Avastu Blog: Sustainable Global Clouds

I guess, that is what I can see what Jim is getting at. Cloud or On-Premise IT shop. Boring is boring. A lot has to change before we can call Clouds the true platforms of change! While I agree that the enterprise is about control and the web is about emergence ( I've made the same argument here at Radar ), I don't think this negative characterization of the enterprise is all that useful. It seems to imply that the enterprise's orientation toward control springs fully formed from the minds of an army of petty controlling middle managers. I don't think that's the case. I suspect it's more likely the result of large scale system dynamics, where the culture of control follows from other constraints. If multiverse advocates are right and there are infinite parallel universes, I bet most of them have IT enterprises just like ours; at least in those shards that have similar corporate IT boundary conditions. Once you have GAAP, Sarbox, domain-specific regulation lik...

-- Eliminates infrastructure constraints: cloud-based services allow companies to dynamically scale virtual environments quickly and cost- effectively based on business demand. -- Turns upfront Cap-Ex into Op-Ex: Cloud services provide the same powerful computing resources without the large upfront investment. Additionally, usage is billed hourly, enabling organizations to pay for what they use without investing in unused capacity. -- Brings software to market faster: Development organizations can support critical business initiatives by delivering applications faster using the cloud. A virtual lab enables development and testing environments to be provisioned immediately and built-in collaboration tools cut unproductive cycle time, resulting in shortened delivery schedules. -- Applications run unchanged in a virtual lab: Companies do not need to modify or rewrite applications for the cloud using a virtual lab, so they can use cloud resources as an ...

I find Nasser's post extremely insightful. Check it out yourself: But while I'm fairly rah-rah about the potential of cloud computing platforms in theory, I remain skeptical about their efficacy for enterprise software development in practice. By comparison, Microsoft is nothing if not gung-ho. Where Amazon and Google have tread carefully, unveiling their cloud services first as pilot programs with limited applications, Microsoft seems determined to deliver its version of the cloud to its entire ISV community on a plate. While the geek in me is itching to play around with this stuff, my instinct says "caution." Let's dispense with the "Microsoft is evil" argument for the moment: Who wants to get in bed with Microsoft for something like this? Windows developers, that's who. You Microsoft ISV partners out there all recognize that a certain amount of vendor lock-in goes with the territory. It might be nice not to have to keep that revenue stream going f...

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...

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 ...

"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...

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 ...

I've tagged it under opinions. There also are items, such as inertia, that have hindered acceptance. Why would a business want to go through the process of evaluating and then moving all of its IT resources? Think of how much time, effort, and money is involved in items, such as training. There also are technical challenges, and they usually start with security. Do you want to explain to the auditors how you "protect" data stationed miles away from your employees? How do you really know that another cloud customer cannot access your information? There are also performance challenges. With cloud computing, another layer of devices is added to your computer infrastructure. Invariably, that means performance degradations. The cloud model can work in certain cases, mainly in startup companies with no existing infrastructure or new lines of business for existing companies. But it's not a good fit for most applications, never has been and never will be. Consequently, the cl...

First, I want to highlight some tidbits in the keynote that Gartner's John Enck gave at the opening of the IBTA Tech Forum. Initially he challenged the assumption that VMware is a secure platform that is immune to attacks and viruses. He mentioned that security is still a point of immaturity in VMware and that VMware issued a fix for known vulnerabilities in its product just a week prior to VMworld. While I believe that VMware is more secure than Windows was in its early days, more vulnerabilities are likely to be discovered as it is more widely deployed. Another interesting tidbit that Enck shared had to do with some of the new management functions that server virtualization makes possible. Enck specifically mentioned that because the images of each individual VMware virtual machine (VM) is stored in what is called a VMDK (Virtual Machine Disk Format) file, it opens the door for companies to assign metadata to these files including service oriented metadata. In so doing, companies...

I really don't get it. Why apologize again? I am really begin to wonder if more things are about to happen soon. We'll soon find out why they're doing that, as of now it seems so amateurish! I think a lof of folks are confused with the VMware camp and really didn't know what they had to say to Mendel's departure. VMware quickly developed workarounds and fixes and Maritz issued a mea culpa letter. But then Sarwal went nine months after joining VMware, to be quickly followed by Greene's husband and co-founder, Mendel Rosenblum , VMware's chief scientist. This was an expected departure but the timing is not good and sours things for Maritz. He's decided it's necessary to issue a second apology to customers and to emphasise VMware's credentials as a mission-critical software supplier. The letter states: "we have initiated a major examination and evaluation of our product release and quality assurance processes. This effort has yielded a numbe...

Forbes.com: Is cloud computing over-hyped? Nicholas Carr: At the moment, yes, and that's typical for technological advances. This is a long-term trend--not a short-term one. What's your imagined time line of the adoption of cloud computing? Will it take years? Decades? If you're talking about big companies, I would say it will be a slow, steady process lasting maybe 15 to 20 years. For consumers, cloud computing is here. Applications offered by Google and other software-as-a-service companies are already taking over traditional software. When young people want to do something, they don't go out and buy software. They look to the Web. For small businesses, it's something in between. Because they don't have as much investment in their current IT infrastructure, they're more willing to consider hosting their entire business on something like Amazon's Web Services. Forbes My take on their take : " When we were done with the stones, we moved ...

Here we have Cap Gemini's CTO talking about Cloud Computing: The real moves I want to keep an eye on are the tie up between the big boys Intel, HP, Yahoo and some good academic computing centres with the aim of building a really large scale test bed for testing and experimenting with Cloud Computing. The challenge with Cloud Computing is that the ‘business case’ is compelling, and I don’t just mean costs, I mean as a method to deliver the kind of Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Business Technology solutions that offer some real new business value. Many of these solutions will eventually require ‘Orchestration’ between services to take place in a Cloud Computing environment. Put another way the environment will be expected to support a lot of previously untried combinations of activities on the basis that all of them subscribe to the same common principles. Right now, you couldn’t say that we have those principles well enough defined for this to have a sporting chance. That’s what interest...

I think writing off a technology that is the core of most future computing, is in my personal opinion, absolutely ridiculous. So how about a few sensational stories such as: VMware may eventually face bankruptcy as competition, IP bleeding intensifies ! Microsoft's Hyper-V is a failed product ESX Server is a poor insecure linux configuration or maybe even worst , to scare off the open-source averse folks: VMware's ESX uses linux open source technology ! Making headlines by writing off products that are being embedded in mobile phones, but Brian did exactly what he wanted to do: attention. And I know that there is word on the street and a lot of guys have approached me as well and I too will write about it but I am in no position to do a comparison as to VMware will exist or not. Anyways, I haven't met Brian and I really am not that inquisitive about cool cats out there. I am one myself, the only one . Simon's response: So Brian's latest piece predicting the end of ...

Oracle CEO and multi-billionaire technology investor Larry Ellison has dismissed the software-as-a-service industry as unprofitable. Although his company made money from its on-demand applications business for the first time in its fourth financial quarter, Ellison said that the model had yet to become the profit driver that many had predicted. “We continue to get better at it and grow the business,” he said in an earnings call yesterday. “[But] it’s not really growing any faster than our overall business.” “We think that’s going to change over time,” he continued. “But the entire on-demand industry has to get better at making money in selling on-demand software.” He pointed to the example of Salesforce.com, the on-demand CRM provider founded by a former Oracle executive, in which Ellison has a significant investment. “If you look at the leader, Salesforce.com, they don’t make very much money and they’ve been at it for almost 10 years,” he said. More here

This blogger ponders about the typical behavior that can lead firms to lose focus of the market (examples of DEC, Novell etc). We are seeing a "excessive hybridization" in terms of strategies that firms are taking to create a "Free for All" markets. HP's acquisition is one such example, Credit Suisse developing its own hybrid management product, Intel going into networking, Cisco moving to data center and lots of criss-cross strategies that are enough to keep an exciting and smart firm busy battling the highly sensitive, aspirational consumer. Anyways interesting article this: I realize that it's a tradition in the computer industry, but I find it a little disappointing to see virtualization giant VMware following the same competitive marketing obsession that made industry powerhouses of Banyan Systems, WordPerfect, Digital Equipment and Novell. Each of those companies, at one time, were considered absolutely dominant in their own markets and gradually lo...

Ed Walsh wonders why VMware introduced yet another layer called VMFS into the storage.

We have raised the bar of analysis by doing it on a day to day basis. Suddenly with this agile, liquid and rather volatile economy, a report that is 6-weeks late is really not useful to the industry, especially if you look at IT and the "current state of IT". I raised this question in LinkedIn and have re-opened the question. Here's this blogger talking about Gartner and what they really do: There are themes at Gartner and its competitors -- ideas that are presented on an almost seasonal basis like adding fins to change a 1956 Chrysler New Yorker into a 1957 Chrysler New Yorker. Two such themes that are popular with such consultants right now are offshoring/outsourcing and getting rid of legacy applications to gain agility, whatever that is. I've written columns and columns about offshoring and outsourcing and the success of both policies is decidedly mixed, unless perhaps you are outsourcing down the street and offshoring Lake Michigan. Outsourcing, while a very ...

“Every vendor in the virtual machine space is claiming the cost savings by going virtual. This has been proven to a large degree on the server but less so on the PC. When servers are virtualized, they literally and physically go away because they run on another server. Cost savings are immediate,” said Jason Smith, vice president of business development for ScriptStart. ” When a desktop is virtualized, most of the time, there is still hardware and software infrastructure needed to run the VM. In reality, this just adds another software layer to mange for most organizations that are looking to implement VDI or XenDesktop on top of existing infrastructure. Therefore, cost-savings and ROI for desktop VMs require a different look.” Can I get you some desktop management software for that desktop management solution? ScriptStart is a Dunwoody, Georgia-based ISV whose Profile Unity solution gives customers a central, portable profile to use at any Windows desktops, whether virtual, thin ...

Jan Stafford, yep one of those funny video ladies from VMworld 2007, asked Chris about it. And he thinks that the pricing may come down. I'm jotting it down under "opinions" as we all have heard that: - VMware has to bring down the prices - People have been saying it for some time I don't know if its really blogworthy, but anyways here's the link

This is the news: Hewlett-Packard will become the second-largest technology services company after IBM with a deal announced Tuesday to buy Electronic Data Systems for $13.9 billion. With revenue of $22.1 billion last fiscal year, EDS of Plano, Texas, gives HP instant scale and a seat at the big table for large contracts. HP's own services unit brought in $16.6 billion last fiscal year. Together, the two companies will have about 210,000 employees with reach in 80 countries and will be a firm challenger to IBM. HP's purchase price values EDS stock at $25 per share, a 32.6 percent premium over EDS' closing price of $18.85 on Friday, before news of the merger talks. HP said the agreement has the full backing of both companies' boards and is expected to close by the end of the year. According to HP, the purchase price includes $13.25 billion paid on 529.9 million units of outstanding common shares, options and restricted stock, as well as $640 million adjusted for the ...