Cloud computing 'could boost EU'

Widespread adoption of cloud  computing could give the top five EU economies a 763bn-euro (£645bn; $1tn) boost  over five years, a report has said.

The CEBR said it could also create 2.4m jobs. The technology gives software  and computing power on demand over the net.
But experts warn that cloud computing can be very disruptive to business, and  companies could end up "disillusioned".
"Nothing kills a new technology better than a poor user experience," said  Damian Saunders of Citrix.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11931841

It's Called Cloud Computing Not Cheap Computing

The debate between private and public cloud is ridiculous and we shouldn’t even be having it in the first place.

There’s a growing sector of the “cloud” market that is mobilizing to “discredit” private cloud. That ulterior motives exist behind this effort is certain (as followers of the movement would similarly claim regarding those who continue to support the private cloud) and these will certainly vary based on whom may be leading the charge at any given moment.

Reality is, however, that enterprises are going to build “cloud-like” architectural models whether the movement succeeds or not. While folks like Phil Wainewright can patiently point out that public clouds are less expensive and have a better TCO than any so-called private cloud implementation, he and others miss that it isn’t necessarily about raw dollars. It’s about a relationship between costs and benefits and risks, and analysis of the cost-risk-benefit relationship cannot be performed in a generalized, abstract manner. Such business analysis requires careful consideration of, well, the business and its needs – and that can’t be extrapolated and turned into a generalized formula without a lot of fine print, disclaimers, and caveats.

But let’s assume for a moment that no matter what the real cost-benefit analysis of private cloud versus public cloud might be for an organization that public cloud is less expensive.

So what?
If price were the only factor in IT acquisitions then a whole lot of us would be out of a job. Face it, just because a cheaper alternative to “leading brand X” exists does not mean that organizations buy into them (and vice-versa). Organizations have requirements for functionality, support, compliance with government and industry regulations and standards; they have an architecture into which such solutions must fit and integrate, interoperate and collaborate; they have needs that are both operational and business that must be balanced against costs.

Did you buy a Yugo instead of that BMW? No? Why not? The Yugo was certainly cheaper, after all, and that’s what counts, right?

IT organizations are no different. Do they want to lower their costs? Heck yeah. Do they want to do it at the expense of their business and operational requirements? Heck no. IT acquisition is always a balancing act and while there’s certainly an upper bounds for pricing it isn’t necessarily the deciding factor nor is it always a deal breaker.

It’s about the value of the solution for the cost. In some infrastructure that’s about performance and port density. In other it’s about features and flexibility. In still others it’s how well supported it is by other application infrastructure. The value of public cloud right now is in cheap compute and storage resources. For some organizations that’s enough, for others, it’s barely breaking the surface. The value of cloud is in its ability to orchestrate – to automatically manage resources according to business and operational needs. Those needs are unique to each organization and thus the cost-benefit-risk analysis of public versus private cloud must also be unique. Unilaterally declaring either public or private a “better value” is ludicrous unless you’ve factored in all the variables in the equation.http://cloudcomputing.sys-con.com/node/1637502
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Cloud Computing Acquisition: Cisco To Acquire LineSider

"Cloud computing represents a significant opportunity for Cisco customers to create more effective business models and increase the operating efficiency of the network," said Jesper Andersen, senior vice president of Cisco's Network Management Technology Group (NMTG), as Cisco this week announced its intent to acquire privately held LineSider Technologies, Inc., a leading provider of network management software that "helps customers build the network services necessary to securely create and deploy cloud computing infrastructure."

"With the acquisition of LineSider," Anderson continued, "Cisco will gain a key component to helping customers make this shift."

Based in Danvers, MA, LineSider will be bringing to Cisco advanced network management software that integrates both physical and virtual network services with a policy-based approach and makes networks more flexible and responsive to change. This - said Cisco in an announcement - will enhance its ability to rapidly provision network services.

http://cloudcomputing.sys-con.com/node/1635844

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Google and Its Cloudware Win Largest Federal Site Yet

GSA expects the deal, plucked out from under Microsoft, to cut its costs in half over the next five years

Google has won the General Services Administration (GSA) over to Gmail and Google Apps for Government.

The GSA, which is sorta like the federal government's quartermaster corps, said it's the first federal agency to move e-mail to a cloud-based system agency-wide.

It expects the deal, plucked out from under Microsoft, to cut its costs in half over the next five years and save it $15 million.

It will bring Google another 15,000 seats.

The agency said the widgetry better suits its mobile work force and is "in step with the administration's ‘cloud first' strategy."

The order is worth $6.7 million to Unisys which partnered with Google, Tempus Nova and Acumen Solutions. Unisys will provide the services and implement Google's software. It will tear out IBM's Lotus Notes and Domino software.

http://cloudcomputing.sys-con.com/node/1634622

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F5 Gets More Cloud-Friendly

F5 is making file virtualization more cloud friendly with the introduction of  software that translates storage protocols, making it possible to store files in  public or private cloud networks using a range of technologies.ARX Cloud Extender software runs on servers that sit between F5's ARX file  virtualization appliances and storage networks that may use different protocols  than are used by the devices the files are being sent from, the company says.

So if CIFS files are being stored in an Iron  Mountain (IRM) Virtual File  Store service cloud, the ARX Cloud Extender will make the protocol translation.  The software can handle any NSF or CIFS implementations as well as Iron Mountain  VFS and NetApp (NTAP) StorageGrid.

The software is expected to be available by the end of the year. F5 isn’t releasing pricing.


F5 is also opening up an application programming interface to its ARX appliance, which will enable customers to get new functionality from the devices. For example, using the API, a script could be written to compile the changes to a file or storage system since an application last scanned it. When
the application scans for an update, the script would feed it just the changes since the last scan rather than having the application scan the whole system itself, a more time-consuming option.

The API will be provided to customers as part of their maintenance contracts for the ARX, the company says.

F5 is announcing a virtual version of its ARX appliance that can be sold to OEMs to be bundled with  other products such as WAN optimization gear or file servers. Also, customers interested in an ARX
could readily download a trial comply of ARX to test before deciding whether to buy, the company says.

The virtual version supports VMware (VMW) virtual environments and will cost less than the ARX appliance, but F5 wouldn’t say how much it costs. It's available in the first quarter of next year, and comes in three models the 500, 2000 and 4000 for varying capacities.

http://www.cio.com/article/643871/F5_Gets_More_Cloud_Friendly?source=rss_cloud_computing
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A Year in the Clouds - How Cloud Computing Exceeded the Hype

We have now reached that time of year when the great and the good partake in the festive tradition of crystal ball gazing, as they predict the IT industry’s future trends for the next twelve months.
Over the next three weeks or so we will be deluged with various top tens, who will move, who will shake, who’ll hit tech heaven with the next iPad and who will reach tech hell with the next Sega Dreamcast.

It was about this time last year that seemingly every list published featured cloud computing as the number one game changer, the one trend that would have the greatest impact on the delivery of IT services. Some went as far as to predict that cloud should be viewed as the single most evolutionary computing development since the web itself was established. Not many argued against the list compilers rankings, but many viewed the prediction with a healthy pinch of cynicism.
It was Winston Churchill who once famously stated that “It is a mistake to try to look too far ahead. The chain of destiny can only be grasped one link at a time.”

We find ourselves one year on, with all of us having been bestowed with that marvellous gift of hindsight, and are now in a position to judge whether the soothsayers were on the money or whether Churchill’s cautionary note rings true.

So in 2010, did we reach for the cloud? The answer has to be a resounding yes, with the reality matching, and quite possibly exceeding, the hype.

Earlier this week, Angus MacSween, industry veteran and CEO of the UK’s iomart group plc told Dow Jones “I have never seen something happen quite as quickly as this. Six months ago around one-fifth to one-tenth of enquiries from potential customers related to cloud computing; now it is roughly nine out of ten.” He also stated that the attitude of firms’ IT departments has changed. “Whereas once they were reluctant to cede control of new projects, now they look to outsource to the cloud from the word go. We are witnessing a paradigm shift away from traditional on-premise models to the cloud”.http://cloudcomputing.sys-con.com/node/1636886
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Peeling Onions in the Cloud

From a conceptual standpoint, consumability through abstraction is arguably one of the most important benefits of cloud computing. The cloud offers up some collection of raw resources (i.e., servers, networks, storage, and applications) as a set of pre-configured, pre-integrated, and ready to use services. As a result, users typically need to know a good deal less about how those resources are setup, and can instead concentrate on consuming them to deliver their own set of services.

While the benefits offered by abstraction (namely consumability) are most certainly a good thing, abstraction can also be problematic. What do I mean? Well, while users understand the benefits they get from abstraction, sometimes they need to peel back the layers of the onion. In other words, they need to pop the hood and exercise more control over resource configuration within their cloud. While I expect this need is really news to no one, the implications on the cloud service provider, and subsequently cloud service consumer, are quite interesting to examine.

In order to provide a sense of concreteness around this discussion, I want to share the kind of discussions I have with users on a regular basis. A considerable part of my day job involves working with users implementing a cloud management device that allows them to more rapidly and consistently provision application middleware environments into an on-premise cloud. The fundamental premise of this solution is that of a patterns-based approach to middleware in the cloud. In this sense, a pattern is a representation of a particular application environment. Further, to a deployer, a pattern abstracts the inane details of the integration and configuration of the middleware supporting an application, and instead presents a simple, cloud-deployable unit. Therefore, the patterns are an abstraction of middleware resources delivered in the cloud.
While the patterns-based approach offers up a nice abstraction to the deployer, not everyone in an organization plays the role of deployer. Some within the organization are responsible for building the patterns that represent their desired middleware environments. It should come as no shock that these environments require customizations, and these customizations apply to many different layers in the software stack. Let the peeling begin!

Two Weeks, Two Companies, Two Results: The Tale of SalesForce and Cisco

The stock price of Cisco, a darling of the stock market for a long time, fell 16% and contributed to a 73 point drop in the Dow index on November 11, 2010. SalesForce, on the other hand, shot into the upper atmosphere, up by 18%. Interestingly, Cisco market cap fell by $24 billion, more than the total market cap of SalesForce.

While stock swings are not as common, what made these two companies change their market value so rapidly? Investors usually peer into the future and buy or sell stocks based on the projections. Cloud computing is being recognized by investors as an engine of growth and rewarding certain companies like SalesForce.

Cisco, the sixth largest technology company by market value(1), has some products that are challenged by solutions delivered free or virtually free. One example is the consumer facing umi telepresence compared to Skype or Gtalk. Also, the next iPad is rumored to have a camera built in and there is a plethora of smartphones planned or that have with video chat capability. In this example, Cisco is going after a video conferencing market already crowded with cheap solutions. I expect for Cisco to make some good cloud start-up acquisitions to enhance their server product line capabilities in the cloud market.

Google’s Office Trojan Horse

It’s no secret that Google has been eying Microsoft’s lucrative Office application franchise since the release of the premium, supported version of Google Apps a couple years ago.

Taking a page from Apple’s old playbook of using the education market to get a foot in the door, Google has scored some big wins among university and government IT buyers. They claim to have over 10 million students using Google Apps with over 3 million companies making the switch -- undoubtedly most of these are small firms, but a recent win with the State of Wyoming for over 10,000 seats shows Google triumphant in some head-to-head enterprise contests with Microsoft.

Targeting price sensitive individuals and students, who are also less attached to legacy software and used to running their lives online, was a logical opening gambit, but Google is making its next move squarely into the mainstream enterprise market with the beta release this week of their Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office.

The technology, originally acquired from DocVerse, bridges the gap between thick local applications and data, and cloud-based software and storage. Cloud Connect is a plug-in for Office 2003, 2007 and 2010 (sorry, no Mac support yet) that allows editing Office documents within the familiar confines of Word or PowerPoint, while automatically syncing them to Google’s cloud service. An interesting wrinkle is that once in the cloud, the documents inherit Google’s versioning and multi-user editing capabilities, so that several users can simultaneously edit a document, even locally within Office, without stepping on one another’s changes. (The technology is quite amazing -- those of you with a CS bent can read the full details of how they pull this off starting with the challenges, the solution and finally the optimizations).

Of course, Microsoft now has similar capabilities with Office 2010 (and Mac Office 2011) with it’s ability to save to Windows SkyDrive, but Cloud Connect certainly could drive a wedge between Office users who don’t yet have an enterprise collaboration implementation and their Microsoft account rep seeking to sell them on SharePoint of BPOS.

Many could find the hybrid approach coupling Google’s strength in online document sharing and collaboration with the familiar standby of Microsoft’s Office suite the best of both worlds. The risk for Microsoft is that once documents are in Google’s ecosystem, users could find themselves doing more and more of the content creation, editing and sharing online, rendering Office increasingly superfluous.

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Optimizing Performance and Availability in Virtual Infrastructures

Many IT administrators have already learned the hard way that managing the performance and availability of services built on virtualization technologies can be difficult, if not impossible, at times. All too often, early adopters of virtualization have struggled with limited technology features and stability constraints, while learning new ways to effectively manage capacity requirements. Fortunately, some platforms now offer clustering solutions that are mature enough to automate the balancing of workloads across physical resources. When combined with disciplined capacity planning and sound deployment configurations, it is possible to achieve fast, scalable, and highly available IT services using virtualization.

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The Top 5 Overlooked Reasons Why Business Belongs in the Cloud

There are plenty of “Top 5 lists” with generic reasons for why businesses should migrate into SaaS and cloud computing. Scalability, cost, mobility – they’re good reasons, sure, but we’ve heard them before: what else does cloud computing offer? If you’re thinking about moving your business into the cloud but haven’t yet, here are five reasons that are often overlooked:

1. Clients notice. Traditionally, IT has served a “backend” role in business. With the exception of email and websites, most businesses hide their IT solutions from clients, and with good reason: IT is ugly. Cloud computing changes that. Many SaaS offerings and cloud-based applications incorporate new ways of reaching clients as part of their workflow solutions. For example, Solve360, a popular online CRM, allows users to “publish” select materials from project workspaces, enabling real-time client collaboration. E-signature services allow clients to sign documents via a slick, paperless delivery model, and Helpdesk software lets clients access knowledge base forums and ticketed support in a branded, easy to use online environment. When it works, clients notice that you’re new, different, modern, and “slick.” IT itself becomes a branding exercise.

2. Smarter architecture. Amid all the fuss about cloud differentiation it’s easy to forget that, aside from being cloud-based, many cloud apps are simply designed better than their on-premise counterparts. This could be attributable to a whole host of reasons, the most prominent of which is that (good) cloud apps have been designed entirely from the ground up. Whereas most on-premise solutions have strong ancestral roots in software designed 10-20 years ago, cloud apps have been developed much more recently, meaning they’ve benefited from years of accumulated programming and business experience. Cloud apps are designed for modern businesses: most on-premise apps simply aren’t.

3. Usability. One of the great innovations of cloud-computing has been the focus put on end-users. Many legacy apps put function first and usability second (MS Access, anyone?), whereas good cloud apps don’t see a difference between the two. This key principle can’t be underestimated: software is only as powerful as the people using it. Generally speaking (and yes, there are exceptions to this) cloud-based software understands that people matter, creating a better user experience and increasing efficiency.

4. Integration. We just published a blog post blasting API integration, but it’s worth noting that at least cloud-based software makes API integration a viable and affordable workflow solution. Good luck getting anything to work well with a legacy app, especially on the cheap: compare that reality with the generous and freely available API’s that most SaaS and cloud-based vendors offer and it’s an easy sell.

5. Quality of Service. This only applies to SaaS, but it’s a powerful enough attribute that I’m listing it as an argument for all cloud-computing. In a traditional IT setting, clients have a one-time transaction with vendors, repeated every few years for product upgrades. In the world of SaaS, clients generally pay vendors month-to-month and upgrades and bug-fixes are released on a significantly ramped-up timescale. This means that: A) clients can drop out at any time, giving vendors a perpetual incentive to innovate, and: B) clients get a product that’s updated far, far more frequently than before. In addition, SaaS vendors increasingly have robust forums and user communities where support questions and feature requests are addressed quickly, effectively, and by multiple user types. This establishes a culture of support and user-driven innovation that has long been missing from on-premise software.