City Network Launches City Cloud in Europe

Company's new cloud computing service enables customers to create virtual servers and scale them up and down as needed with a single click.City Network, a provider of hosting services, today announced the launch of an innovative Cloud Computing service. The new service, called City Cloud, enables customers to create virtual servers and scale them up and down as needed with a single click. The company adds that the service is available immediately to customers, and is the first Cloud Computing service based in Scandinavia.It claims that City Cloud enables customers to pay by the hour rather than investing in their own servers and data centers. The service has a price point starting at about half of competing products, such as Amazon EC2. The company states that the it partnered with Enomaly to create City Cloud, and the service is based on Enomaly's Elastic Computing Platform, Service Provider Edition. City Cloud also leverages its established and robust infrastructure, with multiple power and network providers, dual cooling sources, and 100 percent guaranteed uptime SLA.It explains that it will host the Enomaly ECP cloud computing platform within its Swedish data center, enabling its customers to access and manage any number of virtual servers, running Microsoft Windows, Linux, Solaris, or any other operating system with the software applications of their choice. Customers can access and manage their virtual servers through a web-based dashboard, and can also automatically scale up and down their use of cloud servers through a robust API."Our present and future customers can benefit tremendously from the power and flexibility of Cloud Computing," said Johan Christenson, Chairman of City Network. "We are delighted to offer this innovative and powerful Cloud Computing service, based on Enomaly's platform, as part of our ongoing commitment to innovate and deliver quality services that exceed our customers' highest expectations.""We are delighted to have City Network join the growing number of Service Providers offering cloud computing services based on the Enomaly Elastic Computing Platform", stated Dr. Richard Reiner, CEO of Enomaly. "We believe customers in Sweden will benefit tremendously from having a powerful Cloud Computing service available locally, without trans-border regulatory concerns and the delays of long-distance Internet access."

FireHost Founder and CEO Chris Drake

Carving out a specific niche in the industry as the host that places security as a top concern, FireHost (www.firehost.com) closed its first initial infusion of capital totaling $2 million last month, helping the company quickly expand its IT, sales and marketing team and build out its infrastructure. The funding was also a vote of confidence for the Dallas-based web host's business model, squarely based on the idea that there is a healthy demand for secure hosting solutions.
Since its marketing launch in June 2009, FireHost has been earning revenue at a 40 percent growth rate, quarter over quarter, largely differentiating itself in the managed hosting space based on its a unique and aggressive approach to secure web hosting. It offers clients free web application security scanning, providing small and medium-sized businesses with detailed reporting on website and web application vulnerabilities.
FireHost garnered a lot of attention last summer when reformed hacker Kevin Mitnick came to the company to host his website after it suffered a series of embarrassing, widely publicized hacks. After being dropped by his hosting company and refused by others, FireHost stepped up to the plate, and over eight months, FireHost mitigated nearly 1,500 hack attempts a week on Mitnick's site and has kept him free from attacks.
Just days after announcing its $2 capital infusion, FireHost launched a hosting offering that combines the advantages of dedicated and cloud hosting into an extremely secure and affordable solution for companies of all sizes. Aimed at businesses that need protection from hackers and cybercrime without the expense of hiring their own IT security staff, FireHost's Secure Server options are compliance-ready, and address the needs of small to medium-sized businesses navigating the potential minefields that are e-commerce and healthcare applications.
In an email interview, FireHost founder and chief executive officer Chris Drake explains the FireHost solution, why secure hosting is in real demand, and what is at stake if a client's data is compromised.
WHIR: A lot of people see scalability and on-demand delivery as some of the key benefits of the cloud. How important is the security aspect to your particular clientele?
Chris Drake: Many of our clients come to us AFTER the nightmare experience. Many companies realize, inherently, that security is something that needs to be top priority. Especially those that do Ecommerce, or need to meet compliance standards such as PCI or HIPAA. But what's frightening is the number of businesses that don't believe they would ever be targeted by a hacker. It's this group that the hackers bet on, and go after first. We get new customers every day that are smaller companies, who sincerely never thought it would happen to them. It's a rather emotional service that we end up providing - and the piece of mind it gives customers is priceless.
But here's what unique about the new Secure Server option. It has that great scalability and on-demand delivery that so many companies have come to appreciate. In fact, our Secure Server is more reliable than a standard cloud, which by the way, actually DOES have a ceiling. A lot of companies believe the cloud is infinitely scalable, but talk to one of our customers about the experience she had when her site when down as a result of high traffic from a NY Times article, and you quickly realize that there is a limit.
This solution seems like something that will help SMBs with eCommerce applications, and healthcare organizations that handle patient data online will be interested in. What compliance regulations does FireHost's Secure Server support?
CD: This is a great observation and FireHost has packages designated specifically for these groups. We work with a lot of companies that need to meet PCI and HIPAA compliance. In a lot of ways, Secure Server was designed with these businesses in mind. The majority of Ecommerce, banking and healthcare application companies are paying thousands more than they need to every month because they have to have the powerful security of a dedicated server. What we're doing with Secure Server is giving these companies that that level of security, with the promise that their site will perform well and always be up, and scale. And we're doing it at a much more affordable rate.
Isolation of critical data, it seems, has been one of the major problems with cloud hosting for serious business applications, and there are some situations where businesses don't want their data mingling with others' in a shared cloud environment. Does Secure Server Hosting get around this problem?
CD: Absolutely. We not only isolate the communication between our customers on the network-level with vLANs and the virtualized foundation with VMWare vSheild technology. Our security framework does double-isolation to ensure no data mingling between customers as that's a huge concern for us and our customers.
In what ways does Secure Server Hosting mitigate the threat of DDoS attacks that have taken down high-profile websites across the Internet?
CD: The primary way to mitigate DDoS attacks is to have a bigger internet pipe than the attack. However, no matter how large the pipe the fact is the person that's getting attacked is still down unless protected. We also deploy DDoS mitigation equipment on the edge of our network to ensure the attack victim is also protected. We filter the bad traffic to the network and allow only good traffic.
What do businesses stand to lose if their website is compromised?
CD: Everything. Revenue, customers, vendor relationships and most of all, brand. Not to mention, a company could be looking at a major legal issue if critical customer data is stolen. Look at mberry. They lost revenue and customers while their site was down. They spent a ton of money and time working to get their site back up, every time it was hacked. And they risked severely damaging their brand. Thankfully no customer data was stolen. When your site is hacked, your customers know it and in a day and age of social media when information travels faster than you can catch it, you cannot risk an attack.

NaviSite Joins Cloud Security Alliance

Managed hosting provider NaviSite (www.navisite.com) announced on Wednesday it has joined the Cloud Security Alliance (www.cloudsecurityalliance.org) as a corporate sponsor member to help establish and promote best practices for security in cloud computing.
The move comes just a month after the company unveiled it is shifting its focus away from colocation to concentrate more on hosting, managed services and cloud computing services.
NaviSite will launch its new fully managed cloud services this month with the full-production release slated for a May release.
In joining the organization, NaviSite will support the Cloud Security Alliance's initiatives by working closely with other alliance members to address key security related concerns around adoption of Cloud Computing for enterprise applications.
The Cloud Security Alliance is a non-profit organization that promotes the use of best practices for providing security assurance within cloud computing, and to provide education on the uses of cloud computing to help secure all other forms of computing.
The Cloud Security Alliance is led by a broad organization of industry practitioners, corporations, associations and other key stakeholders.
NaviSite has been managing mission critical, enterprise applications for more than a decade, with a roster of clients including Oracle, PeopleSoft, Siebel, and JD Edwards.
"As cloud computing evolves, NaviSite is excited to be involved in helping set standards and work to develop cloud security best practices," says Denis Martin, chief technology officer at NaviSite. "We are committed to provide best cloud solutions to our customers and being part of CSA will helps us move one step further in our goal."

The good news in the job market is temporary -- as in temporary work. Employment for contingent workers has increased 23% since July, according to the American Staffing Association. Close to 166,000 temp jobs have been added to the payrolls since last summer, reports the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
That’s typical of the job market as the economy emerges from recession. For managers, contracting with temporary workers seems a more prudent choice than taking on full-time staff -- especially with talk of persistent economic woes still in the air.
What’s different about this recovery is that companies, many of which cut staffs to the quick, seem committed to staying flexible in the long term by using contingent workers to manage everything from special projects to whole departments. Moreover, instead of the typists and factory workers who have traditionally populated the ranks of temps, these days you’re likely to be working alongside an engineer, accountant, doctor, lawyer or technology guru.
Companies now spend $425 billion annually on contingent labor, which accounts for about 11% of the workforce, or 14 million people. “We’re seeing much stronger demand for professional skills,” says Joanie Ruge, senior vice-president of Adecco Group North America, a giant temp-staffing agency. “We have 1,500 openings across the U.S. for contract accounting and finance positions.”
Littler Mendelson, a worldwide law firm specializing in labor law, is firmly convinced of the coming contingent-worker revolution. Littler predicts that half of the new workers added in 2010 will be contingent -- enough that soon 25% to 35% of employees in the U.S. will be on finite stints, working project to project or under contract. The possibility that health insurance will become more affordable to those outside traditional employment arrangements could be a big impetus.
It’s getting easier to maintain an upward career trajectory as a contingent worker. Professional connections are easy to make and maintain via electronic networks, such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, and via plain old e-mail. Varied assignments that expose you to different companies stretch your skills. And in addition to the services of traditional staffing agencies, such as Adecco or Manpower Inc., a host of other businesses, such as MBO Partners and BOTH, have sprung up to help people committed to the free-agent lifestyle. These firms provide back-office work such as billing, bookkeeping and tax services; they may also offer group insurance and retirement plans and facilitate collaboration with peers.
For now, though, most people who take on temp work still hope for a permanent offer -- and 20% to 30% of them will likely get one. But a recent survey by the American Staffing Association showed that 25% of temps preferred the autonomy and flexibility of a contingent career, where success depends on your skills and the demand for them instead of on the fortunes of a single company or even an entire industry. Says ASA president Richard Wahlquist: “It’s a different kind of job security.”