Microsoft has formed an alliance with Dell, HP, and Fujitsu to sell pre-configured Microsoft Azure-powered cloud servers. By pre-configured, they mean that the servers should be ready to go without any further configuration required. As such, they call them “appliances” rather than servers.

These appliances will allow companies to take advantage of the “private cloud”, with which they run their own applications and storing them in their own data centers. This differs from the “public cloud”, in which the applications are on servers in third-party data centers.

Potential customers are expected to be larger businesses with scalable enterprise server needs. The first in line is the auction super site Ebay.com. The Azure software itself, however, will be more widely available. Microsoft is joining numerous other big IT companies that are now offering cloud services, including IBM, Google, and Amazon.

Source: The China Post
Photo: Flickr

Continue reading: Microsoft, Dell, HP, Fujitsu Team Up to Sell Cloud Servers

If you’ve never been a fan of the cloud computing hype that has been bandied about the web lately, check out this video of Oracle CEO Larry Ellison bashing the technology.

As far as Ellison is concerned, cloud computing has been around for years. It’s just a computer connected to a network, he says. He also believes many of the people who push cloud computing have no idea what they’re talking about.

Although the CEO doesn’t use the kindest of words to make his point, his argument is very valid. Cloud computing hold a lot of promise for the feature, but too many people have “jumped on the cloud” without fully understanding the technology or its background.

Continue reading: Oracle CEO hates on cloud computing

The largest and most successful commercial Linux distributor has announced the release of the first Linux hybrid cloud platform that integrates with many industry cloud services. Until now, the only other hybrid cloud platform was Azure by Microsoft. The comprehensive package, which they are calling Red Hat Cloud Foundations, gives customers the ability to run applications in both public and private clouds.

Red Hat made the announcement this week in Boston at the Red Hat Summit, where they also announced new additions to the Red Hat Certified Cloud Partner Program, namely IBM, NTT Communications, and Savvis. Amazon Web Services was the first partner to join previously.

Red Hat was one of the first commercial Linux distributions that had a large following of desktop users. They gradually moved their business model to servers with Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and have since made the natural expansion into virtualization and cloud computing. Many of the servers that power websites and web hosting providers around the world use their software.

Source: ComputerWorld

Continue reading: Red Hat Introduces Hybrid Cloud Platform

In a company blog post published Monday, AMD discusses the growth of cloud computing and explains how its products meet the new needs of the technology. Besides tooting its horn about its processors, the company hit the nail on the head when it comes to the cloud’s server requirements:

The explosion of digital data is fundamentally changing the dynamics of how servers are built, bought and deployed. The days of just throwing “raw” performance at the problem are long gone and the era of efficient computing with servers that balance price, performance and power is officially upon us.

Previously, we’ve been accustomed to monster servers with ten hard drives and a kilowatt power supplies. While these servers won’t disappear overnight, the web is all about scaling. Big servers are very expensive, but spreading out a load among many small servers is cheaper and more reliable.

Check out the above video for some pretty cool statistics about cloud computing.

Continue reading: AMD toots its cloud computing horn

While the data center industry is looking at exponential growth in the next three years, it’s also faced with a few problems in the explosion of industry need for storage space and data processing power. With the need for greater capacity, denser servers are being added to data centers’ equipment, but the centers are also facing increases in operational overheads and the under-usage of IT assets.

The issue is at the core of the Infiniti Research market report on the data center equipment industry, but also forms part of a series of reports from their TechNavio branch (including one on green cloud computing for 2008 to 2012).

The data center industry could be a significant example of business innovation in the years to come with the pressures of complex data centers and decreasing space forcing new solutions in service delivery and business models.

Source | TheWhir

Continue reading: Global data center study: 2010-2013

The Amazon Cloud storage service has found a new way to solve the problem of slow upload times that could take weeks for some users uploading terabytes of data. It has taken a more traditional approach to solving the problem, allowing users to physically send their data on storage devices to be subsequently uploaded by Amazon itself with its high-speed network.

The upload service comes at a cost of $80 for shipment to one of the Seattle, Virginia or Dublin storage locations, and another $2.49 for each hour it takes to upload. The service comes at an additional cost to the usual Amazon Simple Storage Service fees. In light of this development, there are calls to allow cloud storage customers to put in place their own WAN acceleration device to upload data.

The service is called the AWS Import/Export service, and Amazon says: “AWS Import/Export accelerates moving large amounts of data into and out of AWS using portable storage devices for transport. AWS transfers your data directly onto and off of storage devices using Amazon’s high-speed internal network and bypassing the Internet. For significant data sets, AWS Import/Export is often faster than Internet transfer and more cost effective than upgrading your connectivity.”

Which means you basically book a courier job with FedEx. For more details or to use the Import/Export service, see the aws.amazon website.

Source | NetworkWorld and eWorldPost
Photo | Flickr

Continue reading: Amazon Cloud uses Fedex to ship data

Although the corporate move to cloud computing has been measured and cautious, many average computer users have made the move without even realizing it. Users of Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail, and other web-based email, have all entrusted their communications with cloud services.

Generally speaking, this is not a bad thing and provides the users with a lot of flexibility, but there are at least 5 reasons to think twice about using cloud email with your own website.

1. A commercial company will have the only copies of your data.

2. Archiving may be a pain if you ever decide to shut down the email accounts but keep the messages.

3. When you cannot connect to the Internet, you cannot see those emails.

4. You are at the mercy of the email company, which can change their software or even shut down completely.

5. You cannot control mail server configuration, except what your service provider allows.

Some cloud services offer a happy medium by providing users with web-based email and pop/imap service. That way, your data is still ultimately yours.

Photo Source: Flickr

Continue reading: 5 Reasons NOT to Rely on Web-based Email

Federal CIO Vivek Kundra has announced a change to the White House’s Recovery.gov website that will save the government some $750,000 USD. What did it do, cut half the site’s staff and lease out excess server space? No, the feds simply switched the site to cloud computing.

The change will save the White House $334,000 in 2010 alone. After much searching, Kundra’s team decided to host with Amazon’s EC2 cloud computing service. Other government agencies have begun preliminary tests with the cloud, but Recovery.gov is one of the first federal sites to move to cloud hosting.

Photo | Flickr

Continue reading: White House to save $750,000 with cloud computing

Earlier this week, Amazon’s EC2 cloud service experienced yet another power outage. This time, a car crashed into a local utility pole and knocked out the power. The generator transfer switch failed. A number of East Coast customers lost service for about an hour.

A very similar incident occurred in 2007 at a RackSpace data center. Regardless of this, Amazon needs to get its act together. Why didn’t the server load transfer over to the generators properly?

The cloud computing provider surely won’t be signing up very many new customers if these power outages continue. Finally, current EC2 users must be very upset about this and worried about Amazon’s long-term reliability.

Continue reading: Amazon EC2 cloud service experiences power outage... again

After power outages on Amazon’s EC2 cloud computing service resulted in a loss of service for some users on May 4 and May 8, Amazon has announced that it is working on a change in its power distribution to address the issue. The company said the changes will, “significantly reduce the number of instances that can be affected by failures like we have seen in the last week.”

The outages were caused by the failure of several electrical components as well as human error. Several disgruntled users report experiencing data loss as well.
While most EC2 users will unaffected by the power failures, this just goes to show that cloud computing isn’t perfectly reliable and there is still a lot of progress to be made in the field of distributed computing.

Continue reading: Amazon addresses cloud computing power issues

Cloud computing start-up VMOps announced the acquisition of a great domain this week: Cloud.com. It bought the name from Meetup co-founder Scott Heiferman for an undisclosed price.

VMOps will rebrand itself as Cloud.com. Whatever price the firm paid for the name, I think it was worth it. Cloud.com is short, memorable, and catchy. It it will let VMOps brand itself as a leader in the cloud computing industry.

Although no price was revealed, it wouldn’t surprise me if the name sold for at least $1 million. Domains this expensive trade hands on a regular basis out of view of the public eye.

Continue reading: Start-up buys Cloud.com

Looking ever-upward toward the clouds, IBM has bought cloud computing integrator Cast Iron Systems. The company is a “cloud broker” that helps other firms switch to cloud computing.

Craig Hayman, general manager of IBM WebSphere, stated:

The integration challenges Cast Iron Systems is tackling are crucial to clients who are looking to adopt alternative delivery models to manage their businesses. The combination of IBM and Cast Iron Systems will make it easy for clients to integrate business applications, no matter where those applications reside.

Seeing as Cast Iron Systems offers consulting and IBM builds servers, the seem like a great match for competing in the cloud computing niche. Previous clients of Cast Iron include Sports Authority, Time Warner, Dow Jones, and Peet’s Coffee & Tea.

IBM projects that cloud computing will grow by 26% annually, going from $47 billion in 2008 to $126 billion by 2012.

Continue reading: IBM buys cloud computing firm Cast Iron Systems