Venyu, which also provides managed Web hosting and cloud computing services, has outfitted the Atlanta Falcons with its off-site data backup and recovery solution, RestartIT.

Venyu's CEO Scott Thompson is enjoying the recognition from the recent sign-ups of the two professional football clubs: "The word is spreading about Venyu: we are becoming the disaster recovery and (online) data backup partner of choice, not just for NFL teams, but any IT teams in need of simple, cost-effective business continuity strategies to build a modern, highly reliable data protection plan."

The Atlanta Falcons IT team wanted the reliability and efficiency provided by Venyu's cloud-based data backup to ensure that data-based activities including ticketing, coaching, scouting, training, team administration and the ongoing Point-of-Sale (PoS) retail operations at the GeorgiaDome could be accomplished accurately and without the complication required by tape backup.

Don Norton, director of Technical Services for the Atlanta Falcons, adds: "The ongoing increase of our database drove the need for a change from our previous tape backup system. We noticed that other NFL teams were upgrading and were pleased with the results. We didn't want our outmoded technology to stop us from having a competitive edge."

Venyu, based in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, has been providing Web hosting, data center services, and backup and recovery solutions since 2000.

Cogitate's launch of its 9G BACKUP solution prompted the search for a cost-effective data center.

George Loescher, President of Cogitate, Inc. said: "We looked for a data center partner that could easily grow with our business, that we could easily add new machines and add new services as time goes on. Online Tech provided a very flexible plan for our colocation solution."

Online Tech's Web hosting and data center services means Cogitate does not have IT capital costs of managing high availability servers, or running a secure data center. Online Tech’s uninterruptible power, network and AC infrastructure with full redundancy and certified compliance (SAS 70 Type II, SSAE 16 Type II, SOC 2, HIPAA and PCI) ensures security, privacy, and data availability.

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) for midrange and Intel systems is being offered along with Cloud Backup and Disaster Recovery.

The document management giant with annual sales nearing $23 billion, says it's marketing the new cloud services to SMBs generating revenues between $10 million to $250 million yearly.

Ken Stephens, senior vice president of Xerox Cloud Services said: "Cloud technology is often presented as a complex, 'big company' infrastructure solution. But, in fact, managing IT operations in the 'cloud' is just as relevant and affordable for smaller companies and can be even more impactful. Expanding Xerox's IaaS and Backup and Recovery services to SMBs is the next step toward offering a full suite of business cloud services that SMBs can access on a 'pay-as-you-go' model."

Basically, RenderCloud is a data centre facility providing high-performance servers manufactured by SGI and supported by ultra-fast 10GB Ethernet built on Brocade networking technology.

The cloud computing model allows studios to pay for server technology on-demand or even on a cost-per-day basis making it more affordable to support projects with extensive technology requirements such as animation or 3D.

Catherine Winder, President and Executive Producer of Rainmaker Entertainment said: "RenderCloud will help all of us to keep Vancouver firmly positioned as the epicentre for production whether that's feature films' special effects, animation, or gaming. The opening of RenderCloud makes us competitive with such cities as London and New Zealand, and puts Vancouver into consideration for the next generation of Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings productions."

More value-added and high-capacity infrastructure services tailored to the digital media community will be forthcoming as RenderCloud is set to scale to over 1,500 servers by the middle of the year.

RenderCloud is supported by B.C. studios Rainmaker, Image Engine and Digital Domain and these firms will be able to sub-lease their resources to other studios as required. The facility is located at the Centre for Digital Media on Great Northern Way Campus in Vancouver.

Source: http://www.digitalhome.ca/

Source: frugaldad.com

Sharad Sanghi, Founder & CEO of Netmagic Solutions said: "It is a huge upside for us and NTT. The partnership will also help us strengthen our growth plans in the Indian sub-continent and globally, while NTT Com’s global customers in India can benefit from Netmagic’s expertise and leadership position in the managed IT hosting and cloud services market. I will continue to hold 26 per cent stake in the company."

Netmagic, which employs 500, operates seven data centers in major Indian cities such as Mumbai, Chennai, Noida (Delhi-NCR) and Bangalore. The company provides colocation and managed Web hosting to more than 1,000 customers, in addition to ISP and cloud services.

CEO Jay Atkinson, who took the reigns in 2010, said: "We are extremely proud of AISN’s steady growth over the past 19 years and our strong position in the SharePoint hosting and cloud computing industries today. And naturally, we are grateful to our clients, partners, employees and everyone who has been a part of AISN’s 19-year history."

Atkinson and his team have overhauled the company's marketing efforts in the last two years, opened an East Coast office in northern Virginia, built strong partnerships with leading application developers (including SharePoint consultants), and perhaps most importantly began offering clients cloud computing and virtualization technologies.

What's in store for Web and cloud hosting customers in the next decade?

The Chicago-based company said it will still remain focused on designing and building the leading, custom, cloud-based hosting solutions on the market and keep customers satisfied.

"We live in a time in which the Internet has enabled a level of collaboration never before possible. SharePoint and the cloud have ushered in a new frontier in collaboration, and we’re excited to be part of it. AISN’s future is bright as we progress into the decade ahead," added Atkinson.

With the South African government's Department of Trade and Industry, Vodacom and the Human Resources Development Council as partners, the aim is to drive economic growth in South Africa and help create jobs.

Taddy Blecher of South Africa's Human Resource Development Council reports that small businesses employ 65 percent of the 13.8 million South Africans with jobs and an increase of 10 percent to that figure will potentially create 1.4 million jobs.

The first 10,000 applicants at www.wozaonline.co.za will get their websites built for free along with a sub-domain name, Web hosting, automatic listing on Google Places, access to training material, workshops, and online support through Google Chat and e-mail.

After successful launches in Kenya and Nigeria in 2011, South Africa is the third country in Africa to join the Google-backed program, which has brought more than 400,000 businesses online in the past two years.

More importantly, 6 US lawmakers dropped their support for the anti-piracy legislation including three who co-sponsored the legislation in the first place: Senators Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, Roy Blunt, a Missouri Republican, and Ben Cardin, a Maryland Democrat.

On a Facebook post Rubio conceded that SOPA presents a "potentially unreasonable expansion of the federal government's power to impact the Internet."

Also reporting their withdrawal from backing of the House bill were Republican Representatives Ben Quayle of Arizona, Lee Terry of Nebraska, and Dennis Ross of Florida.

More will follow suit. House Speaker John Boehner said in The Washington Post that it was "pretty clear to many of us that there is a lack of consensus at this point."

But even Wikipedia notes: "We're not done yet."

But I, like so many other fellow technology followers, especially enjoy when people in the industry just cut to the quick. Jason Hoffman, CTO and founder of cloud hosting leader, Joyent, told GigaOM: "It’s all just so dumb...These are both dumb bills and [are] a classic example of industry-specific lobbyists creating stupid laws."

Hoffman rightfully points out that in a lot of cases consumers will "Bit Torrent'" movies or TV shows because the content is not available for sale or rental anywhere else, so the issue becomes one more of product distribution rather than piracy.

However, illegally copying or downloading these and other materials has been calculated to cost the United States $16 billion in earnings, a further $58 billion in economic output plus a loss of 300,000 jobs annually. Perhaps, it's no surprise that movie studios, record companies, video game manufacturers, publishing houses and broadcast networks continue to support both SOPA & PIPA.

Placing their full support behind SOPA means they have no problem with the government shutting down targeted sites, blocking any payments made to them by ad networks or charge processors, removing the sites from search engines, and then going after other companies that may have links to these sites. And what about the matter of due process? Guilty until proven innocent all of a sudden becomes appealing to these big media firms?

Luckily protests, petitions and effective lobbying by ISPs, Web hosting providers and a myriad of other Internet and technology firms have convinced many in government that SOPA might not necessarily be the way to go. The Obama Administration recently wrote that SOPA's overly broad private rights of action "could encourage unjustified litigation that could discourage startup businesses and innovative firms from growing."

Rob Beschizza, Boing Boing managing editor summed it up for CNN: "The problem is, this legislation won't stop piracy. In years of new laws and aggressive litigation, none of it has had the slightest impact on piracy. Even if (bill supporters) get everything they want, there's no reason to think that pirates won't find a way around it. If the media industry, the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) and so on, if they want to find a way to fight piracy, they need to spend less money sending legal threats and more money making new culture and maybe working on their PR a bit."

The global technology leader will provide managed Web hosting services for the GSA 's current infrastructure, which supports mission-critical applications, such as GSA Advantage and eBuy, two services the government uses to acquire products and services that serve the public.

CSC will help to upgrade and improve the GSA's IT infrastructure to make the organization more responsive and better equipped to meet the technological demands placed by the government. As such, CSC will introduce cost-effective measures including cloud computing, infrastructure-as-a-service and virtualization.

Mike Gaffney, president of CSC's North American Public Sector Civil Group further explains the main task: "CSC's ability to bring infrastructure as a service platforms to GSA will enable the agency to modernize its technology by leveraging new (web) hosting paradigms like the cloud. By applying our expertise in cybersecurity, we will ensure our solutions for GSA represent the best practices to manage risk and provide for effective resiliency."

SkyNox ensures business continuity in the event of disasters and allows quick file and data recovery for both workstations and servers. Featuring 448-bit Blowfish encryption transferred via a proprietary protocol, all data is safely stored in SherWeb’s Tier 3+ data center.

Peter Cassar, CEO and co-founder of SherWeb, said: "We are thrilled to add online backup to our cloud portfolio. The launch of SkyNox further expands our decade-long commitment to providing innovative high-end Web hosting solutions to SMBs."

SkyNox comes with 24/7 expert technical support with flexible storage plans and three recovery options.

The Dallas Cowboys organization selected RestartIT because it uses industry-leading deduplication and cloud backup technology which ensures the team's valuable business data and crucial video footage are quickly retrievable in any emergency situation.

Bill Haggard, Director of Enterprise Infrastructure, Dallas Cowboys, reiterates that position: "Losing data can be a major setback, and if there are no other copies available -- you're in serious trouble. Venyu's RestartIT transformed the way my IT team approaches data protection. We now have a cloud-based backup plan that rises to the level of our existing technology investments."

In addition to online data backup and recovery, Venyu delivers colocation Web hosting, data center solutions and several cloud computing services.

The Shanghai Lingang Economic Development (SLED) chose the managed Web hosting provider along with eleven other companies including Cisco and NetApp to help develop a new data center for cloud computing services.

Additionally, The Aldridge Company will provide consulting and operational services in cloud computing as Chinese customers migrate to the new data center.

David L. Aldridge, president of The Aldridge Company said: "We are proud to be helping to bring the benefits of cloud computing to business and government organizations in Eastern China and view this partnership as a key step forward in our international growth. This is the first of what we hope will be many new opportunities in China and elsewhere as organizations around the world embrace the cloud."

Based in Houston, TX, The Aldridge Company provides managed Web hosting, networking and technology solutions to enterprises and small businesses worldwide.