Friday 12 March 2010
A lot of the benefits of cloud computing, such as virtualization, shared infrastructures, highly disciplined systems management, flexible deployment and scalability are of value to just about all data centers and service providers, whether you run them as a private clouds providing services to only members of the company, or as public clouds open to everyone. There is also general agreement that you should make cloud deployment decisions on a case-by-case basis, especially decisions as to which applications should be run on private versus public clouds. Public cloud deployments make the most sense for highly commoditized, standardized, mass customized applications. There was also a broad consensus that infrastructure savings and flexible scaling where key adoption drivers for cloud computing. One panelist remarked that “The benefits of cloud computing start and end with the dollars you can save.
Cloud-like computing architectures within organizations are garnering a lot of interest. Whether you call them “private clouds” or just the next iteration of service-oriented architectures (SOA), the bottom line is that organizations–especially larger ones–are far more interested in leveraging the approaches embodied by cloud computing than they are in actually hosting their applications elsewhere. It’s arguably been the dramatic “Big Switch” take on cloud computing that has led to so much of the hype surrounding it.
At CeBIT, IBM and SAP today are announcing a ground breaking technology demonstration in which SAP applications were moved live between IBM POWER6 servers running in remote locations. The technology, developed as a part of the European Union’s RESERVIOR project, is targeted at service providers and enterprises that wish to use workload mobility to enhance performance and Quality of Service (QoS). According to Dr. Yaron Wolfsthal, senior manager for system technologies at IBM’s Research Lab in Haifa, Israel, this technology is aimed at providing the RESEVIOUR participants with “energy-efficient, borderless delivery of IT services that are driven by actual demands”. To learn more and to read the entire article at its source, please refer to the following page, IBM and SAP preview live motion between clouds.
The advantages of cloud computing for business end-users are well established, but an attorney with global law firm White & Case says there are also precautions that businesses and service providers alike need to consider when adopting managed and virtualized services. “Cloud computing doesn’t so much raise new issues so much as it creates carryover of historical issues,” said Daren Orzechowski, who handles cases involving information technology, as well as branding and licensing. Chief among those issues are security, legal access and data backup.
8K Miles, which takes its name from the diameter of the Earth, launched three months ago with $1 million and a mission to help small businesses outsource tasks by connecting them with a community of service providers that specialize in everything from software development (expected to be the lion’s share of transactions) to legal and accounting advice. 8K verifies the validity of those service providers and lists them in a categorized, searchable portal, ranking them according to customer feedback and collecting 7.5% of the total cost of the outsourcing project in the process.
In a few months, the company hopes to add targeted advertising to the site, and eventually it will offer sponsored rankings – letting service providers pay more for a higher spot on search-result lists. Today 8K is adding a third entity to the mix: service brokers that will act as matchmakers within the matchmaking site, further simplifying the selection process for a fee (and theoretically making use of their own contacts outside 8K’s community, which they can then bring inside the portal). The site also includes videoconferencing, provided by Oovoo, to let buyers and sellers see and speak with one another live to get better acquainted.
Low cost cloud computing infrastructure and managed services offering is powered in part by 3tera’s award winning AppLogic cloud computing platform and managed by Cirrhus9. The C9 CSP Platform enables Service Providers, like managed hosting companies, ASP firms, software companies and/or IT services companies, to offer Cloud solutions to their customers with minimal investment, short timelines and with reduced complexity. In addition, Cirrhus9 has configured a suite of Open Source products and management tools which provide low cost prepackaged solutions that include email, document sharing/management, collaboration, learning management and others.
AppLogic allows IT professionals to develop and deploy online applications in minutes instead of weeks, using only a browser to manage and scale on demand fully distributed systems and deliver security and business continuity for all applications, while fully controlling their cloud computing environment. Our mission is to help companies use and better understand Cloud technology to achieve measurable results,” continued Michalik. “As a Cloud Integrator, we are passionate about the success of our clients utilizing Cloud technology. For the Service Providers and Technology Companies the net result is that these features bring substantially greater efficiencies, shorter time to market and consistent high-quality infrastructure, with remarkably lower system associated costs.
IBM Cloud Computing
IBM announces establishing the first IBM cloud computing laboratory in Hong Kong. The company said that the new facility will provide a global hub for web-based messaging services to support IBM’s emerging LotusLive cloud service portfolio, which offers company-to-company social networking and on-line collaboration tools.
The new lab will be located in Hong Kong’s Cyberport complex, an information technology centre developed to foster innovation within the Asia-Pacific region. IBM also announced the closing of the acquisition of Outblaze Limited’s messaging assets. Outblaze operates an on-line service platform for the provision of secure, private-label e-mail, collaboration and social media services to other service providers, telecomms operators, corporations, academia, media and publishing companies.
LotusLive.com has been designed to help businesses work smarter by forming virtual communities in the cloud, connecting colleagues, partners, suppliers and customers. The Outblaze asset purchase adds web-based e-mail to IBM’s portfolio of on-line collaboration tools, enabling subscribers to easily provision e-mail accounts and users to access their e-mail from any computer through any web browser.
