Cloud News: Verizon Terremark Enhances Enterprise Cloud

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

Verizon Terremark enhances enterprise cloud. Terremark announced that it has increased availability, security and flexibility for its Enterprise Cloud service. To meet increasing demand for cloud resources Terremark will expand cloud platforms in data centers located in Dallas and London.  Additionally, as a response to the strong demand for hybrid clouds and to further simplify adoption, Verizon Terremark will be extending the Enterprise Cloud service to include instance-based compute and storage. This feature allows customers to pay for their cloud services per virtual machine versus reserving resource capacity, as they continue to have complete awareness of usage through embedded CloudSwitch software technology. "The ability to provide rapid access to cloud environments with high level of security shows our leadership and commitment to the Infrastructure-as-a-Service market, not only domestically but on a global scale," said Chris Drumgoole, Verizon Terremark's senior vice president of global operations. "Through the enterprise-scale cloud ecosystem we have built, Verizon Terremark is in the best position to serve enterprises and governments and enable them to improve the lives of consumers and citizens through the use of the best technology available."

SOASTA awarded cloud provisioning patent.  SOASTA announced that the United States Patent and Trademark Office has issued SOASTA the industry’s first-ever patent for Cross-Cloud Grid Provisioning, U.S. Patent No. 8,341,462. The technology enables SOASTA and its customers to realistically simulate mobile and web traffic by deploying thousands of servers across different cloud providers simultaneously. The global test cloud from SOASTA is able to leverage more than 500,000 servers in 60 global locations running on 20 providers, including Amazon, Rackspace, IBM, Microsoft, and GoGrid. “Cloud computing depends on rapid deployment and on-demand access,” said Melinda Ballou, Program Director for IDC’s Application Life-Cycle Management research. “Workloads like load and performance testing that can depend on a large number of variegated servers driving traffic from different locations are a logical application for cloud computing. Grid provisioning technology like SOASTA’s can provide immediate access to these load servers across environments to help with the problems users face when trying to utilize different cloud platforms for testing.”

Microsoft launches new management tools for Cloud OS.  Microsoft (MSFT) announced the availability of new solutions to help enterprise customers manage hybrid cloud services and connected devices with greater agility and cost-efficiency. System Center 2012 Service Pack 1, the enhanced Windows Intune, Windows Azure services for Windows Server and other new offerings deliver against the Microsoft Cloud OS vision to provide customers and partners with the platform to address their top IT challenges. “With Windows Server and Windows Azure at its core, the Cloud OS provides a consistent platform across customer datacenters, service provider datacenters and the Microsoft public cloud,” said Michael Park, corporate vice president of marketing for Server and Tools, Microsoft. “Powerful management and automation capabilities are key elements of the Cloud OS, taking the heavy lifting out of administration and freeing IT organizations to be more innovative as they embrace hybrid cloud computing and the consumerization of IT.”