AUSTIN, Texas – April 26, 2010 – Rackspace® Hosting (NYSE: RAX) , the world's leader in hosting and cloud computing, has joined forces with Spiceworks™ to allow small and medium businesses (SMBs) to manage their Rackspace email hosting services through the free Spiceworks social IT management application. The integrated systems simplify the jobs of SMB IT professionals by allowing them to monitor and administrate Rackspace cloud email services within the Spiceworks IT management interface, rather than launching a separate portal. The relationship with Spiceworks allows Rackspace to extend the functionality and reach of its hosted email services, including Rackspace Email, Microsoft Exchange or a hybrid of both, through the use of Rackspace's APIs that are available to customers and partners interested in integrating with the Rackspace cloud email platform. For Spiceworks, the integration is part of an ongoing effort to provide SMB IT professionals free management capabilities for their on-premise, cloud-based and hybrid IT infrastructures. "Managing IT today means more than just taking care of the computers and software within the four walls of your company," said Scott Abel, co-founder and CEO of Spiceworks. "Already, over 25 percent of SMBs rely on one or more cloud-based services to keep their organizations running, and that number keeps growing. By working with Rackspace, we're simplifying the jobs of IT professionals by giving them the ability to manage both their on-premise technologies and cloud-based services through a single integrated IT management application." Spiceworks will support the management of Rackspace's cloud email services with the following key features: Email Usage – shows the current status of a company's Rackspace cloud email services, including the top 5 email users in the organization, the status of available licenses vs. used licenses, and the number of Blackberry and Active Sync accounts. Account Management – provides users with a f
SAN JOSE, Calif, April 27, 2010 – Following key announcements of its Borderless Networks architecture in the areas of security,network access and network services, Cisco today announced new products and network and support services that accelerate the transition to the mobile workplace. Cisco's Borderless Mobilitysolutions, including the new Cisco® Aironet® 3500 Series Access Points with CleanAir technology, allow companies to deliver a seamless mobility experience by providing anywhere, anytime access to information. As more employees go mobile, the wireless network must perform on a par with the most critical networks. In a recent Cisco survey of more than 600 U.S. companies, 78 percent considered all or part of their wireless network to be mission-critical to their business operations. Yet, the same group identified wireless interference as one of the top causes of wireless performance issues. With its new CleanAir technology, Cisco is the first to solve the challenge of wireless interference by combining a patented CleanAir Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) in the access point with system-level intelligence to detect, classify, locate and mitigate the impact of wireless interference. An industry first, CleanAir technology is the only solution that can completely address the interference challenge of delivering business-critical applications over wireless networks. Key Facts and Highlights: CleanAir accurately detects, classifies and locates more than 20 unique interference sources including cordless phones, wireless video cameras, microwave ovens and Bluetooth devices while simultaneously serving client traffic. Key highlights include: An intuitive Air Quality Index for a comprehensive assessment of the severity of interference affecting any given access point or specific location. The ability to self-heal and self-optimize the wireless network by enhancing radio resource management to improve wireless reliability without IT intervention. Interfere
SANTA CLARA, CA - 4/27/2010 - Today at the Interop 2010 conference in Las Vegas, Citrix Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: CTXS) announced the availability of three new ultra high-performance NetScaler® MPX™ appliances. Leveraging all the power of the recently released Intel® Xeon® processor 5680 series technology, and the newest NetScaler version 9.2 software with Citrix nCore™ technology, (see link to 9.2 release here), the new NetScaler MPX 17500, 19500 and 21500 appliances offer the ideal blend of scalability, functionality and performance. In stark contrast to other application networking vendors that rely upon proprietary hardware that limits their ability to quickly adapt, the Citrix approach allows for rapid time to market, flexible feature additions and fully leverages the latest Intel CPU advancements as they are released. Cloud computing offers unparalleled flexibility and agility, but it can also add latency to application traffic and deliver uneven application availability for global users. By pairing NetScaler with Intel® Xeon® processor 5680 series technology, Citrix is providing another simple, yet robust, solution that drives the elasticity of the cloud into the datacenter. With virtual datacenters delivering ever more complex Web 2.0 applications, these drawbacks are only amplified. The new NetScaler MPX models make virtual datacenters a reality by simultaneously providing application acceleration, intelligent traffic management, and security - all at extreme performance levels demanded at the front-end of virtual datacenters. The new NetScaler MPX models uniquely scale from 20-to-35-to-50 Gbps performance – all on the same physical appliance, requiring no forklift upgrade. As with all NetScaler solutions, these new MPX appliances support all NetScaler features, including L4-7 local and global load balancing, content caching, data compression, SSL VPN, Web 2.0 server offload, and advanced application firewall security. In addition, these new solutions allow a
Hardware and Virtualization Technology Among Top New Investment Plans. The technology spending freeze of late 2009 is showing signs of thawing among small and medium businesses (SMBs), according to a new survey by Spiceworks™, Inc. The vast majority is seeing overall IT budgets and spending rise in the first half of 2010. TThese findings were uncovered in the second semi-annual "State of SMB IT" technology survey of more than 1,000 IT professionals at small and medium businesses (SMBs). The survey, which is designed to investigate current technology purchasing, usage and staffing trends among SMBs worldwide, was fielded in January and February 2010 by the Spiceworks Voice of IT® market research program. Survey result highlights include: The average IT budget climbed nine percent in 2010 to $117,200 with 43 percent of SMBs reporting budget increases. Nearly half (47 percent) of 2010 IT budgets is allocated to new hardware purchases, 34 percent to new software, and 19 percent to IT services. 80 percent of small and medium businesses plan new desktop, laptop and server purchases in the first six months of 2010 in order to refresh hardware that is on average 48 months old. Netbooks as well as tablet computers like the iPad are still not popular among SMBs, representing less than three percent of planned new mobile computer sales over the next six months. 55 percent of SMBs plan software purchases in the first six months of 2010. Top priorities include virtualization, antivirus/anti-spam, backup and recovery, and Windows 7 upgrades. A surprising new finding showed that 22 percent of SMB IT pros plan to purchase, upgrade or renew CRM applications, indicating that IT departments are becoming more involved in the CRM purchase process. Virtualization technology continues to be very popular among small and medium businesses with 41 percent planning new or additional investments in virtualization solutions in the first six months of 2010. Existing deployments increased work
HP today introduced a comprehensive edge-to-core networking portfolio that delivers a superior alternative to the marketplace in terms of technology, energy efficiency and total cost of ownership. The new HP Networking portfolio combines the best of HP ProCurve and 3Com to provide an advanced network fabric that is up to twice as fast with half the energy use, and at a 65 percent lower total cost of ownership.(1) HP also announced that its newest internal data center will run completely on HP networking products, further demonstrating the scalability and mission-critical properties of the newly combined networking portfolio. HP Networking will be led by Marius Haas, senior vice president and general manager, and is part of the Enterprise Servers, Storage and Networking business unit led by David Donatelli, executive vice president and general manager. The portfolio is a cornerstone of the HP Converged Infrastructure strategy, which eliminates silos of servers, storage and networking to create virtual pools of resources designed to optimally run business services. "Enterprises are clearly asking for more choice when looking at networking solutions," said Mark Fabbi, vice president and distinguished analyst, Gartner Inc. "The combination of increasing expectations for a more agile infrastructure to meet rapidly changing business demands and the more challenging economic climate requires fresh innovation, strong alternatives and a more business-centric approach to network design." The HP Networking portfolio allows clients to eliminate redundant equipment by integrating wired and wireless environments with security from the edge to core. To further drive complexity out of client operations, HP delivers "single pane of glass" management to configure, deploy and monitor the network. This enables common policy management, reduces human error and creates a consistent user experience across access mediums. With the addition of the TippingPoint portfolio, HP has expanded t