Cloud Computing Vendors Shaping the Emerging Cloud

1) Amazon Web Services
Leading cloud pioneer Amazon offers several different in-the-cloud services. The best known is Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, or Amazon EC2, which allows customers to set up and access virtual servers via a simple Web interface. Fees are assessed hourly based on the number and size of virtual machines you have ($.10 -$.80 per hour), with an additional fee for data transfer.
EC2 is designed to work in conjunction with Amazon’s other cloud services, which include Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3), Simple DB, Cloudfront, Simple Queue Service (SQS), and Elastic MapReduce.
Notable: The Amazon Web Services list of partners is high profile, including the likes of Citrix, Facebook, IBM, Oracle, Red Hat, and others.

2) Google
Yes, they own search – and are working on owning the cloud. With Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, and Picasa in its lineup, Google offers some of the best known cloud computing services available. They also offer some lesser known cloud services targeted primarily at enterprises, such as Google Sites, Google Gadgets, Google Video, and most notably, the Google Apps Engine. The Apps Engine allows developers to write applications to run on Google’s servers while accessing data that resides in the Google cloud as well as data that resides behind the corporate firewall. While it has been criticized for limited programming language support, the Apps Engine debuted Java and Ajax support in April, which may make it more appealing to developers.
Notable: Google recently revealed its philosophy of cloud computing in this Enterprise Blog post written by senior project manager Rajen Sheth: “As companies weigh private data centers vs. scalable clouds, they should ask a simple question: can I find the same economics, ease of maintenance, and pace of innovation that is inherent in the cloud?”

3) IBM

Although it was somewhat late to the cloud computing party, IBM launched its “Smart Business” lineup of cloud-based products and services in June. For now, the company is focusing on two key areas: software development and testing, and virtual desktops. But the company makes it clear that the cloud model has much wider-reaching implications, noting that “cloud computing represents a true paradigm shift in the way IT and IT-enabled services are delivered and consumed by businesses.” The company has also made noises about partnering with Google – the two companies would be a potent duo in the cloud sector.
Notable: A big part of IBM’s advantage in the cloud is the remarkable reach of its international presence. Early customers of IBM’s cloud computing offerings include South Africa’s Nedbank and China’s Sinochem.

4.) Microsoft

It’s a critical question facing the tech industry: Can Microsoft, the king of the traditional world of packaged software, leverage its hulking muscle to grab a similar position in the cloud world? The answer is unclear but Microsoft is certainly trying. The software giant’s ambitious Azure initiative has a solution for every Microsoft constituency, from ISVs to Web developers to enterprise clients to consumers. Formally unveiled in 2008, Azure is still very much a work in progress. If it succeeds as Microsoft hopes, in future years we’ll be talking about “Windows Azure,” a cloud-based OS that offers remote computing power, storage and management services. To make the dream come true, Microsoft is investing a king’s fortune in a network of $500 million, 500,000-square-feet datacenters around the country. The facilities will presumably form the physical backbone of the cloud network. If all goes according to plan, Microsoft will not only control the software but also the physical infrastructure that delivers that software. In other words, the company is attempting to be even bigger than it is now. (No one ever accused Redmond of being modest.) Perhaps the company’s ace in the hole: it understands enterprise management – a critical building block – more than its top competitors.
Notable: In a March 2009 interview with the New York Times, Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer jumped up and drew a diagram on a white board of the company’s cloud computing plans. It’s a squiggly, complicated drawing, leading the reporter to ask if the plan wasn’t overly complex. Not at all, Ballmer explained, detailing how current flagship Windows Server will be replaced by Windows Azure. In a quote that suggests that Microsoft is very attuned to the cloud trend, he told the Times: ““Anything that has been a server needs to be a service.”

5) Salesforce.com

More than 59,000 companies use Salesforce.com’s Sales Cloud and Service Cloud solutions for customer relationship management, which has helped make it one of the most well-known and most successful cloud computing companies. In addition, through Force.com, it allows developers to use the Salesforce.com platform to develop their own applications. Users can also purchase access to the Force.com cloud infrastructure to deploy their applications.
Notable: In its 10-year history, Salesforce.com has amassed an amazing lineup of awards. Its impressive client roster includes Dell, Dow Jones Newswires, Kaiser Permanente, and SunTrust Banks. Perhaps more impressive: even in the recession the company reported stellar financial results.

PALO ALTO, Calif. — The traditional data center will have to evolve as the world adopts more of the software-as-a-service (SaaS) model, said panelists here at the AlwaysOn OnDemand conference, hosted by Hewlett-Packard at its headquarters.

The issue posed to the four panelists by David Thomas, executive director of TechAmerica Silicon Valley and one of the first SaaS founders when he created Intacct in 1999, was to define what the data center is today and what IT will be advocating in the future..

“It comes down to where does the industry find the best economic benefit. We’re not looking at the ultimate victory in adopting either an Amazon [outsourced] model or traditional model, but where the balance lies,” said James Urquhart, market strategist and technology evangelist for cloud computing at Cisco Systems (NASDAQ: CSCO).

Not only will there be a future balance of internal IT and outsourcing, there will also be a balance of vendors. “I don’t believe you see any evidence that everyone will pick a company and go 100 percent with them,” said Urquhart.

PALO ALTO, Calif. — The traditional data center will have to evolve as the world adopts more of the software-as-a-service (SaaS) model, said panelists here at the AlwaysOn OnDemand conference, hosted by Hewlett-Packard at its headquarters.

The issue posed to the four panelists by David Thomas, executive director of TechAmerica Silicon Valley and one of the first SaaS founders when he created Intacct in 1999, was to define what the data center is today and what IT will be advocating in the future..

“It comes down to where does the industry find the best economic benefit. We’re not looking at the ultimate victory in adopting either an Amazon [outsourced] model or traditional model, but where the balance lies,” said James Urquhart, market strategist and technology evangelist for cloud computing at Cisco Systems (NASDAQ: CSCO).

Not only will there be a future balance of internal IT and outsourcing, there will also be a balance of vendors. “I don’t believe you see any evidence that everyone will pick a company and go 100 percent with them,” said Urquhart.

Doug Merritt, executive vice president of on-demand solutions at SAP, agreed. “The segregation of layers in computing has always existed and there are even more layers now with an increase in requirements,” he said.

A single stack player that attempts to provide everything never does well, Merritt noted, and you have best of breed players who emerge. “There will be a need for a super dynamic stack for the next decade because the computing need is so strong. We need a shot in the arm after a decade of muddling around,” he said.

And those players, notoriously bad at playing nice with each other, had better learn to interoperate, the panel said, because future generations are growing up with easy interoperation of things like smartphones and videogame consoles and other consumer devices.

They won’t take kindly to needing six months to make Oracle databases work with IBM middleware, said Urquhart. “The next generation will not be tolerant of interfaces that don’t auto-share data and get things done,” he said.

Ron Wastal, vice president of sales and business development for Cast Iron Systems, which specializes in cloud integration, agreed. “The attention span of young folks is integration should just be, not take days. Here’s the challenge. There are all kinds of flavors out there, there are all kinds of APIs. We have to make them all work together.”
Three application models

Wastal described three application models: canned, configured and custom. SaaS demands custom apps.

“You need some flexibility in your integration process to deal with change. What we see with SaaS is change happens a lot more often than it used to. People change objects daily in Salesforce. The ability to do that will be tougher, but vendors like us will have to come together to help snap those components together,” he said.

What could make things interesting is when the big name players decide to move beyond just infrastructures.

“As soon as you see someone acquire Salesforce or SuccessFactors or NetSuite, it changes. IBM and Microsoft and Google are all building cloud environments. How soon before they start looking for apps to run on them?” asked Wastal.

Andy Patrizio is a senior editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of Internet.com, the network for technology professionals.

Full Source

This WordPress plugin allows you to use Amazon’s Simple Storage Service to host your media for your WordPress powered blog.

Amazon S3 is a cheap and cost effective way to scale your site to easily handle large spikes in traffic (such as from Digg) without having to go through the expense of setting up the infrastructure for a content delivery network. Startup companies are embracing it for their online storage solution, and even bloggers are starting to use it to host their images and other static media (such as mp3 files for their podcasts).

Pricing is really cheap. There are no setup fees, no minimum costs, and you literally only pay for what you use, even if it’s just a couple cents a month. If you have a WordPress powered blog, and have a lot of media (such as images or mp3s), this plugin will help you easily utilize Amazon S3 for bandwidth and storage.

Once setup, this plugin transparently integrates with your WordPress blog. File uploads are automatically saved into your Amazon S3 bucket without any extra steps. Once saved, these files will be delivered by Amazon S3, instead of your web host. Any image thumbnails that get created are saved to Amazon S3 too. You’ll also find an “Amazon S3″ tab next to your regular “Upload” tab, which allows you to easily browse and manage files that were not upload via WordPress.

Thanks to Tan Tan Noodles Blog for this

Open-source

software has been on the rise at many businesses during the extended economic downturn, and one of the areas where it is starting to offer companies a lot of flexibility and cost savings is in cloud computing. Cloud deployments can save money, free businesses from vendor lock-ins that could really sting over time, and offer flexible ways to combine public and private applications. The following are 11 top open-source cloud applications, services, educational resources, support options, general items of interest, and more.

Eucalyptus. Ostatic broke the news about UC Santa Barbara’s open-source cloud project last year. Released as an open-source (under a FreeBSD-style license) infrastructure for cloud computing on clusters that duplicates the functionality of Amazon’s EC2, Eucalyptus directly uses the Amazon command-line tools. Startup Eucalyptus Systems was launched this year with venture funding, and the staff includes original architects from the Eucalyptus project. The company recently released its first major update to the software framework, which is also powering the cloud computing features in the new version of Ubuntu Linux.

Red Hat’s Cloud. Linux-focused open-source player Red Hat has been rapidly expanding its focus on cloud computing. At the end of July, Red Hat held its Open Source Cloud Computing Forum, which included a large number of presentations from movers and shakers focused on open-source cloud initiatives. You can find free webcasts for all the presentations here. The speakers include Rich Wolski (CTO of Eucalyptus Systems), Brian Stevens (CTO of Red Hat), and Mike Olson (CEO of Cloudera). Stevens’ webcast can bring you up to speed on Red Hat’s cloud strategy. Novell is also an open source-focused company that is increasingly focused on cloud computing, and you can read about its strategy here.

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