Friday 03 September 2010
Microsoft’s cloud computing platform was initially released last fall and offers an operating system and developer services that can be used individually or together. The whole shebang will hit the virtual shelves at the Professional Developer Conference in November of this year. Once available, Azure will be offered through a consumption-based pricing model. This method will allow partners and customers to pay for the services that they consume, and nothing more. Exact pricing for Azure’s OS will reportedly be US$ 0.12 per hour for computing, and US$ 0.15 per Gigabyte per month for storage. Plans include a basic US$ 9.99 per month basic edition and a US$ 99.99 per month business edition which comes with a 10 Gig database.
Cloud Computing is kind of a huge thing right now so naturally, at the initial release of Microsoft’s platform, we considered the possibility that the company was “betting the farm on Azure.” Do we still think that’s the case? Perhaps. Earlier this year we saw upgrades aimed to woo developers and the pending commercial availability certainly speaks to the needed openness.
The reason it is difficult to run multiple applications on a single instance of a general purpose operating system is because each application has unique needs which conflict or compete with the unique needs of other applications. Virtualization technology, such as that provided by VMware or Citrix with XenServer, breaks the bond of the application to a physical server by placing a layer of software, called a hypervisor, on the physical hardware beneath the operating system instances that support each application. The applications are “isolated” from one another inside virtual machines, and this isolation eliminates the conflicts.
Amazon embraces this virtualization model by using Xen to enable their Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) service. I can tell you that there are lots of folks asking lots of questions about how to enable Windows applications in the “cloud.” I do not believe the answer is “Windows for EC2″ plus “Windows for GoGrid” plus “Windows for Rackspace” plus “Windows for [insert your data-center cloud name here].” If Microsoft does not find a way to turn the licensing ship and embrace JeOS, the market. irtualization enables the separation of the application from the infrastructure upon which it runs - making possible a level of business agility and dynamicism previously unthinkable. Imagine being able to run your applications on-demand in any data-center around the world that exposes the hypervisor (any hypervisor) as the runtime environment.
Although most have never heard of cloud computing — and experts argue over its very definition — many do it every day. By uploading photos to Facebook, sending messages via Gmail or playing Club Penguin online, users are accessing programs that live far away in cavernous rooms containing thousands of computers. Andreas Bechtolsheim, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, where he still consults, knows a thing or two about cloud computing. He’s chief development officer for Arista Networks, a Silicon Valley start-up that supplies networking equipment used to build these massive arrays of servers.
He also was one of the first people to invest in Google in 1998. His $100,000 investment in the company started by Sergey Brin and Larry Page helped turn the Birkenstock-wearing engineer into a billionaire. Bechtolsheim helped explain this shift in the way we use computers.
What we need is a nuts and bolts, sound-proofed room, gathering of the minds and Linux thought leaders to discuss Linux, its current state, its legal standing and its future as an operating system. I’m not talking about a nice little get together with keynote speakers with high-powered, 10,000 foot views of where Linux is and where it’s going. And I’m not talking about vendor booths touting the latest and greatest Linux toys or big blowout parties from a spectacle-making platinum sponsor.
What we need is a nuts and bolts, sound-proofed room, gathering of the minds and Linux thought leaders to discuss Linux, its current state, its legal standing and its future as an operating system. It’s time to get serious. It’s time to put aside our petty differences with the likes of Microsoft and Apple and just take care of business–the business of producing an operating system. It’s time to focus on the future.
We need key players and contributors from Google, Yahoo, Red Hat, Novell, Debian, Ubuntu, The Linux Foundation, Slackware, CentOS, Oracle, IBM, HP, Intel, AMD, VMware and Citrix to come together and hash out a grand plan for this once niche operating system that’s grown up into the enterprise-level beast that has changed the world.
At this year’s Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference, Microsoft, confirmed the upcoming commercial availability of their cloud services platform, Azure. Then they slapped a price tag on it. Microsoft’s cloud computing platform was initially released last fall and offers an operating system and developer services that can be used individually or together. The whole shebang will hit the virtual shelves at the Professional Developer Conference in November of this year. Once available, Azure will be offered through a consumption-based pricing model. This method will allow partners and customers to pay for the services that they consume, and nothing more.
Exact pricing for Azure’s OS will reportedly be US$ 0.12 per hour for computing, and US$ 0.15 per Gigabyte per month for storage. Plans include a basic US$ 9.99 per month basic edition and a US$ 99.99 per month business edition which comes with a 10 Gig database. Cloud Computing is kind of a huge thing right now so naturally, at the initial release of Microsoft’s platform, we considered the possibility that the company was “betting the farm on Azure.” Do we still think that’s the case? Perhaps. Earlier this year we saw upgrades aimed to woo developers and the pending commercial availability certainly speaks to the needed openness.
Google has the advantage of being a pure internet company, with all its products built around the internet, as will its OS. By relying on far-away data centres and computer servers to do the heavy lifting, users won’t need powerful, expensive PCs. The concept, called cloud computing, has long been a focus for Google chief executive Eric Schmidt, who devoted his doctoral dissertation on the topic. Analysts predict that within the next five years, most mission-critical applications will be run through any device which has a browser, including the cell phone. This, in the end, may be the key to Chrome’s success, especially if programmers are able to offer superior applications based on its browsing capabilities.
The new version of Office - which is expected to be released early next year - is said to heavily focus on web-based versions of some of its most popular services, like World and Excel, which appears to be directly aimed at cutting off users from adopting similar features being offered in the cloud from Google. o make the Google/Microsoft situation that much more tenuous, some are arguing that Google made its announcement of Chrome OS - the proposed operating system from the search engine giant - last week to take some power out of Microsoft’s announcement today.
In making its announcement today, Microsoft said that when Office 2010 is officially launched, half a billion people will have access to its applications in the cloud. Office is obviously the 900-pound gorilla that Google is attempting to slay with Google Docs, but a 900-pound gorilla with a matching web offering will be a lot tougher,” wrote MG Siegler last week for TechCrunch. “And that’s likely why Google wanted to get its own uppercut in first [last week].
Trend Micro is expanding its overall virtualization security portfolio with the introduction of a content security solution to protect VMware ESX/ESXi environments. Trend Micro Core Protection for Virtual Machines is designed to secure VMware virtual machines, both active and dormant, comprehensively and efficiently. The product leverages the VMsafe APIs from VMware to offer layered protection through the use of dedicated scanning VMs coordinated with real-time agents within the VM. We were interested to try out Trend Micro Core Protection for Virtual Machines since most security solutions are focused on the operating system software and this was the first solution we found for addressing the unique aspects of virtual machines,” said Terence Snijtsheuvel, a senior consultant at Compugen, one of Canada’s largest privately owned and operated IT services providers and PC systems integrators.
A tough economy is driving companies globally to adopt more cost-effective measures and pursue efficiency, one of the main reasons why analysts expect the virtualization industry to hit over $7 billion over the next four years. But while server virtualization increases efficiency in the data center, it also challenges the security of the IT environment: Existing content security solutions imported from the physical world typically leave security gaps when deployed in virtual environments. Trend Micro Core Protection for Virtual Machines addresses these issues and enables enterprises to maximize the economic benefits of virtualization without compromising the security of their datacenter.
Microsoft delivers its own haymaker with Windows 2010, a cloud-based version of its Windows Office suite of word-processing, spreadsheet, and PowerPoint software. The new line of products won’t be immediately available to customers under a beta tag; rather, Microsoft will give developers and tech professionals a sneak peek at the software, giving them a chance to suggest improvements and build buzz.
Microsoft has a built-in advantage when it gets ready to introduce the new cloud-based suite. Access to the software will be immediately available to anyone with a Microsoft Live account such as Hotmail. That means some 400 million people will be able to access the software with a few clicks. On the other hand, Microsoft has been damn slow getting to this point while Google has been offering cloud-based software via its Google Apps products for quite some time.
If you’d like to take a look at Microsoft’s belated venture into the cloud, both TechCrunch and PC Magazine have looked over the products and offer thorough reviews. Microsoft has even set up a Web site to offer videos showcasing the new suite. But as the name implies, Microsoft 2010 won’t be available for public use for quite some time.
According to ABI Research, the introduction of a cloud computing network means applications are no longer restricted by memory, handset functions and the operating system. Dan Shey, mobile services practice director at ABI Research, said: ‘By moving some of the intelligence of the handset and its functions into the cloud and using an application that is available for all handsets - browsers - the application development process is simplified creating a greater incentive to build applications for a larger addressable market.
Mobile application can become more powerful if it can extract location and presence information while part of the cloud network. A study from Juniper Research showed that global direct and indirect revenues from mobile applications are expected to exceed $25 billion (£16.7 billion) by 2014. Growth in the sector is being propelled by the launch of a number of stores targeting mass-market and high-end handsets.
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