Host Review has released its Top Ten Best Cloud Computing Providers for October 2010 with CloudLinux again taking Top Ten honors for their Linux OS. This award shows those companies that offer top level performance and value for cloud computing servers working to deploy and scale effortlessly in the global computing cloud. Overall judging is rated by the price, technology, reliability, and performance of each company.

CloudLinux is quickly making its name in the industry increasing ranking in the last two months and receiving the Editor’s Choice for August 2010 of Web Host Magazine. With its isolation technology and web hosting-centric focus, it comes as no shock that CloudLinux OS was also named Best Start Up Company this year at the Cloud Computing World Series which celebrates the best companies in the IT global industry.

Igor Seletskiy, Founder and CEO states, “We believe the industry is realizing there is more innovation to be done to make web hosting more stable, secure, and efficient. Previously all we could do was react when a sudden resource spike takes down a server. Now we can prevent it from ever happening. We are helping our customers and partners deliver a superior hosting experience that benefits both web hosts and their customers.”

CloudLinux is a privately funded company that combines unique expertise in the service provider market with in-depth technical knowledge of hosting, kernel development, and open source. Providing hosting companies and data centers with the only commercially supported Linux operating system (OS) optimized for their needs, CloudLinux OS is capable of isolating instances on a server and create resource limits at the OS level. Translating to greater efficiency, security, stability, and density its cutting-edge technology lets service providers extract more performance per server, provides flexibility in management and better, faster updates.

Today at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC), Microsoft Corp. showcased how developers can build applications in the cloud to power rich, immersive device experiences. In addition to the developers in attendance at the company’s corporate campus in Redmond, Wash., the event was broadcast live over the Web, and reached more than 20,000 developers at over 200 PDC events held around the world.

During the keynote address, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Server and Tools Business President Bob Muglia showed how the company is advancing the Microsoft platform, spanning the PC, phone and cloud. Microsoft specifically highlighted the momentum of Windows Azure, Windows 7, Internet Explorer 9 and Windows Phone 7 and the opportunity for developers today and in the future.

“Microsoft is combining the power and reach of the cloud with both Web and local device experiences,” Ballmer said. “There has never been a better time for developers to bet on Microsoft.”

Customer Momentum
Since the commercial availability of Windows Azure was announced earlier this year, Microsoft has seen strong growth with close to 20,000 applications to date. Demonstrating its RenderMan application during the keynote address, Pixar Animation Studios showed how it intends to use Windows Azure to more efficiently manage compute cycles by scaling as needed, helping improve project performance and eliminate costly back-end infrastructure.

NVoicePay, a key technology partner of Automatic Data Processing Inc. (ADP), is using Windows Azure and SQL Azure to provide medium-sized companies with the ability to pay invoices electronically and via a desktop PC or a mobile device.

“Building a mission-critical B2B payment network would have been nearly impossible without the low-cost, pay-as-you-go access of the Windows Azure platform,” said Karla Friede, chief executive officer of NVoicePay. “We could not have built our network at this speed and cost without it.”

Microsoft also highlighted that over 70 partners — including Twitter, Facebook, and Amazon.com — representing more than two-thirds of active Web traffic are building on the capabilities in Internet Explorer 9 and HTML5. Since the launch of Internet Explorer 9 beta in September, there have been more than 10 million downloads, making it the fastest-adopted version of an Internet Explorer beta ever. The company also highlighted a growing list of companies that are betting on Windows Phone 7, including PopCap Games Inc., Intuit Inc., Amazon.com and Facebook. Further, Microsoft announced that the Windows Phone Marketplace will launch with more than 1,000 quality games and applications that extend the unique user interface and functionality of Windows Phone 7. The Windows Phone Marketplace will be open for application submission on Nov. 3.

The Most Comprehensive Operating System for Platform as a Service: Windows Azure

With the capabilities in Windows Azure, Muglia showed how developers can apply their existing skills to build new types of business applications, consumer Web applications and commercial ISV offerings.

“Only Windows Azure delivers general-purpose PaaS, which gives developers the breadth of services needed to allow them to focus on their applications and not the underlying infrastructure or virtualizing machines,” Muglia said. “Imagine having all of the IT infrastructure, hardware, OS and tools you need to support an app just a few mouse clicks away — it opens up so many possibilities for developers worldwide. We are looking forward to seeing the amazing things our customers will build on our PaaS offering.”

The On-Ramp to PaaS: Moving Applications to the Cloud

For existing applications, one option for customers is to move workloads to the cloud, using virtual machines to help lower traditional cost and management burdens. Today Muglia announced two new Microsoft capabilities for Windows Azure to enable customers to get on the path to platform as a service (PaaS): Windows Azure Virtual Machine Role and Server Application Virtualization. Windows Azure Virtual Machine Role gives customers the ability to run an instance of Windows Server 2008 R2 running in Microsoft’s cloud, making it easier for developers to move applications to the cloud. Server Application Virtualization gives developers the ability to transfer application images to Windows Azure, harnessing the underlying management capabilities of the platform.

Enhancing and Transforming Applications in the Cloud

Microsoft announced a number of Windows Azure services that also help developers create rich cloud applications that open up new business opportunities. To enable this, Microsoft introduced the Windows Azure AppFabric Composition Model to speed the process of assembling services by providing critical application deployment and management capabilities. To better connect developers to customers, Microsoft announced the Windows Azure Marketplace including the new DataMarket (formerly “Project Dallas”), offering premium and public demographic, financial, mapping, and entertainment data and other content. Commercially available today, the marketplace features more than 35 providers currently offering data subscriptions.

Windows Azure scales to projects and businesses both large and small, including mobile applications that require an easier and lower-cost means to experiment and build prototypes. As part of Windows Azure enhancements unveiled today, Microsoft made available the Extra Small Windows Azure Instance that eases the process of development, testing and trial. Priced at $0.05 per compute hour, this new offering lowers the barrier to entry for developers who want to run smaller applications on Windows Azure.

Read more complete information about the Windows Azure road map (.docx file) announced at PDC, including new features and capabilities.

Delivering Cloud Connected Device Experiences With Windows 7, Internet Explorer 9 and Windows Phone 7

Ultimately, a primary role of the cloud is to deliver the best end-user experiences that span multiple devices, form factors and screens, regardless of whether people are at work, at home or at play. Microsoft gives developers the ability to treat both cloud and client applications as first-class citizens and deliver great device experiences that love the cloud. The rapid adoption of Windows 7 and Internet Explorer 9 creates new opportunities for Windows developers, especially considering that Web browsing is the No. 1 activity people do on Windows 7. The opportunity for developers to build applications for Windows has never been greater. Windows 7 topped 240 million licenses in its first year, and developers will drive a wave of new Windows applications that span different platforms through HTML and JavaScript, and run on cloud platforms such as Windows Azure.

At the PDC, Microsoft underscored its continued commitment to HTML5 and showed how developers can fuse the full hardware acceleration and site-centric design in Internet Explorer 9 to tap into the power of PC hardware, transforming their websites to feel more like native Windows applications. As part of the ongoing commitment to standards and “same mark-up” on Internet Explorer 9, the company also announced the availability of Windows Internet Explorer 9 Platform Preview 6, available for download today.

The increasing power and accessibility of rich devices, combined with the ease of application development on Windows Phone 7, has driven more than half a million downloads of the free Windows Phone Developer Tools to date. Many of the same skills, languages and tools used to develop cloud applications on Windows Azure have come to Windows Phone for apps and games.

Extending the PDC Globally

Developers tuning into the PDC online and at PDC events around the world will have access to over 100 hours of live and on-demand technical sessions and Channel 9 interviews, covering Microsoft technologies such as Windows Azure, Windows Phone 7, SharePoint, Internet Explorer 9 and Visual Studio as well as industry languages and technologies such as PHP and HTML5.

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

For compliance management software company, Mango, the 7.1 magnitude earthquake that hit its home city of Christchurch, New Zealand on September 4th could have spelt disaster. Instead, just over a month later, sales and customer satisfaction levels are at an all-time high.

Mango is one of a new-breed of software companies that uses an operating model known as ‘cloud computing’ to deliver its compliance management solutions to customers.

As Peter Rogers, founder and managing director of Mango explains, the term cloud computing is somewhat confusing: “The term ‘in the cloud’ sounds all very airy fairy but the reality couldn’t be more different. What it really means is that customers use the Internet to access software that is running on someone else’s hardware, in someone else’s data centre.”

In Mango’s case that expertise is provided by local internet service and data centre provider Unleash. Growing from small beginnings, Unleash has built its reputation on rock solid reliability and network uptime and now services some of the region’s largest and most-demanding businesses.

“The theory is that it’s a highly-secure and reliable operating model because you’re using experts to ensure you can deliver on the promise of 100% uptime,” says Rogers.

However, when faced with a quake larger than Haiti (which claimed over 220,000 lives earlier in the year) theory gets puts to the test.

Yet thankfully in the minutes, hours and days following the Christchurch earthquake, the only thing Mango personnel didn’t have to worry about was business continuity. In fact, whilst other businesses ground to a halt, Mango made more sales than ever before. “It was a very surreal week – even though basic services like water and power weren’t working for some, there we were operating normally and taking orders,” explains Rogers.

Born in New Zealand, Mango is now used by over a thousand companies across the world to automate their core compliance activities like occupational health & safety, quality and environmental management.

“About two hours after the quake hit, I got a call from one of our customers in the UK. First, he wanted to know if we were all OK, second he asked if our homes were still standing and third he wanted to know how come Mango was still up and running,” says Rogers.

Over the coming days similar calls and emails flooded in from customers around the world but it was the local clients who were most grateful for having Mango in place.

“For our local clients, the earthquake obviously threw them a lot of curve balls from a compliance management point-of-view. There was a lot of business disruption and therefore a lot of health & safety, quality and environmental management issues to deal with. Imagine if Mango – the system they rely on to manage such issues – hadn’t been available? That would have been a disaster for everyone.”

But as Paul Allott, general manager of local civil engineering company, Rooney Group explains, Mango was never an issue: “The disaster presented us with a lot of issues, but also a lot of opportunities. Being able to rely on Mango during those critical first few weeks was key to those efforts.”

Ironically it was also a local company who became Mango’s first new client after the quake. Whilst they’d previously looked at switching to Mango, they’d been concerned by the fact that it was a cloud service (as all their other systems were in-house). Then, suddenly unable to access their own in-house IT systems, migrating to the cloud went from being a perceived business risk to a mitigation strategy.

And as Peter Rogers concludes “Terrible as it was, the earthquake actually helped position our business – and cloud computing in general – in a very positive light. It certainly tested the business model and proved to the doubters that, when done right, it’s actually more robust than the alternatives.”

“Of course, data centres are supposed to withstand large earthquakes,” says Erin Salmon, managing director at Unleash, “but it has been a great endorsement of our facility to have demonstrated this in practice.”

In fact, within hours of the earthquake, Unleash was helping customers relocate equipment into its data centre from other premises which had been damaged or were without power, cooling or internet connectivity.

“Since the earthquake we’ve seen a significant increase in interest in our services,” says Salmon. “The earthquake has reminded people how important business continuity is, and we’re seeing a much higher level of interest in hosting services.”

AT&T  is investing further in its European hosting capabilities with the opening of a second London IDC (Internet Data Centre) to meet growing demand in the region for hosting and its portfolio of services.

The IDC, which will also incorporate a new network node, is AT&T’s third in the UK and will be one of the company’s 38 global IDCs, which collectively provide over 2.6 million square feet of secure hosting facilities across five continents and support over 400,000 devices. AT&T has designed the power infrastructure at the newly-built site for high availability and to support high-density computing.

“This expansion reflects AT&T’s investment both in the region and in hosting services for our European customers,” said Andrew Edison, head of AT&T’s business in Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA). “It forms part of  our plan to invest $1 billion this year to meet the evolving needs of our multinational customers. Investments like this mean they will be able to experience all the benefits of cloud services and gain further advantage from our network and global footprint.”

Steve Caniano, Vice President, AT&T Hosting and Cloud Services, said: “With demand for managed hosting and cloud services growing globally, we are further investing in providing enterprise-class infrastructure capabilities and advanced network based services to our customers. With the opening of this state-of-the-art IDC we are building on existing demand for managed hosting and co-location services in EMEA, and expanding our network, while looking ahead to the growth of cloud services.”

With Gartner estimating that the worldwide market for cloud services will grow to $148.8 billion by 2014¹, AT&T’s cloud-based services combine the intelligence and strength of the AT&T network with flexibility of cost and capacity. AT&T Synaptic HostingSM is AT&T’s next-generation utility computing service with managed networking, security, storage and application acceleration for businesses. Its utility computing features are an ideal solution for organizations whose business needs are seasonal or unpredictable, or where end-user traffic spikes are a given. Customers such as the AT&T Williams team benefit from AT&T Synaptic Hosting, which gives them access to more capacity ‘on demand’ and allows for increased video-casting, webcasts and rich media content on the team website.

The opening of the IDC forms part of AT&T’s planned $1 billion 2010 investment programme, which also includes enhanced IPv6-capable MPLS nodes in Europe; a new AT&T Business Exchange node in the Netherlands to support AT&T’s Telepresence Solutions and new AT&T Telepresence Solutions rooms in Belgium (Brussels), UK (Redditch) and Slovakia (Bratislava, Kosice).