cloud

Watch who's jumping on the Cloud bandwagon

It seems that there's no shortage of companies eager to jump on the cloud-computing bandwagon. Consider the latest--all within the space of a single week:

AT&T announces its entry into cloud computing.

Verizon intends to get into the business by the first half of 2009.

Amazon.com makes its second investment in less than a month in a cloud-computing company.

Dell reportedly issued a press release in which it tries to trademark the cloud-computing name.

And then, of course, there is the rest of the familiar cloud-computing crowd, led by the likes of Microsoft, Google, IBM, and … Read more

Stateless computing to become core to cloud computing?

As companies glom onto cloud computing, stateless computing is likely to emerge as a core tenant within the cloud and one that can deliver cost savings, predicted the chief technology architect for Merrill Lynch.

But to get to the state of stateless computing, companies will need to change the way they view their hardware needs and how they store and access the information, said Jeffrey Birnbaum of Merrill Lynch, who served as a keynote speaker Tuesday at LinuxWorld in San Francisco.

"Stateless computing isn't about having no state. It's kind of a misnomer. It's about where … Read more

The cloud is not a computer

My hat goes off to Preston Monroe, the developer of iCopy, an online service that adds cut and paste functionality to the iPhone's browser and e-mail apps. As you probably know, Apple's handheld computer bizarrely omits this feature.

iCopy is a clever hack that lets you select text or a link from a Web page and paste it into another page, or an e-mail. It gets around the lack of iPhone-native copy and paste by sending selected text to a temporary online repository when you "copy," and retrieving it when you "paste." In operation, … Read more

AT&T joins the Cloud, proves there will be multiple Cloud vendors

I wrote yesterday that there will be more than one Cloud vendor and today AT&T announced that they are the latest. Gloating aside, this proves that the market is still being shaped and that it won't necessarily be the domain of BigCo tech companies.

In reality it makes perfect sense that major telcos would become Cloud providers. They own the bandwidth, network and have data centers all over the world.

AT&T and Sprint have long offered hosting services including data center space, managed servers and services and of course network connectivity. Data centers are expensive … Read more

Zembly lets you create social apps for Facebook and more

I just watched this video demo of Zembly, a relatively new service that you create collaborative applications on the fly and deploy them to services like Facebook, Meebo, and the iPhone.

There's lots of widgets and Javascript involved, but it seems easy to use and overall Zembly is an interesting product as it lets users actually manipulate walled-garden content.

It's also interesting in that the company makes use of a wide array of open APIs and developed their own to create a networked effect of usage.

In a bit of a twist, Zembly runs on Solaris and Sun … Read more

Amazon.com invests in another 'cloud'

Amazon.com is taking a different kind of interest in the software companies using its cloud computing services.

On Tuesday, Elastra, provider of a scalable database that's stored on Amazon's Web Services, will announce that it has raised $12 million in a series B round of financing from Amazon, Bay Partners, and previous investor Hummer Winblad.

Elastra plans to use the money to further develop its database software. Neal Dempsey of Bay Partners will join Elastra's board.

This is Amazon's second investment in less than a month in cloud computing. In July, Amazon was among several … Read more

AT&T joining cloud-computing field

Update, 8:32 a.m. PDT Tuesday: Makes note of actual AT&T announcement.

AT&T is joining the burgeoning field of cloud-computing service providers that offer networking and storage services, according to a report late Monday on The Wall Street Journal site.

Cloud computing, which has attracted such heavyweight players as Google, IBM, and Amazon.com, relieves companies of the burden of managing their own data centers. One of AT&T's first customers will be the U.S. Olympic Committee, which runs Teamusa.org and other Olympics Web sites, according to the newspaper. AT&… Read more

There will definitely be more than one major cloud vendor

Unlike search or Web browsing, using cloud resources is not, and won't soon be, a drive-by event.

For the foreseeable future, you will have to actively choose to use the cloud. As such, there is little room for total domination. The cloud requires you to opt-in to participate. Google and Microsoft's Internet Explorer are more passive in their usage.

Even with a new breed of tools like RightScale and GoGrid, you are still an active participant. And considering that the cloud is generally discussed as enterprise nirvana, there are some major flaws in the theory that there will … Read more

IBM muddying the Cloud?

One key missing piece from all of the press around IBM's Cloud building initiatives is what exactly they are going to offer. So far, it just seems like new data centers being built around the world. There have been few mentions of what will be available--for example, will there be VMs, on-demand deployment, Java environments, databases or is just hosting?

And while the data center physical infrastructure is obviously the first step, vendors seem to be confusing the physical with the meta-physical in the Cloud discussion. I pointed this out in the past when IBM announced a Cloud initiative … Read more