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HP’s Revised Proposal of $33 per Share Values 3PAR at $2.4 billion
Sep 2nd
HP Wins 3Par At $33, Beats Dell
Until this morning, Dell and Hewlett-Packard were mired in a bidding war over 3Par, a leading provider of utility storage solutions for enterprises. With a final bid of $2.4 billion for the company, HP has emerged the winner. Below we highlight the significance of 3Par and how it may impact HP’s storage in the future.
Utility storage primer
Utility storage is a category of data storage systems designed for utility computing, a form of information technology in which storage and computation are delivered as a metered service, rather like a power utility. 3Par’s unique storage technology powers so-called virtual data centers for mid-sized to large enterprises, including financial service firms, government entities, hosted computing providers, and consumer-oriented Internet companies.
3Par’s value proposition is based on the premise that unused storage is wasteful. Conventional data centers typically use just 10% to 25% of allocated disk space. By contrast, 3Par’s technology allocates disk space only when applications need storage capacity, reducing the total cost of storage by up to 50% according to the company.
As more enterprises shut down their in-house data centers and turn to on-demand storage and computing services delivered via the Internet, their storage needs become more variable and less predictable. This makes 3Par a great fit for the cloud computing era, which helps explain why HP and Dell are competing so fiercely to acquire the company’s proprietary technology.
Why were Dell & HP chasing 3Par?
(Source Forbes)
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Is Cloud an Adopted Brother of Virtualization or Not?
Sep 2nd
Is Cloud an Adopted Brother of Virtualization or Not?
By Nimantha (CloudTweaks)
Cloud computing came into the lime light very recently and became an instant hit among lot of people, especially CTO’s of different enterprises. Virtualization, the close friend of cloud computing was there for a longer period of time, but with the emergence of cloud, it was given the step mothers treatment. Still it didn’t die from our minds because Cloud and Virtualization did stick together most of the time rather than not. So then the argument began, Does Cloud and Virtualization does carry the same concept or is it different? Let’s figure it out.
What is Virtualization ?
The word virtualization defines of allowing multiplicity of access points from a single outlet. As an example, we can simply take interrelated personal computers that can each be accessed from whatever remote location. What it actually implies is that it will be using the internet to carry out activities that were previously done offline. In other words, the management or the CTO has decided that his organization would like to take control of the activities of that activity by going online rather than offline. Virtualization therefore always associates with technological development.
The best part of Virtualization is that the central command unit will be able to supervise the activities of outpost computers. This element is one which delights managers but it also causes some concern from civil liberties groups regarding their privacy.
What is Cloud Computing?
Well, here is the point where everyone gets confused. It is true that cloud computing utilizes the same basic principles as virtualization, but it involves the provision of externally managed IT services via hosted software, which allows IT systems to be managed from very remote locations where data is accessed and manipulated via a server.
As an example, lets say that there is a company in USA which wishes to reduce the budget they allocate for in-house developments, so what they decide to do is to totally outsource their IT developments to a company in India.
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Amazon AWS Lowers On-Demand and Reserved Prices
Sep 2nd
Amazon AWS Lowers On-Demand and Reserved Prices
Effective immediately, we have lowered the On-Demand and Reserved prices for High Memory Double Extra Large (m2.2xlarge) and Quadruple Extra Large (m2.4xlarge) instances for Linux/UNIX and Windows by up to 19%. If you have existing Reserved Instances, your hourly usage rate starting 
September 1st will be lowered to the new usage rate and your estimated bill will reflect these changes later this month. We continuously strive to be more efficient, and are excited to pass cost savings on to you in the form of lower prices.
Beyond this price reduction, there are several other ways that you can save money when using Amazon EC2. Compared to On-Demand instance pricing, Reserved Instances enable you to reduce the cost of your instances by up to 56%. When using Reserved Instances, you pay a low, one-time fee and in turn receive a significant discount on the hourly usage charge for that instance during a 1 or 3 years period. After the one-time payment for an instance, that instance is reserved for you; you may choose to run that instance for the discounted usage rate for the duration of your term, or when you do not use the instance, you will not pay usage charges on it. Spot Instances also are available, which allow you to bid on unused Amazon EC2 capacity and run your instances for as long as your bid exceeds the current Spot Price. For customers who have flexibility in when they can run their instances, Spot Instances can significantly lower their Amazon EC2 costs.
You can find more detailed information about these options at http://aws.amazon.com/ec2.
Source Amazon
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Sony Challenges Apple ITunes with New Cloud Based Digital Service.
Sep 2nd
Sony Challenges Apple ITunes with New Cloud Based Digital Service.
Sony has made an announcement at the at the IFA conference in Berlin. They have announced that they will be competing with Apple iTunes by offering an 
unlimited cloud-based music service which will be accessible through the PS3 and other cloud connected mobile devices. This new service will be powered by Qriocity and be available later this year and is the 1st major step by anyone looking to challenge iTunes for the digital music download market.
“We are excited to offer our customers high quality, cloud-based entertainment experiences across many of Sony’s network-enabled devices,” said Kazuo Hirai, President of Networked Products & Services Group, Sony Corporation. “Services ‘powered by Qriocity’ will revolutionize the way that users play, listen, watch, share, communicate, learn, discover and create their digital entertainment content.”
Stay tuned for future developments…
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The Business Cloud Summit promises to be the UK’s premier Cloud event of 2010
Sep 1st
The Business Cloud Summit 2010 – 30 November, London, England
Visit our Event Partner for more information on this great Event.
The Business Cloud Summit 2010 will be Europe’s Cloud Computing event of the year. Unfolding over one day, it will comprise two highly focused streams, exploring current and future Cloud Computing issues in both the public and private sectors. The agenda will build on the success of the 2009 
Summit, delivering a unique mix of focus and leading industry insight, and ensuring that the 2010 Summit will be marked in the diaries of CIOs, CEOs and COOs from across the UK and Europe.
With dedicated content streams covering the key issues in both the public and private sectors, this one-day event will include top-level insight, relevant to all forward-thinking technology professionals, across all industries and all sectors; drilling down into the Cloud issues that affect central and local government, the NHS, education and the third sector.
The Business Cloud Summit is the only UK event of its type to offer specific content aimed at line of business managers in HR, finance, CRM and IT. It’s the only place where professionals from all areas of the Cloud industry will be brought together under one roof; infrastructure providers, buyers, end-users, influencers and decision makers.
The Cloud for 2010
According to IDC, 2009 was the year that Cloud Computing was ‘seeded’. In 2010 Cloud computing is now part of the mainstream. End users are embracing the cost and productivity benefits of the model with enthusiasm. At a time when the world is still emerging carefully from the worst economic downturn in living memory, lower start-up costs and total cost of ownership of Cloud Computing, delivering ROI of over 1000% in some cases, are welcomed with enthusiasm by CIOs, CEOs and CFOs in organisations across every business sector.
2010 is the year of Cloud adoption:
- By 2012, a fifth of all businesses will own no IT assets – Gartner
- The Cloud services market will surge to around $150bn in 2013 – Gartner
- The market for cloud services will account for 10% of all IT spending by 2013 – IDC
For more information see: http://www.businesscloud9.com/summit/2010
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Cloudtweaks VMWorld 2010 Updates and Agenda Report
Sep 1st
VMWorld 2010 Update By Malick
If you are not connected with the cloud, your individual mind would be a dumb terminal. Welcome to the VMWorld 2010!
VIRTUAL ROADS. ACTUAL CLOUDS: The statement ends as: Together we’ll travel from Virtual Roads to Actual Roads. Come engage. Leave enlightened. A true global event! 85 Countries represented in the audience. 17000 Attendees! And VMware announcing their Hybrid Cloud Computing Data Center! And claiming that already 4000 VMs (Virtual Machines) are created every hour! It is no secret that virtualization is the underlying driver of cloud computing. There is no cloud computing without virtualization! Well, one may say that virtualization is not the only enabler of cloud computing, but still, it is the key enabler. And VMWare is the pioneer in Virtualization. In the evolution of Information Technology, virtualization is a disrupting force.
Way back in 2004 itself, Gartner predicted that virtualisation will be the most disruptive technology in a decade
And this disruptive technology made cloud computing a reality. And cloud computing is promising a better IT environment today.
More >
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Practically Speaking about Amazon Web Services – Part 2: A Cloud Giant
Sep 1st
Practically Speaking about Amazon Web Services – Part 2: A Cloud Giant
We saw the various innovative cloud products and services offered by Amazon Web Services in Part 1. At this stage, it is quite natural that we have the business economics going on in our mind as how big is the cloud business industry and what part is being played by Amazon. Let us have a look at how Amazon Web Services has fared in analysts views. After all, before Amazon Web Services came along, Amazon was the least known for putting up a fight with IT Giants: such as: Microsoft, IBM, Google etc., where they not?
IDC, in a press release dated June 23rd,2010, says that global revenue of public cloud services which was around $ 16 Billion in 2009 will grow to $ 55.5 Billion in 2014. The research report further states that IT cloud services are crossing the chasm with modest revenue; fastest growth of about CAGR 27.4%.
-Reference: Worldwide and Regional Public IT Cloud Services 2010–2014 Forecast by IDC – (IDC #223549)
Another report released by UBS Investment Research analysts Brian Pitz and Brian Fitzgerald says that, for the type of cloud services offered by Amazon Web Services the market size can be pegged at around $ 15 to 20 Billion in the year 2014.
As per analysts, Amazon Web Services clocked revenue of about $ 0.5 Billion in 2010; could go up to $ 2.54 Billion in 2014. And this is about a 5% of total market share! And a market share of about 15% in similar services! Analysts predict that from the last quarter of 2010, Amazon Web Services revenue will have an impact on Amazon Inc., as a company. Well, not minding accuracy of these market share figures, one can clearly say that Amazon is an early pioneer player poised to grow big.
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Confessions of a Cloudaholic
Aug 31st
Confessions of a Cloudaholic – Life in the Cloud
By Nimantha De Silva of CloudTweaks – Aug 31st, 2010
The script is written, actors are ready, it’s time to say ACTION, but hold on, this time it is not about a film, it is just about unveiling the script of Challenges faced in Cloud Computing. This article purely focuses on challenges faced on cloud computing along with how it’s architecture is made of and its key characteristics to make it so special. A real confession is about to make and lets follow it.
Introduction
Cloud computing, from its evolve itself has become a major talking point. There were wide spread consensus among many industrial observers to check whether it is ready for noticeable deployment in the year 2010. So before digging deep into cloud, lets figure out what cloud computing is defined for. Even though it was introduced sometime back, it can still be identified as in the emerging stage, so there are many definitions based on several releases, but the most appropriate according to my view is the definition given by Wikipedia saying “Cloud computing describes a new supplement, consumption and a delivery model for IT services based on Internet, and it typically involves the provision of dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources as a service over the internet”. With the introduction itself, this topic was subjected towards many discussions, arguments, reviews, etc… Many expressed their ideas over this new born kid, but it was not to stop it but to make it much better. From that time onwards, cloud did grow and overcame many obstacles, but it is not finished yet. There are a certain set of challenges which needs to be addressed. The challenges which came into limelight along with the boom of the cloud are as follows:
- Who has given rights to access the information that organizations are putting on these external cloud application and systems servers?
- What and how does an organization’s compliance posture for applicable laws, regulations, standards, contracts and policies change when business, and sometimes even customer and employee, information is stored in the clouds?
- How long does information put into the clouds stay in those clouds?
- Do the clouds have retention policies?
- Can information be permanently and completed removed from the clouds once it is put there?
- Are there any logs generated to show how that cloudy information is accessed, copied, modified and otherwise used by anyone else?
- Can all necessary information in clouds be easily retrieved during e-discovery activities? If so, what are the related costs involved in it?
Even though cloud has not reached its peak yet, there are certain level of growth in cloud usage from the year 2008 to 2010, mainly due to its change of architecture. Lets figure out how the architecture is built to make cloud look more clearer than earlier.
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Practically Speaking about Amazon Web Services – Part 1: The Evolution of Amazon AWS
Aug 30th
Practically Speaking about Cloud Computing – Series by Cloudtweaks
Practically speaking: Gartner declared that Cloud Computing is at its peak of the Hype Cycle with inflated expectations in 2010. We are witnessing the same in reality now. The talk is no longer about its definitions or security concerns. As cloud computing is entering into the offices of CIOs, CTOs, CFOs and CEOs with a bang, it is execution time. In this Practically Speaking Cloud Computing Series in Cloudtweaks, let us have information-exchange of practical knowledge and experience.
Practically Speaking about Amazon Web Services – Part I: “The Evolution of Amazon AWS”
Last week Amazon celebrated their fourth birthday of its Amazon Elastic Computing Cloud (Amazon EC2). No doubt that Amazon Web Services is the pioneer and poster child of cloud computing. It is quite appropriate that we take Amazon Web Services as first to go for Practically Speaking:
Cloudtweaks Cloud Computing talks.
If we have a look at Google Trends for cloud computing, we can note that the whole thing started in the year 2007. Since then, particularly in the past four years, 2009 and 2010 have been the years of peak. Almost all major hardware and software IT vendors announced their strategy and service offerings in these two years. They include Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, IBM, Google, HP, Dell, Intel and so many others.
Google Trends for cloud computing all regions_ Cloudtweaks chart.
However, Amazon Web Services started its Amazon EC2 Service from the year 2006 itself.
Google Trends for Amazon Web Services all regions Cloudtweaks Chart.
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How to Setup a WordPress blog on Rackspace? Beginner Tutorial
Aug 27th
How to Setup WordPress blog on Rackspace:
Rackspace is a cloud based web hosting application. You can host your blogs on Rackspace using WordPress, the most used and popular CMS blogging application tool on the market.
Some Easy Steps to Follow
You need to follow these steps to upload your blog files into the Rackspace cloud:
1. Open the Rackspace web application and Click on Hosting under Control Panel.
2. Choose web sites from the list of test sites, in case you haven’t created any test sites, you better create one before starting WordPress setup.
3. It will show the site information with traffic details of the selected web site.
4. Click on the Feature tab and select the database from the already existing databases in the table.
