|
Sonoa appliance knits APIs and Cloud togetherOctober 15th, 2008 at 1:30 pmSource:TechCrunch When Fuzz launched a microblogging service for music aficionados called Blip.fm last May, no one in the company expected it to rise above the status of an experiment. But before long, Blip.fm’s traffic began to eclipse that of Fuzz’s main site, which provides an altogether different service for bands that want to cultivate their fan base. Fuzz’s attention has now turned primarily to Blip.fm as a result of its popularity, although it will continue to maintain its other service as well. Since May, its developers have added several distinguishing features, such as badges for members who accumulate a horde of followers. The idea behind these badges is to recognize the most popular DJs and identify them for new members. In the same vein, members can also give each other “props” points whenever they like the songs that others have shared.Source:TechCrunch Enterprise IT looks at the emergence of cloud computing with mixed emotions. On the one hand, financial tough times breed layoffs, consolidation, and outsourcing away from IT’s control. On the other, a new breed of cloud-aware managers look to rationalize the metrics, security, and regulation challenges a distributed model brings. In the middle are companies such as Sonoa Systems, who just announced the closing of a $10 million Series C round of funding, led by Third Point Ventures with current investors Norwest Venture Partners, Bay Partners and SAP Ventures. Sonoa sits in the middle of the API party, with a $50,000 box that proxies and manages a company’s cloud computing services. The ServiceNet appliance, or a virtual VMWare image for those who have their own hardware at $30K, lets IT manage customers of a company’s APIs with a single policy management system located at the edge of the enterprise. The product provides a library of out-of-the-box policies for content-based metering, profile-based access control, credential mediation, protocol interoperability, and governance, security, compliance, and audit tools. |
