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.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 03/15/20112 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.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 03/15/20116 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.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 02/28/20110 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.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 02/28/20112 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.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 02/28/20111 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.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 02/22/20112 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.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 02/22/20110 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!
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Posted by Doug Barney on 02/22/20110 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?”
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Posted by Doug Barney on 02/15/20111 comments
VMware is hoping to lead the charge in merging private, on-premise clouds with external cloud providers. The whole idea is to build an in-house cloud utility using virtualization.
Once that is running and you gain the presumed efficiency and reliability of being able to shift workloads, you can extend data storage, applications and processing by linking to service providers. Instead of adding more servers or arrays in-house when you run out of gas, you simply order more juice from the provider.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 02/15/20112 comments
When Microsoft CRM exec Matt Miszewski fled Redmond for Salesforce.com, Microsoft filed suit claiming the move violated Miszewski's non-compete agreement.
Now in a new motion, Microsoft is accusing the ex-employee of stealing Microsoft data -- to the tune of some 25,000 pages (wonder if he had them stored in a cloud somewhere, filled a hard drive or just walked out with about a dozen wheelbarrows full of printouts?)
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Posted by Doug Barney on 02/15/20110 comments
Service providers (who used to just be called carriers) now have a tougher deal. There is competition everywhere -- much of it from industry deregulation and new companies free from the constraints of the past.
One advantage the older carriers have is deep pockets -- cash collected by their monopolies were protected by law (remember how expensive plain old phone service used to be?).
Verizon is using a chunk of that substantial change to buy a piece of the cloud. In this case, it snapped up managed services and cloud hosting concern Terremark for a cool $1.4 billion.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 02/08/20115 comments