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FRANKFURT, Germany, June 14, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --

T-Systems join forces with VMware to provide customers with easier, quicker and more manageable access to cloud computing. The companies announced their strategic partnership today at the VMware vForum 2012 in Frankfurt.

On average enterprises have virtualized more than 50 percent of their servers, leading to sizable gains in efficiency and manageability over the past few years. That enterprises are increasingly choosing VMware's virtualization and cloud solutions to realize these benefits speaks to the trust that customers place in VMware cloud infrastructure. Yet the promise of cloud to access IT capacity on-demand without a fixed investment is better fulfilled when a service provider offers the same quality of IT infrastructure in the cloud that enterprises are used to on-premise. The VMware vCloud Datacenter Service to be provided by T-Systems delivers on the hybrid cloud promise, to provide IT infrastructure out of the cloud that has undergone a demanding certification process by VMware. This gives enterprises the confidence to move IT capacity into the cloud easily and without any surprises in terms of portability, compatibility, security, manageability and control. Thus when a customer's data center has reached its capacity limit, or resources for new projects are needed within minutes, T-Systems provides a familiar solution in a hybrid cloud model. T-Systems plans to deliver its VMware vCloud Datacenter Service this fall. It will be based on VMware's award-winning cloud infrastructure suite, including VMware vSphere and VMware vCloud Director.

Into the cloud at the push of a button

"Put simply, enterprises will be able to move the contents of their servers to the T-Systems cloud at the push of a button," said Jrgen Urbanski, Cloud expert at T-Systems and a member of Deutsche Telekom's Cloud Leadership Team. "Internally, we have been using proven VMware technologies for many years. Therefore, we are delighted to announce that we plan to deliver VMware vCloud Datacenter Services. This will help ensure that our joint customers can move seamlessly between on-premise and cloud deployments, with the high standards of security and compliance expected of a German provider," he added.

Deutsche Telekom aims to strengthen its growth with cloud services over the next few years. Closer partnerships with top-tier technology providers like VMware play a crucial part in achieving this aspiration. "Our goals are to make innovations from our community of strategic partners available to customers more quickly, to empower customers through self-service, and to offer customers choice and flexibility by embracing industry-leading standards and cloud APIs," says Urbanski. "Our new VMware vCloud Datacenter Service will be a great example of that."

"We have a long-standing strategic partnership with T-Systems. Starting with the virtualization of the server and client infrastructure, through business-critical applications to setting up a highly automated data center environment, we are delighted that T-Systems is now also expanding the VMware vCloud Datacenter Services network," said Thomas Khlewein, Vice President for VMware CEMEA. "T-Systems understands how a whole mix of factors are changing the nature of IT and running a business: more mobile employees, a host of new devices, applications and data, as well as an increased need for greater flexibility - all while continuing to control costs. T-Systems cloud services help IT organizations master these new challenges, and delivering VMware vCloud Datacenter Services can enable them to successfully become key innovation drivers for their organizations," Khlewein continued.

About Deutsche Telekom

Deutsche Telekom is one of the world's leading integrated telecommunications companies with more than 129 million mobile customers, almost 34 million fixed-network lines and 17-million broadband lines (as of March 31, 2012). The Group provides fixed-network, mobile communications, Internet and IPTV products and services for consumers, and ICT solutions for business and corporate customers. Deutsche Telekom is present in around 50 countries and has over 235,000 employees worldwide. The Group generated revenue of EUR-58.7 billion in the 2011 financial year - over half of it outside Germany (as of December 31, 2011).

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Strategic Partnership for Cloud Computing: T-Systems to Offer Customers VMware vCloud Datacenter Services

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ITenpower Technologies Webhosting, Cloud, Dedicated and Managed Servers! - Video

DALLAS, TX--(Marketwire -06/12/12)- SoftLayer, a leading provider of global, Internet-scale cloud infrastructure, today unveiled its new SoftLayer Private Clouds solution that provisions and configures full private cloud deployments on demand. These scalable, secure and high-performance deployments leverage the company's automated architecture, worldwide data center locations and private network, and customer-controlled infrastructure management system.

"For some time our customers have used our portfolio of dedicated servers, network resources, and virtualization options to build their own private clouds. Now, with SoftLayer Private Clouds, instead of starting at square one, you begin with a pre-configured cloud ready for whatever you want to do with it," said Duke Skarda, Chief Technology Officer for SoftLayer. "We've built our Private Clouds solution out of our experience creating and managing our own cloud, and our unique capabilities in automating sophisticated deployments. At the push of a button you have a dedicated cloud at your command, with full access and control over every aspect, and the ability to scale infinitely, on demand."

SoftLayer Private Clouds streamlines ordering, enabling customers to simply choose the number of physical servers that they need as client hosts and then customize the configuration and resources for those servers as desired. In as few as two hours, SoftLayer's automated provisioning system will have automatically:

Additional features include:

SoftLayer's first Private Clouds solution is built on Citrix CloudPlatform, powered by Apache CloudStack. "We are proud to play a central role in this powerful new cloud-infrastructure-as-a-service," said Peder Ulander, vice president of Citrix. "SoftLayer innovates with solutions that make the cloud more accessible, affordable, and scalable and Apache CloudStack is the perfect match for that goal. The combined solution brings flexibility and ease of use while ensuring the control, efficiency, and scalability that dynamic private clouds require."

"This innovative new offering from SoftLayer is a testament to how they understand customer needs. Customers will benefit from the proven configuration and the speed at which SoftLayer will deliver it," said Bailey Caldwell, RightScale Vice President of Business Development. "We're delighted that RightScale and myCloud are available for cloud management of SoftLayer private clouds -- it's an ideal fit with our existing ability to manage SoftLayer public clouds; now customers can manage both through a single pane of glass."

Availability & Pricing SoftLayer Private Clouds will be available starting August 1, 2012. Pricing starts at $1,218 per-month for a base configuration including one management server, one host server, and associated software licenses.

About SoftLayer TechnologiesHeadquartered in Dallas, SoftLayer operates a global cloud infrastructure platform built for Internet scale. Spanning 13 data centers in the United States, Asia and Europe and a global footprint of network points of presence, SoftLayer's modular architecture provides unparalleled performance and control, with a full-featured API and sophisticated automation controlling a flexible platform that seamlessly spans physical and virtual devices, and a global network for secure, low-latency communications. With 100,000 servers under management, SoftLayer is the largest privately held infrastructure-as-a-service provider in the world with a portfolio of 25,000 leading-edge customers from Web startups to global enterprises. For more information, please visit softlayer.com or call 1.866.398.7638.

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SoftLayer Announces Turnkey Private Clouds

SAN FRANCISCO June 12, 2012 CloudPassage, the leading cloud server security provider, today announces SMS support for GhostPorts, a multi-factor mobile authentication method for its Halo cloud server security platform. GhostPorts SMS provides secure access control for any application on any server in any cloud using any mobile phone as the authentication device, barring the need for any additional authentication infrastructure.

Secure administrative access to public and hybrid cloud servers is an enormous barrier to cloud adoption., While multi-factor authentication is standard practice for securing servers in private datacenters, until now it has been impossible to deploy it in the cloud without expensive and complex infrastructure, said Rand Wacker, vice president of product management at CloudPassage. With Halo GhostPorts SMS, we are eliminating this roadblock with an approach to dynamic network access that is easy to manage and can be implemented quite literally in a matter of minutes.

For secure server access, Halo GhostPorts SMS generates a one-time passcode that authenticates the user and temporarily opens a server management port for only the IP address the user authenticates from. Used in conjunction with existing server authentication, this broadly accepted process for multi-factor authentication provides outstanding server access control. Visible only to authorized users, the server port remains invisible and inaccessible to would-be hackers, worms, malware and other threats. Since the passcode is delivered via SMS to the users mobile device, this approach works on even basic mobile phones and pagers in the United States and internationally.

Halo GhostPorts SMS was specifically built for rapidly securing elastic public and hybrid cloud environments and works on any cloud provider or hosting model, allowing users to secure any cloud server or application. GhostPorts creates dynamic, time-bound firewall rules that open temporary access for authenticated users.

GhostPorts SMS is powered by cloud communications leader Twilio, and was developed with their SMS API. "CloudPassage has built an innovative approach to cloud security, said Twilio Co-founder and CEO Jeff Lawson. "And Twilio is proud to extend CloudPassges capabilities by powering GhostPorts SMS to provide a secure channel that's universal, simple, and flexible.

Security must not only be easy for the company, but also for the individual user, which is why we are focusing on the most convenient authentication form possible the mobile phone, continued Wacker. For those companies with a successful BYOD implementation, this model takes advantage of the phones users already carry with them and are comfortable using, providing a simple and cost-effective path to network security.

Halo GhostPorts SMS can be used with most major Linux and Windows operating systems. Halo GhostPorts also offers an alternative USB key-based approach to two-factor authentication.

Availability

Halo GhostPorts SMS is now available as part of Halo NetSec and Halo Professional. To learn more, and to sign up for the Halo cloud server security platform, visit http://www.cloudpassage.com/ghost.

About CloudPassage CloudPassage is the leading provider of public and private cloud server security and creator of Halo, the industry's first security and compliance platform purpose-built for elastic cloud environments. Halo operates across public, private and hybrid clouds. Industry-leading companies like Foursquare, Avatar New York and Exois trust Halo to seamlessly manage their server security configuration, host-based firewalls, intrusion detection and server account auditing from one system. A feature-rich version of Halo is available for free at http://www.cloudpassage.com/free. Headquartered in San Francisco, Calif., CloudPassage is backed by Benchmark Capital, Tenaya Capital and other leading investors. For more information, please visit http://www.CloudPassage.com.

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CloudPassage Introduces Halo GhostPorts SMS

Amazon is closing in on licensing deals with music labels for its cloud music service, according to CNET.

Amazon has already reached agreements with Universal Music Group and EMI, CNET said, and is in the late stages of negotiations with Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group.

Sony could not be reached for comment; Warner Music Group did not immediately respond to request for confirmation.

The news comes shortly after Amazon released an iPhone and iPod touch version of its Cloud Player app.

Amazon launched its Amazon Cloud Drive, Amazon Cloud Player for Web, and Amazon Cloud Player for Android in March 2011. Cloud Drive allowed users to upload music, e-books, videos, and other digital media onto Amazon's servers, while Cloud Player allowed them to listen to their stored music on mobile devices or the PC.

After the service's release, however, record labels were reportedly irked that Amazon did not secure the proper licenses, but at the time, Amazon said it did not need them. "We don't need a license to store music," Craig Pape, director of music at Amazon, told the New York Times last year. "The functionality is the same as an external hard drive."

When Google released its Google Music service later that year, it said it had deals with more than 1,000 music labels, including Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, and EMI, as well as indie labels, like those from Merlin.

Apple, meanwhile, has licenses for iTunes Match, which allows users to store their entire music library in the cloud, or iCloud, for on-the-go access to music from any iOS device or computerfor $24.99 per year.

Amazon did not immediately respond to request for comment.

For more, see PCMag's reviews of Amazon Cloud Player (for Android), as well as Amazon Cloud Player and Amazon Cloud Drive.

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Report: Amazon Cozying Up to Music Labels to Expand Cloud