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Category: Cloud computing
November 25th, 2009
SaaS and cloud computing: A look at the due diligence
This is a guest post by TechRepublic’s Scott Lowe, CIO of Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. Lowe walks us through the software as a service and cloud computing due diligence. For more posts like this see TechRepublic’s IT Leadership blog.
Cloud computing, software as a service, outsourcing… to me, these are all synonymous terms. While “cloud computing” as a concept has gained tremendous traction and mindshare, the fact remains that this sector of computing is nothing more than today’s de jour term for outsourcing and the decisions around and challenges regarding outsourcing should remain front and center all the way through the process.
One of the first questions that comes up almost immediately after problem identification and before solution creation lies in the decision as to whether to build a solution or to acquire a product or outsource the development of a solution. There are a great many factors that go into this decision and here, I will discuss a few important points. Over the past few months, Westminster College has had a number of opportunities to ponder this very question and our answers have been varied depending on circumstances.
November 19th, 2009
Google's Chrome OS: Will you give up desktop apps?
Google on Thursday revealed a bevy of noteworthy developments for its Chrome OS. The company released the Chrome OS to the open source community, laid out its security vision and promised to deliver a simple operating system. However, the success or failure of the Chrome OS will ride on whether users will give up desktop applications.
Sundar Pichai, Vice President of Product Management, outlined the Chrome OS, noted that “there’s a paradigm shift in computing” presumably to netbooks and noted:
“Every application is a Web application. There are no conventional desktop applications.”
And there’s the rub.
November 18th, 2009
Salesforce kicks off Dreamforce, announces Chatter
These days, two of the biggest buzzwords in online business tools are collaboration and social.
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has just taken the stage at San Francisco’s Moscone Center to kick off the Dreamforce conference and is expected to introduce Salesforce Chatter, a new tool that brings collaboration and social together. (Techmeme)
Other coverage: Michael Krigsman: Dreamforce: Quick first impressions
The company, in a statement, says Chatter will “revolutionize the workplace” by leveraging social networking models that have become popular among the mainstream, notably Facebook, and bringing them to a secure and private cloud where people, content and applications will have profiles feeds and groups.
As you can probably imagine, Chatter incorporates things like status updates (I’m on a conference call now or maybe in a meeting), groups (which helps a project team stay updated), sharing (which allows users to determine who sees what) and, of course, Twitter, with the most relevant tweets being filtered into Chatter.
The Salesforce announcement comes on the heels of Cisco’s own unveiling of collaboration tools earlier this month and builds on some of the buzz created by Google when it introduced a preview version of Wave, an online collaboration platform.
The Salesforce model goes beyond just collaboration tools. This is a platform and Salesforce is opening it to developers as a platform so they can build their own social enterprise applications of their own. Likewise, the 135,000 native apps on Force.com will also become social, the company said.
Increasingly, as workers are mobile, companies are global - or virtual - and meetings are conducted over a video conference just as often as they’re held in a conference room, employees no longer can rely on walking over to a colleague’s cubicle to discuss a presentation.
Chatter is scheduled for release in early 2010 - though Benioff wouldn’t offer any specific date, noting that delays can happen. It will be included in all paid editions of Salesforce CRM and Force.com but there will also be a new Chatter Edition for $50 per user per month and will include Salesforce Chatter, Salesforce Content and Force.com. (See YouTube video below)
The company also offered a peek at a new user interface, scheduled for release next year, that looks cleaner and simpler but has some familiarity to the old UI, easing in the users who tend to not like change.
Back at the Dreamforce keynote, Benioff - joined by San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom - spent some time talking about the work that the Salesforce Foundation is funding locally. He also spent time looking back at previous announcements made by the company.
Interestingly enough, Benioff and team spent the first half of his keynote looking backward, talking about previously-announced services that were relatively unknown to those in the audience, based on the number of hands that went up when Benioff asked who’d heard of them. (So, it seems it may have been a good idea to review them.)
Specifically, he talked about the four clouds: Sales Cloud 2 and Service Cloud 2, which were introduced earlier this year. (Video) He also mentioned Custom Cloud 2, which he said will be the focus of discussions at Dreamforce tomorrow. He also teased to an unknown cloud that would be revealed at the end of the keynote, which ended up being Chatter.
He called it “Our biggest breakthrough ever,” describing it as Facebook and Twitter in the enterprise. Unfortunately, he didn’t get big rounds of applause for Chatter - largely, I suspect, because it took him at least 15 minutes of talking about his own experiences with Twitter and Facebook to finally get to the announcement.
As a side note, Chatter is a cool announcement but a long-winded keynote seemed to be forcing the audience to remain engaged. The news itself was buried into the final minutes of the speech. And company executives - especially Benioff - seem to be trying to inject some excitement into this keynote, including some bizarre Bruce Springsteen-like introductions for anyone who steps on stage. (”Ladies and Gentleman, please welcome to the stage… JOE SMITH!!!!).
The audience is clearly engaged already. Some 19,000 people are attending Dreamforce and many of them are already fans of the technology, so why the need to splash some “Hollywood” into it and try to sell them on the idea of cloud computing? They’re already sold. At Oracle Open World this year, there were cameo appearances by The Who’s Roger Daltrey and California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, but the biggest celebrity on stage at Dreamforce was San Francisco’s mayor.
Maybe it’s me but it all seemed like showboating overkill, especially given that the keynote started 30 minutes and then still went over the 90-minute time frame, There were plenty of places where the keynote could have been trimmed to put things back on schedule. And, given that people started to stream out of the auditorium as the Chatter demo continued (and went on and on and on) and tweets reflected that attendees were not as engaged as they could have been, the company really sort of botched this keynote.
November 17th, 2009
Riverbed announces plans for virtual appliance to accelerate, optimize cloud
Today at Interop, Riverbed Technology is announcing a new push into network acceleration and optimization for the cloud, a virtual appliance, if you will, that is intended to mirror what’s being done on the private cloud.
When the servers are yours and they’re housed on-site, you can install things to your infrastructure, such as the network optimization appliances that Riverbed has already been offering. Network optimization tools can do a number of things, including re-routing traffic to ensure bandwidth for heavy-duty tasks such as streaming video or using deduplication to transport just changes to a file - instead of the whole file - over the network.
Related coverage: Watching the WAN: Is it time to invest?
Riverbed said it has plans to change that in 2010, initially with a virtual appliance called Steelhead for the cloud. In the simplest terms, it’s a virtual version of the appliance that resides at the gate of the cloud to manage network performance of applications and files. In a statement, Eric Wolford, a senior VP at Riverbed, said:
Our new technology will change the way enterprises and governments think about storage. No longer will storage have to be tethered locally to the server. This frees IT leaders to locate and move storage assets to sites anywhere in the world, even thousands of miles away, to deliver the most cost-effective and intelligent architectures. This capability allows enterprises to bridge the public cloud and the private cloud - allowing them to take advantage of the best of both worlds
November 16th, 2009
AT&T plots compute cloud similar to Amazon Web Services
AT&T on Monday rolled out a cloud computing system that mimics the approach of Amazon Web Services.
Dubbed the AT&T Synaptic Computer Service, the telecom giant is offering on-demand computing via self-service. AT&T said its service will allow corporate customers to scale up computer requirements quickly. As corporate customers increasingly ponder Amazon Web Services, hosting providers and major enterprise IT players are racing to offer similar services. Simply put, many traditional enterprise IT players are likely to emulate Amazon’s on-demand computing cloud model.
The offering, outlined in a statement, is built on software from VMware and Sun Microsystems (Techmeme). Notably, AT&T will use the Sun Open Cloud Platform, Sun Cloud APIs and architecture.
The service will launch in the fourth quarter in the U.S. AT&T will offer international services in the future. AT&T’s feature list includes a portal to order computing power, multiple billing options, storage as a service, no feeds and a service level agreement for the platform.
The service comes in three server sizes:
- Small (1 CPU and 4 GB of memory)
- Medium (2 CPUs and 8 GB of memory)
- Large (4 CPUs and 16 GB of memory)
And the storage options:
- 100 GB of storage provided with each server image (on the same virtual infrastructure in the same IDC)
- Two supplementary storage options for an additional charge:
- Purchase up to 2 TB additional disk storage per virtual server
- Connect to AT&T Synaptic Storage as a Service
- 24×7x365 monitoring of the virtualized infrastructure
- Service level agreement of 99.9% for availability of the infrastructure
AT&T has been adding to its cloud computing lineup for the last year. The company didn’t reveal pricing for its compute as a service offering in its statement or Web site.
AT&T’s storage as a service offering costs 10 cents per GB of data transferred. If you have two copies of data in one location it’s 25 cents per GB. Two copies in one location and backup in another will run you 35 cents per GB.
November 16th, 2009
IBM launches private business analytics cloud; Eyes 'easily consumable' BI for the masses
IBM on Monday will unveil Blue Insight, a massive business analytics cloud that will hold more than a petabyte of data. This internal cloud computing environment will be the basis for future external services.
Internally, IBM’s effort is dubbed Blue Insight, a business analytics cloud that will give 200,000 employees access to key corporate data around the world. Blue Insight will suck in data from 100 different data stores and warehouses. The data will then be dished out to salespeople and developers.
According to IBM, Blue Insight is a showcase of the “eat your own dogfood” mantra. The system is built using Cognos, IBM’s business intelligence software, and hardware systems such as System Z, the company’s mainframe (right).
Going forward, IBM said it will add structured and unstructured data to Blue Insight. Some of this data will include revenue forecasts and sales quotas, product breakdowns, queries from real-time data and inventory levels and defects.
Increasingly, companies like IBM and HP are revamping their internal operations and then using those learnings to sell to customers. In IBM’s case, the architecture behind Blue Insight will be used to form the Smart Analytics Cloud for customers.
The Smart Analytics Cloud aims to provide “easily consumable business intelligence services, systems and software.” The bundle will include business intelligence services, Cognos and mainframes.
IBM added that it plans on focusing on the easily consumable part. To make business intelligence easier to digest, IBM said it will use Web 2.0-ish dashboards. In a backgrounder, IBM writes:
A key focus area of the Smart Analytics Cloud is rapid service deployment and end user acceptance. With agile Web 2.0 toolkits, user registration applications are easily created. Corporate processes are automated using IBM freeware and guidance documentation.
Also: IBM launches business analytics services unit; Eyes predictive modeling
November 12th, 2009
Other governments are "Going Google," too - not just L.A.
For Google, Los Angeles was the big catch - the second largest city in the nation chose to Go Google and transition some 30,000 employees to Google’s cloud-based e-mail system.
But L.A. isn’t the only local government agency going Google. Earlier today, the company hosted a live Webcast on ZDNet’s Sister site, TechRepublic, that featured the CIO of the New Mexico Attorney General’s Office talking about his decision to move 120 attorneys and 200 full-time employees to Google Apps.
In a blog post earlier this week, Google also noted that the city of Canton, Georgia has moved its 165 employees to Google Apps and that the school district in Palm Beach County, Florida is moving its 200,000 students, staff and other users, as well. Finally, the city of Orlando, Florida is also on board. From the Google blog post:
Conrad Cross, the CIO for the City of Orlando… is leading the migration of all 3,000 city employees from Lotus Notes/Domino to Google Apps, including the Police and Fire departments. Facing software license renewals, major upgrade costs, and a 12% reduction in staff, it was the right time for the City to consider other options. For half the cost of the alternative, Orlando is jumping onto Google’s innovation curve and freeing up IT resources to focus on more important efforts. “The time was right,” said Cross. “I’m delivering a better service with less resources, and that gets me ahead of the game.”
It appears that these decisions were already in the works by the time the Los Angeles City Council approved a $7.25 million contract with Google. But for many large cities, Los Angeles is the one they’re watching. There’s a lot on the line for L.A., Google and the cloud, in general, as others are waiting to see if the Google move turns out to be a nightmare or a seamless transition that ends up offerings some real cost savings to the city.
November 12th, 2009
Amazon Web Services plots Asia rollout
Amazon Web Services plans to expand its services into Asia-Pacific in 2010.
The company said in a statement that it will offer “multiple availability zones” in Singapore in the first half of 2010. Other services will roll out across the region in the second half of 2010.
Amazon’s lineup of services such as EC2, S3, SimpleDB, Relational Database Service and others will all be available.
According to Amazon, the expansion is being pushed so services can be closer to customers. Pricing will be announced when services launch next year.
November 12th, 2009
Rackspace adds Windows Server support to its cloud
Rackspace has launched a beta for Windows Server 2003 and Server 2008 cloud computing services.
The offering, which was hinted at a few months back in an interview, will be fully supported by Microsoft. In a nutshell, Microsoft will allow its Windows customers to get the same technical support for Windows Servers in Rackspace’s cloud as they would in a physical environment.
The program is currently under beta.
Here’s a look at the pricing.
Rackspace’s Windows effort comes amid a flurry of news for the company of late. On Monday, Rackspace reported third quarter net income of $7.6 million, or 6 cents a share. Revenue for the quarter was $162.4 million, up 17.4 percent from a year ago. The results were in line with expectations.
According to Rackspace, the bulk of that revenue derived from managed hosting services. Cloud revenue accounted for 10 percent of total revenue.
Meanwhile, Rackspace ended the quarter with 80,994 customers, up from 70,803 in the second quarter. In addition, Rackspace announced that its cloud would power the Posterous blog platform.
November 11th, 2009
LiveOffice opens cloud-based e-mail archiving to all mail platforms
if you’re thinking about moving your company’s e-mail system to a cloud provider, you likely have a lot of questions: Is it safe? Can I really save money? What do I do about archiving to remain compliant?
LiveOffice, a company that’s focused on archiving e-mail systems in the cloud, today announced support for cloud-based e-mail services, including Google Apps, Microsoft Exchange Online and Cisco WebEx Mail. In its press release, issued today, LiveOffice said:
Switching to a cloud-based email provider presents challenges when it comes to existing email archives. While it is common for on-premise and hybrid archiving vendors to use MAPI, EventSync or log shipping to archive client messages, these methods do not work when email is hosted in a multi-tenant, Internet-based cloud. Plus, on-premise archiving software and appliances cannot be deployed in the data centers of cloud email providers. Cloud email providers that offer their own limited archiving features don’t offer archiving support for other cloud email platforms, thereby locking customers into their email platform.
It’s almost like a baby-step, if you will, for companies who are considering a move to the cloud but are still a bit uncertain about pulling the trigger. And, as anyone who’s ever been around when a baby starts to walk knows, it’s important to have someone nearby ready to help that baby take those steps and keep balanced.
LiveOffice has put together a number of resources to address the concerns and answer the questions of companies thinking about a move to the cloud. The company has created an educational Web site with more information, called cloudemail101.org, and is also offering a complimentary whitepaper called “Separating Cool Clouds from Hot Air.”
In addition, the company is hosting a free webinar tomorrow - that’s Thursday, Nov. 12 - at 10 am Pacific Time to discuss the challenges that come with managing e-mail volume and the importance of being cloud ready. Finally, what sort of educational campaign would be complete without a YouTube video to explain it all.
November 9th, 2009
Survey: Cloud confusion among IT could slow enterprise adoption
When it comes to cloud computing, there are a number of people whose definition of it is, well, still in the clouds. What makes that worse is that those people who are still confused by what cloud computing is actual IT professionals, many of whom still see it as “more hype than substance.”
With “cloud computing” still bringing up a number of different definitions and perceptions in the IT community, there are concerns that the adoption of cloud computing technologies among the enterprise may be stalled, according to a survey of IT professionals released today.
November 3rd, 2009
Cisco, EMC, VMware announce joint integrated datacenter venture
Cisco, EMC and VMware announced Tuesday a joint venture to sell a new integrated data center product called V-Block.
Their venture, called the “Virtual Computing Environment coalition,” will sell and provide maintenance and service support for V-Block, and will combine EMC storage equipment, Cisco virtualized servers and networking equipment and VMWare virtualization technology.
[EMC statement] [Cisco] [VMWare]
Rumors of the deal — code-named “Alpine” — have been going around since September.
October 29th, 2009
With Chargify, Web 2.0 and SaaS businesses can bill with ease
If you’re a small Web 2.0 business, you shouldn’t have to build an application from scratch to properly bill your customers.
That’s the thinking behind Chargify, a billing and subscription system by TechCrunch50 startup Grasshopper. The company’s API and hosted payment solution makes it easy to integrate the system into an existing website, allowing businesses to charge customers on a recurring basis, manage subscriptions, comply with PCI regulations and intelligence from billing.
I spoke with Grasshopper CTO and co-founder David Hauser about how his solution is different from FreshBooks, Zuora, Vindicia, MoneyBird and other competitors.
I also spoke with lead developer Michael Klett about how the system actually works.
October 29th, 2009
Juniper Networks makes its move; Rolls out processor, router, network operating system revamp
Juniper Networks on Thursday unveiled an armada of new gear, software and chips that it hopes will ding Cisco Systems while positioning the company well in the next generation data center.
The networking company will roll out its strategy at the New York Stock Exchange later today (statement). Juniper’s strategy positions the company’s network operating system, Junos, as a centerpiece of the enterprise network while surrounding it with a bevy of new systems including processors that offer “3D Scaling.” In a nutshell, 3D Scaling is expected to allow for more subscribers, services and bandwidth to be squeezed into the network.
For Juniper, the product overhaul represents a repositioning as the center of the network. Juniper CEO Kevin Johnson called the repositioning a “historic day” for the company that highlights the vision for the next decade of networking. “Juniper believes it’s time for a new approach to networking. An approach based on smart systems and open software platforms. An approach that adapts to changing business dynamics. An approach that embraces partnership and unleashes innovation,” said Johnson.
Juniper’s biggest brother in this adventure is IBM, which has an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) partnership. The companies said that IBM is now shipping to customers a suite of Ethernet networking products to customers. In addition, Juniper has surrounded itself with a bevy of other partners such as Dell.
The game appears to position Juniper as a Switzerland type neutral and open figure as larger players vie to become the dominant data center architecture.
Among the moving parts from Juniper:
The company unveiled new Junos software platform. Junos, a network operating system that runs behind the scenes, is Juniper’s answer to Cisco’s Internetwork Operating System (IOS). Junos has been updated to program layers of the network for rich user interfaces. Juniper’s platform consists of the Junos operating system, a Junos Space network application platform and Pulse, a network client.
Juniper rolled out new processors. The company touted a new Junos One family of processors. The linchpin here is a Junos Trio chipset with 3D Scaling, which allows enterprises to cram more onto a network. Junos Trio will be delivered in new line cards and 3.5 inch routers for the Juniper MX Series. The Junos chips are the fourth generation. There are 30 patents in the architecture. Juniper founder and CTO Pradeep Sindhu said in a statement that the company has invested more than $80 million over the last five years developing the processor line.
Juniper introduced new edge routers based on its software and new processors. The systems, dubbed MX 3D, carry some heady claims including dramatic cuts in operating expenses for carriers. Juniper is claiming that the MX Series can provide up to 2.6 terabits per second with less power consumption. To put that throughput into perspective 2.6 terabits per second equates to 8.5 million iTunes downloads in one tenth of a second or 50 Blu-ray DVDs downloaded in less than 5 seconds.
The MX 3D introductions include new line cards and two new routers. The products will be available in December and throughout 2010.
The company is offering cloud services based on its systems. Virtualized security services are the headliner here and Juniper is also offering new support for VMware and Citrix.
Also see: Juniper steps up Cisco assault
October 27th, 2009
L.A. votes to "Go Google"; pressure shifts to Google and the cloud
Score one for Google and The Cloud.
The Los Angeles City Council today voted unanimously to “Go Google,” approving a $7.25 million contract to outsource the city’s e-mail system to Google’s cloud and transition some 30,000 city employees to the cloud over the coming year, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times.
Clearly, this is a big deal for the city of Los Angeles. But this vote is also monumental for cloud computing as a whole, which has gained popularity and widespread interest but still relatively little adoption as companies - and municipalities, apparently - weigh the anticipated cost benefits over the unknown risks that might come with system failures or data breaches.
The stakes are also high for Google, which has stepped up its campaign for Google Apps, its cloud-based suite of offerings, by highlighting how companies who are fed up with breakdowns and costs of maintaining old legacy systems finally decided to “Go Google.”
Both Google and Microsoft had put in bids for the city’s contract and, at one point, it seemed to be a showdown between the two, representing a bigger winner-take-all battle between old school systems and 21st Century cloud systems. In a post last month, I suggested that a win for Microsoft would show that Outlook and Exchange are still big players and that a win for Google would show that the cloud is ready for prime time.
This doesn’t necessarily mean the beginning of the end for Microsoft in this space. Los Angeles is just one city on this planet - and it’s only 30,000 city employees. But Google clearly has its sights set on the enterprise for the next wave of growth, even to the point that it could overtake - or nicely complement - the advertising business.
At the Gartner IT Symposium 2009 in Orlando earlier this month, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said the largest number of seats for Google runs about 30,000 users and that goal right now is to gain users for its enterprise apps. He sees the enterprise as “humongous,” a multi-billion dollar business that has real potential. By Gartner’s calculations, enterprise accounts for about 3 cents of every dollar that Google makes, leaving plenty of room for growth.
That growth could come from the countless other municipalities, agencies and companies that have been toying with the idea of a move to the cloud but have held back, waiting for someone else to jump off the cliff first.
That’s what happened in L.A. today
October 27th, 2009
Intuit enhances Quickbooks by bringing cloud apps to desktop software
Intuit, a trusted name for some 4 million small business customers who manage their finances using the Quickbooks software, is bringing a bit of the cloud to the desktop. The company, like so many others these days, is unveiling an app store of its own and opening its API to developers who want to free the financial data of Quickbooks 2010 into custom apps.
But instead of just putting it out there for customers, the company is embedding a button link to the apps marketplace into the desktop product. It’s an interesting approach - putting a “cloud” element in desktop software - but execs at Intuit say that their customers are taking baby steps into the cloud and aren’t necessarily interested in a full-swing jump into Web-based software.
The company is quick to point out that it’s not automatically sending anyone’s financial data into the cloud. Nor is this some sort of sign that Intuit is trying to move its customers from client-based software to cloud-based apps. But it does offer those who might be interested in testing the cloud a way to do just that.
In some ways, it struck me that Intuit is offering something competitive to what salesforce is offering with its AppExchange program, which allows developers to build custom apps and upload them to the salesforce app marketplace. That becomes even more obvious when you consider that many Quickbooks users also use it to manage their customer lists and relationships - something that salesforce was built to do.
Developers are creative enough and smart enough to build apps that take advantage of the Intuit’s open API and then integrate them with salesforce. Intuit gets that. But it also thinks it has a unique marketplace for small businesses and that many of them can benefit from it.
During an interview, I also talked to Intuit execs about the potential consumer market around custom apps for programs such as Quicken and TurboTax. After all, Intuit’s software has revolutionized personal finance software and consumers are far more savvy about their own finances, especially after some of the lessons we’ve learned from the economic downturn, than they were a decade or so ago
For now, Intuit is focused on Quickbooks and small businesses - but if the apps take off for that market, it’s not a big reach to explore the same concept for consumers. For anyone who’s trying to re-take control of their personal finances in these tough economic times, a push into the consumer could be welcomed with open arms.
October 27th, 2009
Amazon launches relational database service: Think MySQL in the cloud
Amazon on Tuesday launched a public beta of a service dubbed the Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS). The main appeal: Allow customers to operate and scale database clusters while leaving pesky tasks like patching and administration to Amazon Web Services.
Adam Selipsky, vice president of Amazon Web Services (AWS), said the goal was to make it easy to scale MySQL clusters. He noted that “MySQL code and developer tools today will work with RDS.”
The RDS will round out Amazon’s SimpleDB service and other plans where you bring your own database to the company’s cloud (AWS blog, Amazon CTO Werner Vogels). What remains to be seen is the level of data that gets pumped into Amazon’s RDS. Selipsky said the service is “suited for anything you’d put into a MySQL database” and that Amazon has “taken great pains to make sure it is highly secure.”
Selipsky said that RDS came about because Amazon’s SimpleDB is optimized for index and query functions not relational functions. Most enterprises mix and match these database types. Adobe is one of the customers taking RDS for a spin. Nevertheless, enterprise customers are likely to take their time moving sensitive data into Amazon’s RDS effort. “We’re highly confident that RDS can hold a wide range of data sensitive or otherwise,” said Selipsky.
To ride shotgun with the RDS rollout, Amazon also unveiled a new family of Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) services. The latest family is for high CPU and memory usage. Things like running demanding databases, rendering and caching will operate better with a high-memory EC2 service. Selipsky noted that EC2 has three EC2 families in multiple sizes.
And finally, Amazon is dropping prices across all of its EC2 instances. For instance, the smallest Linux-based EC2 instance runs 10 cents an hour, but will now go for 8.5 cents. In general, the price cut is 15 percent across Linux instances. Microsoft is also dropping the price of Windows EC2 instances.
More:
- Amazon Web Services rolls out Virtual Private Cloud: Enterprise customer tipping point on deck?
- BMC to link up with Amazon Web Services for hybrid cloud deployments
- Comparing infrastructure as a service providers: Amazon, Rackspace emerge
- Rackspace lays out its cloud computing roadmap: Think hybrid
- Amazon tweaks EC2 pricing; Takes next step in its enterprise evolution
- 10 things you still have to worry about until cloud computing becomes reality
- Long live the Sneakernet: Computing’s most resilient network
- Amazon beefs up cloud visibility and monitoring tools
- Migrating to Amazon Web Services: The blueprint
October 26th, 2009
Enterprise IT's trust level of Google will increase
TechRepublic’s CIO Jury finds that IT leaders trust Microsoft more than Google as a technology partner, but tune in next year.
Jason Hiner outlines the latest findings in the TechRepublic CIO Jury. In a nutshell, it looks like this:
So why do I expect Google’s standing to look better next year? Last week, I was at the Gartner IT Symposium and you couldn’t escape chatter about Google and what it may be able to do for the enterprise. And here’s what caught my attention: The audience—not the analysts—were yapping about Google in the enterprise.
October 26th, 2009
Salesforce, Adobe bring Flash to Force.com
Businesses who have already taken the plunge into the Salesforce cloud will find something new this morning: Adobe Flash.
The two companies today announced an alliance that brings the power of the Adobe Flash platform to the Salesforce’s Force.com, where developers build - and many times share - business apps for the cloud. Through the partnership, the companies said they are are offering developers a way to build rich Internet applications in the cloud.
The apps built using Adobe Flash Builder for Force.com can easily be deployed to users through the browser using the Adobe Flash® Player or directly to the desktop via Adobe AIR. In a joint statement, the companies further said:
This tight integration enables client-side data management and synchronization between cloud and client, simplifying the development of applications that seamlessly run online or offline across operating systems and devices, while taking full advantage of the proven scalability, security and reliability of the Force.com platform. Developers can use Adobe Flash Builder for Force.com to extend or enhance existing Salesforce CRM implementations and custom-built Force.com applications, or build entirely new applications to provide customized user experiences for any business need.
Adobe Flash Builder for Force.com is available today as a developer preview. The full release is expected to be released in the first half of 2010. The companies have also put together a brief (14 minutes) video demonstrating the building of an app on the new platform.
October 23rd, 2009
Data center design 101
I don’t have to design data centers, but I do have to play a knowledgeable wonk on the Web from time to time. With that in mind, I attended two data center presentations at the Gartner IT Symposium to see what I could learn.
My knowledge about the data center essentially boils down to one word: Money. Companies are building new data centers to save money on power and better utilize their computing power. Sure, cloud computing is a factor, but a small one for enterprises at this juncture. These people are building data centers in a big way. The other money point: Vendors are killing each other to be the data center king. Cisco takes on HP. IBM is in there. Oracle too (via Sun). And unfortunately for IT buyers each vendor has a different twist on data center architecture.
Simply put, I’m a data center economics major with a minor in things like raised floors, cooling systems, server racks and other items.
Here’s what I learned:
Companies are only building what they need. A weak economy and green IT initiatives mean that techies are increasingly going to be judged by their data center savings, says David Cappuccio, an analyst at Gartner. An efficient data center design can cut the footprint by 60 percent.
Tiers are being mixed and matched with one data center. Data centers have tiers of availability. Tier 1 is 99.6 percent uptime and Tier 4 is 99.995 percent with Tier 2 and Tier 3 in between. To build a Tier 1 10,000 square-foot facility the cost is $9.94 million. Tier 4 will run you $34.5 million, according to Gartner.
One of the more recent trends is to mix and match tiers within one facility. With this approach, you can segment applications based on the importance to the business.
Everyone has a box for mid-sized and large businesses. IBM, Rackable, Sun, Verari Systems and HP all have trailers (right) that can extend data centers and deploy in 12 to 14 weeks. Cappuccio noted that Microsoft has a large 200-and-more-container deployment at its Chicago data center. Microsoft is also experimenting with wind-powered containers. For mid-sized companies these containers could become an alternative to traditional data centers—slap these boxes on a slab and go.
Pod architecture. Cappuccio noted that previous data center design principles went like this: Build a facility for today, estimate what you’ll need in 20 years, and go. Today, it’s all about pods. With this approach you figure out how much space you need, say 15,000 square feet, and then build out for five to seven years. Then you add pods as you grow. Pods also allow for retrofitting so a data center complex can last 40 to 50 years.
Combine pod architectures with density zones. Cappuccio added that data centers should be designed by density zones. High-density applications (200 watts per square foot) represent 10 percent to 15 percent of a total data center usage. Medium-density apps (150 watts per square foot) account for another 20 percent. The rest is low-density (100 watts per square foot). If you mix and match densities you save money on the build-out. The density zone approach is likely to be used in the majority of new or retrofitted data centers by 2013. Double bonus if you take the pod architecture and use density zones.
The money chart:
Raised floors are passe. Anyone who has been in a traditional data center knows that raised floors, anywhere from 12 to 18 inches to 24 to 48 inches, are the norm. If you design a data center properly you can use a concrete slab for the build out. Building on a slab can be $20 per square foot cheaper than a raised floor.
And once you learn the data center principles all you have to do is evaluate all of these vendor data center visions dancing around. The field: Cisco, Oracle, HP, IBM and VMware. You can toss Dell, Microsoft, Amazon and Google into the mix too. The big takeaways from Gartner’s talk on the vendor data center vision are:
- Don’t get locked into anything proprietary;
- The tectonic plates between these vendors are still shifting;
- Don’t let any one vendor creep to the point where it controls your budget. Data centers aren’t meant to be homogeneous.
That final point is very notable. Most data center players have adjacent products and if you’re not careful your entire enterprise could depend on one big name.
Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and Editorial Director of ZDNet sister site TechRepublic. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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