In case you missed it, McKinsey released a report entitled “Clearing the air on Cloud Computing” and it is fair to say that its timing is quite apt, as there has been much debate recently in the blogosphere about Cloud Computing, the “buzz”, it value proposition, the economics/financials and most important of all the role virtualisation plays.

With Cloud Computing being such a broad - and dare I say it - vague term, the report overall highlights some interesting areas but at the same time has lots of folks raising questions about the cost models used, areas of focus etc..  

So with all of this, the last 2 weeks have been interesting to say the least, as folks debate whether Cloud is cheaper, IaaS vs PaaS and the role virtualisation and system management tools plays.

Even today, 2 of the big heavyweights have added to the debate

- Google -  Official Google Enterprise Blog: What we talk about when we talk about cloud computing

- Microsoft - 'Private cloud' = just another buzzword for on-premise datacenter?

Cloud Computing definitions and snowflakes have a lot in common, no two are alike.

And this is even before you bring in the discussion of what is multi-tenancy and is virtualisation enough? Or is there more to the value proposition of multi-tenancy and is of a direct benefit to customers as well as SaaS/Cloud Providers – and their tenancy density models, OpEx and CapEx.

More on this later!

/Paul

Wednesday, April 29, 2009 2:30:25 PM UTC |  | Disclaimer | Comments [0] | 

Citrix Joins DMTF Board of Directors

/Paul

Tuesday, April 14, 2009 4:34:00 PM UTC |  | Disclaimer | Comments [0] | 

Since its announcement a year ago, rumours and speculation (for a good review, see link) have been circulating about Google intentions with AppEngine, e.g. see a sample of the blogosphere discussion at Techmeme at the time.

One of the big take aways I had at the time was besides the fact that it was an early preview (only python based etc…), but also that it was focused on targeting the consumer-focused market and not the business applications market.

In the 12 months that have passed alot has changed and Cloud Computing is now the principal lingua franca for all things OnDemand, be it Web2.0 or Business Applications. 

So I find it interesting that Google announces that the second development language and environment that it is going to support on AppEngine is Java! Not PHP or Ruby! It will be interesting to see if Google uses its own custom VM, i.e. a variation of its Dalvik VM.

[update from link : Google’s AppEngine “Java runtime can support any language with a compiler that targets the JVM. In fact, many advanced scenarios work as well - such as libraries that rely on runtime bytecode generation (such as dependency injection frameworks, AOP)”]

And even more interesting, Google has also announced Google SDC (Secure Data Connector), which enables behind the firewall integration with Google AppEngine(/Cloud) , also see link, link and link 

Is Google getting more into Enterprise computing? If you combine the new pricing for AppEngine,  existing SSO functionality and Google Apps (and its reseller programme), it certainly looks possible.

The big questions that seem to remain are SLA (i.e. none exists, as far as I know), marketplace (next logical step, when looking at where Google Apps appears to be going) and production ready ( and hooks up with Android for mobile and netbooks), but I guess the Google I/O conference at the end of May could answer some of these questions.

All of this certainly makes Fabric based Cloud Computing even more interesting, especially as the IT ops and scalability costs are more and more baked into the fabric. If folks like Google and Microsoft can get feature parity with OnPremise offerings - but for an OnDemand context - then folks like Amazon and Salesforce are in an interesting position, from a costs and overheads perspective.

/Paul

Tuesday, April 14, 2009 1:26:33 PM UTC |  | Disclaimer | Comments [0] | 

Just saw that Salesforce’s CloudForce London Content is now available at this link, plus this excellent MarComms video – which I think is very well put together.

/Paul

Tuesday, April 14, 2009 7:30:00 AM UTC |  | Disclaimer | Comments [0] | 

Well yesterday was the day that the Open Cloud Manifesto was officially published so I thought I would follow up on my previous post and share a few links that I found insight.

- Larry Dignan gives an excellent run down of who is in and who is out

Can you have an Open Cloud Manifesto without Amazon, Google, Salesforce and Microsoft?

-  Paul Greenberg provides an insightful review and analysis of the current state of play of the Manifesto

The Open Cloud Initiative: Whats Up With That?

After having a few days to think about the Manifesto, I am still not certain as to what it aims to achieve or could achieve?

This is especially the case as the folks at the Cloud Computing Interoperability Forum pulled out of Monday’s announcement of the Open Cloud Manifesto (also see link) and even more important in my view, the Big Four in Cloud Computing are not involved.  

But ultimately, the single biggest aspect I still do not get is the current list of backers for the manifesto, see link. This is a vastly diverse portfolio of companies with very different offerings and value propositions for different parts of the Solution delivery stack. With all of those different agendas and constituencies could a productive outcome be achieved in a reasonable timeframe?

If you buy into the proposition and thesis that Cloud Computing encompasses, SaaS, PaaS and IaaS, then what common ground can be developed for so many diverse vendors – ranging from chip manufactures to Public Cloud (IaaS) providers to Network Equipment vendors to Application/Platform (SaaS/PaaS) providers to System Management Tool Vendors/Services = outside of what currently exists in the industry via Web Services Interoperability and REST/POX. As for Virtualisation (the core atomic unit in a data center today), already their are efforts in place here, but Citrix, Microsoft, Parallels and Virtual Iron are not backers of the manifesto at the moment.

Maybe this is just a push for a Private Cloud Computing, which right now makes more sense to me , especially considering who is in and who is out at the moment. 

If you look at the list through a OnPremise/MSP/Telco/Managed Hosting/”private cloud” lens, then more of the dots seem to join up and with the aim of Public Cloud Private Cloud “inteop”.

Just a few thoughts!

/Paul

Tuesday, March 31, 2009 2:27:27 PM UTC |  | Disclaimer | Comments [1] | 

For all of the details, go to virtualization.info.

……. and then their was 6…….

Certainly not an early arrival to the game, but their OS Containers are very interesting for certain target scenarios and the more they build out the hypervisor offering the more interesting OS Containers become! Or at least that's how I see it and mileage will vary!

/Paul

Friday, March 27, 2009 9:35:42 PM UTC |  | Disclaimer | Comments [0] | 

[document below via link]

Hopefully the platform wars are not back (also see Techmeme conversation at link),  with the Manifesto below reportedly being backed by IBM, SUN, GOOG amongst others, while MSFT and AMZ are not involved.

Cloud Computing can be a daunting enough concept to navigate, without full on Vendor sports taking place like we had with the SOA Hype cycle. There is some really good stuff in there but seeing through the clouds can be challenging sometimes ;) and ultimately it is very early days yet for standards to form.

/Paul

Open Cloud Manifesto v1.0.9

Friday, March 27, 2009 3:26:00 PM UTC |  | Disclaimer | Comments [2] | 

[via link]

/Paul

Friday, March 20, 2009 9:49:00 AM UTC |  | Disclaimer | Comments [0] | 

[via link]

From the CNet article:

“A small new survey from Nielsen about the five fastest growing "member community destinations" in the U.S. reveals what we all kind of knew already: Twitter is at the top. From February 2008 to February 2009, it clocked in at a whopping 1,382 percent growth rate.”

For me (and being in Ireland), the tipping point was when Irish media (Radio and TV) started to talk more about Social Media as part of their normal flow (i.e. not called out specifically as being social media) and Bebo and MySpace were less called out (if called out at all) – i.e. its only been Facebook and Twitter (in the vast majority of cases) for a while now.

/Paul

Thursday, March 19, 2009 10:21:49 PM UTC |  | Disclaimer | Comments [0] | 

[via Intel’s blog see link]

“You can read the whitepaper online here or download it here.”

/Paul

Thursday, March 19, 2009 9:30:32 PM UTC |  | Disclaimer | Comments [0] | 

Since it took me a little head scratching to figure out where the Session recordings are being posted (Doh!!)  I thought I would share.

Session Videos or alternatively go to this link and look for a like camera icon beside the session title (in the Summary/Abstract view of a session that is below the timetable)

There is a certain bit of irony about this, considering that so much of Mix is about UX and Usability ;) But ‘nough about that, a simple blog post on the main page/site would have done the trick.

/Paul

Thursday, March 19, 2009 9:01:33 PM UTC |  | Disclaimer | Comments [0] |