Rackspace has acquired database firm ObjectRocket to add its NoSQL database-as-a-service (DBaaS) platform to its ever-growing portfolio of cloud computing offerings.

The move will help customers to implement a big data strategy, according to Rackspace, as well as helping to differentiate its offerings from other cloud providers.

With the acquisition expected to close Wednesday, Rackspace said it intends to move quickly to integrate ObjectRocket’s technology with its OpenStack-based open cloud platform in order to make the service available to its customers.

It is set to be up and running from Rackspace’s Chicago datacentre in March, and will roll out to the firm’s other global datacentres throughout the rest of the year.

European datacentre support is expected “sooner rather than later,” Rackspace vice president of technology Nigel Beighton told V3.

ObjectRocket’s platform is based on the MongoDB open-source database, which does not rely on traditional relational database techniques to store and retrieve information, making it a “NoSQL” class of tool.

“Companies are starting to realise that they shouldn’t throw any data away, and instead of worrying about the cost of very expensive proprietary systems, they are now looking at NoSQL and open-source technologies as a very cost-effective way of handling all the data they will ever have,” said Beighton, explaining Rackspace’s reasons for the acquisition.

ObjectRocket built its service from the outset to be able to partition – or “shard” – the database across multiple servers, enabling it to scale easily, while also adding greater resilience and recovery capabilities.

For this reason, it is expected to attract existing MongoDB users who are looking for a way to scale up, or those taking their first steps in the NoSQL world and don’t want to have to build it all themselves.

“If I was creating an e-commerce solution now, I’d really think about using NoSQL for driving the catalogue, for giving a really fast user experience when searching for products, while a relational database would be best for recording purchase transactions,” Beighton said.

Rackspace said that the ObjectRocket service will store data entirely on Solid State Drives (SSDs), with redundancy built-in, and that in tests it delivered a latency of just 2ms, making it 10 times faster than rival database services.

The new platform will also be backed by Rackspace’s Fanatical Support services.

Rackspace has yet to disclose pricing, but Beighton said it would likely be in line with ObjectRocket’s existing licensing structure, which starts at $29 per month for a 1GB shard.

No financial details on the deal were disclosed.

Salesforce has launched a mobile edition of its Service Cloud application with features including chat, co-browsing, communities and touch interfaces for both iOS and Android devices, including the Kindle.

Service Cloud Mobile will help businesses improve the mobile services they offer customers, by giving businesses the ability to interact with their customers in real time, giving answers to customer queries instantly.

“We are doubling down on mobile this year,” Salesforce innovation director Charlie Richey told V3. “This announcement is the launch pad [for] a number of mobile announcements that will follow.

“This isn’t just saying Service Cloud is mobile as we have had mobile capabilities on the Service Cloud before. This is about customer satisfaction and improving customer experiences.”

“Everyone looks first to receive customer service on the mobile devices they carry around with them. We believe they should not have to be on hold, and should not have to look for answers on social networks.”

The co-browsing technology available with Service Cloud Mobile will allow customer service agents to deliver guided assistance to customers on mobile devices via any web browser. Customers may need such assistance when performing complex transactions or trying to set up accounts or resolve issues.

Meanwhile, Service Cloud mobile chat will allow customers to instantly interact with live service agents to quickly resolve issues as they happen, said Salesforce.

A communities feature will allow businesses to provide a single destination for customers needing answers to questions via peers or company experts.

Additionally Salesforce said Service Cloud Touch will allow service agents to easily manage and resolve customer cases on the go with an Amazon Kindle, Android device, iPad or iPhone.

The cloud giant said the release builds on the success of Salesforce Touch, which brings Salesforce Sales Cloud to mobile devices, and the Salesforce Touch Platform, which allows developers to write custom mobile applications once and then deploy them to any device.

One customer that has used Service Cloud Mobile in beta is New Jersey’s public transportation organisation NJ Transit. It said it is now able to give travellers real-time information about their journeys.

However, Richey told V3 that Salesforce had no UK customers using the Mobile Service Cloud in beta that he could reference.

Samsung has unveiled a new service called Knox to let enterprises create and manage a secure container for corporate applications and data on their Android smartphones.

The handset maker last year introduced Samsung for Enterprise (Safe) on its Galaxy S3 smartphone, adding capabilities such as encryption and VPN support in a bid to make its devices more appealing to the corporate market.

Now, Samsung is extending this with the Knox technology in a move to meet the growing bring your own device trend by creating separate container environments for personal and professional use of devices.

The firm said this should remove many of the headaches facing firms dealing with issues of security and data protection. The Knox service will be available on select devices later this year.

Security management vendor Centrify has partnered with Samsung to provide administrator control for the feature via a company’s existing Active Directory infrastructure.

The capability is said to be comparable to the Balance feature on BlackBerry’s new Z10 and Q10 smartphones, potentially making Samsung a rival for BlackBerry in the corporate market.

“It involves making their devices more secure and enterprise-ready, providing cleaner separation between work and play, and Samsung definitely sees an opportunity to go after the enterprise mantle that BlackBerry has historically had,” Centrify chief executive Tom Kemp told V3.

The technology revolves around creating an isolated container on the device, according to Kemp, which can be managed by the IT department, while the user is free to use the handset outside the container for whatever they wish.

“One of the issues with bring your own device (BYOD) in the enterprise is that there’s a big concern about data leakage occurring, and making sure the enterprise stuff stays in the sandbox and doesn’t leak out,” Kemp said.

“If the employee leaves the organisation, IT want to ensure the information is wiped, but the user doesn’t want their personal photos and music deleted as well.”

Google has unveiled a new Chromebook device called the Pixel that is designed to compete with Apple and Microsoft at the top end of the laptop market with a cool £1,049 UK price tag.

The device was unveiled late on Thursday and V3 was one of a handful of UK sites to get its hands on the device. Below are a series of images showing the key dimensions and specifications of the devices.

The device boasts a 3:2 display which Google said is designed to better display pages on the web which are generally designed vertically, rather than adhering to movie formats of 16×9 that are more horizontally framed.

Google said it did away with the markings usually found for ports for design reasons and because most users never actually consult what they are, instead just working out the shapes of what will fit into which holes. This makes sense in a way; most people don’t need these symbols and many other devices don’t include them either.

Google made big boasts about the screen, claiming it was better than anything on the market with a pixel density of 229 pixels per inch (PPI). Here you can see it snapped against a large-screen Macbook Pro, and certainly there’s not much difference between the two, as you can see below (although admittedly, this is far from ideal testing conditions, and we’ll compare it more properly in due course).

When compared to other Windows devices on the market such as a Lenovo X220, you can see the device is not that much larger in general, but far more of its real estate is given to the screen or keyboard units, which is a nice touch as these are far more important than the casing around it.

Speaking of the keyboard, it’s certainly very nice, with deft, responsive keys that are well spaced out and easy to adapt too.

Overall, based on early first impressions, while the price is fairly eye-watering, the Pixel is a lovely piece of design and the touchscreen is very nice to use too. Those unsold by Apple or Microsoft and looking for something at the high-end and confident they’ll always have Wi-Fi access may well be tempted, but the price may well be off-putting for many.

Check back in the coming days for a more thorough review.

21 Feb 2013

The VCE datacentre joint venture formed by Cisco and EMC has unveiled the next wave of its converged infrastructure products, introducing lower-priced mid-range Vblock integrated systems, enhanced management tools and specialised systems for specific applications starting with SAP HANA.

VCE announced the Vblock System 100 for branch office deployments and the Vblock System 200 for mid-sized customers, positioning both of these below the existing Vblock System 300 and 700 series of modules.

Meanwhile, the latter lines have been enhanced with the addition of the Vblock System 320 and 720, which offer three times the performance and three times the scalability of the existing hardware, according to Todd Pavone, VCE’s vice president of product development and strategy.

“Previously, with our enterprise customers, we were selling into the core, but now with the Vblock 100, you can go to the edge, to those remote office locations, while with Vblock 200,we can say to mid-size firms that you can take advantage of the benefits the large enterprise customers been getting,” he said.

VCE’s raison d’être is to offer converged infrastructure to enterprise and cloud computing service providers, combining Cisco network switches and UCS blade servers with EMC VNX storage in pre-built and pre-tested configurations, delivered in racks as modular Vblocks.

Pavone claimed that figures from IDC demonstrate that this architecture delivers five times faster deployment, 83 times better availability and is cost three times less than existing silioed infrastructure.

VCE also introduced Vblock Specialised Systems, versions of the infrastructure optimised for key enterprise applications, with the SAP HANA the first to be delivered.

“We take the app and integrate it for you, certified by SAP, so it is uniquely optimised to architect that workload into Vblock,” said Pavone.

Specialised Systems integrated with other enterprise applications are planned over the next 12 to 18 months, he added.

To simplify management, VCE announced Vision intelligent operations, a single management interface for managing the entire portfolio of Vblock systems and their components, delivering an administrator dashboard for VCE infrastructure.

Vision integrates fully with VMware’s vCentre and vCentre Operations Management Suite, Pavone said plus VCE has an open API and SDK to enable integration with other management platforms, if required.

“We believe this is announcement today represents the foundation for the future, for that end-state datacentre that is predicitive, intelligent and adaptive,” Pavone said.

Vblock System 100 is due to ship in March via VCE and its partners, while Vblock System 200, VCE Vision Intelligent Operations and Vblock Specialised System SAP HANA are all expected early in the second quarter.