Skytap, Inc., the leading provider of self-service cloud automation solutions, today announced that its customer Cushman & Wakefield, a global real estate solutions firm, has been invited to discuss their successful cloud deployment using Skytap at this week’s Interop New York conference, taking place at the Javits Center on Oct. 3-7.

In addition, Skytap has been invited to share best practices for enterprise cloud success at multiple conferences in October, including Interop New York, StarWest and Washington Technology Industry Association (WTIA) TechNW conferences.

INTEROP NY: Real World Case Study – Cushman & Wakefield

Who: Dr. Craig Cuyar, Global CIO, Cushman & Wakefield Leif Maiorini, Senior Managing Director of IT Strategy, Cushman & Wakefield

When: Mon., Oct. 3 at 11:25 a.m. ET

Where: Room 1E11, Javits Center, New York, NY

Description: In this case study session, Cushman & Wakefield will discuss their transformation efforts and share the business benefits and challenges associated with the use of cloud platforms.

INTEROP NY: Under the Covers – Skytap

Who: Brett Goodwin, Skytap

When: Tues., Oct. 4 at 2:35 p.m. ET

Where: Room 1E11, Javits Center, New York, NY

Description: In this session, Skytap will address conference attendees’ shortlist of questions on enterprise cloud challenges, hybrid cloud architecture, deployment best practices, pricing, SLAs, and data center locations.

STARWEST – Cloud Computing: Powering the Future of Testing

Who: Sundar Raghavan, Skytap

When: Wed., Oct. 5 at 11:30 a.m. PT

Where: Disneyland Hotel, Anaheim, CA

Description: Skytap will demonstrate how the cloud model empowers development teams with tremendous agility and flexibility to manage complex application testing scenarios. Based on expertise gathered from working with leading innovators including Google and Cushman & Wakefield, Skytap will show how cloud solutions deliver significant reductions in the cost and complexity of dev/test environments.

STARWEST – Cloud Development and Test Boot Camp

Who: Sundar Raghavan, Skytap

When: Thur., Oct. 6 from 9:45 a.m. PT

Where: Disneyland Hotel, Anaheim, CA

Description: Skytap will conduct a hands-on workshop on cloud application development and test. The mini boot camp will teach attendees how to move existing applications to the cloud without code or architectural changes. It will also demonstrate how a development and test team can collaborate on production-like virtual data centers to resolve complex bugs.

WTIA TechNW: Cloud Panel

Who: Brett Goodwin, Skytap Peter Coffee, Director of Platform Research at Salesforce.com Mitch Hill, CEO at Opscode Jeff Barr, Senior Manager of Cloud Computing Solutions at Amazon

When: Tues., Oct. 11 at 3:30 p.m. PT

Where: Bell Harbor International Conference Center

Description: As the promise of cloud computing has grown so has its scope. In a still-evolving state, the infrastructure of the cloud-computing transition is being built by both startups and big name companies based in the Pacific NW. During TechNW’s cloud panel, attendees will hear from both public and private company thought leaders on their projections of where cloud computing is headed.

About Skytap

Skytap is the leading provider of self-service cloud automation solutions for dynamic workloads. Skytap enables users to run enterprise applications unchanged in the cloud, collaborate securely with global teams, and gain unparalleled business productivity. Additionally, IT organizations can gain visibility and control over cloud projects, align capacity with demand, and reduce costs by 70% or more. Enterprises can securely connect Skytap to their data centers and create virtual private clouds. Skytap is ideal for any dynamic workload including application development, testing, virtual training, ERP migration and sales demonstration projects. To buy or learn more, visit www.skytap.com.

Contact: Lindsey Emert Barokas Public Relations [email protected] 206-264-8220

 

Exinda, a global provider of WAN optimisation solutions incorporating Unified Performance Management, today announced that Kevin F. R. Suitor, vice president of marketing for Exinda, will speak about next-generation WAN Optimization requirements and solutions at this year’s Interop New York show.

Suitor will discuss solutions to requirements such as reducing bandwidth costs, managing application demand, ensuring adequate bandwidth for mission-critical applications, and managing the end-to-end user experience.

DATE: Thursday, October 6, 2011
TIME: 10:50 AM
LOCATION: Cloud and Virtualization Zone Theater, Booth 900, Expo Hall

About Exinda®

Exinda is a proven global supplier of next generation WAN Optimisation and Application Acceleration products. The company has helped over 2,000 organizations in over 80 countries worldwide improve the end user experience, manage application performance, manage congestion over the WAN and reduce network operating costs for the IT executive. For more information, please visithttp://www.exinda.com.

The modern enterprise is increasingly dependent on its networking infrastructure. While CIOs are centralizing their data centers to afford them more control and greater security, users are involved in operations that are more widely dispersed and require a wider variety of applications.

This means that while the CIO is trying to exercise tighter control over the corporate wide-area network (WAN), users are expecting looser controls and the ability to access anything, anywhere, anytime with scant regard for security or the impact on network performance. Look into the usage logs of most corporations today and you will find hours spent on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, for example.

This usage is expensive. Research in the UK, sponsored by MyJobGroup.com, polled 1,000 British workers and found that nearly 6% or 2 million of Britain’s workforce of 34 million spent over one hour per day on social media while at work. The study further concluded that social media networks could potentially be costing Britain up to $22.16 billion.

The solution CIOs desire is a fully integrated single platform that delivers complete WAN optimization capabilities, the insight to allow management to keep its eye on exactly what traffic is traversing the network, and the flexibility to dynamically optimize it when and if required. What are the requirements for such a platform?

There are three components that form the pillars of a next generation WAN optimization approach. Together, they provide Unified Performance Management (UPM) – Visibility, Control and Optimization. These elements comprise the core capabilities, when integrated into a single network appliance, which allow an IT team to effectively manage the WAN. With a UPM solution in place, assumptions about network traffic give way to facts, and decisions can be based on knowledge rather than well-intentioned guesses. Let’s look at each pillar in turn.

Visibility

This pillar operates at Layer 7 of the network, providing insight into all network activity, usage and performance. It provides CIOs with all the user and application information they need to monitor overall network developments and track their organization’s key performance indicators. Exinda’s UPM solution provides managers with in-depth reports and dashboards on network traffic, empowering them to rapidly take action to improve network performance and the user experience and to optimize productivity.

Control

This pillar allows CIOs to optimize network resources via comprehensive control over network traffic. Users can plan congestion management policies based on the granular insight provided by the Visibility Engine, and then use the same dashboards to demonstrate the positive end user impact of those policies. For the most accurate view of the state of the network, data is obtained by collecting and reconciling Data Records across the network at the WAN demarcation points. WAN management can be done from a high level to shape and prioritise general network traffic, or it can be controlled at the user level should specific users have unique job requirements. Marketing staff, for example, may require open access to social media sites to do their jobs effectively.

Optimization

The third pillar is optimization. Knowing what is happening on your network is irrelevant if you can’t change it. CIOs therefore need the tools to optimize the flow of traffic according to the company’s requirements. This empowers them to rapidly take action to intelligently accelerate certain applications to improve network performance when necessary.

With these three pillars integrated into an easy-to-use next generation WAN optimization appliance, CIOs are able to minimize the time spent managing the WAN while optimising the transmission of business traffic. Not only will this optimize the user experience, it will improve productivity by ensuring that the applications and data they need are immediately at hand while recreational distractions are not.

Industry Perspectives is a content channel at Data Center Knowledge highlighting thought leadership in the data center arena. See our guidelines and submission process for information on participating. View previously published Industry Perspectives in our Knowledge Library.

ExactTarget, a leading global provider of on-demand email marketing and interactive marketing solutions, recently presented BrandMuscle its “2011 Embedded Partner of the Year” award at the company’s annual user conference in Indianapolis, Indiana.

The award recognizes BrandMuscle’s innovation in digital marketing and in creating a seamless brand experience for companies that rely on a decentralized network of dealers, franchisees and sales agents to deliver relevant marketing and advertising to local markets on behalf of their company’s brands.

Using BrandMuscle’s web-based BrandBuilder® software, corporate marketers enable local dealers, franchisees and sales agents to create and deliver brand compliant, corporate-approved, advertising and one-to-one communications using standardized templates. As an ExactTarget Embedded Partner, BrandMuscle has layered the robust delivery, hosting and analytics features of ExactTarget’s platform for email, landing pages, microsites and SMS text messaging into the BrandBuilder® product. This integration is transparent to users of the BrandBuilder® product and allows BrandMuscle to deliver a unified, consistent and exceptionally user-friendly interface for the customization of all media types.

“Corporate marketers are capitalizing on the benefits of interactive marketing channels from a national and international standpoint. Our integration with ExactTarget makes it possible for them to scale top performing digital media campaigns across their decentralized sales and marketing organizations, right down to the local level,” states Clarke Smith, BrandMuscle’s Vice President of Product Development, Sales & Marketing.

“With a few clicks of the mouse, a franchisee, dealer or sales agent can create his or her own email campaign or microsite without worrying about misrepresenting the corporate brand because we’ve limited their customization capabilities to include only options that corporate marketing has pre-approved. We’re also able to give corporate marketers insight into what’s occurring at the local level, something they would have little control over otherwise.”

Within one week of launching BrandMuscle’s microsites solution for one of the nation’s largest providers of wireless voice, messaging and data services, the company’s sales agents created more than 400 customized microsites to deliver customized, up-to-the-minute rate plan and discount information to employees of some of the largest corporations in the U.S. The program has delivered a steady stream of new activations and exceeded the company’s annual goal for number of microsites created.

“We were thrilled with the instant adoption by our client’s sales agents,” states Philip Alexander, BrandMuscle President & CEO. “It validates ease-of-use and more importantly, the impact our product has on driving sales.”

Learn more about BrandMuscle and its suite of local marketing customization software and services by visitinghttp://www.BrandMuscle.com or by calling the company at (866) 464-4342.

About BrandMuscle

BrandMuscle is a leading provider of web-based local marketing Software as a Service (SaaS) and unparalleled end-user support for companies with decentralized sales and marketing channels. Using the company’s proprietary, Adobe InDesign-based software BrandBuilder®, marketers can empower field-level customization and execution of personalized advertising and marketing campaigns to optimize their local sales and marketing performance. Founded in 2000, BrandMuscle is headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio with a regional service office in Los Angeles, California. BrandMuscle clients include many of the nation’s most recognizable brands including Allstate Insurance, Chase Bank, BMW of North America LLC, DIRECTV, Hunter Douglas and T-Mobile.

About ExactTarget

ExactTarget is a leading global provider of on-demand email marketing and interactive marketing solutions. Supported by collaborative global services teams, ExactTarget’s technology integrates with more sales and marketing information systems than any other in the industry. ExactTarget powers permission-based multichannel communications for thousands of organizations around the world including Expedia.com, Best Buy, Papa John’s, CareerBuilder.com, Gannett Co., Inc., The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, The Home Depot and Wellpoint, Inc. For more information, visit www.exacttarget.com.

Businesses these days simply can’t start a website, sit back, and watch the money roll in. The Internet has opened a lot of doors.

Now every marketer can be a publisher, every customer has a voice, and every company has an opportunity to carve out its own share of a particular market. With this level of online competition, those that fail to take the proper steps risk being lost amidst the noise.

Today OpenView Labs, the strategic consulting group for OpenView Venture Partners, released “Better Keywords, Better Customers: A Complete Guide to Keyword Generation” to help startups and expansion stage companies implement keyword generation strategies.

“The Internet has created a world where everyone has a ‘voice.’ With so much competition, companies that don’t take the proper steps to be heard will never get noticed. That’s where keyword research becomes so important; amidst everything else on the Web, it allows you to make your business more visible to potential customers. But it’s not just about helping them find you. Keyword research also provides excellent insight into the language, needs, and pain points of your targets,” said Brendan Cournoyer, Marketing Associate for OpenView Labs.

The new ebook features tips and ideas from leading online marketing and SEO experts including Outspoken Media’s Lisa Barone, SEOMoz’s Cyrus Shepard, and SAP’s Michael Brenner. Contents include:

•     A foreword from popular marketing consultant and blogger Kristi Hines
•     An introduction to the basics of keyword generation
•     Details on the goals and business benefits of keyword research
•     Solutions to some of the most common keyword generation problems
•     Additional process guides, checklists, and sample templates for customizing your project

 “Keywords are where you connect with your target market. It’s pretty much equivalent to choosing which conferences to attend, where to advertise and how to start a dialogue with potential clients. Select the wrong keywords for your online marketing efforts, and you could miss large groups of prospects,” added Tom Johansmeyer, Group Marketing Director, Cross Border.

Visit the OpenView Labs to download your free copy of “Better Keywords, Better Customers” to start improving your keyword generation efforts and winning more customers today.

About OpenView Labs

OpenView Labs is the strategic and operational consulting arm of OpenView Venture Partners, a global Venture Capital fund that invests in expansion stage technology companies. The Labs was formed to assist the management of OpenView portfolio companies build great companies by gathering, creating, storing, and disseminating best practices across all functional areas. The dedicated full-time teams, Senior Advisors, and network at OpenView Labs spend the bulk of their time working on behalf of the OpenView Venture Partner’s Portfolio companies. This work includes incubating methodologies, testing approaches, performing research projects, developing and implementing forums and workshops, gathering the best network and ideas for building great companies, and coaching the management of the portfolio companies.

 

Ingram Micro has signed an agreement to distribute Acronis’ products throughout Australia and New Zealand.

Ingram Micro will now sell, market and support Acronis’ product suite of disaster recovery and data protection solutions to resellers and managed service providers (MSPs) throughout Australia and New Zealand.

Under the new alliance, Ingram Micro channel partners will have access to a wider range of data protection and business continuity solutions provided by Acronis.

“Demand for, and adoption of, disaster recovery and data protection solutions for physical, virtual and cloud environments is growing within small to medium organizations, as well as enterprises,” said Ingram Micro Australia senior director and general manager, David Lenz.

“Acronis’ backup, recovery and visualization solutions offer the features and capabilities these organizations are looking for. We are delighted to add Acronis to our portfolio of industry-leading solutions and services,” he added.

Acronis general manager Pacific, Karl Sice, said he is pleased to be working with Ingram Micro to help grow the company and develop a new sales channel.

“We look forward to working with the Ingram Micro team and leveraging their advanced marketing programs and extensive VAR channel to provide our family of disaster recovery and data protection solutions throughout Australia and New Zealand,” said Slice.

Ingram Micro joins Datastor as Acronis’ two local distributors in Australia and New Zealand.

Ingram Micro has inked a new distribution deal with back up and recovery vendor, Acronis.

The relationship stems from a global partnership between the two companies.

Ingram will have access to Acronis’ business products and joins Queensland-based distributor, Datastor in the line up.

Acronis retail products are provided through specialist republishing distributor, Mindscape.

Ingram Micro senior software business manager, Lee Welch, said Acronis complemented other vendors within its line-up particularly VMware, Red Hat and Microsoft.

“We’ve trained up our licensing and sales teams on these products already,” Welch said. “We’ve got dedicated people in our licensing team that are focused on delivering quick quote turn-around at competitive pricing.”

Acronis Pacific general manager, Karl Sice, said it was looking to build on the quality of relationships it currently maintains. Globally, Acronis has about 20,000 partners.

“Ingram’s got the capability of taking knowledge to the market that will give us greater reach,” Sice said. “In the time we’ve been working with them, the commitment and level of confidence they have has been good for us. The enthusiasm has been very encouraging; it’s going to help us be even more successful and will open up a number of channels that weren’t open to us previously.

“The products that we’re providing are volume-based and you need a capable partner who can not only fulfill the needs but also provide support. That’s where we’re hoping Ingram can fill the gap.”

Intronis, an industry leading online backup and recovery solution was awarded its 5th consecutive Best Revenue Generator Award at the ASCII Reseller Success Summit in Boston, Massachusetts this September.

This is the 6th overall award given to Intronis by the ASCII community.

Since the Summit was on Intronis’ home turf, a larger Intronis team was present to accept the award. Both Ted Roller, VP of Channel Development and Carol Ferrari, VP of Marketing and Customer Success were present and honored by this 5th consecutive Best Revenue Generator Award.

Carol Ferrari stated, “It’s always an honor to be given this award, but we are especially proud as it was the 5th time by the ASCII community. We look forward to the ASCII events each time and are happy to see that our presence is not only noticed but valued by the IT channel and ASCII community. We at Intronis do our best to provide a solution that offers an industry leading value for MSPs and their reselling business. It is great to be a part of this tight-knit community and we look forward to future events, collaboration, and giving back to the ASCII community for years to come.

About Intronis

Intronis is a provider of cloud backup and disaster recovery services for the IT channel. Intronis utilizes 256-bit AES security and multiple data centers located on opposite coasts to ensure data protection and availability. Intronis offers IT service providers a secure data solution combined with a robust partner program, the efficiencies of full web-based account management, and an industry leading technical support team. http://www.intronis.com.

About the ASCII Group

The ASCII Group, Inc., headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, was established in 1984, with additional offices in Canada, India, and the UK. ASCII is the largest paying community of independent computer resellers in the world with more than 2,000 members and system wide end-user sales of approximately $10.5 billion. ASCII provides technology tools, products and services to assist independent information technology resellers increase profits, reduce costs, and grow their respective businesses. For more information, please visit http://www.ascii.com orhttp://www.asciievents.com for more information on the ASCII 2010 Reseller Success Summits.