cloud

The battle of the cloud OSes begins in earnest

Once upon a time a cottage industry of platform-as-a-service (PaaS) vendors emerged to proclaim the next generation of application development. Bungee Labs (which I advise), Coghead, 3tera, and a range of others each stepped up to provide cloud-based platforms for developing cloud-based applications.

This week, however, each of these independent efforts was put on notice by industry heavyweights VMware, Citrix, and Virtual Iron: We're joining the fray.

James Urquhart calls out the significance of of their entries into the cloud platform market:

The long and the short of it is that we have entered into a new era, in … Read more

VMware VCloud: Channel conflict on the horizon?

VMware's announcement Monday of its new VCloud initiative is an early attempt to offer a more "enterprise-class" cloud offering. Considering that most cloud offerings are based on virtual machine images, it's a smart (and obvious) move by VMware to stake its claim.

To date, the majority of cloud offerings have lacked certain enterprise fundamentals--things like security models, licensing agreements, and so on that are requirements, not accessories. By aligning with hosting providers like Rackspace, VMware starts to offer show some of the enterprise type of attributes we'll eventually see from companies like IBM and … Read more

VMware takes its turn at cloud computing

Virtualization specialist VMware is sticking its head in the clouds, and hoping for sunshine.

The company on Monday opened up its VMworld 2008 conference with a flurry of announcements. Most notably it is aiming to turn its infrastructure products and technologies into what it's calling a Virtual Datacenter Operating System (VDC-OS). Using the data center system, VMware says, businesses will be able to unite servers, storage gear, and other networking resources together into an "on-premise cloud."

Cloud computing has become one of the dominant drives in the IT sector in recent months. It's a loose term, … Read more

MokaFive moving desktop virtualization to iPhone and mobile devices

As virtualization fanatics gear up for VMworld this week in Las Vegas, desktop virtualization will no doubt be among the hottest topics. In the last few months, everyone seems to want a piece of the pie -Sun, HP, Dell, Microsoft are jumping in as desktop virtualization brings in a new technical variable to the quietly reigniting war for desktop domination. Red Hat bought Qumranet this past week for $107 million and immediately went after VMWare.

One company worth checking out if you're heading to the show is Redwood City-based MokaFive. They specialize in mobile desktop virtualization - meaning, you … Read more

Tech experts see a 'cloudy' horizon in Washington

WASHINGTON--Internet users have jumped head-first into the world of cloud computing, but both policy makers and the public have a lot to learn about it, tech experts said Friday.

Cloud computing will "transform how we do computing--and not in 10 years, but in four or five," said Mike Nelson, a visiting professor at Georgetown University's Center for Communication, Culture, and Technology and a former tech policy adviser under the Clinton administration. "This is going to change everything we do with computing, and there are lots of policy implications."

Nelson participated in a panel discussion of … Read more

One problem with the cloud: Obsolescence of applications

ReadWriteWeb lists 10 of its favorite Web applications that have disappeared from the Web. In so doing, it calls out a problem with cloud-based applications that lack an open-source license: once they're gone, they're really gone.

I've mentioned before enterprises that have desperately tried to get their proprietary vendors to open-source their code, only to see the vendors go bankrupt and take their code with them. No, having source code access wouldn't necessarily guarantee an easy future for such customers, but not having the source code ensures that there is no future for the product and … Read more

Cloudonomics--understanding the cost benefits of the Cloud

Trying to figure out if the Cloud is right for your enterprise is a favorite topic of mine. I wrote previously about Joe Weinman, Strategic Solutions Sales VP for AT&T Global Business Services list of 5 questions you should ask yourself about Cloud consumption.

1. Is demand constant? 2. Is growth predictable? 3. Can demand be shaped? 4. Where are the users? 5. Is the application interactive?

Joe is back with a list of The 10 Laws of Cloudonomics. And while I hope the term Cloudonomics dies an immediate death, there are some pearls of wisdome within the … Read more

Private cloud storage at about $1 per GB

There's no question that the cloud provides a conceptually correct approach to large-scale data storage. As opposed to expensive gear from the likes of Sun and NetApp, which require a large capital outlay to get up and running, cloud-based services allow to you scale as you need at a much cheaper rate.

Today, Parascale launched a private beta of their software for cloud storage. You just have to bring your own cloud or have available Linux boxes to run the software on.

The Parascale software appears quite similar to the open-source Eucalyptus project, which favors a node-controlled system with … Read more

Zune's Wi-Fi finally becomes useful!

Update and correction: based on information I received from Microsoft, I mistakenly credited the wrong blog with breaking this news--it was actually first posted by Zunerama. Microsoft has since put out a press release confirming many of the details, including the specific radio metadata formats that are supported by the "Buy from FM" feature.

I'd been briefed on the upcoming Zune update and was supposed to hold my fire until next week, but somebody at Fry's Electronics posted details online, and the bloggers at fan site Zunerama passed them along to the public, although the site … Read more