Flexiant, a UK-based cloud infrastructure software and services provider – and Europe’s original public cloud provider – and Standing Cloud, Inc. a leader in the emerging platform as a service (PaaS) marketplace, have gone live with their “Standing Cloud powered by Flexiant” integration, bringing a vastly simplified method of deploying and managing cloud-hosted applications to European cloud users.

“Standing Cloud powered by Flexiant” marries an application layer from Standing Cloud with Flexiant’s Extility cloud product. Extility customers will be able to find and immediately use around 100 popular web applications—WordPress, SugarCRM, DotProject and OpenBravo, to name a few—complete with built-in monitoring and management tools that ease system administration headaches. Developers can use PHP, Java, Ruby on Rails, and Python to support rapid testing and live deployment. Pricing starts at $38.95 per month.

Together, Standing Cloud and Flexiant aim to remove the mystery of the cloud for “informal buyers” who have struggled with accessing cloud technology. Forrester Research defines this group as including application developers, innovative business users and service providers.

The “Standing Cloud powered by Flexiant” integration includes a separate Flexiant branded area of the Standing Cloud web site, and offers the ability to register and run a free trial of the various applications, before opting for full hosting. This allows users to see how flexible and immediate cloud application provisioning really can be.

“Standing Cloud powered by Flexiant is an exciting new way to bring the promise of cloud computing to business users and developers. By connecting Standing Cloud’s point and click interface to their infrastructure, Flexiant’s customers no longer need to have system administration skills to use it productively,” said David J. Jilk, CEO of Standing Cloud.

As well, earlier this year, Standing Cloud began expanding its support for data centers in the UK and Europe so that users could take advantage of the company’s ability to restore their application in minutes to another cloud in case of downtime on their primary cloud provider. For more info, read “Standing Cloud Facilitates Privacy Law Compliance in the EuroCloud” (Standingcloud.com).

“We found we had a lot in common with Standing Cloud, in our determination to look at things from the users’ point of view. We’ve created a service that ‘just works’, that doesn’t need a lot of knowledge or skills. You shouldn’t have to hire someone to manage your cloud computing, you should be able to do it yourself. And with Standing Cloud’s innovative application layer, you can,” said Alex Bligh, Flexiant CEO.

Flexiant’s flagship software product, Extility, allows licensees to build their own cloud and sell cloud services under their own brand. The cloud computing platform delivers all the benefits of real-time server estate management to end-users through its unique user interface and API. Central to these end-user benefits is the ability to provision and reconfigure servers in seconds or minutes rather than hours or days.

For more information on Flexiant, please visit: http://www.flexiant.com/

You may be quite aware of the plan in the United States to save money by closing federal data centers. Well, now, Canada is planning its own data center consolidation. According to a release by the Canadian government, the country plans to move from having around 300 data centers to just below twenty, accounting for closures of around 280 data centers.

Along with the plan, the Canadian government will also move from 100 email systems to just one. The newly consolidated services will be placed under “Shared Services Canada,” a new organization.

It’s a pretty large consolidation effort. However, it really comes as no surprise. As technology advances, it becomes more compact, requiring less space. Then there’s the economic factor that should be taken into account.

Commenting on the matter in a press release, Canadian Minister of Public Works and Government Services Rona Ambrose stated, “Canadians work hard for their money and expect our Government to manage taxpayers dollars responsibly.”

Portion of the release on the matter states, “This will improve services to Canadians, make IT more secure and reliable, and save taxpayers’ dollars in line with the Government of Canada’s plan to return to balanced budgets.”

The move comes as the country looks strengthen its economy in the wake of the worldwide economic crisis. In the United States alone, the U.S. government is planning to close 373 data centers by sometime next year. Earlier this year, Meritalk, an IT research group estimated that the U.S. could save nearly eighteen billion from closures in the United States.

You can find more information here at Canada News Centre.

A new breach has been identified in the area of global cyber hacking. Recently internet security company McAfee detailed “Shady Rat,” a hacking operation that targeted 72 top worldwide entities. Such victims included various U.S. defense contractors, government agencies, top companies, the United Nations, and plenty more.

The operation occurred over five years. Although it mostly had U.S. targets, various other victims were based in countries such as Canada, South Korea, Taiwan, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.

The security company’s analysis of the attack was based off of accessing the intruders’ “Command & Control server.” Despite the magnitude of the breach, McAfee says that most of the targets had already corrected problems caused by the infections.

According to the report, the operation relied on setting up a backdoor channel through malware. Concluding its findings, McAfee stated, “This is a problem of massive scale that affects nearly every industry and sector of the economies of numerous countries, and the only organizations that are exempt from this threat are those that don’t have anything valuable or interesting worth stealing.”

Although the source of the operation wasn’t revealed, many tech analysts have suspected China as the source of various recent cyber-attacks. Despite denying any involvement, the country was said to be the source of a recent high-profile attack on Google’s Gmail service.

Meanwhile, countries such as the United States have looked to increase their efforts against global cyber security threats by working with other nations, as well as developing new technology. Other recent global cyber-attacks have included a breach on defense contractor Lockheed-Martin and one involving the Pentagon (which the U.S. said likely originated from an unidentified nation state).

Besides these larger scale global breaches that seem more mysterious, this year has seen plenty of other attacks where individual hacking groups have openly taken credit for particular breaches.

Groups LulzSec and Anonymous have recently dominated the headlines. LulzSec has been responsible for attacks on sites belonging to Sony, PBS, the U.S. Senate, the CIA, and more while Anonymous has recently targeted the likes of U.S. defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton and Monsanto, an agricultural company. Fighting back, authorities in various countries have recently arrested people suspected of involvement in the organizations.

Even with all the bad news recently regarding cyber breaches, hopefully such developments have spread awareness and pushed entities to increase their protection against large cyber threats.

You can access the entire report by McAfee in PDF format here: http://www.mcafee.com/us/resources/white-papers/wp-operation-shady-rat.pdf

Could data centers be consuming less power than once believed? The New York Times recently reported on data center power use based on a study from Stanford Professor Jonathan G. Koomey. The findings posed some interesting results.

To get his results, Koomey relied on data compiled by IDC, an information firm.

Back in 2007, the EPA predicted that data center power would double in a span of five years (2005-2010). However, Koomey’s study found something different. In fact, the study found an actual increase of around 56% worldwide.  In the United States, data centers saw an increase by 36%. That’s not quite the doubling the EPA was predicting.

So, what are the reasons behind the shortfall of power consumption by the facilities? According to the New York Times, such factors may include “power-saving technologies” along with the global recession.

Cutting power consumption isn’t necessarily a bad thing though. In fact, it’s often seen as good. More recently, many top data center builders have looked for ways to cut power costs by introducing new methods for cooling facilities’ servers. For example, in May, Google announced a Finland data center that would use cooling methods by relying on water from the Baltic Sea.

Despite the fact that power-use failed to double, it’s still shown a steady climb, signaling the continued importance of data center facilities. In some regards, perhaps the global recession has played a small part and pushing data centers to innovate towards more energy-efficient technology.

In his study, Koomey also found something very interesting pertaining to Google. Despite its high profile, Google is responsible for just around less than 1% of data center power.

For more information on the study, visit The New York Times at http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/01/technology/data-centers-using-less-power-than-forecast-report-says.html?_r=1

I have just updated http://www.webhosteditor.com/ theme. Its a clean and profissional template made by Andrew Lindstrom and can be downloaded for free here:

http://wellmedicated.com/themes/zinepress/

The funny thing is I have over 4 unique, custom made and expensive templates made for this blog, and I end up using a free template! I guess sometimes the best things in life are free, but we dont notice it since we are always in a hurry to get things done.

So, post your comments on what you think of this new wordpress theme and any recommended widgets to add to it.