Open Source
JackBe Launches Enterprise Mashup Platform on the Cloud
Mar 4th
CHEVY CHASE, Md. – (Business Wire) JackBe, the leading provider of Enterprise Mashup Software, today announced that its award-winning Presto Enterprise Mashup Platform is now running on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud. ‘Presto Cloud (Community Edition)’ is immediately available at no cost to all members of JackBe’s Mashup Developer Community.
Presto Cloud (Community Edition) combines agile mashup creation with the instant accessibility of a cloud service, enabling mashup developers to connect Internet-based data sources in their own secure workspace and easily share their mashups with community members around the world. With Presto Cloud (Community Edition), users can also take advantage of a public mashup catalog consisting of hundreds of mashable data sources from JackBe Preferred Partners as well as shared mashup applications created by other community members.
“Presto Cloud Community Edition is the fastest way to start mashing. The shared platform lets our community members instantly use an enterprise-grade mashup platform for easy mashup creation as well as benefit from collaborating with other mashers from around the world,” said JackBe’s CTO, John Crupi. “And Presto Cloud Community Edition is only our first step. We have big plans in future releases for production mashup applications in the cloud.”
“I am very excited to see enterprise software vendors like JackBe taking advantage of cloud-based platforms and services,” said Dion Hinchcliffe, Web 2.0 strategist and founder of Web 2.0 University. “The cloud has become a particularly compelling destination for enterprise developers to harness innovation and build valuable business applications. I believe enterprise mashup platforms like JackBe Presto are a natural fit for this dynamic new extension of the IT environment.”
Presto Cloud (Community Edition) is available at no charge to members of JackBe’s Mashup Developer Community. New mashers can join the 3,000+ member Mashup Developer Community at www.jackbe.com/dev. Production licensing for the Presto Enterprise Mashup Platform is also available. For more information, contact info@jackbe.com.
Related posts
G.ho.st’s Web-Based Operating System To Shut Down March 15
Mar 4th
Ghost Inc.
, also known as G.ho.st, is shutting down its personal cloud-based services in two weeks, according to an email the company just sent out to users. Ghost cites “changes in the marketplace” as the reason behind the shutdown, but says that the startup will continue to license or sell its technology to larger companies.
The service launched its beta last summer after years of development, allowing users to store their files in the cloud. Files were accessed through a web-based desktop environment, which also included integrated tools like Zoho for editing documents. Users could also access their files through a mounted virtual drive in Windows or from their mobile phones.
Ghost was previously hosted at G.ho.st, which stood for “Global hosted operating system”. The company later moved to the current domain, Ghost.cc, which has the broader tagline, “Cloud Computing”.
Here’s the email the company just sent out to users:
Dear Ghost User,
We hope you have been enjoying our free Ghost service. Regrettably changes in the marketplace mean that it is no longer economical for us to host the Ghost service and we will be closing down the service on or around March 15. We will instead be focusing on licensing or selling our technology to larger companies.
We advise you to migrate ALL important folders, files and emails to another secure place before March 15. You might like to consider Google Docs or Microsoft SkyDrive for files and services such as Gmail or Yahoo! Mail for email. Some instructions for migrating data are included below.We are really sorry for any inconvenience this may cause you and are very grateful for the fantastic support we had from our community.
Note that the message says “on or around” March 15 — hopefully they mean “no earlier than”, but I’d back up my data as soon as possible.
It’s also unclear if Ghost’s unreleased services are being shutdown as well (both “Ghost Enterprise” and “Ghost Business” are marked as Coming soon on the site). I’ve reached out to the company for more details.
Related posts
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
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
Related posts
NASA builds its own Nebula cloud computing platform out of open-source components
Feb 23rd
You’ve probably heard all about Google’s shipping container server farm. Over capacity? Just plug in another container! Now you, as an end user, can enjoy a similar service direct from NASA itself.
NASA’s Nebula platform provides a cloud of processing power much like that of Amazon’s EC2. A brief look at the details of NASA’s cloud suggest that this is a much more low-level solution: while Amazon’s EC2 is great for websites, NASA’s Nebula could replace an entire computer infrastructure.
The container in the photo above is NASA’s primary node, but I presume they have more containers in the background. You can tell by the presence of a huge dish that they’re trying to impress — and I have to admit I am impressed! I have no idea where other cloud computing providers host their servers, but I bet it isn’t at frickin’ NASA. If all of that wasn’t cool enough, it’s all built out of open-source components. They haven’t contributed their code to the community yet, but fully intend to!
Unfortunately I saved the bad news for last: this isn’t a public service. I’m afraid you’ll have to be in the science community to take advantage of NASA’s cloud — or, if they release their platform software, perhaps you could build your own cloud…? If you know someone with a spare shipping container, anyway… Full Source DownloadSquad
Related posts
Cloud computing compliance: Exploring data security in the cloud
Feb 16th
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||
Amid an ever-increasing bevy of regulations that enterprises need to worry about — from SOX and PCI DSS to HIPAA/HITECH and the FTC’s Red Flags Rules — and a growing number of cloud service providers to choose from, enterprises have a lot of options and a lot of questions to consider concerning cloud computing compliance.
While migrating services to the cloud may provide many benefits, it does not absolve an enterprise of certain responsibilities. Most notably, the enterprise is still required to remain compliant with the assorted regulations and laws that it would fall under had it retained that service inside the company.
In some cases, as with PCI DSS, there is definite potential to reduce a company’s compliance scope by outsourcing certain services. Most notably, by wholesale outsourcing the credit card processing to a third-party provider, an organization’s PCI scope will be significantly smaller (though not go away completely). With the FTC’s Red Flags Rules, however, that is not the case, as the FTC has mandated that any outsourcing must entail equivalent or better security than the enterprise would have implemented internally.
As you start to investigate moving services to the cloud, it’s important to ask several cloud computing compliance questions:
- Does this data that will be moving to the cloud fall under any compliance-related regulations or requirements? This includes data such as Personally Identifiable Information (PII), Personal Health Information (PHI), or corporate finance-related information.
- If the answer to question one is yes, which regulations does it fall under and what controls are necessary?
- Can the cloud provider actually offer the identified or equivalent controls that your organization’s data requires?
- Does the cloud provider have the necessary policies, processes and procedures to properly maintain those controls?
- Does the provider have appropriate disaster recovery and business continuity processes to meet your organization’s business needs?
- What happens if the cloud provider goes bankrupt? Can the enterprise’s data be sold to a creditor or at auction as a provider’s asset?
- Should I decide to change providers, is there an easy way to export my data in a useable format?
- Is the provider willing to alter its default terms of service in order to guarantee or provide service level agreements (SLAs) around questions 3-7?
Related posts
HP Launches Cloud Computing Design Service
Feb 16th
By now everyone knows that at some point they will be using a cloud computing service. But using one and building your own are two different stories. For those IT organizations that intend to build their own cloud computing platforms, Hewlett-Packard wants to lend a hand.
HP today is launching a portfolio of cloud consulting services that builds on the company’s expertise in not only building its own cloud computing service, but also work the company did on the Rapid Access Computing Environment (RACE) cloud computing platform for the Department of Defense.
According to Alan Wilson, vice president of infrastructure consulting for HP’s Technology Services division, many IT organizations that are planning on building their own cloud computing platforms are not doing the level of analytical rigor necessary to insure success. For example, there are a whole range of tradeoffs in terms of types of servers used and the levels of latency that need to be achieved depending upon the applications being deployed.
HP, he said, has developed a series of reference methodologies for building out cloud computing platforms. Ultimately, Wilson said that IT organizations should be designing cloud computing platforms with the next generation of virtualization in mind. Advances in virtual machine technology will make it easier to dynamically deploy application workloads across public and private cloud computing services as long as IT organizations start building their internal clouds today with an eye toward hybrid cloud computing scenarios that will be the norm tomorrow.
The ultimate issue, said Wilson, is that IT organizations need to think about cloud computing integration by design today rather than by committee tomorrow. Of course, every IT professional will say they alrady know how to build a cloud computing platform if they have access to all the right resources. But in truth, it’s harder than it looks on paper. Otherwise, everybody would have one by now. That doesn’t mean there are not a lot of options in terms of getting advice. But like the saying goes, don’t try this at home alone. Full Source
