Special thanks for the help on this blog to the coolest, most hip group of industry experts that I have ever met: the Pathfinders. The Pathfinders is an elite forces group of master system engineers inside of Dell EMC who tackle our customers’ most difficult and inspiring challenges. I am honored to be part of that club! Suppose an autonomous vehicle learns of a more efficient route and wants sell this knowledge to other autonomous cars for a fee (using blockchain to handle machine to machine transaction). Suppose the autonomous vehicle could start to monetize itself; to self-fund its own operations and the acquisition of goods and services such as gas, repairs or vehicle upgrades (using blockchain to conduct commerce).  Now suppose the autonomous vehicle could couple real-time analytics of vehicle performance and maintenance with real-time bidding for maintenance... (more)

Clouds Are No Substitute for Competence

Just as people begin to understand the difference between web ops and IT, we are entering a period where clouds promise "Ops-Free" computing. Because it’s easy, scalable, available and disposable, the cloud is well on its way to becoming “technology’s next big thing.” However, with recent outages from Amazon and Google Apps, the question of the cloud’s competence, security and reliability have come into play. In this session, Hyperic’s CEO, Javier Soltero will address these issues along with the many others surrounding the cloud including: The emergence of web operations as a discipline How cloud computing simply changes, instead of eliminating the importance of web operations What tools are available to help better manage cloud environments? Sponsor Virtualization Conference & Expo Register Now and Save! Submit Your Speaking Proposal Speaker Bio: Javier Soltero is Co-F... (more)

4th International Cloud Expo: Photo Album

Cloud Computing Expo on Ulitzer SYS-CON's 4th International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo, held on November 2 - 4, 2009, in Santa Clara, attracted more than 40 sponsors with over 2,000 delegates, a record attendance. The three content-packed days emphasized value with a rich array of sessions led by exceptional speakers about the business and technical value of cloud computing. Enjoy here our photo album of the show. Now held three times a year -- in New York, Prague, and Santa Clara -- the Cloud Computing Conference & Expo series is the fastest-growing Enterprise IT event in the past 10 years, devoted to every aspect of delivering massively scalable enterprise IT as a service. The event in Santa Clara, CA, was co-located with our 7th International Virtualization Conference & Expo. Cloud Computing Expo 2010 East to Attract More Than 5,000 Delegates from ... (more)

Cloud Talk with Peter Coffee: What's Next for the Cloud?

Recently I had the pleasure of speaking with Peter Coffee, of eWeek fame.  Peter, as industry veterans may be aware, was eWeek's Technology Editor, and is now Director of Platform Research for Salesforce.com, a leader in cloud computing. Our conversation began with my blatant attempt at gaining insight about Salesforce's strategic roadmap, knowing full well only the CEO can answer those type of questions, but you never know what you can glean from a non-response.  Hey, I gave it a shot. Then the real discussion of our meeting began.  The economic advantages of the cloud computing model, comparisons of lifecycle costs (TCO) of services vs. acquisition + ongoing maintenance costs of legacy business models, costs of delay, and other detractors of legacy business models compared to the benefits of a public cloud offering like Salesforce.com, as well as the insights an... (more)

Yahoo! SVP Shelton Shugar to Discuss Innovation at Cloud Computing Expo

"Accelerating Innovation with Cloud Computing" will be the topic at hand when Shelton Shugar, SVP of Cloud Computing at Yahoo!, delivers his keynote at the 4th International Cloud Computing Expo in Santa Clara, CA. Shugar will deliver his speech on Tuesday, November 3 at at the Santa Clara Convention Center, before 2,000 preregistered delegates. Shelton Shugar, SVP of Cloud Computing at Yahoo! with Jeremy Geelan, Conference Chair of 4th International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo Yahoo aims to be one of the 800-pound gorillas--along with Google, Amazon, and several major technology companies--in the upcoming battles for hosting dominance in the Cloud Computing space. As Shugar noted in the days before his presentation, the company "is developing and utilizing Internet-scale cloud computing services to improve the consumer experience, speed innovation, simplify o... (more)

Cloud Computing: Dell Helps Businesses Reap its Full Value

What do salesforce.com, NetSuite, RightNow, Marketo, Taleo, Zuora, Coupa, NASDAQ and Web MD all have in common? They all rely on Dell Boomi's AtomSphere integration technology. Such leading SaaS players and enterprise customers, says Dell Boomi, rely on AtomSphere "to accelerate time to market, increase sales, and eliminate the headaches associated with integration." When the acquisition was announced in November 2010, Boomi president and CEO Bob Moul called it "a fantastic outcome" for his team, as well as for Boomi's customers and partners. "Dell gives us the global platform to continue to scale Boomi AtomSphere as the leading integration solution in the SaaS and cloud computing industry," Moul commented. From Dell's perspective, the move was one more step in its assembly of a technology portfolio for growing businesses seeking the benefits of web-based computin... (more)

Why Your Business Will Value Data Virtualization

Access to and analysis of complete, high-quality actionable information is the key to effective business decisions making. Data virtualization enables IT to provide business with the information it needs with greater agility and lower costs than traditional data integration approaches and technologies.   As a result, business units in every industry are pushing on IT to adopt data virtualization. How does data virtualization apply to your organization? How will you meet your industry-specific data virtualization needs? Will your data virtualization investments pay off? Data Virtualization Adoption Strategies In What Is Your Strategy for Data Virtualization?, five data integration challenges that data virtualization was capable of solving were identified.  Understanding these challenges and solutions can help guide an enterprise's data virtualization adoption strategy ... (more)

The Encrypted Elephant in the Cloud Room

Anyone who’s been around cryptography for a while understands that secure key management is a critical foundation for any security strategy involving encryption. Back in the day it was SSL, and an entire industry of solutions grew up specifically aimed at protecting the key to the kingdom – the master key. Tamper-resistant hardware devices are still required for some US Federal security standards under the FIPS banner, with specific security protections at the network and software levels providing additional assurance that the ever important key remains safe. In many cases it’s advised that the master key is not even kept on the same premises as the systems that use it. It must be locked up, safely, offsite; transported via a secure briefcase, handcuffed to a security officer and guarded by dire wolves. With very, very big teeth. No, I am not exaggerating. At least ... (more)

Examining Excellent Eucalyptus

Eucalyptus is an open source Infrastructure as a Service cloud offering. What is unique about Eucalyptus is that it is compatible with Amazon AWS APIs. This means that you can: Use Eucalyptus commands to manage Amazon or Eucalyptus instances. Freely move instances between a Eucalyptus private cloud and the Amazon Public cloud to create a hybrid cloud. Eucalyptus leverages operating system virtualization, such as KVM or XEN, to achieve isolation between applications and stacks. Operating system virtualization dedicates CPU and RAM to systems and applications such that they don't interfere with each other. In cloud parlance, this is called isolation and is essential to achieve multi-tenancy. (For a refresher on basic cloud terminology, see here; for a refresher on Infrastructure as a Service, see here). Cloud computing layers on top of operating system virtualization... (more)

Moore’s Law Gives Way to Bezos’s Law

Cloud providers Google, AWS and Microsoft are doing some spring-cleaning - out with the old, in with the new - when it comes to pricing services. With the latest cuts, here's a news flash: There's a new business model driving cloud that is every bit as exponential in growth -- with order of magnitude improvements to pricing -- as Moore's Law has been to computing. Let's call it "Bezos' Law," and go straight to the math Bezos' law is the observation that, over the history of cloud, a unit of computing power price is reduced by 50% approximately every 3 years If Bezos' law reflects reality, most enterprises should dump their datacenters and move to the public cloud. Let's factor in recent events. Google was first to announce "deep" cuts in on-demand instance pricing across the board.  GigaOm's Barb Darrow was quick to capture the excitement: And bam: Google cuts on-dema... (more)

Octoblu's IoT Presentation by Chris Matthieu at Internet Of @ThingsExpo

Internet of @ThingsExpo Early Bird Savings here! There will be 50 billion Internet connected devices by 2020. Today, every manufacturer has a propriety protocol and an app. How do we securely integrate these "things" into our lives and businesses in a way that we can easily control and manage? Even better, how do we integrate these "things" so that they control and manage each other so our lives become more convenient or our businesses become more profitable and/or safe? We have heard that the best interface is no interface. In his session at Internet of @ThingsExpo, Chris Matthieu, Co-Founder & CTO at Octoblu, Inc., will discuss how these devices generate enough data to learn our behaviors and simplify/improve our lives. What if we could connect everything to everything? I'm not only talking about connecting things to things but also systems, cloud services, and pe... (more)