Hyperconvergence software developer Maxta joins forces with Red Hat and Intel with the Hyperconverged "(Un)Appliance"-- a pre-configured system bringing together Red Hat and Maxta software running on Intel Data Center Blocks hardware.

According to the three companies, the joint solution brings customers all advantages of appliance-based hypercovergence while sidestepping the disadvantages, namely "there’s no upgrade tax, no refresh tax, no proprietary virtualisation and no VMware tax." As such, the Hyperconverged (Un)Appliance combines storage, networking and servers into a unified server tier able to operate both virtual machines and containers.

Alibaba Cloud, the cloud business of Chinese giant Alibaba, forms a "strategic partnership" with Poland's ABC Data-- one bringing the Alibaba cloud offering to the CEE market.

“We are very pleased to partner with a well-connected local partner such as ABC Data. The partnership marks an exciting step towards our goal of further advancing our technology and expanding our presence to Poland and CEE," Alibaba says. "Alibaba Cloud aims to become the preferred cloud service provider for all size of businesses in the region by providing a full range of cloud solutions and helping them to extend their footprint in China and Asia.”

Microsoft adds further to Windows Admin Centre Preview (version 1808) with improvements to tools and configuration options, including an Apps & Features extension, an updated task scheduler and expanded file sharing support in multiple tools.

The latest release also promises improvements for Azure Site Recovery and Azure Update Management hybrid scenarios. Thus, server settings such as environment variables, remote desktop and RBAC (Role-Based Access Control) settings are available as a standalone tool at the boom of the tool list in the Server Manager. Hyper-V host settings are also available on standalone servers and clusters with Hyper-V enabled, and allow admins to change configurations across all cluster nodes at once, something not possible in previous versions.

Privileged account management (PAM) solution provider Thycotic announces "major" updates to the Secret Server Cloud PAM as a service offering, now with all the capabilities of the on-premises version.

"Given the rising scale and scope of cyber threats targeting privileged accounts, sophisticated PAM has become business-critical for every organisation," the company says.  "With Secret Server Cloud, organizations of every size can now have all the features and capabilities of an enterprise-grade PAM solution, without the management burden or overhead of legacy on-premises tools. Since day one, a primary mission and design principle of Secret Server has been to empower security professionals to easily deploy and manage PAM across their organisation, and Secret Server Cloud is our latest effort in support of this mission."