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Microsoft: Everything Moves Faster in the Cloud

cgseo — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 19:38:51 +0000

Microsoft revealed a bit more about its container system for data centers, giving us some pause about it as a symbol of the cloud itself. These boxes represent the future of cloud-based infrastructures for both shared and dedicated networks. Microsoft, Amazon, HP and a number of other vendors use these containers to operate cloud networks. They are becoming fully automated systems that physically represent how we are seeing a fundamental shift in how IT services are managed and deployed. Sponsor In his keynote at the Microsoft Management Summit, Executive Bob Muglia featured the company's container system used at its Chicago data center, illustrating the company's new datacenter and cloud management capabilities for mass deployment of virtualized technologies. Muglia said the new container system is 10x less expensive than traditional data center infrastructures and 10x faster, too. "Everything moves faster in the cloud,"Muglia said. The container is an independent, high-speed network optimized with virtualization technology. Muglia said every piece of the data center is tightly fit, almost bound to make one network that stores data and provides raw processing power. The news serves to represent Microsoft's ability to model and deploy applications across platforms. Microsoft owns the management tools, the developer tools, the applications, OS and the cloud platform. That's Microsoft's value statement to data center operators and the new generation of IT professionals and developers who will become wizards of sorts in these new environments. It also shows the move to automate IT. Bing, for instance, has a few hundred thousand servers that are manned by a handful of people. Bing servers do not get patched. Instead, IT will deploys an updated OS image with the apps pre-installed. It also highlights some key trends in cloud computing and data center environments. As Mike Kirkwood wrote in his post today about Hitachi , server management is moving from three steps (OS, network and storage) to one system to orchestrate them all. Microsoft is providing both shard and dedicated services. It's the container model, though, that makes this interesting for us. By offering an automated data network, it opens up in some respects the data center market. It's an OEM environment that can be plugged in to a data center for offering virtualized and cloud-based services. Companies like Hitachi, Microsoft and Eucalyptus are defining a new container model that binds "compute, storage, network" with templates that can allow resources to move quickly. These types of systems will become predominant as virtualization gains mass acceptance. Discuss

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Microsoft: Everything Moves Faster in the Cloud

Is the Cloud Suitable for Scaling Real-Time Applications?

cgseo — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 00:13:03 +0000

Twitter is moving to its own data center, showing that sometimes the cloud is not ideal for the real-time web. This may seem ironic as cloud computing is largely credited for giving application developers access to commoditized server networks that they can scale up or down. Cloud services make it realistic for developers to create real-time services in the marketplace. Sponsor But at some point, the cloud is not ideal for a real-time web service provider. Twitter is a good example. And, so, we use this news to present our weekly poll: "Is the Cloud Suitable For Scaling Real-Time Applications?" Is the Cloud Suitable For Scaling Real-Time Applications? online survey According to Data Center Knowledge , Twitter now uses a managed hosting service from NTT America where it has a dedicated space. Twitter also uses Amazon Web Services to serve images, including profile pictures. Twitter parted ways with Joyent in January 2008. The move NTT America came in response to latency issues. Latency is not a major issue for small application developers that use a service like Rackspace or Amazon. But when a service scales, the issues become increasingly significant. John Adams of Twitter discussed scaling issues last week at Chirp, the Twitter developer conference. Chirp 2010: Scaling Twitter Latency issues pose a significant challenge to cloud computing services that serve real-time applications. It raises questions about how a service can scale in a cloud computing environment. In Twitter's case, the cloud did not do the job. Will the problem get worse? Raghavan "Rags" Srinivas thinks it could: "One of these fallacies is that "Latency is zero". In traditional computing, the compute and data was typically hosted on the same system and the data latency was determined by the storage disks and the data bus speeds. It was a simple matter of buying better hardware to overcome data latency if it was ever an issue. In cloud computing and especially when we get to network of clouds with data expected to flow around different clouds, latency (however minimal it is) could be an issue depending on the data being manipulated, the network speeds and so on. Add to this the fact that the entire data or part of the data should be encrypted and decrypted when it moves around unreliable and public networks, and the fact that data needs to be streamed, latency will soon add up and could become a serious issue." What do you think? Will latency emerge as one of the major issues for cloud computing service providers? Discuss

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Is the Cloud Suitable for Scaling Real-Time Applications?

The Largest Cloud in the World is Owned By A Criminal Network

cgseo — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 19:39:26 +0000

The biggest cloud network in the world is owned by the mob. While you may think that Google, Amazon and Microsoft are the world's largest cloud providers it's really the Conficker worm that has helped criminal networks spawn a botnet of mass proportions. Sponsor How does Conficker meets the definitions of a cloud? According to the Spectre Group ,a veteran technologist explained the connection last week at the Cloud Connect conference in Santa Clara, Ca.: "Conficker controls 6.4 million computer systems in 230 countries at 230 top level domains globally, more than 18 million CPUs and 28 terabits per second of bandwidth, said Rodney Joffe, senior vice president and senior technologist at the infrastructure services firm Neustar. The biggest cloud on the planet is controlled by a vast criminal enterprise that uses that botnet to send spam, hack computers, spread malware and steal personal information and money, Joffe said. In other words, the cloud is mobbed up." The Spectre Group further explains how, Conficker meets the definitions. The botnet cloud is available for rent and and is just about anywhere in the world. It can be used for a variety of purposes, be a denial-of-service attack, spam distribution or data exfiltration. In fact, all that comment spam that plagues blogs could easily be spawned from the Conflicker cloud. Joffe used the presentation at the conference to illustrate the dangers of Conficker and and how it poses a threat to legitimate cloud computing providers. He said at the conference that Conficker has not been as active as it once was, but is still a threat. The Manchester, UK Police Department was hit in February. And it has a huge footprint, all over the world. The operators have a lot of experience, too, dating back to 1998. The Spectre Group says in comparison the legitimate players in the market are far smaller: "By the way, the biggest legitimate cloud provider is Google, based on Joffe's information, made up of 500,000 systems, 1 million CPUs and 1,500 gigabits per second (Gbps) of bandwdith. Amazon comes in second with 160,000 systems, 320,000 CPUs and 400 Gbps of bandwidth, while Rackspace offers 65,000 systems, 130,000 CPUs and 300 Gbps." The Conficker cloud demonstrates the illusions that have to be considered when thinking about cloud computing. It's not just the danger of a a PC being infected by a virus. It's the danger of another computer entering the criminal enterprise. Discuss

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The Largest Cloud in the World is Owned By A Criminal Network

Another Cloud Computing Acronym To Drive You Bonkers

cgseo — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 21:58:46 +0000

Scanning the news the other day and what do we see but a reminder of the many acronyms in the cloud computing world. Again, it's a vendor with a made up name. This time it's Verizon with an update to its "Computing as a Service" or CaaS for short. Acronyms abound in the cloud computing world - perhaps more than any other technology in play today. They are emerging at a rapid clip. It's understandable as cloud computing is so new and there are so many ways for it to be applied. But it's also frustrating. Sponsor Verizon's service looks solid. But the name creates more confusion. Get this: Verizon also offers "Everything as a Service." That takes the cake, or should we say... muffin! It makes the whole concept of cloud computing a bit confusing as you try to understand what really is available. It becomes an issue of "what is it now?" This week's other imaginative term - Virtualization as a Service - from Salesforce.com and VmWare. It's the center issue for our Weekly Poll: What does Virtualization as a Service Really Mean? Dave Geada, vice president of marketing at StrataScale, had this to say about what it means: I think [new names are] a lot of unwarranted marketing hype (and that means something coming from a marketer). Knowing very little about the announcement, I would guess that the two are partnering in order to provide a platform where Force.com partners can deploy integrated solutions to a VMware enabled Salesforce cloud. In essence these providers would have a one-stop-shop for delivering their solutions to market instead of having to rely on an assortment of hosting partners to deploy their solutions. A joint platform initiative like the one I just described would also benefit enterprises who could host their own customized VM appliances on this cloud and easily integrate them with their Salesforce implementations and Force.com applications. In doing so VMware would be able to access a segment of the market where it's been having some difficulties (i.e. SMB ISVs) and Salesforce would benefit from providing a more comprehensive solution to their partner ecosystem. If I'm right about this (and I reserve the right to be wrong), isn't that a much more compelling story than the mumbo-jumbo we're dealing with now? Cloud providers should demonstrate some more restraint in throwing the "cloud" label around and turn the conversation back around to the value that their providing to customers and partners. And high profile providers like Salesforce and VMware should be setting the example. We expect these ancronyms will filter out over time. Or perhaps VaaS and CaaS will stand the test of time. It's just too early to tell. Until then, how about a muffin? Discuss

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Another Cloud Computing Acronym To Drive You Bonkers

Weekly Poll: What does Virtualization as a Service Really Mean?

cgseo — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 04:00:15 +0000

What is not a service these days? We start to wonder when we hear the latest incantation: "virtualization as a service." But after closer look, perhaps it makes sense, especially considering now that VMware and Salesforce.com are working on a partnership and joint product dubbed VMForce . So, we ask you: "What does virtualization as a service really mean? Sponsor What does Virtualization as a Service Really Mean? polls Last week, we asked: "How does the iPad affect cloud computing?" Once again, seeing from our responses, it's virtualization that plays a key role in the way cloud computing evolves. Plus, people agree that the tablet is the next step to the embedded computer on any object. For Salesforce.com, a partnership with VMware could mean it gets a foot inside the data center with the capability to provide its technology in a private cloud environment, leveraging its installed base. For VMware, the potential is to take a big step into the cloud, packaging its virtual infrastructure with Zimbra and the technology suite provided by Salesforce.com. So, what do you think? Discuss

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Weekly Poll: What does Virtualization as a Service Really Mean?

WeoGeo: How the Cloud Makes New Markets Possible

cgseo — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 23:39:17 +0000

Cloud computing is affecting the evolution of content management systems and the manners in which data becomes a service. Business services are evolving as cloud computing forces people to think more about how information is organized and shared. At the consumer level, Apple iTunes will be replaced by cloud computing services, often referred to as online music storage lockers. People have become accustomed to using iTunes but as people get access to more data, they will find new ways to organize information. And the kids will realize how the information can be shared. Sponsor At the business level, cloud computing is having a profound effect in a number of markets. In the mapping world it's leading to new forms of content management systems that use data for specific niche purposes. Services like WeoGeo offer new forms of geo-spatial, content management systems and marketplaces that offer deep repositories of data, like a giant map case in the sky. It's in some ways like a content management system and marketplace for map makers, an age old craft now in a different dimension. Foe example, WeoGeo offers a map library and a marketplace , designed specifically for surveyors, engineers, architects, geoscientists, and cartographers. It offers both the library and the marketplace as data services, petabytes of data stored in the cloud. All of its services are available via RESTful web services. Is that a big deal? We kind of think so. Web oriented architectures require the data to be browser compatible. With RESTful, companies can create new kinds of mashups baked into a new generation of content management systems that correlate to specific communities. That's the evolution taking place. Applications that can share data through API's that provide the capability to organize new sets of data and shared in a variety of manners. The service is in contrast to what Google and Microsoft offer. Both of these companies use map data to enhance their services. They serve as ways to lock in data that they use for search and advertising. SimpleGeo is a similar service to WeoGeo but it uses geodata to makes applications more location aware. ESRI represents the old guard of the industry and is the market leader in mapping software. It's a proprietary platform. But the real future for the mapping world is in the cloud. It serves as a place that data can be served and built upon. It's also the place where markets will develop. It's like a data fabric that the map makers use to sell their works. It's a community made of developers. And that's how communities evolve. They trade between themselves, thus creating the demand. It's similar to how the publishing market evolved several hundred years ago. Book makers traded books. As more books were published, the market grew. We are in the same place with data as a service. Google and Microsoft will not and can not control the entire market. The foundation for geo market services will strengthen as its developer/small business community evolves. Its these small businesses that represent the future. Discuss

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WeoGeo: How the Cloud Makes New Markets Possible

International Politics Slow Cloud Computing In Europe and Asia

cgseo — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 05:42:07 +0000

It's worth noting that the cloud certainly has borders. It's the one reality that proves the cloud computing movement may seem at times abstract and vague but in the end it is the international politics of our world that creates some of the deepest issues for its place in the world markets. According to InformationWeek , The 451 Group presented a webcast that showed cloud computing adoption trails in Europe and Asia. About 57% op spending is in the United States with 31% in Europe and 12% in Asia. The numbers get even more polarized when you only look at the adoption for infrastructure as a service. A full 93% of spending is in the United States with 6% in Europe and 1% in the United States. Sponsor The low numbers almost makes it seem like some artificial effect is in play. And in some ways it really is. A lack of European data centers services by the large providers affects adoption. Rackspace, Terremark and Savvis are the primary companies looking to develop a presence in Europe. But they need to build data centers before they can have any real presence there. According to the 451 Group, 99 percent of European businesses are either small or mid-sized organizations. And they have plenty of choices from telecommunications providers. But here is an interesting twist. InformationWeek: One obstacle to both sides is the U.S. Patriot Act, which gives the U.S. government a right to demand data if it defines conditions as being an emergency or necessary to homeland security, and a measure that contradicts that power when the data is of European origin, the European Union's Data Protection Directive. In 2006, the European Court of Justice ruled that an agreement negotiated with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security was too broadly construed and violated the EU's directive. The agreement was about sharing data on European airline passengers headed for the U.S. The data sought by the U.S. was too broadly construed and violated the EU's directive, the court said. "Both measures could prevent establishing a cloud without borders," said 451's William Fellows. Cloud advocates say services established via an Internet data center should be accessible by people around the world, and they are in the case of Google search or Facebook apps. But when it comes to sensitive data, national borders still prevail because of conflicting laws." The issue is apparent now with Google's issues with the Chinese government. It's not the technology that is making cloud computing an issue. It's international politics. Discuss

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International Politics Slow Cloud Computing In Europe and Asia

Cloud Aware Monitoring: GroundWork and Eucalyptus Offer Private Cloud Beta Program

cgseo — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 20:32:00 +0000

Tomorrow, GroundWork Open Source Inc. and Eucalyptus Systems will be announcing that they have partnered to deliver monitoring and management of applications running in a Eucalyptus private cloud environment. If your enterprise is running private cloud powered by Eucalyptus, you now can plug your cloud into the GroundWork's monitoring solution. This allows you to join your view of resources from Amazon and other servers in your enterprise with your private cloud solution. Sponsor What is Eucalyptus? We covered Eucalyptus recently in an interview with the company's founder and CTO. The company is a first-mover in helping organizations build private clouds that can achieve parity with Amazon's EC2. The company's enterprise addition will allow you to run an Amazon instance on your VMware infrastructure, effectively joining your virtual infrastructure and the Amazon cloud. "Detailed monitoring and management of private cloud applications can give Eucalyptus users important real-time information to increase productivity and reduce costs," said Marten Mickos, CEO of Eucalyptus Systems. "Through our partnership with GroundWork Open Source, Eucalyptus open source users and Enterprise Edition customers can now benefit from a proven, open source solution to monitor private clouds as part of their overall network environment." GroundWork's newest solution offers the ability to monitor topology of your private cloud and to plug the results into the monitoring you are doing with other servers and the Amazon public cloud infrastructure. In the briefing we attended with company executives, several things emerged that we're considering. First, it was pointed out that private clouds are "where the action is" for large enterprises. What we heard is that some companies, like pharmaceuticals that GroundWork currently has in its portfolio simply won't be able to move all of their data out to the public cloud yet. But, they do want to get the benefits of cloud computing internally. Second, we learned that one thing GroundWork's offers is a flexible hosting model, where your monitoring infrastructure can be hosted internally, or in the cloud on a managed EC2 instance. Recently, we checked out CloudKick , another cloud monitoring startup that also can monitor servers in the cloud and in the enterprise. The GroundWorks solution that is launching in beta both offers topology view of the private cloud and flexible hosting options that may be attractive to enterprises that plan on keeping most of their assets internal. From what we can see, CloudKick is positioned to companies that are starting on the cloud for scaling purposes, and GroundWork seems positioned towards companies where the center of gravity is inside the data center and now the private cloud. "More and more of our customers are investigating and investing in private cloud usage. Eucalyptus gives incredible power and cost savings to IT teams building out cloud services. Coupled with GroundWork's automatic instance and application monitoring, this partnership provides a robust cloud solution with clear ROI that enterprises can take advantage of quickly," said Peter Jackson, GroundWork Open Source President and CEO. What is GroundWorks private cloud solution? GroundWorks offers the premise that if you are running a private cloud, the monitoring solution needs to be aware of your architecture (topology, software stacks, and servers). Here is a visual representation of how the company envisions cloud aware monitoring: Here is a screenshot of the GroundWorks monitoring solution: Here is a bit more from the companies on the beta program: The GroundWork Monitor Enterprise Cloud for Eucalyptus beta program offers: "GroundWork Monitor Enterprise Cloud usage to cover on-premise, public or private cloud hosted applications and infrastructure Access to Eucalyptus EE, including VMware support to implement private clouds in existing environments The opportunity to provide direct feedback to the engineering and product teams, helping define the future of IT operations in the cloud Engineering and technical assistance for the duration of the beta program. Participants will gain these benefits with the combined GWOS and Eucalyptus Quickly and easily build and monitor private and hybrid clouds with your existing environment and other public clouds Run Amazon Machine Image (AMI) instances on VMware-based hypervisors within your Eucalyptus private cloud Seamlessly manage environments with multiple hypervisors (Xen, KVM, vSphere, ESX™ and ESXi™) under one management console and transition applications without any modifications Manage service performance and availability based on IT monitoring insight trend and usage reports across environments" More information available about the beta program at http://www.gwos.com/products/Enterprise_Cloud_beta.html It is becoming clear that private clouds are increasingly becoming an important part of the enterprise. Eucalyptus has a real opportunity as a first-mover in deploying them with its tools. From experience, we know that where enterprise-class computing exists, monitoring follows. GroundWork and Eucalyptus are working together to make a seamless offering that plugs into the private cloud deployment process in this beta release - and they are asking for feedback from administers interested in the program. Does deploying a private cloud change your view of administration tools and monitoring? Discuss

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Cloud Aware Monitoring: GroundWork and Eucalyptus Offer Private Cloud Beta Program

Will the Cloud Challenge Apple’s Dynasty?

cgseo — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 01:12:36 +0000

The news may be about the iPad this weekend but it's the cloud that will hover hot over Apple by the Fall and in many respects challenge its hegemony over how we store and share music and video. According to CNET , that's about the time of year that it looks like Apple will unveil its cloud-based music service. Sponsor In the meantime we are seeing a number of storage services emerge for the iPad that could be used for people to store their music and other media. Yesterday, we looked at the Box.net app. Dropbox has an iPad app as does SugarSync. And then there are the forces that are not tethered to the iPad at all. Last week, Canonical started a public beta for its cloud-based music service. Most cloud-based services allow you to store your own music in the cloud. With Canonical, you purchase your music through its music store that syncs with your device and your own personal cloud. That means you control your Apple appears to be looking at a similar strategy, allowing consumers to store music and movies in the cloud, albeit the media being that from the major labels and even more so, the studios. Will they go for it? Well, a long time ago, perhaps, but with the options available, the studios, have far more possibilities to pursue. But how can the Apple strategy work in a cloud built on open-source? Apple's Fair Play digital rights management software is intended to keep music, movies and other entertainment locked down so it can not be shared. It's in contrast to the open-nature of cloud computing that we see with services that allow for online storage lockers. People will find ways to store and organize data in the way they wish. That makes sense for a number of reasons: People have media on multiple devices. Keeping it in the cloud makes it easier to access. Syncing to the cloud makes sense. Cables? Dongles? That's old school. You can update a file in the cloud and see that same update on your smart phone. If a number of people have their own personal clouds than that means we can share, right? Yes it does! It's that last point that must give Apple a bit of a chill. For years, iTunes seemed like the only option. But Apple has locked down its hardware, software and the content. In league with the labels and studios, Apple has used DRM to get its leverage at the expense of us all. Will that strategy continue to work? Well, it's going to take a while but all these storage providers know that those home videos can bloat a hard drive pretty fast. Or maybe just maybe, Steve will put the screws back in the iPad, give us the schematics and let us all see what we really can do with that tablet. He'll then thank Cory Doctorow for waking him up and sure enough we'll all wonder if we had just fallen into a hot tub time machine. Discuss

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Will the Cloud Challenge Apple's Dynasty?

Are You the Next Zynga? The Rocket Science at RightScale Helps Deliver a Safe Liftoff

cgseo — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 09:18:00 +0000

Zynga is a leading example of how to wield cloud infrastructure to achieve scale. The company uses RightScale to help match demand of its incredibly successful game franchise with appropriate resources. Zynga seems to be a master of understanding how to model customer demand and underlying resources. As even virtual goods have COGS (cost of goods sold) server resources are part of the bill when conjuring up virtual goods for tens of millions of users. Although we can't all be as smart (or cute) as Zynga, many of us are catching on that scaling into the cloud is a smart choice. This brief analysis of RightScale looks at its offerings and the momentum the company is gaining in the market. Sponsor What Does RightScale Offer ? RightScale is a platform that abstracts cloud offerings from Amazon and a host of other cloud providers to help orchestrate the management and provisioning of cloud assets. In the case of social games, this may be algorithms that help spin up services during a dramatic swing of usage. Or, in the reverse case, it maybe scaling infrastructure across the life cycle of a property as it is launched, goes viral, and eventually is replaced with the next thing. The company also offers resource portability, where it can deploy servers with Amazon, or other cloud providers that compete in providing cloud workload services and the ability to spin up new services through APIs. RightScale has tuned its tools to both learn and to react to changes required in the infrastructure for applications using the platform. New customer announcements include Hitachi Systems and Services in Japan and ProKarma in the United States. Both are strong systems integrators that have chosen RightScale as the platform to bring the cloud to their customers. RightScale has announced over one million servers launched using its platform. Maybe Zynga is the next Zynga The company certainly has the viral pattern down, and delivery nailed. And, one thing that we've learned in watching the excitement of social games is that demand can be like a roller-coaster. In addition to all of the natural benefits of cloud infrastructure in cost and timing, we think being ready for wild success is just good practice - it can much less expensive than failing to scale. More importantly, have a platform that scales can open up new doors to business that may have not existed without it. RightScale: For All Shapes and Sizes At RightScale, it doesn't matter if your application is an addictive game, or monthly billing application. The company knows that in the next years, it is likely that hosting in the cloud makes sense for internet infrastructure and it is well positioned to be a piece of a lot of solutions that want to scale with demand. If the momentum with heavy-hitting system integrators continues, RightScale will be coming to you through its partners. Of course, you can also try it for free and get started in managing the cloud. The company is targeting companies that have more than a handful of servers and has a compelling offering to get started and to grow from there. Does RightScale fit into your scaling plans? Photo Credit: jurvetson Discuss

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Are You the Next Zynga? The Rocket Science at RightScale Helps Deliver a Safe Liftoff