Cloud Computing

I've been a proponent of the Cloud and hosted applications for quite some time but today I am dramatically feeling the effects of having zero control over my infrastructure and the inability to get anything when a Cloud provider has issues.

My MacBook Air is clearly in it's death-throes just six months after purchase and today Google Docs was down for over an hour. I basically have no way to do any real work at this point as I can't use most of my applications and can't get to my documents on Google. I'm a … Read more

Sisense, a developer of business intelligence software, has introduced a new dashboard that it says will allow developers to keep better track of their Amazon S3 usage.

This is an interesting first step toward Cloud management. The big question is what happens to the emerging ecosystem if the Cloud vendors decide to shut this kind of thing down (which presumably as long as you pay they won't) or if they start offering the services themselves.

Via TechcrunchIT

Here are seven of the specific security issues Gartner says customers should raise with vendors before selecting a cloud vendor.

1. Privileged user access 2. Regulatory compliance 3. Data location 4. Data segregation 5. Recovery 6. Investigative support 7. Long-term viability

Full article on Infoworld.

I caught a touch of food poisoning yesterday and I'm not still not totally right. While generally not a great experience, something about pulling over in the Tenderloin to hurl felt all too comfortable.

Some links for your enjoyment:

Join me and John Rowell from Opsource, Wednesday, July 9, 2008 9:00am PDT on a webinar discussing how the Cloud affects the Enterprise and vice-versa.

Learn about common concerns organizations face when incorporating SaaS applications into their growing enterprise architecture and how to make the transition from on-site to internet based applications.

Click here to register

As the cloud continues to emerge as a serious option, many people are starting to catch on that there are limits to what can be done outside that particular platform.

Right now there only a few options if you are a cloud or PaaS provider: 1. Cordon off virtual machines and use VM images (like Amazon.com or Joyent) 2. Allow development on some programming language (like Google App Engine) 3. Force users onto your platform (like Salesforce.com)

The applications that are built on top of a particular vendor's infrastructure are locked into that provider's way of … Read more

I can't believe it took Yahoo! this long to create a Cloud Computing division. They are easily in the top 5 most impressive infrastructures and maybe will now take advantage of it.

In order to expand its cloud computing capabilities, the Company will form a Cloud Computing & Data Infrastructure Group, charged with developing a computing infrastructure that balances scalability with cost effectiveness.

Yahoo! is making changes to its technology organization, led by Chief Technology Officer Ari Balogh, to better position the company to execute on its strategic priorities. Principal changes are developing a world-class cloud computing and storage … Read more

Nick Carr sent a message to the Structure conference audience and noted the symbolism of Bill Gates leaving Microsoft to the ushering in of computing moving from the desktop to the network.

Definitely worth a view.

At lunch with Michael Coté from RedMonk on Wednesday, we talked a lot about how open source has really split into "free" and "open source," with the former typically associated with basement developers and Apache licenses, and the latter generally associated with the General Public License and some set of enhanced features.

As I was following Coté's Twitter feedearlier, I started to wonder whether everything really will go to the cloud and all of our open-source musing will go away, as software becomes consumed versus installed.

Realistically, there is a vast array … Read more