Cloud News: Platform, Fujitsu, SOASTA, Skytap, Citrix

Here’s a roundup of some of this week’s headlines from the cloud computing sector:

Platform and Fujitsu partner for HPC solutions.  Fujitsu and Platform Computing announced a strategic agreement for Fujitsu to become the latest partner for Platform Computing's high performance computing (HPC) and cluster management solutions. Fujitsu becomes a worldwide Platform Strategic Partner, building on its position as one of Platform's leading partners in the global market. Running on Fujitsu PRIMERGY servers customers will be able to offer Platform Cluster Manager software through a series of Fujitsu packaged editions. Packaged solutions contain a kit that enables customers to use high-quality cluster systems optimized to Fujitsu PRIMERGY in a short deployment period. "As the HPC market expands, leading vendors are responding to customer demand by partnering with Platform Computing to leverage HPC technology," said Tripp Purvis, Vice President Business Development, Platform Computing. "We are looking forward to collaborating on future customer deployments with Fujitsu around the world to deliver cutting edge HPC solutions that deliver significant business benefits to our customers." Separately Fujitsu announced that it has started to offer a highly reliable public cloud service in Australia, Singapore, the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany based on its Global Cloud Platform strategy announced in 2010. The Global Cloud Platform delivers Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) over a network of Fujitsu's data centers.

SOASTA's CloudTest to be resold by IBM.  SOASTA announced that it has signed a global distribution agreement with IBM under which IBM Global Business Services (GBS) will resell the SOASTA CloudTest Platform.  Using on-demand infrastructure such as the IBM SmartCloud, customers can run tests that simulate millions of users, and even test in production.  "Through this important collaboration, IBM customers across the globe can now easily use SOASTA’s award-winning CloudTest Platform to ensure the performance and reliability of their business-critical websites and mobile applications. We look forward to extending our excellent relationship with IBM as they deliver CloudTest directly to IBM customers," said Tom Lounibos, SOASTA CEO.

Skytap leverages HP's ALM 11 suite.  Self-service cloud automation provider Skytap announced new cloud testing capabilities that leverage HP's Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) solutions. Skytap also announced integration with HP's ALM 11 suite to enable customers and HP partners to more easily leverage the cloud for comprehensive software development and testing. The integration allows customers to plan, build and release higher quality applications while leveraging the cloud for scalability and agility, while distributed teams can access cloud-based testing environments to enhance collaboration and sharing for rapid bug reproduction and issue resolution. Capabilities enabled by the integration include requirements management, performance, load and stress testing, creation of hybrid cloud architectures, and application security testing. "Enterprises are increasingly turning to cloud computing to reduce business costs and provide greater flexibility and scalability," said Scott Roza, CEO of Skytap. "Skytap provides a cost-effective, agile solution to accelerate the development and testing of applications. Our collaboration with HP provides customers with a best of breed solution for application development and testing that leverages HP's ALM offerings, Skytap's cloud platform, and HP partner services."

Citrix helps deliver 100,000 personal clouds.  Citrix (CTXS) announced today that Indiana University has chosen Citrix as a preferred partner in helping the university deliver and support virtual technologies for its approximately 100,000+ students, faculty, and staff. The partnership effectively creates a “Personal Cloud” where users can access applications and data as an on-demand service — anytime, anywhere, and on any PC, Mac, tablet or smart phone. IU will extend a broad range of applications to staff and students using Citrix XenDesktop with FlexCast technology. “Citrix XenDesktop is helping us transform the way we deliver and support personal computing devices and applications. The IU IT staff is spending an large percentage of support hours just maintaining, patching and upgrading hardware and software at these multiple locations. Staff can be utilized for higher-level activities in IT, and in teaching, learning and research. Virtualization allows us to more effectively use IT to support the university’s educational mission by allowing our users to get access to resources wherever they are and from whatever device they choose,” said Sue Workman, associate vice president of support at Indiana University.