Skip to main content

Cloud Computing Round Table Discussion moderated by Tim O'Reilly

Instead, the jibes went uncontested. Benioff said that when Ellison dismissed Salesforce.com and cloud computing, Ellison was leveraging the Sun Tzu "Art of War" strategy—"when weak, feign strength"—and that that was the "right approach for him." Oracle specializes in on-premises database systems.

In answer to O'Reilly's question about margins for cloud computing being lower than traditional software businesses, another claim made by Ellison, Benioff said it's unfair to compare the cloud model to "mature, dying models like Oracle or SAP, which may be already dead. ... It's a little bit apples and oranges."

Benioff, looking worn out from his company's Dreamforce event this week, also welcomed Microsoft to the cloud, with a caveat:

"I think it's fantastic that they're coming in and saying they're going to have something one day," he said, referring to Microsoft's announcement of its Azure cloud computing platform at its Professional Developers Conference last week. Azure is not expected until 2009.

Girouard was more diplomatic, but picked up where Benioff left off with the fruit metaphor. He welcomed Microsoft, which is building Office Web, an answer to Google Apps, by saying that Microsoft will eventually be able to go apples-to-apples with Google, but "we think our apples will taste better."

VMware President and CEO Paul Maritz (who once oversaw Windows, Office, Visual Studio, and other key platforms and applications for Microsoft, and now runs an EMC-owned business focused on providing virtualization infrastructure to enable companies to run their computer systems on the cloud) and Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch were also on the panel, though they did not partake in the spear throwing.


Source

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Security: VMware Workstation 6 vulnerability

vulnerable software: VMware Workstation 6.0 for Windows, possible some other VMware products as well type of vulnerability: DoS, potential privilege escalation I found a vulnerability in VMware Workstation 6.0 which allows an unprivileged user in the host OS to crash the system and potentially run arbitrary code with kernel privileges. The issue is in the vmstor-60 driver, which is supposed to mount VMware images within the host OS. When sending the IOCTL code FsSetVoleInformation with subcode FsSetFileInformation with a large buffer and underreporting its size to at max 1024 bytes, it will underrun and potentially execute arbitrary code. Security focus

Virtualization: GlassHouse hopes to cash in with its IPO!

GlassHouse Technologies Inc. on Tuesday registered to raise as much as $100 million in an initial public offering that, despite the company's financial losses, could prove a hit with investors drawn to its focus on "virtualization" technology. The Framingham, Mass., company offers consulting services for companies that use virtualization software to improve the performance of corporate servers and cut costs in their data centers. GlassHouse also provides Internet-based data storage. "Software-as-a-service," or SaaS, companies and vendors of virtualization products have proved popular among investors in recent years as corporate customers seek alternatives to conventional packaged software. GlassHouse, with roots in both sectors, will test the strength of that interest, said Peter Falvey, managing director with Boston investment bank Revolution Partners. "It will be a bit of a bell weather," he says. "It's not as though it's the 15th SaaS m...