Last week IBM launched the first third party virtual switching platform for VMware environments. This is an important development because as the first tier of network switching moves into the server, the virtual switch becomes extremely strategic real-estate and control point for emerging SDN architectures. Read more »
Zerto Virtual Replication 2.0 promises to bring enterprise-class business-continuity/disaster recovery to VMware virtualized environments, taking aim at applications that run “in and between private, public and hybrid clouds.” Target customers are large businesses and cloud service providers. Read more »
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 »
Large data centers are increasingly moving to converged infrastructure, and most of the chatter has been about this slick, new hardware. But it also has deep implications for enterprise employees and the CIOS and managers that must retrain them — or do away with them altogether. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
AppFog CEO Lucas Carlson isn’t shy about touting PaaS as the ideal way for developers to access cloud computing resources, but he also knows it’s not mainstream. In this inforgraphic illustrating the evolution of cloud computing, Carlson says PaaS will hit its stride in 2013. Read more »
Developers concerned about confining their apps to a single cloud need worry no more. If they’re willing to utilize Cloud Foundry, the open-source PaaS project, developers can now run apps that move seamlessly between any infrastructure already running a Cloud Foundry-based service. Read more »
DynamoDB, AWS’ latest effort to rock the technology establishment, has many implications for other players in the big data and cloud computing markets. A new GigaOM Pro research note examines just who is affected, and how. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Surprise! The hypervisor battle rages anew and is in fact getting more heated as VMware tries to push vSphere (not just the free ESXi hypervisor) to customers and Microsoft vies to win market share and credibility for Hyper-V. Read more »
Diane Greene has joined the board of directors of Google announced today. Greene was the CEO of VMware but was replaced by current CEO Paul Maritz a few years ago. Green, who was the co-founder of VMWare is quite plugged in to the Silicon Valley ecosystem. Read more »
The free version of Jaspersoft’s analytics software will be offered as part of Red Hat’s OpenShift Platform-as-a-Service. As Red Hat, Microsoft, Heroku, and Cloud Foundry PaaSes compete, watch for them to add more services and capabilities just as they’ve raced to add language support. Read more »
Yahoo apparently is looking to overhaul its board of directors,. Like me, many critics believe that have been negligent in their duties. I have a handy list of some great corporate leaders who can contribute positively and also help new CEO’ Scott Thompson’s quest for innovation. Read more »
IBM’s snapping up Green Hat and CA’s acquisition of ITKO indicate that the market for cloud-based testing services is hot. And since software testing represents more than 50 percent of overall development costs, developers would do well to keep an eye on this quickly growing ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
How does the cloud market for the next year look? There will be no silver linings or lemonade. This research note, part of GigaOM Pro’s outlook for 2012, examines startups’ chances to challenge traditional enterprise IT practices, cloud pricing models, the true state of federated clouds, and how IT jobs will change in the coming months. Expect plenty of defensive M&A, cloud lock-in, phantom data discovery, outages, availability headaches, pricing confusion and job displacement over the next 12 months. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Ask Box.net CEO Aaron Levie about his company’s cloud storage business, and you’ll hear a long, excited answer that probably won’t include the word “storage” at all. He’ll talk about sharing, collaboration and universal access — anything but the core storage infrastructure that makes Box’s service possible. Read more »
Schneider Electric filled in some checkboxes in its overall data center infrastructure management (DCIM) stack with the acquisition of Viridity’s EnergyCenter technology. EnergyCenter will bring Schneider a fuller picture of the energy cost and resource utilization of information technology gear. Read more »
Up-and-coming Infrastructure-as-a-Service provider Tier3 has made a significant contribution to the Platform-as-a-Service world by releasing a .NET implementation of the Cloud Foundry PaaS project. A fork project called Iron Foundry will serve as the primary source of .NET development within Cloud Foundry. Read more »
Playing off the interest in creating software defined networks for virtualized environments, startup ConteXtream has launched a product that allows a data center operator to separate network services such as firewalls and load balancers from the physical hardware. It joins several startups pushing virtualized networks. Read more »
A simple emoticon can tell you wonders about the emotional state of your company. Socialcast experimented with such a test in a Japanese factory asking employees to rate their work day with a happy, average, or sad face. The simple question gleaned enormous insight. Read more »
If your company has a cloud application with a predictable audience size or one that is costing you more than $25,000 a month to host, you may want to consider maintaining a private cloud. This paper provides an overview of the factors that decision makers who are developing a public-to-private cloud-migration strategy should consider, recognizing that public versus private cloud strategy is not an all-or-nothing proposition. It also details pitfalls that must be avoided along the way and provides a case study of Zynga, a company that has found a way to use both the private and public clouds to create a hybrid solution. Companies mentioned in this report include Akamai, Foursquare, Nimbula and ARM. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Advocates of the public cloud tend to dismiss private cloud deployments within individual companies, arguing that they are too small to deliver the cost or flexibility advantages of the public cloud. But recent developments in the UK refute that argument. The University Modernization Fund’s Cloud Pilot, ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Windows Azure is an ambitious PaaS that doesn’t get a lot of love from web developers. Here are four things Microsoft must do to make it a more compelling option for the new-age, non-.NET developers who now flock to Amazon Web Services or another PaaS. Read more »
VMware’s Cloud Foundry is already catching on among companies wanting to become PaaS providers, and now it might start finding a home in private data centers too. ActiveState has created a commercial Cloud Foundry distribution called Stackato that’s meant to give customers their own private PaaS. Read more »
If it’s possible to make “unlimited” more unlimited, Backblaze says it has done so with the latest release of its online storage service. Users can now store bigger files than ever or whole VMs, for the same $5 per computer per month price Backblaze charged before. Read more »
AppFog, which started out as a PHP-based Platform-as-a-Service, just added Java to its roster of supported programming languages. AppFog already added support for Ruby and Node.js. Still to come: support for Python, .NET and “smaller languages like Erlang,” said AppFog CEO Lucas Carlson. Read more »
SpringSource, the application-platform arm of VMware, has been working closely with NoSQL startup Neo Technology to produce a version of the Neo4j graph database optimized for Spring environments. Additionally, SpringSource founder and GM Rod Johnson is now chairman of Neo’s board of directors. Read more »
EMC, having spent billions on acquisitions over the last few years, ain’t done yet. At the top of the shopping list is more security, more management and more data analytics know-how, EMC’s Pat Gelsinger told reporters today at an event at Gillette Stadium. Read more »
VMware has signed deals with Verizon and Telefonica to offer virtualization on phones provided by the operators. The net result of this deal is that employees who want to combine their work phone and their personal phone will soon be able to do so. Read more »
Nicira, the not-so-stealthy startup working in the network virtualization space was “outed” Monday by the New York Times as a secret startup pursuing the next hot trend in computing. But the article overstated Nicira’s secretiveness and perhaps its role as network virtualization hits the mainstream. Read more »
Last quarter we highlighted the fast maturation of the Platform-as-a-Service and big data spaces. Those two trends only picked up speed during the third quarter of 2011. Joining them on the cusp of IT greatness, though, are the OpenStack project and flash storage. The former gathered serious validation from big-name companies, while the latter saw less funding than last quarter but a significant number of product launches. Of course, the third quarter wasn’t all lollipops and rose petals. We saw new computing technologies and delivery models such as tablets wreak havoc on both HP and Cisco, and there are concerns (aren’t there always?) about how the Internet will handle our increased use of streaming video and cloud computing. Unfortunately for HP and Cisco, the latter problem might be an easier fix than the strategic woes facing them. Additional companies mentioned in this report include CloudBees, Rackspace, Engine Yard and Joyent. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Microsoft poured money and resources into Microsoft Windows Azure, its grand attempt to transport the company’s software dominance into the cloud computing era. For die-hard .Net heads, Azure is probably the PaaS of choice. But for the army of new-age web developers, it’s an also-ran. Read more »
Much like everyone has some product or strategy to optimize on “the cloud,” momentum is already gathering around the next big technology trend to drive buzzzwords — big data. VMware is no exception, so I spoke with Steve Herrod, the company’s CTO to find out more. Read more »
Microsoft, still a server virtualization also-ran, gets key third-party support for its Windows Server 8/ Hyper-V tandem from NEC America, Cisco and OpenNebula. With a little help from its friends, it hopes to dislodge VMware as the kingpin of server virtualization. Read more »
At Mobilize, VMware CTO Steve Herrod laid out a mobile plan that reeks of success on par with what VMware has achieved in server virtualization. The trick to accomplishing that might be VMware’s quest to make its hypervisor technology a part of the core Android kernel. Read more »
Red Hat is the Microsoft of Linux. But now, like Microsoft itself, it obsesses more on cloud infrastructure than lowly operating systems. Questions about Red Hat’s OpenShift PaaS and CloudForms IaaS dominated last night’s earnings call, but CEO Jim Whitehurst was cautious on revenue predictions. Read more »
Adchemy, the six-year-old online ad technology company, has raised $61 million in a Series E funding round led by Microsoft. This round brings the total venture capital invested in Adchemy to $116 million, Adchemy CEO Murthy Nukala told me in an interview on Tuesday. Read more »
AppFog, the Platform-as-a-Service startup that began life a PHP Fog, now supports both Ruby and Node.js applications. The expanded support comes as no surprise, but speaks volumes about the potential for Cloud Foundry as a PaaS equivalent to what OpenStack is for Infrastructure as a Service. Read more »
The Socialcast team at VMware has introduced a beta version of a new product called Strides, which aims to make task management an interactive experience. Think Basecamp, but more social, and with more visibility into what your colleagues are working on. Read more »
On Wednesday HP released its first two public cloud computing services for private beta, based in part on the open-source OpenStack code. The services, some details of which were leaked in the spring, are HP Cloud Compute and HP Cloud Object Storage. Read more »
VMworld can be a lot to digest, but it also can be a good barometer of where IT is and where it’s going. A couple days removed from the show, I gave some thought to the interesting trends I noticed and the insightful discussions I had. Read more »
