More and more companies are turning to cloud technologies to build private, public and hybrid cloud solutions. However, many are finding that managing those silos of services is becoming an impossibility, surrounded by incompatibilities, complex dashboards and differing standards.

Cloud services vendor Skytap is looking to eliminate many pain points for those venturing into the cloud. The company has released a new set of solutions, which brings management simplicity and federation to clouds of all shapes and sizes.

The key component of Skytap’s latest innovations comes down to one word: automation. Skytap claims that its cloud automation tools will deliver cost savings of as much as 70%, if not more. Some of the savings come from time reduction and overhead savings.

To achieve those savings, Skytap has integrated four core capabilities into a solution that promotes the privatization, federation and management of cloud-based services. Those capabilities, which are based upon Skytap’s intellectual property, include:

• Self-Service Hybrid Cloud: Skytap’s new solution capabilities enable IT managers to create hybrid clouds by configuring network connectivity and security policies quickly using a web UI. Functional users are then empowered to connect their cloud instances with corporate data centers with point-and-click ease. Skytap’s hybrid cloud solution enables enterprises to create cloud instances that act as a seamless extension of their data centers. With this innovation, Skytap offers comprehensive enterprise hybrid capabilities, including automated import/export of existing images, full support of existing applications, a two-way IPSEC tunnel and advanced multitier topologies that emulate in-house virtual data centers. More than 25% of Skytap customer cloud environments are now hybrid in nature.
• Cloud Orchestration and Configuration Routing: Skytap released new cloud orchestration and network connectivity capabilities that enable development and test users to consolidate and centralize their build/test servers in the cloud, avoid set-up errors and reduce costs. Using the new network routing feature, software teams are able to create a hub-and-spoke model with centralized servers acting as a hub, individual dev/test configurations acting as nodes and network routes acting as spokes. Dev/test teams are able to utilize the self-service cloud orchestration features to automate the sequencing and scheduling of a complex multiserver environment. This eliminates the need for complicated scripts and costly software licenses.
• Security Policy Management for Cloud Access and Control: Skytap introduced new security policy management features that provide one central cloud facility for enterprises to keep up with ever- changing security and policy requirements, as well as protect sensitive applications in the cloud. New enterprise-ready features such as IP access range limits, browser validation and email verification strengthened Skytap’s comprehensive security policy management capabilities.
• Organizational Policy Management: Businesses can now use Skytap’s cloud platform to manage the needs of multiple large user groups with varying roles, such as development, test, training, sales engineering and IT operations. Departmental or divisional cloud administrators can assign role-based permissions and user-level quotas to govern cloud usage within and across various teams. Skytap provides a flexible model to organize users into “groups” based on a user’s specific role in a project, geographic location or business unit.”Over the last twelve months, Skytap has led the innovation agenda in enabling enterprises to accelerate their adoption of secure, self-service hybrid clouds,” said Sundar Raghavan, VP of marketing for Skytap. “The market opportunity for proven cloud solutions continues to grow as enterprises look to the cloud as the preferred model to focus and deliver on their application development priorities.Skytap offers several packages and pricing tiers across their various services offerings. More information is available at Skytap.com.

eEye Digital Security, a provider of IT security and unified vulnerability management solutions, will exhibit at the InfoSec 2011 Nashville Conference at the Nashville Convention Center on September 15.

The Southeast’s leading security conference now in its 11th year, InfoSec assembles technologists and security professionals for a day of industry-recognized keynote speakers, panel discussions, and breakout sessions focusing on technical and management issues, as well as healthcare and other industry regulations in the security industry. The event is hosted by Nashville Technology Council and Middle Tennessee chapter of Information Systems Security Association.

eEye CTO, Marc Maiffret, will keynote the event with the speech: “Security: A Journey without End.” The presentation will discuss the cultural and social challenges of IT security and the human nature behind some companies’ failure to protect their systems and data. Maiffret will also address the aspects that shape how people view technology and security’s role within a business.

“This talk will focus on the never-ending, always evolving nature of IT security,” said Marc Maiffret, CTO, eEye. “Although there is no end-state in security, we can continually improve, especially if we pay attention to the human aspects that affect and often hinder IT security.”

eEye invites the media and conference attendees to explore the Company’s latest innovations, demonstrated in Booth 3, primarily the newly released Retina CS 2.5 Management solution. Retina CS is the only unified vulnerability and compliance management solution that integrates security risk discovery, prioritization, remediation, and reporting into a single, web-based console.

At the event, eEye will encourage SecureWorld Expo attendees to take advantage of several free, online resources that the company provides to the IT security community. Retina Community is a free vulnerability scanner for up to 32 IPs, now being used by thousands of organizations. Zero Day Tracker provides a catalogue of the newest zero-day vulnerabilities, instructions for quick remediation, and a historical record of past vulnerabilities. eEye’s Vulnerability Expert Forum (VEF), hosted by Maiffret and the eEye Research Team, is a popular monthly webinar attended by hundreds of IT security professionals seeking insight and information on recently announced critical vulnerabilities from Microsoft and other software vendors.

About eEye Digital Security
Since 1998, eEye Digital Security has made vulnerability and compliance management simpler and more efficient by providing the only unified solution that integrates assessment, mitigation, protection, and reporting into a complete offering with optional add-on modules for configuration compliance, regulatory reporting, and integrated patch management. eEye’s world-renowned research and development team is consistently the first to uncover critical vulnerabilities and build new protections into our solutions to prevent their exploit. Thousands of mid-to-large-size private-sector and government organizations, including the largest vulnerability management installations in the world, rely on eEye to protect against the latest known and zero-day vulnerabilities. More at eeye.com.

eEye Digital Security, a provider of IT security and unified vulnerability management solutions, will exhibit at the SecureWorld Expo in St Louis, Missouri, September 13-14, 2011. The conference brings together the security leaders, experts, senior executives, and policy makers who shape the direction of security across Information Security, Physical Security, Compliance, IT Audit, Computer Forensics, Enterprise Risk Management, Business Continuity, and Security Management.

eEye invites the media and SecureWorld Expo attendees to explore the Company’s latest innovations, demonstrated in Booth 204, primarily the newly released Retina CS 2.5 Management solution. Retina CS is the only unified vulnerability and compliance management solution that integrates security risk discovery, prioritization, remediation, and reporting into a single, web-based console.

eEye CTO, Marc Maiffret, will offer insights on the Industry Expert Panel, ” Mobility – The Age of Consumerization,” to be held on Tuesday, September 13, 1:15-2:15 PM, in the Keynote Theatre. eEye recently announced forthcoming availability of its Retina CS Mobility Connector, an add-on module that allows Retina CS management console customers to extend and unify vulnerability management to consumerized mobile devices used to access corporate networks.

“Securing smart phones and other mobile devices is an increasingly important topic for IT Security teams,” said Marc Maiffret, CTO, eEye. “As a speaker on the ‘Mobility’ panel, I look forward to addressing attendee questions on how to protect their IT environments as growing numbers of consumer devices plug into the corporate network.” eEye is participating in SecureWorld Expo’s “Dash for Prizes.” Attendees can register at the eEye Booth (204) throughout the two-day conference to win an Amazon Kindle and a $25 gift card. Dash for Prizes commences at 2:15PM on Wednesday, September 14. Attendees must be present to win.

At the event, eEye will encourage SecureWorld Expo attendees to take advantage of several free, online resources that the company provides to the IT security community. Retina Community is a free vulnerability scanner for up to 32 IPs, now being used by nearly four thousand organizations. Zero Day Tracker provides a catalogue of the newest zero-day vulnerabilities, instructions for quick remediation, and a historical record of past vulnerabilities. eEye’s Vulnerability Expert Forum (VEF), hosted by Maiffret and the eEye Research Team, is a popular monthly webinar attended by hundreds of IT security professionals seeking insight and information on recently announced critical vulnerabilities from Microsoft and other software vendors.

About eEye Digital Security Since 1998, eEye Digital Security has made vulnerability and compliance management simpler and more efficient by providing the only unified solution that integrates assessment, mitigation, protection, and reporting into a complete offering with optional add-on modules for configuration compliance, regulatory reporting, and integrated patch management. eEye’s world-renowned research and development team is consistently the first to uncover critical vulnerabilities and build new protections into our solutions to prevent their exploit. Thousands of mid-to-large-size private-sector and government organizations, including the largest vulnerability management installations in the world, rely on eEye to protect against the latest known and zero-day vulnerabilities. More at eeye.com.

Global interactive marketing provider ExactTarget announced today that its client Kestler Financial Group posted a nearly 50 percent increase in client engagement since April despite the turbulent global financial markets thanks to a revamped marketing effort on Twitter and email.

Powered by ExactTarget’s Interactive Marketing HubTM, the national financial services firm launched the effort in April and boosted engagement by identifying the most frequent conversations on social media to select the most relevant financial content to feature across email, social media and its website.

“The key to our marketing is evaluating and monitoring all marketing channels in real-time, whether that’s Twitter, our blog or email,” said Kevin Kestler, director of communications of Virginia-based Kestler Financial Group. “We then shape our marketing campaigns to deliver highly relevant and timely financial content on email, Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.”

Using the Interactive Marketing Hub, Kestler Financial Group creates interactive marketing campaigns and monitors social network traffic, client-level engagement from email marketing campaigns and Web traffic from the technology’s single real-time dashboard. Those insights are then used to anticipate and respond in real-time to financial trends, issues and topics important to the firm’s key audiences.

The result, he said, is improved customer service, more relevant financial advice and a seamless brand experience across Kestler Group’s interactive marketing channels.

The Interactive Marketing Hub is a cross-channel interactive marketing platform that enables marketers to engage in real-time marketing, consolidate all data to create a common view of the consumer and deliver targeted, permission-based interactions across email, mobile, social media and the Web.

“As the industry’s most advanced cross-channel marketing solution, the Interactive Marketing Hub provides organizations an integrated solution to plan, manage and engage in real-time across all online channels,” said Tim Kopp, ExactTarget’s chief marketing officer. “Kestler Financial Group is a great example of a brand that is harnessing the power of technology to create relevant and effective customer experiences across all interactive channels to drive efficiency and improve business results.”

The news of Kestler Financial’s cross-channel marketing success follows the launch of a Forrester Consulting study commissioned by ExactTarget that found 48 percent of interactive marketing executives rank understanding customers’ cross-channel interactions as one of the top challenges facing marketing today. Entitled “The New Campaign Management Mandate,” the June 2011 study found marketers’ lack of cross-channel insights result in brands interacting through disconnected channels that fail to deliver seamless brand experiences and the real-time, relevant dialog consumers expect.

About ExactTarget

ExactTarget is a leading global provider of on-demand email marketing and interactive marketing solutions. The company’s Interactive Marketing Hub technology provides organizations a single solution to connect with customers via email, integrated text messaging, landing pages and social media. Supported by collaborative global services teams, ExactTarget’s technology integrates with more sales and marketing information systems than any other in the industry, including Salesforce.com, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Omniture and Webtrends among many others. 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 .

Acronis, a leading provider of easy-to-use disaster recovery and data protection solutions for physical, virtual and cloud environments, today proudly announced that its Customer Central Support team have received global recognition from the International Customer Management Institute (ICMI). Acronis has been awarded the 2011 Global Call Center of the Year Silver Award for Strategic Value.

The ICMI is the leading global provider of comprehensive resources for customer management professionals. Each year, the ICMI honors two companies with the prestigious Call Center of the Year Gold Award. The Global Call Center of the Year Silver Award for Strategic Value is one of two new categories introduced to the program in 2011. More than 80 companies from all over the world attempted the application process in 2011, with only 47 completing the rigorous requirements.

“We were very impressed with the entry from Acronis,” said Layne Holley, director of Community Services for ICMI and chairman of the 2011 Global Call Center of the Year Awards Selection Committee. “Not only did the team show their enthusiasm, professionalism and customer oriented spirit, but they also proved that their operations are centered around the pursuit of excellence — from staff training and benefits, to fostering a winning culture. It is clear to see that Acronis Executives regard customer service as a key differentiator and invest appropriately to maintain that position. We are proud to make Acronis the inaugural recipient of this highly coveted award.”

“The Acronis support structure is truly focused on finding the right solution, which is why I am a loyal customer and advocate for Acronis,” said James Redmon, IT director for BEDI, an engineering and design company and customer using Acronis Backup & Recovery(R) 10. “My case was resolved due to the persistence of the customer support agent and the flexibility of process which allowed him to continue until we had identified the issue and a solution. This was even though the problem was not with my Acronis software, but a faulty network card that was intermittently preventing successful backups.”

The Acronis Customer Central support team has five locations across the globe, providing support in up to 14 languages to a customer base that consists of more than 175,000 business and over 2.5 million consumer customers worldwide. Acronis operates a two tier channel model, with a network of over 20,000 resellers to support product sales.

“Our strategic values are aligned to the core corporate values of using customer service as a key differentiator. To make sure our customers receive the highest levels of service, we invest in training and promote accountability across our operations,” commented Robert Frost, senior director, Customer Central at Acronis. “We use a variety of internal measures including customer satisfaction scores, employee satisfaction, coaching scores and internal sales satisfaction with the service provided to our customers and channel partners alike.”

About Acronis Acronis is a leading provider of easy-to-use disaster recovery and data protection solutions for physical, virtual and cloud environments. Its patented disk imaging technology enables corporations, SMBs and consumers to protect their digital assets. With Acronis’ disaster recovery, deployment and migration software, users protect their digital information, maintain business continuity and reduce downtime. Acronis software is sold in more than 90 countries and available in up to 14 languages. For additional information, please visit www.acronis.com . Follow Acronis on Twitter: http://twitter.com/acronis .

About ICMI The International Customer Management Institute (ICMI), is the leading global provider of comprehensive resources for customer management professionals — from frontline agents to executives — who wish to improve contact center operations, empower contact center employees and enhance customer loyalty. ICMI’s experienced and dedicated team of industry insiders, analysts and consultants are committed to providing uncompromised objectivity and results-oriented vision through the organization’s respected lineup of professional services including training and certification, consulting, events and informational resources. Founded in 1985, ICMI continues to serve as one of the most established and respected organizations in the call center industry. For additional information about the Global Call Center of the Year Awards and ICMI, please visit www.icmi.com . Follow ICMI on Twitter at www.twitter.com/callcentericmi or join us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/CallCenterICMI .

Acronis(R), Acronis Backup & Recovery(R), Acronis Compute with Confidence(R) and the Acronis logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of Acronis Inc. in the U.S. and other countries. Other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Creating a consistent email-to-website customer experience can dramatically increase marketing performance according to Freshpair, the leading online retailer of men’s and women’s intimate apparel. The company recently deployed an integrated solution from testing, targeting and content optimization company Monetate and cross-channel marketing solutions leader Responsys.

“We are thrilled with the results we’ve experienced through the integration of Monetate and Responsys’ joint marketing solution,” said Matthew Butlein, President of Freshpair. “This targeted strategy has enabled us to quickly design and implement website campaigns that reflect the variety of email promotions we are sending to customers.”

By leveraging the joint solution in a targeted marketing campaign, Freshpair has experienced a 16.59% increase in its add-to-cart rate and a 33.8% decrease in bounce rate.

Traditionally, to create customized landing pages for the large quantity of emails a company sent proved ineffective and a strain on resources since the initial message was lost once the customer left the landing page. Leveraging the Monetate and Responsysjoint solution, every page on a business’ website acts as a personalized landing page, echoing the look-and-feel and message of the original email to reinforce the sale. This results in a website experience that is fully synchronized with the company’s ongoing email marketing efforts, maximizing the effectiveness and relevance of each email sent. In addition, with a new focus placed on social media and other marketing techniques like pay-per-click, Monetate enables businesses to echo the message from virtually any inbound channel.

“Integrating the joint Monetate and Responsys solution provides businesses with a perfect marriage of best-in-class enterprise email-to-web solutions to dramatically increase conversion,” said Monetate CEO David Brussin. “Online campaigns that were expensive and nearly impossible to implement before can now be seamlessly integrated using one single line of Javascript. With Monetate, each page on a company’s website becomes a personalized landing page that reminds the customer of why they clicked through in the first place.”

Freshpair recently integrated the Monetate and Responsys solution to reclaim revenue lost to shopping cart abandonment. Consumers who added items to their shopping cart but left prior to completing the transaction received an automatically generated email reminding them of the un-purchased goods. Clicking the notification directed them to Freshpair’s checkout page outfitted with a customized banner that reinforced the email’s message. The campaign resulted in significant increase in add-to-cart rate and decrease in bounce rate.

“Responsys is pleased to empower a retail innovator like Freshpair to execute relevant integrated campaigns that drive sales and brand value,” said Scott Jones, Director of Product Marketing and Partner Strategy at Responsys. “With the Responsys and Monetate solution, customers like Freshpair can more effectively target, automate, integrate, and coordinate cross-channel campaigns based on customer behavior.”

About Freshpair
Freshpair.com is the leading online retailer of men’s and women’s intimate apparel. With over 100 brands available on the site and an expert staff that knows the ins and outs of the fits, sizing and styles, Freshpair.com is the premiere destination for everything underwear. Freshpair.com is also the founder of National Underwear Day, a holiday dedicated to the appreciation of underwear. Freshpair.com’s exceptional customer service and huge selection help make every shopping experience comfortable and convenient.Freshpair.com also offers free shipping on all US orders. Visit Freshpair athttp://www.freshpair.com

About Monetate
Monetate is the leading provider of testing, targeting, and content optimization solutions for websites. The company’s Software as a Service platform empowers marketers to test and target product offers and site features and convert successful tests into personalized messaging and promotional campaigns, instantly, anywhere on the website. Monetate removes the IT bottleneck and is quick and easy to install using just a single JavaScript tag, inserted only once, and requiring no internal IT resources. Some of the best known brands in the world use Monetate to make the most of their online marketing dollars, increase conversion rates, and personalize the website experience including Aeropostale,Urban Outfitters, Altrec, The Sports Authority, PETCO, QVC and more. Based inPhiladelphia, Monetate serves a growing list of B2C websites around the world.

About Responsys
Responsys is the leading provider of email and cross-channel marketing solutions that enable companies to engage in relationship marketing across the interactive channels customers are embracing today—email, mobile, social and the web. With Responsyssolutions, marketers can create, execute, and automate highly dynamic campaigns and lifecycle marketing programs that are designed to grow revenue, increase marketing efficiency, and strengthen customer loyalty. Responsys’ New School Marketing vision, flexible on-demand application suite, and customer success-focused services aim to deliver high ROI, increased levels of automation and fast time-to-value. Founded in 1998, Responsys is headquartered in San Bruno, California and has offices throughout the world. Responsys serves world-class brands such as: American Family Mutual Insurance Company, Avis Europe, Continental Airlines, Deutsche Lufthansa, Dollar Thrifty, Lands’ End, LEGO, LinkedIn, Newegg, Qantas, Southwest Airlines, and UnitedHealthcare. For more information about Responsys, visit responsys.com.

Instructure, a Utah startup company that has launched a new online learning management platform, has expanded its client base to 60 universities in recent months, creating the need to hire dozens of software engineers.

To connect with young programers, particularly computer-science students, the firm is holding a coding contest Saturday to give away more than $10,000 and to identify potential new hires. The event is called the MebiPenny Coding Competition “where nerds battle for money and glory.” The contest name keys off the computer term mebibyte, or 1,024 bytes squared. Translated to pennies, this sum equals $10,485.76, and that’s how much the winner will take home after two rounds of coding online, followed by a final round in person.

In the first two rounds, open to anyone with “ninja-like coding skills,” contestants tackle “really, really hard math problems — so hard that you have to write software code to solve them,” said Instructure publicist Devin Knighton. “After two rounds online of solving really hard technical problems, the finalists will meet at the Instructure office [in Cottonwood Heights] for the grand prize.”

Earlier this year, Instructure’s “learning management system” called Canvas won the contract to provide service to Utah’s eight public colleges and universities, beating out industry leaders Blackboard and D2L. Since then, dozens of other universities have signed on, most recently Auburn and the Wharton School of Business, according to Knighton.

The firm currently employs 50 out of its Cottonwood Heights offices. To learn more, go to instructure.com/mebipenny.