It is the infrastructural paradigm shift that is sweeping across the Enterprise IT world, but how is it best defined? I refer of course to 'Cloud Computing' - the phenomenon that currently has as many definitions as there are squares on a chess-board. To try and narrow it down we bring here a round-up of some recent attempts to bring welcome precision where there risks being unnecessary vagueness. Enjoy! "What is cloud computing all about? Amazon has coined the word “elasticity” which gives a good idea about the key features: you can scale your infrastructure on demand within minutes or even seconds, instead of days or weeks, thereby avoiding under-utilization (idle servers) and over-utilization (blue screen) of in-house resources. With monitoring and increasing automation of resource provisioning we might one day wake up in a world where we don’t have to care about... (more)

Cloud Computing: A Step in the Right Direction

We all take for granted that our online applications at home will perform the instant we need them. Whether it’s Voice over IP, video on-demand, gaming, or other applications, we have instantaneous, high-speed access, anytime. In this environment, IT managers are now facing the question: “Why can’t you deliver the same quality of service at work that I experience at home?” Despite spending three to five percent of total revenues on computers, software, and IT services, corporations today still are not able to deliver this same level of performance we receive in our homes. To attain this level of speed and reliability, businesses need to shake off the antiquated computing model of the past and learn from today’s leading Web-based service vendors. The Challenges of the Corporate Data Center Despite all the technological changes that have occurred in recent years, corp... (more)

Cloud Computing - Yahoo, HP & Intel Embark on Joint Cloud Research

Yahoo, HP and Intel are going to do cloud research together using a global, multi-data center, open source Cloud Computing Test Bed bigger than anything put together for such a purpose before, they said. The whole testbed could potentially scale to 24,000 cores, 18 terabytes of memory and 9 petabytes of disk, roughly 164 teraFLOPS of power, big enough, the threesome said, for Internet-scale tests, at least tests of short duration. There will be six - God willing always-available - sites: one at each of the vendors and one each at the state-run Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA), the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Germany. Each site - and, remember, academic researchers have lacked the hardware and software infrastructure to support Internet-scale systems software research before - is supposed... (more)

How Do You Qualify Something as Cloud Computing?

Melvin Lancelot's Blog Practically every one with an online business model is now referring to their service as cloud computing - starting from your average Joe hosting firm all the way to the SaaS/S+S vendors, every wants to ride the next buzzword wave, and this distorts the cloud computing term all together. Part of the reason being that historically the term "cloud" loosely referred to anything that’s available online/on the Internet. Ask a bunch of geeks and you would get a different explanation of cloud computing from each person (if you ever asked a bunch of people what Web 2.0 is you know what I mean). So how can we qualify if a service is really leveraging the cloud computing model? That’s a tough question. An easier way to answer this is by first examining the behavior of services provided by some of the well known cloud computing vendors. Lets take Amazon a... (more)

Dell Does Not "Own" Cloud Computing

Although no final determination as to the registrability of the mark has been made, Dell's attempt to register "Cloud Computing" as a trademark has resulted in the US Patent & Trademark Office mailing the company last week what it calls "a non-final action" - namely, a letter from the examining attorney "requesting additional information and/or making an initial refusal." The news has been spreading across the Cloud blogosphere all weekend. In a characteristically analytical and useful post Sam Johnson (pictured) explains the refusal as follows: "First they've argued that 'the applied-for mark merely describes a feature and characteristic of applicant’s services'. A mark is merely descriptive if it describes an ingredient, quality, characteristic, function, feature, purpose or use of the specified services. That is, 'cloud computing' simply describes a type of comp... (more)

The Rise and Rise of Cloud Computing

Phillip Kwik's Blog Cloud computing is an emerging technology in which data – documents, email messages, photographs, etc. – and applications – word processing and spreadsheets, for instance – are stored in cyberspace and not on an individual’s computer. So if you use a web-based email, like Yahoo, Gmail, or Hotmail, or an on-line photo service like Flickr, or a video-posting site like Youtube, you are using cloud computing. According to a recent study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 69% of Americans who are on-line use “cloud computing,” even though most of them don’t know what the term means. Cloud computing is an emerging technology in which data – documents, email messages, photographs, etc. – and applications – word processing and spreadsheets, for instance – are stored in cyberspace and not on an individual’s computer. So if you use a web-based em... (more)

Cloud Computing, the Recession's Silver Lining

Kelly Glynn's LTech Blog It isn’t easy to look on the bright side of an economic crisis. The unstable stock market is provoking widespread talk of “belt-tightening,” and already thousands of people have lost their jobs. However, there is a silver lining for cloud-based services: companies looking to cut IT spending are starting to take notice of Google Apps and other online productivity suites. The relatively new concept of the cloud model makes some organizations wary. Up until recently, risk-averse companies and large established enterprises have seen little reason to ditch their trusted offline office suites and move their entire technical infrastructure onto the internet. But now, the economic recession and subsequent panic are sparking an interest in the lower costs of SaaS suites. The cloud is now appealing to more than just small start-ups who can’t afford M... (more)

Who Has the Industry Lead in Cloud Computing?

Stephen E. Arnold's Blog Google has shifted from solving problems in distributed, massively parallel computing to developing next-generation cloud-centric applications. Google can, with the deployment of software, deliver global services that other companies cannot match in terms of speed of deployment, operation, and enhancement. Cloud computing has become commonplace. Amazon has pumped steroids into the Amazon Web Services product line. Microsoft executives have been providing forecasts of a bold new service offering. Other vendors blasting off from mother earth to loftier realms include IBM, Intel, Rackspace, and other big name firms. One of the most interesting documents I have read in months is a forthcoming technical paper from Microsoft’s Albert Greenberg, Paranta Lahiri, David Maltz, Parveen Patel, and Sudipta Sengupta. The paper is available from the ACM as... (more)

Are Interoperable Cloud Platforms Achievable?

Dare Obasanjo's Blog Although cloud computing vendors are not explicitly trying to lock-in customers to their platform, the fact is that today if a customer has heavily invested in either platform then there isn't a straightforward way for customers to extricate themselves from the platform and switch to another vendor. In addition there is not a competitive marketplace of vendors providing standard/interoperable platforms as there are with email hosting or Web hosting providers. Tim Bray has a thought provoking post on embracing cloud computing entitled Get In the Cloud where he brings up the problem of vendor lock-in. He writes: "Tech Issue · But there are two problems. The small problem is that we haven’t quite figured out the architectural sweet spot for cloud platforms. Is it Amazon’s EC2/S3 “Naked virtual whitebox” model? Is it a Platform-as-a-service flavor... (more)

CapGemini and Amazon sign agreement to sell stuff in the Cloud

Capgemini has announced an agreement signed between Capgemini UK plc and Amazon Web Services, extending its Outsourcing portfolio with cloud computing services. Capgemini's new Center of Excellence, focused on cloud computing, will help its enterprise clients take full advantage of integrating cloud computing into their IT and business strategy. Capgemini's Cloud Computing Center of Excellence will initially have a team of Amazon Web Services-trained professionals located in North America, Europe and India to help clients evaluate and implement Amazon's current offering; this will evolve as other provider's cloud computing capabilities mature. The centre will also offer Cloud Consulting, Development, Migration and Back-up Services. Under the right circumstances, leveraging the fast developing cloud computing market has the potential to create significant value for e... (more)

SYS-CON.TV: Cloud Computing Expo Power Panel

SYS-CON's 4th International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo takes place November 2-4, 2009, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA. View the Conference Main Page Here ! With an ever-increasing number of companies now buying computing, storage, and networking power as they need it from the cloud, SYS-CON.TV recently invited four leading industry thought leaders to discuss how Cloud Computing brings the economics of the Web to Enterprise IT and where the move to the cloud will take the industry overall. The participants are Amazon.com VP & CTO, Werner Vogels; Rackspace CTO, John Engates; Booz Allen Hamilton Principal, Rod Fontecilla; and Sun's CTO of Global Sales & Services, Hal Stern. View SYS-CON.TV's Cloud Computing Power Panel Live from Times Square here. The participants were (left to right, after SYS-CON.TV Host Jeremy Geelan): WERNER VOGELS - VP &... (more)