I often get asked about where cloud tools and technologies are being sold/implemented today. Note that cloud tools is different from "clouds" in that you use the tools to build/automate your cloud. Things like infrastructure stack software, orchestration, configuration management, etc. fall into the category of cloud tools. There are three primary markets I am seeing today.... Continue Reading →
VMware Should Run a Cloud or Stop Charging for the Hypervisor (or both)
I had a number of conversations this past week at CloudConnect in Santa Clara regarding the relative offerings of Microsoft and VMware in the cloud market. Microsoft is going the vertically integrated route by offering their own Windows Azure cloud with a variety of interesting and innovated features. VMware, in contrast, is focused on building... Continue Reading →
Protecting Yourself from Cloud Provider & Vendor Roulette
David Linthicumwrote a piece today in InfoWorld regarding the coming wave of cloud vendor consolidation. After CA's acquisition of 3Tera, it's natural to ask how you can protect yourself from having your strategic vendor acquired by a larger, less focused entity. Face it, the people building these startups are mostly hoping to have the kind of success... Continue Reading →
Amazon Adds Consistency to SimpleDB
Last week Amazon announced the addition of full database consistency as an option for SimpleDB users. Most of you know that SimpleDB is a "NoSQL" database that allows you to build very scalable Web apps without the typical scaling limitations of SQL databases. One of the limitations of SimpleDB has been the reliance on "eventual consistency" at... Continue Reading →
Skytap Goes Deep in Networks
Skytap is known as a cloud dev/test provider today, but they have been seeing more workloads coming on-board including ERP migration, training, demos, etc. So perhaps they are not as targeted as we think. This can be a risk, where customers start to wonder what you stand for. Skytap entered in the dev/test market, and... Continue Reading →
Fair Weather Forecasted for Regional Clouds
I think we might be at the very beginning of an interesting new phase in the evolution of cloud computing -- regional and local clouds. Local and regional hosting is nothing new - there have been smaller players operating in the shadows of the big hosting companies for years. Some of these organizations are resellers... Continue Reading →
Private (external) Clouds in 2010
At the enterprise level, the interest in private clouds still exceeds serious interest in public clouds. Gartner and others predict that private cloud investments in the enterprise will exceed public cloud through 2012. In my conversations with people, there appears to be some confusion as to just what is a private cloud, where you might... Continue Reading →
Amazon Named “CloudBzz Innovator of the Year”
2009 has certainly been a cloudy year. The sheer volume of real innovation somehow makes all of the hype worthwhile. While there were many companies doing interesting and innovative things in the cloud - Microsoft Windows Azure could be a strong 2010 contender - the decision on who wins for 2009 is no contest. Amazon... Continue Reading →
Amazon Adding Active Directory Support (mini-scoop)
I was surprised to find an Amazon Web Services booth at the Microsoft PDC yesterday. They had nothing specific to say regarding additional Windows support or capabilities - at least not officially. What I did get was a wink-wink, nudge, nudge when I commented on Azure's integration with Active Directory and other touchpoints. "This is... Continue Reading →
Azure Owns the Enterpri$e
I had a "discussion" on twitter a few weeks ago where I predicted that Microsoft's Windows Azure would be "the one to beat" in the enterprise. It's nice that companies are using Amazon and other clouds, but for the 80-90% of Windows/.NET applications that run your typical enterprise, Azure will be king. I'm at the... Continue Reading →
John Treadway 