Posted by Ian Howells on Fri, Oct 29, 2010 @ 06:53 PM
The cloud is a once in a decade shift and the acceleration continues with some people speeding ahead and others debating the differences between IaaS and PaaS. Virtualization has become synonymous with the cloud and this week VMware delivered its private cloud vision predicting the world will evolve from virtualised servers to private clouds. Microsoft announced that Windows Server 2008 R2 will now run in the cloud and compared Azure to Amazon though Platform-as-a-Service vs. Infrastructure-as-a-Service. Microsoft also announced the Windows Azure Marketplace - a marketplace for datasets not apps.
Elsewhere research has shown that scalability is a primary priority.
I believe all of these are related. A decade ago there was a major problem with CPU utilisation. VMware has done a great job solving that problem. The cloud provides great benefits in the form of:
- Instant Provisioning
- Unlimited Elastic Expansion
- Automatic High-Availability
- Available form Anywhere
- No Hardware Maintenance
- Support for Disaster Recovery
- Utility Billing
for both CPU and Storage.
My point is elasticity is very important in an unpredictable environment. The number of users Zynga has is very unpredictable and elastic CPU is very valuable. The number of employees an enterprise has is very predictable and the CPU requirements are much, much more predictable. What is unpredictable or temporary for an enterprise is:
- How much content a user will generate
- How many users will hit their external website
- When will Disaster Recovery be required
- How much temporary CPU and storage will be required for BIG Data analysis and for how long
- How much temporary CPU and storage will be required for Staging and Testing
So this week has brought together seemingly diverse stories and positions that are actually intertwined and related. I believe that many users will continue to use virtualization within the enterprise. As the report says scalability is a primary priority and enterprises want instant scalability when they need it, particularly in unpredictable environments. Cloud bursting of CPU will be rare. However, enterprises will tier content into the cloud with instant thin provisioning being the equivalent of cloud bursting. Enterprises will use the public cloud for large datasets and BIG Data analysis where instant storage and CPU is only temporarily required. Testing Staging will also extensively temporarily use the cloud. Customer facing applications in unpredictable industries such as retail or utilities will use the elasticity of cloud CPU.
Backup data centres are the preserve of large companies with large budgets. The public cloud will enable any organisation to have Disaster Recovery. Companies will be able to backup to the cloud and use the cloud as a Disaster Recovery (DR) site. This way they only pay for DR when they need it. Microsoft supporting Windows 2008 R2 is a major step in this direction. Azure will start to be used as a DR cloud in the future. Cloud vendors will need to be certified on this platform to deliver these benefits.
The cloud provides elasticity and elasticity is the path to manage unpredictability of storage, external users and disasters. The cloud provides instant provisioning, both on and off, and that is the path to temporary resource requirements.
Elsewhere studies from KPMG predict that 90% of executives predict their organisations will use cloud-based computing in the next two years. Another survey from ComTIA show cost as a primary driver.
The cloud is here, the cloud is a great solution to unpredictability and temporary usage with hybrid and public clouds being linked to either internal virtualized data centers or private clouds.
What's Happening in the Cloud This Week
VMware’s Private Cloud Computing Vision
VMware predicts your IT infrastructure will evolve from virtualized servers to private clouds, where enterprise apps will be served to any device from the most efficient location.
VMware (VMW) wants people to be able to access enterprise applications with the same ease and flexibility they enjoy from Facebook and Gmail. That is, on any device, without a thought about where the service originated.
But the market for private clouds is nascent, and VMware’s success in it isn’t yet assured, says Charles King, president and principal analyst for IT consultancy Pund-IT.
Virtual Infrastructure Shifts Toward the Cloud
Virtualization is not absolutely necessary for cloud computing, but it does provide the kind of resource efficiencies and dynamic infrastructure that make the cloud worthwhile.
In its recent Cloud 2015 report, Intel identifies a number of key functions that virtual server environments will need to encompass, including widespread automation and "client-aware" capabilities, as well as a much greater capacity to integrate mobile business solutions into broader data environments. All of this should be aimed at supporting massive hosted environments that can deliver services to large numbers of users simultaneously.
Intel is spearheading a new consortium, the Open Data Center Alliance (ODCA), aimed at greater technology federation that would foster interoperability among platforms without compromising performance or security. The group is due out soon with a vendor-agnostic roadmap said to lay out 19 data center usage models consisting of specifications governing things like infrastructure, management, security and government.
Scalability, Not Cloud, More Important to Engineers
Research study of CIOs and engineering VPs shows that scalability is first priority for IT departments. Study also indicates skills and expertise, much more than cost or location, as the most important factor in selecting an outsourcing vendor.
3 Elements of Good Clouds
We in IT finally seem to be getting to work on this whole cloud computing thing, rather than standing around arguing the benefits of private versus public clouds or trying to define elasticity. Good for us, but considering that most organizations have no experience building clouds, I put together a few items that should be a part of the process:
- Loose Coupling
- Governance and Security are systemic
- Testing and Staging
The CIO View and Cloud Economics
Cloud Computing Grows on Execs: Survey
KPMG polled 174 attendees of the Oracle OpenWorld 2010 trade show in September and found that 90 percent of executives predicted their organization would use cloud-based computing in the next two years, while 68 percent of middle manager respondents said the same.
“The survey results reflect wide acceptance of Cloud-based services among executives, who are increasingly recognizing the Cloud's strategic, business value,” said Steve Hill, KPMG's National Innovation Leader, in a press statement. “Those surveyed also said that experimentation will be required to fully understand the value of Cloud-based operations, and this approach, they noted, will bring challenges that need to be addressed.”
Of the executives surveyed, 79 percent viewed cloud computing as a potential means towards cost competitiveness and 74 percent believed that cloud computing could reap long-term economic advantages.
Cloud Computing Adopters Satisfied with Benefits: Survey
Experienced cloud adopters see public cloud solutions as a significant improvement from their traditional on-premises counterparts, and cite the cloud's positive and strategic impact on their business and IT organization, according to a survey commissioned by cloud solution provider Appirio. More than 60 percent of cloud adopters surveyed said cloud solutions are better than on-premises in terms of availability, total cost of ownership, ease of integration, ease of deployment and time to value.
Nearly 40 percent of respondents said they think future cloud adoption will be part of an overall business transformation, and 65 percent said it would be part of an IT transformation. In addition, adopters labeled many of the most common fears about cloud solutions as "misconceptions." Twenty-eight percent of survey respondents listed cloud security as the No. 1 misconception about cloud solutions, with integration challenges (15 percent) and lock-in (13 percent) coming in a distant second and third choice.
Hurtling Down the Cloud Computing Path
Although nobody seems to fully agree on the definition of cloud computing, both IT organizations that consume these services and the IT services companies that provide them are convinced that cloud computing will cut their costs.
A new survey from CompTIA, a trade group representing IT services firms, finds that both IT organization and IT services companies say the primary benefit of cloud computing is lower costs.
Microsoft
Microsoft Puts Windows Server Instances in the Cloud
Microsoft bolstered Windows Azure with several new capabilities today, including the ability to run Windows Server instances on Azure, theoretically making applications portable between the data center and Microsoft cloud platform.
“Windows Azure Virtual Machine Role gives customers the ability to run an instance of Windows Server 2008 R2 running in Microsoft’s cloud, making it easier for developers to move applications to the cloud,” Microsoft said. “Server Application Virtualization gives developers the ability to transfer application images to Windows Azure, harnessing the underlying management capabilities of the platform.”
Microsoft's server boss talks Azure and more (Q&A)
What's the difference between, say, moving your infrastructure to a cloud-based service--whether it's a storage in the cloud service, or virtualization that VMWare offers--versus moving to Azure?
Muglia: With infrastructure as a service, you're still working and managing the environment. You're still thinking about the infrastructure. In particular, you're still managing virtual machines. With platform as a service, you're focusing on the application. And so that really takes all those infrastructural components and handles them for you.
The second big thing is that with infrastructure as a service, you're maintaining that virtual machine image. You're patching it, you're updating it. With platform as a service, we take care of all that for you. And then the third thing with infrastructure as a service, you're still assembling all the other services you need. You're putting them together, you're creating the images, you're deploying it. And with PaaS, the services are -- there's a broad set of services, particularly on Windows Azure.
One of the challenges with the shift to the cloud is making sure businesses even understand these costs and benefits. How does Microsoft talk to businesses about that?
Muglia: Yeah, they're still all deciding that. We had a CIO Summit here about a month ago, and one of the things I talked to CIOs about was that they have some applications that [are] sometimes referred to as context, they provide context to their business. And they're critical applications, but there's no differentiation in them. And those are great candidates to go to software as a service
What is Windows Azure Marketplace
The new Windows Azure Marketplace is designed to match information providers with end users and developers. It's a core aspect of the encompassing Windows Azure platform, arguably one of the most complete cloud offerings available.
A distinguishing aspect of the "DataMarket" service has to be Microsoft'e efforts to make the platform available to developers and the end user.
Data providers in the marketplace provide information that users may immediately access with Microsoft applications.
But the platform is not to be confused with an app environment. It is a data marketplace.
At its launch, the marketplace included 77 data sets across 13 categories from 28 publishers.
Data sets are spit into categories that include entertainment and media; financier; health and wellness; location based services; mathematics; movies and events; news; points of interest; real estate; retail and merchandise; statistics; transportation and navigation as well as weather.
Amazon
Keeping Customers Happy - Another New Elastic Load Balancer Feature
We added SSL support to the Elastic Load Balancer a couple of weeks ago. This met the needs of many of our users, but not all of them. Some of our users wanted to be able to tell if the HTTP requests arriving at their EC2 servers had been transmitted across the Internet using HTTPS. For example:
One question. How will the webservers know the original request came from HTTPS?
We currently add the "X-Forwarded-Proto: https" header when that happens.
As I always do, I passed this feedback along to the proper team for consideration. The "voice of the customer" is highly valued at Amazon, and feedback like this helps us to assign the proper priority to each feature.
I am happy to be able to report that we were able to turn this request around very quickly and I am happy to say that requests processed by newly created Elastic Load Balancers now include two additional headers:
* X-Forwarded-Proto specifies the protocol ("http" or "https") of the original request made to the Elastic Load Balancer.
* X-Forwarded-Port specifies the port of the original request.
The Basics
The Basics of Cloud Computing Explained
Cloud computing is getting mentioned everywhere these days and if you are working in technology or even just interested in it there is a good chance you have heard it mentioned several times. What exactly is cloud computing though? This is cloud computing explained for those not interested in hearing the minuscule details and complexities of cloud systems and their intricate features.
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Microsoft SharePoint Team Blog
Governance is a key component to ensuring the success of your SharePoint 2010 deployment, and one we frequently get asked about it as we travel to conferences and events. Represented by a set of established processes, procedures, and stakeholders, a well designed and implemented governance plan promotes adoption, ensures participation, and maximizes ROI. By using the governance techniques, best practices, and recommendations available below, you can align your policies for using SharePoint 2010 with your culture and goals while still enabling teams and individuals to effectively collaborate and share information.
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Posted by Ian Howells on Fri, Oct 22, 2010 @ 05:45 PM
It has been an interesting week for cloud storage and cloud computing. Interop discussed the cloud and came to the conclusion that "Hybrid Clouds Will Rule", which is a pragmatic approach that most people agree with that dramatically accelerates the time to cloud deployment. Licensing and pricing is one of the most discussed subjects on the cloud. Traditional vendors are fed on upfront license fees of software that often sits on a shelf. IDC discuss this subject and the changes in licensing. When I did my research on this subject it is interesting that software is often licensed to a company to run on premise, as in the old days this protected a company from its software be used at a another unlicensed company. This does not work today. The other premise may be a cloud. Why should you have to buy software a second time just to run it on the cloud? This is part of the reason a hybrid cloud is so attractive - Keep the same software, IT processes and procedures on premise and bring the cloud into your enterprise applications without being forced to move your applications to the cloud (and potentially buy the licenses again).
The Wall Street Journal discussed the Dow Jones VentureWire Top 50 where the leading cloud companies were heavily featured - Cloudera, Eucalyptus, Nimbula and StorSimple. These companies are becoming a common theme in cloud leader polls.
When you talk about the cloud security is always on peoples lips. Forrester discuss the rapid growth of a new category - the cloud security market.
Government continues to be early adopters of the cloud with New York city choosing Microsoft.
Talking of Microsoft, this week they announced Office 365. It is interesting to see the adoption of Outlook/Exchange moving to SaaS more rapidly than other applications such as SharePoint which are often integrated into other enterprise application and processes where the hybrid cloud is more appropriate. Also, as Microsoft say "The Cloud is Invetable" and along those lines Zane Adams talks about a year of Windows Azure.
Have fun reading about this week in cloud storage and cloud computing in more detail...
What's Hot in the Cloud - Cloud Innovations
VentureWire’s FASTech Conference Spotlights Most Promising Start-Ups
According to a Wall Street Journal article, Dow Jones VentureWire examined hundreds of technology startups that have raised venture capital during this challenging economy and chose 50 of the most promising ones to watch. Top venture capitalists, technology experts and Dow Jones editors hand-picked these 50 startups to be featured at Dow Jones VentureWire FASTech, Nov. 3-4 in Redwood City, Calif.
Interop: Hybrid Clouds Will Rule
One of the hottest debates around cloud computing is whether a public cloud or private cloud is the best solution for most organizations. But, according to a panel of experts who spoke Thursday at the Interop IT Conference and Expo in New York City, the majority of businesses will adopt a hybrid approach to the cloud to get the best of both worlds.
The CIO View and Cloud Economics
Forrester: Cloud Computing to Fuel Security Market
A new report from Forrester Research projects the cloud security market will grow to $1.5 billion by 2015 - a shift that will disrupt the "security solution ecosystem."
In a report entitled ‘Security and the Cloud’, Forrester analyst Jonathan Penn predicts that rather than reallocating portions of existing security budgets to the cloud, organizations will allocate money to security within cloud projects – creating “a whole new category of revenue for the security market.”
Cloud Computing Disrupting Software Licensing, Pricing
The move to cloud computing will change the game when it comes to software pricing and licensing models according to a new reportfrom market research firm IDC together with application usage management software provider Flexera Software.
Buzz around the cloud is being replaced quickly with real deployments. And, in response, most software vendors are not taking any chances of losing business in the transition process. Sixty percent believe they’ll need to change and evolve their current licensing models in the next 24 months in order to adapt to cloud computing popularity. Thirty percent think that change will lead to a significant shift in pricing models and strategy, and that includes back-end licensing and entitlement management as well.
- Today, 65 percent of software vendors offer seat and 62 percent offer concurrent user pricing models.
- Enterprises prefer concurrent user models (59 percent) and usage-based models (16 percent).
- Vendors hear the cry for usage-based models, and are responding. Forty-one percent plan to offer usage-based models, while, today, only 22 percent offer it as an option.
- One-third of companies that have or plan on implementing usage-based pricing do not track usage at all.
- Many deployed applications are out of compliance with licensing requirements -- 53 percent of enterprises also responded that at least some of their software license spend is associated with applications that are overused and therefore, out of compliance.
- Another big loss of potential cash is in under-used but overpaid license fees. Eighty-five percent responded that at least some of their software license spend is associated with under-used software, or “shelfware.”
Cloud Computing: Demystifying IaaS, PaaS and SaaS
Cloud Computing has the entire IT industry buzzing, with companies such as Microsoft, IBM, Amazon, Google, and others investing billions of dollars in this new form of computing in recognition of its potential to usher in a new era of responsiveness, effectiveness, and efficiency in IT service delivery. In fact, Gartner recently named Cloud Computing as the second most important technology focus area for IT users in 2010. But what is Cloud Computing exactly?
The Cloud in Government
Microsoft, New York City Ink Licensing, Cloud Computing Deal
New York previously had 40 different licenses for Microsoft products across several different agencies. The Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DoITT) will consolidate that into a single license that will reach about 100,000 city workers and is expected to save approximately $50 million over five years.
About 30,000 of those employees, meanwhile, will have access to Microsoft cloud services. That will allow developers to create city-specific applications that can be used across the board, as well as provide employees with access to Internet-based Office products that will facilitate real-time editing and syncing.
Apps.gov to Begin Offering IaaS Cloud Services
Federal, state, local, and tribal governments will soon have access to cloud-based Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) offerings through the government’s Apps.gov cloud-based services storefront, the General Services Administration said Thursday. The GSA has awarded contracts to 11 applicants, including many of the major players in the cloud computing industry. The companies will need to pass security requirements of the Federal Information Security Management Act, which governs federal cybersecurity requirements.
Microsoft
Zane Adam talks about the first year experience of Microsoft’s PaaS offering
Microsoft launched its Azure platform as a service (PaaS) offering at the beginning of this year.
“All the way from Windows Azure to SQL Azure to AppFabric – the portfolio’s growing. We have over 11,000 customers on the platform already and that’s getting rapid adoption.”
Windows Azure: The Cloud Is Inevitable
Recently I had the pleasure of talking a bit with Sébastien Noël, Sr. Director DPE, Microsoft Central & Eastern Europe about Windows Azure, and Microsoft’s foray into the Cloud.
“At a high level you have three components of Azure. One is Azure itself which is about providing the computing power, storage and management tools.
Then you have SQL Azure, which is the second building block, a relational database, and then you have AppFabric which is an area where you manage the connectivity of your app with other services and access control,” he explained.
Microsoft Goes Deeper into the Cloud with Office 365
In a move meant to keep its Office cash cow earning ever more income, even as the IT world moves towards computing in the cloud, Microsoft introduced a set of cloud-based computing offerings Tuesday that it says are scalable from the smallest to the largest organizations.
Dubbed Microsoft Office 365, the core offering combines Office Web Apps on the client side with Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, and the newly rebranded Lync Online on the back-end -- all on a subscription basis.
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Read about how StorSimple supports a SharePoint hybrid cloud strategy on our new website
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Posted by Ian Howells on Fri, Oct 08, 2010 @ 06:15 PM
It has been a very interesting week for me. I have been talking to a number of analysts, listening to and reading to research on the cloud market space.
Nearly all organisations have a Disaster Recovery (DR) strategy and historically this has been done on tape that is stored offsite. This thing about disasters is that by their nature you can't predict them. One (great) analyst had two great stories about disaster recovery. The first was about 911. At the time the strategy to get a tape to a company quickly was on a plane. Suddenly this disaster meant that a company was down for days as a tape could not be flown to them. The second was Katrina - the tapes were safe but in a flooded mine that could not be accessed. What is important about DR is that you test your processes before a disaster happens and DR testing should be easy and not massively disruptive your organisation.
The cost of cloud storage today makes DR to and from the cloud a no-brainer for many organisations. At the consumer level it makes sense and at the Enterprise level where the volumes are much larger is makes just as much sense. What is key here is also managing security and performance which typically needs a hardware appliance that performs deduplication, tiering, compression and encryption.
The CIO View and Cloud Economics
I was at a TechTarget conference this week. What is interesting is when you look at adoption it is clear most companies will have a hybrid strategy - a mix of public, private and SaaS that is driven by the characteristics of the application and the stage of usage - development, production, DR etc. Enterprises also need to plan for the changes in network traffic and have strategies for minimising WAN traffic and latency.
Cloud computing in the U.S. shows momentum
Among 210 IT executives in U.S. businesses, roughly one-third currently uses only private cloud computing, while another one-third uses both private and public clouds. Roughly 1 in 10 uses only public cloud computing, and almost one-quarter uses no cloud computing option at all.
The key drivers for cloud computing are reducing capital expenditure, reducing costs and driving new capabilities.
Research: Cloud Computing a Prime Opportunity
“Cloud Computing: Pulling Back the Curtain" shows that mid-sized companies are adopting the technology fastest – 64 percent reported involvement with cloud computing compared to 36 percent of small companies and 58 percent of larger firms.
For the most part, respondents are looking to cloud computing technology to reduce their capital expenditures (85 percent) and drive down costs (84 percent). But an impressive 81 percent said they are using cloud computing as a way to add new capabilities not available in current IT models, which suggests an incredible opportunity for solution providers.
The survey, conducted in August by Harris Interactive and sponsored by Novell, indicates that 43% of IT executives with decision-making authority foresee increased use of both public and private cloud platforms in the future. Roughly 29% expect more use of private-cloud platforms, while 5% expect increased use of public clouds. Another 5% have "no plans" regarding use of cloud computing, and 7% said they are not sure.
When asked if the use of cloud computing will increase as current IT platforms need to be replaced, 92% of the IT execs answered either "strongly agree" or "somewhat agree." At the same time, almost 9 in 10 agree that cloud computing will occur alongside, instead of replacing, company-owned data centers.
When asked about possible barriers to adoption of private-cloud computing, 53% said the initial cost is a barrier, and half expressed security concerns as well.
Cloud computing brings drastic changes to IT departments
Since the cloud separates customers from business-critical information, latency and network bottleneck issues can slow down data recovery. The problem can be overcome by upgrades to a businesses broadband network, but adjusting to the potential problem before adopting the cloud is crucial to maintaining production.
Microsoft
The Telegraph had a great article on Cloud Computing and Microsoft discussing this once in a decade shift. Every CxO needs a cloud strategy. Again the US is leading the way and Microsoft is investing $9.5bn in R&D on cloud computing.
Cloud computing: will Microsoft and its rivals find a silver lining?
“The shift to cloud computing is huge. It’s one of those shifts that happen in technology once a decade or so,” said Sarah Friar, an analyst at Goldman Sachs in San Francisco. “It’s not something that anyone of any size can afford to ignore.” And it’s no longer just the preserve of theory, either. It’s shaping strategy in boardrooms, has fuelled the boom in technology deals this year and will help define the technology industry’s next generation of winners and losers.
North America has led the way on spending on cloud computing, accounting for 58pc of total spend this year, according to research firm Gartner, compared with 24pc for western Europe.
The numbers Microsoft gives suggests its bet is a real one. By next year, the Seattle-based company plans to be spending 90pc of its annual $9.5bn research and development budget on cloud computing. It already has a range of web-based software products, including Office Web Apps and Windows Azure, and 70pc of the 40,000 of its staff who work on software are in this field.
Global sales of cloud computing services climbed 21pc to $56.3bn last year, according to Gartner.
The research firm is forecasting that the size of the market will grow to $150bn in 2013.
A recent survey by research firm Vanson Bourne, found that 52pc of companies cited security when explaining why they were steering clear of cloud computing.
But it’s not just about the price. Experts say the ability for companies to radically increase or cut their computing power quickly is attractive, and can generate cost savings of its own. Investment banks, for example, make a surge in demands on their networks when option trades are calculated at the end of each quarter, but that paid-for computing capacity typically lies unused the rest of the time.
Bob Muglia was also interviewed on Microsofts cloud strategy
Q&A: Microsoft's Bob Muglia details cloud strategy
Virtually every customer that we're working with on e-mail is having a conversation about [whether it] is time for them to move those workloads into a cloud service. Many are choosing yes.
When we talk to readers about cloud, management is always an issue; security's always an issue. Can you talk about what Microsoft is doing to address those big worries about cloud computing?
The cloud is kind of a misnomer. It's more like multiple clouds. What is Microsoft doing to drive interoperability and standardization across different cloud platforms to make it easier for customers to bridge them?
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Vertical
Government, Particularly in the US continues to forge ahead
Open Government Vision Continues to Flourish Through Data.gov
Synteractive, a leader in strategy consulting and business solutions, has been tapped to partner in building a new cloud-based dataset hosting solution for Data.gov using Microsoft's technology Windows Azure, SQL Azure, SharePoint 2010, and Bing.
Berkley who wrote one of the seminal papers on the cloud are continuing to invest.
Berkeley Lab Taps Google, Tests Amazon Cloud Services
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is emerging as one of the federal government's leading adopters of cloud computing. The lab is in the final stages of implementing Google Apps; it's testing Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud service; and it's deploying a mega private cloud.
Featured Blog Posts
Ready For Primary Cloud Storage?
Cloud storage has moved out of the experimental mode and into some form of production for many organizations. To date most of the use cases are either to backup data to the cloud or to archive data to the cloud. Now though the move is on to provide leverage the cloud for primary data storage. If successful it could change the way many businesses buy storage.
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Posted by Ian Howells on Fri, Oct 01, 2010 @ 07:05 PM
StorSimple hit the headlines earlier this month as Mayfield Fund, the original investor in 3PAR led the $13m series B funding in StorSimple. Storsimple made news in Fortune Magazine, The New York Times, Xconomy, VentureBeat, The Silicon Valley Business Journal and the mega blog GigaOM.
Since then StorSimple has been named as one of the 7 Hot Cloud Computing Innovations in and article by Jeff Vance of Datamation
Mike Vizard at CTOEdge has written about The Coming of Application-Aware Cloud Storage featuring StorSimple.
Om Malik of GigaOM has written about the valuations of the hot companies of cloud computing - StorSimple, RightScale and Eucalyptus and Big Data - Aster Data, Cloudera
Cloud Startup Values Are Getting Insane
Chris Nemey in Tech Business Today continued the theme talking about StorSimple, Eucalyptus and Aster data
The stratospheric rise of cloud computing valuations
Ben Kepes in Business Week talked about how StorSimple Gives Some Context to Cloud Storage
Cloud Computing, Cloud Storage and Big Data is hot and the hot new leaders are emerging - StorSimple, RightScale and Eucalyptus and Big Data - Aster Data, Cloudera
People are starting to realize the power of application optimized storage and why you need it. Without it you have dumb BLOB storage - just in the cloud. My colleague Joel Christner wrote a great article How is tiering different than caching?
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Posted by Ian Howells on Fri, Oct 01, 2010 @ 05:09 PM
Cloud computing and cloud storage continue to be hot topics. The Oracle,sSalesforce soap opera that we discussed last week has continued. Larry Ellison contends virtualization is an essential component of the cloud and, by that measure, Salesforce.com fails, while Oracle's Exalogic Elastic Cloud wins.
Salesforce Challenges Oracle CEO's Cloud Account
On a more important note the specifics about what hot cloud innovations there are was discussed in Information Week and CTOEdge
What's Hot in the Cloud - Cloud Innovations
7 Hot Cloud Computing Innovations
Despite a dismal economy, analysts continue to be bullish on cloud computing. A few recent studies project continued momentum for cloud computing, which according to IDC, should soon “reach 12% of the size of traditional IT product spending, [while representing] over 25% of the net-new growth in traditional IT products.” IDC predicts that worldwide revenue from public IT cloud services, which exceeded $16 billion in 2009, will grow to nearly $56 billion in 2014.
Many of those on-premise applications benefit from features such as collaboration and remote access, which has led to hybrid clouds. “Hybrid clouds have, in many instances, become the information gateway to the public cloud, while allowing users to preserve the legacy core,” said Chris Weitz, Director of Deloitte Consulting.
- Displacing the laptop with smartphones and tablets
- Mobilizing surveillance
- Moving gaming - all video gaming - online
- Making MMO gaming truly trivial
- Smoothing the transition with cloud gateways
- Pushing the cloud envelope with “Sky Computing
- Scaling in response to viral marketing success
The Coming of Application-Aware Cloud Storage
One of the challenges with cloud computing storage is that most of the services out there are not particularly aware of any given application. For example, to use the Amazon cloud storage service, your organization needs to first integrate its applications with a custom application programming interface from Amazon. For that reason, we’re seeing the emergence of application-aware storage services in the cloud.
The CIO View and Cloud Economics
Cloud computing 'taken up by half of CIOs'
CIO.com's eighth annual Global Information Security Survey took responses from almost 13,000 business and technology executives across the world to come up with its findings.
It discovered that 49 per cent of those questioned have some form of cloud computing offering in use at their company.
How cloud computing can improve your operations and bottom line
IT experts at The Gartner Group have predicted that cloud computing usage will triple over the next three years.
The discussed to the top reasons to move to the cloud:
- Ease and Convenience
- Ability to roam
- Economics
- Reliability
- Flexibility
- Cash Utilization
The Cloud in Government
Government continues to power ahead with its use of cloud computing
US State migrating to Microsoft’s Cloud offering
The use of Cloud Computing in the United States public sector has continued to gain traction, with confirmation the Midwest State of Minnesota is to take its communication and collaboration activities into the Cloud through a deal signed with Microsoft.
Government Bodies Embrace Cloud Computing
Ed Bugnion, CTO for the Server Access and Virtualization Business Unit at Cisco, certainly got it right when he predicted that the adoption of cloud computing within the enterprise could well be led by the government and not the corporate sector. Today, many government entities are leading the way in cloud adoption.
Microsoft
A Look Into How The Microsoft Cloud Is Taking Shape
Another clue as to Microsoft's future in the cloud lies in the Codename "Dallas" product which according to the official site is "a new service allowing developers and information workers to easily discover, purchase, and manage premium data subscriptions in the Windows Azure platform".
Featured Blog Posts
The Wisdom of Clouds
The series basically breaks down the effect of virtualization and cloud computing on IT operations, and looks at how those changes affect data center operators, developers and end users, respectively.
How is tiering different than caching?
One such difference is whether the device performs "caching" or "tiering". On the surface, many people think "aren't these the same thing?". While they seem to perform a similar function, they are in fact quite different technologies.
Caching is the function of retaining a copy of information in a smaller yet faster repository than its terminal storage. Caching is everywhere - from your processor to the controller of your traditional storage system - and it's not necessarily a bad thing. However, in the context of cloud storage, it may not be the appropriate architecture.
Caches operate fundamentally in one of two modes of operation: write-through, or write-back.
The cloud has taken off.
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