Blaze Cloud named in Anthill’s ‘SMART 100’ Index

June 12, 2013 11:24 am
MEDIA RELEASEWednesday, 12 June 2013, SYDNEY: Crucial Cloud Hosting’s Blaze Cloud has been named one of Australia’s 100 most innovative products or services, in one of the largest and most audacious innovation awards of its kind in Australia – the Anthill Magazine ‘SMART 100’ Index.Crucial’s Blaze cloud, which utilises the SolidFire all-SSD (Solid State Drive) SAN (Storage Area Network) and OnApp Cloud Management Platform and control panel, has now put control of application performance into the hands of Crucial’s customers. In addition to offering unprecedented application control, Crucial is also able to deliver guaranteed levels of performance, availability and scalability.With the rapid growth of cloud computing and the entry of new players into the Australian market, Crucial is positioning itself as a key player with highly competitive and unique offerings that meet the needs of every customer.For the first time, cloud computing is a viable option for I/O intensive applications or databases that until now have relied on dedicated servers to ensure disk performance. Online retailers and digital agencies can also achieve significant cost savings by scaling up or down their high performance environments for different promotions or as their business needs change.About the Smart 100The SMART 100 Index was created by leading business media channel Anthill Magazine in 2008 to identify and rank Australia’s 100 most innovative products, proving to be one of the largest surveys of its kind in Australia.“In true Anthillian style, the SMART 100 is an ever-evolving, ever-improving experiment,” said Anthill founder and Editor-In-Chief James Tuckerman.“It identifies and ranks new Australian innovations by applying a combination of crowdsourcing, collaboration and common-sense. We employ the judgement of ‘mavens’ and readers.“Unlike your average awards program, we don’t lock a panel of expert adjudicators in a small room. Neither do we demand a thorough analysis of each applicant’s P&L statement. We don’t even request an historical snapshot of ‘runs on the board’ or commercial achievements.“This is because innovation is future focussed. It is about identifying and solving problems in ways that will change the way we live, do business and think.”What is a ‘maven’?Academics have known about the existence of Mavens for many years, claiming they have a particular psychotype. However, it was Malcom Gladwell’s book ‘The Tipping Point’ that really brought attention to this underutilised group in society.Gladwell described Mavens as “those who are intense gatherers of information and impressions, and so are often the first to pick up on new or nascent trends”. ‘Maven’ is a Yiddish word that means, literally, “one who understands”.According to Tuckerman, “The maven’s unique talent is his or her ability to unearth and identify, from all the new products and services available in the marketplace, the innovations that are worth propagating. A maven also generally has the ability to communicate the potential of the innovation to the broader public and, therefore, plays an integral role in the mass take-up of any innovation.“These people have the ability to identify innovations that will meet an important need for the population. The hypothesis is that Mavens will provide a more predictive measure of innovation than mass consumers or, indeed, experts in the field – because they have a unique ability to identify the importance and relevance of an innovation.”What is Anthill Magazine?Anthill was initially launched as a print magazine, in September 2003, by its current editor-in-chief James Tuckerman, who at the age of 26 quit his day job, departing a promising career in corporate PR, to pursue his own entrepreneurial journey.Since then, it has evolved into one of Australia’s leading online communities for Australian business owners, ranked among the Top 50 Business & Finance websites in Australia by Nielsen Online Ratings. It is dedicated to innovation, entrepreneurship and the commercial development of Australian ideas.ENDS

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