Citrix is a pioneer when it comes to serving up Windows apps on the iPad. Now VMware is joining the fray with a free app, VMware View for iPad. With View you can get at Windows through 3G networks or, if you have a hotspot nearby, a wireless network (which should be faster and cheaper). While the client app is free, your shop will have to have VMware View 4.6 desktop virtualization software installed.
Are you using the iPad for corporate computing? If so, for what and how? E-mail your stories to [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 03/22/2011 at 12:47 PM1 comments
Microsoft just released the second beta of Visual Studio LightSwitch, a tool that lets power users turn what they do in Excel, Access and other apps into full-fledged, albeit lightweight, .NET apps. The tool uses wizards and GUI tools to help these users rapidly build line-of-business apps. In this latest beta, Microsoft is allowing these apps to be published to the cloud through Azure.
Not all power users are power coders. Thus, LightSwitch lets real programmers examine the code in Visual Studio before making its way to either desktops or the cloud.
Posted by Doug Barney on 03/22/2011 at 12:47 PM5 comments
VMware's vCenter is the company's main virtualization management tool. Now a new edition, vCenter Operations, aims to do for the cloud what vCenter did for virtualized servers. The Operations tool gathers data from both vSphere and vCenter and lets this all be monitored and analyzed in one new place.
The new tool is based on VMware's acquisition of Integrien, an 8-year-old company VMware picked up last summer. With its vSphere integration, the Operations tool can view networks, storage and servers, and provide configuration, performance management and capacity management.
While this sounds like virtualization management, pure and simple, it's also cloud management, as clouds are mostly a bunch of virtual resources pooled together into a utility.
This is all well and good, but I worry about the impact it may have on many third parties who stuck their necks out supporting VMware in the early days.
Who is your favorite cloud or virtualization vendor? Answers readily received at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 03/15/2011 at 12:47 PM2 comments
Think writing a cloud apps takes tons of pizza, Mountain Dew and years of C programming skills? VMware wants you to think again. It just announced its intention to buy Wavemaker, a company that makes Java tools it claims are so easy, even I could use them!
The company targets developers who aren't really developers, but on a lower rung -- opting for visual tools that help the apps build themselves.
The drag-and-drop Wavemaker tool can build apps that run through all popular browsers, and can be hosted on OpSource, RackSpace or Amazon EC2 clouds.
Posted by Doug Barney on 03/15/2011 at 12:47 PM2 comments
How do you know, or prove, that you are an expert in a technology? For some, certifications do the trick. Let's face it: If you passed a test, you have to know something.
That is the theory behind Microsoft's new cloud certs.
Microsoft is taking a two-pronged approach. First, it is adding cloud issues to many of its existing certifications, and also plans to add an array of cloud-specific certification training programs in the next 12 months.
For training, Microsoft offers books (the cheapest method), as well as in-person training (the most expensive) and Internet-based courses (somewhere in the middle).
Most shouldn't jump right into a cloud course, Microsoft advises. There are many areas of cloud computing, each with an on-premise counterpart or antecedent. For instance, if you are interested in Infrastructure as a Service, Microsoft suggests getting your server and virtualization chops in order first.
Do certifications really matter? Let me know at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 03/15/2011 at 12:47 PM6 comments
I was surprised to hear that Cisco had a cloud-based e-mail service that debuted, at least in a test version, last winter. Perhaps that distinct lack of buzz is why Cisco decided that instead of seeding the cloud market with this service, it would blow it out of the sky.
Cisco isn't blaming the product. Instead, it got a bit of a reality check from customers. Apparently, there are so many solid choices for hosted e-mail that customers just weren't interested in a brand-new, unproven offering. I'm not sure if Google, Lotus and Microsoft exactly breathed a sigh of relief, but they should be pleased that Cisco will help its cloud mail testers migrate to the more established players.
Are you looking at or using hosted e-mail? Share the skinny at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 02/28/2011 at 12:47 PM0 comments
Microsoft may be a leader in the cloud, what with BPOS/Office 365, Azure and all the Windows Live services. But that doesn't mean its own moves are a cake walk. A candid Microsoft CIO, Tony Scott, gave an honest assessment about the Redmond cloud migration to a group of CIO peers at the Microsoft campus. Scott already moved what he claims is the world's largest Web site, Microsoft.com, to Azure.
One of the biggest issues is political rather than technical. After going through this rather massive process, Scott now advises senior IT to keep company execs, especially CFOs, fully in the loop. That's because moving to the cloud can change chargeback models. CFOs' chargeback surprises are no picnic.
Posted by Doug Barney on 02/28/2011 at 12:47 PM2 comments
IT pros have lots of cloud worries. Is it secure? Is it private? Is it stable? Will the prices go up once you move? And will it kill off a decent portion of well paying IT jobs? They are also worried about data ownership. Can the cloud vendor somehow use the old maxim "possession is nine-tenths of the law" and exert ownership?
This is especially troubling in the case of subpoenas or government demands over compliance. While IT tends to honor these requests, I'm sure IT would rather hand off the data than a cloud provider.
All of these topics came to the fore during a recent CIO panel discussion. The CIOs argued that one way to allay these fears is to lay out data ownership in an iron-clad contract. If you don't like the terms, walk away and over to a provider that will abide by your terms. This is particularly critical for government agencies. Heck, it's a matter of national security. And it's not just data ownership you should stipulate, but IT processes, workflow and other proprietary IT information.
Posted by Doug Barney on 02/28/2011 at 12:47 PM1 comments
I'm always skeptical when vendors publish "independent benchmarks" proving them the best. In the '80s and '90s, all the database companies played this game and got a lot of attention -- positive and negative. In particular, I remember some of these benchmarking firms being subsidized by the very company they were testing. Guess who usually came out on top.
Now Joyent, which sells software to cloud service providers, is claiming that Amazon's EC2 eats its dust. The IMS Company tested Joyent's I/O performance, looking at Linux VMs, Windows VMs and Joyent SmartMachines, and in nearly all cases, Joyent was faster.
Cloud consultancy Cloud-Harmony did a bunch of benchmarks last year, but for some reason didn't include Joyent. At the same time, Joyent uses Cloud-Harmony benchmarking tools or frameworks for its tests. The world of benchmarking has more going on behind the scenes than backstage at a beauty pageant!
Joyent may be right, and so should be proud. However, choosing a cloud provider is a complex undertaking, and performance is but one factor. Joyent isn't exactly a newcomer; the company is about 7 years old. And a perusal of its Web site reveals a company with personality, humor and a solid board of directors.
What do you look for in a cloud provider? E-mail thoughts to [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 02/22/2011 at 12:47 PM2 comments
Scalar Decisions is a Canada-based cloud integrator that just made a major deal. First, some background: Scalar has expertise in Zimbra, an online e-mail and collaboration tool that competes with Microsoft Exchange. VMware, seeing an opening, bought Zimbra and now offers it to its partners such as Scalar.
Scalar just entered a deal in which the University of Guelph in Ontario will move some 60,000 mailboxes from on-premise servers, also based on Zimbra, to the cloud, eh. Before the deal could be struck, Zimbra had to assuage the university's serious privacy concerns. Apparently, it got all those privacy "i"s dotted.
Posted by Doug Barney on 02/22/2011 at 12:47 PM0 comments
In the United States, our EPA is the Environmental Protection Agency. In Europe, it stands for the European Privacy Association. The group met recently in Barcelona and gave potential cloud users an earful.
First, the group is hugely bullish on the cloud, believing that if done right, cloud computing could have a huge impact on the European Union, saving member states up to $600 million euros over the next five years. But the EPA is very worried about the privacy of all that data floating about in the cloud. Heck, look how easy it is for hackers to steal data behind all our firewalls and IPS and IDS systems. Now imagine this same information floating about in the ether. A bit scary, mate!
But here's where efficiencies of scale come in, the EPA argues. Not every IT shop has the best security -- it's hard to build and maintain. Cloud providers, though...well, their whole business should be about selling secure data services, and one comprehensive security plan could be applied to thousands of enterprises.
I've got mixed feelings, but I have to believe the cloud companies will get it right far more often than they get it wrong. Are you as hopeful as I am? Pessimists and optimists are both invited to weigh in at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 02/22/2011 at 12:47 PM0 comments
Larry Ellison pooh-poohed the cloud in 2008 when he said "The interesting thing about cloud computing is that we've redefined cloud computing to include everything that we already do. I can't think of anything that isn't cloud computing with all of these announcements. The computer industry is the only industry that is more fashion-driven than women's fashion. Maybe I'm an idiot, but I have no idea what anyone is talking about. What is it? It's complete gibberish. It's insane. When is this idiocy going to stop?”
Oracle is nowhere near stopping this idiocy and is making cloud announcement after cloud announcement. Latest case in point is the announcement of a new cloud file system that supports cloud storage for Oracle and non-Oracle applications.
The Cloud File System is a clustered file system and lets Oracle database software create private storage clouds and manage non-Oracle data.
The cost for this honor? Five grand for each CPU.
Are you an Oracle customer and do you like what they're doing in the cloud? Yays and nays equally welcome at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 02/15/2011 at 12:47 PM1 comments