Collaborative Strategy Guild » Cloud Computing

Open-Source A.W.S.: Creating a Thousand Clouds – NYTimes.com

Peter O'Kelly — Sun, 11 Mar 2012 12:08:00 +0000

For those inclined to make private AWS cloud clones

“Like Amazon or not, they are the de facto standard for cloud,” says Marten Mickos, the chief executive of Eucalyptus. “It’s just that not everyone wants it. Some people in open source think it is immoral to make a profit. I don’t.” Mr. Mickos was previously the head of MySQL, an open source database company that was purchased by Sun Microsystems (now part of Oracle) in 2008 for $1 billion.

Eucalyptus originated with a project at the University of California, Santa Barbara, but is clearly intended to be a profit-making business. Its customers include Puma, Sony, and the federal Department of Agriculture, and it counts over 25,000 clouds running on its software worldwide. Eucalyptus runs for free when customers use open source virtualization software, necessary for cloud computing, like Xen and KVM. When customers use the more popular products from VMWare, they must use Eucalyptus’s subscription product, which costs $2,000 per server a year.

Open-Source A.W.S.: Creating a Thousand Clouds - NYTimes.com

Windows on an iPad – Technology Review

Peter O'Kelly — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 11:11:00 +0000

Check the source for an overview of Steve Perlman’s latest adventure

By downloading a free application to an iPad, users get two gigabytes of storage and access to popular Office software

Windows on an iPad - Technology Review

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What Went Wrong With Oracle’s Quarter? – Arik Hesseldahl – News – AllThingsD

Peter O'Kelly — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 10:37:00 +0000

Oracle had a bad quarter, but it can now point to at least one large Exadata cloud

Ellison also hinted that Apple is a big Oracle customer. He mentioned a “a very large American smartphone manufacturer” that had bought more than 30 Oracle Exadata systems as it built out its cloud. Unless I’m missing something, there’s really only one company that fits that description, and that’s Apple. Its use of Oracle gear within the mix at its North Carolina data centers has been speculated about before, but never confirmed by Apple directly. (Big surprise, that.)

What Went Wrong With Oracle's Quarter? - Arik Hesseldahl - News - AllThingsD

Continue reading: What Went Wrong With Oracle’s Quarter? – Arik Hesseldahl – News – AllThingsD

Salesforce, a Leader in Cloud Computing, Draws Big Rivals – NYTimes.com

Peter O'Kelly — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 10:54:00 +0000

I suspect Google will be surprised to read that Google Apps is “close to” $1B in revenue; Gartner estimates it at considerably less than that

Mr. Benioff, the chief executive of Salesforce, is characteristically pleased with himself. “It’s great that Oracle and SAP are buying cloud companies,” he said, asking, “Do you think it will transform them?”

For Mr. Benioff, who co-founded Salesforce in 1999, the acquisitions are a vindication of his strategy. “Amazon Web Services is making over $1 billion in revenues with cloud software,” he said. “Google Apps is close to that. We’re on track for revenues of $3 billion in 2012. That is $5 billion, and that is what has them worried. Where are SAP, Microsoft, Oracle? Why haven’t they taken our customers?”

Salesforce, a Leader in Cloud Computing, Draws Big Rivals - NYTimes.com

Google vs. Microsoft: Not All Clouds Are Created Equal | Wired Enterprise | Wired.com

Peter O'Kelly — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 10:53:00 +0000

Excerpt from an Amit Singh profile; he’s the 20-year Oracle alum now leading Google’s enterprise operations

With its new cloud services, Oracle is offering its various software tools over the web, including its database. But it hasn’t adopted a Google-like multi-tenant architecture. Ellison says that in keeping customers isolated from each other, Oracle provides better security — whereas Singh sees this as an inability to really cut costs.

There’s no settling these arguments. There are certainly advantages to Google’s model — we’ve seen them firsthand — but no doubt, there will be businesses who refuse that model for years to come. But Singh’s point is well taken. At Google, “the cloud” means something very different than it means at Oracle. Or Microsoft.

Google vs. Microsoft: Not All Clouds Are Created Equal | Wired Enterprise | Wired.com

Don’t look now, but AWS might be a billion-dollar biz [GigaOM]

Peter O'Kelly — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 10:30:00 +0000

In other news, from AMZN

“Other,” the revenue category in Amazon’s reports that encompasses Amazon Web Services, is growing like mad — 70 percent over last year, in fact. This matters because it likely means AWS is outpacing its projected growth and is rapidly approaching a $1 billion run rate.

[…]

Whatever the actual market size though, one has to assume AWS will be responsible for the lion’s share. Rackspace topped $100 million in cloud revenue in 2010, and has done just just over $80 million over the first two quarters of 2011. When Terremark announced its fiscal third quarter earnings in February before the Verizon acquisition closed, it claimed an annual cloud computing run rate of $37.5 million.

http://gigaom.com/cloud/dont-look-now-but-aws-might-be-a-billion-dollar-biz/

Federal Push for ‘Cloud’ Technology Faces Skepticism – NYTimes.com

Peter O'Kelly — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 11:00:00 +0000

Forecast: partly cloudy

Some agencies, especially those that deal with less confidential information, have been quick to adopt the model. In the first six months of Mr. Kundra’s policy, the Agriculture Department has moved about 46,000 employee accounts and is in the process of adding 120,000. The cloud can help speed along technology projects, said Chris Smith, the agency’s information chief.

But other departments, especially defense and state, are proceeding more slowly. Teri Takai, the chief information officer for the Defense Department, said her agency’s use of cloud computing would be limited for the near future to keep confidential data within the military’s advanced security systems.

Federal Push for ‘Cloud’ Technology Faces Skepticism - NYTimes.com

Your own cloud – silver lining included – The Boston Globe

Peter O'Kelly — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 08:07:00 +0000

A personal private cloud market profile by Hiawatha Bray

There’s a lot to like about cloud computing, but why use the other fellow’s cloud? Many of us save our most precious photos, videos, documents, and music on servers owned by Google or Amazon or Microsoft. But now it’s cheap and easy to create clouds of our own, with simple, but powerful servers that will fit on a bookshelf in the basement and transmit our files to any Internet-connected device on earth.

Your own cloud - silver lining included - The Boston Globe

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U.S. to Close 800 Computer Data Centers – NYTimes.com

Peter O'Kelly — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 09:29:00 +0000

Government IT heads to the cloud

The federal government is the largest buyer of information technology in the world, spending about $80 billion a year. The Obama administration, in plans detailed Wednesday, is taking aim at some of that by closing 800 of its sprawling collection of 2,000 data centers. The savings, analysts say, will translate into billions of dollars a year and acres of freed-up real estate.

U.S. to Close 800 Computer Data Centers - NYTimes.com

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Microsoft Challenges Itself With New Cloud Version of Office – WSJ.com

Peter O'Kelly — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 09:33:00 +0000

An Office 365 reality check

Office 365 enters a crowded field. Google Docs from Google and VMware's Zimbra email, for example, are attracting hundreds of companies seeking tools that work from desktop computers, smartphones or the growing number of tablet computers in use today.

Microsoft's biggest competitor, however, might be itself. Nearly nine of every 10 office computers runs one of the 14 versions of Office the company has released since the software's launch in 1989. The company now needs to convince those computer users, estimated at about one billion, to switch to Office in the cloud without disrupting the legacy version that is financing the transition.

Microsoft Challenges Itself With New Cloud Version of Office - WSJ.com