New IBM Appliance Delivers Enterprise Cloud Services

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New IBM Appliance Delivers Enterprise Cloud Services
First of its Kind Hardware Plus New Software Speed Application Deployment

ARMONK, N.Y. - 30 Apr 2009: IBM today is announcing two new products that allow customers to seamlessly extend their investment in service-oriented architecture (SOA) into a cloud services environment. These new offerings enable clients to easily create application environments that can be deployed and managed in a "private cloud" and include:
IBM WebSphere CloudBurst Appliance -- a new hardware appliance that provides access to software virtual images and patterns that can be used as is or easily customized, and then securely deployed, managed and maintained in a clo
IBM WebSphere Application Server Hypervisor Edition -- a version of IBM WebSphere Application Server software optimized to run in a virtualized hardware server environments such as VMware, and comes preloaded in WebSphere Cloudburst.

With today's announcement, IBM is empowering clients to consolidate and manage existing resources to realize the economic and technological advantages of increasingly popular private clouds. A primary benefit to customers who already have a SOA foundation is that cloud computing enables them to now reuse and share applications.

The first hardware appliance of its kind, WebSphere CloudBurst stores and secures WebSphere Application Server Hypervisor Edition images and patterns to be dispensed into a cloud. WebSphere CloudBurst helps customers easily and quickly develop, test and deploy business applications, ending the use of manual, complex or time-intensive processes associated with creating application environments. Once finished, resources are automatically returned to the shared resource pool and logged for internal charge-back purposes. 

WebSphere CloudBurst also manages individual user and group access, giving IT managers the right kind of access controls with optimal efficiency rates.

IBM's WebSphere CloudBurst combines SOA with cloud services that allow our customers to work smarter," said Jim Deters, President of Ascendant Technology. "Our customers are looking for ways to simplify their IT environments and leverage their existing assets. WebSphere CloudBurst will help them deploy and manage SOA in a cloud environment."

These new products incorporate more than 10 years of IBM software management best practices for cost-effective, rapid, and repeatable application deployment. They also fully integrate with development and service management tools from IBM Rational and Tivoli, giving clients the seamless end-to-end support they demand.

The new IBM Rational Automation Framework for WebSphere optimizes configuration and application deployment to customize WebSphere CloudBurst patterns, providing more than 400 field-proven, automated tasks for configuration and application deployment to WebSphere Application Server environments. Using Rational Automation Framework together with WebSphere CloudBurst can improve delivery efficiencies for development, test and production scenarios leading to faster time to market, higher-quality software and rapid return on investment.

In addition, WebSphere CloudBurst integrates with Tivoli Service Automation Manager to support a more modern dynamic data center and reduces IT operational costs by automating the development and management processes for WebSphere cloud computing environments. Tivoli Service Automation Manager provides the capability to request, fulfill and manage complete software stacks for the data center and WebSphere CloudBurst complements this with intelligent, pattern-based deployment and management of WebSphere within the cloud. 

For many workloads, including application testing and development, cloud computing delivers compelling economic benefits for clients. IBM Technology Services is supporting this by extending the IBM Implementation Services for Cloud Computing, an on-premise test environment for cloud applications to include services for CloudBurst that allow customers to test applications in a secure environment before going into production. 

These offerings come at a time when organizations are facing a complexity and affordability crisis, in which costs to manage and power operations are becoming more expensive than the hardware and software itself. To combat this, IBM has compiled the most complete portfolio of cloud computing software and services for enterprise clients in the industry today, building on its long history in security, virtualization, standards-based innovation and large-scale computing to help clients integrate this new compute model into their enterprises.
"The WebSphere CloudBurst Appliance combines the flexibility of SOA with the adaptability of the cloud," said Tom Rosamilia, general manager of WebSphere at IBM. "It's new capabilities for rapid deployment deliver a fast return on investment to our clients."

As part of its public cloud initiatives, IBM is also announcing BPM BlueWorks, a cloud-based set of strategy and business process tools. BPM BlueWorks provides business users with the collateral they need to implement business strategies within their organizations based on industry-proven business process management techniques.

IBM has a number of initiatives that allow customers to leverage IBM software in a cloud. IBM is working in collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS), a subsidiary of Amazon.com, Inc. to make IBM software available in the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2). WebSphere sMash, Informix Dynamic Server, DB2, and WebSphere Portal with Lotus Web Content Management Standard Edition are available today through a "pay as you go" model for both development and production instances. In addition to those products, IBM is also announcing the availability of IBM Mashup Center and Lotus Forms Turbo for development and test use in Amazon EC2, and intends to add WebSphere Application Server and WebSphere eXtreme Scale to these offerings.

With more than 7,000 customer implementations worldwide, IBM is the SOA market leader. This leadership is further illustrated by a thriving community of more than 120,000 architects and developers, 300 SOA-specific technology patents, 2,000 universities advancing the SOA curriculum, and 7,420 Business Partners building SOA skills, solutions and practices.
The WebSphere CloudBurst Appliance and WebSphere Application Server Hypervisor Edition are available in the second quarter of 2009.

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EconRam Systems is independent of, and is no way affiliated with those entities.

Barracuda Networks Enhances Virus and Malware Threat Prevention Techniques; Renames Flagship Barracuda Spam Firewall

Barracuda Networks Enhances Virus and Malware Threat Prevention Techniques; Renames Flagship Barracuda Spam Firewall

Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall Emphasizes Speed of Response and Low False Positives

http://www.econram.com/barracuda-networks1.html

Campbell, Calif., April 6, 2009 – Barracuda Networks Inc. today announced enhancements to its email virus and malware threat prevention techniques, enabling its newly renamed Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall to identify viruses and other email-borne malware threats faster than well known competing anti-virus products. The decision to rename its flagship Barracuda Spam Firewall to Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall reflects Barracuda Networks ongoing commitment to providing best-of-breed malware protection for threats sent over email in real-time.

“What differentiates Barracuda Networks from the competition is that our products are purpose-built to solve the unique needs of email and Web security appliances,” said Stephen Pao, vice president of product management for Barracuda Networks. “Unlike desktop anti-virus engines retrofitted for email server usage, the Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall features anti-virus technology specifically designed for rapid response to viruses that propagate and mutate quickly over botnets and other bulk delivery techniques.”

Demonstrating the efficacy of Barracuda Central’s response to email-borne malware, Barracuda Networks is posting malware classification benchmarks against leading anti-virus vendors, including Symantec (NASDAQ: SYMC), McAfee (NYSE: MFE), and Trend Micro. For more information, visit www.econram.com.
Combating malware propagation techniques over email requires dedicated focus on the unique properties of the virus and other malware attack types including: the attack sources, referenced URLs, the social engineering techniques used to entice recipients to launch them, and the rate of attack proliferation. Through advanced technologies, such as Barracuda Real-Time Protection and Predictive Sender Profiling developed specifically for spam and email-borne malware, Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewalls provide industry-leading response times to email-borne threats.

Barracuda Central Rapid Response
Barracuda Real-Time Protection provides industry-leading protection through the rapid identification of threats and the immediate, real-time, dissemination of protection measures to all Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewalls in the field once a virus or other malware has been identified.
To identify these threats as they emerge, Barracuda Central, a 24x7 operations center operated by Barracuda Networks, monitors statistics from both captive virus traps and anonymous data collected in aggregate from over 70,000 customer systems worldwide. Once Barracuda Central engineers identify a potential virus or malware outbreak based on this trend analysis, Barracuda Central validates the hypothesis by collecting samples of suspect emails from Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewalls around the world that elect to participate in data collection. Through efficient evidence collection, Barracuda Central can quickly classify the viruses or malware.
Immediately upon virus or malware classification, Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewalls running Barracuda Real-Time Protection perform live queries for unknown fingerprints against the Barracuda Central virus and spam fingerprint databases, avoiding any need to wait for the next virus definition download for protection. Once categorized, new fingerprints are automatically included in subsequent spam and virus definitions downloaded by Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewalls through Energize Updates, avoiding the need to perform real-time queries.
To address rapidly mutating threats, Barracuda Networks employs a set of technologies called Predictive Sender Profiling that goes beyond traditional reputation techniques and can identify suspicious behaviors associated with the campaign itself. Examples include hacking of legitimate Web sites or newly infected bots on otherwise legitimate computers or data centers. Predictive Sender Profiling enables immediate blocking of the entire malware campaign, even before more general anti-virus signatures can be developed.

Low false positive ratings critical to complete gateway protection
“Email security solutions must be designed to avoid blocking legitimate email,” said Pao. “As such, Barracuda Central has prioritized low false positive rates in its analysis in not just spam traffic but also impending malware threats over email.”
In order to maintain low false positives for malware threats over email, Barracuda Central works to restrict individual binary signatures as much as possible to specific instances, utilizing other campaign details to provide corroborating evidence to further generalize the mitigation techniques, avoiding false positive problems caused by overly broad signature definitions.
“Barracuda Networks offers the best of both worlds; industry-leading rapid response and protection from the threats that propagate most aggressively without impacting legitimate work,” said Pao.

Augmented by open source protection
Barracuda Networks recognizes that not all email-borne viruses propagate rapidly, including infected attachments sent from one user to another rather than through bulk email delivery techniques. The Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall completes its coverage of proprietary rapid-response threat data with the world's largest open source collection of common malware vulnerability data. ClamAV excels in identifying viruses which are not well covered by rapid-response techniques, including those that are well-known but that do not propagate quickly. The Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall – as well as other network security appliances in the Barracuda Networks product portfolio – includes the ClamAV engine, and Barracuda Central leverages the ongoing updates contributed by the open source security research community. With three layers of anti-virus protection – open source signatures, proprietary signatures, and Barracuda Real-Time Protection – the Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall provides the most comprehensive, purpose-built anti-virus engine for email-borne threats.

Pricing and Availability
Existing products in the field are functionally equivalent and will be upgradable to the latest firmware that supports the new branding. The new branding goes into effect this week and will roll out to all current Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall customers as part of their Energize Update service. The Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall is available to new customers in eight models and pricing will remain the same. U.S. pricing ranges from $699 to $89,999 depending on model with no per user fees. For more information, please visit www.barracudanetworks.com/spam.

About the Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall
The Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall is available in eight models and supports up to 100,000 active users with no per user licensing fees. Its architecture leverages 12 defense layers: denial of service and security protection, rate control, IP analysis, sender authentication, recipient verification, virus protection, policy (user-specified rules), Fingerprint Analysis, Intent Analysis, Image Analysis, Bayesian Analysis, and a Spam Rules Scoring engine. In addition, the entire Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall line features simultaneous inbound and outbound email filtering with the inclusion of sophisticated outbound email filtering techniques, such as rate controls, domain restrictions, user authentication (SASL), keyword and attachment blocking, triple-layer virus blocking, and remote user support for outbound email filtering. The Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall’s layered approach minimizes the processing of each email, which yields the performance required to process millions of messages per day.

EconRam Systems is a Barracuda Networks Authorized Platinum Partner. www.econram.com

Sun Microsystems Trumps Competition with New High-Performance, Energy-Efficient Flash SSD Product Line

Sun Microsystems Trumps Competition with New High-Performance, Energy-Efficient Flash SSD Product Line

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Sun Ahead of Emerging Trend: 2008 Expected to be Tipping Point Year for Solid State Disk (SSD) "Flash" Evolution from Consumer Electronics into Enterprise ITSANTA CLARA, CA Juni 4, 2008 Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ: JAVA) today announced it is preparing to introduce new Sun solid state disks (SSD) to the market that will give customers greater application performance, massive scale and value through the integration of the Solaris Operating System (OS), Solaris ZFS and other open source technologies. Sun is already shipping Solaris ZFS software optimized for SSD technologies through the OpenSolaris community and is the first major systems vendor to add an end-to-end Flash-based disk product line to its portfolio, leapfrogging competitors and giving customers 3x better performance at one-fifth the energy consumption of traditional spinning disk offerings.

New Flash disks integrated in storage systems and servers will join Sun's list of industry-leading products available for free, no-risk trials under Sun's Try and Buy program. Because the New Flash arrays so dramatically reduce energy use, they will join Sun's growing portfolio of Eco Innovation products and services. To download OpenSolaris software or to learn more about the community, go to www.sun.com/openstorage or www.econram.com

With the recent explosion of data that needs to be processed efficiently and immediately accessible, companies of all sizes are looking to open source storage solutions that work with general purpose hardware. Flash-based innovation enables these customers to immediately increase application performance and save on energy costs compared to traditional Fibre Channel hard drives. Flash technology will also enable greater system utilization and scalability that will decrease server and storage sprawl in already maxed-out data centers.

"Flash SSD is the most exciting innovation to happen to system and storage design in over a decade. By mid-2009, it will be in the majority of servers and deliver more capacity than DRAM and far greater overall system performance and energy efficiency," said John Fowler, executive vice president, Systems Group, Sun Microsystems, Inc. "This technology will completely change how server and storage infrastructure is designed and deployed in enterprise data centers."
2008: Tipping Point for Flash Storage
With the sprawl of under-utilized server and storage systems growing out of control and generating exorbitant power, cooling and space costs, customers are ready for Flash SSD technologies. The Flash SSD market is currently defined by consumer electronics and high volume deployment on cell phones, mp3 players, key chain dongles and other devices has driven down the cost for Flash technology. In the storage industry, 2008 will prove to be a pivotal tipping point for Flash technology, as the performance and reliability along with the price of SSD is expected to be more attractive than Fibre Channel hard drive technology. Enterprise class Fibre Channel hard disk drives have only exhibited a 40 percent year-over-year price decline in the last decade, while the Flash SSD price per gigabyte continues to fall between 50 to 70 percent annually.

Sun's Open Approach to Flash Storage
Sun is first to market with software integration and co-development of enterprise Flash technology with other industry leaders. Sun's Flash SSD technologies are optimized for MySQL database and other leading applications. These solutions leverage open source platforms and communities to uniquely address these issues, increase the performance of data intensive applications and deliver the industry's best value. The integration of Solaris ZFS in Open Storage systems, Sun's industry standard servers and Sun services sets Sun apart in the industry. These solutions are "Flash Ready" today so customers can easily, simply and cost-effectively scale their infrastructure as required and ensure data is securely stored and accessible 24/7.

Flash Storage is Greener
Customers today are running out of space, power and cooling and are looking to solve the growing problem. Forty-one percent of Fortune 500 IT execs claim power/cooling as a major problem. Over 25 percent of an IT budget is used for energy (power and cooling) costs and this number continues to rise. Flash technology SSDs consume around one fifth of the power of both memory DIMMs and disk drives, have no rotating media and consume very little power when not in use, making it "greener" than its alternatives.

Availability
Sun is expected to deliver Flash-based products to market in the 2HCY08

Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun logo, Solaris, Solaris ZFS and OpenSolaris are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries. www.econram.com EconRam Systems is independent of, and is no way affiliated with those entities.