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Oracle Buys Sun. Now does Larry buy into the cloud?

It’s the biggest news of the day, at least in the world of tech, if not business. Oracle has agreed to buy Sun Microsystems for $7.4 billion. You can read the press release from Sun to get the official details.

It is definitely an aggressive move by Oracle and one that sees them grab the crown jewels of Java, MySQL, and Solaris. It gives them many ways to play the game, with core assets to entice big enterprise customers, as well as, new ways to approach small and medium-sized businesses.

Although, Larry Ellison has scoffed at the definition of cloud computing, that’s not the same as dismissing the concept itself. If anything, he’s simply said, “Hey, wait, haven’t we been doing this all along?”

Well, not quite. But, clearly he gets that the technology and the thinking is here today. It’s a matter of evolving it a bit further, packaging it up right, and wrapping it in some standards. And, then, keeping it open. None of which will be easy. Yet, all of which is something the industry is moving towards and that customers, developers, and vendors appear to be quite interested in exploring and adopting.

Therefore, the move by Oracle may also be seen as a confirmation that cloud computing is the next legitimate wave of computing. By acquiring the core assets of Sun, it can now think about packaging the pieces and offering them as a true utility. As Larry said: “”Oracle will be the only company that can engineer an integrated system – applications to disk – where all the pieces fit and work together so customers do not have to do it themselves.”

What better way to offer that integrated systems than via the cloud?

Finally, Oracle has the resources to invest in such things, while they continue to print money from their database franchise. It’s a shrewd, timely move, from one of the best operators in the game. With this move, Larry Ellison has made it clear that he intends to lead the next wave of computing by fighting it out with all challengers. It looks like the oracle has spoken.

Hey, hey, You, you: Get off of my cloud

So, McKinsey & Company came out with a report, “Clearing the Air On Cloud Computing,” that throws–at first blush–cold water on the benefits of cloud computing. McKinsey is a world-class consulting firm and their analysts certainly have earned the right to be listened to. Of course, that doesn’t mean they’re always right. It just means they’ve done some thinking on the subject and have drawn some conclusions from it.

If anything, the biggest splash of cold water they toss is that there’s a heck of a lot of hype around cloud computing. So much so, that it’s all a bit of “irrational exuberance”. Therefore, we should proceed with caution. After that dose of reality (as if we needed reminding), they then report, essentially, that cloud computing is no replacement for your data center. That it’s simply not cost effective.

Gee, really? That conclusion, in its own way, is a kind of anti-hype. I’ve not come across anyone saying cloud computing will replace an enterprise’s data center. Far from it. But, cloud computing sure can augment IT, and thus, the business broadly speaking.

McKinsey seems to be countering the benefits of cloud computing with a straight line examination of the price of compute cycles via Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). Well, that tells a very small part of the story.

As John Foley states, in article, Cloud Computing Gets A Much-Needed Reality Check, “Here’s the flaw in McKinsey’s argument: Few if any major corporations are looking to replace their data centers with a cloud…The more likely scenario, and the one that’s playing out, is that companies of all sizes will use cloud computing to supplement their own IT infrastructures.”

Yeah, like I said: there’s hype on both sides of the argument. To  me,  it makes perfect sense for Fortune 500 companies, as well as, small and medium-sized businesses, to explore cloud computing rather than continuing to throw resources at existing problems and, or, struggle as they try to spin up resources for new projects. A balance is what’s needed. That’s all most of those on the pro-cloud side of the argument have been suggesting.

While, McKinsey’s report is great for debate and offers a counterpoint to all the positive news stories, it should be read just as critically–even if they’ve got a lot of brains and experience going for them. In the end, cloud computing is part of the business and IT equation. It doesn’t solve it completely. But, that was never really the intent.

Managing and Monitoring Cloud Services

An area of concern that comes up when talking about the merits of cloud computing has to do with monitoring and managing cloud services. There is a perception that doing so in the cloud is far more difficult than within the four walls of the data center.

Well, there are some real-world examples that turn that perception on its head. Robert Scheier, in his InfoWorld article, Can IT manage the cloud? These CTOs can, dissects the issues surrounding it by looking at how the choices one makes depends, in part, on the cloud model itself (i.e. software, infrastructure, platform), as well as, the availability of third-party tools (often open source), and the critical issue of data security.

For example, when it comes to software as a service, “you don’t have to trust the vendors’ reports to assess whether they deliver the service promised. IT pros can use anything from simple network-sniffing tools to open source monitoring software and enterprise-class management systems to see what they’re getting from the Web.”

On the other hand, when it comes to infrastructure as a service, where customers may have the greatest management needs, one “should ideally use “the same agents, the same tools, the same configuration, and management tools” as in their own datacenters to simplify and standardize administration, says Joseph Tobolski, a partner at Accenture Technology Labs. While there isn’t universal integration between such tools and the cloud service providers’ APIs, he expects such integration “pretty soon” because of the need for “some sort of control of the cloud.”

The following real-world examples show how IT pros are managing and monitoring their cloud services.

• OmniPresence, which sells videoconferencing and teleconferencing equipment and services, uses the Zenoss family of management software to monitor the equipment and services it provides to customers.

• For Agora Games, it was critical to have root-level access to the 60 to 70 virtual servers it runs at cloud provider Terremark Worldwide. Using Terremark’s cloud computing environment, Agora Games can just as easily manipulate their virtual servers as if they were in-house or at a collocation facility. A test environment for a new game can be built, then easily cloned for production, and then removed when the popularity of the game fades.

• Pathwork Diagnostics uses Amazon.com’s EC2 infrastructure to meet big spikes in demand for computing power whenever it acquires specimens of various types of tumors and must race competitors to create tests to detect those tumors. Pathwork only needs to monitor the virtual “compute units” it is using, as well as the amount of memory allocated to each, says Zoran Popovic, a senior software engineer. To do that, he uses Unix open source tools for both jobs.

• Dreambuilder Investments has built its key business applications on Salesforce.com’s Force.com platform, and it relies on cloud services from other vendors for its backup, accounting software, and even PBX, The company has built a few simple tools to monitor the quality of its Web connections, but it usually relies on the CRM giant to keep its applications running and provide updates on their health.

Of course, one of the biggest issues businesses face when considering cloud computing is data security. “For example, Agora could encrypt the data on each server but doesn’t, because of the likely drag on performance. The fact he has root-level control of each server means “we can prevent anyone else from getting access to the data,” says Brian Corrigan, CTO of Agora.

Moreover, “a number of other IT managers say that the use of virtualization and open source monitoring tools lets them do just as good a job, if not better, monitoring and managing virtual machines in the cloud as equipment in-house or in a collocation facility.”

So, what have we learned? Well, for one, you need to think strategically about what applications and services can be moved into the cloud. Secondly, you need to consider skill sets, whether it’s mission critical, and the needs of the business. Yet, the bottom line is that managing and monitoring cloud services can be done, often “easier than in a brick-and-mortar, in-house datacenter.” This is definitely evidence that, when done right, cloud computing can live up to its promise in terms of cost, flexibility, and speed.

The Case for Private Clouds

There has been a lot of recent discussion, debate, and, even some derision when it comes to private clouds — a way to create a cloud-like environment within the walls of the enterprise. The benefits of a private cloud are analogous to public ones (i.e. economic, scale, speed, portability, etc.) with an added level of control and security.

While a private cloud architecture, as Charles Babcock writes in his InformationWeek article, Why ‘Private Cloud’ Computing Is Real — And Worth Considering, “looks deceptively familiar…[it] represent[s] a convergence of tech trends holding great promise for enterprise computing.” He goes on to add: “Private clouds are a more powerful combination of modular commodity hardware that can be sliced and diced into many small pieces, with networking and storage that can be dynamically allocated through preset policies.”

Both he and James Urquhart have noted that we’ve seen this before. As Urquhart explains in his blog, The argument for private clouds, “The Internet itself had the intranet: the use of HTTP and TCP/IP protocols to deliver linked content to an audience through a browser. The result was a disruptive technology similar to its public counterpart but limited in scope to each individual enterprise.” Eventually, TCP/IP became the standard that replaced proprietary networks and the Internet began to function as an extension of corporate networks.

Most likely, Babcock goes on to say, data centers will be built to look and act like  public clouds such as Amazon EC2, based on standards which will then increase portability between public and private clouds. This gives rise to the term “hybrid-clouds” and that concept, in turn, provides another set of obstacles that need to be overcome. But, these can be overcome because of the ability to run a private cloud in conjunction with public ones.

In summary, according to Babcock,  the benefits of private clouds are:

• Better resource allocation and greater flexibility to match spikes in traffic with resources on-the-fly
• Reduced overhead due to commodity x86 servers and virtualization allow the data center to be managed as a unit
• Private clouds help IT teams get ready for private-public hybrid clouds in the future data center

In addition, you may want to check out the following articles and blogs:

GE Puts ‘Private’ Cloud Computing To The Test: It’s starting a three-year effort aimed at better efficiency and flexibility.

New Tools For Private Clouds: Startups offer intriguing options for building private clouds.

Private Clouds: Even A Blind Squirrel Finds A Nut Once In A While

The Importance of Infrastructure

When we talk about cloud computing we can define it across three levels: software as a service (SaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), and infrastructure as a service (IaaS). Each level has it’s own unique properties, value proposition, and implementation. Often the consumers of these services move between them. Each is critical in its own way. That is, the things that make up the service are relevant even if they are hidden or abstracted “in the cloud”.

So it is with the infrastructure components of the cloud. James Urquhart, writing for CNET in his blog, posed the (rehtorical) question: “The new cloud infrastructure: Do you care?” Well, according to James, you’d better. Here’s why: “What is happening in data center infrastructure is a complete rethinking of the architectures utilized to deliver online services, from the overall data center architectures all the way down to the very components that serve the “big four” elements of the data center: facilities, servers, storage, and networking.”

He then describes how Cisco’s Unified Computing System, Rackable Systems‘ CloudRack C2, and Google are changing the very fabric of infrastructure to meet the needs of services in the cloud. And, therefore, “whether you are a technologist or a business manager” you need to understand how infrastructure and the data center are changing because your service — your value and the revenue that goes with it — are dependent upon it. He also asks, “What I wonder is if (when?) the large cloud vendors will begin to fork their infrastructure designs as they gain more and more control over the data centers that host global IT.” Then he closes with a call for standards, as I have previously argued, to minimize risk and to ensure the evolution of the cloud.

I’d also like to point to Chris Hoff’s blog post, Does Cloud Infrastructure Matter? You Bet Your Ass(ets) It Does! because he’s written articles similar to James’ and because it give more evidence to the fact that infrastructure, while sometimes (usually?) not very sexy, it is still quite critical. You may want to check out Chris’ related blogs on this topic: The Cloud is a Fickcle Mistress and Cloud Catastrophes (Cloudtasophes?) Caused by Clueless Caretakers?

Amazon: Putting the Cloud to Work

Amazon just rolled out new features for Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS), which “is the quiet workhorse behind many of the highly scalable applications running on Amazon EC2. The new features, announced on the AWS blog, include availability within the EU region, control of access permissions, and more control over visibility timeout. So, instances of Amazon SQS can now be either based in Europe or they can span regions to provide geographic diversity. Then new permission features will now provide an even greater level of control at both the higher and lower levels of access. As Amazon states, “with this new permission system you can now use Amazon SQS queues to connect non-AWS applications to AWS applications and to connect AWS applications from different organizations.”

The Amazon Web Services team also released a new white paper: Creating HIPAA-Compliant Medical Data Applications with Amazon Web Services. The white paper explains on how to encrypt and protect data within the AWS cloud and focuses on The Privacy Rule and The Security Rule of HIPAA. You can download it from here.

Finally, AWS team also announced a new webinar on Amazon Flexible Payments Service (FPS). Amazon FPS allows “customers to complete payment transactions on your website or application using the information in their Amazon.com account.” It has API level access, giving the user greater flexibility in the monetization of their assets. The webinar takes place on Tuesday, April 14 and. Register here.

Google App Engine: Delivering a More Robust Platform

Google announced a new version of Google App Engine with “its goal of making Google’s scalable infrastructure available to all developers – from those in startups to those working in enterprise IT departments.” New features and benefits include:

• Cron support – developers gain the flexibility to run tasks on a regular basis, without the need for labor intensive monitoring and maintenance
• Database import and export – batch transfer gigabytes of data into App Engine using a new import tool; with export capabilities next month.
• Access to firewalled data – a new tool called Secure Data Connetor, that is targeted at enterprise developers, enabling centrally-managed access to on-premise data from Google Apps™, including App Engine- and gadget-based solutions.
• App Engine’s early look at Java language support includes a Java runtime, integration with the new Google Web Toolkit 1.6, and Google Plugin for Eclipse.

You can find out a little more by visiting the Google Blog. Or, better yet, you can get more detail on this announcement (and a look back at the past year) by checking out their Campfire One video.

Kicking the Week Off

James Urquhart has some interesting things to say about the different approaches that Amazon and Cloudera are taking with the Hadoop implementation of MapReduce and summarizes it as the “Internal cloud’s big test“. By comparing and contrasting the offerings, he thinks over time we’ll “finally have reasonable means of watching which directions enterprise IT prefers.”

David Linthicum recently presented “Winning with Cloud Computing…Step-by-Step” at the Cloud Computing Expo. As he says, “My larger concern is that there is so much hype in the cloud computing space that those looking to implement cloud computing ignore the fact that we’re in essence extending the architecture to outside platforms, nothing much more than that. Thus, architecture is still the focus.” Some live blogging was done as David gate his presentation and you can read it here.

In the hoopla over the Open Cloud Manifesto, let’s not forget that the Cloud Security Alliance was recently formed to promote best practices in cloud computing. However, as NetworkWorld reported “it will not seek to define standards”. The alliance, with fouding members eBay and ING, will be launched at the RSA conference later in the month.

Other news worth noting:

Deutsche Post Spin-Off to Bring Eclispse App Development to the Cloud

NetSuite talks up integration with Salesforce.com

Longjump puts SaaS inside IT shops: Provider says customers who are not yet ready to all-in with cloud computing can now control cloud functions themselves.

Big Data Gets a Boost from Amazon and Jaspersoft

Amazon Web Services has launched a public beta of Amazon Elastic MapReduce, a web service that enables the processing of vast amounts of data utilizing the Hadoop framework. It runs on Amazon EC2 and Amazon S3. The benefits of Amazon Elastic MapReduce include easier and less time-consuming set-up and affordability. MapReduce is a software framework created by Google to more efficiently handle large data sets. Hadoop is the open source version of it. (For more detail check out the Wikipedia entry on it.) Amazon Elastic MapReduce puts the technology in the hands of more organizations by lowering the barrier to entry. A company can now “instantly provision as much or as little capacity as you like to perform data-intensive tasks for distributed applications such as web indexing, data mining, log file analysis, machine learning, financial analysis, scientific simulation, and bioinformatics research.” It’s already being used by Netflix, among others.

Jaspersoft announced v3.5 of its business intelligence suite. It’s the industry’s first SaaS-enabled, multi-tenant BI platform. The new version promises “integrated data analysis for simple, powerful slicing and dicing of data” and “enhanced scalability for large deployments and data sets.” Jaspersoft says they have more than 50 customers, have incorporated their solution into their SaaS products. The company feels these new SaaS-enabled features make it far more easy for application vendors and enterprises to incorporate BI functionality into their solutions, rather than trying to “roll their own”.

The Perfect Storm Will Fundamentally Change Enterprise IT

If desperation is the mother of invention and experimentation, then get ready for a fundamental shift in the way businesses look at enterprise applications and IT. As we head into 2009 with global economy grinding slowly down, and the world’s largest economy poised for a deep recession, the only questions left are how painful will it be, how long will it last, and how different will the IT landscape look?

The perfect storm will result in a dramatic change in the way businesses consume and implement technology. Open source software (OSS) and software-as-a-service (SaaS) will break-through in a big way, as the vendors of these offerings better match the economic value proposition with the long-term viability of their solutions. As “movements” both OSS and SaaS have come a long way towards establishing strong positions in the areas of flexibility, speed, and customization, while underlining the value of community support. These are major coups. But they’re made all the more valuable by the economic crisis.

Here’s a summary of the most interesting stories on this front:

Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation, says technologies such as Linux and open-source software can help enterprises cut costs during tough economic times. Zemlin says users should look to open source and Linux, systems management tools, and virtualization technology to keep budgets in line. Read more here.

Another eWeek blogger notes, “the end result of all this freezing of capital expense spending has been an increase in interest in software-as-a-service applications that can be paid for as an operating expense and open source software that is mostly free.” Alfresco Software says they’ve seen quarter-over-quarter revenue growth between 50-100%. xTuple executives, meanwhile, say the number of downloads they’ve seen for there ERP software that runs on top of the PostgreSQL database has moved past 170,000.

I found this article regarding Leo Apotheker’s recent admission that SAP would slow down the roll out of it’s SaaS offering called SAP Business ByDesign “because of fears over what the impact this product would have on the company’s profit margins” testament to my call that 2009 will indeed by transformational. And I use that term quite broadly.

Finally, a note of caution is sounded in this article for open source vendors that they shouldn’t get ahead of themselves. It’s still about end user customers. Open source vendors have to be vigilant and proactive: “don’t pretend that just because no one asks for something it’s not something they want. Sometimes the greatest and most pressing needs go unarticulated precisely because they’re so huge.”

The Latest News from Amazon, Sun, HP, and IBM

I thought I’d highlight some of the more interesting news items from the last week and then give a short summary about what these announcements portend for the year ahead.

Amazon announced the public beta of Amazon CloudFront, a new web service for content delivery. With it you can distribute content using a worldwide network of edge locations that provide low latency and high data transfer speeds. Just like other Amazon Web Service (AWS) offerings, CloudFront is self-service with no up-front commitments, no long-term contracts, and works on a pay-as-you-go pricing scheme. Pretty cool.

I also thought it was pretty cool and just in the nick of time that Sun Microsystems announced a major coup with the Wikimedia Foundation. The announcement describes how Sun will help Wikimedia build a secure and scalable open source web infrastructure using Sun Fire x4500 and x4150 servers and Sun StorageTek storage arrays. The collaboration will enable Wikimedia to host ever-increasing volumes of rich media and video content and also support the collaborative development and testing of new Wikipedia content and applications by its global network of users. Good news and good timing indeed.

HP’s Critical Facilities Services division is focused on building energy-efficient datacenters or retrofitting existing ones. HP bought EYP Mission Critical Facilities, a consulting firm, last year after they jointly worked on a project to consolidate 85 datacenters around the globe into just six. In a new InfoWorld article, Bill Kosik, managing principal of the new HP division, talks about the nuts and bolts of datacenter efficiency and the impact of targeting power distribution systems. As he says, “It’s not sexy stuff, but it makes a big difference.” Also, HP announced their Green Business Technology initiative, which aims to help businesses cut costs and triple datacenter capacity with new energy-efficient technologies and services. It may not be sexy, but judging from HP’s most recent financial results, it sure helps the bottom line.

Finally, IBM launched a new services offering in the cloud computing arena. Combining consulting and implementation services, IBM hopes to dispel concerns over security and reliability with services that help businesses assess the total cost of ownership, as well as, design and implement cloud computing operations. IBM also announced a new program called “Resilient Cloud Validation,” which will enable vendors of cloud computing solutions to undergo a certification process to gain an IBM stamp of approval and a logo mark to prove it. I know what you’re thinking. But, it’s a step in the right direction and as IBM invests more in the cloud, as the saying goes, all boats will rise.

So, add it all up and what do you get? Well, I think despite all the doom and gloom, what we’re seeing is the responsiveness of the technology industry. It’s the constant push forward despite the difficult odds and a tired constituency. There’s good news in here for everyone. Cloud computing is getting more viable every day. Better systems are rolled out and implemented in web-based infrastructures that drive efficiency in cost and flexibility. It seems the more challenges we face, the more dynamic the computing world gets. These four announcements bode well for what’s ahead in the new year. Get ready.

Going Green: It’s about Strategy and Planning

I thought I’d kick-off the post-Thanksgiving, Black Friday, pre-Christmas rush with some interesting news and analysis in the area of Green Computing. I mean this time of year—especially in these trying economic times—is all about getting the best deal for your dollar. And, when it comes to IT that should mean looking at your energy efficiency plans and systems effectiveness. These are two hallmarks of going “green”.

In a recent eWeek blog, Michael Vizard comments, “Green Computing is about 80% process, followed by another 20% of random product upgrades related to eliminating obsolete equipment that already costs more than it’s worth.” He goes on to refer to a Forrester Research report that shows only 35% of those companies surveyed had any real type of green computing strategy and that 20% had no plans. Yikes. That leaves a whole lot of people in the twilight zone.

Obviously, the benefits are clear, especially in these difficult economic times. But, it also requires “the need to spend money to save money.” So, the bottom line is that green computing requires strategy, planning, and tactics just like any other key initiative. Luckily there are a lot of resources available to make your green computing initiative a likely success. Again, Michael Vizard gives some advice by pointing to new ideas from Sun and HP. There are interesting server concepts from Sun that go beyond the usual consolidation tactics to include:

•    Examining application processing power requirements, with an eye toward how developers will create more event-driven applications
•    Pushing more application load to the server and installing more thin client systems that need less energy and power than PCs
•    Sun’s new generation of Flash Memory products that are inherently more energy efficient like their new Amber Road storage products (Sun Storage 7000 product line)
•    Move to more energy efficient Ethernet networks that will come with the transition to 10GB Ethernet

Meanwhile, HP is attacking energy efficiency in a place that is probably often overlooked: all those printer assets scattered across your enterprise. HP has created a Green IT Action Plan, that includes simple things like printing on both sides of the paper, to creating scripts that can automatically turn off printers at night, recycling cartridges, and replacing old printers with multi-function devices.

In short, the concept of Green Computing provides tangible bottom-line results in terms of efficiency and cost. As such, it deserves the proper strategic assessment and planning that you’d bring to any key initiative. The good news is that there are plenty of ways to implement it from both a process and product standpoint. Once again, it’s a situation where trying times can provide an opportunity to improve Enterprise IT. Go for it.

What You Can Learn from HP’s IT Transformation

HP just released the results of its three-year IT transformation and they’re impressive and instructive. The transformation focused on five key initiatives: next generation global data centers, portfolio management, workforce effectiveness, building a world-class technology organization, and building a next generation enterprise data warehouse.

And the results are in: IT operating costs cut in half; cost savings of more than $1 billion; more reliable and better availability of information; the creation of a more simplified and dependable IT infrastructure. Oh, and they did this while adding more than $25 billion in revenue over the same three year period.

Randy Mott, HP executive vice president and chief information officer, ran the show after previous stints at Wal-Mart and Dell. As he says, “HP’s IT transformation was not just a technology initiative within the IT organization, it was a business strategy adopted throughout the company.”  The goal of course is to make HP more nimble in responding to business opportunities, while doing a better job of investing in IT where it matters—in the area of innovation and new projects targeted at the bottom line. It was essentially a dramatic shift to literally get revenue out of IT, by changing the focus to new project development, rather than support and maintenance.

If you’re interested there’s more detail in an InfoWorld article with on Mott’s strategy, results, and the implications for enterprise IT. Mott went “all in” and felt there was no other way to do it. He didn’t feel he could “pick-and-choose” because, as he warns, “the parts you don’t do will undermine the parts you do.”  He quickly cautions that executive support is paramount to success and without it you’re likely to miss your goals or fail. There’s also a bit more on the importance of revenue of IT and it shows how those “figures have credibility with execs because they’re based on a cost-benefit analysis agreed to by business unit leaders and their controllers, so they’re finance numbers, not IT department numbers.”

Of course, it’s great to see HP succeeding and leading by example. But you do have to wonder how likely it is for other companies to take such an all-or-nothing approach. Careful planning and commitment are what’s really needed to shift IT’s strategic value. I would’ve like to see a little more detail into alternative paths that could be taken to lighten the load as projects are reprioritized. Perhaps, this is where things like cloud computing and pay-as-you go infrastructure and software will have a bigger role to play. In the end, it is all about becoming more valuable and more nimble. HP looks to be on their way to setting a new benchmark.

Weekly Highlights: What you need to know

Another week and another flury of announcements and commentary. With all the turmoil in the markets it’s reassuring, to some degree, that the technology sector is responding with innovation and business value. Here’s what really made news this week.

If you must cut costs, make sure you do it with discrimination. Baseline provides 13 ideas on where and how to cut IT costs. More>

Thinking about virtualization. Of course you are. Want an idea of where it’s going in the next five years? Check out eWeek’s five-year roadmap. More>

There’s a good analysis and set of guidelines for planning the next-generation data center, again by eWeek, that’s shouldn’t be missed. More>

Sun Microsystems unveils JavaFX 1.0 with immersive media capabilities targeted at the market’s 800 million Java powered desktops. More>

The open source invasion of the data center continues this week with an Apache Tomcat Java application server offering from SpringSource. More>

VMware View 3 addresses key pitfalls that have slowed virtualization on the desktop. More>

Intel will be the sole supplier of NAND flash memory technology for Hitachi’s high-end solid-state drives for servers, workstations, and storage systems. More>

Interesting news from Google in the cloud computing space with the Google App Engine. More>

Microsoft plans to integrate RSA data-loss prevention technology into its products to enable security managers to monitor sensitive data and block unauthorized use. RSA is EMC’s security division. More>

Storage Weathering Downturn

I thought I’d recap some recent news in the storage arena as there’s lots of interesting things going on in that you should be aware of.

Possibly the biggest surprise didn’t come from a vendor. The news from IDC is that the storage business grew by 9% in the last quarter. Midrange systems ($15,000-$299,999) led the way. “IP storage was a major factor…led by strong adoption of iSCSI SANs, particularly within virtual server environments, and solid growth in NAS-based solutions.”

Of course, vendors have not been quite. Here are some of the more interesting announcements:

• Intel, Hitachi Make a Splash in Solid State Storage (SSDs) paving the way for the technology to find its way into Hitachi Data System’s high-end storage arrays… Read on
• EMC Retools Backup for Virtualization, Dedupe… Read on
• HP unveiled a direct-attach storage (DAS) product that works with its server BladeSystem to give smaller businesses a storage solution to match their virutal server environments… Read on
• Symantec announced new services the let users know when changes to their data center environment could put them at risk for unwanted downtime… Read on

I’ll keep my eye on this space, because where there’s growth, there’s competition and that brings out the best in vendors. Again, it’s a chance for customers to benefit.

Weekly Highlights – What you need to know

Well, the Chinese New Year for 2009 is officially the Year of the Ox. Unofficially, we should call it the Year of the Cloud. I don’t think any other technology topic has been hotter than cloud computing. And it looks like 2009 will be the break out year, as more and more vendors solidify their offers and customers start to really use and experiment within the enterprise. Speaking of which…

Of course, you can’t talk about the cloud without talking about Salesforce.com–and that usually means CEO Marc Benioff  has something to say. Well, they’re getting even closer to Google by announcing, among other things, a set of tools and services for letting Force.com developers write to the Google App Engine platform. And don’t miss Benioff’s strong words about Salesforce’s position against the establishment–SAP, Oracle, and Micorsoft. Check it out here and here.

Sun made news this week by announcing a renewed effort toward cloud computing. They have a lot of assets (e.g. MySQL, xVM) to bring to bear, so it will be interesting to see how it all comes to fruition with their new cloud offering. Read more here and here.

An interesting change by SugarCRM sees them launching Cloud Connectors that seeks to open the leading open source CRM vendor to cloud services like Linkedin. Read about it here.

I thought the news from IBM about a partnership with Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, was really eye catching. Now there’s a way to roll out corporate Linux desktops in a very fast, efficient, and intelligent way. Read this blog to find out more.

What else will 2009 have in store for us? How about Cisco entering the data center with their soon-to-be-announced blade server? In the meantime, they’re going to focus on improving the technology the stiches things like servers, switches, and storage together. Cisco calls it “unified computing” and you can read more here.

HP added Linux support to its desktop virtualization suite–HP Virtual Client Essentials–which previously only ran on Windows. You can find more here.

And, finally, back to Sun with the release of MySQL 5.1, which they promise will boost performance and simplify management of large-scale database applications. I suppose 250,000 downloads in the first ten days of availability would be an indication of some things. Here’s the press release and some commentary.

Now that was an interesting week. (But, aren’t they all?) In any case, like I said, get ready for the Year of the Cloud…

Contrarian View: Partly Cloudy?

Well, no sooner did I write that we’d be calling 2009 “The Year of the Cloud” did I come across a more sobering view in a Cnet article titled “Handicapping cloud computing: the big picture”. It’s a summary of a recent report by Berstein Research that includes an analysis on cloud computing and its “imperfect storm”.

As for the analysis, it’s pretty sobering but I don’t think it’s going to forestall the “momentum” around cloud computing–at least for 2009. Factor in all the dismal news and the tech industry is going to need the cloud story just to keep people interested. Also, I think customers will adopt a variety of approaches when it comes to the cloud. That is, it will be project or initiative dependent and people will choose to implement cloud offerings in different ways. For example, build something out on Amazon’s EC2, utilize Salesforce.com’s CRM solution, and then maybe build an “internal” cloud within the enterprise for a specific business unit or initiative.

As with most things in the tech/hype conitnuum, the reality will be somewhere in the middle. But, utility computing is definitely here to stay. And the economic downturn might just be the catalyst that’s needed to propel it even further. That’s why I think a vendor like Salesforce may be in the best position. They offer a real pay-as-you-go  service in the “cloud’, they’ve built a platform for others to develop on, and they’ve staked out a partnership with Google that gives them more legs.

Of course, Google themselves may have something to say about that. And Microsoft and IBM have the deep pockets necessary to make a meaningful impact. And, Sun will try to regain its footing in what is arguably natural territory. And then there’re those like Zoho and Xcalibre who could easily make more noise. So, stay tuned because just like weather forecasting, things can change quickly–and for the better.

Enterprise Content Mangement: What’s that Rumble?

In a world where everything appears to be contracting, there is one area that continues to grow, quite literally, like weeds. And that one thing is content. We seem to have no problem creating ever more email, documents, presentations, and videos, among a myriad of other file types. It’s like a tremor that you only notice after a seismic jolt.

Of course, throwing more storage at the problem is like a band-aid. It doesn’t begin to address the demands for compliance and e-discovery that are placed on every organization.  Nor does it consider access rights and privileges. We’re talking about the massive amounts of unstructured data that live outside traditional enterprise content management systems (ECM).

A new InformationWeek article describes “a new approach to collaboration and enterprise content management” and its well worth considering. First, compliance and record retention will move “to something that lots of companies will do with lots of data.” Secondly, Microsoft’s SharePoint collaboration software will play a crucial role. Finally, “new initiatives aim to ensure that ECM platforms balance availability, interoperability, and management in this sea of information.” So, standards will become more important too.

At the same time, another article points to open source software and software-as-a-service (SaaS) “will challenge the  dominant deployment of proprietary, premises-based software.” Alfresco and SpringCM “attack two major weaknesses of ECM vendors: cost and time.”

Alfresco comes at it with an open source business model and touts it’s community as a major benefit. At 74,000 registered members and 3,500 active participants, that’s leaves a lot of potential coming from those most interested in seeing Alfresco succeed.

SpringCM comes at things from the SaaS angle.”Rather than deploy an on-premises platform and force it to fit different needs, departments can turn to the cloud and configure the application to their needs.” Cox Communications is cited as runnning 13 different applications from SpringCM.

The bottom line is that ECM is going to get more and more attention and that means more ideas and solutions to help organizations manage and keep a lid on all their content.

Weekly Roundup

Well, we’ve got less than six days of shopping to go before Christmas, as we wind down the final two weeks of the year. But, that hasn’t stopped the tech industry from churning out interesting news and things to consider for 2009. So, let’s recap the week:

Oracle and HP made came out with a bang today with their world record benchmark running Oracle Fusion Middleware on HP Integrity server blades. Oracle showed a 30% improvement over the previous champ, IBM. Get the details here…

Oracle CRM On Demand appears to be gaining momentum and big name customers like Fidelity, The Economist, and 3M Taiwan among many others. Could a remark from Salesforce.com’s Mark Benioff be far away? Read more…

There’s more detail emerging about Cisco’s upcoming blade server–code named California–that will join Cisco’s Nexus 5000 switch, Intel’s Nehalem processors, and VMware’s virtualization management software. Read more here…

Sun released a new update of xVM VirtualBox, its desktop virtualization software. Better performance across platforms–Windows, Linux, Macintosh, and Solaris–on any PC hardware is the thrust of the 2.1 release. Here’re the details…

On the data center front, you might want to check out this article on IronScale, which promises to bring data center automation to small and medium-sized businesses. Read more here…

Amazon has been busy building strategic relationships an effort to boot it’s EC2 services. The goal is to push into the enterprise with the help of partners like Sun, Red Hat, Capgemini and more niche players like Elastra and RightScale. Here’s a great analysis that includes a focus on Capgemini and their practice around AWS…

Well, that’s about it for the week. Now back to shopping…

Biggest Open Source Stories of 2008

Well, as we finally wind down the year it’s time to look back and take stock of the most important and interesting stories in enterprise technology. Let’s start with open source. And with that, here’s probably the best review I’ve seen: “The year 2008 showed open source–both in the form of Linux specifically and as a software development model generally–coming into the mainstream like never before.” So, on with the top ten list:

1. The Rise (and Falling Price) of the Netbook–Linux comes of age, driving down the cost and the perception that you need a full-blown notebook to get work done. MacBook? I don’t need no stinking MacBook. (Okay, I own one an love it, but still..)
2. Sun’s Slow Spiraling Towards Nova–Relentlessly pursuing an open source strategy, reaching its culmination (so far) with the acquisition of MySQL. It should be quite a year ahead, no matter how you look at it.
3. The Release of Ubuntu 8.10 and Fedora 10–With Canonical’s latest Ubuntu release and Red Hat’s newest revision of Fedora, I’ll agree with the consensus that this past year was the “long-vaunted year of the Linux desktop.”
4. The Release of Google Chrome–Minimal design, built for speed, safety, and security. What’s not to like? And this isn’t even version 1.0. Okay, it’s Windows-only. For now…
5. The Release of Google Android–Mobile Linux. Google. Enough said.
6. Nokia Picks Up Symbian–Unless, of course, you’re talking about this combo. The handset makers seem very interested in this pairing. It’s Iron Chef Android versus Iron Chef Symbian. Can’t wait to see what Google and Nokia cook up for 2009.
7. Courts Rule that Copyrights on Open Source Software are Enforceable–The decision makes “it clear that not upholding the provisions of an open source license is an infringement of the original code creator’s copyrights.” A legal precedent is set.
8. Omitted by choice.
9. Debian’s OpenSSL Blunder–A major security bug is found. Then it’s found to have existed since 2006. It gets fixed. The moral: “ Many eyes may make bugs shallow, but they also need to be open and looking in the right direction first.”
10. SCO Loses to Novell–Finally, it’s looks over for SCO as it’s three most critical claims are “dismissed with prejudice“.

2008: “A Year in the Clouds”

Barring some incredible news in the next two days, this will be my second to last post of the year. And my final enterprise-related post. Naturally, it’s got to be about cloud computing–the story, the trend, for 2008. (My final post will be a round-up of the best top ten lists.) Now onwards, upwards to the clouds. Here’s a summary based on a recent InfoWorld article.

To start go back and check out InfoWorld’s first salvo in what became a barrage of articles, reports, and opinions on cloud computing. It really kicked things off nicely. Ultimately, there were three categories: “infrastructure services such as Amazon EC2; software as a service à la Salesforce; and development platforms as a service” (e.g. Microsoft’s Azure).

Then there’s the debate out the external and internal cloud. Basically, the difference between services and apps that you can get outside your company (say from Salesforce.com), than from your internal IT department, which “aggregates other IT trends, such as SOA (service-oriented architecture), virtualization, datacenter automation, and EDA (event-driven architecture) into one harmonious internal cloud.”

Two arcticles, each from different points in the year, highlighted how companies were taking advantage of external clouds: “Early experiments in cloud computing” and “Cloud computing to the max“.

The InfoWorld crew also spent a lot of time “playing” in the clouds and they reported back on their experiences. Google App Engine “was best for dynamic Web sites that act as a relatively thin layer of business logic sitting on top of a data store.” Other platforms were tried such as JotForm, FormAssembly, Wufoo, and Zoho Creator. A separate review was done on Coghead and it’s competitor Caspio Bridge.

Then in October, inevitably, Microsoft got into the mix big time with the launch of Azure. A review followed that stated Azure “reveals a thoughtfully designed cloud computing architecture where seasoned .Net developers will feel at home.” Another review was done comparing Amazon, Google, AppNexus, and GoGrid. Then, a much more comprehensive  study looked at Amazon’s offerings and it’s still well worth reading.

Less space was given to reviewing SaaS applications, but there were a couple of articles to look at again: Zoho CRM and a shootout between Microsoft Office and Google Docs and Zoho.

So 2008 was the break-out year for cloud computing. As I’ve written before, we’re entering a perfect storm that should see more adoption, more creativity, and more controversy. Personally, I can’t wait….

Best Top Tens for 2008

Well, here we are at the final day of the year. During the run-up to New Year’s Day there are always Top Ten lists for just about everything. So, I’m giving you my favorite top ten lists that I’ve come across in the world of technology. Forget about reading all the others, here’s the ones you need to check out:

• The top 10 stories of 2008: Not business as usual
• The top under-reported tech stories of 2008
• Top 10 open source stories of 2008
• Top 12 tech embarrassments in 2008
• 10 things that won’t survive the recession
• 24 most underrated web sites of 2008
• 101 most essential iPhone apps of 2008

See, and there weren’t even ten of them. But, I assure you they’re all worth checking out. Until, next year…

Kicking off the New Year: SOA, Open Source, and Clouds

Well, isn’t it just like us “media types” to kick off the new year with hype, controversy, and the belief that things will get better with IT–if we just get out of the way.

Anne Thomas Manes, vice president and research director at Burton Group, blogged that “SOA met its demise on January 1, 2009, when it was wiped out by the catastrophic impact of the economic recession. SOA is survived by its offspring: mashups, BPM, SaaS, Cloud Computing, and all other architectural approaches that depend on ’services’.”

It’s a great read and well worth checking out. While states that “organizations desparately need” SOA, it was in the implementation (or lack thereof)–not the theory behind it–that has done it in. People got caught up in the technology and lost focus on the architecture. She continues by saying, “Although the word “SOA” is dead, the requirement for service-oriented architecture is stronger than ever.”

David Linthicum, at InfoWorld, has a nice piece of commentary if you want to devlve a little deeper into the subject. Essentially, he agrees with her.

In the open source front there were a couple of recent articles that are worth checking out. One that is sure to add to the controversy posits, “What if Gartner’s prediction that 50 percent of IT projects using open souce will not have a lower TCO than those using closed source products?” You can read more here.

The same crew from InfoWorld also wrote up a nice summary of the five biggest trends they see in open source for 2009. They include: more commercial open source; more experimentation with business models; more acquisitions; more power in the user community; and more mainstream.

Finally, let’s move away from predictions and controversy and let’s looks at a customer success story with cloud computing. InformationWeek has an interesting piece on Eli Lilly’s cloud intiative, whereby they’re tapping into Amazon’s Web Services. You can hear more by signing up for a related webcast. Should be well worth your time.

I think we’ll see a lot more real world successes (and some failures) in the area of cloud computing this year. Lots of things are working in its favor. And the biggest one is that there are more and more valuable services that enterprises can tap into.

Going Green, Rethinking Middleware, and Cloud Predictions

So, as you can tell I took a bit of a break for personal reasons but now I’m back and scouring the Web for the most interesting Enterprise IT stories that will have a real impact on you and your business. These are the things you need to know because they will impact IT in fundamental ways. Let’s get started.

A recent article in Baseline with the title “Obama: Hope and Change for IT?” caught my eye. It’s an educated guess on how the stimulus package will effect IT in 2009. Aside from the fact that the White House will forever change the way we–the citizens–interact with government via the Web (a huge change to be sure) there were a few other very likely implications.

But, Beyond security and privacy and the issue of IT jobs, the one that really hit me was the convergence of IT and the Green Revolution. For instance, “Obama’s New Energy for America will seek a $150 billion investment over 10 years to encourage development of technologies that reduce energy.” And that means server vitualization and consolidation “Topic A on the green front among IT purchase decision makers, as the technology can significantly reduce energy consumption and costs.” Keep that in mind as you plan your priorities, especially if you’re a vendor trying to survive in this market. Go where the money’s going to be.

In “The Dawn of Middleware as a Service” it was posited that we’ll be seeing a lot more activity in the middleware space as a matter of course.  That’s because developers are already there building apps in the cloud and “middleware as a service will eventually turn the Internet into a mega-service bus for enterprise applications.” Pretty cool. I think this has incredibly big implications if organizations can make the leap and providers can deliver an acceptable level of security and performance. If it comes to fruition, then we’ll truly see the benefits of a services oriented architecture running across the Web.

Finally, InformationWeek put out an interesting set of “10 Cloud Computing Predictions For 2009“. For example:

• The Cloud Market Will Grow Steadily…to the detriment of traditional software, hardware and other parts of the IT market.
• Google Will Remain a Niche Player…because developers using Google App Engine tend to congregate around the startup and Web 2.0 space. Hmm, we’ll see…
• Big Companies Will Embrace the Cloud…just like I’ve been saying…
• Enterprise-Class management Tools Will Emerge…starting with Amazon EC2 management, monitoring and load balancing tools with IBM’s Tivoli not far behind…
• We’ll See Public-Private Clouds…using platforms like Elastra’s Cloud Server to devise cloud-like environments in their own data centers that work seamlessly with public cloud services…and that is very, very cool…

Hey, until my next post…have a great day…!

Clouds are in the News; so is SaaS

There’s been a bevy of interesting news in the cloud and SaaS fronts. Let’s check them out:

• Cloud vs. SaaS for Small Business — A new survey shows small business is shy of the cloud. At the same time, a SaaS provider that focuses on SMBs is growing fast. Does SaaS resonate more than “cloud”?
• Oracle takes on Salesforce.com with CRM Demand Upgrade — Offering both multitenant and single-tenant versions in the hopes of attracting customers who may be leary of the former approach.
• Cloud Storage Matures — When it comes to storage, cloud computing continues to evolve and show real sustainability. HP and EMC have lent more legitimacy to the concept, which helps the trailblazers like Bycast, Cleversafe, and Amazon.
• You can also listen to the David Linthicum discuss SOA and private clouds…very well worth your time…
• Finally, check out all the Cloud Computing events for 2009 by going here…

So, until next time…

State of Affairs: Amazon, Microsoft, and IBM

Let’s take a look at a few of the most successful technology companies and see what their most recent results and initiatives say about the state of affairs when it comes to cloud computing.

Amazon, once again, provides proof that cloud computing is not only viable but also highly profitable. Late last week, Amazon posted fourth quarter results that exceeded Wall Street’s expectations with an 18% increase in revenue to $6.7 billion. That, in and of itself, is great in this environment. But what’s most intriguing is that “Amazon Web Services Help Fuel Blow-Out Quarter“.

A few of thought provoking articles appeared around Microsoft, including “Why Windows Must Go Open Source” and “Remaking Microsoft: Go All-In The Cloud“. The case for Windows going open source rooted in the needed for Microsoft to maintain its developer base, the impact of virtualization (loosening the grip on hardware and OS), and the need to extend and open their systems into the mobile — and rapidly emering — netbook space.

Of course, all this leads into a discussion about cloud computing, as all the aforementioned things are impacting and threatening Microsoft’s fortress of strength. As the second article states: “Microsoft’s customers might be ready for cloud computing before it is. If Microsoft wants to lead the way into cloud computing–and it should–it needs to move more aggressively with its considerable talent and assets.” It’s an incredibly interesting time to watch Microsoft and the moves they make will without question pave the way for its relevance over the next decade.

Finally, IBM continues to make advances in the cloud and SaaS areas. Their latest announcements centered on a “new ISV partnership, a move which, on the heels of cloud-related agreements penned last week with several universities, advances Big Blue’s cloud and SaaS realm.” Adding that IBM has tripled the number of partners in their SaaS program and said that they are continuing to sign up paying customers to their cloud infrastructure offerings.

Contrast in Approaches: SAP, IBM, and SugarCRM

This week SAP launched Business Suite 7, citing many “functional” improvements covering most of its applications and, most importantly, puts everything under one single underlying platform. However, I think what was most interesting is what was left out — SAP’s soon-to-be announced on demand services for Business Suite 7. This further underscores the viability of cloud computing as, yet another, major player begins to step into the ring.

Meanwhile, over on ComputerWorld, Mark Everett Hall has an insightful blog on IBM’s enterprise cloud dreams. He spoke to Dennis Quan, director of autonomic computing at IBM. He draws the disctinction between public (e.g. Amazon, Salesforce.com, Google) and private or enterprise clouds (i.e. exclusive to an organization). The architecture includes scalable services, IP network access, centralized management, and a virtualized environment. “Quan believes that dynamic workload management eventually will get so sophisticated that allocating fully secure resources around the globe on the fly to applications on demand will be a breeze.”

Finally, SugarCRM held its annual user conference this week. In a summary of the event, CEO John Roberts ” talked about how SugarCRM was “born in the cloud” and introduced new cloud connectors that provide integration with third-party services such as Zoominfo and Crunchbase. There’s also a newly announced Cloud Connector framework that should enable developers to extend SugarCRM to other cloud-based applications.” An article in Informationweek is worth checking out for both more detail and to remind everyone just how far SugarCRM has come. It’s really an interesting story on how two determined people can leverage the open source model, using Sourcfore.net as a backbone, and go from there.

Mixed Signals for SaaS

I suppose it’s not surprising that uncertain times add up to mixed signals regarding just about everything. And the world of IT is no exception. Consider the following:

A recent report by EquaTerra showed that ERP outsourcing was on the rise. Their report shows that firms intend to outsource more in the first three quarters of 2009, even after a drop in the fourth quarter of 2008.

Similarly, an IDC report concludes “the harsh economic climate will actually accelerate the growth prospects for the software as a service (SaaS) model” for 2009. It notes some very interesting survey findings, including one big splash of cold water: “cash-flow short falls” and “liquidity challenges” could put a dent in adoption.

Meanwhile, John Foley’s recent InformationWeek blog has the eye popping headline: “SaaS Growth Thrown Into Question.” This after it was reported that “Steve Cakebread, president and chief strategy officer of Salesforce.com, has resigned, and two other execs are out.” Apparently, the conclusion to be drawn from this is that this may be a precursor to slowing sales at the SaaS juggernaut.

Well, this is definitely a harbinger of things to come. The question is: which way is the needle going to move? Will the economic climate push more companies to embrace SaaS and all its variants? Or, will organizations think twice and maybe focus elsewhere, like data center consolidation and the like?

Good questions indeed.

Amazon and IBM Link Up; What HP Has to Say

IBM and Amazon have teamed up on EC2 with a pay-as-you-go model for development and production versions of IBM Information Management database servers, IBM Lotus content management, and IBM WebSphere portal and middleware products. You can read Jeff Bezos’ announcement  on the AWS Blog. You may also be interested in IBM’s press release.

For an analysis check out CNNMoney.com and InformationWeek. This is big given the relative strength and customer base of each company. I don’t think its surprising and I expect that we’ll see more of these partnerships throughout the year.

A more sobering view of IBM’s strategy can be found in John Foley’s recent blog entry IBM Drifts Slowly Toward Mainstream CloudComputing. Although it’s a day before the big announcement, it is interesting because he wonders if the big guys can deliver on their announcements, while smaller players are more nimble and disruptive.

For example Savvis and DataSynapse are two such vendors that may appeal to developers and small businesses, in addition to enterprise customers. They’re both referenced in an InfoWorld article that includes the Amazon/IBM link up.

Yet another view came from Russ Daniels, HP’s CTO for cloud computing and VP of cloud strategy, as he tried to explain and contrast his approach and view with Google, Microsoft and Amazon. I wouldn’t say that his view is totally unique — that there will be public and private clouds. But, other statements are. For example: “If you use virtualization [internally], you will gain a significant reduction in cost. If you move the workload to the cloud, you have to redesign the software architecture of the workload” to realize another “order of magnitude” cost savings.”

Microsoft’s Latest Moves Open Up Possibilities

Microsoft and Red Hat have agreed to support each other’s server OS on each other’s hypervisors. The driving force? Customers and partners. Now that was refreshing. Moreover it points to Microsoft’s evolving open source plans, as well as, its potential direction in cloud computing.

As Rodrigues and Urlocker blogged, “Whatever its history with open source, Microsoft keeps showing that they can evolve their thinking to remain relevant to their customer base.” They also suggested that this could mean Microsoft will open up their cloud to “non-Microsoft environments,” which would certainly seem like a wise move.

A more detailed take can be found on Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols’ blog. Or you can take it from the horses mouth by checking out Red Hat’s announcement and FAQ.  Similarly, you may want to read Mike Neil’s explanation on his blog. He’s the general manager of virtualization at Microsoft.

Shifting gears to the bigger picture, let me point you to a fairly rich InfoWorld article, Cloud options for IT that IT will love. It take a more prosaic look at the (early) value that cloud computing can bring to IT. That is, things that “provide a slew of labor- and cost-saving options for harried IT managers.” For example, “help-desk ticketing, network management, vulnerability assessment, and enterprise knowledge bases are just a few of the applications you can spin up in the cloud in just minutes.”

The article then gets into the emerging platform-as-a-service discussion and how developers will, ultimately, write for the cloud “bypassing the traditional sever-OS-storage platform.” Google,  Microsoft, and Amazon are, in turn, discussed. It then ends with a note of caution, as any self-respecting article that attempts to see the future should, before sounding a final note of optimism.

Speaking of optimism, check out what SugarCRM is doing to help ThyssenKrupp weather the economic storm. It’s pretty impressive what you can achieve today, even as these technologies are emerging.

Serious Thinking: Clouds, PaaS, and Open Source

It’s the architecture, stupid! Another attempt by David Linthicum to get people to realize cloud computing will fail (arguably, like SOA before it) if we continue to be enamored of the technology and wrapped up in the hype, at the expense of serious thinking about the architecture. This drum must be banged.

Platform-as-a-service (PaaS) is the cousin of SaaS, whereby developers take advantage of free programming tools offered by a “service” provider to create and deploy applications in the cloud. Given the aforementioned caution, it’s critical that the same issues be resolved, before we have a host of disillusioned developers and disappointed customers. Of course, PaaS might be a way to circumvent some of these bigger issues since Google’s App Engine may by definition alleviate the architectural headaches because the architecture can be defined by Google. You either want to play there or not and, if so, then you’re buying into their definition of an architecture, roadmap, etc.

Meanwhile, over in the open source world (which is closely related to the trends in SaaS, PaaS, and cloud computing) there was an interesting post about OpenLogic’s year-end stats. It poses the question, “Are customers starting to shift from relationship with vendors behind OSS projects to OSS support consolidators?” The answer appears to be yes, up to a certain point. The reason is that it’s easier to have a relationship with a consolidator, like OpenLogic, than 10-20-30 individual contracts. But, the dynamic changes depending on the mission critical nature of the OSS.

Cloud Event Summary, Plus SAP’s Move

I think Charles Babcock’s provocative question posed to a panel at the Cloud Computing Forum deserves a few minutes of your time. He asks, “why it was necessary for every hypervisor vendor to launch its own virtual machine runtime format?” Then he asks rhetorically, “What will it take…a user revolt?” The answers he gets are, sadly, not too encouraging.

But never fear, there’s always another way of perceiving the situation. Jason Brook’s takes a look at how “the cloud computing world today resembles the early days of Linux, during which dabblers with a surplus of time and motivation could assemble and integrate their way to a Linux platform.” He then points to announcements from Red Hat and Ubuntu underscore how this just might come to pass. It’s well worth reading.

Another worthwhile panel discussion at the Cloud Computing Forum centered on “Security, Privacy and Compliance in the Cloud.” Check out Roger Smith’s synopsis of that discussion.

SAP made news after announcing that it bought Coghead, a cloud-based startup that offered Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) to developers and others who wanted to create custom web-based applications. As InformationWeek reported, SAP will bring Coghead’s IP in-house to help bolster its own applications, though it will shut down the service to outside customers.

There’s an interview with Andrew Jassy, senior vice president of web services at Amazon, on TechFlash that you may want to check out. John Foley, over at IW’s Cloud blog, critiques it and sums it up by saying, “Amazon’s Cloud is Too Cloudy.”

David Linthicum has two interesting posts this week. One talks about SOA “becoming a part of IT, rather than just a new destination.” And it repeats his empahsis that we need to shift away from all the technology and focus on what matters — the architecture. His other post talks about an increased interest in SOA, albeit in a more incremental, and possibly more reasonable, approach.

More on SAP, Microsoft, and Google; Plus SOA vs Cloud: More Clarity

A little bit of thought goes a long way when it comes to SAP’s acquisition of Coghead and what it means for customers when their platform as a service (PaaS) vendor goes bust and support has been dropped. The thoughts belong to Richard Watson, of the Burton Group. Before offering up some “advice for mitigating the development risk,” he questions whether or not SAP may have missed an opportunity by not extending support to existing Coghead customers — some of whom certainly were joint customers too.

Still confused by cloud computing? Find yourself scratching your head because it sounds so similar to SOA? You are not alone. Luckily, we have David Linthicum because, as he states, “we need to understand cloud computing in the context of SOA.” And what would that be? SOA is the “architectural pattern”, while “cloud computing is a set of enabling technologies as a potential target platform or technological approach for that architecture.” So, again, be careful and focus on the architecture that’s best going to enable your enterprise to take advantage of services offered via the cloud.

Finally, here are two quick updates on Google and Microsoft. As InfoWorld reported, Google will institute new billing services for its App Engine hosting service. By the way, did you know that Google estimates that 45,000 applications have been built on App Engine? Pretty impressive. On the Microsoft front, Steve Ballmer stated that the Windows Azure cloud computing platform will be released by the end of the year.

VMware Steps Up, Microsoft Fires Back, Oracle and Salesforce.com Continue War of Words

Paul Maritz, VMware CEO and President, laid out his company’s vision for cloud computing last week at VMWorld Europe. As reported in eWeek, that “means means embracing a cloud computing strategy, built on taking industry-standard hardware building blocks and then layering on software that allows scalability.” Consequently, VMware laid out the following initiatives:

• VDC-OS (Virtual Datacenter Operating System) — a “new substrate of software that provides the foundation … for an internal cloud, allowing IT to operate more like a hosting provider inside the data center, as well as a foundation for external clouds.”
• The VMware vCloud Initiative — a way of federating internal and external clouds “so that the private cloud can pull in resources from the outside, with common management across all spheres.”
• The VMware vClient Initiative — directed at allowing “desktops to follow users to any endpoint via universalized clients that are easy for an IT department to manage”

Given these announcements, then what should we make of the latest news from long-time partners Microsoft and Citrix? Citrix Essentials is a new virtualization product that integrates with Citrix XenServer and Microsoft Hyper-V. Simon Crosby, CTO of Citrix, “asserted that free virtualization will make enterprises’ entry into the realm of cloud computing a more realistic and affordable proposition.” Perhaps that was a rhetorical question after all.

Zmanda made news in the area where open source and cloud computing are converging. Based on Amazon’s Simple Storage Service (S3), “Zmanda Cloud Backup (ZCB), [is] a cost effective and easy-to-use solution for small-and-medium sized businesses (SMBs) that need data backup and disaster recovery for Microsoft Exchange and SQL Servers.”

And, finally, let’s end with a little bit of gamesmanship as Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce.com, fires a few salvos of his own across the bow of the Oracle ship and Larry Ellison, its indefatigable captain. Recall that Larry had said his company was taking significant business away from Salesforce.com. Well, Benioff this week hit back saying, “…customers moved to the cloud in record numbers in FY ‘09. That’s because in days like these, when cash is king, liquidity is critical, and credit is scarce, the predictable flexible cost of cloud computing is overwhelmingly the right choice.” Let’s wait to hear what Larry has to say about it.

Vendor Lock-In and Compliance: What to consider

As the interest and usage of cloud computing services becomes more prevalent, we’re also starting to see more discussion around issues such as security, compliance, continuity, and vendor lock-in. Fortunately, there’s a lot of idea exchange and debate going on, while some best practices are beginning to emerge. It demonstrates the growth and maturity of cloud computing.

There’s an excellent article in Computerworld, “Cloud computing: Don’t get caught without an exit strategy,” that tackles the issue of vendor lock-in. It looks at it from the perspective of the where you are in the cloud “each of which requires varying degrees of commitment.” For example, “the higher you go in the cloud taxonomy, the higher the risk of lock-in.” It also covers what it means to be locked-in or locked-out of data and the perception we have about where data is stored. A risk/benefit analysis is offered as a way to help with the decision making. It finishes by covering the need for standards, largely “driven by customer demand.” In the end, customers don’t want to be locked-in to anything, which is a goal that’s been evolving for a long time.

In the area of compliance, Mark Everett Hall makes the case in “Compliance raids in the cloud” that after doing a careful evaluation of a given cloud offer you should also pay close attention to the associated software licenses. He cautions that “If there are CPU restrictions in any of them, maybe those apps should remain grounded in the data center.”

Weekly Round-Up (and what a week it was)

In the area of cloud computing, here are the news and articles that I found most interesting:

“Not long ago, the phrase “Windows cloud” was an oxymoron; no two words could be further apart in meaning. But cloud computing is evolving quickly, and Windows clouds are finally taking shape.” More here >

“Microsoft’s Azure, where you go to build cloud apps” More >

“One of the bigger challenges IT departments will face this year is whether they can take the plunge with cloud computing quickly enough to benefit their organizations as a whole.” More >

“Vendor lock-in is one of the primary fears expressed by IT leaders considering a move to the cloud, but much of that fear is caused by misconceptions.” More >

“So, before you merrily send your apps flying into the cloud, check their combined software licenses. If there are CPU restrictions in any of them, maybe those apps should remain grounded in the data center.” More >

“IBM, SAP, and Microsoft have just revealed efforts to use the cloud to move and manage the kinds of big workloads that are common in corporate data centers.” More >

“…from VMware’s point of view, cloud computing isn’t just an option that some leading-edge customers will deploy, but an evolution of virtualization that will eventually be adopted by all of its customers.” More >

“Lots of fresh research is coming out on the state of cloud computing. The following data points provide a snapshot of user attitudes in this fast-moving market.” More >

As I blogged about earlier in the week, we need to pay attention to SOA with equal interest, as we move forward with cloud computing. With that in mind, here are the news and articles that I found most valuable in the area of SOA.

“SOA is the ‘architectural pattern’, while ‘cloud computing’ is a set of enabling technologies as a potential target platform or technological approach for that architecture.” More >

“SOA has had time to mature, but discussions around it are still laden with buzzwords and unrealistic expectations. Learn what SOA is and isn’t with the first of a new series.” More >

“…James Kobielus explores the exploding use of cloud computing by enterprises and the fact that the expanded use of cloud services is causing issues around existing SOA governance policies and mechanisms.” More >

Finally, take a look inside a real-world SOA project by someone on the front lines of Fastenal Corp’s big project. More >

Cloud Computing: Becoming the Fabric of IT

A couple of recent articles offered insight into how IT will evolve in the next two-three years. One was based on comments from datacenter professionals and the other was the result of new services launched by Cisco. In turn, it represents another set of data points for the ways cloud computing is becoming part of the fabric of enterprise IT.

InfoWorld published an interview between Afcom CEO Jill Eckhaus and InfoWorld Editor at Large Tom Sullivan, just ahead of Afcom’s (the association of datacenter professionals) Data Center World conference this week in Las Vegas. Survey results that Afcom had conducted showed that “some 77 percent of datacenter administrators are not planning to increase their use of cloud computing.”  More importantly was why? Eckhaus posited the reason for this was because “they don’t have just one clear definition of cloud computing.” Another insight came with the agreement “that business units, rather than IT” might drive adoption with the danger of bypassing IT altogether because of realities like time to market and ease of use. Ideally, both the business and IT will work together to lay out plans and policies for adoptiong cloud computing within the enterprise. As a result, those of us in the industry and in the media have a critical role to play as educators and as conductors of the conversation.

Another item that caught my attention was Michael Vizard’s blog in eWeek regarding Cisco’s announcement of a new set of managed e-mail security services from it’s IronPort division. These new services give customers the option of paying as you go or utilizing their managed services. The upshot is that it’s that this is further evidence of mainstream, global vendors recognizing the value proposition of cloud computing for customers. Vizard goes on to explain how “corporate customers are rethinking their approach to acquiring IT”, from treating IT as a capital expense to treating it as an operational expense. Thus, big up front expenditures are limited, if not eliminated, as well as the staff to run them. He sees this as a trend that is going to last beyond the eventual recovery, as IT “morphs” into a general contractor of sorts for “IT that are actually fulfilled by a host of sub-contractors.”

Open Source ERP Goes Cloud; A Business Proposition You Gotta Love; and Don’t Forget the Channel

Let’s take a look at some interesting cloud-related offerings that have recently been announced.

Compiere, an open source ERP and CRM provider, has now moved into the cloud by offering these solutions through Amazon Elastic Cloud Compute (EC2). Compiere’s solutions have seen more than 1.4 million downloads. Teaming up with Amazon gives them a better way to turn those downloads into revenue by utilizing a joint value proposition that combines open source with cloud computing. They’ll be targeting small and medium-sized businesses (SMB) and it should prove lucrative for both parties. Again, it’ll be interesting to hear how this progresses.

As reported in InfoWorld: “The Compiere-Amazon combination might also apply to smaller sites within larger companies, says Bruce Richardson, chief research officer at AMR. “If you talk to SAP and Oracle, they’re only waking up to the need for cloud solutions. They just don’t have a good SaaS or cloud offering.” This is another example of the shift going on in enterprise computing. It’ll be interesting to track Compiere’s success as the year rolls on.

And how about a value proposition whereby you pay nothing if the solutions doesn’t prove it’s value? That’s exactly what eGain is offering with their “solution-as-a-service” (yes, another new acronym: SLaaS) called eGain SelfService SLaaS Edtition (and, branding be damned). Seriously, though it’s has a compelling business proposition. Ahsu Roy, eGain CEO, stated in a report by InfoWorld: “Success is judged by usage, [meaning] the number of self-service sessions conducted by their end-customers each month on the client’s Web site. The more the usage, the more the success.” It’s a great example creativity and a willingness to be aggressive with one’s solutions, all of which wouldn’t be possible the software or solution was delivered in a traditional way.

Meanwhile, USA.NET has teamed up with HP to offer a set of “email, messaging and collaboration solutions as a part of their software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering for HP channel partners” as reported in Channel Insider. It’s worth noting because it shows that sales coverage matters in the world of cloud computing and that using the words reseller channel and SaaS is not an oxymoron.

Improving the Cloud Value Proposition: Two cases in point

It’s very exciting and encouraging to see continued innovation on the business side of cloud computing. It simply makes it more accessible and relevant to more potential customers. Let’s take a look at some recent news in this area.

Amazon launched EC2 Reverved Instances, which gives customers the option to make a low, one-time payment for each instance they want to reserve and, therefore, benefit by receiving a significant discount on the hourly usage charge for that instance. As reported in InfomationWeek, Amazon officials summarized it stating, “Customers can choose to reserve capacity as if they owned the hardware, but unlike traditional infrastructure, with Reserved Instances, customers do not pay to maintain and operate idle hardware, and instead pay usage charges only when actually utilizing the instances.”

If you’re interested in delving deeper into what this may mean for your organization in dollar and cents, then check out Geva Perry’s calculator. It turns out the break-even point is about 12 hours per day for twelve months. So if you’re running an instance longer than that then it makes financial sense to go with Reserved Instances. By the way, Geva is “obsessed with cloud pricing” and that’s good for all of us!

Continuing with the theme of better business ideas, as reported in InfoWorld, Microsoft announced they will offer standard SQLServer relational database support in their Azure cloud offering. As emphasized in the report, the major milestone is that “a developer can take an existing application and just change the connection string to point it to the cloud and have it just work.” Why is this important? Because “the vast preponderance of applications fall into traditional architecture infrastructures, which rely on SQL databases as the persistence mechanism.” Thus, “being able to take an existing app and move it into the cloud, or easily install a new app in Azure, makes Microsoft’s cloud service extremely appealing.” Score one for Microsoft.

Sun Bursts Out of the Clouds; and more from Rackspace and Cloudera

Sun mad a big splash today (and I’m not talking about the acquisition speculation) at it’s CommunityOne developer event by announcing the Sun Open Cloud Platform. Not surprisingly it leverages core technologies like Java, MySQL, and OpenSolaris. Also, officials previewed the Sun Cloud, a public cloud offering targeted at developers, students, and start-ups.  Sun is positioning its Virtual Data Center (VDC) capabilities, which came with its purchase of Q-Layer, as a key differentiator over competitors like Amazon and Google. “The VDC provides a unified, integrated interface to stage an application running on any operating system within a cloud…[and] supports WebDAV protocols for easy file access and object store APIs that are compatible with Amazon’s S3 APIs.”

Another company jumping into the cloud is Rackspace, long known for its data center hosting service. Their products include Cloud Sites, Cloud Files, and Cloud Servers. As reported in InfomationWeek, “The move puts Rackspace into competition with Amazon Web Services and other infrastructure-as-a-service providers. The new services are an obvious fit with Rackspace’s managed hosting business, giving customers a broader set of options for running computing workloads on Rackspace’s hardware.”

Finally, Cloudera made very interesting news by announcing its first commercial version of Hadoop, which “allows cloud-powered servers to store petabytes worth of information,” as noted in an InformationWeek news story. One of the goals is to overcome the difficulty customers have in configuring and deploying Hadoop. That has been a major roadblock to much wider adoption and prevented them from achieving a wider goal: enabling “Big Data to truly disrupt the enterprise.” Given the successful deployment of Hadoop at Facebook, Google, and Yahoo, it’s probably only a matter of time before it reaches a much bigger audience of customers. And then we’ll see just how disruptive it can be. It’s another example of how cloud computing is expanding and adapting to the needs of vendors and customers alike.

What Cisco’s Data Center Push and IBM’s Overture Mean for Cloud Computing

By now you’ve read about Cisco’s ambitious push into the data center with the Cisco Unified Computing System, which integrates “network, compute, and virtualization resources in a single system.” By combining Cisco’s IP with partners like EMC, NetApp, and BMC they have just made it easier, in theory, to launch a cloud computing system for enterprise consumption.

On the other hand, with each passing day it looks more and more likely that IBM will make an official offer to buy Sun Microsystems. As The Economist put it, “part of the attraction of Sun is that it has some assets, such as networking gear and data-centre software, which would beef up IBM’s ability to build private clouds.” IBM also gets its hands on some crown jewels: Java, MySQL, and further entree (and legitimacy) into open source communities.

Of course, one shouldn’t forget HP’s acquisition of EDS, which at the time looked a bit circumspect if only for the daunting task of incorporating one giant into another. But, given the speed with which cloud computing has taken hold, Cisco’s bold move in the data center, and IBM’s aggressive move to buy Sun, it appears that HP had certainly been just a prescient. HP gained a leading integrator with years of experience in building and running data centers.

So, what can we take away from these recent moves? Certainly, we’re witnessing convergence on a strategic scale, as demonstrated by the fact “that companies that used to be allies, or in totally different markets, are now starting to compete with each other.” It shows, emphatically, that the next wave of computing is at hand driven by economics, technology, and social aspects of how and why we we utilize computing to get things done. Cisco’s move demands that we look at them differently–as more than a networking company. IBM shows that it intends to lead by providing the most complete systems approach to the market–whether packaged as public or private clouds–wrapped up and delivered by IBM Global Services.

In short, Cisco’s push and IBM’s overture both demonstrate that cloud computing has come of age. Yes, there are hurdles, which I’ve talked about in other posts. But, the fundamental point is that the big boys of IT are not sitting on the sidelines, while upstarts like Amazon, Google, and Salesforce attempt to set the cloud computing agenda. With far more history, experience, and firepower the giants of IT are finally ready to act.

Better Cloud Performance, Amazon for Enterprise Apps, and Nicholas Carr on “The Big Switch” (to the Cloud)

Michael Healey, CTO of IT integration company GreenPages, wrote a report that discusses a five-step process for improving the performance of cloud applications. It’s worth your time, but if you want a summary go here.

An article in InformationWeek  argued that Amazon EC2 was a “superior alternative to SaaS” for hosting enterprise applications. Pentaho was referenced as a  vendor taking this route when it launched it Cloud Computing Edition.

Nicholas Carr, the author of “IT Doesn’t Matter” and “The Big Switch” gave a very interesting interview to Tom Sullivan of InfoWorld. The key take-aways were:

- Make no mistake about it: cloud computing is a natural evolution of computing in general; it is real and it will result in it becoming more like a true utility.

- We’re at the beginning of a 10-15 year transition period; while the hype may be ahead of reality, “the uptake of cloud services over the last year has moved faster than I would have expected.”

- Economics will outweigh the social and political challenges that arise as an enterprises, and executive management in particular, weight the benefit of reducing IT costs and improving profitability against the disruption within the IT department.

- Cloud computing will enable a whole lot more experimentation and innovation because the previous constraints on IT — the upfront infrastructure costs — will be dramatically reduced.

- A handful of big companies are buying about 20 percent of the servers sold today.  The implication is two-fold: it represents a confirmation that “more and more computing is done in central datacenters”; and, it demonstrates how much activity happens in the cloud and the changing nature of how we access content and services.

- The most significant thing enterprise IT needs to realize is the things that accounted for most of their spending and hiring “are going to go away…[and]  move out to the utility model over time.”

Open Standards for the Cloud

I’ve written about the need for cloud computing standards and the likelihood that such a movement will come to fruition. Well, it turns out that on Monday, March 30, the official Open Cloud Manifesto will be published for all to read and comment on. The goal, naturally, is to ensure “that the cloud itself should be open…an open platform.”

InfoWorld reported that the major driver of the Manifesto was IBM. Other big players like Cisco, HP, and Sun have been linked to it. This should not be too surprising to anyone. Standards are often started, cared for, and managed by vendors with the means to see the process through. It’s something that takes time, money, and resources.

Of course, we shouldn’t be surprised, then, that Microsoft cried foul. Steve Martin, part of the developer platform product management group at Microsoft, fired back a heartfelt, if not long-winded, rant accusing those spearheading the Manifesto  as lacking openness in its development.

However, as the authors of the Manifesto make clear this is just the beginning. And, not surprisingly, the authors welcome Microsoft’s future participation. One well respected blogger, even wrote it was all “much ado about nothing.”

Setting aside egos and the rhetoric, it’s good to know that the issue of standards will finally be taken up. It may be painful for those hashing through the details, but — if all goes well — customers and developers will greatly benefit.  And, ultimately, so will vendors of all stripes.

Getting Technical: Security and Architecture

Moving forward, I will start adding articles and reference material that cover the technical aspects of cloud computing. While I’ll continue to focus on the evolution of cloud computing from a business and enterprise standpoint — with an emphasis on vendor solutions — adding another layer to the discussion centered around the technical implementation and implications of cloud computing is critical to gaining insight into how it will effect your business and technology strategy.

There’s an excellent podcast on Overcast that includes an interview with Chris Huff,  a cloud security expert. He talks about the benefits and shortcomings of security in the cloud, as well as, some of the security issues associated with multi-tenant architecture and virtualization.

In terms of architecture, Todd Huff wrote a detailed analysis on the subject by asking Are Cloud Based Memory Architectures the Next Big Thing? in the blog High Scalability. He starts out provocatively and then puts together a well-thought out argument in favor of memory based architectures based on performance, scalability, availability, and faster application deployment. His premise starts:

“We are on the edge of two potent technological changes: Clouds and Memory Based Architectures. This evolution will rip open a chasm where new players can enter and prosper. Google is the master of disk. You can’t beat them at a game they perfected. Disk based databases like SimpleDB and BigTable are complicated beasts, typical last gasp products of any aging technology before a change. The next era is the age of Memory and Cloud which will allow for new players to succeed. The tipping point is soon.”

Both of these features are well worth your time whether you are focused on the technical aspects of cloud computing or more on the business end. If the former, you’ll find people speaking your language with depth and experience. If you’re the later, it would be wise to gain familiarity with these subjects. In the end, both the business and IT need to have a common framework to build on. Getting to know each others perspectives can only help in setting the right strategy and expectations.

It’s Official: Open Cloud Manifesto

Today marks the official launch of the Open Cloud Manifesto. The list of companies and groups that support it include: AT&T, Cisco, The Eclispse Foundation, EMC, IBM, Juniper, Red Hat, SAP, Sun, Telefonica, The Open Group, VMWare, and many others.

The Manifesto states why cloud computing is important an starts with “a set of core value propositions.” It also covers challenges and barriers to adoption, as well as, the ultimate goals and promises of “open” cloud computing. It then ends by listing six key principles:

1. Cloud providers must work together to ensure that the challenges to cloud adoption (security, integration, portability, interoperability, governance/management, metering/monitoring) are addressed through open collaboration and the appropriate use of standards.

2. Cloud providers must not use their market position to lock customers into their particular platforms and limit their choice of providers.

3. Cloud providers must use and adopt existing standards wherever appropriate. The IT industry has invested heavily in existing standards and standards organizations; there is no need to duplicate or reinvent them

4. When new standards (or adjustments to existing standards) are needed, we must be judicious and pragmatic to avoid creating too many standards. We must ensure that standards promote innovation and do not inhibit it.

5.Any community effort around the open cloud should be driven by customer needs, not merely the technical needs of cloud providers, and should be tested or verified against real customer requirements.

6.Cloud computing standards organizations, advocacy groups, and communities should work together and stay coordinated, making sure that efforts do not conflict or overlap.

The organization’s web site is located at: http://opencloudmanifesto.org/

Manifesto details can be found at: http://opencloudmanifesto.org/opencloudmanifesto1.htm

New Kids on the Block

There’s a new Gartner Report, Cool Vendors in Cloud Computing, that highlights five start-ups in cloud computing management and professional services. They are:

• Appirio – which provide professional services and integration solutions based on salesforce.com for various web 2.0 services including Google Apps, Facebook, and Amazon. They are doing relatively well and their 2,000 customers include Japan Post Office, Qualcomm, Genentech, and Author.
• CohesiveFT – a cross-platform virtual appliance packaging solution for VMware, Xen, Parallels, and Amazon EC2. They also have a product called VPN-Cubed which allows companies to set up secure networking between their servers across the clouds.
• Hyperic – application and infrastructure monitoring solution for Amazon EC2 (I wrote about them in my notes from Cloud Computing Expo last year.)
• RightScale – cross-cloud automation engine and a set of application templates.
• Ylastic – browser-based Amazon-management interface for mobile phones and other devices.

Another interesting startup is rPath. As reported in TechCrunchIT, rPath is taking their technology and value proposition — reduced cost and complexity of application delivery — into the cloud, whether via Amazon’s EC2 or in private clouds. For example, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is using rPath to “manage and operate applications in a private cloud.”

Also, TechCrunchIT reported that another start-up, Sonoa Systems, inked a deal with MTV Networks (MTVN). “Sonoa’s product, ServiceNet, will help MTVN manage the delivery of video feeds as the they open their APIs to partners and consumers in the cloud.”

Finally, InfoWorld reported that storage start-up ParaScale announced the general availability of ParaScale’s Cloud Storage (PCS) software. PCS is being used and tested by customers including Sony Pictures Imageworks. “Target customers include cloud providers that need to offer storage over the Internet in a highly scalable manner, as well as enterprises attempting to improve the efficiency of storage operations inside the firewall.” The full release is available here.