Tuesday, July 31, 2012
PayPerCloud(TM) Revamps Network With Ethernet Fabric and 10 GbE to Meet Growing Demand
Press release:
PayPerCloud(TM) Revamps Network With Ethernet Fabric and 10 GbE to Meet Growing Demand
Brocade Helps Cloud Hosting Company Increase Orders by 160 Percent After Displacing Incumbent Networking Vendor
SAN JOSE, CA -- (Marketwire) -- 07/31/2012 -- (NASDAQ : BRCD ) Cloud hosting provider PayPerCloud ran its business on a mix of servers and storage connected with various network switches operating at 1 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE), but the aging infrastructure was unable to scale with its growing business. The company was running out of physical ports and experiencing performance issues. It needed a 10 GbE solution.
After evaluating several solutions, PayPerCloud replaced its infrastructure with a Brocade® Ethernet fabric that includesBrocade VDX® 6720 Switches and Brocade MLX® Series routers. The comprehensive solution from Brocade delivered the performance, scalability and reliability PayPerCloud needed, as well as the design, installation, service and support.
PayPerCloud relies on Brocade VDX 6720 switches for 10 GbE top-of-rack server connectivity. These connect to Brocade MLX-16 routers in a Multi-Chassis Trunking (MCT) configuration, enabling network-level virtualization and enhanced network reliability. A Brocade MLXe-4 chassis resides at the edge of the network and supports connections between servers and storage, as well as 10 GbE Internet connectivity. SAN storage arrays connect to Brocade MLXe-16 chassis to provide storage connectivity to the various environments.
California-based PayPerCloud -- specializing in creating a high-availability, cloud-hosting infrastructure and cloud-enabled applications -- has since launched VaultScape™, an online backup service, based on its new storage capabilities. The Brocade network infrastructure allows PayPerCloud to easily support new customers on the bandwidth-intensive backup service as it continues to grow. PayPerCloud subsequently grew its customer base 81 percent in 2011, and orders are currently up 160 percent for 2012.
PayPerCloud also increased its server-rack density from eight servers per rack to 12, a 50 percent increase, and expects to reduce power consumption by approximately 60 percent. "Now we have half as many cables to manage," said Miles Feinberg, president of PayPerCloud. "And VM management takes a lot less time with Brocade Network Advisor."
The Brocade Automatic Migration of Port Profiles (AMPP) feature ensures that a consistent port profile is applied to all VDX switches in the fabric. Whenever there is a VM motion event, it dynamically configures the switch ports to ensure that VM traffic experiences consistent policies and configurations. PayPerCloud is leveraging AMPP with Brocade Network Advisor, a graphic user interface (GUI) based network management tool, to automate a previously manual process.
This incredible growth was almost upended by the company's aging network. "When we moved to pure hosting services, we discovered our weak points," said Feinberg. "Brocade helped us architect a plan that fulfills our business goals, and service and support have been great."
What Is an Ethernet Fabric?
Compared to classic hierarchical Ethernet, Ethernet fabrics provide higher levels of performance, utilization, availability and simplicity. Moreover, they have the following characteristics:
- Flatter: Ethernet fabrics are self-aggregating, enabling a flatter network.
- Intelligent: Switches in the fabric know about each other and all connected devices.
- Scalable: All paths are available to help ensure high performance and reliability.
- Efficient: Traffic automatically travels along the shortest path.
- Simple: The fabric is managed as a single logical entity.
"The interest in Ethernet fabric offerings and customer adoption are all on the rise. Customers want to migrate to an Ethernet fabric with minimal disruption to current operations. An access layer-based approach addresses the pains that drive many to look at fabrics to begin with: the latency and unnecessary load on core switches that is incurred without the risk associated with a 'rip and replace' strategy. The right fabric does not require an entirely new set of skills and training to manage, and solid solutions do exist," said Zeus Kerravala, founder ZK Research.
In the PayPerCloud environment, Brocade 1860 Fabric Adapter cards installed in Dell servers enable 10 GbE connectivity to the Microsoft Hyper-V hosts and security systems, which provide 10 GbE backup performance. Brocade Network Advisor gives PayPerCloud end-to-end visibility through an integrated interface that manages the Brocade devices, the remaining incumbent devices and third-party monitoring tools.
PayPerCloud has noticed significant performance and bandwidth improvements as a result of the network upgrade. "We went from eight- to nine-millisecond latency to the Internet backbone to sub-millisecond latency. Our rack-to-rack latency is in the nanoseconds, whereas before it was three to four milliseconds," said Feinberg.
The Brocade network infrastructure also has enabled increased capacity and scalability. "Our capacity originally was 48 servers per row and 30 VMs per machine, and we were maxed out. Today, the Brocade architecture allows us to support 72 servers per row and 540 possible VMs in a rack. If we need more 10 GbE capacity, we can scale out easily," said Feinberg.
Brocade VDX 6720 switches are among the lowest power consuming top-of-rack switches on the market.
Additional Assets:
Tags: PayPerCloud, Ethernet Fabric, Brocade, VDX, MLX, Brocade Network Advisor
About BrocadeBrocade (NASDAQ : BRCD ) networking solutions help the world's leading organizations transition smoothly to a world where applications and information reside anywhere. (www.brocade.com)
Brocade to Announce Fiscal Q3 2012 Results
Press release:
Brocade to Announce Fiscal Q3 2012 Results
SAN JOSE, CA -- (Marketwire) -- 07/31/2012 -- Brocade® (NASDAQ : BRCD ) plans to report its financial results for its third quarter 2012 on Thursday, August 16, 2012, following the close of the market.
At 2:30 p.m. PT (5:30 p.m. ET), Brocade will host a webcast conference call primarily devoted to Q&A. To access the webcast please go to www.brcd.com/events.cfm. A replay of the conference call will be available at www.brcd.com for approximately 12 months.
About Brocade
Brocade (NASDAQ : BRCD ) networking solutions help the world's leading organizations transition smoothly to a world where applications and information reside anywhere. (www.brocade.com)
Brocade (
Brocade, Brocade Assurance, the B-wing symbol, DCX, Fabric OS, MLX, SAN Health, VCS, and VDX are registered trademarks, and AnyIO, Brocade One, CloudPlex, Effortless Networking, ICX, NET Health, OpenScript, and The Effortless Network are trademarks of Brocade Communications Systems, Inc., in the United States and/or in other countries. Other brands, products, or service names mentioned may be trademarks of their respective owners.
© 2012 Brocade Communications Systems, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
SAP Named a Leader in Advanced Data Visualization by Independent Research Firm
Press release:
SAP Named a Leader in Advanced Data Visualization by Independent Research Firm
SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) today announced it has been positioned by Forrester Research, Inc., as a leader in its July report, "The Forrester Wave: Advanced Data Visualization Platforms, Q3 2012." Forrester highlights SAP's breadth of advanced data visualization (ADV) business intelligence (BI) functionality as a key factor in securing its leadership position.
According to the report, "SAP BusinessObjects offers excellent big data ADV. In-memory is the name of the ADV game these days when one is looking for answers at the speed of thought. Most other in-memory DBMS engines, however, have practical limitations of analyzing no more than a few hundred GBs at a time. To address this limitation, SAP now offers a highly differentiated combination of [SAP] BusinessObjects Explorer and Visual Analytics with its top exploration and discovery capabilities and the SAP HANA in-memory appliance."1
SAP allows customers to perform ADV against any size of data using SAP BusinessObjects Explorersoftware in conjunction with the SAP HANA platform, making "big data" available to users at the speed of thought. SAP continues to enrich its ADV capabilities with the recent introduction of SAP Visual Intelligence software, which allows employees, departments and lines of business to creatively visualize and analyze information and apply it to individual and group decision-making. These solutions empower users to perform data discovery regardless of technical skill level for true self-service BI while taking advantage of existing data investments that their IT organizations have built and maintained. Additionally, SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards software gives decision-makers an easier way to explore insights and test out future business scenarios with instant, interactive access to metrics that are clear and easy to understand.
For more information, visit the SAP Newsroom. Follow SAP on Twitter at @sapnews and@businessobjects.
1Forrester Research Inc., "The Forrester Wave: Advanced Data Visualization Platforms, Q3 2012," July 17, 2012
New Ruggedized ThinkPad Laptops Are A+ Classroom Performers
Press release:
New Ruggedized ThinkPad Laptops Are A+ Classroom Performers
Tuesday, July 31, 2012 10:13 am EDT
Dateline:
RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, NC
"We know from experience that students are our toughest customers – literally – and for that reason we make it a point to go above and beyond our standard ruggedness features in the laptops we introduce for education..."
Lenovo (HKSE: 992) (ADR: LNVGY) today announced the ThinkPad X131e laptop, built especially for students with the technologies to enhance classroom learning along with a rugged design to meet the physical demands of the school day and beyond. The ThinkPad X131e offers choices of Intel® Core™ and Celeron® processors or AMD E-Series Accelerated Processing Units (APUs) for strong performance, Dolby®Advanced Audio® for rich and resonant sound, vibrant HD graphics and USB 3.0 for fast data transfers. The PC’s cover displays a wireless activity LED indicator so teachers know when students are using WiFi in the classroom. Built for the rigors of education, the laptop also includes customization and security options for schools’ IT teams.
“We know from experience that students are our toughest customers – literally – and for that reason we make it a point to go above and beyond our standard ruggedness features in the laptops we introduce for education,” said Dilip Bhatia, vice president, ThinkPad Business Unit, Lenovo. “To help combat the extreme wear and tear students subject their laptops to, we’ve designed our toughest education PC yet by incorporating heavy-duty, military-grade features, while packing the device with top of the line technology so teachers can offer students the latest in digital learning.”
Student-Tested, Teacher-Approved
The powerful ThinkPad X131e can handle a variety of student assignments, from working with video and creating presentations to managing data and other word processing tasks. The 11.6-inch laptop includes choices of dual core AMD E-300 and E2-1800 APUs with AMD Radeon™ graphics or Intel® Core™ i3-2367M and Intel® Celeron® 877 processors with Intel® HD Graphics; all help to deliver multimedia-rich lessons. ThinkPad X131e PCs equipped with Intel processors also offer the option of including Intel® Learning Series Software Suite, a collaborative and user-friendly tool designed for one-to-one eLearning and classrooms around the world.
The convenient LED light on the laptop’s cover shows wireless activity to give teachers a quick visual cue that students are connected to the Internet for lessons requiring connectivity -- and offline when the work calls for simple word processing or other local activity. This convenient aid to teachers helps keep students following along with the lesson.
The laptop’s Dolby® Advanced Audio® boosts the performance of the built-in speakers and enhances classroom learning that includes music, video and games. Additional multimedia functions include a low-light webcam and Lenovo’s Instant Resume function, allowing students to maintain a WiFi connection while moving from class to class.
Kid-proofed Design
Lenovo built the ThinkPad X131e for mobility throughout the school day with its lightweight design, less than four pounds,[1] and with long battery life, up to 8.5 hours.[2] Student-tested, heavy-duty features include:
The X131e comes in custom colors[4] and the school can opt to have its logo etched into the top cover.
Pricing and Availability[5]
The ThinkPad X131e laptop will be available starting today from business partners and onwww.lenovo.com. Pricing for models starts at $499
For the latest Lenovo news, subscribe to Lenovo RSS feeds or follow Lenovo on Twitter andFacebook.
About Lenovo
Lenovo (HKSE: 992) (ADR:LNVGY) is a $US30 billion personal technology company – and the second largest PC company in the world, serving customers in more than 160 countries. Dedicated to building exceptionally engineered PCs and mobile internet devices, Lenovo’s business is built on product innovation, a highly-efficient global supply chain and strong strategic execution. Formed by Lenovo Group’s acquisition of the former IBM Personal Computing Division, the company develops, manufactures and markets reliable, high-quality, secure and easy-to-use technology products and services. Its product lines include legendary Think-branded commercial PCs and Idea-branded consumer PCs, as well as servers, workstations, and a family of mobile internet devices, including tablets and smart phones. Lenovo has major research centres in Yamato, Japan; Beijing, China; and Raleigh, North Carolina. For more information, see www.lenovo.com.
“We know from experience that students are our toughest customers – literally – and for that reason we make it a point to go above and beyond our standard ruggedness features in the laptops we introduce for education,” said Dilip Bhatia, vice president, ThinkPad Business Unit, Lenovo. “To help combat the extreme wear and tear students subject their laptops to, we’ve designed our toughest education PC yet by incorporating heavy-duty, military-grade features, while packing the device with top of the line technology so teachers can offer students the latest in digital learning.”
Student-Tested, Teacher-Approved
The powerful ThinkPad X131e can handle a variety of student assignments, from working with video and creating presentations to managing data and other word processing tasks. The 11.6-inch laptop includes choices of dual core AMD E-300 and E2-1800 APUs with AMD Radeon™ graphics or Intel® Core™ i3-2367M and Intel® Celeron® 877 processors with Intel® HD Graphics; all help to deliver multimedia-rich lessons. ThinkPad X131e PCs equipped with Intel processors also offer the option of including Intel® Learning Series Software Suite, a collaborative and user-friendly tool designed for one-to-one eLearning and classrooms around the world.
The convenient LED light on the laptop’s cover shows wireless activity to give teachers a quick visual cue that students are connected to the Internet for lessons requiring connectivity -- and offline when the work calls for simple word processing or other local activity. This convenient aid to teachers helps keep students following along with the lesson.
The laptop’s Dolby® Advanced Audio® boosts the performance of the built-in speakers and enhances classroom learning that includes music, video and games. Additional multimedia functions include a low-light webcam and Lenovo’s Instant Resume function, allowing students to maintain a WiFi connection while moving from class to class.
Kid-proofed Design
Lenovo built the ThinkPad X131e for mobility throughout the school day with its lightweight design, less than four pounds,[1] and with long battery life, up to 8.5 hours.[2] Student-tested, heavy-duty features include:
- Reinforced hinges:because frequent opening and closing of laptops can accelerate wear and tear, the X131e has a reinforced hinge to withstand 50,000 open/close cycles.
- Stainless steel hinge brackets:helping the laptop absorb 150 percent more force to the cover.[3]
- Tightly aligned keyboard:prevents objects like pencils from wedging under keyboard keys.
- Dustless fan:filters dust away from the fan assembly to extend the life of the fan.
- Strengthened AC adapter cable:designed to withstand frequent plugging and unplugging of the laptop.
- Enhanced HDD shock performance:protects against damage from students by incorporating rubber padding around the hard drive.
The X131e comes in custom colors[4] and the school can opt to have its logo etched into the top cover.
Pricing and Availability[5]
The ThinkPad X131e laptop will be available starting today from business partners and onwww.lenovo.com. Pricing for models starts at $499
For the latest Lenovo news, subscribe to Lenovo RSS feeds or follow Lenovo on Twitter andFacebook.
About Lenovo
Lenovo (HKSE: 992) (ADR:LNVGY) is a $US30 billion personal technology company – and the second largest PC company in the world, serving customers in more than 160 countries. Dedicated to building exceptionally engineered PCs and mobile internet devices, Lenovo’s business is built on product innovation, a highly-efficient global supply chain and strong strategic execution. Formed by Lenovo Group’s acquisition of the former IBM Personal Computing Division, the company develops, manufactures and markets reliable, high-quality, secure and easy-to-use technology products and services. Its product lines include legendary Think-branded commercial PCs and Idea-branded consumer PCs, as well as servers, workstations, and a family of mobile internet devices, including tablets and smart phones. Lenovo has major research centres in Yamato, Japan; Beijing, China; and Raleigh, North Carolina. For more information, see www.lenovo.com.
[1] 3.93 lobs (1.78kg) with 6-cell battery
[2] With 6-cell battery
[3] Compared to previous models
[4] Minimum order quantities and lead times vary based on customer customization requirements.
[5] Prices do not include tax or shipping and are subject to change without notice and is tied to specific terms and conditions. Reseller prices may vary. Price does not include all advertised features. All offers subject to availability. Lenovo reserves the right to alter product offerings and specifications at any time without notice. Pricing varies by configuration and business partner.
Choice Hotels Uses Oracle SOA Suite and Oracle BPM Suite to Modernize Global IT Architecture
Oracle Press Release
Choice Hotels Uses Oracle SOA Suite and Oracle BPM Suite to Modernize Global IT Architecture
Oracle Fusion Middleware Enables Hotel Franchiser to Reduce IT Complexity and Time-to-Market for New Services
Redwood Shores, Calif. – July 31, 2012
News Facts
Choice Hotels International, one of the largest and most successful hotel franchises in the world, has implemented Oracle SOA Suite and Oracle BPM Suite.
To support the growing IT demands of more than 6,100 hotels worldwide in 35 countries, Choice Hotels needed to replace its homegrown and legacy systems built over 25 years with a modern and flexible IT architecture.
By leveraging Oracle SOA Suite and Oracle BPM Suite to replace dozens of complex systems and hundreds of point-to-point connections in its legacy architecture, Choice Hotels simplified application development, reduced IT costs and streamlined business processes.
Using components of Oracle SOA Suite, including Oracle Service Bus and Oracle BPEL Process Manager, coupled with Oracle BPM Suite and Oracle WebLogic Server, Choice Hotels has standardized application development projects, enabling it to cost-effectively deliver innovative services to its customers faster than ever before.
As part of its SOA initiative, Choice Hotels has been able to lower development costs by re-using existing IT investments and assets to launch 19 new services including an enhanced Online Travel Agent interface, Google API and other innovative solutions.
Choice Hotels leveraged Oracle SOA Suite to dynamically integrate with the Google API to handle more than 3.7 million data points and 2.1 GB of data per week.
The standardized architecture has also streamlined processes by empowering the IT department at Choice Hotels with the knowledge necessary to meet the rapidly changing demands of its global franchise network.
Supporting Quote
“To support a vast global network and maintain a proud history of innovation, we needed to fundamentally rethink our IT architecture,” said Rain Fletcher, vice president of application development and architecture, Choice Hotels International. “Oracle SOA Suite and Oracle BPM Suite have allowed us to replace a complex maze of legacy systems and point connections. With Oracle Fusion Middleware we have achieved faster time-to-market for new services and reduced operating costs.”
Supporting Resources
About Oracle
Oracle engineers hardware and software to work together in the cloud and in your data center. For more information about Oracle (NASDAQ:ORCL), visit www.oracle.com.
Trademarks
Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
Oracle Unveils Oracle Tuxedo 12c
Oracle Press Release
Oracle Unveils Oracle Tuxedo 12c
New Release Offers the Most Comprehensive Feature Set for the Development, Deployment, and Management of C/C++/COBOL Applications in the Data Center and in the Cloud
Redwood Shores, CA – July 31, 2012
News Facts
Oracle today announced Oracle Tuxedo 12c, the latest edition of the industry's #1 application server for conventional and cloud-based C/C++/COBOL applications.
Optimized to run on Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud and tightly integrated with Oracle Fusion Middleware, Oracle Database 11g and Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c, Oracle Tuxedo 12c provides mainframe-class scalability and performance for mission critical enterprise applications.
Oracle Tuxedo 12c introduces the new Oracle Tuxedo Message Queue 12c, which provides transaction management, enhanced performance and improved availability of enterprise messaging applications.
Oracle Tuxedo 12c delivers innovative features, development tools and product enhancements to help lower the total cost of ownership of existing Tuxedo applications and reduce time-to-market for new application development.
With the introduction of Oracle Tuxedo 12c, along with the new and enhanced Oracle Tuxedo products, Oracle offers the most comprehensive solution for the development, rehosting and deployment of C/C++/COBOL applications in traditional data centers, engineered systems and enterprise clouds.
This release also updates existing Oracle Tuxedo add-on products including: Oracle Tuxedo Application Runtime 12c for CICS, IMS and Batch; Oracle Tuxedo Application Rehosting Workbench 12c (See related news release on Oracle Tuxedo ART 12c); Oracle Tuxedo System and Application Monitor (TSAM) 12c; Oracle Services Architecture Leveraging Tuxedo (SALT) 12c; Oracle Tuxedo JCA Adapter 12c; and Oracle Tuxedo Mainframe Adapters 12c.
With Oracle Tuxedo 12c Customers Can:
Run Mission Critical, Conventional and Enterprise Cloud C/C++/COBOL, Applications
Achieve increased performance and lowered latency through Oracle Exalogic optimizations: Shared memory for inter-process communication provides an 8x increase in throughput and lowers response time by 80 percent for Oracle Tuxedo applications, irrespective of deployment topology.
Support for multiple application types: Oracle Tuxedo 12c is the only application server that allows for optimized, co-existence of C, C++, COBOL, Java, PHP, Python and Ruby applications.
Dynamic provisioning and automatic scaling in the cloud: Oracle Tuxedo applications can be dynamically provisioned and deployed, and automatically scaled up or down within a private cloud environment.
Improve Operational Efficiency with State of the Art Management
Monitor and manage full application stack: Oracle TSAM 12c is now integrated with Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c, enabling customers to monitor and manage Oracle Tuxedo and its applications, as well as other Oracle applications, from a single console.
Improve productivity and avoid downtime: With business transaction monitoring for cross-product applications and the ability to run more than one version of the same application side-by-side, Oracle Tuxedo 12c reduces diagnostic time and allows application upgrades without system downtime, to help customers maintain a 24x7 operation schedule.
Lower total cost of ownership: New capabilities allow for more efficient workload management across applications based on actual machine usage, within or across domains. Configuration wizards reduce deployment time for new applications.
Accelerate Time to Market with Developer Efficiency Innovations
Enhanced application development capabilities: Customers can develop Oracle Tuxedo applications using Java and leverage the new Oracle Tuxedo integrated development environment plug-in for Oracle Solaris Studio to develop C/C++ applications.
Third-party application integration: Through an easy-to-use configuration tool for deploying Web services, Oracle Tuxedo 12c makes it easy to connect with third-party applications. In addition, it provides a configuration only approach to access Oracle Tuxedo applications from Oracle SOA Suite through Java Connector Architecture (JCA) based integration.
Enhanced Security: With an enhanced security framework, Oracle Tuxedo 12c applications can be integrated with various security providers to provide improved application security.
Supporting Quotes
“To meet the increasing demands of conventional and cloud-based applications, organizations need a modern and open platform that can deliver mainframe-class scale and performance,” said Frank Xiong, vice president, Software Development, Oracle. “With Oracle Tuxedo 12c and the new and enhanced Oracle Tuxedo products, current and new customers can cost-effectively take advantage of high-performing business-critical applications to increase productivity and reduce costs. In addition, the optimized integration between Oracle Tuxedo 12c and Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud, provides tremendous improvements in application performance, elastic scalability to accommodate load fluctuations and simplified provisioning delivered in a cloud environment.”
“Oracle Tuxedo on Oracle Exalogic provided better than expected performance for our GTX application. GTX is a mission-critical financial messaging application, which requires high level of reliability and scalability. Oracle Tuxedo on Oracle Exalogic not only meets these requirements, this configuration also lowers overall TCO,” said Etienne Savatier, International Sales & Partnerships Director, Sterci.
Supporting Resources
About Oracle
Oracle engineers hardware and software to work together in the cloud and in your data center. For more information about Oracle (NASDAQ:ORCL), visit www.oracle.com.
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