As ProfitBricks rolls out its scale-up infrastructure as a platform in the U.S. this week, it says it can offer more powerful instances to customers cheaper than market leader Amazon Web Services. That’s a tall order, but an intriguing one. Read more »
While computing in the cloud can cost less than running servers in your enterprise data center, the question of how much less isn’t an easy one to answer. The cloud will get cheaper in the future, but not before these challenges are addressed and overcome. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
In cloud and big data, the second quarter of 2012 featured several high-profile deals and product launches that could reshape the marketplace for everyone. Google and Microsoft launched Infrastructure-as-a-Service offerings, software-defined networking took off, and all eyes stayed fixed on the continuing promise of data analytics. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Two big Amazon outages over the past month certainly got everyone’s attention. Here are three tactical measures cloud users should take to minimize damage from future cloud computing snafus. Broadly, the outages also ratchet up pressure for companies to move to multiple clouds. Read more »
With more and more business leaders now turning to this topic, the questions — and confusion — are multiplying. With so much to consider, we’ve broken down the cloud discussion to help companies decide which strategy is right for their business. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
This quarter saw Amazon Web Services finally relaxing its public-cloud-only stance and launching services to support hybrid-cloud deployments. Meanwhile, Hadoop players moved to make their platforms more accessible to mainstream BI analysts and database administrators. A new quarterly report analyzes these trends and provides a near-term outlook. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
GoGrid and Sungard join a long list of service providers offering Hadoop in the cloud, but these services are missing a key ingredient at the top of the stack that will appeal to the mainstream. ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
If you didn’t think that Amazon was the king of cloud, just look at what other cloud companies announced Monday. Even paragons of the private cloud world are trying to cloak themselves in the glow cast by Amazon, which is squarely in public cloud realm. Read more »
As more companies put workloads on Amazon Web Services or other public cloud platforms, many are paying for more cloud than they need. That overprovisioning is the problem Cloudyn, an Israeli startup, is taking on with its new software as a service. Read more »
Demand for cloud computing continues to increase exponentially as consumers, businesses and government agencies seek to defer the expense of acquiring, operating and maintaining infrastructure and applications to third-party service providers. Likewise, software publishers are finding the cloud computing model an efficient and effective mechanism for delivering their products as a service and as an operational expense to their customers. For independent software vendors, cloud computing is opening up new markets and making their applications more accessible and affordable to scores of new customers. For a multitude of reasons, many ISVs are choosing to forego data center development and are partnering with hosting providers that have the infrastructure, resources and expertise in managing and delivering cloud services. This report provides ISVs with guidance on partnering with hosting companies, establishing criteria for selecting a hosting service, metrics for measuring hosting performance as it relates to cloud services delivered and an understanding of the responsibilities they retain even when outsourcing a large part of their services functions to a third party. Companies mentioned in this report include Microsoft, Google and Salesforce.com. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
There’s a long-running debate in the cloud computing world about whether standard IaaS resources have become true commodities, but it doesn’t look like they’re there yet. Even as prices drop closer to zero across the cloud-provider landscape, there are still plenty of points of differentiation. Read more »
Developers at the Surge conference in Baltimore have a love-hate relationship with America’s largest online retailer and cloud provider. But repeated tales of Amazon’s failures were immediately followed by assurances that the service was cheaper and better than buying your own hardware. Read more »
Dome9, a stealth company that aims to create the equivalent of a firewall for public and private clouds, launched the company and its product Monday. The company, which was founded last year, is just one of several cloud security companies coming out of stealth mode. Read more »
At the end of last month Verizon acquired CloudSwitch, adding value to Verizon’s January acquisition of cloud data center provider Terremark. Around the world, big telecommunications providers such as AT&T, BT, Telstra and Verizon have been hard at work, diversifying and seeking new business opportunities as ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Big data and Platform-as-a-Service offerings highlighted the second quarter, suggesting that we can expect to see a shift in enterprise IT practices around application development and analytics very soon. On the PaaS front, we saw new projects like DotCloud and Cloud Foundry gain incredible momentum in just a few short months. The big-data activity ranged from major new Hadoop vendors to heavy investment in flash storage that will speed the serving of data to processing engines. In other areas, we saw an uptick in cloud-computing plans from large vendors, OpenStack continued to mature and pick up both contributors and users, and Facebook caught our eye by launching an open-source project around the designs for its specialized servers and data centers. Additional companies mentioned in this report include VMware, Salesforce.com, IBM, Heroku and Calxeda. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Virtustream, a cloud computing provider focused on hosting enterprise applications, has raised $10 million in a Series B round. The round was funded by existing investors Intel Capital, Columbia Capital, Noro-Moseley Partners, and TDFunds, which invested $49 million in Virtustream’s Series A round last year. Read more »
Enterprise users have different reasons and preferences for deciding between shared and dedicated resources in the cloud. But most shouldn’t be making those decisions based on the infrastructure, but based on the application that they’re trying to run, execs at GigaOM’s Structure conference said. Read more »
Cloud computing has grown from a pie-in-the-sky vision to a major IT movement over the past few years. As its promise has grown, though, so too has its scope. This report covers six key sectors in cloud computing: commodity Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), enterprise IaaS, Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), cloud storage and private clouds. We highlight the current state of each and provide informed insights into where they — and cloud computing in general — are headed. Much like any market in a still-evolving state, the infrastructure of the cloud-computing transition is still being built by startups, practitioners and even a big-name company or two. Companies mentioned in this report include VMware, Amazon, Nasuni, Terremark and Heroku. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Earlier this week, cloud provider GoGrid announced that founder and original CEO John Keagy is leaving that post and transitioning into a new role, a decision Keagy told me this morning is the result of the company growing too fast. Read more »
GoGrid CEO John Keagy wrote on his blog yesterday that when it comes cloud computing, things such as cheap hydroelectric power and massive-scale data centers are overrated. His theory doesn’t make sense for every cloud provider, but he does make some good points. Read more »
In five short years, cloud computing has gone from being a quaint technology to a major catchphrase. Amazon and others are now moving at Internet speed, trying to offer better security, faster networking, more compliance and a host of other products that are attempting to meet the demands of startups, consumers and enterprises alike. On GigaOM’s Structure channel, we cover the gear and software that comprises the cloud, the services and the people who are changing the industry. Now for the first time, we’ve decided to condense that knowledge into the Structure 50, a list of the 50 companies that are influencing how the cloud and infrastructure evolves. All of these players, big or small, have people, technology or strategies that will help shape the way the cloud market is developing and where it will eventually end up. Companies mentioned in this report include Amazon, Rackspace, Cloudera, China Telecom and SeaMicro. For a full list of companies, and to see the Structure 50 as one full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Amazon Web Services and GoGrid both made some significant strides this week toward addressing digital-rights management issues. Neither feature is particularly sexy by cloud computing standards, but both are very necessary for bringing certain user and software-vendor communities into the fold. Read more »
Two markets stand out above all else when looking at the first quarter of 2011: infrastructure as a service (IaaS) — the epitome of cloud computing — and big data. Amazon Web Services continues to lead the IaaS space in terms of customers and innovation, while Rackspace, buoyed by momentum around OpenStack, will be its primary competitor for mainstream customers. In the big data space, there are so many players and terms floating about it’s difficult for outsiders to get a handle on who’s who and what’s what, though such activity validates the technologies. Other developments this quarter included HP’s impending presence in the cloud computing and big data spaces and the realization that Intel won’t be left to die if low-power servers based on x86 processors catch on like the buzz late last year suggests they will. Additional companies mentioned in this report include VMware, Microsoft, Cloudera, SeaMicro and Facebook. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Business and IT leaders now face significant opportunities and challenges with big data — that is data sets that are so large they are difficult to store, manage and analyze. This report explores the rapidly evolving big data business and technology ecosystem. It examines big data in the context of several different industries: financial services, health care, sports, travel and media. We explore the different big data technologies — from Hadoop and NoSQL derivatives to cloud-based collaboration tools — and their various benefits for enterprises. And we examine some of the existing challenges big data poses, and what enterprise IT leaders can do to overcome them. Companies mentioned in this report include Amazon Web Services, Google, Teradata, IBM and Cloudera. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Cloud provider Tier3 announced this morning that it has secured $8.5 million from Ignition Capital and Madrona Venture Group to fund its “enterprise platform-as-a-service” offering, a term that might not be entirely accurate, but that might actually be indicative of a forthcoming trend in cloud marketing. Read more »
As Amazon Web Services continues to roll out new features and services for its cloud platform, its competitors increasingly tout better performance as a key point of differentiation, which has me wondering if either approach — more features or better performance — will clearly win out. Read more »
With enterprise data volumes growing, business and IT leaders face significant opportunities and challenges from big data. Using cloud-computing technologies, organizations are experimenting with distributed data stores, cloud compute capacity for data analytics, hosted data integration and even operational databases in the cloud. Hadoop/MapReduce, meanwhile, has moved past test and development stage to become a viable extension or alternative to traditional relational databases. Though the space is not without its obstacles, including plenty of privacy concerns, there are numerous sales-growth opportunities and new business models finally surfacing in 2011. Companies mentioned in this report include Google, IBM, Apple, Oracle, Salesforce and VMware. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Amazon Web Services needed to develop its own flavor of PaaS, the cleverly named Elastic Beanstalk, to keep up with cloud development trends, but that doesn’t mean the rest of its IaaS brethren need to follow suit – at least not in the immediate future. Read more »
Cloud provider GoGrid has expanded its Infrastructure-as-a-Service catalog by launching a Hosted Private Cloud that maintains all the features multitenant clouds, but on dedicated physical servers. It’s an interesting tactic, and it highlights the different value propositions and visions of the leading cloud providers. Read more »
Some might call this past quarter in the infrastructure space transformative. The rise of ARM-based processing suggests the days of x86 dominance might be coming to an end, while the Amazon Web Services-WikiLeaks controversy cast new light on the legal aspects of cloud computing. Big data got bigger, meanwhile, as the Hadoop ecosystem expanded, and amid all these cutting-edge technologies, two archaic topics — Novell and Java — proved they aren’t going anywhere soon. Companies mentioned in this report include Intel, AMD, Amazon Web Services, IBM, Yahoo, Appistry, VMware, Joyent and Microsoft. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
We’ve already covered the trends that began to shape up in the infrastructure market in 2010 and will really materialize in 2011. Several companies played — and will continue to play — a big role in making those trends happen. From Facebook to Cloudera to Microsoft, here ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
This year was rightfully advertised as the “Year of the Cloud.” The cloud computing landscape began to take shape in 2010, with providers honing their offerings, important issues surfacing to light and industry consolidation finally beginning to happen. In most areas, however, the action is likely ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
The second quarter of 2010 belonged to the little guys and the new guys. Almost across the board, from processors to virtualization to cloud services, relatively small vendors and startups had the market cornered on innovation and mindshare. And where there’s tinder in the forms of customer demand, products, funding and a greater societal movement toward environmentalism, something is bound to catch fire. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
The growing ubiquity of the Internet is having a major influence on the video and software industries, which are using it to enable delivery of their products online.
Advanced infrastructures are required to deliver those contents efficiently. The Internet has been built on a best-effort model, but ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
On Aug. 26, 2009, Amazon announced a new initiative: the Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC). Essentially, the new service enables a company to extend its internal data center to incorporate Amazon EC2 compute instances — it’s as though the perimeter of the data center has bulged out to incorporate a set of AWS compute resources. All traffic between the data center and the EC2 instances in the VPC runs over an encrypted virtual private network, ensuring that the traffic is secure and private. Tools commonly used within data centers, like traffic analyzers and intrusion detection, can be used on the Virtual Private Cloud. The net effect is that companies can incorporate scalable, cheap computing into their existing compute arrangements and treat the VPC resources as though they reside within the data center. The new services hold the potential for making enterprises that are reluctant to trust public cloud computing more comfortable and thereby increase acceptance of cloud computing. This service, by itself, does not address all aspects of “privatizing” a public cloud; the issue of securing persistent storage within Amazon still remains and must be addressed at the EC2 instance level rather than via a general AWS Service. Nevertheless, this is a significant announcement and one that hold the potential of increasing corporate adoption of AWS. This note looks at further implications of the announcement, what questions are left to be answered, and what to expect next from both Amazon and its competitors. Read more »
Customers who ordered a Viliv X70 UMPC from retailer Dynamism have received emails informing them of a delivery delay. Dynamism cites a component shortage by the manufacturer, Viliv, as the reason for the delay. That doesn’t provide much comfort for those anxiously awaiting the arrival of […] Read more »
Yesterday I wrote almost 1,000 words on Microsoft’s Azure platform, but I think this video does a good job explaining the basics without all that pesky reading. Steve Marx, who works for Microsoft, pulled together a video in what I would call the “whiteboard genre” that […] Read more »
Cloud Computing has hit the main stage, solidly capturing the minds of both the technology and business communities. But while three distinct deployment models have emerged, it’s far from certain which of them will go on to prosper. The three models are: 1. Renting raw hardware: […] Read more »
Amazon said today it is now using Microsoft’s Windows Server in its EC2 computing cloud. Read more »
As corporate giants get more interested in managing clouds, startups already in the sector are defending their turf and trying to make cloud computing more enterprise friendly. RightScale, a one-year-old startup that offers a management platform for Amazon’s Web Services said today that it now can […] Read more »
