Many in IT want the cloud to function just like internal systems but with less of the hassles. In the early days, the cloud was a bit of a black box -- it only did what the providers let you.
That just doesn't cut it for IT pros used to total control. That is the whole impetus behind private clouds, whether they are hosted in the cloud or act as a private cloud in the data center.
Amazon, a cloud leader, is testing a new DNS service, RT 53, which offers IT some of this control, says Werner Vogels, CTO for Amazon . "Route 53 provides authoritative DNS functionality implemented using a worldwide network of highly available DNS servers," Voglels wrote in a recent blog. "Route 53 has the business properties that you have come to expect from an AWS service: fully self-service and programmable, with transparent pay-as-you-go pricing and no minimum usage commitments."
Posted by Doug Barney on 12/07/20107 comments
Don't you hate people who don't practice what they preach? Well then, steer your anger towards me, for I am a hypocrite. I not only preach about the cloud, I wrote a huge feature about data and file synchronization. I exposed the best tools and advocated that we all have an active role in the replica of our files, not just for backup, but for access from any device anywhere. Pretty good idea and pretty good advice.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 12/07/20107 comments
Content delivery is a pretty cool area. Akamai, which was founded by three MIT profs with the help of a handful of equally brilliant students, was a pioneer in the field.
Now Amazon wants to harness its massive network to help high-volume Web sites deliver content faster. The new service, CloudFront, is an add-on to its Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and moves bandwidth-intensive items such as video closer the ultimate consumer.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 11/30/20100 comments
I love startups. Someone has to come up with a hopefully great idea and have the gut to see it through. A few weeks ago I gave a quick glimpse of Nasuni. So did Bruce Hoard, editor-in-chief of Virtualization Review, which you can read here.The CEO, Andres Rodriguez, is seemingly connected to everyone that matters in the virtualization and cloud space.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 11/30/20102 comments
One of the advantages of working in Framingham, Mass. is that nearly all vendors pass through at one time or another. Framingham, oddly enough, is the epicenter of the computer press -- there must be a dozen tech magazines here and many more nearby.
That's how I got to meet Frank Huerta over a bowl of Lobster Bisque at Legal Seafoods.
Huerta is co-founder and CEO of cloud infrastructure startup Translattice. While many startups pick out a niche they hope to one day own, Huerta hopes to become the next VMware, by creating a foundation that changes the way we all computer.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 11/30/20105 comments
Dell is moving deeper into the cloud with its plans to buy Boomi. While Dell deals primarily in hardware that runs off-the-shelf third-party apps, Boomi is a cloud integration firm that eases the tying together of cloud apps with on-premises hardware and software.
Boomi already has one great reference account: Saleforce.com uses its integration software!
Posted by Doug Barney on 11/16/20101 comments
VMware is clearly aiming for the cloud with vSphere, but that is not the allusion I intended in my headline. By cloudy I mean VMware's future is uncertain.
VMware, as I see it and reported recently, has two main problems: Microsoft and itself.
Microsoft, although late in the virtualization market, is taking direct aim at VMware. Redmond now has Hyper-V, which is getting better each day and is free, as well as a line of desktop and application virtualization tools. Microsoft also has a rather amazing partner in the form of Citrix. That's the technical challenge.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 11/16/20102 comments
Microsoft has a new report that discovers facts so obvious even Jessica Simpson could have found them.
The profound realization is this: If you move your IT operations to the cloud, you save electricity. And if you save electricity, you'll emit fewer greenhouse gasses.
Let's see here... If I stop running so many machines in my data center, I won't need as much juice? You don't need Encyclopedia Brown to figure that one out!
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Posted by Doug Barney on 11/16/20107 comments
A year ago Cisco, VMware and EMC all joined to form the Virtual Computing Environment Coalition. In point of fact, this is really a duo as EMC owns VMware.
Recently telecom service provider Orange Business Services has joined, and the group renamed itself the Flexible 4 Business Alliance.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 11/09/20103 comments
Welcome to Doug on Cloud, Virtualization Review's new cloud blog, where I will be delivering news, analysis and coverage on everything related to the cloud.
So how did this all get started? It basically began at Legal Seafood in Natick, Mass. Vendors on press tour always come through our offices in Framingham, some 20 miles west of Boston, and that's usually where we meet for lunch. Lately, an awful lots of cloud startups have come by, and I've been besieged by press releases from cloud startups to existing vendors embracing the cloud.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 11/08/20105 comments