A more powerful Dropbox Pro from Dropbox

Dropbox Pro Feature Set, Now Offering 1 Terabyte Of Storage For $10/Month

With more than 300 million users signed up, Dropbox users increase from 200 million users hit nine months ago. Those users are also extremely active, saving more than a billion files to its cloud storage every day.

Dropbox issued a new "One plan, more room" a plan or having enough space. So they had simplified Dropbox Pro to a single plan that stays at $9.99/month, but now comes with 1 TB (1,000 GB) of space.

This new pricing now matches for Google Drive, which lowered its prices for a TB of storage earlier in the spring. And this new Pro service is much cheaper than comparable cloud storage plans from Box and Microsoft OneDrive.

"Whether you’re a professor sending out your lesson plans, a musician creating and sharing your new composition, or a consultant writing and refining a proposal, Dropbox Pro provides a home for your passion and creativity."

It has new sharing controls:

Passwords for shared links create an additional layer of security so only people with the password can access your link.
Expirations for shared links safeguard your sensitive files by letting you set how long your links stay up.
View-only permissions for shared folders let you pick whether recipients can edit or just view files within your shared folder.

New safeguards for lost devices:

Remote wipe lets users delete their Dropbox files from a lost or stolen device while keeping them safely backed up in Dropbox. For example, if you’ve ever left your laptop on a plane, you’re not just worried about the laptop — you’re worried about the stuff that’s on it.

More on >> Introducing a more powerful Dropbox Pro

Cross Match Technologies goes Live with Tier1 Private Oracle Cloud

Pittsburgh, PA – August 19, 2014

Tier1, Inc. announced today the availability of the Tier1 Private Oracle Cloud, the most optimized and protected computing environment for Oracle Applications and databases. Leveraging Oracle’s Virtual Compute Appliance (VCA) technology, the only virtual environment certified to use Oracle Trusted Partitions – the Tier1 Private Cloud provides the flexibility to license Oracle software on a virtual CPU basis.

The Tier1 Private Oracle Cloud is designed to minimize customer costs and the complexities they face when hosting Oracle applications in-house. Private cloud environments are hosted in a world class data center and designed specifically for Oracle customers.

Tier1 CEO, Dave Busch, says, “We thoroughly evaluated the build versus buy for our private cloud solution and decided to purchase Oracle’s VCA for a number of reasons: The VCA uses all Oracle products that are pre-configured and wired. It's a turnkey solution. It’s pre-built, and it’s easy to install and configure. We were able to get our virtual computer clients running very smoothly, very quickly.” Additionally, he notes, the VCA was versatile enough to serve their diverse clients’ needs. “Our customers have a lot of different versions and variability in their software and we needed a solution that can help us support all of them.”

The VCA enables rapid, repeatable software-defined infrastructure deployment for virtually any x86 application and workload. It is an easy-to-deploy, integrated system with the flexibility required for cloud computing.

Ed Eichler, COO and VP, Consulting Services for Tier1 Inc., says, "With technology already engineered and integrated together, the VCA allows us to enable our clients to spend more time adding value to their company and less time managing the day-to-day issues that come with supporting their own Oracle environment.”

Cross Match Technologies, Inc., a leading innovator and provider of biometric identity management solutions, went live with the Tier1 Private Oracle Cloud on July 28, 2014. For the Palm Beach Gardens, FL-based company, an affordable, scalable, and highly secure Cloud environment was critical to theirs and their clients’ data-sensitive missions. Cross Match serves governments and law enforcement agencies, as well as businesses throughout the world.

CIO of Cross Match Technologies, Scott Minter explains their thought process, “We decided to use Tier1’s Private Oracle Cloud months ago to fulfill our IT Cloud Strategy: Partner with a cloud provider whom we can trust and rely on for cost-effective, adaptable delivery of business applications and services. Through the ease of our migration, their responsiveness to our needs, and their common sense approach, Tier1 has proven that they are the right partner for us.”

Customers access their software on the Tier1 Private Oracle Cloud through private circuits via a secure site-to-site VPN. They also receive Oracle VM Compute Nodes, Oracle ZFS Storage, and Backup and Disaster Recovery services. Customers bring their own software and licenses, and can run them on Linux, Unix, or Windows platforms.

There are significant cost benefits for the customer. The Tier1 Private Oracle Cloud saves repeated, expensive investments in IT infrastructure like servers, SAN, and network hardware; increased IT staffing retention and costs; and higher power and HVAC bills. Customers also just pay for the space they need and can adjust it as demand changes. Tier1 handles installation, deployment, and management of the Tier1 Private Oracle Cloud – and also provides support for third-party and homegrown applications. Tier1 manages Backup/Restore, Backup/Recovery, and security services.

Busch explains one of the biggest cost savings, which is tied to licensing. “When companies decide to move their business applications to a virtual environment, there are typically licensing issues for the Oracle database. But with the VCA leveraging Oracle's trusted partitions licensing policy, it enables our customers to bring their Oracle Database licenses over and not incur additional license fees.

Additionally, Busch says, the Tier1 Private Oracle Cloud enables the firm to help customers manage their Oracle applications from start-to-finish. “The VCA gives us an opportunity to provide a full lifecycle of services to our customers, not only the managed services but to completely host the applications for them. We own the entire environment and we can manage the entire environment for them.” See more of his interview with Oracle at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0u-mQXx4GM.

Full Press Release available at >>

Scared chickens dont lay eggs

"...People say that having a bunch of unhappy employees doesn't measure the value of company's technology. I completely disagree: Dysfunctional cultures mean high turnover and a lack of consistency in building and deploying products or services. As a boss of mine once said, "Scared chickens don't lay eggs."

Google, Mulesoft, Zoho, and Financial Force top the Glassdoor.com employee satisfaction list, with Financial Force in the No. 1 position. Guess what? They all have very strong and competitive cloud technology offerings.

Working down the list, Salesforce.com comes in with 76 percent of employees who would recommend working there to a friend. Amazon Web Services comes in at 66 percent, Oracle at 65 percent, IBM at 59 percent, Verizon at 52 percent, Hewlett-Packard at 47 percent, and Pivotal Software at 40 percent.

Making people happy is not that hard to do. The challenge is creating an innovative culture that drives productivity and value. I suspect that many cloud technology companies are moving so fast that the stress makes its way down to the worker bees, and as the survey shows, they are not responding positively.

When I first became an executive leader, these sorts of data points didn't mean much to me. However, I quickly learned that what the average employee thinks about the strategy, technology, pay, leadership, and the company culture means a great deal to the success or failure of a company or technology.

Today, I consider such markers when I select technology. You should too. Ask yourself: Is the product or service you're about to commit to coming from scared chickens or happy chickens?.."

Read from the source >> Choosing a cloud provider? Follow the happy employees

Alibaba Cloud is growing

"Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce giant, has a growing cloud computing business and a hunger for American companies. And soon, it will most likely have a large amount of cash. Will it take on the American cloud giants?

"It would be an amazing change from the way cloud computing seems to be developing. Public cloud computing is the rental of infrastructure, like raw computing power and online data storage, and sophisticated applications.

"It is a multibillion-dollar business, expected to grow much bigger, and is currently led by Amazon Web Services, or AWS; Google; and Microsoft Azure. IBM and others also have designs on the market.

"To date, all of the big global players are United States companies.

"In a recent evaluation of the cloud infrastructure business, analysts at the technology research firm Gartner counted 15 companies.

"Just two, Dimension Data and Fujitsu, were not American firms. There was no mention of Alibaba.

"Yet according to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission ahead of Alibaba's proposed public offering, Alibaba had revenue of $102 million from cloud and infrastructure sales last year. That was an increase of 26% from a year earlier. That is not the 50% annual growth seen at AWS, perhaps, but not bad.

"So why isn't Alibaba an international cloud contender? Particularly since, as The New York Times reported last week, it has sunk a fortune in American tech companies. A spokesman for Alibaba, citing the company's quiet period ahead of its IPO, declined to comment on its plans. But people with knowledge of the company said that Alibaba, like other possible Chinese contenders, seemed to have its hands full just handling its China business..."