Archive for February, 2010
Guest Post: Si Chen on Cloud Computing and Open Source
Feb 26th
Introduction
Two years ago, I switched from Mozilla Thunderbird to Gmail. Ever since then, a little voice has bugged me each time I sent an email. You see, I’m an open source software developer, the name of my company is “Open Source Strategies,” and our mission is to promote open source software. So when I give up on one of the most popular and successful open source applications, is it just an isolated expedient, or does it mean something bigger?
After two years, I’ve decided that it does. Cloud computing is a big time game changer, and we open source developers better get prepared.
Cloud applications are everywhere today, offering a hosted alternative to just about every open source project. For example, just from Google consider the following:
- Gmail to replace sendmail/postfix and Thunderbird
- Google Apps to replace Zimbra
- Google Docs to replace OpenOffice
- Google Groups to replace forums
- Google Sites to replace wikis and content management systems.
Then there are smaller cloud-based applications like Disqus and MicroPoll to replace the discussion and poll features which are ubiquitous in ecommerce and content management systems like Joomla!, Drupal, WordPress, and Magento.
And yet, open source developers are amazingly complacent. We’re lulled by the fact that most open source applications are web-enabled. Some of us think the cloud is just another deployment option. Some of us hope that maybe a cloud computing vendor would buy us out. Does none of us ever wonder if “No Software” might just mean “No Open Source Software” as well?
We should take cloud computing more seriously. Cloud computing has created a new value proposition for users. Unless open source developers understand and adapt to it, they will be relegated to the sidelines of the software industry. Let’s first take a look at that value proposition, and then at what it means for open source.
Traditional vs. Open Source vs. Cloud Value Propositions
Traditional commercial software is often expensive. First you have to pay to license the software, then pay for hardware to run it, then pay again for the software to be customized, and finally pay regularly for maintenance and support. Furthermore, because the source code is not available, commercial software could be very difficult to customize to meet the users’ actual needs. This combination of high cost and lack of flexibility is pushing some CIO’s to look for greener pastures.
Open source addresses both of these issues with a once novel but now familiar approach. The software is available free of charge, and the source code is also available so the user could modify it to fit their needs. The user just has to pay for the hardware and any customizations he needs, so the cost to acquire the software is significantly lower. Most importantly, the user has the flexibility to modify and use the software according to his needs.
Cloud-based software takes a different approach. The user pays a recurring fee to use a cloud-based application. In return, the cloud vendor provides both the hardware and software as a package. Cloud-based applications themselves are highly standardized, and you don’t get to see the source code. However, they usually provide APIs for building third-party add-on modules. This way, cloud vendors (try to) provide flexibility via a better technical architecture, rather than by freeing the code.
Clearly, people like this model. Consider two cases in point:
- Salesforce.com has grown to over a million users
- Google Apps has signed up over two million businesses
This begs the question: Why are cloud-based applications so successful? Because they have made it easy. Even though open source software is free, you still have to get the hardware and then set up and possibly customize it. Cloud software vendors have taken care of all that for us, so we just have to show up with our browsers. For most users who don’t have very specialized needs, that convenience is far more important than having the source code.
So What About Open Source?
One viable option for open source software is simply to become the “anti-cloud.” Perhaps somethings aren’t meant to be “in the cloud” after all. For example, Eucalyptus is offering an open source solution to build internal clouds inside the data center. (The US Army’s Deputy CIO is quoted on their home page. Could you imagine why the military might not want everything “in the cloud?”)
Another interesting option is to make open source software the entry point to the cloud. Under this model, the real value of computing moves to the cloud, and open source becomes a way to mobilize developers to create as many entry points to that reservoir of value as possible. For example, Google made its Android platform open source to encourage the development of mobile applications which connect to the web—where Google rules. Skype’s plans to open source its client software seems to fit with this logic as well.
Finally, are there cases where flexibility is so important that standardized applications in the cloud wouldn’t work for a lot of users? We believe that Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is one such case. Because virtually every business has some unique processes, almost all ERP software packages must be customized to meet the needs of the particular organization. In these cases, open source is the right solution, and we’ve seen it in polls like this one from the home page of opentaps Open Source ERP + CRM, which tells us that most users of open source ERP are looking to deploy it internally:
Open Source and the Cloud Together
Ultimately, open source and the cloud are not mutually exclusive; they can work together.
I started my blog at opensourcestrategies.blogspot.com five years ago, but then moved it to WordPress last year. So here’s a case where I’ve moved off the cloud and back to open source. But I also use Google’s Feedburner to syndicate my blog, and I’m thinking about adding Facebook wigdets, MicroPoll, and Disqus as well.
I hope this may serve as an example for the future: a free and flexible open source core application enhanced by cloud add-ons. Open source software gave me more control, specifically over my online identity: I can have my own domain name, look and feel, and my choice of modules and add-ons. The cloud applications gave me easy, inexpensive, and maintenance-free ways to add standard features to this core. Today this is common in the blogging world, but we are re-architecting opentaps to bring that to enterprise software such as ERP and CRM as well: a world of open core architecture and platform-independent add-on modules.
Related posts
List of Cloud Platforms, Providers, and Enablers 2010
Feb 25th
Here is another list of cloud players that we’ve come across…
Cloud computing infrastructure tech&solution provider:
- 3Tera – AppLogic grid OS used as cloud computing platform by service providers and enterprises
- Appistry – Cloud computing middleware - Enables easily scalable cloud computing in the enterprise.
- Cassatt – Cassatt Active Response platform enables administrators to set policies to power physical and virtual servers safely on and off and pool their computing resources.
- CloudHan - Cloud tech and infrastructure consultant, in China.
- CloudScale Networks – Cloud enabler. Currently in private ALPHA only
- Joyent – Cloud Infrastructure (Accelerators), and consulting for developers and enterprise.
- nScaled, Inc – Cloud related services such as Migrations, Deployment, Planning, Consulting
- Q-layer – provides software for data centers that enables cloud computing, support VSAN, VLAN, VPDC, currently support VMware ESX.
- Skytap – IaaS service optimized for QA, Training, Demo, and Ops Testing. Supports VMware, Xen hypervisors & Windows, Linux & Solaris OS guests.
- Webscale Solutions – IT Strategy and Consulting on Cloud computing. Specialize in ROI investigations of CC. a CC provider evaluation framework and Enterprise Cloud Roadmap development.
Cloud computing infrastructure provider:
- Agathon Group – Cloud provider. Services include highly available VPS, virtual private datacenters and ready-to-use LAMP stacks. Self-service ordering. Custom development and managed services available.
- Amazon Web Services – Amazon EC2/S3 (Hardware-a-a-S & Cloud Storage)
- CohesiveFT – CohesiveFT Elastic Server Factory – Webservice for assembling full application stacks (contextualization, custom apps, middleware, on top of base configs) with deployment to many virtual and cloud environs.
- ElasticHosts – UK-based instant, on-demand servers in the cloud
- Flexiscale – Another instant provisioner of web servers with some advanced features like auto-scaling coming soon.
- GoGrid – instant, on-demand servers offering “control in the cloud”. Deploy Windows/Linux servers via web-interface in minutes
- GridLayer – Cloud Provider. A service by Layered Technologies that delivers Virtual Private Datacenters and virtual private servers from grids of commodity servers
- LayeredTechnologies - Cloud Provider. provider of on-demand hosting and cloud and utility computing solutions through its brand GridLayer
- ReliaCloud – Deployed within a robust and resilient virtualization environment and architected to maximize uptime and performance. Free benefits include high availability, load balancing, robust APIs, and persistent servers.
- Mosso – Rackspace’s cloud hosting service
- Newservers – Instant provisioning of web servers either Windows or Linux
- Plura Processing – On-demand infrastructure for high-performance computing
Cloud computing PaaS provider:
- Aptana Cloud – Elastic Elastic Application Cloud™ featuring fully stacked and integrated PHP app engines, Ajax/Jaxer app engines, and soon Ruby on Rails app engines — ready to use and ready to scale as you need it.
- Bungee Connect – Provides end to end tools and systems required to develop, deploy and host web applications (Platform as a Service)
- Coherence – Oracle Coherence Data Grid for EC2 and other cloud platforms
- Force.com – Salesforce.com’s application development platform (PaaS)
- GigaSpaces – middleware for the cloud, “cloudware”
- Google AppEngine – (PaaS)Now support python
- Heroku – Ruby on Rails in their Cloud
- Morph Labs – Fully managed, open, elastically-scalable, end-to-end deployment and delivery platform for Ruby on Rails and Java (Jetty, JRuby, Groovy and Grails) web applications. Leverages AWS, but completely abstracts details and complexities from developers.
- Intuit Partner Platform (IPP) – Platform as a Service (PaaS) from Intuit.
- Qrimp – An AJAX based PaaS
- RightScale – RightScale provides a platform and expertise that enable companies to create scalable web applications running on Amazon’s Web Services that are reliable, easy to manage, and cost less
- Stax – Java Platform as a Service
Cloud computing based service provider:
- CAM Solutions – Monitoring-as-a-Service(TM)
- CloudStatus- CloudEnabler. Real-time performance trending of cloud infrastructure (currently AWS).
- DATASiSAR – Cloud Computing technology based consulting & IT Services provider
- Kaavo‘s IMOD is an easy to use online application. Cloud Computing Made Easy.
- Microsoft Mesh
- Nasstar - SaaS provider. Business grade Hosted Desktop service, UK market leaders.
- Nirvanix – Cloud Storage
- TrustSaaS – uptime monitoring and alerting service (‘SaaS Weather Report’) for Software as a Service (SaaS) run by an independent third party.
- UtilityStatus - Utility Computing Platform for SaaS charged in elapsed CPU time running on EC2.
Semantic computing Cloud service provider:
- ThoughtExpress – Generic Enterprise Management Service based in semantics supported by semantic computing cloud to perform enterprise information processing to deliver: BPM, BI, enterprise modelling & semantic human interface without the need to program.
Cloud Security Consultants and Overlay Network Providers
- CohesiveFT – CohesiveFT’s VPN-Cubed products are virtual firewallls, switches, hubs, and routers that are used to build overlay networks in clouds, across clouds, and to connect enterprise data centers to public clouds.
Cloud End-Points:
- XPack - a dedicated cloud end-point from Moderro Technologies. A solid-state, power-saving, VESA mountable desktop appliance with custom desktop environment designed for web applications.
Related posts
Force.com – Huge 4Q profit on big sales jump
Feb 25th
SAN FRANCISCO — Salesforce.com on Wednesday posted a 48 percent jump in fiscal fourth-quarter profit, on strong sales growth for its online business software applications.
For the three months ended Jan. 31, Salesforce.com said profit jumped to $20.4 million, or 16 cents per share, compared with $13.8 million, or 11 cents per share, in last year’s fourth quarter.
Revenue shot up 22 percent to $354 million, from $289.6 million a year ago.
Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters, on average, expected profit of 15 cents per share, on revenue of $342.3 million.
Chairman and CEO Marc Benioff said the company is benefiting from the move to cloud computing.
Cloud computing lets companies collaborate online and store data on outside servers, lowering the cost of maintaining their own computer systems.
For the fiscal year, the company earned $80.7 million, or 63 cents per share, on revenue of $1.31 billion. That compares with profit of $43.4 million, or 35 cents per share, on revenue of $1.08 billion last year.
The company said it added more than 17,000 new customers during the fiscal year, to about 72,500.
For the fiscal first quarter, the company expects earnings between 12 and 13 cents per share, on revenue between $365 million and $367 million.
Analysts call for profit of 18 cents per share, on revenue of $354.7 million. The earnings per share numbers, however, may not be comparable because of unusual items.
For the full fiscal year, Salesforce.com forecast earnings between 58 cents and 60 cents per share. It raised its revenue guidance to growth between 16 percent and 17 percent, from 15 to 16 percent. That implies a revenue forecast between $1.51 billion and $1.53 billion.
Wall Street expects profit of 82 cents per share on revenue of $1.51 billion for the fiscal year.
Salesforce.com shares wobbled in aftermarket electronic trading, falling immediately after the release before gaining $1.28 to $70.90. The stock closed regular trading up $1.20 at $69.44.
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The economics of cloud computing
Feb 25th
What will the next big technology be? This column argues that “cloud computing” will have a dramatic effect on how we live our lives and how we do business. The economic impact of the diffusion of this technology could match that of telecommunication infrastructures in the ’70s and ’80s or the introduction of the internet in the ’90s. Once diffusion gathers apace, cloud computing could significantly boost GDP growth and could create around a million EU jobs within five years.
The new big thing of the IT world is “cloud computing”, a general purpose technology that could provide a fundamental contribution to promote efficiency in the private and public sectors and promote growth, competition, and business creation.
Cloud computing is an Internet-based technology (hence “cloud”) which stores information in servers and provides it as an on-demand service. The economic impact of cloud computing will be substantial on both households and companies.
- On one side, consumers will be able to access all of their documents and data from any device (the home or work PC, the mobile phone, an internet point), as they already do for email services or social networks.
- On the other side, firms will be able to rent computing power (both hardware and software in their latest versions) and storage from a service provider, while paying on demand, as they already do for other inputs such as energy and electricity.
The former application will affect our lifestyles, but the latter will have a profound impact on the cost structure of all the industries. For instance, it can provide huge cost savings and greater efficiency in large areas of the public sector including hospitals and healthcare (especially to provide information and technologies in remote or poorer locations), education (especially for e-learning) and the activity of government agencies with periodic spikes in usage. Moreover, substantial positive externalities are expected because of energy savings: the improvement of energy efficiency may contribute to the reduction of total carbon emissions in a substantial way.
If we look at the private sector, again the introduction of cloud computing can provide cost savings. It can create multilateral network effects between businesses, and it can promote entry and innovation in all the sectors where IT costs are restrictive and are drastically reduced by the adoption of cloud computing. This last effect can have a large effect on the wider economy. Continue Reading…Full Source
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BC’s Cloud Computing Ecosystem – a comprehensive list
Feb 25th
Cloud computing is here and it is real. It is helping businesses lower costs and be more agile. It is allowing startups to lower their setup costs and large enterprises to do R&D faster. It is being used by companies in financial services, pharmaceuticals and life sciences, media, and many others. And B.C. is developing a rich ecosystem of cloud computing companies that you may not know about yet.
For those unfamiliar with the term, cloud computing is the name given to the IT industry’s shift towards delivering IT as services. This is only another phase-shift, one of many that the computer industry has already experienced. Using mainframes as a starting point (which offered computing at the “center”), we then moved to minis, then PCs (computing at the edge), then client/server (computing moved back to the center), then the web (computing at both ends), server virtualization (abstracting the applications and software from the hardware underneath), and now automation and self-service.
What’s cloud and what isn’t?
There are a lot of debates about who fits where. For the purpose of this article, we have broken the industry down in a 3×3 grid as follows.
For layers, we have the following key three that are most often referenced in taxonomies of the market: applications; platforms; and infrastructure.
Applications contains those applications used by end-users, administrators, and managers. Platforms are the middleware that sits underneath the applications, often including things like security, management tools, databases, messaging, and servers. Infrastructure includes things such as core computing and storage resources and infrastructure management.
For types, we have broken this down into “Public”, “Hosted”, and “Private” – terms that are by no means adequate and which probably cause more misunderstanding these days but they’re commonly used so we’ll use them here.
This Public column is the one that is really “new” in the sense that it is different than what came before in the Hosted and Public columns. Sometimes it helps to think about a number of dimensions that make something column 1 or 2 or 3. In column 1, you find that apps, platforms, and infrastructure have been highly abstracted from hardware, they are offered as a service over the public internet, they are designed as “multi-tenant” services (one core code base under all users), often have publicly accessible APIs, are metered (if not billed by) usage, are often designed in a way that lets users provision themselves instantly and leave when they want. Some very well-known examples that fit well in column 1 are Salesforce.com, Google’s web-based Google Apps, Force.com (the development platform), Google’s App Engine (a deployment platform), and of course Amazon Web Services, the Rackspace Cloud, and now Microsoft Azure.
In the Hosted column, you find “On-Demand” applications from the big vendors. Often these are just applications hosted by the vendor with both a perpetual license fee and a separate hosting fee. Most of the time, it is the same application or platform stack as what you could install yourself locally on your own servers. I’ve included them here because people often ask “isn’t Hosted Exchange a cloud service?” Well, not if you want “Column 1″ cloud services. It’s a single-tenant, high cost-structure offering that does not pass any of the Column 1 tests.
In the Private column, we have placed those vendors who are building anything that would fit in the “Private cloud” category. If the vendor is just simply building apps, platforms, or infrastructure that is not and never will be used for delivery “as a service”, they have not been included here. Same with software so if there are applications that are used behind the firewall and that will never be delivered across the public internet, particularly in a multi-tenanted, “as a service” model, they were not included here.
So where are the opportunities?
With every major phase shift, a lot of things need to be rebuilt. When the industry moved to server virtualization, all of the major infrastructure tools had to be rebuilt. Out of that chaos, VMWare came from nowhere and gained 80% marketshare against its closest competitor Microsoft. And many small companies were born and did great things. That opportunity is now ahead of us again as all of the industry ecosystem is refactored once again. What is up for grabs? Everything: storage, computing, management, billing systems, security, cross-cloud management tools, SOA tools, databases and analytics systems, testing tools and deployment tools. It’s a complete ten year rebuild, just like the last cycle. Some stuff will move forward untouched but much of it has to be refactored.
B.C. Cloud Computing Ecosystem
Table 1 is the overview that shows how we have broken up the ecosystem.
Table 2 contains all of the detailed entries.
B.C. companies are hyperlinked.
Non-B.C. companies are in (brackets) for context purposes only.
If you would like to suggest additional companies, please do so here:
http://www.techvibes.com/blog/bcs-cloud-computing-ecosystem-a-comprehensive-list
Table 1: Overview
| Public |
Hosted |
Private |
|
| Applications |
Software as a service |
Hosted applications |
On Premise applications |
| Platforms |
Platform as a service |
Hosted Platforms |
On Premise Platforms |
| Infrastructure |
Infrastructure as a service |
Hosted Infrastructure |
Private Infrastructure |
Table 2: Detailed View
| Public |
Hosted |
Private |
|
|
Characteristics that are traditionally associated with each of the columns on the right –> |
- Vendor Managed - Automated - Multi-tenant - Web-Services - Hosted - Self-Serve - Subscription License - Pay for use - Instant Setup - Continual upgrades - IT = 2-3% of Rev. |
- Vendor Managed - Manual - Single-Tenant - Web Services? - Hosted - Vendor Served - Mixed License - Pay for time - Setup in Days - Big migrations - IT = 7-9% of Rev. |
- Self-Managed - Manual - Single-Tenant - Few Web Services - On Premise - Self-Serve - Perpetual License - Pay for everything - Setup in Weeks - Big migrations - IT = 7-9% of Rev. |
| APPLICATIONS |
Software as a service |
Hosted Apps |
Installed Apps |
| Mobile Payments |
Mobio |
||
| Social media content companies |
NowPublic |
||
| Social applications |
Wantsa Eqo |
||
| Social Networks |
Tyze (Facebook) |
||
| Social Media Client Tools |
Hootsuite |
||
| Gaming |
EcoBuddies FitBrains |
||
| Conferencing Tools |
Mingleverse Meeting Wizard |
||
|
File backup, sharing, access |
|
|
|
| Document collaboration |
(Google Docs) |
||
|
Email / Mgmt |
(Google Email) |
(Hosted Exchange) |
Exchange in-house |
| Document routing and workflow and approvals |
Recombo Vitrium |
||
|
Customer Relationship Mgmt (CRM) & Sales Force Automation (SFA) |
(Salesforce.com) |
|
(Goldmine ACT!) |
| Mobile functionality |
Tagga Quickmobile |
||
|
Marketing & PR Applications |
|
|
|
| Partner Relationship Management (PRM) |
PartnerPedia |
||
|
Service / Support / Help Desk |
|
|
|
|
Prof. Services Automation (PSA) and Project Management (PM) |
(Quick Arrow) |
||
|
HR Management (HRM) |
(Workday) |
|
|
| Municipal Applications |
BasicGov |
||
|
Spend & Expense Management |
|
|
|
| Online Research Software |
Vision Critical |
||
|
Business Intelligence & Reporting |
(Business Objects) (Pentaho) |
||
| Performance Management |
Visible Strategies |
||
|
Business apps – other |
|
|
|
| Database applications |
DabbleDB |
||
|
Large Data Set Analytics |
(Hadoop) |
(Hadoop) |
|
| Finance – Accounts Payable |
Beanbills |
||
|
Finance & Accounting |
|
|
|
| Energy & Resource Monitoring |
Pulse Energy Carbon Networks |
||
|
ERP-Other |
|
|
|
|
Security applications (end-user) |
|
||
|
IT Mgmt application |
|
|
|
|
Desktop as a service |
|
|
|
|
Application Marketplace |
|
|
|
| PLATFORMS |
Platform as a service |
Hosted Platforms |
Internal Platforms |
|
Platform Name |
(Force.com) (Microsoft Azure) |
|
|
| Ecommerce gateways, subscription billing |
Monexa |
Hyperwallet ElasticPath |
ElasticPath |
|
BPM |
|
|
|
| Policy compliance |
Colony Layer7 |
Layer7 | |
| Website Construction Platform |
Ubertor |
Sitemasher |
|
|
Business Framework |
|
|
|
|
UI framework |
|
|
|
|
Application Scripting |
|
|
|
| Video Streaming |
LiveCast |
LiveCast | |
|
Content Management |
|||
|
Site hosting |
|
|
|
|
Web Analytics |
|
|
|
|
Mobile Application Delivery |
|
|
|
|
Application Integration |
|
|
|
|
Developer Sandbox |
|
|
|
|
Application/Middleware Provisioning |
|
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|
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Deployment Tools |
|
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|
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Testing Tools |
|
|
|
|
Development Tools |
|||
|
Code Performance Analytics |
|
|
|
|
Stack creation tools |
|
|
|
|
App/Web Server |
|
|
|
|
Portal Server |
|
|
|
|
Cacheing Servers |
|
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|
Database – Unstructured |
|
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Database – Relational |
|
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Database Synchronization |
|
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|
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Web Services / SOA tools |
|
||
|
Frameworks |
|
|
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| Security – Spam control |
Mailchannels |
||
|
DNS Services |
|
|
|
|
Billing, Payment, Metering |
|
|
|
|
Telephony |
|
|
|
|
Security / Identity Mgmt |
|
||
|
Operating System |
|
|
|
| INFRASTRUCTURE |
Infrastructure as a service |
Hosted Infrastructure |
Internally hosted infrastructure |
|
Infrastructure Name |
(Force.com) (Amazon Web Services) (Rackspace Cloud) (Microsoft Azure) |
(Rackspace) |
(Microsoft Azure Internal Services) |
|
Inside to outside bridging |
|
|
|
|
Cross Systems Mgmt |
|
|
|
|
Automation/Provisioning Platform |
|
||
|
Virtuallization Platform |
|
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|
|
Grid Mgmt |
|
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VM App Perf. Monitoring |
|
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|
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Config Mgmt |
|
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Monitoring Services |
|
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Compute Services |
|
|
|
|
Messaging/Queuing Services |
|
|
|
|
Edge Storage – CDN |
|
||
| Mobile Network Optimization |
Mobidia |
||
|
Primary Storage |
|
(Netapp) |
|
|
Secondary Storage |
|
(Netapp) |
|
|
Storage Compression |
(Netapp) |
||
| Network Perf. Mgmt |
Colony | Vineyard Networks Apparent Networks |
|
|
Load Balancers |
|
|
|
|
Networking |
|
|
|
|
Firewalls |
|
|
|
Read more: http://www.techvibes.com/blog/bcs-cloud-computing-ecosystem-a-comprehensive-list#ixzz0gYXCbMKm
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CA Acquires 3Tera To Boost Presence In The Cloud
Feb 24th
SLANDIA, N.Y., February 24, 2010 – CA, Inc. (NASDAQ:CA) today announced a definitive agreement to acquire privately-held 3Tera®, Inc., a pioneer in cloud computing. 3Tera’s AppLogic® offers an innovative solution for building cloud services and deploying complex enterprise-class applications to public and private clouds using an intuitive graphical user interface (GUI). Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
With 3Tera—which follows CA’s recent acquisitions of Cassatt, NetQoS and Oblicore—CA continues to aggressively expand its portfolio of solutions to manage cloud computing as part of an integrated information technology management program.
3Tera enables enterprises and service providers to provision, deploy and scale public and private cloud computing environments while maintaining full control, flexibility and reliability. 3Tera also makes it easy for service providers to offer application stacks on demand by adding applications to the AppLogic catalog, where they can be deployed to a low-cost, shared cloud infrastructure. 3Tera’s customers include more than 80 enterprises and service providers globally, which use the cloud computing technology to provide services to thousands of users.
“CIOs can use cloud computing to build and manage a new type of IT ‘supply chain’ across today’s virtualized internal and external technology infrastructure,” said Chris O’Malley, executive vice president of CA’s Cloud Products & Solutions Business Line. “3Tera technology is a powerful addition to the total solution CA provides for optimizing these high-value supply chains—from the mainframe to the cloud.”
Rapid, Simplified Cloud Enablement
Using the intuitive GUI and drawing from a catalog of pre-configured virtual server and software components, AppLogic simplifies the design and deployment of composite applications as a single logical entity in the cloud. By unifying application configuration, application deployment, and a virtual server fabric—functions that are otherwise typically performed in a fragmented manner—AppLogic helps reduce costs, improve productivity and increase service quality.
“3Tera eliminates the manual, error-prone tasks that have historically hampered an organization’s ability to deploy IT services to the cloud,” said Barry X Lynn, CEO of 3Tera. “As part of CA, we can bring rapid and simple cloud enablement to a dramatically larger group of customers, leveraging the thousands of CA sales, services and support professionals.”
In addition to AppLogic, 3Tera provides a cloud computing marketplace that allows software vendors to provide developers with production-ready cloud components and full applications that are available on a pay-as-you-go basis. This greatly facilitates exchanges of value between developers, service providers and customers.
Integration with Virtual and Physical Management Technologies
By streamlining cloud-based deployment of composite applications, 3Tera adds significant new capabilities alongside CA’s existing virtual and physical infrastructure management functionality—including that provided by CA Spectrum Automation Manager, the CA Service Assurance line of products, and the recently acquired assets of Cassatt and Oblicore.
CA plans to integrate AppLogic with these and other key technologies to provide customers with a comprehensive set of tools for delivering, managing and optimizing cloud computing as part of overall enterprise IT environment. CA also plans to extend support of 3Tera, which currently operates on the Xen virtualization platform, to include both VMware ESX and Microsoft Hyper-V™.
“AppLogic is a software platform that helps IT departments and service providers rapidly create and deploy cloud applications,” said Rachel Chalmers, research director at The 451 Group. “By adding this technology to its own strengths in IT management, CA is offering an intriguing value proposition to customers who want to both take advantage of the cloud’s adaptability and maintain rigorous control of the their virtual service delivery infrastructure.”
To learn more about CA and cloud computing, visit http://www.ca.com/cloud.
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RELIACLOUD JOINS THE RANKS OF AMAZON AND RACKSPACE
Feb 24th
ReliaCloud and enStratus Team Up to Present CloudCamp Events and
Cloud Computing Webinar for IT Directors
EDEN PRAIRIE, Minn. (February 24, 2010) – ReliaCloud, the new service that offers small-to-medium-sized enterprises cloud computing servers and storage space, has announced a new partnership with enStratus, a national cloud management platform that delivers governance for enterprise applications in the cloud. Together ReliaCloud and enStratus offer companies a seamless, manageable cloud computing service. The two organizations are also joining forces to sponsor 2010 CloudCamp events and an April 7, 2010, webinar to educate information technology professionals about the business advantages of using cloud computing.
“We are thrilled to offer the enStratus solution to ReliaCloud customers,” said Jason Baker, chief technology officer for ReliaCloud. “The highly regarded management platform and experience in cloud security and availability management at enStratus is invaluable to regulation-heavy businesses or enterprises that are concerned about reliability and business continuity.”
To go beyond basic cloud computing service, ReliaCloud customers now have access to a suite of software management tools from enStratus that are also used with Amazon Web Services, Rackspace and Microsoft Azure platforms to maximize:
- Security – enStratus has a patent-pending security architecture that ensures separation of security keys from encrypted data and provides advanced user management and activity logs for compliance;
- Reliability – Automated management tools, auto-recovery engine and unique clustering capabilities that minimize human error and enable support of service level agreements up to 99.9999 percent; and
- Cloud Independence – enStratus provides business continuity through cloud-independent backups as well as cross-cloud disaster recovery.
“enStratus is pleased to add ReliaCloud to its supported list of cloud providers,” says George Reese, chief technology officer of enStratus. “We’re confident that ReliaCloud is ready to serve IT directors who are seeking a reliable and secure partner that they can trust in the cloud.”
In addition to launching their affiliation, ReliaCloud and enStratus are hosting the Minneapolis CloudCamp on Tuesday, March 2, which is a local gathering of early cloud computing adopters who want to exchange ideas on the evolving topic. Other upcoming 2010 regional CloudCamps are taking place on Friday, March 5, in Chicago; Tuesday, March 16, in Philadelphia; Tuesday, March 23, in Washington, DC and Tuesday, May 25, in Denver. For more details about a specific CloudCamp go to www.cloudcamp.org.
To continue cloud computing education efforts, ReliaCloud and enStratus are also hosting a webinar on Wednesday, April 7, 2010, for IT directors and chief technology officers who want to learn what cloud computing can do for their respective businesses and hear examples of success stories. The webinar will feature Jason Baker from ReliaCloud and George Reese from enStratus. More details about the Webinar are posted on the ReliaCloud blog at www.reliacloud.com/blog.
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A Music Library in the Cloud So It’s Accessible Anywhere
Feb 24th
Cloud App Of the Day
When you bop between your work and home computers all the time, it’s tough keeping your favorite music at your fingertips (“Which computer has my Once More, With Feeling soundtrack on it?”). AudioBox lets you listen to your music from anywhere.
(Click the image above for a closer look.)
AudioBox is a web-based media player that puts your music (and, eventually, movies) in the cloud so you can access it from any computer with an internet connection and standard browser. Just upload your favorite media files to AudioBox’s secure server, and stream them anytime you want to hear one of your favorite tunes. In fact, you can also access your music via your mobile browser (the company says an official iPhone app is in the works).
Uploading files is easy-peasy. Just locate music on your computer’s hard drive and send files to AudioBox in batches or one at a time. Create and delete playlists, shuffle and repeat songs, or filter by artist, song, or genre. The app supports drag and drop, so organizing your media files is a snap.
Currently AudioBox is free while it’s in beta, and you’re limited to 250 MB of storage with file size limits of 50 MB. Once the service is ready for prime time, various pricing plans will let you buy more storage and upload larger files.
AudioBox is still a little buggy during the testing phase and, of course, you shouldn’t use it to store files that are super-important to you. If you’re looking for a way to grab some of your favorite music whenever the mood strikes though, then AudioBox is definitely worth checking out.
What are some ways you access your media files remotely? Share what works for you in the comments.
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Cloud Computing & Natural Monopolies
Feb 24th
Mike Kirkwood of ReadWriteWeb recently wrote a piece asking the question “Will One Company Become the Dominant Player in Cloud Computing?” Kirkwood offered a series of arguments both for and against the idea of the market being one where a “natural monopoly” might occur and a few of his arguments are worth exploring in greater depth.
Addressing the potential for vendor lock-in (think Outlook .PST files), Kirkwood points out that cloud customers may demand data portability:
If customers demand solutions where they can move from vendor to vendor freely, it will impact the landscape. Companies with cloud solutions in the marketplace could be required by these customers to remove barriers to moving data and services between different entities.
Kirkwood should know that this is already happening. CRM solutions like HighRise by 37Signals and cloud-based office solutions like Google Apps already have these features built in. One of the biggest reasons that many companies are moving to cloud-based applications is because they’re weary of being locked-in to solutions that hold their data hostage. It’s doubtful that these exit doors will disappear when things like office suites, CRMs, accounting software, and other software categories are almost exclusively offered as cloud applications or web apps. Customers already expect and will continue to demand the freedom to move their data around—a new culture of data portability is being created as a part of the shift to the cloud and that consumer expectations may be permanently altered because of it.
So long as data is portable, it seems doubtful that any vendor will be able to gain anything near a monopoly status through the use of tired proprietary software shenanigans. Huge capital expenses, like those associated with setting up an Exchange server and installing the latest version of Outlook on hundreds of desktop machines is also a thing of the past. The massive upfront costs are being replaced by cheap subscription models that easily scale as a firm’s need for a given sort of software grows. This means switching to a new vendor in the cloud involves little more than an export and important of data, followed by an email supplying co-workers with a new URL, username, and password.
The one area that Kirkwood doesn’t explore which may have some potential for a would-be monopolist is exploiting possible network effects—the idea that everyone uses brand X because everyone else uses brand X. This makes sense when you think of something like Facebook, where the sole value of the product is derived from the fact that a lot of people use it—otherwise why would anyone use the abysmal site? But does this sort of logic apply to accounting software? Would I choose to use something from Intuit instead of FreshBooks because my friends use it?
No, but I might choose a software titles because my potential employees are more likely to already be familiar with it and those potential hires might choose to learn one software title over another because employers are more likely to be using it. This is the kind of a snowball effect that could give one vendor an advantage that has nothing to do with the quality of their product.
But here too I see the culture of the emerging cloud applications market being a strong force against this kind of software/employee compatibility lock-in argument. Aside from wanting to flee the world of proprietary standards, expensive servers, in-house IT staff, client-side software, and other technological nightmares that come with so many non-cloud applications, companies are fleeing the world of terrible user interfaces. The cloud based-apps that I use—BaseCamp, HighRise, MailChimp, Google Apps, FormSpring, WuFoo, Mint, as well as many others—are all orders of magnitude less daunting and needlessly complex than something like the UX abomination that is the Microsoft Office suite. (Hint: If the “plain and simple” guide to your software runs 384 pages, you’re doing it wrong.)
Cloud software creators seem to actually care about user interface, somewhat negating the notion of user training related network effects—fostering what I will now officially dub “user portability.” Again, one could argue that when some software categories become predominantly cloud-based, and cloud software creators are not longer selling the concept of web software itself along with their specific services, that this emphasis on user interface could be phased out in favor of making more “ribbons.” But because of the new culture of data portability, user portability is likely to be maintained as well because bad user interfaces will be punished through losing customers to a better UX that is just a export, import, and quick staff-wide email away.
I’m really interested to hear my fellow TLFers and our readers’ thoughts on this issue. Is the cloud a near-perfect market or am I just a naive idealist who doesn’t see the vapory beginnings of a future cloud monopoly looming in the distance?
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Cloud storage in a post-SQL world
Feb 24th
Since the rise of the Web, SQL-based relational databases have been the dominant structured storage technology behind online applications. The past few years have seen the emergence of the cloud as a compelling environment for online application development, bringing true utility computing into the infrastructure pantheon. But the cloud and SQL do not mix well, and multiple efforts are now underway to offer viable alternatives to the venerable database. In this article, I’ll review the forces that have led to this shift, and I’ll argue that while relational databases are by no means doomed, they will soon be joined in the cloud, and possibly out-shined by, new non-relational database technologies.
The trouble with SQL
For most developers, SQL-based relational databases work just fine. Support for SQL is extremely broad, setup has become reasonably straightforward, there are plenty of resources to help with management, and modern hardware allows a single machine to handle a lot of transactions quickly. For smaller projects, SQL databases can offer something close to a plug-and-play storage environment. But there are weaknesses, and for some teams these are big problems.
Foremost of the weaknesses of relational databases is their inability to scale horizontally. Some database packages allow teams with large budgets to scale vertically, to a point, using expensive “big iron” hardware, but others (most notably MySQL) run into architectural limitations long before the hardware is exhausted. (See page two of my prior article for a brief discussion.) Either way, there’s a ceiling there.
Despite steady improvement in the field of clustered databases, in the relational world these remain fairly limited both in feature-set and in scalability. We can confidently say that these limitations will not go away any time soon: Brewer’s Theorem (aka the CAP Theorem), demonstrated in 2002 by Gilbert & Lynch, says in effect that a system cannot have high Consistency, Availability, and Partition Tolerance simultaneously. SQL offers a variety of strict consistency guarantees (both ACID transactional semantics and data-integrity tools such as foreign keys), and for online applications, high availability is a must. Given this, partition tolerance—in effect meaning the system’s ability to withstand internal latency and failures—must be low, limiting the size of any reliable clustered database technology with SQL’s semantics.
Additionally, managing relational databases in a production environment can become labor intensive and error-prone. Each database package comes with its own world of configuration options, performance sensitivities, bugs, and tools. While these issues usually start small, they can become a drain on developers’ time and resources as the product matures and its needs become more complex. This complexity of management arises from the complexity of the database packages themselves; it is their very breadth of capabilities which makes them difficult to manage.
Finally, SQL encourages (but does not require) developers to perform data processing in the database itself, in addition to data storage. Much of the time, the easiest way to map two tables together is to use a JOIN, and the easiest way to sort the results is with an ORDER BY, and so forth. Doing so adds load to the database’s CPU, often a precious resource, while saving load on the application host—a bad trade-off that leads more quickly to the relational database’s scaling wall.
These issues alone have spurred the development of relational-database alternatives. But it is the cloud which will ultimately drive their success.
The promise of utility computing
The move to the cloud is arguably the most visible force in the world of online application development. Not everyone is moving, but as I argued in my last article, the cloud is going to be an increasingly common backbone for applications. From a developer’s perspective, cloud computing platforms (particularly in the up-and-coming Platform as a Service (PaaS) flavor) ideally offer infrastructure components as utility services rather than discrete units of servers running software. This simplified approach not only saves development time, but enables application scalability by offering what amounts to inexhaustible resources.
In this landscape, the conventional relational database is something of an alien. SQL itself enforces a server-centric view of the world: clients persistently connect to individual servers, each with their own namespace and no mutual awareness. Database servers are long-running and have configurations fairly specific to the hardware on which they run. Unpredictable resource contention means that sharing server resources between customers is risky beyond very small workloads. Because of this, cloud platform providers are offering relational databases as dedicated servers running on virtual machines, e.g., Amazon’s MySQL-based RDS, Heroku’s PostgreSQL-based database units, etc. But this approach resembles managed hosting much more than cloud computing—it is not a utility service. To offer developers truly scalable structured storage services, providers must turn away from SQL. Continue Reading at Ars Technica
