Maybe I’m just a geek, but to me, in our ever growing, massively scaled enterprise computing landscape, there are few technologies that peak my interest like memory-based data grids. It is nothing short of amazing to see an increasing number of enterprises use these solutions in a myri...

In the eyes of cloud storage service providers such as Google Storage, any On-Ramps tools, desktop clients, edge devices or appliance that can talk to Google Storage is a gateway. In the eyes of end users or IT admin, a cloud gateway refers to a central access point that does the tran...

Automation, policy-driven processes and best practices are offering more opportunities for optimizing virtualization so that server, storage, and network virtualization can move from points of progress into more holistic levels of adoption.

I had a really good discussion with Kaitlin Brunsden from EbizQ on the topic of Cloud Security in general, and API Keys in particular. All too often, CISOs and IT managers do not realize that if their organization is using Amazon Web Services (AWS), for example, then the Secret Key ID ...

I was pondering the weather in Northeast Wisconsin this morning, it’s gloomy and oppressively hot. Between heat and humidity, I’d say it felt more like the US’s Pacific Northwest than the Midwest. And it’s been image that way all summer. We’ve been plowed under with 80+ percent humid...

In many documents and introductions to cloud computing we have been shown what the Cloud really means and what is possible to do inside it. Things that have been covered have been what systems make up the cloud right up to applications and services running in it. This blog entry ai...

Cloud computing is such a powerful investment area for government because not only can it modernize their IT and therefore enhance their business processes and reduce their own operating costs, but this same platform can also boost technology-enabled public innovation across a broader ...

For many folks in IT it is likely you might find in their home a wall on which you can find hanging a diploma. It might be a BA, it might be a BS, and you might even find one (or two) “Master of Science” as well. Now interestingly enough, none of the diplomas indicate anything other...

Almost exactly a year ago, I inherited several sets of model railroad trains. Two full O scale sets and two full HO scale sets. They were in varying stages of disrepair, and I wasn’t certain any of them worked. I’m not a train person, but my kids might be – given the chance to try the...

Lately in the IT community all the hype is on Cloud Computing. We have small start-ups offering several variations of Cloud services as well as some of the established big players (Google, Amazon, IBM, Novell (aimed at cloud service providers),Sun) stepping up their offerings of cloud ...

What makes Monitis' nodes so unique is their True One-Minute Monitoring. This means that each of Monitis' 12 nodes is monitoring a client's site every minute. This is not the case with most other companies that claim to offer one-minute monitoring. Such companies only monitor once a mi...

"To understand the need for the Open vSwitch, you have to realize that while CPU virtualization, including hardware support, has evolved rapidly over the last decade, network virtualization has lagged behind pretty badly." This statement, and many more besides, occurs in a blog publish...

Predicting the future is a lot more fun than analyzing the past. And there have been plenty of predictions recently, but as Mel Brooks might say “A funny thing happened on the way to the future; it changed from what we expected.”

It has certainly been an exciting week in the Cloudsphere with Dell and HP battling it out over 3PAR. It’s clear who is on Dell and HP’s radar, and I’m looking forward to seeing the rest of 2010 Cloud acquisitions as the segment continues to consolidate. Its been almost 2 quarters ...

I was 25-26 years old when I worked at IBM. Steve was not much older. IBM, like many companies, plots a career path for every new employee it hires. It moves them from job to job grooming them from their first day on the job until their retirement. Whenever I took an elevator with Mill...

Between 1991 and 1994 I worked for the French company Rhône-Poulenc in its U.S. headquarters in Cranbury, New Jersey. Rhône-Poulenc is the biggest French company in the world and is owned by the French government. During those three years I designed, coded and delivered a state-of-t...

A few weeks ago I once again had the pleasure of participating in a private discussion on cloud computing with Mr. Vivek Kundra.  What struck me in this most recent meeting was his views on the need to infuse geospatial information into the national policy deci...

Platform Computing has paved the way to faster private cloud adoption with a low-risk, low-cost way for companies to evaluate their use of cloud computing. The Platform ISF Starter Pack, announced this week, will enable architects and IT managers to get a cloud sandbox environment up a...

It is said that one image says more than a thousand words. This image illustrates how OpenNebula emphasizes interoperability and portability, recognizing that their users have data-centers composed of different hardware and software components for security, virtualization, storage, an...

As we work with dozens of companies that are actively running pilots and doing early deployments in the cloud, it made me think about what the “new normal” will look like in enterprise IT infrastructure. A recent report from the Yankee Group shows that adoption of cloud is accelerating...

I read where UBS, the Swiss banking giant, found that Amazon Web Services (AWS) earns $500 million yearly from its cloud computing business. While that number may sound impressive to some at first blush, it’s really only around 2% of Amazon.com’s annual revenues. And in the blog I rea...

I was a bit disconcerted by the notion put forward that cloud-based applications are somehow less complex than their non-cloud, non-virtualized predecessors. In reality, it’s the same application, after all, and the only thing that has really changed is the infrastructure and its compl...

Recently, I read an interview with fellow IBMer, Bruce Otte, in which he laid out IBM’s Roadmap to ‘Smart Clouds’ by highlighting five key areas. I’m not going to enumerate those here, if you are interested you can check out the interview, but there is one thing that especially caught ...

The technology value triumvirate of newScale, rPath and Eucalyptus—with solution practice experience of MomentumSI—is an excellent example of the ecosystem approach most likely to become the way that private cloud models actually work for enterprises for the next few years. A trio of ...

Cloud Storage is a hot topic this year. Google I/O is talking about it with the introduction of Google Storage for Developers. EMC World is talking about the journey to the private cloud. HostingCon this year is almost completely dedicated to “the cloud”. You are fully aware of what i...

Putting lock-in into your criteria is a key measure of how quickly we're going to get into the right world, versus a situation where people end up where vendors and providers have too much leverage over customers.

6fusion, a company that has developed a system to take control of third-party computing resources and create a single utility to meet the needs of the IT Service channel announced that it has raised a $3 million round of venture capital financing. In concert with funding, the company h...

Ever wish you saved a blog title for that ‘perfect’ eye-catcher? Well, I do. Last week I wrote about some cloud surveys talking about how financial institutions are using cloud services titled: CloudFucius’ Money: Trickles to the Cloud. I get to this week’s weekly entry and Ka-Chow ...

According to 1,250 ERP Software Advice readers that will be Oracle's next acquisition. Terradata came in a close second in this race, suggesting that Oracle will "...play it safe next time around and strengthen their already formidable data warehousing and business intelligence offeri...

Amazon doesn’t break out the cloud service platform revenue in its quarterly reports. That leaves people wondering how big exactly is the Amazon cloud and how much money does it make? There are some information that is publicly available, such as the number of objects in Amazon S3 sto...

If you are a technology vendor, chances are that your users want to know what you are doing in the cloud. IBM is certainly no different. I get user queries all the time asking about the IBM cloud strategy or IBM cloud solutions. Specifically, perhaps owing to my role, I get many questi...

The security capabilities that Intel just acquired from McAfee can help them create game changing solutions for the cloud computing market. It took me a while to digest Intel’s acquisition of McAfee. Other than giving Intel an opportunity to improve the desktop architecture by integra...

As I write this, Lori and The Toddler are on their way to the store, his first trip out of the house without a diaper (nappy for our UK friends), she bravely told him that they would go get some robots as reward formom-nat being a big boy. I told her that it was brave – possibly braz...

A March 9 2010 report states that Amazon S3 had over 102 billion objects. I was searching on the Internet, trying to find the most recent report (Aug 2010). I didn’t find what I was looking for. However, I found reports on Amazon S3 data for different time spots from April 07 all the ...

As a serial entrepreneur, I learned a lot of lessons from things that didn’t work. These lessons later on shaped my ideas on what would be needed to build a successful startup company. When I became a VC, I realized that these same lessons could be applied to helping evaluate the many ...

Synaptic Storage is similar to Amazon S3, Windows Azure Storage and other cloud storage services. The storage usage is over the Internet, by HTTPS REST API and billed monthly by usage. Since AT&T itself is a managed service provider with data center all over different cities in US, ...

One of the greatest moments a cloud evangelist indulges in occurs at that point a listener experiences an intuitive leap of understanding following your explanation of cloud computing. No greater joy and intrinsic sense of accomplishment.

In a couple of years, Amazon and Azure in Cloud Platform and Services could be like Coke and Pepsi in soft drinks. With the launch of Amazon S3 in March 2006 and Amazon EC2 in Aug 2006, Amazon publicized the “Cloud Services” early that it has a significant lead over its peers. On t...

Microsoft announced the return of Age of Empires, one of the biggest PC franchises in the world, having sold more than 20 million copies worldwide and essentially defined real-time strategy (RTS) games for the PC, says Dave Luehmann, general manager of Microsoft Games Studios. “This ne...

No, I’m not investing some seed money in a cool new company or technology but banks are certainly looking to take advantage of cloud computing services.  At least that’s the message from a recent survey by Bank Systems & Technology and InformationWeek Analytics.  70% of t...