Red Hat rolled out something called Cloud Foundations the other day, claiming it put Red Hat in the same league as Microsoft, the only other company with a comprehensive cloud solution. Of course, Microsoft Azure isn't open like Red Hat and God forbid Microsoft can't deliver what's needed down the road and you're stuck, locked in. Cloud Foundations, which is supposed to make "cloud computing consumable for the enterprise," is a bunch of solutions for planning, building and managing Infrastructure-as-a-Service and Platform-as-a-Service private and public clouds: products, implementation cookbooks and reference architectures, professional services and training. It's supposed to mean less risk and simpler implementation, deliver consistency between the data center and public clouds and boost cloud adoption. It's supposed to manage Windows and Red Hat as one cloud and us... (more)

Sun’s Ex-Cloud CTO Finds Home at Cisco

Lew Tucker, who was CTO of Sun's cloud initiative and was pretty much untouched by the cloud-aborting Oracle, has been hired by Cisco as CTO of its cloud effort, a brand new job with broad pull-it-together remit that reports to Cisco CTO Padmasree Warrior and Service Provider Group boss Tony Bates. In a previous life he led the design and implementation of salesforce.com's App Exchange arguably one of the largest cloud computing success stories so far. He thinks networks need to be more programmable. ... (more)

Oracle Surviving Sun Just Fine, Thank You

Oracle doesn't look like it's choking on Sun any. It beat the Street and its own projections Thursday when it reported its fiscal Q4 numbers. Revenue was up 39% and income was up 25%. That translates into a record 46 cents a share on $9.5 billion - 60 cents non-GAAP on expectations of 54 cents - with new software licenses up 14% to $3.1 billion. License updates and product support revenues were up 12% to $3.4 billion. Oracle estimates that Sun reduced its $3.3 billion operating income by approximately $100 million, including $176 million of amortization, and contributed about $40... (more)

Cisco, Ingram Micro Launch Asia's First Unified Computing Center

On Thursday Cisco and Ingram Micro announced the launch of Asia's first Cisco Center for Unified Computing in Singapore. The center will provide Ingram Micro's customers and channel partners with a next-generation data center platform that will accelerate the delivery of new services simply, reliably and with a high degree of security through end-to-end provisioning and migration support. It will also feature technology from APC, CA, Hitachi Data Systems, Intel, Microsoft, Oracle, Symantec, VMware and other partners. As the pioneering solution center in the region, the Cisco Cente... (more)

The Top 250 Players in the Cloud Computing Ecosystem

In the run-up to the two next Cloud Expos, 6th Cloud Expo (June 21–22, 2010) in Prague, Czech Republic and 7th Cloud Expo (November 1–4, 2010) being held at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Silicon Valley, it's time to give my earlier list a complete overhaul. Here, accordingly, is an expanded list of the most active players in the Cloud Ecosystem. I have increased it from the 'mere' 150 I identified back in January of this year, to 250, testimony – as if any were needed! – to the fierce and continuing growth of the "Elastic IT" paradigm throughout the world of enterprise com... (more)