Cloud News: Amazon, Dell, Nirvanix, Caringo, CTERA

Here’s a roundup of some of this week’s headlines from the cloud computing sector:

Amazon adds locations for CloudFront and ElastiCache.  Amazon (AMZN) announced the immediate availability of four additional ElastiCache regions in Northern California, Dublin, Singapore and Tokyo. Elasticache can be used in those regions to add an in-memory cache to an application architecture in a matter of minutes. Amazon CloudFormation templates may also be used to configure, provision and deploy Amazon ElastiCache. Amazon also announced the launch of new edge locations in South Bend, Indiana and San Jose to serve CloudFront and Amazon Route 53 customers. A second edge location was added in New York to increase connectivity.  Amazon now has a total of 24 edge locations worldwide. The Amazon Global Infrastructure map depicts where customers are being served from in over 190 countries.

Dell Boomi announces Master Data Management solution.  Dell announced development of a cloud-based master data management (MDM) solution, which will offer improved capabilities to simplify data management within cloud and software-as-a-service (SaaS) application integration for medium and large enterprises. The MDM platform is built on Dell's AtomSphere offering and allows companies to ensure their master customer, item/product, vendor and employee data is clean, accurate and consistent, all within an adaptable, cloud-based environment. MDM offers data modeling, storage, synchronization and a means to discover and reconcile duplicate records. "Boomi’s new master data management solution is going to fundamentally change the way business applications work in the cloud," said Rick Nucci, founder and CTO of Dell Boomi. "By developing a cloud-based master data management solution, Boomi is not only offering an innovative way to streamline data across an organization, but also taking the first step to unifying what has been a difficult situation regarding cloud applications’ inherently segmented data makeup."

Nirvanix selected by DRFortress.  Nirvanix announced that DRFortress, Hawaii's premier managed colocation services provider, will deploy a Nirvanix Hybrid Cloud Storage solution and offer consumption-based data backup and archival services across the Pacific Rim. DRFortress represents the ninth datacenter now part of the global Nirvanix Cloud Storage Network. "We believe that there is a billion dollar market opportunity for enterprise-grade cloud storage services in the Pacific Rim region by 2015 as customers look to reduce capital expenditures and move off of antiquated storage systems to modernize their backup and archival needs," said Fred Rodi, President of DRFortress. "With the new DRFortress Cloud Storage Services, powered by Nirvanix, we are expanding our managed services portfolio with the recognized industry-leading solution, as recently validated by the world's largest IT services company. We also look forward to collaborating with Nirvanix's partners such as CommVault and Symantec to provide our customers with 'one click to the cloud' access to our managed services."

Caringo and CTERA partner.  Object storage solution provider Caringo and cloud-attached storage provider CTERA announced today that the companies have integrated Caringo CAStor object storage software with CTERA Cloud Attached Storage gateways and CTERA Portal to provide a full-featured, market-ready cloud storage solution. The integration combines Caringo's object storage with CTERA's cloud platform for cloud storage that is capable of delivering the ease of management, performance, integrity and scale necessary for business users of all sizes. "The key characteristics to look for in a cloud storage solution are the ability to easily and cost effectively manage infrastructure and service utilization," said Mark Goros, CEO at Caringo. "We achieve this through our partnership by combining Caringo's highly automated and self optimizing object storage with CTERA's robust cloud storage gateways and portal."