Profile of Charles Babcock

Editor At Large, InformationWeek Member Since: 11/15/2013
Author
News & Commentary Posts: 2917
Comments: 924 Charles Babcock is an editor-at-large for InformationWeek, having joined the publication in 2003. He is the former editor-in-chief of Digital News, former software editor of Computerworld and former technology editor of Interactive Week. He is a graduate of Syracuse University where he obtained a bachelor's degree in journalism.

Red Hat OpenShift Commons Adds Fuel To Cloud Foundry Competition

2/27/2015
Red Hat looks to boost its cloud development platform by giving it a Commons where developers may exchange best practices.
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Docker Preps Containers For Amazon, Other Clouds

2/26/2015
Docker introduces three orchestration tools designed to help deploy distributed applications.
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7 Linux Facts That Will Surprise You

2/24/2015
Here are seven things we bet you didn't know about Linux and why it remains a software project of historic proportions.
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IBM Promises Bridge From Data Center To Cloud

2/24/2015
IBM said at its Interconnect conference its new services will allow easier shifting between the enterprise data center and public cloud.
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Google Cloud Outage: Virtual Networking Breakdown

2/20/2015
Google's virtual networking software stopped providing routing updates, and customers lost their connections to the outside world.
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Rocket Containers: How CoreOS Plans To Challenge Docker

2/20/2015
As containers rise in importance for data center innovation, the Rocket project has attracted 50 contributors in its bid against today's de facto option, Docker.
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Google: Docker Does Containers Right

2/19/2015
Two leaders for Google's cloud computing services talk about how they use containers in the data center, and why virtual machines also remain critical to their strategy.
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Heroku Expands Cloud Services For Enterprise Development

2/19/2015
Heroku has added access controls and code deployment capabilities to its Platform-as-a-Service, which runs on top of Amazon's EC2.
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5 Cloud Predictions For 2015 From TBR

2/16/2015
Infrastructure-as-a-service has moved toward commodity status, spurring Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and others to add services and specialties.
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Stop Amazon: A New Era Of Cloud Co-opetition

2/16/2015
The recent VMware and Google partnership shows how far competitors will go to keep would-be cloud customers from flocking to Amazon.
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First American: Cloud Analysis Points To Savings

2/10/2015
First American title insurance ramps up Azure spending as Apptio expense metrics show a gain versus on-premises virtual machines.
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Containers Get Ready To Run Critical Production Apps

2/10/2015
Interest in Docker runs high, even among practiced virtual machine users. One big question: Who will provide container management?
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Containers Explained: 9 Essentials You Need To Know

2/10/2015
Containers are the hottest topic in the data center. Here are the essentials that every well-informed IT pro should know and be able to explain.
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Oracle Linux Wants To Be 'Dockerized' Too

2/6/2015
Oracle Linux is available in a Docker container on the Docker Hub, which should aid development and database app mobility.
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Equinix Cloud Exchange: Private Access To Public Clouds

2/5/2015
Equinix is offering Cloud Exchange, where customers can select the cloud they want to connect with.
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VMware NSX: A Cloud Pitch To Sell SDN

2/5/2015
Software defined networking is key to VMware's data center ambitions, so it's selling NSX-as-a-service through the vCloud Air public cloud.
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VMware CEO Gelsinger: It's Time For 'Brave IT'

2/3/2015
VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger urges IT to manage virtualized resources, not physical hardware and networks.
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VMware Shows Off New Live Migration, OpenStack Options

2/3/2015
VMware's vSphere 6 lets companies shift running virtual workloads up to 3,000 miles away.
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Amazon's Cloud Business: New Openness, Products, Competition In 2015

1/30/2015
Amazon will reveal its cloud computing service revenue for the first time later this year, bringing new insights while cloud competition sharpens.
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Amazon WorkMail: A Challenger To Google

1/28/2015
Amazon Web Services may go head-to-head with Google when it launches WorkMail in the second quarter, but it wants to be BFFs with enterprise IT.
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VMware: Cloud Management, Virtual Networking Paid Off In 2014

1/28/2015
VMware predicts better than 10% growth in 2015 as subscriptions become a larger part its revenue.
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When Facebook's Down, Thousands Slow Down

1/28/2015
When Facebook went down this week, thousands of websites linked to the social media site also slowed down, according to Dynatrace.
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Molina Healthcare Looks To Hyper-Converged Infrastructure

1/27/2015
The Fortune 500 company expects operating savings from this private cloud strategy, using Nutanix appliances.
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Google OKs Docker Container Registry Service

1/27/2015
Google adds Docker container registry and encryption service to keep customers' containerized workloads private and secure.
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Docker: Less Controversy, More Container Adoption In 2015

1/26/2015
Docker CEO Ben Golub shrugs off the Rocket project flap, says Docker is well positioned for enterprise uptake in the coming year.
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'Windows Must Go Open Source': What Happened?

1/23/2015
It was a bold prediction in 2009 that Microsoft would take its Windows operating system open source. The advent of Windows 10 says it hasn't come true -- yet.
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Cloud SLAs: Improvements Still Needed

1/22/2015
There's been a slight improvement in cloud SLAs as leading service providers like HP, Amazon, and Google guarantee 99.95% uptime by the month, not year. But performance issues remain.
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VMware Offers 'One-Button' Disaster Recovery In Cloud

1/20/2015
VMware has added disaster recovery to its public cloud environment that makes use of existing, on-premises vSphere software and capabilities.
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FreeBSD Gains Ground With Small Cloud Providers

1/19/2015
Can this 30-year-old version of Unix help DigitalOcean and other cloud startups compete with the likes of Amazon?
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Fiber Mountain Sees Redesigned Data Center Nets

1/16/2015
Fiber Mountain's goal is to make data center networks more scalable with fiber and photonic switches, creating "the programmable light path."
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Microsoft Trails Amazon, Google In Cloud Reliability

1/15/2015
CloudHarmony's benchmarking report on cloud service reliability shows Amazon shines in compute, Google in storage.
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Gartner Gives Thumbs Up To Docker Security

1/14/2015
Docker containers isolate resources similar to Linux or virtual machine hypervisors, but fall short with management and administration, Gartner analyst says.
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Amazon Trumps Microsoft With C4 Virtual Servers

1/13/2015
Amazon outstrips Microsoft's new Azure offering with launch of C4 Xlarge, a 36-virtual-CPU server instance.
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Google Launches Cloud Application Performance Tool

1/13/2015
Google Cloud Trace will help developers identify where the slowest user interactions are occurring with an application running on App Engine.
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Verizon Cloud Outage Draws Overblown Angst

1/12/2015
Verizon Cloud's planned 40-hour outage set off outraged critics, but long-term implications will make the cloud service more stable and more competitive.
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University Of Phoenix Finds Payoff In Private Cloud

1/9/2015
Apollo Education Group implements vCloud classroom system to help track and analyze student data to improve academic outcome.
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Microsoft Matches Amazon With Cloud Crypto Key Storage

1/9/2015
Microsoft's Azure cloud adds encryption key storage service, Docker Linux containers, and other features to better compete with Amazon.
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Data Centers Slash Energy Usage

1/6/2015
Modern data centers use open and green tech to respond faster to customer needs while cutting 40% of electricity use.
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9 Cloud Trends For 2015

12/29/2014
In 2015, expect to see the cloud mature as a platform for hybrid operations, with cloud data centers achieving new efficiencies through containers.
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Docker, CoreOS Push Containers To Center Stage

12/29/2014
Containers aren't just good for developers. They're good for cloud workloads, if their supporters can get the security right.
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Boxever Implements DevOps, Continuous Delivery On Amazon

12/23/2014
Travel analytics firm Boxever thrives while executing three or four updates a day to its core systems on Cassandra in Amazon cloud.
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Microsoft Azure Outage Blamed On Bad Code

12/22/2014
Microsoft's analysis of Nov. 18 Azure outage indicates engineers' decision to widely deploy misconfigured code triggered major cloud outage.
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MyWebGrocer Taps Power Of API

12/19/2014
Online ad/coupon service uses API tools to provide targeted advertising for retailers and useful information to consumers.
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IBM Brags Of 49 Cloud Data Centers

12/18/2014
IBM promised 40 SoftLayer cloud data centers globally by the end of 2014. Through a partnership with Equinix, it's ending the year with 49.
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Atlantic.Net Cloud Stretches To The Pacific

12/16/2014
Small, low-cost IaaS provider opens its first West Coast cloud facility.
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DigitalOcean Displays 'Meteroic' Rise As Web Host

12/15/2014
Netcraft survey on world's largest web hosts shows DigitalOcean has risen to No. 3 from 568th place two years ago.
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Amazon Expands OpsWorks For On-Premises Server Management

12/12/2014
AWS embraces hybrid cloud by extending OpsWorks server management to systems assigned to run in customers' data centers.
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Developers See ROI For Continuous Delivery Via Cloud

12/10/2014
Developers find the pay-off for DevOps and continuous delivery comes with cloud, Evans Data survey says.
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Ubuntu Wants To Run Containers, Too

12/9/2014
Snappy, a lean Linux Ubuntu optimized for container operation, promises stronger security for Linux containers.
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Amazon Says Expansion Worth Price

12/8/2014
After a Moody's credit rating downgrade, Amazon will pay a higher rate to borrow than well-funded competitors, such as Apple, Microsoft, and Google, but says business expansion will pay.
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Docker Founder Must Right His Ship

12/5/2014
After some controversy this week, Docker needs to show it has the maturity needed to manage an open source project.
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Rocket Vs. Docker Will Come Down To DevOps

12/4/2014
Whether CoreOS's Rocket successfully challenges Docker's lead in cloud containers will come down to which gets DevOps right.
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Amazon Streamlines Reserved Instance Pricing, Options

12/3/2014
Faced with frequent complaints about complexity, Amazon stripped down the number of Reserved Instance types and simplified its billing.
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Rocket Challenges Docker On Cloud Containers

12/3/2014
Linux company CoreOS launches an alternative to Docker as a lean building block for future cloud environments.
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Holiday Shoppers Got Better Mobile Response Times

12/2/2014
Major retailers minimized wait times for mobile users over the Black Friday/Cyber Monday shopping weekend. Exceptions included Best Buy and Staples.
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Sika Meshes Salesforce Customer Data With ERP Apps

12/1/2014
Sika Group turns to Jitterbit to make Salesforce.com software-as-a-service function with SAP enterprise applications.
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Docker Security Flaw Found

11/26/2014
Docker advises users to upgrade their container formatting system immediately to patch security hole in non-current versions.
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Facebook Data Center Showcases Open Compute Work

11/25/2014
Facebook's Altoona, Iowa, data center includes Open Compute Project data center network fabric.
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IBM Courts DevOps With Dedicated Bluemix

11/24/2014
Dedicated Bluemix is IBM's development platform with host servers in the cloud dedicated to a single customer, for security and compliance reasons.
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Microsoft Azure Outage: Questions Remain

11/21/2014
Microsoft Azure's East and South Central US data centers' performance plummeted while West remained relatively unaffected.
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Microsoft Azure Storage Service Outage: Postmortem

11/20/2014
Azure outage Tuesday produced disruptions to MSN website, Office 365, Xbox Live, and third-party services, as well as possible data integrity problems.
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How Amazon Kinesis Adds Speed, Resilience To Analytics

11/19/2014
Three Kinesis users explain how they use AWS's real-time, streaming data capture and analytics service to support their businesses.
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Interoute, European Cloud Supplier, Makes US Move

11/18/2014
One of Europe's largest cloud service suppliers, Interoute Communications, will open a virtual data center in Los Angeles in December.
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Amazon's Container Strategy, Examined

11/17/2014
Amazon believes it can win developers with new AWS Container Service, despite Google's big headstart.
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Amazon Cloud: 10 New Insights

11/14/2014
AWS already has five times the compute capacity of 14 competitors combined, but it's still expanding fast. See what else we learned at Re:Invent this week.
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Amazon Focuses On New Services, Not Price

11/13/2014
Amazon Web Services expands its menu, while dropping references to its leading price-cutter status.
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IndependenceIT: 'Switzerland' Of Virtualized Desktops

11/12/2014
IndependenceIT offers server-based SaaS to deliver virtualized desktops from an Amazon, Microsoft, or Google cloud.
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Salvation Army Finds Refuge, Recovery In The Cloud

11/11/2014
Nonprofit agency finds cloud-based backup and disaster recovery system is best and most cost-effective way to protect critical data.
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Rackspace Launches Azure Services From Data Centers

11/11/2014
Rackspace offers Microsoft's Cloud OS platform from within its data centers, gives Hyper-V users cloud services backed by technical support.
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CloudHealth Automates Amazon Cloud Management

11/7/2014
Automated Tasks enables IT to define a cloud management task, set policies around it, and implement the task programmatically.
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VMware Preps Australia, Japan vCloud Services

11/5/2014
VMware will launch vCloud Air in Melbourne, Australia, and take the beta label off its Japan service.
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VMware's ESXi Has Backup Bug

11/5/2014
The version of VMware's hypervisor that's embedded in shipping servers has a bug that under certain circumstances corrupts backup virtual machines.
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IBM Launches Cross-Cloud Security Protection

11/5/2014
IBM's Dynamic Cloud Security can monitor and analyze data access activity and applications in IBM SoftLayer, Salesforce.com, and Amazon.
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Joyent Plans To Run Docker In Multi-Tenant Clouds

10/31/2014
Joyent will apply its container expertise to Docker for secure, efficient multi-tenant hosts.
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IBM, Tencent Offer Enterprise Cloud In China

10/31/2014
IBM partners with Tencent, China's largest Internet company, to offer enterprise-level, industry specific cloud services.
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Cloud Computing: IT's Driving Again

10/30/2014
Enterprise spending on cloud has grown 38% in 2014, and IT now controls 80% of that budget, finds Verizon study.
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Microsoft Opens Azure Center In Australia

10/29/2014
Microsoft cloud growth continues, though Microsoft still falls short of Amazon Web Service's dominant revenue position.
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EMC's Hybrid Cloud Moves: VMware Rival?

10/28/2014
EMC will do something in 2015 that subsidiary VMware can't: offer a self-service hybrid cloud that links easily to Microsoft Azure.
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2nd Watch, New Relic Monitor AWS Workloads

10/27/2014
2nd Watch cloud migration and management firm is now using New Relic to offer insight into workload performance on Amazon.
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Amazon Moves Into Germany

10/24/2014
On the heels of a losing third quarter, AWS opens a new data center in Frankfurt, Germany -- and the global stakes are high.
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Rackspace Bundles Collaboration, Productivity Apps

10/24/2014
Cloud Office gives users single sign-in to email, Microsoft Exchange, Lync instant messaging, and SharePoint.
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IBM, Microsoft Cloud Partnership Examined

10/23/2014
IBM and Microsoft will put key software assets on each other's cloud services. Can they double appeal to enterprise developers, compete better with Amazon?
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CenturyLink Plans Cloud Center For Developers

10/23/2014
CenturyLink will open cloud development center in Bellevue, Wash., to attract enterprise application developers.
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Illumio Takes New Cloud, Data Center Security Approach

10/22/2014
Security startup Illumio has launched a granular scheme based on individual workloads, not firewalls or network monitoring.
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If Microsoft 'Loves Linux,' Why Not Red Hat?

10/21/2014
Microsoft says it loves Linux. Enterprises love Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Is there a way to give this love triangle a happy ending?
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OVH.com Launches Power8-Based Cloud Service

10/20/2014
OVH.com is the first cloud supplier to use IBM's Power8 processor for data analytics services.
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StackEngine Offers Linux, Windows Container Management

10/17/2014
Docker is doing what once seemed impossible: providing common ground for Linux and Microsoft developers, say startup leaders.
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VMware Taps CSC For Public OpenStack Partnership

10/16/2014
VMware offers its Integrated OpenStack for private clouds; now it has a partner that's willing to offer it as a public cloud service.
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OpenStack Juno Offers Automated Hadoop Provisioning

10/16/2014
OpenStack Foundation's Juno release features the automated provisioning of three different Hadoop clusters.
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Microsoft Brings Containers to Windows, Azure

10/15/2014
Partnership will enable developers to load and move Windows apps in Docker containers, just as they now do for Linux workloads.
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Cloud Cruiser Expands Cloud Usage Tracking

10/15/2014
Cloud Cruiser 4.0 adds greater capabilities to track and bill for usage in hybrid public clouds and private clouds.
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Deloitte Adds Boomi Integration To CloudMix

10/14/2014
Deloitte's CloudMix expands integration service to include Dell's Boomi, to connect Salesforce.com apps to enterprise software infrastructure.
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VMware Adds Macs To Windows Virtual Desktop Scheme

10/14/2014
VMware is trying to make it easier for a variety of devices to run a basic Windows desktop, allowing firms to reach Mac users as well as PC users.
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VMWorld Europe: Tools To Manage Multiple Clouds

10/14/2014
VMware vRealize suite will manage Microsoft Azure, Amazon, and OpenStack cloud workloads.
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Forrester Names Top API Management Vendors

10/10/2014
As APIs become the foundation of the digital economy, CA, SOA Software, and Apigee head the list of API management system vendors, according to Forrester Research.
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VMware, EMC, Pivotal Launch 'Federated' Offerings

10/9/2014
EMC, with subsidiaries RSA, VMware, and Pivotal, create integrated bundles in bid for deeper customer buy-in and lower support costs.
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Engine Yard Appoints Vrolyk CEO

10/8/2014
Engine Yard replaces John Dillon with Beau Vrolyk as CEO in move to expand Amazon-based platform as a service company.
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Rackspace Offers Google Apps Support

10/8/2014
Rackspace's tech support services aim to help small and midsize businesses better utilize Google Apps.
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Amazon Simplifies Importing VMware VMs

10/7/2014
Amazon enhances vCenter management console connection to ease setup and use for VM administrators.
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Amazon Taps AT&T For Private-Line Cloud Connectivity

10/6/2014
AWS solves one of its major vulnerabilities by teaming with AT&T to increase enterprise-friendly private-line routes into its cloud data centers.
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