Enterprise-grade private cloud computing could take a big step forward with the introduction of Platform Computing’s new cloud management software, Platform ISF. The casual IT follower might never have heard of Platform, but for the better part of 20 years, the company has been proving the worth of its grid and cluster management solutions inside some of the world’s most demanding companies. Platform’s public customers include major banks like Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase, manufacturing giants like Pratt & Whitney and Airbus, and IT blue-chippers HP and AMD. If Platform is able to spur cloud adoption among large organizations and establish itself as a cloud computing leader, its reputation will play a vital role in the process. Continue »

In our ideal webworld, developing and deploying consumer-facing web-based applications should be as easy as 1-2-3.

• Step 1: Develop
• Step 2: Deploy
• Step 3: Scale

And as every single successful application on the web teaches us instead, the magical step 2 of deploying and scaling the application is the most treacherous part of it all. With clouds of all kinds — compute, store and networking — hovering hopefully around us, application developers would love to focus on refining the application vs. worrying about fixing underlying infrastructure. To help find out if infrastructure is ready, we are bringing together application specialists and putting them up against a few brave infrastructure experts on a panel at GigaOM’s Structure 09 conference.   Continue »

As 2009 kicked off, pundits were adamant that the dismal state of the economy would drive suddenly cost-conscious enterprise IT departments to the cloud. Anecdotal evidence from vendors pointed to more customer engagements, and general interest in cloud computing (which continues to increase) had never been greater. I questioned this conventional wisdom, wondering instead if the economy wouldn’t drive CIOs away from the cloud, fearful that any near-term misstep could be disastrous. A GigaOM Pro report (sub. required) by analyst firm TechAlpha suggests that, at least in the storage area, I may have been right. Continue »

Cisco today announced its Unified Service Delivery (USD) strategy, which connects the data center with IP Next-Generations Networks (NGNs) to help service providers meet the increasing demand for high-bandwidth and time-dependent services ranging from consumer video to enterprise applications. Essentially a unification of existing components with a couple new products thrown into the mix, the move establishes Cisco’s place in the cloud computing ecosystem as a provider of infrastructure components for cloud service platforms. Continue »

HP’s MagCloud is pretty cool, as services go. (Even the New York Times seems to like it.) For only 20 cents per page, it lets small-scale magazine publishers with no use for traditional, large-scale printing services create their own high-quality magazines. The MagCloud site also serves as a virtual newsstand where HP handles everything: customer buys a copy, HP outsources the ad hoc print job, and printer ships magazine to buyer. All the publisher has to do is create and upload the magazine.

However, while involving the web and a pay-per-use model might put MagCloud “in the cloud” in the most liberal interpretation of the phrase, it is far from a cloud service. HP should leave MagCloud in its printer division and save the cloud talk for something involving, well, an actual cloud. Vendors who stand to benefit from the cloud (HP, for example) are in serious jeopardy of stretching the already-overdone “cloud” label too thin — and MagCloud is a particularly egregious case in point. Continue »

When we recently heard about the history of YouTube’s growth strategy from CEO Chad Hurley’s point of view, he described it as “hanging onto a rocket.” But an engineer’s take is always going to be a bit less rose-colored and a bit more about the terrifying situations you brained your way out of. So we were particularly interested to tune in to a talk at YouTube’s developer conference Thursday by Cuong Do, an early software engineer who’s now manager of the site’s Core Product Engineering group.

Continue »

Today is the last day to get a super-saver discount on tickets for Structure 08, our upcoming conference dedicated to web infrastructure. In addition to keynotes from speakers including Jim Crowe, chairman and CEO of Level 3 Communications, the event will feature the first-ever workshop on Google’s App Engine. Learn from the masters at Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Sun, VMWare and more about how to put cloud computing to work at Structure 08, which will be held on June 25 here in San Francisco. To get your ticket discount, click here.