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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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…

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“.

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.

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.”