Eucalyptus started out in the research labs at UCSB about a year ago but the coding. It's part of an NSF funded project called V-Grads. The goal of V-Grads is to create a software infrastrucure that gives Grid and grid-like programs a uniform execution target regardless of how the resources are managed.
Every year the Eucalyptus team demos how the applications are managed … Read more
Cloud computing promises to liberate its adherents from the bother of messy implementations of software, while also freeing them from the constraints of hardware capacity. At the same time, however, cloud computing has the potential to deliver the ultimate in vendor lock-in.
My colleague, James Urquhart, has put together a proposed "cloud computing bill of rights" to help guide would-be cloud customers to those clouds best able to guarantee their freedom. Just as some are now clamoring for open-data commitments, James' suggestions are intended to deliver the value of the cloud without the lock-in:
No vendor shall, in … Read more
IBM is making a $300 million bet that it can turn cloud computing into a lot more than the buzzword du jour.
Big Blue is spending that sum to equip 13 data centers around the world with infrastructure that will let customers access a bevy of cloud-based computer services in the event service disruptions take down their networks.
The investment also constitutes the biggest investment IBM has ever made in this area, according to Brian Reagan, who directs the company's Global Strategy & Portfolio Management group.
"You either would have dedicated seats or essentially a replica of your … Read more
Two of the biggest names in tech are teaming up on a cloud computing project that they plan to announce at a special event next week.
Facebook amasses billions of photos, friend connections, and status updates and stores them up in "the cloud," and Dell is working on being one of the main providers of the infrastructure--servers--that makes the cloud possible.
So what, exactly, are they doing together? Well, we already know Dell provides servers for Palo Alto, Calif.-based Facebook, but what other plans the two have hatched together beyond that is unclear. The event is scheduled … Read more
The lack of standards for virtual machines presents a very significant problem for users.
Depending on how you've deployed your applications, you either have portability or you don't. Generally speaking you will be stuck (for better or worse) with your VM image vendor, assuming you had a choice in the first place.
I spoke to John Pozadzides, chief marketing officer of LayeredTech, a hosting provider that has deployed a lot of grid-oriented infrastructure.
My main question for Pozadzides: what happens if I want to move my stuff?
Unfortunately there is no clear answer. It all depends on the … Read more
Elastra's Stuart Charlton responded to my earlier rant about Eucalyptus. It's possible that I was way off on my interpretation and it's also possible that Elastra didn't do all right things in their efforts (like notify the companies they cited.) I will chalk it up to a poor written press release.
We were announcing that we've enabled the Elastra Cloud Server to interoperate with the Eucalyptus project and are opening up a limited beta program for those who have deployed a test Eucalyptus environment and would like to use our cloud server to provision and … Read more
Dell's attempt to trademark the term "cloud computing" faced another setback last week after the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office sent the company a "non-final" refusal of its application.
The PTO informed Dell on August 12 that its registration of the trademark for the term "cloud computing" was refused because "the applied-for mark merely describes a feature and characteristic of applicant's services...In addition to being merely descriptive, the applied-for mark appears to be generic in connection with the identified services and, therefore, incapable of functioning as a source-identifier for … Read more
The Guardian had a fantastic set of articles this weekend addressing the role of Google in the world. One particularly intriguing piece comes from Adam Curtis, a documentary director, who notes:
Google is a paradox. It gives us the feeling we are wild and free individuals, powerfully reinforcing an idea of us as heroic figures in the consumer age. Yet at the same time it is powerfully proving the opposite - that we are completely predictable. Out of that is going to come some very interesting political ideas of how to organise society and also new artistic ideas.I think we're going to see Google given a run for its money, with more and better ways of filtering information to consumers and businesses. Each of these, however, will take us one step closer to becoming assimilated into a Borg-like information-dense existence, one largely devoid of privacy and meaningful, individual choices.
Glyn Moody has written a beautiful eulogy for the Windows desktop of yore, one that I heartily encourage you to read.
For many years, people in the free software world have dreamed of a day when GNU/Linux would replace Windows on the desktop....[I]t seems unlikely that GNU/Linux will ever take over the desktop from Windows. But that does not mean that Windows will maintain its dominance there, simply that the future is more complex than the monoculture we have seen and suffered for nearly two decades.Moody touches on a range of threats to Microsoft's … Read more
When Hyperic launched CloudStatus.com, I think most people took a look and figured they would never need such a service. Then all of the sudden we saw multiple outages from Google and Amazon and CloudStatus.com became the best resource to figure out what was going on.
I asked Javier Soltero, CEO of Hyperic to provide some insight as to why the Cloud is as much of an operations as it is a deployment battle.
Guest post by Javier Soltero, CEO of Hyperic Operations is one of the key open issues that will define Cloud computing's future.
The separation of Cloud offerings around consumption of resources versus consumption of applications makes a lot of sense. Regardless of the use case, the idea that a business might choose the Cloud as a platform to build and consume applications because it inherently reduces or removes the operational burden is ridiculous.
The simple reason is that software, regardless of who is developing it, always fails. Those who refute that point haven't been around technology long enough or haven't paid attention to the fact that every single 'Cloud' has had outages recently.
Enterprise software consumers (the folks whose money most Cloud providers are looking to get) know better than to assume that any new platform (whether it's "the Cloud" or Linux or Java) is inherently management free. Because of this, I'm confident that until management technology (including everything from provisioning to monitoring) matures, the enterprise will still regard the Cloud as a place to do science experiments. … Read more
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Christina Milian and the gadgets she loves
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