Azure

HP fine-tunes its multi-cloud pitch

Many clouds, one console

It must be really interesting to work at Hewlett-Packard these days. Not only is the company breaking itself in half, it’s making multi-billion-dollar…

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Cloud monitoring category gets busier

The week in cloud

Server monitoring gets hot SolarWinds, which monitors multi-vendor technologies running in house, last week bought Librato to extend its reach into the cloud.…

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Microsoft puts Docker on Windows clients

Microsoft said today that users can now run Docker inside a Windows machine and manage Linux-based containers using the new Docker Command Line Interface for Windows. The news follows up on the recent partnership between Microsoft and Docker to ensure that Docker can run nicely on the Azure cloud and Windows Server.

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4 things on the Amazon cloud shopping list

Amazon Web Services offers lots of IT infrastructure options, even some application level services, but has gaps to fill in its platform. Here are some areas that targeted acquisitions could address.

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Report

What developers should know when choosing an MBaaS solution

A new service delivery model of the cloud, called Mobile Backend as a Service (MBaaS), fills the gap that exists in the current cloud delivery models and offers a higher level of abstraction than Platform as a Service (PaaS). With MBaaS, mobile developers can consume cloud services in a way better suited to mobile-application scenarios.

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Software-defined networking forces Juniper’s big shift

The threat of software-defined networking has prompted Juniper to revamp its business model — switching from a hardware-based model to one more familiar in enterprise software. It has also unveiled an SDN strategy that preserves the importance of specialty hardware at the lowest level of the network.

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What we’ll see in 2013 in cloud computing

Next year, “the cloud” will finally be ready for enterprise workloads and big companies will finally start moving them there. Data centers will stop being enclosed by walls and those are just two of GigaOM’s 5 big cloud predictions. Read on for more.

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Obama’s tech team talks loves, hates and neck hair

Just weeks after the election, members of the tech team behind the Obama For America effort took their show on the road to Vegas. Here, at AWS: Reinvent, they gave off the cuff and very candid reviews of the technologies they loved — and hated.

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Apprenda gets the hybrid cloud religion

Apprenda, a true believer in private Platform as a Service, is embracing the hybrid cloud with its latest release. CEO Sinclair Schuller said many companies are ready to test out at least some workloads in a public cloud.

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Amazon speeds up EBS storage input-output — again

Another busy week for Amazon Web Services which added new compute instance types, cut prices on others, and upped the limit on provisioned IOPS for EBS volumes. Amazon is getting busier as more public cloud options come on line.

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Microsoft snags StorSimple to pack more stuff onto Azure

Microsoft snarfs up StorSimple as an easy way to get customer data into its Windows Azure storage cloud. The deal, terms of which were not disclosed, signals increasing competition between Microsoft, Google, Amazon and the OpenStack crew for customer data.

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Where’s Azure, and 4 other takeaways from Microsoft’s earnings

For all of Microsoft’s huge investment in the Windows Azure cloud computing platform, there was very little mention of the multi-billion-effort on Thursday’s Q4 and FY 2012 earnings call. Microsoft CFO touted major updates for Windows, Windows Phone, Office and Windows Server in the coming year.

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Google App Engine gets more global

The new Google App Engine release gets more global with better European data center coverage, plus better search APIs, SSL support for custom domains, and more integrated PageSpeed optimization. On the flip side, the Cloud SQL database still isn’t fully baked.

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The Amazon API battle for the cloud rages on

Lew Moorman, president of Rackspace, said cloud providers that clone Amazon APIs miss the point of true cloud interoperability. Eucalyptus and other cloud providers clearly disagree. The debate will doubtless rage on this week at the GigaOM Structure conference.

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Did NASA ditch OpenStack for Amazon?

In a recent blog post, NASA’s CIO Linda Cureton gives both Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services a shout-out for helping NASA save money while serving its constituencies. But she made no mention of OpenStack, the cloud platform NASA helped bring to life.

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HP, Oracle, Microsoft prep for cloudapalooza

Next week, legacy tech powers Hewlett-Packard, Oracle and Microsoft will vie for the spotlight as they set forth their cloud computing game plans at closely scheduled events. All three have prodigious resources and all three lag far behind cloud giant Amazon Web Services.

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SAP cuddles up with Amazon, but what about Azure?

News that SAP and Amazon will All-in-One business applications to run in production on Amazon’s public cloud raises a question: what’s going on with SAP and Microsoft Windows Azure? News on this could come next week at the Sapphire 2012 show. Or not.

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NAB: Cloud computing is ready for its closeup

Few industries are better suited to the cloud computing model than film and TV production. Show business is heavily project-oriented with myriad production shops and contractors collaborating on relatively short-term, compute-intensive projects. That’s why the cloud-computing giants are converging at NAB this week.

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Cloud services and the new platform wars

Who will become the standard platform for cloud computing? The stakes are massive, and not simply because of the burgeoning spending on compute as a utility. At stake is control over the applications that run on cloud platforms. Michael Driscoll of Metamarkets sizes up the competition.

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Cloud ‘lock-in’ survey shows not all clouds are alike

When it comes to moving massive files between storage clouds, performance depends — a lot — on what clouds you use, according to new research. For it’s bulk data migration report Nasuni repeatedly transferred 12 TB of data between Amazon S3, Rackspace and Microsoft Windows Azure.

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So what happens to storage….

There’s a big change that is sweeping the business world — instead of buying their infrastructure by spending millions of dollars upfront, companies are now getting comfortable with the idea of paying for their needs as they go along. And that spells trouble for many.

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Microsoft Azure falls down, goes boom

Azure, Microsoft’s platform-as-a-service cloud, went down Monday night and stayed down for at least 10 hours. The news comes as Microsoft is trying to pitch two-year-old Azure as a safe and reliable platform for consumer and business applications.

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AWS offers free Windows on EC2 (kind of)

Amazon will let customers run micro-instances of Microsoft Windows 2008 R2 for free on its EC2 service starting now, according to a new post to the Amazon Web Services (AWS) blog. Such try-before-you-buy tactics have helped Amazon win converts to its cloud platform.

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Jaspersoft parlays Red Hat OpenShift in BI push

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.

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Developers will flock to public cloud in 2012

The cloud is looking pretty good to software developers this year, according to new Zend Technologies’ research. More than half of the 3,335 developers surveyed said they expect to use a public cloud for their work in 2012, with AWS being the top draw.

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Report

Quality of the cloud: best practices for ISVs

This report is intended to provide 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.

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Amazon S3, Microsoft Azure are top dogs in cloud storage

After a long look at the performance of cloud storage providers, only six of the 16 largest CSPs made the grade and the two top dogs were Amazon S3 and Microsoft Azure, said Nasuni, a data continuity specialist that works with all the major CSPs.

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4 Azure milestones Microsoft must hit — and soon

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.

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DotCloud adds Redis, MongoDB and MySQL

DotCloud, the platform as a service that won our Structure 2011 Launchpad competition, said Wednesday that it will support three new data stores as part of its multi-language platform. The company will add MySQL, Redis and MongoDB support.

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Fujitsu makes Azure compliant by making it hybrid

Fujitsu’s new hybrid implementation of Microsoft Windows Azure could address corporate concerns about deploying global workloads on Microsoft’s public cloud. With Hybrid Cloud Services for Microsoft Windows Azure, Fujitsu can use its global presence to make sure that data stays within prescribed areas

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Red Hat automates Java dev in OpenShift PaaS

Red Hat is bringing more cloud-based automation to Java developers in an update to its OpenShift Platform as a Service which integrates the JBoss tool suite and supports two open-source tools that will shift more of the programming workload to the cloud itself.

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Peer 1 launches Zunicore, a new cloud service.

Peer 1, the hosting provider, joins the ranks of Rackspace, GoDaddy and other hosting companies that have decided to get into the cloud. On Monday, it launched its Zunicore service, which combines elements of an Infrastructure-as-a-Service with those of a platform.

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Microsoft puts more of its own apps on Windows Azure

Microsoft started moving Photosynth, it’s cool immersive camera application, to the Microsoft Azure platform-as-a-service earlier this month. And that marks the beginning of a flow of Microsoft legacy apps — many of which it already hosts but not on Azure — over to its full-fledged PaaS.

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Microsoft Azure: B for effort, less for execution

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.

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Can Microsoft Web Matrix 2.0 lure developers to Azure?

Microsoft could use Web Matrix 2.0 tool — now in beta — to entice new-age web developers to Azure, its cloud-computing Platform-as-a-Service. While the Azure PaaS has a potentially huge built-in audience of .Net programmers, it lacks cachet among the “cool kid,” next-gen web developers.

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Report

Infrastructure 2011: The Real Cloud Computing Picture Will Emerge

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 just getting started, and we’ll continue to see the real picture of cloud computing emerge throughout 2011. From the future of low-power processors to the growing importance of Infrastructure startups like Cloudera and Engine Yard, here are a few trends to watch in the coming months.

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Ray Ozzie to Leave Microsoft: Has The Future Left the Building?

Ray Ozzie, the chief software architect with Microsoft is leaving the Redmond, Wash.-based software giant. Ozzie, is widely viewed as someone who tried to change Microsoft’s internal attitudes towards cloud computing. He is credited for Microsoft’s move into the cloud with its Azure efforts.

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Microsoft Wants to Build Its Business With Data

Is there a business in providing intelligible data sets to information workers, application developers and analysts in a world where once expensive data such as turn-by-turn directions or real-time financial quotes are now free? Microsoft, with its Project Dallas, joins other firms hoping that there is.

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Report

Report: Evolution of The Private Cloud

Every 15 years or so, the IT world undergoes a tectonic shift. Technological forces collide and grind against one another, creating an upheaval that leaves the landscape irrevocably changed. The latest such shift is currently underway: the transition to computing as a service, also known as cloud computing. This change promises to make computing more like a utility such as electricity or telephony — users plug in and get the resources they need without much manual effort on the part of service providers.

Cloud computing has brought these benefits to Internet titans like Google, Salesforce.com and Amazon, and to their customers. Traditional enterprise IT has long aspired to the same advantages, but with a crucial distinction. Businesses want the option of greater control over governance, security and management that comes with using their own infrastructure. This report looks at the future for hardware and software in enterprise adoption of cloud-like systems, or “private clouds,” as well as the role that major players are likely to take in its ongoing development.

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Why Azure Could Help Drive Cloud Revenue in 2010

This week Microsoft finally launched its Azure cloud computing platform. The offering is distinct for a few reasons not directly connected to the platform, but more linked to Microsoft as a whole. Azure may well stand out and drive significant cloud revenues in 2010.

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Can Microsoft's Azure Find True Blue Developers?

Microsoft on Tuesday opened up its Azure cloud computing platform, after more than a year of development. Derrick Harris takes an in-depth look at Azure over at GigaOM Pro to see what exactly Microsoft is offering and how it compares with other clouds.

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Report

Microsoft Azure: What It Is, What It Costs and Who Should Care

An event more than a year in the making, Microsoft’s Windows Azure cloud-computing offering is finally available to the public. The software giant announced Azure in October 2008, made the service available as a limited Community Technology Preview (CTP) project shortly thereafter, and has been releasing pricing and product details at a regular clip in the meantime. Preview customers have been experimenting for free with a limited version of Azure, but as of April 1, 2010, all existing CTP customers who have not upgraded to the official version will have their accounts deleted. As the cliché goes, general availability is where the rubber meets the road for Microsoft and its vaunted cloud platform: If it can leverage its existing customer base and convince potential users to trust an oft-criticized software vendor with an entirely new delivery model, Microsoft could become a major force among cloud providers. While Windows Azure is a more-than-capable offering, trust could be an issue for a large number of developers and businesses that don’t believe Microsoft will deliver the openness so valued in the cloud world. Here’s a look at what Azure is, what it costs, and how it fits into (and will differentiate itself in) the market.

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Microsoft Finally Opens Azure for Business

Microsoft today finally opened up its cloud platform, Windows Azure, for business. Today the rubber meets the road — and we will soon see how Azure does against larger players such as Amazon and Rackspace, as well as how it affects Microsoft’s margins and other businesses.

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Report

As Cloud Computing Goes International, Whose Laws Matter?

Cloud computing solutions of various flavors continue to grow in popularity, as individuals, small startups and global corporations turn to the cloud in order to store data, distribute computing tasks, or deliver applications from email and calendaring to customer relationship management and gene sequencing. While cloud advocates tend to present ‘the cloud’ as global, seamless and ubiquitous, the true picture is richer and complicated by laws and notions of territoriality developed long before the birth of today’s global network. What issues are raised by today’s legislative realities, and what are cloud providers — and their customers — doing in order to adapt?

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Quarterly Wrap-up

In Q4, Data Centers, Not the Cloud, Were the Big Story

Of all the infrastructure trends during the fourth quarter, the biggest might be the changing shape of the data center market. An area once comprising separate vendors for separate functions now is full of cross-component partnerships and alliances, most notably that of Cisco, VMware and EMC. The three formed their Virtual Computing Environment alliance to peddle the jointly developed Vblock solution, and Cisco and EMC finally launched their long-awaited joint venture, Acadia. Reactions to this trifecta included alliances between and among competitive vendors like Microsoft, NetApp, Dell, Fujitsu and others.

In the cloud space, the discussion was all about what is and what might be. The soft launch of Microsoft Windows Azure had the cloud community and prospective customers alike discussing – with much anticipation – the merits of a platform and associated features that will not be publicly available until later this year. Likewise, Amazon Web Services’ introduction of Spot Instances for EC2 sparked much discussion about the possibility of a free market for cloud-computing instances. The requisite pieces for such a system are yet in place, but many think it is now just a matter of time until it materializes.

In the ongoing saga that is Oracle’s acquisition of Sun Microsystems, the fourth quarter brought the first signs of progress since the deal was announced in April. Oracle laid out a list of concessions that seem to have allayed European Commission concerns over the future of MySQL, which has been the primary obstacle in clearing the purchase. MySQL creator Monty Widenius launched a late campaign to free the popular open-source database from Oracle’s clutches, but success appears unlikely.

Economic recovery in the IT sector seemed likely when third-quarter results were announced in October, with IT vendors across markets growing revenues and beating Wall Street’s estimates. Additionally, the server market, fresh off the worst quarter since the 1990s, showed quarterly revenue gains for the first time in a year, and VC funding was up 16 percent from the second quarter. Our collective demand for computing resources kept the data center market expanding through the fourth quarter, spurring M&A activity and driving up stock prices in the face of advice to sell data center stocks.

The fourth quarter was not great for everybody, however. Intel was hit with two lawsuits — one by the State of New York and one by the FTC — and settled its existing litigation with AMD for $1.25 billion. And every company associated with “the cloud” suffered a black eye as a result of Microsoft and T-Mobile losing Sidekick users’ personal data. Although the data ultimately was recovered, the incident garnered much media attention and resulted in a class-action lawsuit against the companies involved.

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Will Microsoft Drive Cloud Revenues in 2010?

As the ramp-up towards the January launch of Microsoft’s Azure platform reaches a crescendo, the software giant, of all companies, could be the most significant revenue driver for the cloud in 2010. Here are several reasons why.

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Will Rackspace Partnership Save FathomDB?

Rackspace today said it would offer a database in the cloud through a partnership with FathomDB, a company that provides a relational database as a service. The move brings competition to the cloud database market and could be a lifeline for FathomDB.

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