VMware Streamlines Electronic Medical Record Delivery through Spectrum Health’s Cloud Computing Environment

Spectrum Health Selects VMware ThinApp™ to Transform the Delivery of Patient Care

PALO ALTO, Calif. (SaaS Newswire via VMware.com) – February 2011 – VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW), the global leader in virtualization and cloud infrastructure, today announced that Spectrum Health has chosen VMware ThinApp™ to provide fast and efficient access to point-of-care applications, electronic medical records (EMR) and patient data from their cloud computing environment.

Spectrum Health, a premier national healthcare provider, has experienced significant growth over the last few years, and currently has more than 16,700 employees including 1,500 medical staff members, nine hospitals, 170 service sites and over 2,000 licensed beds.

Streamlining EMR Delivery through the Cloud:
In 2010, Spectrum Health set out to build a private cloud to deliver mission critical medical applications-as-a-service from their datacenter. Their existing infrastructure, a mixture of traditional client/server modules and application publishing, was not sufficient for a larger scale environment. Spectrum Health needed a solution that would scale and accommodate their plans for expansion.

Spectrum Health partnered with Data Strategy, a trusted Premier VMware Solution Provider, to develop a cloud computing and desktop virtualization strategy to transform their existing desktop and application infrastructure into a modern, adaptive environment, enabling them to scale on demand while minimizing risk and reducing costs.

Spectrum Health chose to deploy VMware ThinApp™ as a key step to move from a physical to a virtual environment. Virtualizing key medical applications such as Epic Hyperspace, Cerner Millennium and McKesson’s Horizon Homecare, allows Spectrum Health to standardize and streamline application delivery from their datacenter to existing desktop devices. This bridging strategy will enable Spectrum Health’s IT team to easily migrate to a completely cloud-based environment.

VMware ThinApp™ provides Spectrum Health clinicians with non-stop, easy access to their point-of-care medical applications from a wide variety of devices inside and outside of their facilities.

Comments on the News:
“Using VMware ThinApp™ for application virtualization was a natural progression for Spectrum. We already adopted VMware for server virtualization and were interested in having a single solution and common platform to manage our cloud environment. Working with Data Strategy and leveraging their experience in implementing real world virtualization solutions was key to our success. Together we were able to develop a logical migration towards our virtual desktop initiative in a non-disruptive and modular approach.”
— Scott Dresen, vice president, Enterprise Technology Services, Spectrum Health

“VMware ThinApp™ provides a bridge for healthcare organizations like Spectrum Health to transition from their existing workstation model to a virtualized model without noticeable disruption for users. VMware ThinApp™ is the enabler towards realizing the cost savings and administrative efficiencies associated with desktop virtualization.”
— Brandon Sanders, solutions architect, Data Strategy

“VMware is committed to helping our healthcare customers reduce the cost and complexity of their existing desktop and application infrastructures, while improving the workflow of clinicians. One way we do this is by empowering our solution provider partners to deliver robust end-to-end solutions. Bringing the power of the cloud to healthcare by delivering applications-as-a-service from the data center will modernize legacy environments and allow clinicians unprecedented levels of efficiency. All with the goal of providing better patient care.”
— Christopher Young, vice president and general manager, End-User Computing, VMware

Additional Resources:

• Find additional information on VMware solutions for Healthcare
• Learn more about VMware ThinApp™
• Learn more about how to use VMware ThinApp
• Follow VMware in Healthcare on Twitter

About VMware:
VMware delivers virtualization and cloud infrastructure solutions that enable IT organizations to energize businesses of all sizes. With the industry leading virtualization platform – VMware vSphere ® – customers rely on VMware to reduce capital and operating expenses, improve agility, ensure business continuity, strengthen security and go green. With 2010 revenues of $2.9 billion, more than 250,000 customers and 25,000 partners, VMware is the leader in virtualization, which consistently ranks as a top priority among CIOs. VMware is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the world and can be found online at www.vmware.com

About Data Strategy:
Data Strategy is the solution provider of choice for architecture and delivery of information technology solutions that bring immediate benefits to organizations looking to reduce cost and complexity. Data Strategy’s offerings include server and desktop virtualization, enterprise storage, data archiving and retention, and managed procurement solutions. As a recognized leader in the virtualization space, Data Strategy was awarded the VMware Central Region Partner of the Year and selected to participate on the VMware Partner Technical Advisory Board (PTAB). Data Strategy was among the initial VMware partners to invest and focus on virtualization solutions and is one of an elite few VMware Premier Partners in North America with demonstrated expertise in all VMware competency areas. Data Strategy is a VMware Authorized Consulting (VAC) partner.

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VMware, VMware vSphere, and VMware ThinApp are registered trademarks or trademarks of VMware, Inc. in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. All other marks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies.

Pulled from/Sourced: VMware.com

Tags: Cloud Computing Environment, Electronic Medical Record Delivery, SaaS, thinapp, virtualization, VMware, vsphere

Social network LinkedIn blocked in internet crackdown in China

Networking site falls victim as government stifles online calls for a pro-democracy uprising in wake of Middle East upheaval

Until now LinkedIn has been allowed to grow largely unhindered in China

LinkedIn has become the latest major social network to fall victim to China’s renewed crackdown on the internet, as the ruling Communist party stifles online calls for a pro-democracy uprising.

The networking site for business professionals – which has more than 1 million users in China – was blocked for the first time in the country on Thursday. Internet searches on the Chinese Twitter equivalent are also being heavily censored.

Authorities have tightened control of the internet in recent days in the wake of the political uprising sweeping the Middle East. Activists have described the situation as “one of the worst crackdowns on the mainland’s activists in recent years”.

Hani Durzy, a spokesman for LinkedIn, said on Friday: “We can confirm that access to LinkedIn is being blocked for some in China.

“This appears to be part of a broader effort in China going on right now, involving other sites as well.”

LinkedIn has been allowed to grow largely unhindered in China, unlike more popular Western social networks such as Twitter, Facebookand YouTube which remain blocked.

A LinkedIn user named Jasmine Z set up a “Jasmine Voice” discussion group on the network on Wednesday, claiming to be “becoming a critical dissent dying for democracy, freedom and justice in my homeland”.

Authorities have also blocked searches for the Chinese name of the US ambassador, Jon Huntsman, after a video was published of him near a pro-democracy gathering in Beijing.

Searches for “Egypt”, “jasmine”, “jasmine revolution” and “Hillary Clinton” were also censored on the popular Chinese internet portal Sina.com.

A number of activists have been arrested in the country over the past week, charged with “endangering state security” as fresh calls for demonstrations were posted on the overseas website Boxun.

China’s tight grip on the internet is thought to involve one of the world’s most sophisticated online censorship systems.

But the creator of “The Great Firewall”, Dr Fang Binxing, recently admitted that it could be subverted by using technology called virtual private networks (VPNs). “So far, the GFW [Great Firewall] is lagging behind and still needs improvement,” he told a Chinese newspaper.

Pulled from/sourced: guardian.co.uk

Tags: Great Firewall, internet crackdown in china, linkedin, linkedin.com, social network, VPNs

Gartner Survey Shows CRM Software Spending Is Expected to See the Largest Increase of all Application Software Markets

Analysts to Discuss CRM Market Trends and Dynamics at Gartner Customer Relationship Management Summit 2011, March 14-15, in London and Gartner Customer 360 Summit 2011, March 30-April 1, Los Angeles

Egham, UK —
Spending on customer relationship management (CRM) software is expected to see the largest increase of all the application software markets worldwide in 2011, according to a survey by Gartner, Inc. Overall, 31 percent of respondents expect an increase in application software spending in 2011.

In comparing their 2011 fiscal budgets with 2010, 42 percent of survey respondents indicated that they expect to increase spending on CRM in 2011, compared to 39 percent on office suites and 36 percent on enterprise resource planning (ERP), which ranked second and third, respectively.

Gartner conducted an expansive primary research survey of more than 1,500 IT leaders of organizations in 40 countries, which concluded in July 2010. The goal was to determine software spending allocations for IT budgets in 2010 and predictions for 2011.

“We’re expecting the CRM market to recover gradually as buyer confidence returns and as businesses begin refocusing on growing revenue as opposed to just reducing costs,” said Hai Hong Swinehart, research analyst at Gartner. “Areas of investment are expected to include the online channel; software as a service (SaaS) -based deployments; and technologies enabling customer loyalty management, cross-sell/upsell opportunities, and more-targeted levels of customer service. Along the way we can expect market shifts as acquisition activity escalates, adoption of SaaS grows, and service providers become a more visible force in the market.”

Ms. Swineheart added that buyers of CRM continue to focus on investments that promote customer retention and enhance the customer experience, and they are increasingly interested in technologies that encourage development of customer communities and social networks. SaaS adoption continues to be a key driver. SaaS within the CRM industry is expected to exceed $4 billion in total software revenue in 2014, representing more than 32 percent of the overall CRM market. Marketing automation remains the market segment with the strongest growth, with the greatest demand coming from campaign and lead management and analytics.

Worldwide application software spending is expected to increase 31 percent in 2011, up 9 percent from last year, and emerging markets are planning for higher budget growth. Asia/Pacific is expected to have the largest increase, at 37 percent in 2011, up from 14 percent growth last year, followed by Latin America and EMEA showing an increase of 35 and 27 percent in 2011, respectively.

“Overall, the survey indicates a healthy investment trend for application software. Software application vendors should continue to build, fund and invest in software sales and marketing programs as the market is recovering, to maintain customers and expand revenue opportunities,” said Ms. Swineheart. “A market downturn and its aftermath are disrupters that create great marketing and sales opportunities for organisations prepared to take advantage with the right products, market programs and funding.”

For many markets, the greatest new sales opportunities exist within Latin America and Asia/Pacific where “Greenfield” opportunities are prevalent. This trend is not expected to abate. Gartner advises vendors without a direct channel or direct sales to consider expansion into these regions, with the understanding that immediate returns on that investment are unlikely.

Additional information is available in the Gartner report “User Survey Analysis: Application Software Spending, 2010-2011 “. The report is available on Gartner’s website athttp://www.gartner.com/resId=1528818.

About Gartner Customer Relationship Management Summit
CRM is entering a new era where the focus is much more on the relationship and less on its management. Driven by social media, a more open, honest and balanced approach is emerging, where organizations listen to and work with their customers to provide mutually beneficial and rewarding relationships. At the Summit, Gartner analysts will provide guidance on how to apply intelligence to customer interactions and become socially aligned and digitally enabled. They will also explore best practices and technology to effectively help organizations use analytics, and achieve lasting improvements in data quality.

The Gartner Customer Relationship Management Summit 2011 will take place March 14-15 at the Lancaster London hotel in London. For further information about the Summit, please visit www.europe.gartner.com/crm. Event analyst blogs, and tweets related to the event can be found at http://www.gartner.com/technology/summits/emea/crm/media.jsp. Members of the media can register for the Summit by contacting Laurence Goasduff, Gartner PR on + 44 (0) 1784 267 7195 or at laurence.goasduff@gartner.com.

Additional information from the event will be shared on Twitter at http://twitter.com/Gartner_inc using #GartnerCRM.

The Gartner Customer 360 Summit 2011 will take place March 30-April 1 in Los Angeles. For further information about the Summit, please visit www.gartner.com/us/crm. Event analyst blogs, and tweets related to the event can be found at http://www.gartner.com/technology/summits/na/customer-360/media.jsp. Members of the media can register for the Customer 360 Summit in Los Angeles by contacting Christy Pettey at christy.pettey@gartner.com.

pulled from/sourced: iewy.com

Tags: application software markets, crm, crm software, customer relationship management, gartner

Vitrue Closes $17 Million Series C Round Funding; Announces Global Expansion Plans

Scale Venture Partners Leads Financing Effort

ATLANTA–(SaaS Newswire via Vitrue.com)–Vitrue, the leading social media management software provider, today announced it has closed a $17 million Series C financing round led by Scale Venture Partners and Advent Venture Partners. Existing investors General Catalyst Partners, Comcast Interactive, and Dace Ventures will continue to participate. Vitrue also announced that Stacey Curry Bishop, partner with Scale Venture Partners, has joined the board.

Vitrue’s software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform enables brands and marketing agencies to communicate with 450 million fans in 47 countries across more than 2,500 Facebook and Twitter accounts, emerging social media avenues, and mobile applications.

With this financing, Vitrue will expand the scope of the company, including:

• Domestic office openings in seven markets that include New York, San Francisco, Dallas, Chicago, Detroit, Cincinnati and Los Angeles
• Three International office openings in London, Toronto and Singapore
• Strategic product integration with best-of-breed social media application partners
• Hiring between 100 and 150 new employees to support these endeavors

“With the explosion of Facebook, Twitter and mobile location-aware applications, the opportunity for brands to effectively engage and deepen relationships with consumers has never been greater,” said Reggie Bradford, CEO of Vitrue. “We will aggressively scale the company and continue delivering best in class solutions to our customers, enabling them to connect with consumers any time, any place.”

Silicon Valley-based Scale Venture Partners has funded some of the most well-known SaaS-based businesses, including Omniture and Exact Target.

“Marketing in social media has become a compelling way for businesses to engage consumers, and is a growing line in brands’ budgets,” said Stacey Curry Bishop, partner with Scale Venture Partners. “Just as brands are investing here, ScaleVP wanted to catch this trend. We believe that Vitrue’s experienced management team and impressive performance to date positions them to scale globally on Facebook and beyond.”

Frederic Court, general partner at Advent Venture Partners, one of Europe’s most established venture and growth capital firms, said Vitrue has the potential to become the social media market platform of choice across Europe and globally.

“Social media is a global phenomenon and Facebook has reached a massive user base in Europe. To fully leverage this opportunity, marketers are turning to software delivered as a service to engage with their consumers, and Vitrue is at the leading edge of this trend,” Court said. “Vitrue’s superior approach to connecting brands with consumers, and ability to massively scale its platform position the company for strong international growth.”

About Scale Venture Partners

Based in Foster City, California, the ScaleVP team is a long-standing partnership with a consistent, top quartile track record of returns. The ScaleVP team’s collaborative and active approach provides entrepreneurs a competitive advantage for growth and category leadership. Representative portfolio companies include Alimera Sciences, Box.net, Brightroll, Docusign, Everyday Health, ExactTarget, Hubspot, IPC The Hospitalist Company, mBlox, NComputing, Omniture, and ScanSafe. For more information, visit www.scalevp.com.

About Advent Venture Partners

Advent Venture Partners is one of Europe’s most established growth and venture capital firms, investing in technology and life sciences businesses run by great teams that want a pragmatic and well-connected partner by their side.

Top tier growth equity investors, Advent’s technology team backs highly differentiated and capital efficient technology-driven businesses in digital media, e-commerce, software and services. Our investments include: Cartesis, a growth capital software investment acquired by Business Objects for $300 million; Zong, a leading mobile payments solutions provider; Qype, Europe’s largest local search and review site; The Foundry, a buyout of the Academy Award winning global visual effects software vendor for the post-production industry; and Farfetch.com, an online fashion marketplace for independent fashion boutiques. www.adventventures.com

About Vitrue: Vitrue is the leading provider of social media publishing software, offering software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions to help brands and agencies harness the marketing potential of social media and manage all of their social connections. Vitrue’s Social Relationship Manager (SRM) platform approach seamlessly unites the ubiquity of social networks, our deep understanding of user social media behaviors, and best of breed partner applications and services to give our customers a head start and competitive advantage through leveraging of the latest social, mobile and web innovations. Vitrue’s offerings manage 454 million fans across 2,000 Pages in 40+ countries. For more information, visit vitrue.com.

Contacts

For Vitrue
Porter Novelli
Kara McClain, +1 404-995-4531
kara.mcclain@porternovelli.com

Tags: advent ventures, saas news, saas strategies, scale venture partners, silicon valley-based venture partners, social strategies, Vitrue

Google uses cabbies, regular folks to map India’s cities

SaaS Newswire via bizjournals.com – Search and advertising giant Google Inc. turned cab drivers into cartographers in the Indian city of Bangalore, and has been asking users of its maps to help with driving directions and other data in booming and sometimes poorly planned cities.

Frequent construction and sometimes Kafkaesque changes in major routes and one way streets make driving around many Indian cities much more difficult than in the United States. Online maps of U.S. cities don’t change that often, but Vinay Goel, Google’s head of products in India, told a news conference in Hyderabad that maps of India’s booming cities are often out of date the moment they’re finished.

So the company (NASDAQ: GOOG) seeks help from users on the roads for much more frequent updates and other services that alert travelers to changes in public transit or road access.

In Bangalore, for example, Google got help from taxi drivers to map the city. Google’s staff in the city have regular taxi drivers they rely on, and they recruited them to upgrade maps during their idle hours of the day, according to a report in the Times of India.

Google also compiled data from users to map the Pakistani city of Lahore in three days, according to local news reports.

This article pulled from/sourced:

Read more: Google uses cabbies, regular folks to map India’s cities | San Francisco Business Times

San Francisco Business Times – by Steven E.F. Brow

Tags: cartographers, google maps, google uses cabbies, map india's cities

Avectra Announces Partnership with 20twenty Strategic Consulting

McLEAN, VA (SaaS Newswire) – February 17, 2011 – Avectra, the industry’s leading web-based association management software (AMS) provider, announced today a strategic partnership with 20twenty Strategic Consulting to implement and support new and existing netFORUM customers with technical strategy, development and integration services.

“The staff at 20twenty has a proven track record of providing outstanding implementation services, development, integration and training at an exceptional value to our customers in the areas of association management, content management and social media,” said Craig Dellorso, Avectra Vice President of Sales and Implementations. “We look forward to working with 20twenty to provide netFORUM customers an unparalleled software experience.”

20twenty and Avectra plan to approach a broad spectrum of opportunities, leveraging their joint capabilities and resources. Depending on the nature of the opportunity, either organization may lead the engagement to success.

“We are pleased to expand our relationship with Avectra, which will provide us greater access to information, resources and capabilities important to our joint customers,” said Steve Giddens, President of 20twenty. “netFORUM has distinguished itself in terms of quality and capabilities from the other association management solutions in the market. 20twenty is ready to bring that same level of quality and innovation to the implementation and development process.”

20twenty has a combination of local and offshore resources that have extensive experience in the non-profit market. 20twenty employs a modified Rational Unified Process (RUF) for implementation and development to help customers improve the quality and predictability of their software development efforts.

About 20twenty Strategic Consulting

Headquartered in McLean, Virginia, 20twenty Strategic Consulting, Inc. (http://www.20twentysc.com) is a multinational professional services and software development company focused on the primary goal of delivering high-quality, low-cost solutions to the non-profit market. Certified by Avectra as an Implementation Partner and Professional netFORUM Training Provider, 20twenty has experienced resources and a history of successfully implementing and enhancing netFORUM to ensure project success.

About Avectra

For the last 16 years, Avectra has been translating our customers’ needs into market-leading association management software – whether our customers serve members by the hundreds or hundreds of thousands. Our 100% web-based technology integrates data with business processes and then automates it, so our customers can engage members, provide access to all of their resources and get more done. Each of our solutions is continually refined by the user community, ensuring that we have the features our customers need to run their businesses and lead their industries. With ongoing, automatic upgrades that won’t disrupt service or incur additional costs, we keep our customers current with the latest technology. Avectra is headquartered in McLean, VA, with regional offices in Chicago, IL and Orlando, FL.

To explore the netFORUM family of products, please visit www.avectra.com, or call 800-858-8272.

Media Contact:

Patrick Dorsey
(703) 506-7037
pdorsey(at)avectra(dot)com

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Tags: AMS, association management software, avectra, database management, enterpeise computing, member management technology, netFORUM

NIST Tackles Security Concerns on the Cloud

Study includes recommendations for securely configuring and using full computing virtualization technologies.

By almost any measure, cloud computing is a marketing triumph. Software as a service off the Internet “cloud” was once initially merely a promise of the future. Today in the infinite present, it’s the ceaseless rage.

But, more than other industries, questions abound as to whether the cloud has a fit in the industrial world.

Many large-scale manufacturers are intrigued by the concept of using virtualized servers within the plant, yet use is still in its infancy. Even more unclear are questions concerning security.

On this front, the National Institute of Standards and Technology hopes to bring more clarity. Recently, the technology organization set out to definitively lay out clear security requirements for web-based computing applications and services.

U.S. chief information officer Vivek Kundra tasked NIST with speeding up the process of forming security guidelines for federal adoption of the cloud. Kundra has been among the nation’s most vocal proponents of wiring federal agencies into the cloud.

NIST laid out a series of proposals in its “Guidelines on Security and Privacy in Public Cloud Computing,” which highlights security and privacy challenges related to public cloud computing as well as what steps an organization should take when it begins its migration.

Though the suggestions are focused on public adoption, they reveal significant obstacles that remain for private clouds as well.

“Cloud computing can and does mean different things to different people,” the report explains. For all the buzz surrounding its presence, “cloud computing remains a work in progress.”

Perhaps the biggest obstacle to widespread adoption is that cloud providers can’t apply cookie-cutter solutions to complex security questions.

Among the key guidelines, NIST suggests:

• Carefully plan the security and privacy aspects of cloud computing solutions before engaging them.

• Understand the public cloud computing environment offered by the cloud provider and ensure that a cloud computing solution satisfies organizational security and privacy requirements.

• Ensure that the client-side computing environment meets organization security and privacy requirements for cloud computing.

• Maintain accountability over the privacy and security of data and applications implemented and deployed in public cloud computing environments.

• “Organizations should require that any selected public cloud computing solution is configured, deployed and managed to meet their security, privacy and other requirements,” the report states.

• NIST also points out that for all the hype, there has been little clarity in defining what truly constitutes cloud computing. The report maintains five “essential” characteristics to identify what falls under the scope of “cloud:” on-demand self service, broad network access, resource pooling, rapid elasticity and measured service.

• NIST also launched a cloud-computing collaboration website to provide information and to further the dialogue between government researchers, agency technology chiefs and the broader public.

By Peter Alpern

Pulled from/Sourced: Find Original article here: Industryweek.com

This is not an original work of SaaS Newswire, rather, this is an article that SaaS Newswire chose to post to it’s readers based on it’s informative content.

Tags: cloud computing news, NIST, saas news, secority concerns, software as a service

A Cloud Computing Business Intelligence Organization

Data Warehousing As A Cloud Candidate
Over the past year, we have started seeing greater support for Cloud from major vendors and Cloud is here to stay. The bigger impact is that, the path is clearly drawn for the enterprises to adopt Cloud. With this in mind, it is time to identify the potential for existing data center applications to be migrated to Cloud.

Most of the major IT majors predict a HYBRID Delivery will be future, where by the future enterprises needs to look for a delivery model that comprises of certain work loads on Clouds and some of them continue to be on data centers and then look for a model that will integrate them together.

Before we go further into a blue print of How Data warehouses fit within a HYBRID Cloud environment, we will see the salient features of Data warehouses and how the Cloud tenants make them a very viable work load to be moved to Cloud.

A data warehouse is a subject oriented, integrated, time variant and non volatile collection of data in support of management’s decision making process.

Data Warehousing Usage	Cloud Tenant Value Proposition
ETL (Extract, Cleaning, Transform, Load) process is subject to variable patterns. Normally we may get large files over the week end or in night time to be processed and loaded.	It is better to use the COMPUTE resources on demand for the ETL as they require , rather than having a fixed capacity
OLAP (Online Analytical Processing) and related processing needs for MOLAP (Multi dimensional OLAP) and / or ROLAP (Relational OLAP) are highly compute intensive and requires stronger processing needs	High Performance Computing and ability to scale up on demand, tenants of Cloud will be highly aligned to this need
Physical architecture needs are complex in a data warehousing environment. MPP Servers (Massively Parallel Processing) Shared Nothing Data Architecture Mirrored Copies of Disk Space High Availability Clustering	Most of the IaaS , PaaS offerings like Azure platform, Amazon EC2 have built in provisions for a highly available architecture, with most of the day to day administration is abstracted from the enterprises. The below are some of the advantages of SQL Azure Platform No physical administration required – software installation and patching is included, as this is a platform as a service (PAAS) High availability and fault tolerance are built in
Multiple Software and platform needs, Database Design Tools (STAR Schema Modeling) ETL Tools Data Cleansing Tools OLAP Tools Spatial Tools Data Mining Tools BI Reporting Tools	The product stack of data warehousing environment is really huge and most organizations will normally find it difficult to get into a ideal list of software and platforms and tools for their BI platform. platform. SaaS for applications like data cleansing or address validation and PaaS for reporting like Microsoft SQL Azure reporting will be ideal to solve the tools and platform maze.

The following are the ideal steps for migrating a in-premise data warehouse system to a cloud platform, for the sake of case study , Microsoft Windows Azure platform is chosen as the target platform.

1. Create Initial Database / Allocate Storage / Migrate Data
The existing STAR Schema design of the existing data warehousing system can be migrated to Cloud platform as it is. And migrating to a Relational database platform like SQL Azure should be straightforward. To migrate the data, the initial storage allocations of the existing database on the data center needs to be calculated and the same amount Storage resources will be allocated on the Cloud.

You can store any amount of data, from kilobytes to terabytes, in SQL Azure. However, individual databases are limited to 10 GB in size. To create solutions that store more than 10 GB of data, you must partition large data sets across multiple databases and use parallel queries to access the data.

Once a high scalable database infrastructure is setup on SQL Azure platform , the following are some of the methods in which the data from the existing on-premise data warehouses can be moved to SQL Azure.

Traditional BCP Tool : BCP is a command line utility that ships with Microsoft SQL Server. It bulk copies data between SQL Azure (or SQL Server) and a data file in a user-specified format. The bcp utility that ships with SQL Server 2008 R2 is fully supported by SQL Azure. You can use BCP to backup and restore your data on SQL Azure You can import large numbers of new rows into SQL Azure tables or export data out of tables into data files by using the bcp utility.

The following tools are also useful, if you existing Data warehouse is in Sql Server within the data center.

You can transfer data to SQL Azure by using SQL Server 2008 Integration Services (SSIS). SQL Server 2008 R2 or later supports the Import and Export Data Wizard and bulk copy for the transfer of data between an instance of Microsoft SQL Server and SQL Azure.

SQL Server Migration Assistant (SSMA for Access v4.2) supports migrating your schema and data from Microsoft Access to SQL Azure.

2. Set Up ETL & Integration With Existing On Premise Data Sources
After the initial load of the data warehouse on Cloud, it required to be continuously refreshed with the operational data. This process needs to extract data from different data sources (such as flat files, legacy databases, RDBMS, ERP, CRM and SCM application packages).

This process will also carry out necessary transformations such as joining of tables, sorting, applying various filters.

The following are typical options available in Sql Azure platform to build a ETL platform between the On Premise and data warehouse hosted on cloud. The tools mentioned above on the initial load of the data also holds good for ETL tool, however they are not repeated to avoid duplication.

SQL Azure Data Sync :

• Cloud to cloud synchronization
• Enterprise (on-premise) to cloud
• Cloud to on-premise.
• Bi-directional or sync-to-hub or sync-from-hub synchronization

The following diagram courtesy of Vendor will give a over view of how the SQL Azure Data Sync can be used for ETL purposes.

Integration provides common Biztalk Server integration capabilities (e.g. pipeline, transforms, adapters) on Windows Azure, using out-of-box integration patterns to accelerate and simplify development. It also delivers higher level business user enablement capabilities such as Business Activity Monitoring and Rules, as well as self-service trading partner community portal and provisioning of business-to-business pipelines. The following diagram courtesy of the vendor shows how the Windows Azure Appfabric Integration can be used as a ETL platform.

3. Create CUBES & Other Analytics Structures
The multi dimensional nature of OLAP requires a analytical engine to process the underlying data and create a multi dimensional view and the success of OLAP has resulted in a large number of vendors offering OLAP servers using different architectures.

MLOAP : A Proprietary multidimensional database with a aim on performance.

ROLAP : Relational OLAP is a technology that provides sophisticated multidimensional analysis that is performed on open relational databases. ROLAP can scale to large data sets in the terabyte range.

HOLAP : Hybrid OLAP is an attempt to combine some of the features of MOLAP and ROLAP technology.

SQL Azure Database does not support all of the features and data types found in SQL Server. Analysis Services, Replication, and Service Broker are not currently provided as services on the Windows Azure platform.

At this time there is no direct support for OLAP and CUBE processing on SQL Azure, however with the HPC (High Performance Computing ) attributes using multiple Worker roles, manually aggregation of the data can be achieved.

4. Generate Reports
Reporting consists of analyzing the data stored in the data warehouse in multiple dimensions and generate standard reports for business intelligence and also generate ad-hoc reports. These reports present data in graphical/tabular form and also provide statistical analysis features. These reports should be rendered as Excel, PDF and other formats.

It is better to utilize the SaaS based or PaaS based reporting infrastructure rather than custom coding all the reports.

SQL Azure Reporting enables developers to enhance their applications by embedding cloud based reports on information stored in a SQL Azure database. Developers can author reports using familiar SQL Server Reporting Services tools and then use these reports in their applications which may be on-premises or in the cloud.

SQL Azure Reporting also currently can connect only to SQL Azure databases.

Summary
The above steps will provide a path to migrate on premise Data warehousing applications to Cloud. As we needed lot of support from the vendor in terms of IaaS, PaaS and SaaS, Microsoft Azure Platform is chosen as a platform to support the case study. With several features integrated as part of this, Microsoft Cloud Platform positioned to be one of the leading platform for BI on Cloud.

The following diagram indicates a blue print of a typical Cloud BI Organization on a Microsoft Azure Platform.

About Srinivasan Sundara Rajan
Srinivasan Sundara Rajan works at Hewlett Packard as a Solution Architect. His primary focus is on enabling SOA through Legacy Modernization for Automobile Industries. He has worked as a consultant for Compuware, Verizon and other organizations in the earlier parts of career. All the views expressed are Srinivasan’s independent analysis of industry and solutions and need not necessarily be of his current or past organizations.

By: Srinivasan Sundara Rajan

Feb. 14, 2011

Original article can be viewed here (pulled from/sourced): http://www.sys-con.com

Tags: business intelligence, cloud computing, data warehousing, saas news, sys-con

GetApp.com introduces WebAppRank for web-based business software

GetApp.com launches the first independent ranking of cloud application providers based on market data. The objective of the ranking is to help buyers see at a glance which solutions are getting traction.

SaaS Newswire – February 11th, 2011 - Barcelona, Spain

GetApp.com, http://www.getapp.com/ today launched a series of data indexes to help buyers of business applications understand which solutions are being adopted by the market at large.

The first of the WebAppRank indexes,http://www.getapp.com/webapprank tracks 20 public companies delivering their software solutions on-demand (SaaS). The ranking is based on a variety of sources such as website information, official reports, and direct conversations with company staff, and will be updated monthly.

“Millions of business and IT buyers are turning to web-based applications to run critical aspects of their operations”, said Christophe Primault, co-founder of GetApp.com. “As the number of available applications increases, identifying those with the most appropriate functionality for particular business processes will grow in importance. Business software app stores, such as GetApp.com, help with discovery stage but buyers will also benefit from knowing which solutions are actually getting traction. The WebAppRank indices will provide this information.

GetApp.com also publishes a monthly Top 20 Popular Business Apps, http://www.getapp.com/top-apps and will soon release new WebAppRank indices for private companies in mainstream categories such as CRM, project management, accounting, productivity, security, marketing and HR.

The WebAppRank indices will be available on http://www.webapprank.com. Software vendors and developers wishing to list their applications in private companies and categories indexes should submit a request to the editor on editor(at)getapp.com.

Twitter updates on WebAppRank will also be available through Twitter on @webapprank and @getapp

About GetApp.com:
GetApp.com is an app store for business applications. It offers a simple way for buyers to discover, compare and evaluate applications and an efficient channel for providers to be found online. Application buyers come to GetApp.com to research from a large number of enterprise applications, organized into categories. They can save weeks from their purchasing cycle. Application providers come to GetApp.com to get their solutions listed and found by prospects. They can reach out to a new global audience of active buyers, get high quality traffic to their website and receive sales leads relevant to their targeted markets.

Contact information:

Christophe Primault, CEO

christophe.primault@getapp.com

http://getapp.com
http://twitter.com/getapp

http://www.facebook.com/GetAppcom

Tags: business software, get app, getapp.com, ranking of cloud apps, saas news, software as a service, webapprank

Salesforce’s expanding product set and soaring enterprise sales make it the most influential cloud-software company in the world.

Salesforce.com’s fiscal fourth-quarter revenue will top $450 million and its torrid 25% annual growth rate will continue this year on the strength of the company’s “ever-expanding cloud portfolio,” a leading software analyst said in a research note Sunday.

That bullish projection from UBS research director Brent Thill is the latest addition to the remarkable momentum and buzz surrounding Salesforce.com over the past few months as a wave of new products, greater acceptance among large enterprises, and the recruitment of an IBM sales executive to further expand large-company penetration are combining to push this leading cloud-software provider to the brink of a $2 billion revenue run rate.

“We believe CRM (Salesforce.com’s stock symbol) will deliver FQ4 revenues above guidance and consensus as strength was driven by strong year-end buying/budget flush, momentum drafting off early December user conference, increased penetration of large enterprises (including new logos), lower churn, and broadening acceptance of Cloud-based apps,” wrote Thill.

The company’s new social collaboration tool, Chatter, isn’t yet a revenue driver itself but it’s impact has been extensive, notes Thill: “Chatter has been highly successful as ’server pings’ went from <1%>13% in January ‘11.”

For Salesforce.com, that type of interaction is essential for Chatter as it joins several competitors seeking to capitalize on the social-networking phenomenon to provide an enterprise-strength version that will significantly change how knowledge workers find information, consume applications and resultant findings, and communicate with colleagues, customers, and partners.

More broadly, the range and volume of interactions and transactions that Salesforce is managing for its 87,200 customers is expanding, Thill said, which is a clear indication that the company’s cloud-based applications and platform are burrowing more deeply inside mission-critical processes for corporations.

“Daily transaction volume hit record levels last week,” Thill wrote, “and are sustaining year-to-year percentage growth rates in the high 70s.”

In concert with that more-extensive use of its products, Salesforce.com has also begun changing and expanding the way it describes itself to the world in an effort to change the perception that it’s a one-trick pony that does cloud-based CRM and little else.

Here’s the company’s latest version of its “About salesforce.com” description:

“Salesforce.com is the trusted enterprise cloud computing company. Based on salesforce.com’s real-time, multitenant architecture, the company’s Force.com platform and apps (http://www.salesforce.com/crm) have revolutionized the way companies collaborate and communicate. Salesforce.com’s cloud offerings include:

“The Sales Cloud, for sales force automation and contact management; The Service Cloud, for customer service and support; The Jigsaw Data Cloud, for ensuring data integrity and quality; Salesforce Chatter, for social collaboration; The Force.com platform, for custom application development; Database.com, the world’s first enterprise cloud database; and The AppExchange, the world’s leading marketplace for enterprise cloud computing apps.” (End of excerpt.)

And to help lead its efforts to have more large organizations adopt more of those cloud-based enterprise tools, Salesforce.com last week named former IBM software-sales executive Jeff Lautenbach to the newly created position of senior VP of enterprise commercial sales, Americas.

In a press release announcing that move, Salesforce.com said Lautenbach will “lead salesforce.com in its efforts to bring the power of cloud computing to large enterprises” and help those corporations “embrace social, mobile and open cloud computing.”

Read the rest of the original article here at informationweek.com

By Bob Evans , InformationWeek
February 7, 2011

Tags: database.com, saas database news, salesforce chatter, salesforce.com

Next-Gen Security Solution Puts New Spin On Cloud’s Role

In light of the release of Websense TRITON Security Gateway Anywhere, Dave Meizlik, director of marketing at Websense, shared with me his thoughts on why legacy security solutions — including the vendor’s own — simply no longer meet the needs of the channel or customers. Among the issues challenging security vendors are increasingly sophisticated threats delivered via Web applications — well beyond the traditional methods such as spam and malware. “With cloud, there is so much information in the cloud, and there is use of that information every day from all kinds of environments, which creates an entirely different threat landscape,” he explains. “The question has become: How do we secure what is now this open enterprise? Because the content and the data that is the life blood of our business is what we need to secure, and the access to that information has completely evolved.”

Traditional solutions have been coming under fire for the last year plus because, while they work extremely well when faced with legacy threats, the solutions were not built for today’s flow of data through the Internet and mobile devices. “We all knew we needed a new approach, one that isn’t myopic, isn’t point based, isn’t static,” says Meizlik. New solutions must be about the content rather than locking down endpoints. And, just as we’ve seen hybrid solutions for backup and disaster recovery, Meizlik says he expects hybrid security solutions to gain traction during the next 18 months. For example, the Websense TRITON product combines on-premises email and Web security on an appliance with Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) components that deliver the efficiency and effectiveness of the cloud.

One need driving that combined solution set is the increased focus on data loss prevention (DLP) that must go beyond checking outgoing email for Social Security numbers or credit card information, and integration of that service with other standard security solutions. “I believe we’ll see more unification,” says Meizlik. “With no network perimeter or standard endpoint to secure, the focus has turned to securing the content itself. This year is going to mark the beginning of content security.” Don’t expect the solutions to pop up overnight, however. Websense has spent three years and more than $500 million in R&D to create its new Triton solution.

Who does content security appeal to? SaaS versions will probably appeal to midtier businesses, while the hybrid fits larger enterprise organizations. Websense expects early adoption in healthcare, retail, energy, and manufacturing, especially those with dispersed locations or highly mobile workforces. The opportunity for solutions providers is twofold: 1) this new solution approach offers an integrated resolution to the increasingly high-profile issue of content protection, and 2) the hybrid model opens the door for remote monitoring, full management, and integration. “We believe there is great value and great opportunity in this new solution approach,” says Meizlik.

By Gennifer Biggs, security, storage, and managed services editor

Original Article, follow this link: bsminfo.com

Tags: bsminfo, data loss prevention, triton, websense

Google Puts $20,000 Bounty On Chrome In Hacking Contest

Most software companies have learned to grudgingly cooperate with researchers who expose security vulnerabilities in their products. Google, lately, seems positively excited to see its products taken to pieces by skilled hackers.

At the Pwn2Own contest next month, Google will offer $20,000 to the first security researcher who can gain full control of a laptop running its Chrome Browser, a task that requires defeating the software’s sandbox protections, measures designed to isolate an attack within the browser and prevent it from accessing the rest of the machine’s operating system. The contest, run annually by security firm Tipping Point, now owned by Hewlett-Packard, will offer a total of $125,000 in cash to hackers who can be the first to hack various machines including laptops running Apple’s, Microsoft’s, Google’s and Mozilla’s browsers, as well as mobile phones that will include the iPhone 4, BlackBerry Torch, Dell Venue and Nexus S. Successful contestants also walk away with whatever device they managed to hack.

But this year represents the first time Google has added its own bounty to that program, likely making Chrome the prime target of the contest–and, in theory, helping to keep the browser safer from real-world attacks, as all Pwn2Own hacks are disclosed to the software’s vendor before they’re released to the public. “Kudos to the Google security team for taking the initiative to approach us on this,” reads a statement on Tipping Point’s blog. “We’re always in favor of rewarding security researchers for the work they too-often do for free.”

The Chrome prize is only the latest in a string of incentives from Google for anyone who can demonstrate security flaws in its products. In January of last year, it launched a bug-buying program to pay as much as $1,337 for information about critical security bugs in its browser. Within six months, it upped that maximum payout to $3,133.70. (Both numbers contain a coded reference to the word LEET, or “elite” in hacker jargon.)

Then in November Google extended those rewards to its Web applications including YouTube, Blogger and Gmail, and soon after announced that it planned to award the first $20,000 for vulnerability information in those programs.

(this is not the end of the article, please read on at blogs.forbes.com)

Read the full article/original here: blogs.forbes.com

By: Andy Greenberg

Tags: Apple, blog SaaS, bug-buying program, chrome browser, dell, google, hackers, Microsoft, mozilla, pwn2own contest, safari, tipping point