CA, the IT management software maker, is becoming an aggressive player in the cloud computing arena.

Observers are noting that the company’s third cloud-related acquisition, of a firm called 3Tera, which developed cloud computing technology AppLogic, will help CA make it easier for customers to move to cloud environments. (CA announced its intended purchase last week.)

And interestingly enough, a story I read said that the purchase will “put the company in a good position to later sell its management products designed to monitor and control services in the cloud.”

“The most interesting thing about 3Tera is their ability to give both service providers and enterprises a way to take existing applications and bring them to private and public cloud environments via an elegant interface,” said Jay Fry, vice president of business unit strategy for CA, in the piece. “The process used to be done very manually, but AppLogic automates it and smoothes that transition.”

This is the third cloud-based acquisition by CA, which bought automation vendor Cassatt last summer and Oblicore earlier this year.

Industry observers generally think that the Oblicore purchase means that CA is more committed to bringing the cloud into more mainstream service management disciplines, for example, SLMs. And CA’s purchase of Cassatt boosted CA’s own data center management and automation products, applicable for cloud management services.

What do I think? It certainly looks like CA is gearing up to become a full-service cloud computing company, especially after creating its Cloud Products and Solutions business unit. This new level of aggressiveness is increasing the level of competition among cloud services providers of all kinds.

Generally, competition is a good thing! It leads to lower prices and better services – at least according to Capitalism 101 textbooks. But we’ll have to wait and see how well CA takes up tasks such as cloud monitoring – considering the growing capabilities of its competitors.

Hewlett-Packard on February 24^th opened an advanced collaborative research lab in Singapore to support its growing cloud business – what it calls its “Everything as a Service” vision.

“Our new lab in Singapore is a key component of the transformation strategy put in motion less than three years ago to accelerate our pace of technology transfer and bring a variety of advancements to market,” said Prith Banerjee, senior vice president, Research, and director, HP Labs, in a press release. “HP Labs Singapore aligns very closely with HP’s strategic growth areas and significantly expands the resources we bring to bear on our customers’ biggest opportunities and challenges.”

Officially known as HP Labs Singapore, the facility will focus on a range of projects that aim to re-examine data center and application design principles in order to explore how future cloud computing needs will be met, said the release.

HP plans for the lab to work closely with customers, partners, HP business divisions and schools to generate advancements that will drive research for cloud development. And HP expects its customers to capitalize on this shift to a service-based infrastructure model using developments from HP Labs Singapore.

The new lab will collaborate with other key cloud initiatives already underway at other HP Labs sites, including the Service Automation and Integration Lab (SAIL) in Palo Alto, CA., and the Automated Infrastructure Lab (AIL) in Bristol, UK.

HP’s intention is that, together, the three labs will work on its vision for creating an enterprise cloud software platform – dubbed Cirious. As part of that project, HP has partnered with:

– Intel, Yahoo! and the Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) of Singapore to create a global, multi-data center, open source test bed for the advancement of cloud computing research and education. IDA houses one of nine test bed locations worldwide.

– SingTel – to form Singapore’s largest commercial grid services platform. It’s called Alatum, and it offers a variety of computing power, storage and software applications on a pay-per-use, on-demand and online basis.

HP Labs Singapore is the company’s third research facility in the Asia/Pacific region and its seventh worldwide

Of course, HP isn’t the only one building data centers and research facilities around the world dedicated to cloud computing and development. It’s good to see that healthy competition in this area is further driving hunger and interest for cloud computing – and that, in turn, lifts all the cloud service provider boats in this giant industry.

If you’re familiar with Citrix Online, you know they’ve got a suite of SaaS and cloud-based applications that enable companies to do things like arrange on-the-spot meetings online (GoToMeeting). Another example: Consumers and business travelers can use Citrix Online to access their home or office computers (GoToMyPC).

Now, it looks like Citrix has a new service, GoToManage. In January, it bought Menlo Park, CA-based IT management vendor Paglo Labs, which offers a cloud search engine for IT and logs. This enables users and managed service providers to capture and store logs and search and analyze them in the cloud by collecting data from networked devices.

While I don’t usually write about competitors (Paglo lets businesses monitor servers and applications in real time and manage network usage and track configuration changes), I think it’s interesting that Citrix Online continues to recognize the growing need among companies to monitor and manage their cloud databases, apps, servers and networks.

Citrix Online introduced GoToAssist, Web-based remote support, about 10 years ago. To cater to individuals and small businesses, it created GoToAssist Express last year. But GoToManage gives GoToAssist customers new capabilities.

“This is exactly what is needed if you have distributed infrastructure,” said Brian de Haaff, Paglo’s CEO, in a story about the new service. With GoToManage, “MSPs and IT consultants can get a unified view of multiple companies’ IT infrastructures and offer proactive monitoring and alerting, while also offering remote access, file transfer capabilities and customer branding and reports.”

I also found it interesting that Citrix Online surveyed its customers and more than 60% wanted some form of monitoring solution.

Good news for the cloud. Profits were way up in Q4 2009 for Salesforce.com. And that positive news would seem to answer the lingering question that many in the business world have about the cloud: Can I trust a third party to store my proprietary business data on the web?

According to a report in a tech stock publication that I read, the cloud computing pioneer posted a 48% surge in profits, to $20.4 million, or 16 cents per share. Revenues climbed 22%, to $354 million. Apparently that performance beat what Wall Street was expecting: 15 cents per share and $342.3 million in revenues.

And incredibly, Salesforce.com attracted 4,600 new customers during the quarter, for a total of 72,500.

While this is yet another example of how well cloud services companies are faring (such as our own good fortune here at Monitis during 2009), there’s some bitter-sweetness in Salesforce’s good fortune. It’s going to get harder to pump out strong growth, as the company’s revenue base increases. That’s why Salesforce feels it necessary to keep enhancing with features such as social media capabilities.

I’ve no doubt we’ll see more growth from this amazing company, and from cloud industries, in general.

Some good news on the issue of security in the cloud.

First, CA, Inc., has just joined the Cloud Security Alliance as a corporate member to help establish and promote best practices for security in cloud computing. The CSA is a non-profit organization formed to promote 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.

In a release from the company, CA said it will work “with enterprise customers and cloud service providers to securely adopt and deliver cloud services.” The company offers several products to maintain security for customers, including a menu of identity and access management technologies.

CA’s long-standing involvement in developing security computing features should be a great asset to the CSA, and I congratulate the company on its involvement in CSA.

On another front, there’s a study that I found that shows that small- and medium-sized companies can increase their security by using cloud services, despite some risks. The study exploring the security risks of cloud computing comes from the Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology (SIT). It not only gives an overview of prices and functions offered by major cloud providers, but it also lays out in detail the risk assessments for various use cases.

The study asks such questions as:

• What happens when a cloud service fails?
• Who guarantees that company secrets are secure on the external servers used in cloud computing?
• Which security risks evolve when a cloud service subcontractor accesses the cloud systems?
• Is a company’s data truly destroyed after deletion?

“Almost every large cloud service provider had an incident in the past in the areas of availability or security,” says Werner Streitberger, one of the study’s authors. “The current offerings in cloud services show that, especially in the area of infrastructure, a number of security technologies have been applied already.” But Streitberger says that “cloud providers have not yet advanced the support of security technologies as much in the areas of architecture, management and compliance.”

Small and mid-sized companies are at an advantage here because “they can obtain security solutions as a service from a specialized provider and, thus, benefit from the provider’s experience in the implementation and running of secure services,” says Streitberger.

Indeed, companies can protect themselves with advanced solutions running 24/7 from anywhere in the world that monitor their data safety, the performance of cloud providers, even customers’ experiences on their websites.

The study also recommends that companies, especially large firms, look over SLAs microscopically – to ensure that the rights and duties between the cloud provider and user are clearly spelled out. “The current customary agreements only provide minimal warranty for the quality of service for the cloud. Security guarantees exist rudimentarily and the functions necessary for the guarantees are insufficiently documented by the cloud provider,” says the study.

I can tell you this from talking day to day with companies looking to give their web businesses an edge: they are not happy with the technology that’s supporting their sites during all-important peak traffic periods, for instance during the holiday season or a special promotion.

How unhappy? I read about a recent survey that said nearly three-quarters of online shoppers experienced poor performance during peak periods compared to other times. And of those:

• 72% reported slower websites
• 58% reported errors on web pages
• and more than half said they couldn’t complete their transactions

Whether you’re selling widgets to other businesses or lipstick to consumers, these numbers aren’t good. You want your site to run smoothly especially during peak traffic periods. It’s a given that’ll run like clockwork during normal or slow traffic periods.

What’s worse, the survey said that more than three-quarters who had problems abandoned a site for a competitor, and then most (88%) wouldn’t return, after a bad experience. And what’s even more worrisome, given how powerful social media tools can make or break a product, service or company these days, look at these findings:

After a poor experience…

• Nearly half left feeling negative about the company
• 42% discussed it either with friends or online

My advice to website owners is to be prepared for peak times to avoid losing customers, and use available tools to test performance, such as load testing. Monitis’ WebLoadTester uses cloud computing power for instant web applications and network testing. At your request, WebLoadTester is able to simulate a large number of virtual visitors, each with their own unique user name/login and task.  On Demand WebLoadTester helps ensure that your site’s web pages will continue to work at peak performance when many visitors come. 

Heavy user traffic is never a bad thing, unless your web system is under too much stress.  WebLoadTester will help you determine how your system responds to that traffic.  You can use the service at any time, day or night, to ensure that your websites and applications are ready for an army of visitors – whenever they arrive.

San Jose, CA – February 25, 2010 – Monitis, the leading provider of affordable, easy-to-use, 100% Cloud-based, network and systems monitoring solutions, today announced that it has opened yet another front in its battle to save IT managers’ time - it has integrated its Universal Cloud Monitoring Framework with GoGrid’s cloud services, thereby enabling massive time savings for GoGrid’s customers.

Monitis’ Universal Cloud Monitoring Framework automates monitoring in highly dynamic cloud environments, where customers’ servers may be added and terminated according to the load by management software or manually.

Given this dynamism, setting up end-user experience monitoring can become a tedious, resource intensive, and error-prone process. Monitis’ Universal Cloud Monitoring Framework automates the configuration of external monitoring and server monitoring tools every time a new installation is called for - saving IT managers and system administrators around the world enormous time and hassle.

In addition to saving IT managers’ time, Monitis’ Universal Cloud Monitoring Framework gives users the confidence that comes from using a 3rd party tool to monitor Cloud infrastructure in an independent manner.  Even when Cloud computing providers provide some sort of monitoring, there is an inherent conflict of interest – as they are keen to show higher uptime. By providing a customized, independent audit of SLAs (service level agreements), Monitis’ Universal Cloud Monitoring Framework increases the credibility of Cloud computing providers claims, which ultimately benefits both users and the industry, as a whole.

Monitis already provides this service for Amazon and Rackspace clients, but with the addition of GoGrid, it now provides 3rd-party SLA verification for the industry’s top 3 cloud hosting providers. Said Monitis’ Founder and CEO, Hovhannes Avoyan, “In the pursuit of saving IT managers massive amounts of time, no one is even close to offering what we do. Our new partnership with GoGrid will continue to cement our lead as the new industry standard in Cloud monitoring.”

I read in BusinessWeek that Microsoft business software president Stephen Elop expects the giant’s launch of Office 2010 in June, which will include a cloud-based version, to pump up revenue and profit.

I quote: “In that cloud environment, we are not only selling them [cutomers] software but we are also saying, ‘We’ll take care of your networking, your hardware, your operations, your customer support.’ “We’re doing much more work for the customer. What that does is increases revenue and allows us to participate in more profit.”

But Bob Evans of InformationWeek raises some important questions and injects a bit of doubt into Elop’s sunny scenario. Bob says: “Rational? Absolutely. Likely to happen? Maybe, and maybe not.

His theory is that, of course, it could happen if Microsoft can package enough value and flexibility into its cloud pricing model so that its huge base of Office users “decides that the transition costs for switching to Google Apps are prohibitive.”

So Microsoft’s big challenge is to set its prices not so much to grow revenue at a remarkable rate, but instead to allow customers to lower their cost of IT. But if Google continues to aggressively innovate with new products and price them competitively, that could put a serious crimp in the number of large clients that Microsoft is hoping to be the boosters of its cloud-based revenue.

Plus, who knows what kind of business collaborations that offer enhanced cloud services, such as transaction and platform monitoring services, will form in the future? That could add a bit of complexity to Microsoft’s business plan – and Google’s, too, for that matter.

Says Bob: “As we’ve seen repeatedly during other tectonic shifts in the technology business, the status quo rarely survives and it’s pretty much impossible to project a steady-state future. So while Elop’s expectation that more work for enterprise customers will logically mean more revenue and profit for Microsoft, I contend that his plan looks a whole lot better on paper here in February than it will when the cloud version of Office 2010 hits the market in four months.”

Well, I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what Microsoft’s new suite looks like, and how businesses and end-users take to it, too. Will it be more robust, more dependable and easier to use than Google’s apps? And will it be strong enough to withstand potential new competition from constantly evolving and innovating cloud players?

Last week San Antonio-TX-based Rackspace introduced a new cloud computing program for its 1,500 global partners.

The new cloud partner program will be different from other Rackspace partner programs – managed hosting and Email & Apps – as there will be a different compensation structure offered to partners.

Rackspace’s cloud partner program is for two types of partners: affiliates and resellers. Affiliates will earn 5% of customers’ monthly spend on cloud computing for three years and commissions start during the first month of active billing. Meanwhile, Rackspace reseller partners buy cloud hosting services and resell them to customers and generate profits from customer fees.

“Initially, we’re treating this as a separate partner program,” Fuller said, in a story. Rackspace e-mailed current partners information on the cloud partner program on February 18th, containing a link to sign up and to access additional details.

It looks like Rackspace was motivated to create the new partner cloud platform due to rising revenue from the technology. In the fourth quarter, Rackspace reported overall revenue of $169.5 million, an increase of more than 4% from the previous quarter and up more than 18% from fourth-quarter 2009.

In particular, cloud computing generated great business for Rackspace. In the fourth quarter, computing revenue rose to $17.1 million, up from $15.3 million in the third quarter. For the whole year, cloud revenue skyrocketed nearly 125% — to $56.4 million, according to the company.

Glad to see expanding choices for companies that want to offer customers cloud services, and even more pleased to read that Rackspace’s revenue is derived more and more from cloud computing. That’s a trend we’ve been experiencing here at Monitis, too, as more and more firms migrate to the cloud and look for independent services to monitor performance and reliability of hosting services.

San Jose, CA – February 19, 2010 – Monitis, the leading provider of 100% Cloud-based network and systems monitoring solutions, today announced the deployment of another monitoring node, this time in the Netherlands. This brings to 9 the number of Monitis monitoring nodes available worldwide, and the third in Europe along with the UK and Germany. This is in addition to Monitis’ exclusive ability to offer IT managers nodes from custom locations of their choosing.

What makes Monitis’ nodes so unique is their True One-Minute Monitoring. This means that each of Monitis’ 9 nodes is monitoring a client’s site every minute. This is not the case with most other companies that claim to offer one-minute monitoring, but instead only monitor once minute from one individual location, not from all of their nodes. If a monitoring service is offering 100 nodes, each node is typically only activated once every 100 minutes.

Hovhannes Avoyan, Monitis’ Founder and CEO, commented, “The Netherlands is of strategic importance for us, as so much of the European IT industry is based there. With this node and the others soon to be deployed across Europe, Monitis’ True One-Minute Monitoring is changing the game and setting a new standard.”

About Monitis All-in-One Monitoring Platform

Monitis is a 100% Cloud-based, complete, and flexible IT monitoring solution which consolidates backend, application, and cloud monitoring in an all-in-one, central monitoring service. The platform is easily customizable and may be used for managing of all kinds of IT assets such as websites, servers, routers, switches, VoIP devices, DNS, databases, processes and any other IP devices.  Monitis provides users with a comprehensive view of their system’s health and performance.

About Monitis

Monitis believes that the Cloud is the biggest thing to happen in IT management since IT management. Having seen this vision early, Monitis is now the global leader in developing this market.  It is the first affordable network and systems monitoring solution based 100% in the Cloud.  More than 50,000 customers from small businesses to Fortune 500 companies to government agencies and educational institutions have chosen Monitis to reduce system downtime, improve the productivity of their IT staff, and reduce operational expenditures.

Monitis was founded in 2005 by a team of seasoned entrepreneurs and fed-up and worn-out developers who were tired of complaining about the limits of software-based tools, while inspired by the promise of the Cloud.  Headquartered in San Jose, CA, Monitis is lead by a team of IT professionals with deep experience running enterprise-grade IT businesses, as well as starting and selling several IT start-ups.  Using a global workforce, particularly its R&D team based in Yerevan, Armenia, Monitis is poised to move from strength to strength.  At present, it has a loyal and enthusiastic user community of 50,000, and an average month-on-month revenue growth of over 12%.