieve even higher levels of availability with Scality RING’s geo-redundancy features. “Performance, availability and scalability requirements of large scale cloud businesses cannot be met with traditional IT approaches to storage, that typically excel in one of these areas and fall short in another,” said Charles Wuischpard, CEO Penguin Computing. “To meet the demands of our customers that require storage solutions at the petabyte scale we based our large scale storage appliance Icebreaker CS on software from Scality. With its distributed no-shared architecture and its sophisticated Advanced Resilience Configuration, Scality RING offers excellent storage scalability and great availability without compromising performance.”

Software AG acquires LongJump. Software AG announced the acquisition of the Cloud Platform vendor LongJump. LongJump’s technology is fully complementary to Software AG’s ARIS, Terracotta and webMethods, product suites extending the company’s business value both within existing enterprise customers and to SMEs. Software AG will also continue to develop and extend LongJump’s Platform-as-a-Service products for fast and flexible cloud based development and deployment of situational and case management applications. “The digital enterprise is all about real-time business insights driving fast decisions and faster reactions,” said Wolfram Jost, CTO at Software AG. “With this latest acquisition we have taken a major step in optimizing both the business knowledge and IT skills needed to develop flexible, business process driven, situational applications and deploy them rapidly wherever they are needed.”