CA Targets Midmarket Clients with Nimsoft Acquisition
Author: John Duckgeischel
on March 12, 2010 - 10:43 AM
CA’s all cash
$350 buy of Nimsoft, known for its performance software, gives CA access to
smaller clients where Nimsoft has built its customer base. This acquisition contrasts with CA’s acquisition
of Oblicore and 3tera in early 2010 and NetQoS and Cassatt in 2009, which
focused on the larger enterprise clients with cloud management requirements. 451 Group analysts note that Nimsoft has 800
midmarket clients which use its managed service provider (MSP) product to provide
cloud software management. 451 Group
went on to say that CA claims that it has 14,000 potential clients that can utilize
its products. “With our planned
acquisition of Nimsoft, CA will be equipped to capture several important growth
market segments — including emerging enterprises, emerging national economies,
and the MSPs who are providing these customers with IT management services via the
cloud,” Chris O’Malley, a CA executive vice president, has written in a
statement. “Penetration of these markets will further expand our global
leadership in IT management and complement our existing strength with large
enterprise customers.”
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Google Apps Marketplace Open for Business
Author: John Duckgeischel
on March 11, 2010 - 12:32 AM
Google’s Apps
Marketplace opened the online doors for business on Tuesday with 50 companies
joining in the offerings. The most
popular offerings were related to Google cloud apps that are Software-as-a-Service
focused. Lesser known companies joined
in with CRM, fax and ERP apps, but there were well known companies such as
Intuit with its payroll software and content management from Box.net. Creative offerings from companies such as
Manymoon, with its free "social productivity, project management, and task
management" app, were part of the mix.
Atlassian Software known for its hosted software development suit will
bring its customer to Google Apps, but will benefit from the Google Apps that
enable word processing, calendar, and chat within the Atlassian suite.
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RightNow Lays Down “Cloud Challenge”
Author: John Duckgeischel
on March 9, 2010 - 6:50 AM
RightNow, known for its Web customer experience management software,
believes that the cloud provides a new opportunity for cloud software vendors
to provide fair pricing that reflects a new level of economies of scale. RightNow CEO Greg Gianforte stated The “Cloud Challenge” is directed at other
major players in this space including
Oracle, SAP, Salesforce.com, and other vendors. "We are challenging the industry to
finally deliver on the full promise of the cloud. I challenge our peers to step
up and engage with clients like true cloud vendors, not on-premise vendors in
cloud clothing," stated RightNow's chief marketing officer, Jason
Mittelstaedt.
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NetApp Introduces New Cloud Management Tools
Author: John Duckgeischel
on March 8, 2010 - 8:26 AM
After a major
cloud computing partnership with Microsoft with in December, NetApp has now
announced a comprehensive set of management tools to enable service providers
to build private and public clouds for both storage and virtualization
customers. The latest products from
NetApp not only enhance functionality in providing services and apps for enterprise
clients, it bolsters functionality and security for IT service provider cloud deployments
for their customers. "NetApp has a
proven track record of successfully teaming with leading service providers to
power their cloud service offerings," Patrick Rogers, NetApp's (NASDAQ:
NTAP) vice president of solutions and alliances, wrote in a statement.
"Our strategy in this space is to enable the success of our solution
partners, not compete with them, and through them provide a broad and open set
of industry cloud services for enterprise IT customers."
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RSA Conference: Cloud Security Alliance and HP Identify Top Cloud Computing Security Threats
Author: John Duckgeischel
on March 1, 2010 - 12:56 AM
HP and the
Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) have identified the top cloud computing security
threats in a new document which features research on the subject. The CSA has provided a warning to
organizations to be aware of technology that accumulates sensitive personal
information such as credit card numbers, social security numbers and employee
information. Prevention is less
expensive that cleaning up after a data loss or regulatory compliance violation,
which require notification and system modification. Chris Whitener, HP's chief security
strategist, noted that although cloud computing can reduce capital
expenditures, managing risks is often overlooked. "The No. 1 thing you shouldn't do is
approach this with complete ignorance," Whitener stated. "And
unfortunately, this is something that a lot of people do. Understand and limit
your risk profile. If you approach this with complete abandon, you're asking
for it."
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