Reuven Cohen Added as TechStars Cloud Mentor

I'm happy to announce that I've agreed to pitch in as a TechStars Mentor for their new Cloud accelerator program.

For those of you unfamiliar with TechStars, it's the #1 startup accelerator in the world. Not to mention one of the most selective – although thousands of companies apply each year, they only take about ten companies per program. This gives them a selection rate lower than most Ivy League schools, so you have to be among the best of the best to be in TechStar.

TechStars Cloud is a vertically-focused accelerator that funds companies focused exclusively on cloud computing and cloud infrastructure. For me, the more exciting aspect of the TechStars Cloud program is that it's specifically targeting cloud infrastructure startups exclusively. Yes, something I have a bit of experience with.

What do you get? How's $100k cash sound? Oh did I mention it's provided by top venture capital firms including Avalon, DFJ Mercury, Foundry Group, IA Ventures, Right Side Capital, Silicon Valley Bank, SoftBank Capital, DFJ Mercury, RRE, as well as TechStars Alumni and several individuals.

Oh, and thats not all. They're some pretty sweet perks too.

So, do you have a great idea for company, but don't have the funds to get it off the ground? Go ahead and apply for the upcoming Cloud accelerator program (deadline for applications is Oct 21)

Who knows, you might have me as your mentor.  Tell'em @ruv sent ya :)

Talking about The China Cloud

Reuven Cohen is the founder of Enomaly, a cloud services provider. He is also one of the original CloudCamp founders. He travels more than most people I know. And a lot of that travel is to China and the Asia Pacific region. He is one of the first cloud people to start doing business in China and the Asia Pacific region.

 Original link
http://ruv.net/a/zi

Announcing SpotCloud for OpenStack

SpotCloud, the world's best place to buy & sell cloud computing capacity, is happy to announce support for the OpenStack platform.

The open source SpotCloud OpenStack Connector is available for immediate use as a  free Apache-licensed download (http://dl.enomaly.com/spotcloudopenstack). The SpotCloud OpenStack Connector provides an easy and effective way for service providers deploying OpenStack based clouds to sell cloud computing capacity through the global SpotCloud market.

This release represents another step in opening up the SpotCloud market with support for the widest range of cloud services. The SpotCloud market is open to all buyers of cloud computing services through www.spotcloud.com, offering the world’s best pricing and availability for cloud services from service providers on four continents, now including service providers using OpenStack as their cloud platform.

Key facts about the SpotCloud OpenStack Connector:

• The SpotCloud OpenStack Connector easily connects any existing or new OpenStack deployment to SpotCloud

• Through SpotCloud, service providers can choose to sell excess cloud capacity anonymously, and can also offer their fully branded cloud services for sale

• Service providers have full control over how much of their cloud capacity is made available to SpotCloud buyers, what configurations are offered through SpotCloud, and at what price

• SpotCloud provides detailed reporting of all transaction activity and provides payment settlement services in over 80 currencies

• The SpotCloud OpenStack Connector is free open source software, supported and released under the Apache license

Download the free SpotCloud OpenStack Connector today

Curious how SpotCloud works? For a limited time, receive a free credit for cloud services when you sign up as a buyer!

SpotCloud Update - Non-Opaque Provider Branding Options

This is a quick note to let you know that we’ve added an exciting new “Non Opaque” feature for SpotCloud providers. This new branding option for hardware profiles allows you to selectively choose which profiles are made visible under your own company name and logo while allowing other profiles to remain opaque (hidden) to our more then 1200+ registered SpotCloud buyers. 

By promoting your brand, you’ll benefit by attracting buyers who are willing to pay extra for the trust your brand implies.

To enable this feature please login to the SpotCloud dashboard as a provider, then go to the “settings” tab and upload your logo,  your company name and website.

Next go to the “Pricing” tab and edit the profiles you would like to make your brand visible with by selecting the “branding” check box in each profile. Once approved your company, logo and link to your website will be visible to all SpotCloud buyers. You can login as a buyer to see this in action with our example "Enomaly Inc" provider.

Real-time SpotCloud Market Data API Released

One of the most requested additions to the SpotCloud API is the ability to get realtime market data. I'm happy to announce that we've added this to the latest SpotCloud Provider API update V1.2.

These new API calls allow you to adjust your pricing to be based on market conditions or simply see what the most popular locations or instance type are at any given moment giving our providers an extra level of insight into the SpotCloud market.

You can grab the latest API docs from the following locations.

• Provider API - PDF
• Provider API - HTML

Request

GET /api/v1/provider/market.{json|xml}

Response Fields

• average_package_size - The average appliance storage size.
• popular_cpu - A list of popular CPU counts used when creating instances.
• popular_memory - A list of popular memory sizes used when creating instances.
• popular_location - A list of popular geographic locations used to deploy instances.
• average_memory_cost - The current average cost per GB of memory.
• average_cpu_cost - The current average cost per CPU.