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Here are your top news stories from eWEEK. Today’s topics include Google’s announcement that more than 12 carriers and mobile device makers are supporting its Rich Communication Services messaging app on Android hardware, Red Hat’s updates to Ansible Tower for improved DevOps workflows, Webscale Networks’ introduction of a new cloud web application firewall and the NetApp-Cloudtenna partnership to develop a cloud file service.
Google’s efforts to make Rich Communication Services messaging available more widely on Android devices took another major step forward last week with more than two dozen carriers and mobile device makers agreeing to make the company’s Android Messages the standard messaging app for their subscribers.
The announcement follows Google’s recent news about similar partnerships with Telenor, Sprint and Rogers Communications. It brings to more than 1 billion the number of Android phone users who now have RCS messaging on their devices.
Among the major carriers who committed to preloading Google’s Android Messages RCS app as their native messaging software last week were Deutsche Telekom in Germany, Orange S.A. of France, and Globe Telecom in the Philippines.
Red Hat announced the latest iteration of its Ansible Tower DevOps platform on Feb. 28, providing new workflow and scalability options for enterprises. The Ansible Tower 3.1 release adds multi-playbook workflows as well as additional search and scale-out clustering features.
Justin Nemmers, product manager for Ansible at Red Hat, noted that in addition to the automation engine, the commercial offering of Ansible Tower includes a centralized API, which provides control, knowledge and delegation capabilities to Ansible automated environments.
Among the new features in Ansible Tower 3.1 is a multi-playbook workflow capability that enables organizations to chain multiple sets of disparate actions together. It’s an idea that in networking is commonly referred to as service chaining.
Security vendor Webscale Networks launched its Cloud Web Application Firewall (WAF) service on Feb. 28, providing organizations with features to help defend against online attacks.
The new WAF service is focused on helping to support ecommerce businesses and can be used to enable some requirements needed for Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS) compliance. “Since we’re an ADC (Application Delivery Controller) and sit on the data path, we can see all the sessions and that gives us a lot of insight,” Sonal Puri, CEO of Webscale, told eWEEK.
The core Webscale Networks platform is a cloud-based ADC stack that helps to enable multiple types of web delivery and security functions.
Startup Cloudtenna, the newest member of the NetApp Alliance Program and NetApp itself are combining their technologies to co-develop in intelligent file sharing hardware and software.
Cloudtenna’s DirectShare software, recently validated for use with NetApp Storage, as of Feb. 28 is now bringing new IP in intelligent file share and search to NetApp’s solid state storage packages.
DirectShare uses machine learning to enable smart features on top of the leading enterprise storage technologies. Cloudtenna enables storage platforms to work directly with cloud applications, such as Microsoft Office Online, in addition to other cloud applications. It enables smarter access, search and auditing for file services without migrating sensitive data to third-party services.