Avastu Blog: Sustainable Global Clouds

The news comes following Sprinx Systems’ recent presentation at Interop New York, the leading business technology event. Radko Jelinek, Sprinx’ Director of Sales, described the company’s product, positioning and timing as ideal for the American business sector. “SprinxCRM is one of the few customer relationship management systems designed with middle-market companies in mind. Our newest editions were developed to specifically address the needs of those sales-driven businesses in the U.S., through either our ‘off-the-shelf’ or customized versions. Our SprinxCRM Mobile for Windows Mobile offers solutions that are particularly exciting in light of current trends in sales and sales force management.” In anticipation of Sprinx Systems’ entry into the U.S. market, the company has established operations in California, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, as well as toll-free call center support for the continental United States. Press Release

Virtualisation software maker VMware will slash the price its distributors buy at by 10% from Monday, according to a report in IT channel magazine Microscope. This price reduction will be passed on to customers as the virtualisation specialist attempts to boost its competitiveness. It cancels out a 10% rise the supplier introduced on 1 September, which combined with the rallying of the US currency has made VMware less competitive, particularly against Microsoft , said partners. Matt Piercy, senior director of OEM alliances for EMEA, confirmed the price reduction and hoped distributorswho buy its software in dollars, would decide to shelve plans to hike prices. Piercy said, "I hope our move means [distributors] will not raise their prices, I cannot control the price our partners sell at, but as a vendor we are taking positive steps". Source

So, what the heck is "cloud computing"? Even after reading a 14-page special report in this week's Economist, I still have a hard time coming up with a concise definition. Perhaps the easiest way to understand the basic concept is to think back about 15 years ... If you wanted to type a letter, create a spreadsheet, or play a game, you'd have to go to the store, buy the software, and install it on your hard drive. And each time you used one of these applications, everything you did took place inside the computer sitting on your desk. But then the Internet came along. Oh, brave new world Nowadays, if you want to watch a video on YouTube, share photos with friends on Flickr, listen to music on MySpace, or post an ad on Craigslist, all you really need is a browser and an Internet connection. That's because nearly all of the applications we use and all the data we access is now stored on a remote server somewhere out in "cyberspace." And these servers are h

OK, so obviously they said it in a more polished way. But the fact of the matter is that we are at the brink of an industry shift. This is happening and we all know it. A lot of big and established firms will be doing something fundamentally different or may totally disappear. Anyways, here's another pitch for the Cloud: Forrester Research has whipped up a new report that advises business managers how to sell CFOs, those folks scrutinizing the bottom lines of your businesses, on cloud computing. The report aims to provide some respite from recession fears. Forrester analyst Ted Schadler lists three key benefits to the cloud, starting with speed. SAAS enables businesses to get up and running in a flash. The analyst said a financial services firm migrated its employee portal to a cloud-based vendor and launched it in two months, while another firm he surveyed has spent the last 18 months building its employee portal in house. In short, the cloud is ready made. Customers don't bui

Rackable, a leading provider of servers and storage products for large-scale data centers, today announced the availability of the Rackable Systems CloudRack(TM), a new, highly-efficient enclosure that includes one-of-a-kind rack and server designs. CloudRack's innovative new design provides one of the industry's most optimized compute and storage densities to date. Available in some of the widest ranges of configurability options on the market today, CloudRack can help cloud computing environments to scale cost effectively. "Rackable Systems continues to focus on data center density and efficiency, while offering our customers the widest possible set of configurations that fit their specific needs," said Mark Barrenechea, president and CEO of Rackable Systems. "The Rackable Systems CloudRack sets a new standard for density and configurability for cloud computing. In a 44U cabinet configuration, it can support up to 44 trays, 704 cores and 352 TBs of storage.&quo

This report illustrates how cloud data centers and renewable energy make for a potent combination that may forever change the data center computing competitive landscape. These computing giants are in a race to construct cloud facilities: mega-sized data centers that are "off the grid", powered by massive amounts of renewable energy. "Given that the giants in the computing industry have the ability to run their own data centers at such ultra-low costs structures that only a scant few will be able to duplicate, the pursuit of a sufficiently 'green' data center is an unending and impossible mission," writes Denegri. Denegri deduces that cloud computing vendor strategies will make it increasingly difficult, over the long term, for companies to justify the management of their own infrastructure. "In my view," writes De

My keynote yesterday at CloudCamp and continuous talks with vendors, consumers and niche-vendors tell me that some big things will be happening in this cloud space: Semi-nationalization of Data Centers ? : At some point of time, the need for political stability or to prevent instability will lead to a typical asset grab and ownership of the data centers (or the castles that own the data and knowledge of nations/states). Should it have been arranged with the nations/states by vendors such as IBM, Microsoft etc but also smaller challengers such as RackSpace etc, then it should create lesser of friction. Should it have been arranged on different terms, (Revenue sharing, both in good and bad times, again meaning that a not open and non-regulated Cloud Center may be a very dangerous thing to do, if you can look at bit ahead in the future) , then a land/data center grab may lead to many local and glocal consumers, who may lose ownership to their data. Same thing that is happening to many tr

In the days immediately following the election, the president-elect will dispatch transition teams. And since both Barack Obama and John McCain's campaigns have relied heavily on social networking sites and other cloud-based services to help their campaigns, these transition teams may come to Washington with a different attitude about what they want from federal IT systems. That's why next week's election may create an opportunity for vendors to pitch new technology directions, and cloud services adoption in particular, said Michael Farber, a vice president at Booz Allen Hamilton Inc., a management consulting firm with a number of federal clients. Farber said he believes the period following the election will be a fertile time to "structure a pilot and forge a partnership with Google ." Ballmer's memo, which echoed the sweeping, change-is-at-hand message of Bill Gates' 1995 Internet Tidal Wave memo , bundles the cloud, social networking, and the diver

Yesterday at the CloudCamp, Microsoft's Belgium Evangelist did show us pics of the Microsoft Data Centers and did admit that it was Dell, they were using in containers, each container packed with 2500 Servers! (and about several hundred containers then). To build the Azure data center, Microsoft has engaged Dell's Data Center Solutions division, an independent unit of the company - which has its own research, design, manufacturing, marketing, and sales employees - that was expressly created in the spring of 2006 to chase the cloud computing-Web 2.0-utility computing opportunity. DCS makes custom servers tuned for specific workloads and data center power and cooling envelopes. It does not sell standard PowerEdge iron and PowerVault storage. According to Forrest Norrod, vice president and general manager of the unit, this small piece of Dell has close to 200 employees and is chasing 30 cloudy customers (including the brass ring called Google). While the DCS unit doesn't break

Here are the pics, details will follow soon...

(Update 1) Final call! So why should you really attend? Its a very free format session Many group discussions will be there (see tentative planning below) Its got some really great quality, not just some free event. Its definitely a lot richer than those paid events where you cannot get your ideas on the table. So why again? Cloud Computing is all about YOU ! The program: 4.00 pm Welcome & drink 4.30 pm Keynote: The Shi(f)t is Happening! (Tarry Singh, Technology Evangelist) 5.00 pm Keynote “Visionary” panel (Q-layer – Salesforce.com – Flexiscale - Itricity) 5:30 pm Sponsor Lightning Talk 1: Aserver 5:35 pm Sponsor Lightning Talk 2: Quest Software 5:40 pm Sponsor Lightning Talk 3: Amazon 5:45 pm Sponsor Lightning Talk 4: Philipp Huber 5:50 pm Sponsor Lightning Talk 5: Microsoft 5.55 pm Powerbreak 6.00 pm Unconference Introduction by Raphael Bauduin - Profoss “The Engine Behind Cloud Computing” Attendees split up in smaller groups to discuss topics of the

Yup! Dark days, Chris. All Storage vendors are going to die! Now seriously, lets sit back and think about it. What we may have forgotten, is: Data Center build-up is great, there will be Data Centers that communities will choose. Reasons will be a lot more, a lot local and yet cloud happy data centers, that will be quick to setup, that will be literally agile and that will cost a lot less! So, are IBM, Cisco, Intel, Microsoft all betting too much on one farm? We'll find out pretty soon. We are building up data centers, we still don't know how to get those customers into those data centers. That still needs to happen. A lot of effective evangelism needs to take place. Data Centers for 50 years, huh? Do you know that your data centers will also have a very expensive refresh cycle? How are you going to do that while charging bare minimum, in order to compete with others? That refresh cycle will happen 10 times in those 50 years, if not more often! So lets do the math: If your ty

The VMware Infrastructure Management Assistant (VIMA) allows administrators and developers to run scripts and agents to manage ESX and ESXi systems. VIMA is a virtual machine that includes prepackaged software, a logging component, and an authentication component that supports non-interactive login. You can use VIMA to perform most of the tasks commonly performed in the ESX service console. Source

The big computer makers are starting to flex their muscles after ceding the early lead to smaller companies, like Fremont, Calif.-based Rackable Systems Inc. (RACK) and Verari Systems Inc. of San Diego. Both were among the first to commercialize high-density server systems. Dell has emerged as a cutting-edge player in this market, a little more than one year after creating a unit specifically tasked with developing customized products and services for "hyper-scale" data center customers. "Hyper-scale computing environments - where infrastructure deployments are measured by up to millions of servers, storage and networking equipment - are changing the way organizations are thinking about their data center requirements," said Brad Anderson, a senior vice president in Dell's business product unit. That has left H-P and IBM trying to catch up. "H-P and IBM are behind in this particular data center business," said Roger Kay of Endpoint Technology Associate

Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) is the king of cloud computing. Two very smart guys just said so: Bill Gurley of Benchmark Capital and Ray Ozzie of Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT). Gurley I met live, at his office overlooking Stanford University, during an "innovation tour" of Silicon Valley with my Rule Breakers teammates. He had just bought shares of Amazon, explaining that the retailer can be a low-cost leader in cloud computing services. Ozzie, Mr. Softy's chief software architect, is less a fan than an admiring rival. On Monday, he said that "all of us are going to be standing on [Amazon's] shoulders" in introducing Windows Azure, a cloud computing environment that CEO Steve Ballmer foreshadowed earlier this month. The technical idea is intriguing. Windows Azure runs applications and resembles Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud in that it's a massive cluster of processing horsepower made available via the Web. A "Fabric Controller" governs the environ

Before Yahoo offered this hosted solution, users had to either deploy Zimbra on their own servers, or partner with a 'Zimbra Hosted Service Providers'. Zimbra did not release any information about the pricing for this hosted solution, but the company guarantees a 99.9% uptime and will provide 24/7 support. Otherwise, the hosted Zimbra platform provides the same feature set as the self-hosted version, though faculty and staff get a few extra features for group scheduling and Outlook synchronization. Zimbra also offers schools the option to run advertising on the service, though we assume that most schools will opt out of this. In the educational market, Zimbra is competing directly with Google, which has been providing an ' Education Edition ' of Google Apps for about two years already, and which, thanks to the inclusion of Google Docs and Sites, provides a slightly more comprehensive feature set than Yahoo currently can. Source

MomentumSI is giving one-day training on CC to Business and IT professionals. I sincerely hope for them that Richard Stallman and Larry Ellison aren't sitting in that course ;-) The course introduces cloud computing concepts across a three-layered stack; software, platforms and infrastructure. Benefits, obstacles and examples are presented at each layer. Adoption patterns, investments and expected returns are also covered in the one day class. "The cloud computing class was developed for some of our larger clients based on strategic IT initiatives under development, but is completely applicable to organizations of any size that may be considering cloud computing options." said Jeff Schneider, CEO of MomentumSI. "Our courseware is designed to quickly assist the client in the determination, motivation and next steps required to deploy a successful cloud computing pilot." Thousands of Managers, Architects, Developers and Analysts have attended MomentumSI's comp

His rant was reported by the Guardian newspaper and a debate in the blogosphere ensued. Stallman argues that users will lose control of their programs, their data and their privacy. Many others believe cloud, or utility, computing is the future. On Monday, software giant Microsoft Corp. finally announced Windows Azure, a development platform, so that it can join the ranks of companies like Amazon.com Inc. and Salesforce.com Inc. and offer Web-hosted software applications as a service. The debate will surely continue over the pros and cons of cloud computing. But a book called "The Big Switch," published earlier this year, makes one of the most compelling arguments that accessing many of your computing capabilities via another provider is the wave of the future. Author Nicholas Carr's comparison of the history of electrical power to utility computing is fascinating and portends that one of the biggest shifts in computing is

I have never said that, never went there, but Martha does have something to say there: Speaking of cloud computing, I had the opportunity to speak with Mr. Hal Anderson, CTO of 24by7 Service ( www.24by7service.com ), regarding their project management tools. This company provides a measured, intelligent solution to migrating from PBX technology to voice over IP that is vendor agnostic. They are not beholden to any of the telcos, and do not have a vested interest in any particular VoIP solution. Their role is to assist companies in leveraging IP-based communications solutions when and where it makes sense. They never, ever, recommend a rip-and-replace. Their philosophy is one I share: squeeze every last nickel of value out of existing technologies before getting rid of it, but take advantage of emerging technologies when and where it makes sense. As an aside, we had a good time drawing numerous parallels between the telephony industry and the auto industry within this country. Olig

1. Have You Prevented Against "Sticker Shock" Down the Road? One of SaaS's biggest selling points is its simplified pricing model: those pay-as-you-go, per-user monthly fees. The term "flat" usually stars in a SaaS vendor's marketing materials. However, companies are still confused by uncertainties in pricing models and contract agreements, note Forrester analysts William Band and Peter Marston in the May 2008 "Best Practices: The Smart Way To Implement CRM" report. (For more on rolling out SaaS CRM, see "Five Best Practices for Implementing SaaS CRM.") "SaaS pricing models that seem simple and inexpensive (flat per-user monthly fees) can become costly and complex when users sign up for different pieces of functionality and support options," the analysts write. "Additional charges often apply for support, configuration services, additional functionality or going beyond a preset storage limit." In addition, business use

Kevin Lawton, a friend and one of the pioneers on x86 Virtualization, has finally launched his blog and he starts elegantly with : here's been a lot of talk about bare-metal hypervisors in the virtualization realm. All academic arguments aside, the reality is that Linux + KVM is a bare-metal hypervisor. You can create a small Linux+KVM image, embed it in a computer like firmware, and add all the same end-to-end attestation that you can with any other software stack. The fact that KVM is a kernel module doesn't change much other than how someone might draw boxes in a powerpoint presentation. Most of the proponents of Xen based virtualization talk ad nauseum about the attack surface size of a bare-metal hypervisor. Well, then what do you about the monumentally big efforts of creating drivers for all the varied hardware out there, especially on the endpoint? Why you take Linux and ram it into Xen as a control OS. What about the OS features which Linux has grown 17 years to

I dined with a MSFT's exec at the recent Gartner summit in Amsterdam and got to know that they had a hard time convincing the stage shy Ozzie on the front stage. I personally have been waiting very anxiously to get this "Groovy" guy on the center stage. Anyways we welcome Windows Azure. Microsoft Corp took the wraps off a new computing service that allows companies to use its data centers to run their Web applications in a bid to become a player in the so-called "cloud computing" trend. Ray Ozzie, Microsoft's chief software architect, said on Monday it will start previewing "Windows Azure," a platform that allows third-party Web developers to host, manage, calculate and store data for applications running on the Internet. "It's a transformation of our software. It's a transformation of our strategy," Ozzie said at the Professional Developer's Conference, Microsoft's annual gathering of third-party engineers to detail the c

Although this is a lot prototypisch, soon I can see that we can do a lot with a lot less humans. Scary! Royal Opera House: Audience. from rAndom International on Vimeo . "Found" first at Nick 's site.

The architecture behind the editor follows the pattern of: The UI looks to the local DB for data When an event happens it gets queued When an event happens the UI tries to send it to the cloud Events have status flags to let the system know what is happening This is beginning to be part of the on and off, blink on, blikn out , session management, session freeze and session recontinue kind of logic which is crucial for the transformational IT. Good stuff! Blog.gears post on Google Gears blog .

Update 1 : Nick Carr apparently saw some flaws in Tim's analysis, see below. Tim has been evangelizing this while we were still in our nappies. Listen to the man! Types of Cloud Computing Since "cloud" seems to mean a lot of different things, let me start with some definitions of what I see as three very distinct types of cloud computing: Utility computing. Amazon's success in providing virtual machine instances, storage, and computation at pay-as-you-go utility pricing was the breakthrough in this category, and now everyone wants to play. Developers, not end-users, are the target of this kind of cloud computing. This is the layer at which I don't presently see any strong network effect benefits (yet). Other than a rise in Amazon's commitment to the business, neither early adopter Smugmug nor any of its users get any benefit from the fact that thousands of other application developers have their work now hosted on AWS. If anything, they may be competing

This is extremely dangerous for McCain. I have been reading this Financial Times article today and it really got me thinking. McCain can still change the stakes with only 10 days to go and get Lieberman as is aide. Gideon wrote about it and I somehow agree with him there. I think Palin may have quickly scored but Obama's calm composure, which many Democrats left with their heads scratching, came out not only a winner against the cowboy tactic to get a fake hockey mom to the table but also the credit crunch to which Obama has remained a resolved and cautious player. On the global stage Obama has some experienced staff (One of them has helped shape Mexico's economy as well), while guess who McCain has? Ask Mark Hurd. Anyways, I think Palin may be causing a lot more damage by getting greedy and hogging a lot of attention for her own future plans. Reading all those comments from women across America and to all those subscriptions I have, I don't see any hardworking mom relatin

Click to attend!

Mike Clesceri, vice president of marketing for Laurus Technologies in Itasca, Ill., said Symantec acquisitions also make things easier for clients. "Our customers don't want to manage a lot of vendors," he said. Clesceri also said that Symantec legitimizes the companies it acquires -- which makes those acquired products and services easier for partners to sell. VARs typically don't want to stake their reputations on niche technologies that have a lot of buzz but uncertain futures, but the Symantec name allays a lot of those concerns, Klein said. "Being an evangelist is not the way to go," he said. When Symantec combined its own channel program with that of Veritas, it created new processes and procedures that drew the ire of partners -- and Symantec didn't fully fix those problems until last year. Symantec has since learned from those mistakes, Klein said. "Veritas wasn't the best integration out there, but they've seemingly done a better jo

"What drives me crazy is that Jonathan spends a lot of time in the press talking about OpenSolaris and not about the architecture and density of Sun's x86 servers, or what continues to be the world-changing architecture of its Niagara boxes. As a partner I'd like to see him creating increased visibility and attention for those things at Sun that we partners can drive and make money on," said Rob Wolfe, CEO of AvcomEast , a Vienna, Va., Sun solution provider. and Whether or not the vendor is getting the desired traction from this strategy is an open question, however. Several partners said that out of 10 customers looking at OpenSolaris or Linux, maybe one or two end up running either on Sun hardware. But Sun-affiliated partners insist customers will pay for real value, as long as it is communicated clearly and emphatically. "If you look at the cell phone market, the model was historically to give away the handset and make money on the service or annual fees. The

A sneak peek on my slide, which I'll be presenting during my keynote in Brussels next week at the CloudCamp Summit. Hope to see you guys next week.

Stephanie reporting: Poor Bill Gates. He spurs the personal computer revolution. Then becomes one of the planet's largest benefactors, trying to eradicate disease worldwide . But he's still not cool. Now, he's started a new company that could be cool--because it's " mysterious ." The entity, called bgC3, (for Bill Gates Company #3?) has the nerdosphere buzzing. It will " oversee Gates' personal pursuit of breakthrough ideas in science and technology," reports TechFlash , which broke the news. " You didn't think Willy G would be content fading away into the background after stepping down as the head of Microsoft, did you?" says Boy Genius Report . The new company might "be focused on creating catalyst business ideas to spin off to Microsoft, the Gates Foundation or elsewhere," speculates ReadWriteWeb . "It sounds like an intellectual romper room --a spot for Gates to extend his annual 'think week' sessions an

Although I would also have loved to have the author: Ask me in advance (Obviously I'd have obliged) Told me later (instead of me looking into my logs to find where the link came from) Maybe, just maybe, thanked me as well Nevertheless, it is good to be mentioned (and get unjar'ed while I'm emitting) :-) The Economist page where you can read the snippet, and obviously I downloaded the full copy. Here is the detailed acknowledgment page on sources the author used to write the report.

AWS blog Here's what's happening today: Amazon EC2 is now in full production. The beta label is gone. There's now an SLA (Service Level Agreement) for EC2. Microsoft Windows is now available in beta form on EC2. Microsoft SQL Server is now available in beta form on EC2. We plan to release an interactive AWS management console. We plan to release new load balancing, automatic scaling, and cloud monitoring services. Let's take a look at each of these items in turn. Production - After a two year beta period, Amazon EC2 is now ready for production. During the beta we heard and responded to an incredible amount of customer feedback, adding support for powerful features such as Availability Zones , Elastic Block Storage , Elastic IP Addresses , multiple instance types , support for the OpenSolaris and Windows operating systems, and (as of today) a Service Level Agreement. Regular EC2 accounts are allowed to run up to 20 simultaneous instances. Requests for hundreds a

Stacey (from Om's team) reporting: Newly christened HipLogic , which was formerly known as Numobiq, today launched a software development kit for its cell phone virtualization platform. The company’s product demo looks like several other mobile phone personalization efforts , but is actually a virtual machine running on top of the existing mobile operating system. The end goal, according to Mark Young, HipLogic’s CTO and founder, is to create applications that can truly interact with phones and each other, bringing the same level of functionality to millions of other phones as the iPhone has and the Android will. So far, it’s hard to judge how successful the three-year-old HipLogic will be with its mission, but it raised $4.5 million last January from Benchmark Capital and has ported its Java-based virtual machine to the Windows, Linux, S60 and UIQ mobile operating systems (BREW and RIM will be next). Developers can write applications for the HipLogic virtual machine and have them

Mike Arington reporting... Web hosting provider Rackspace has acquired JungleDisk, an online backup service, and Virtual Machine provider Slicehost in a deal designed to help bolster its offerings against top competitor Amazon Web Services. The announced acquisition price is $11.5 million in cash and stock, with the possibility of up to an additional $16.5 million depending on performance. Jungle Disk is a file storage and backup service that up until now has relied on Amazon’s Simple Storage Service (S3). With the new announcement the company says that it will begin offering the service using Rackspace’s similar service Cloud Files, but will continue to support storage using Amazon with plans to support even more services in the future. Slicehost offers developers “slices” in Xen-based virtual servers that are much cheaper and generally easier to use than a traditional dedicated server. The service is a direct competitor to Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). Source

Transcript for the whole call is here .

Microsoft virtualization – training resources Microsoft Learning offers a diverse range of innovative training products that include certification, Microsoft Press books, classroom training, and e-learning solutions. Whether you learn better in a group setting or independently, Microsoft offers you comprehensive training that helps you build technical solutions and advance your career. Books from Microsoft Press Microsoft Press provides comprehensive reference and training books that enable you to get the most from Microsoft tools and technologies. Microsoft Press books are written by industry experts and Microsoft insiders who provide accurate and current information so that you can get the answers you need and advance your skills. Classroom training Classroom training is designed to help you build expertise with the help of world-class learning content. Classroom training includes "First Look" courses and classes. Our training providers are uniquely positioned to help you d

IDC reporting: “The cloud model offers a much cheaper way for businesses to acquire and use IT - in an economic downturn, the appeal of that cost advantage will be greatly magnified. This advantage is especially important for small and medium businesses, a sector that will be key target in any plan for recovery.” Three market forces are helping drive the shift toward cloud computing, according to IDC: the search for growth (and revenues) in important new segments, including emerging markets like Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC) as well as the small and medium business sector; the shortcomings of traditional approaches in capturing the growth in these increasingly important markets; and competitive pressures from new players with little to lose and everything to gain from pushing the new model. Source

Update: I've update the text so I can let Chris Hoff (our drunken security friend) comment and help us all understand better what he understood/understands...well...better :-) So why is this good news? We need the endorsement of those hackers of understanding that it's not the OS where all the energy will be spilled but on the Virtual Data Center OS, as VMware puts it. So again why it's good news? This is a validation of the fact that Virtualization is going mainstream. Security and Compliance will be core focus of all organizations (as regulators will come knocking at your doorsteps) Virtual Infrastructures are easier to batten down and secure due to its uniformity. Regulators will increasingly ask for audits, where as in traditional environments (I've seen such audits by the like of KPMG etc) and always wondered like "wow--you are so prepared, dude, NOT!", Virtual environments suddenly enables auditors to ask the right questions and get or not get the expec

I have my own doubts and opinions on how IDC came up with that figure and what actually accounts for a "real sell on virtualization" against a "mere add-on" which is barely used by those freebie collectors. My detailed analysis will come when I'll find that IDC contact and drill him/her on how they came to that figure. For now Mike did some hardwork to look back at those figures: As with most analyst reports this one was sponsored. IDC won't give up the name of who actually sponsored it but I can tell you it wasn't VMware and the ones that did sponsor it are a competitor in Redmond. That's just fine that people sponsor reports and I would have no issue with it as long as the information was accurate . When the firm putting out the report just publishes inaccurate or incomplete date then they look as foolish as Forrester did when they wrote about Open Source adoption . I'm actually surprised that Matt Asay didn't pick up on the inaccuracies in

Program ( subject to changes, depending on sponsors ) 4.00 pm Welcome & drink 4.30 pm Keynote: The Shi(f)t is Happening! (Tarry Singh, Technology Evangelist) 5.00 pm Keynote “Visionary” panel (Q-layer – Salesforce.com – Flexiscale - Itricity) 5:30 pm Sponsor Lightning Talk 1: Aserver 5:35 pm Sponsor Lightning Talk 2: Quest Software 5:40 pm Sponsor Lightning Talk 3: Amazon 5:45 pm Sponsor Lightning Talk 4: Philipp Huber 5:50 pm Sponsor Lightning Talk 5: Microsoft 5.55 pm Powerbreak 6.00 pm Unconference Introduction by Raphael Bauduin - Profoss “The Engine Behind Cloud Computing” Attendees split up in smaller groups to discuss topics of their specific interest, moderated by volunteers. Discussion Groups: Cloud Computing opportunities for XSP's Moderated by Aserver Cloud Computing & Open Source Moderated by Profoss More to be added ... 7.00 pm Closing Talk Networking (Boat needs to be empty by 9pm) During the Welco

But hey , just look around. Before I do the simple copy-paste of that techcruncher, the financial markets are in panic. A human factor, panic and pandemonium has taken over. My Time magazine subscriptions are spelling doomdays. Last mag had pictures of the great depression and this week it was about London sinking. Gawwshh.... So the times are hard and some real hardcore warriors are needed should any firmwant to go out there and chase newer markets. Now back to VMware, simple and quick advice: Go global Go to BRIC countries now! Keep expanding your presence in EMEA and other newer economies Keep flattening the pie and go to mass markets Cloud Computing is emerging trend, ride it out and you'll ride out the recession My list of advice can go on and on. There has been a shake up and surely other competitors will go after you. VI4 is coming, and pack it up with some really mass consumerable juices. Now reality check and the post from Techcrunch Given the current economic climate, VM

As regulatory compliance expands, more and more of your virtual environment will become subject to security and compliance standards, such as PCI DSS, HIPAA and SOX (GLBA). With the proper tools, achieving and demonstrating compliance on VMware Infrastructure is not only possible, but can often become easier than a non-virtual environment. Assess the Management Control Features in a Virtual Platform Having a secure foundation is the first step. As security threats grow and evolve, your security environment will need to be flexible and adaptable. Security standards require enterprise-grade management features in order to provide the necessary controls for achieving and demonstrating compliance. The following describes the management features that a virtual computing platform should have in order to be compliance-ready. Start by Looking at Authentication and Authorization Capabilities Security management starts with authentication and authorization. All virtual platform interf

Saving Money Through Technology New technologies and approaches also anticipate lean times ahead. Diane Bryant, CIO of Intel (NASDAQ: INTC), spoke to a global workforce increasingly collaborating and sharing data and information. The world is going green, said Bryant, and Intel's goal is to efficiently manage information and data to enable business growth and agility. Bryant outlined an approach for managing the explosion of information based on policies and procedures for information lifecycle, data, capacity, security and rights management, and engineering innovation through SAN/NAS virtualization, thin provisioning, next-generation backup and recovery, fabric unification, and FCoE (Fibre Channel over Ethernet). The Fibre Channel Industry Association (FCIA) featured a multi vendor FCoE demo, and the SNW Hands-On Labs featured FCoE exercises from Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO), Intel, NetApp (NASDAQ: NTAP) and QLogic (NASDAQ: QLGC). An FCoE case study presented by SNIA (Storage Networking I

This blogger's assumption that Google was a CC leader is not at all incorrect, its just an early-muse. Right now, Amazon is the CC leader and probably the only one who is stacking up: - Apps Space (SimpleDB to Oracle Apps) - Utility Billing Model - Security - Reliability - SLA etc So what do we really understand about the Cloud Computing and what do I think that Google understands about it? Go and read that other blog post of mine. Some of the core requirements for a CC provider. Many other Telco's too will come close to getting there. I do agree that Google is building it's business case around Cloud Computing, but given that they are still busy with their internal academic exercise talking about the diverse areas from Android to AppEngine to asking Universities to use its AppPack. I am a heavy Google Cloud Services user and do enjoy the benefits of several core requirements (or the lack of it) from my gmail account. I am not being billed, I am apparently secure (they may

Avastu as in my blog ;-) So here's returning the favor and letting ye all know that we're gonna kick ass together and ride together into the next decade, a new era , (much professed by me only as of yet, aren't investors listening???) the Ideation-Age . Guy's email: We recently added your site to Alltop ( http://cloudcomputing.alltop. com/ ). Alltop is an "online magazine rack" that aggregates RSS feeds about popular topics. If Alltop is slow or down, please keep trying because we often get hammered by traffic. We'd appreciate your help in getting critical mass for Alltop. 1) Mention us on your site. I hope that you will share Alltop with your readers by writing about your site's inclusion—even the shortest blog post or news item will help. 2) Display our badge. Hundreds of our member sites display our badges, and we'd be honored if you did so too. In fact, we serve approximately 250,000 badges per day. They are available at http:/