Archive for June, 2010

Rackspace Updates Hybrid Email for 1.7 Million Users

Thursday, June 17th, 2010

Rackspace has enhanced its popular Rackspace Hybrid Email offering.  Hybrid email now has a a custom mix of Hosted Microsoft Exchange and the business-focused Rackspace Email platform on a single domain. Rackspace Hybrid Email now features easy calendar viewing between Hosted Microsoft Exchange and Rackspace Email, as well as a new webmail interface for Rackspace Email designed to help make businesses using the solution more productive.

“We’ve learned from our customers that, on average, only a small percentage of employees really need and use the advanced features of Microsoft Exchange, yet many businesses are paying a lot more to run Exchange for every single user,” said Kirk Averett, director of product for cloud applications at Rackspace. “With Rackspace Hybrid Email, companies can purchase a combination of Exchange and low cost Rackspace Email accounts on a single domain, without sacrificing features for any employee. Most businesses can realize a significant cost savings by utilizing this model because they have different types of email users.”

With the recent updates, Rackspace Hybrid Email now features:

  • Viewable Calendars — Now users can share and view calendars across the entire organization, whether it’s an Exchange user or a Rackspace Email user, for easier scheduling and coordination.
  • Improved Webmail — The new webmail interface for Rackspace Email is easy to learn and faster to navigate. New features include improved search quality and speed, and simplified customization of company logos and background images for private label resellers.
  • Simple Control Panel — Administrators can easily manage Hosted Exchange and Rackspace Email accounts and settings from one dashboard.
  • Microsoft SharePoint — All Rackspace cloud email accounts have access to free hosted SharePoint, with up to 250MB of storage, for improved document management and team collaboration. More storage is easily purchased with low utility pricing.
  • Compatibility — Both Hosted Exchange and Rackspace Email are compatible with the Microsoft Outlook desktop client, and provide mobile support for Blackberry, iPhone, iPad, Android and Windows Mobile.
  • Fanatical Support — Rackspace goes above and beyond to serve its customers, with live support teams available 24x7x365 on chat and phone.
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Eucalyptus Private Cloud Adds Windows VM Support

Thursday, June 17th, 2010

Eucalyptus Private Cloud which primarily runs on the Amazon EC2 Platform,  released version 2.0 with a special update that adds support for Microsoft Windows VMs, along with user group management tools designed to make it more attractive as a scalable enterprise solution.

Recent Moves

Still, plenty of companies are trying to blend cloud computing, open source and virtualization for service providers. Prime examples include:

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OnLive Launches Tomorrow…Gaming In The Cloud

Thursday, June 17th, 2010

OnLive, the free cloud gaming service founded by Apple alum Steve Perlman launches tomorrow!  Boom Baby! The service hopes to mark a monumental shift in the way gaming works, and they WILL.  What does this mean for us?  No more downloads, no more patches, no more discs.  All free cloud gaming at the touch of your fingertips is brought to us by AT&T!  So let’s all give a SHOUT OUT to AT&T!

Instead of running a video game on your consule, players will connect to OnLive via broadband to a gaming system that runs and stores not just their data, but the entire game itself on their free cloud gaming servers. OnLive enables video games to be played on Mac or PC and, using their “micro console device” on your TV.

According to CEO Perlman, the launch marks “the first step toward a future where video game content is increasingly free from the restrictions of device and location, while showcasing the ability to instantly play the latest, most advanced games at the touch of a button.”

Can anyone tell that I’m excited about this?  Sign up here!

UPDATE:

According to a blog post by OnLive’s Steve Perlman, the goal of the company (and secret-sauce to minimizing hair loss due to lag) is to have data centers positioned throughout the world so that users are never more than 1000 miles from the nearest OnLive server farm.  At launch, OnLive operates data centers in San Francisco, Dallas, and Washington D.C. which creates a blanket of coverage in the U.S. excluding only those poor souls in Northern Minnesota, North Dakota and northeast Montana.

OnLive U.S. coverage map

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