Business Generation

Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve Chairman, has declared that it has become easier for consumers and businesses to borrow loans as banks are shoring up balance-sheets. Credit Unions have seen significant signs of improvement in several areas.

The improvement in credit lines has led to large companies sell bonds at a historically low interest rate. People with strong credit records can gain access to credit cards and loans. But at the same time there are challenges for small business owners. Some credit-worthy Americans are finding it difficult to secure loans even after offering collateral like their home property.

Bernankes comments have focused on shedding risk from the balance sheets of banks and considerable progress made in this regard. Also, since cash and securities of large banks doubled from 2009 onwards, there are reasons to apply for loans.

Read more…

LOS ANGELES, California—May 3, 2012— The developers behind the open source, scalable distributed storage systemcalled Ceph today announced the launch of a new company, Inktank.  The first company to offer enterprise-level support for Ceph, Inktank is dedicated to helping enterprises leverage Ceph to transform and scale their storage infrastructure.

Ceph is the future of storage—a self-managing, highly scalable, open source distributed storage system that uniquely delivers object storage, block storage, and POSIX-compatible file storage in one unified platform that runs on commodity hardware.

Inktank provides enterprise-grade consulting and support services that help companies efficiently implement and operate the Ceph distributed storage system.  Inktank launches with a core team of passionate Ceph experts to guide the continued transformation of Ceph’s storage platform and galvanize its worldwide developer community.  Leveraging the Inktank team’s deep expertise, enterprises can quickly modernize their storage capabilities and lower IT infrastructure costs by efficiently deploying and managing Ceph’s free, robust, easy-to-administer, and easy-to-scale system.

Inktank’s Sage Weil originally created the Ceph open-source project for his doctoral dissertation at UC Santa Cruz in 2004.  Since then, Ceph has developed into a robust storage platform that tackles enterprises’ biggest storage challenges in the modern era of cloud computing and Big Data.  Ceph has been in the Linux kernel for over two years and is integrated into the OpenStack project.

“Since Ceph’s creation eight years ago, more and more companies have been expressing interest in its ability to transform storage and free companies from the restrictions of expensive, proprietary systems.  However, the lack of professional support for Ceph made it difficult for some enterprises to make the leap—until now,” said Bryan Bogensberger, President and COO of Inktank.  “With Inktank’s Ceph experts providing enterprise-level consulting and support services, even the most demanding companies can adopt Ceph with the confidence that they have the professional support they need every step of the way.”

 “We were an early adopter of Ceph.  We chose it as the block storage device for our OpenStack-based Piston Enterprise OS product, but because there was limited support we had to do the heavy lifting to get it fully integrated,” said Joshua McKenty, CEO and co-founder at Piston Cloud Computing, Inc.  “With the launch of Inktank, I am confident that other companies like us will derive significant benefit from formalized support and services that can help them leverage the full power of Ceph.”

“Ceph is more than just an open-source project; it’s a vibrant, global community of developers working together to solve one of the biggest problems in computing today: truly scalable storage,” said Sage Weil, Chief Architect and CEO at Inktank.  “With the launch of Inktank, the worldwide Ceph community has the resources of an independent company and passionate, talented community at its back to transform and efficiently manage their storage infrastructure.”

Inktank is currently hiring.  To learn more about the employment opportunities at Inktank, please visit . To get involved with the Ceph worldwide developer community, please visit .<

Read more…

A small business survey conducted by TD bank in Florida revealed that many businesses expect to see increased revenue earnings and have stable staffing levels in 2012. Performance of small businesses has gone up as 54 % of small businesses polled said that they met or exceeded revenue earnings in 2011s last quarter.

TD Banks sample of 300 small business owners was spread across Floridas Northeast, Central and Southeast regions. It has been found that 69% of Floridas small businesses expect to exceed revenue projections during first few months of 2012. Many respondents are found happier now compared to previous year. About 53% of company owners feel optimistic about the U.S. economy.

Floridas small business owners have been resilient and upbeat. They will inevitably bolster sales and enjoy success as the economic recovery continues.

Read more…

With immediate cloud computing open positions and job listings on the BizCloud job board , Coit Group, a BizCloud partner offers practical advice to job seekers on creating great resume.

The tips below present six ways to write and improve resumes in an effort to optimize them for today’s machine and human audiences. In recent years, the means by which staffing firms and HR departments have managed hiring and candidate sourcing has changed drastically. With the rise of tools such as Monster, Dice and applicant tracking systems the manner in which resumes are filtered and found is no longer as simple as emailing a resume to an HR professional. Because of this shift, there is a need for candidates to write resumes for two audiences: Machine search engines and human staffing experts. T

Read more…

EASTERN VIRGINIA G. Robert Aston Jr., received the Economic Impact Award from the Economics Club of Hampton Roads. Aston is founder, chairman and CEO of TowneBank. (News release)

Marvin L. Bright, named provost for the Norfolk campus of Tidewater Community College. Michelle W. Woodhouse was named provost for the Portsmouth campus. (Inside Business)

John Broderick, named to the American Association of State Colleges and Universities Council of State Representatives. He is president of Old Dominion University. (News release)

David Chase, named a shareholder of Wall, Einhorn Chernitzer PC. He joined the firm in 2004. (Inside Business)

Eric Cook, Matthew M. Dudley and Joseph P. Moriarty named partners, at the law firm Willcox Savage, Norfolk. (Inside Business)

Diane Carter, named tax director in the Hampton Roads practice of Cherry, Bekaert Holland LLP.

Read more…

There is expansion of business loan program by economic officials of top counties and more pressure has been laid on older community districts. Fort Smallwood and Rivera Beach communities are part of the effort so as to make low interest loans available for revitalizing the economy.

Anne Arundel Economic Development Corp. (AAEDC) has come forward and assigned a staff member to Community Reinvestment Initiative so as to make finances available for equipment purchase, exterior improvement and architectural services.

Supporting small community business is top priority of AAEDC. Its loan fund offers SBA-guaranteed loans up to $300,000 to small business owners. No-interest loans are available to business owners for exterior improvements that include $1,500 worth architectural service. AAEDC has plans to approach County Council so as to amend County Code that will add $100,000 tax credit to the agency as opposed to $50,000 credit.

Read more…