Salesforce.com Boosts Strategic Investments in Europe

Salesforce.com announces plans to boost its European strategy in response to customer and revenue growth in the region, VMware and Carpathia team to offer a vCloud Government Service offering, and Red Hat brings Enterprise Linux to the Amazon GovCloud (US).

Salesforce.com grows in Europe. Building on significant customer momentum in the region Salesforce.com announced that it is further increasing its commitment to Europe with new strategic investments. The plans are in response to the recently reported record revenue growth of 41 percent. Salesforce.com plans to add more than 500 new jobs across Europe in fiscal year 2015 and open new data centers in the U.K., France and Germany.“Cloud computing is at the heart of growth and innovation in Europe, which is why salesforce.com delivered full fiscal year 2014 revenue growth of 41 percent in Europe," said Miguel Milano, president, EMEA, salesforce.com. "Our tremendous growth and customer momentum is why salesforce.com is significantly increasing its investment in Europe by adding 500 new jobs and opening three new data centres across Europe, in the U.K., France and Germany." “The U.K. has a growing reputation as the leader in the European digital economy and we welcome this new investment,” said Stephen Kelly, Chief Operating Officer for Government. “Within the U.K. Government we are driving a policy of ‘Cloud First’ to improve the way the public sector manages crucial functions, engages with citizens and delivers value for taxpayers.”

VMware vCloud Government Service from Carpathia. VMware (VMW) announced its bid to secure FedRAMP Authority to Operate for a new enterprise hybrid cloud service offering, VMware vCloud Government Service provided by Carpathia. VMware is collaborating with Carpathia, a trusted cloud operator and leading provider of cloud services and managed hosting for government agencies, to bring this service to market. Emulating the VMware vCloud Hybrid Service the vCloud Government Service will provide the security and compliance assurance of FedRAMP authorization by using Carpathia's extensive experience delivering compliant solutions for government agencies. "VMware has helped Federal agencies optimize and manage their data center infrastructure for more than 14 years, and helping them to now use that infrastructure in the cloud is a natural extension of our core business," said Lynn Martin, vice president, Public Sector, VMware. "More importantly, because so many Federal agencies are already using VMware solutions, it's a natural evolution of what they are already doing. VMware is committed to empowering these agencies to use the cloud to meet their line of business and mission requirements rapidly, easily and confidently."

Red Hat Enterprise Linux now on AWS GovCloud. Red Hat (RHT) announced that Red Hat Enterprise Linux is now available in the AWS GovCloud (US) region of Amazon Web Services (AWS). AWS GovCloud enables U.S. government agencies and customers to move sensitive workloads into the cloud by addressing their specific regulatory and compliance requirements. The new option enables customers to deploy  sensitive workloads on the AWS cloud and benefit from the use of identical technology as Red Hat Enterprise Linux deployments in their on-premises datacenters. As a result, AWS GovCloud (US) customers will realize the added efficiencies of a standard operating environment across multiple deployment scenarios. “Government agencies need the ability to quickly access computing resources that clouds like AWS GovCloud (US) provide, while still deploying applications on Red Hat’s secure platform, Red Hat Enterprise Linux," said Paul Smith, vice president and general manager, Public Sector at Red Hat. "On AWS GovCloud (US), agencies can use Red Hat Enterprise Linux on demand, paying for only what they use, when they need it. As agencies determine their cloud strategies, the ability to use Red Hat Enterprise Linux for both on-premises deployments and in the cloud is game-changing.”