Cloudtastic!

Microsoft’s Azure Gets A Business Model And An Official Release Date

2009-07-14T09:32:00.001-07:00

Microsoft says that Azure will be offered for purchase through a consumption-based pricing model and will try to continue to offer promotional discounts to enterprise customers. Pricing for Azure’s OS is $0.12 cents an hour for computing and $0.15 cents per Gigabyte per month for storage. SQL Azure will offer a basic $9.99 per month plan and a $99.99 business edition, which has a database capacity of up to ten gigabytes.

Microsoft SQL Services Is Now Microsoft SQL Azure, More Software + Services News Next Week At WPC09

2009-07-09T08:27:00.001-07:00

Via LiveSide - Windows Live news and interviews:

Microsoft is updating the branding for SQL Services and SQL Data Services. From now on SQL Services will be called Microsoft SQL Azure and SQL Data Services will be called Microsoft Azure Database:

This name change doesn’t reflect a change in the products themselves; we will still be providing a powerful relational database foundation to the Azure Services Platform. By standardizing our naming conventions, we’re demonstrating the tight integration between the components of the services platform. More intuitive names also help to reinforce the relationships between our on-premises and cloud solutions. Ultimately, the goal is to drive simplicity and clarity for customers as they consider on-premises and cloud computing approaches for solving their IT needs.

More news and updates related to Microsoft’s Software + Services strategy will be announced next week at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans.

Long Zheng has been digging in deeper as to what might be announced next monday: Potential announcements already on people’s minds include the announcement and subsequent availability of Windows 7 RTM code and pricing and licensing plans for Windows Azure. What also might be announced is the public release of the Microsoft Office Web application that was announced back at PDC08, Long received some information that confirms this one. Can’t wait!

We’ll keep our eyes open, that’s for sure!

Meffifying Windows Azure

2009-07-03T12:42:00.001-07:00

Via CodeBetter.Com - Stuff you need to Code Better!:

Magnus has been off doing some interesting work around integrating MEF with Windows Azure. The first question you might be asking is Why?

In his words, he set out to build a template for Windows Azure templates that:

enables testability

abstracts away storage

is extensible and easy to evolve during development

In the post he shows how to take the RoleManger and expose it through MEF, thereby making it pluggable. He then creates a mock Role Manager for use in his unit tests, thus removing the dependency on all the Azure infrastructure.

I am guessing this is the first of many posts to come on MEF and Azure.

For more, check out Magnus post here.

Open source to shape cloud computing, but not dominate it

2009-07-03T09:01:00.001-07:00

Via CNET News.com:

Redmonk analyst Stephen O'Grady writes a bleak, but likely accurate, eulogy for open source's relevance to cloud computing. In a world where horsepower matters more than the software feeding those "horses," in terms of the entry cost to compete, and where big vendors like Amazon and Google are already divvying up the market, the odds of a small-fry, open-source start-up challenging "Goliath" are slim.

Continue reading Open source to shape cloud computing, but not dominate it

The Cloud as a Platform for Platforms

2009-07-02T10:12:00.001-07:00

Via Amazon Web Services Blog:

Of the many things I love about AWS, I will mention three of my favorites in this blog post:

AWS does not force developers to use any particular programming model, language, or operating system.

AWS does not force developers to use the entire suite of services - they can use any of our infrastructure services individually or in any combination.

AWS does not limit developers to a pre-set amount of storage, bandwidth, or computing resources they can consume - they can use as much or as little as they wish, and only pay for what they use.

Our customers love this flexibility. Today, a developer can run more experiments and achieve results much faster than before. If something does not work in a particular environment, the developer can drop that idea, click a few buttons, dispose all of his infrastructure and move on to the next experiment; starting with a fresh, new environment. Developers can try out several new ideas simultaneously by running multiple projects concurrently. Once the ideas are implemented, they can be further battle-tested using more resources in the AWS cloud until they become finished products. Developers love this because they are able to convert their concept/idea into a successful finished product quickly. As a result, we are seeing tremendous innovation happening at break-neck speed. The Cloud is becoming a platform for Innovation.

Continue reading about The Cloud as a Platform for Platforms.

The Role of the CTO & CIO in Cloud Computing

2009-06-22T16:38:00.001-07:00

Via Latest News from Cloudonomics Journal:

Recently I asked a question on twitter, one I figured would stir up some debate. (Which was the point) The question was "Does the CTO matter any more with the rise of Cloud Computing or is it all about the CIO with data reigning supreme?"

As the founder of a cloud software company, I am the self imposed CTO. I have no formal CTO training other then a passion for emerging technology. In a company full of PHd's, I have probably the least technical credentials with no formal post secondary education. As a CTO I view my job as the technical leader. My job is to stay ahead of the curve, spotting trends or even sometimes helping to create the trends based on what I see as a continued evolution occurring in computing. In this new information driven world, ideas have become the new currency and in this, I see my role as not only the technical leader but also the creative leader. I continually try to educate myself on the various emerging technologies with an eye toward their practical implementation within either our cloud software platform or within our customers infrastructures.

For me thought leadership is also a very important aspect of my job. For example, this very blog, is a way for me to publicly think through various concepts with a kind of public peer review.

I do admit, the job of a CTO can greatly vary depending on your company size and the market segment. Like any executive job role there is room for a standard deviation within it's definition. Most will agree there is no common definition of a CTO or it's responsibilities, apart from that of acting as the senior-most technologist in an organization. The role can also greatly vary depending on the type of work, industry or market segment of the organization. More over a CTO can be thought of as a "Jack of all technical trades" and possibly a master of some.

I found the follow excerpt on wikipedia contrasting the differences of a CIO Vs CTO particularly insightful, "The focus of a CTO may be contrasted with that of a CIO in that, whereas a CIO is predisposed to solve problems by acquiring and adapting ready-made technologies, a CTO is predisposed to solve problems by developing new technologies. In practice, each will typically blend both approaches."
"In an enterprise whose primary technology concerns are addressable by ready-made technologies, a CIO might be the primary representative of technology issues at the executive level. In an enterprise whose primary technology concerns are addressed by developing new technologies, or the general strategic exploitation of intellectual property held by the company, a CTO might be the primary representative of these concerns at the executive level."

"A CTO is focused on technology needed for products and technology sold to clients where a CIO is an internal facing job focused on technology to run the company and maintaining the platform to run services to sell to clients."
So basically a CTO is in charge of technology whether a phone system, security system, storage system or anything that has a technological aspect. In contrast the CIO leads the management of data / information and how it's utilized.

With the rise of cloud computing the role of the CIO is quickly becoming one of the most important jobs in any well manged business. Information has become a disruptive tool and defining the information architecture while assuring a near realtime access to an ever expanding world of data will be the key metric in which successful and competitive businesses are measured. I won't go as far as saying the role of the CTO is becoming less important, but the role of the CIO is certainly more important then ever before and this is especially true of most modern data driven companies.

I believe we are in the midst of a realtime information revolution. No longer can we sit back and analyze what happened yesterday, we must focus on what is happening now or even what will happen tomorrow. Those companies who have the most efficient access to a realtime data stream will dominate and the CIO not the CTO will be the person who will have the most influence in bringing about this coming corporate information revolution.

The new generation of cloud-development platforms

2009-06-22T16:25:00.001-07:00

Via The Wisdom of Clouds:

Software development "in the cloud" has been one of the really interesting developments to come out of the cloud computing market so far. While many early players, such as Zimky and Coghead died on the vine, there is a pretty robust Platform as a Service (or "PaaS") market out there today, with Google App Engine taking the most visible lead, and a pretty solid stable of Ruby on Rails-based hosting providers telling a compelling story of their own.

Such success is driving some new players to seek the spotlight, however. I wanted to highlight two that I found most interesting. They are very different from one another, but those differences highlight the breadth of opportunity that remains in the PaaS market.

Your Cloud is Not a Precious Snowflake (But it Could Be)

2009-06-18T17:31:00.001-07:00

Via Latest News from Cloud Computing Journal:

You can’t differentiate until you do something different

Gartner analyst and cloud pundit Lydia Leong reminds us that without differentiation, all clouds look pretty much the same.

“These are traits that it doesn’t take a genius to think of. Most are known requirements established through a decade and a half of hosting industry experience. If you want to differentiate, you need to get beyond them.” [emphasis added]

She lists traits common to most cloud providers: premium equipment, VMWare-based, private VLANs, private connectivity, and co-located dedicated gear but doesn’t really get into what really is – or should be – the focus of cloud offerings: services. To be more specific, infrastructure services.

A cloud provider of course wants a solid, reliable infrastructure. That’s why they tend to use the same set of “premium” equipment. But as Lydia points out differentiation requires services above and beyond simple hosting of applications in somebody else’s backyard.

Cloud providers need to differentiate based on what kinds of infrastructure services they can provide including but certainly not limited to management. Going above and beyond the basics, however, requires investment and some roll-up-your-sleeves coding at this point because the management and process automation systems simply don’t exist. The means to build those systems do exist – that’s part of the allure and value of dynamic infrastructure, a.k.a. Infrastructure 2.0.

Using the tools available it is wholly possible to build out the “self-service” for infrastructure services that folks have been led to believe will one day, hopefully, maybe be part and parcel of a cloud computing offering. Building this out is not trivial, but it’s certainly worth it if you’re trying to (a) differentiate from your competitors and (b) find yet another revenue stream on which you can ride smoothly into the next round of technology advances.

Lydia mentions that most cloud providers are built atop premium equipment and cites Cisco networks and F5 application delivery infrastructure among others. There are more than enough “services” that can be abstracted via both companies’ APIs to keep cloud computing providers differentiating their hearts out. There’s presence and location, application acceleration, application security, commonly used web application functions like rewriting URIs and customized “apology” pages via network-side scripting just to name a few. There’s a veritable cornucopia of specialized functionality above and beyond simple network and application network functionality that simply isn’t being exploited to its full potential, both in terms of the technological capabilities and the ability to differentiate for a cloud computing provider.

There’s no reason why such differentiation of cloud providers cannot be achieved through infrastructure services and, in fact, its about the only way to differentiate aside from better management/control over design and maintenance of the deployment. The rest is simply price wars – competing based on cost per mega or kilo or peda or tera byte of something. The problem may very well be that we’re just too early in the game for such large-scale differentiation; that not enough customers are even sure what to do with the basics let alone advanced infrastructure service offerings. Problem is that many times customers won’t sign on to anything – a service or a product – without the promise that they can do more, either right now or in the future. Whether they want to – or will use those services – is irrelevant. The fact that they exist tells the customer that the provider is serious, dedicated, and ready to do business.

It’s kind of a Catch-22. Without the demand there’s no reason for a provider to invest in such an undertaking, but without investing in such an undertaking there may well continue to be a lack of demand. Remember that in many organizations data center infrastructure is the underlying foundation for their competitive advantage. If you can’t offer tit-for-tat you’re simply not a good replacement no matter how much “cheaper” you may be in the short term or long run.

Differentiation of cloud services will eventually come down to management and infrastructure services because there’s really no where else for it to go. What and how those services are packaged and offered to customers will go a long way toward cloud providers differentiating amongst their offerings.

Technorati Tags: MacVittie,F5,cloud computing,infrastructure,network,Cisco,application delivery,infrastructure services,cloud,Lydia Leong,Gartner,infrastructure 2.0,dynamic infrastructure

Related blogs & articles:

“Enterprise class” cloud

The Infrastructure 2.0 Trifecta

The Revolution Continues: Let Them Eat Cloud

Cloud computing is not Burger King. You can’t have it your way. Yet.

Control, choice, and cost: The Conflict in the Cloud

Virtualization: How to Isolate Application Traffic

Categories: Cloud Computing , iControl
read more

ParaScale & Alfresco Partner to Deliver Content-as-a-Service in the Cloud

2009-06-17T12:32:00.001-07:00

Via Latest News from Cloud Computing Journal:

ParaScale and Alfresco Software have announced a cloud-based integrated ECM solution co-locating Alfresco Content Management and ParaScale Cloud Storage software on the same hardware. Unlike traditional ECM architectures, the combined solution enables organizations to store and access content without adding management overhead or cost; offers simple configuration and setup; and ensures high-performance and easy scale-out.
read more

Taking.NET Development to the Cloud

2009-06-17T10:58:00.001-07:00

Via Latest News from Cloud Computing Journal:

Cloud platforms, such as Microsoft Azure, offer compelling advantages for building new scalable .NET applications. But can the Cloud be used for developing existing .NET applications? In this article, I’ll explain how we’ve made the leap to Cloud-based development for our internal applications and the lessons we’ve learned along the way.
read more

Mezeo Software and iomart Group Partner to Deliver Cloud Storage

2009-06-17T10:56:00.001-07:00

Via Latest News from Cloud Computing Journal:

Mezeo Software Corp., the leading provider of a deployable platform for cloud storage, today announced that iomart Group plc has selected the Mezeo Cloud Storage Platform for their implementation of a cloud based distributed solution that allows the customer to create a virtual storage area that can be shared between servers, workstations and users. The service supports most popular operating systems including iPhones. With full access and control, iomart’s customers will be able to administer their files anytime, anywhere.
read more

Into the Cloud We Go...

2009-06-17T10:54:00.001-07:00

Into the Cloud We Go... — A new shift in computing is upon us – cloud computing. As our use of computing resources evolves from mainframes to PCs and networks, we are now facing a major shift in the way we work. This could have dramatic effects on the way we use computers, both for work and play. But the security issues need to be discussed, risks assessed and judgements made knowing the risks and issues. For some, cloud computing makes a lot of business sense, for others, it may create confusion.

Cloud Computing Expo Live: Messaging in the Cloud

2009-06-17T10:53:00.001-07:00

Cloud Computing Expo Live: Messaging in the Cloud — How can you effectively send mass permission-based email at scale? That’s the question Bryan Wade, Director, Channel Partnerships for ExactTarget, tackled head-on in this session at Cloud Computing Conference & Expo 2009 East. Sending and tracking the impact of messages sent at massive scale can be a daunting task – tracking each individual open, click, and bounce can easily become too intensive for back-end systems to handle.

A Sneak Peak at our Plans in the Cloud

2009-06-17T10:43:00.001-07:00

Via The Official Rackspace Blog:

Last week we briefed some key partners and customers on our view of the emerging world of on- demand computing, including some plans around our offers.

We want to share with you some highlights.

We firmly believe the era of on-demand computing is upon us. Over the next decade, we predict the de facto model of consuming computing will not be from an in-house server farm but over the web via on-demand computing providers. Why? Well, given the new tools and services associated with cloud hosting and more mature models like dedicated hosting and SaaS (software as a service), the options to get all your computing over the web have become vastly more affordable and flexible than in-house alternatives. We encourage you to examine the benefits of a “no servers” approach to your business, instead opting to get computing services as you need them.

Over the coming months, you will see a lot from Rackspace to help make this transition super compelling.

We gave a sneak preview of a few focus areas: 1. We are moving all our services under the Rackspace brand. We will continue to have 3 distinct service areas: Managed Hosting, Cloud Hosting and Email and Apps. We have focused, dedicated teams working to build out the best of breed offerings in each of these areas, but we believe that most companies will want to use services across all 3 computing services. Different workloads require different tools and we want to bring you the best for all your core computing needs. While full integration does not exist across all 3 offers, we will be moving in that direction over time. But, you can be assured you are dealing with Rackspace and our trademark Fanatical Support® standard will be a part of each offer.

2. The first area of integration surrounds what we call Hybrid Hosting. Imagine having core systems in a managed environment with dedicated equipment and firewalls for security, but behind the firewall access to unlimited cloud resources on-demand for your web and application tiers. Or private connections to the cloud to offload data for warehousing and computational work. Well, it is coming. Stay tuned.

3. We are also very focused on advancing our Cloud Servers product quickly. We have had great traction on an offer that includes persistent storage, DNS services, auto resizes and other easy to use tools. But, we are a missing a few things. One is API’s: As you may know, we’ve recently released the API spec for public comment – after all, the people using the spec should define it. We’ve received great feedback on it already (thanks!). It will be released to the public in July and you can expect a lot of cool partner tools quickly. Two, what about Windows? Half the market simply cannot use Cloud Servers. Well, Windows for Cloud Servers is officially coming. Our plans include offering fully supported Windows. We want to offer high performance Windows that supports the latest OS and database builds and also meets Microsoft’s supportability standards. Achieving this high bar comes with some complications which is causing our longer timelines. But, the work is underway.

4. Finally, we have big plans for our Apps and Email division. We are currently supporting over 1.2 million business class email seats. We continue to build out the best Exchange-IMAP hybrid email system that brings huge saving to our customers. But, we are also moving on to the next core IT problem. We want to help businesses solve their basic storage issues. So in the coming months you will see a few new offers from us. One, an advanced, but low cost mail archiving offer. So whether you are sick of managing large PSTs or need a compliance tool, giving your employees unlimited archiving will soon be an affordable option. Next, we plan to offer a variety of tools to help with basic collaboration and backup. Every business needs a basic fileshare. A centrally managed, infinitely scalable fileshare is on the way. And, want to offer your employees an automated PC backup and web access tool? Stick around.

We are very excited about these and many other projects in the works. We hope this collection of on-demand services will help you say no to your next server purchase. We plan to remove the burdens of technology lock in, slow lead times, expensive build-outs, and unsupported technologies. We are just getting started. Keep the feedback coming!

Computing In The Cloud Era
View more from RackspaceHosting.

IBM's new enterprise cloud portfolio

2009-06-16T00:49:00.001-07:00

Via The Wisdom of Clouds:

Enterprise systems and services vendor IBM today launched a new portfolio of products and services for the enterprise cloud computing market, which the company claims builds on lessons learned from earlier cloud initiatives. Targeted at providing standardized platforms for specific computing workloads, the products and services, launched under the Smart ...

Microsoft to announce Azure business plan next month

2009-06-15T12:48:00.001-07:00

Via CNET News.com:

The software maker, which has been testing its cloud-based operating system plans to use its July partner conference to offer details on how it will get paid for hosting cloud-based applications.

Microsoft talks virtualization and cloud

2009-06-15T10:41:00.001-07:00

Via CNET News.com:

Microsoft's virtual Server and Tools Business industry analyst meeting last week emphasized reducing costs today but also placed a lot of focus on forward-looking technologies.

clouds and peer-to-peer

2009-06-11T23:15:00.001-07:00

Via Above the Clouds:

We've been asked a few times about the relationship between clouds and peer-to-peer systems, and we wanted to take this opportunity to respond.
Definitions
We differentiate between peer-to-peer (p2p) techniques and p2p systems. The former refers to a set of techniques for building self-organizing distributed systems. These techniques are often useful in building datacenter-scale applications, including datacenter-scale applications that are hosted in the cloud. For instance, Amazon's Dynamo datastore relies on a structured peer-to-peer overlay, as do several other key-value stores.
People often use "P2P" to refer to systems that use these techniques to organize large numbers of cooperating end hosts (peers) such as personal computers and settop boxes. In these systems, most peers necessarily communicate using the Internet, rather than a local area network (LAN). To date, the most successful peer-to-peer applications have been file sharing (e.g., Napster, BitTorrent, eDonkey), communication (Skype). and embarrassing parallel computations, such as SETI@home and BOINC projects.
Limitations
The main appeal of p2p systems is that their resources are often "free", coming from individuals which volunteer their machines' CPUs, storage, and bandwidth. Offsetting this, we see two key limitations of P2P systems.
First, p2p systems lack a centralized administrative entity that owns and controls the peer resources. This makes it hard to ensure high levels of availability and performance. Users are free to disable the peer-to-peer application or reboot their machine, so a great degree of redundancy is required. This makes p2p systems a poor fit for applications requiring reliability, such as web hosting, or other sorts of server applications.
This decentralized control also limits trust. Users can inspect the memory and storage of a running application, meaning that applications cannot safely store confidential information unencrypted on peers. Nor can the application developer count on any particular quantity of resources being dedicated on a machine, or on any particular reliability of storage. These obstacles have made it difficult to monetize p2p services. It should come as no surprise that, so far, the most successful p2p applications have been free, with Skype being a notable exception.
Second, the connectivity between any two peers in the wide area is two or three order of magnitude lower than between two nodes in a datacenter. Residential connectivity in US is typically 1Mbps or less, while in a datacenter a node can often push up to 1Gbps. This makes p2p systems inappropriate for data intensive applications (e.g., data mining, indexing, search), which accounts for a large chunk of the workload in today's datacenters.
Opportunities
Recently, there have been promising efforts to address some of the limitations of p2p systems by building hybrid systems. The most popular examples are data delivery systems, such as Pando and Abcast, where p2p systems are complemented by traditional Content Distribution Systems (CDNs). CDNs are used to ensure availability and performance when the data is not found at peers, or/and peers do not have enough aggregate bandwidth to sustain the demand.
In another development, cable operators and video distributors have started to test with turning the set top boxes into peers. The advantage of settop boxes is that, unlike personal computers, they are always on, and they can be much easily managed remotely. Examples in this category are Vudu, and the European NanoDataCenter effort. However, to date, the applications of choice in the context of these efforts have still remained file sharing and video delivery.
Datacenter clouds and p2p systems are not a substitute for each other. Widely distributed peers may have more aggregate resources, but they lack the reliability and high interconnection bandwidth offered by datacenters. As a result, cloud-hosting and p2p systems complement each other. We expect that in the future more and more applications will span both the cloud and the edge. Examples of such applications are:

Data and video delivery. For highly popular content, p2p distribution can eliminate the network bottlenecks by pushing the distribution at the edge. As an example, consider a live event such as the presidential inauguration. With traditional CDNs, every viewer on a local area network would receive an independent stream, which could lead to choking the incoming link. With p2p, only one viewer on the network needs to receive the stream; the stream can be then redistributed to other viewers using p2p techniques.

Distributed applications that require a high level of interactivity, such as massive multi player games, video conferences, and IP telephony. To minimize latency, in these applications peers communicate with each other directly, rather than through a central server.

Applications that request massive computation per user, such as video editing and real-time translation. Such applications may take advantage of the vast amount of computation resources of the user's machine. Today, virtually every notebook and personal computer has a multi-core processor which are mostly unused. Proposals, such as Google's Native Client aim to tap into these resources.

Who's Architecting the Cloud?

2009-06-10T16:11:00.001-07:00

Who's Architecting the Cloud?:

As the hype cycle for the cloud computing continues to gather steam, an increasing number of end users are starting to see the silver lining, while others are simply lost in the fog. It is clear that the debate over the definition, business model, and benefits of cloud will continue for some time, but it is also clear that the sluggish economic environment is increasing the appeal of having someone else pay for the robust infrastructure needed to run one’s applications. Yet, all this talk of leveraging cloud capabilities, or perhaps even building one’s own cloud, whether for public or private consumption, introduces thorny problems. How can we make sure that the cloud will bring us closer to the heavenly vision of IT we search for rather than a fog that hides a complex mess? Who will make sure that the cloud vision isn’t just another reinterpretation of the Software-as-a-Service, Application Service Provider, grid and utility computing model that provided some technical answers but didn’t simplify anything for the internal organization? Who is architecting this mess?

(Via ZapThink.)

Google’s David Girouard on the company’s cloud computing ‘perception problem’

2009-06-09T16:09:00.001-07:00

Google’s David Girouard on the company’s cloud computing ‘perception problem’:

During today’s press event highlighting new features for Google Apps (the company’s online productivity tools), Google Enterprise President David Girouard also spoke about common concerns leveled against applications in the Internet cloud — in other words, running software on Google’s infrastructure rather than your own. There are plenty of potential customers who are still concerned about security and reliability, but those worries are more an issue of perception than reality, Girouard said — and, surprisingly, he pointed a finger at the journalists in the room.

There’s a bit of a double standard at work, he argued. When most technical systems have a minor outage, the press doesn’t say anything. On the other hand, if Google has “a service disruption of any size, it gets picked up.”

“It is a perception problem,” Girouard said. “That’s our problem to fix.”

And Google has been taking steps in that direction, he added. It unveiled an Apps Status Dashboard so customers can see whether different services are up and running. Girouard also said Google has started to “really do better about handling enterprise users” — those large companies tend to have the most concerns about using web tools, and they need to be certain that nothing will go wrong, so Google makes sure enterprises know their issues are being addressed “in a preferantial way.”

As someone who has been guilty of “Holy crap — Gmail is down!“-style posts myself, I think there’s some fairness to the criticism, and to the idea that the press’ occasional Google-induced frenzies have less to do with greater unreliability on the search giant’s part, and more with general cloud computing fears.

Not that those fears are completely baseless. For one thing, when a substantial number of Google services have problems, even if only briefly, it can be a big deal for the entire Internet.

(Via VentureBeat.)

Structure 09: The GigaOM Cloud Computing conference

2009-06-09T12:49:00.001-07:00

Sponsored Post: Structure 09: The GigaOM Cloud Computing conference — VentureBeat Readers get a discount!:

Cloud computing has shifted from idea to reality. Get the scoop on how to put cloud computing to work in real companies at GigaOM’s Structure 09 conference on June 25th. Your exclusive VentureBeat $75 discount on this year’s conference is available now! http://structure09.eventbrite.com/?discount=MPVENTUREBEAT.

Don’t miss this opportunity to meet with and learn from the experts. Buy your ticket now.

Save the date.

Structure 09 June 25, 2009 Mission Bay Conference Center San Francisco, CA Come hear what’s on the minds of the biggest players in the cloud computing industry.

The last year has seen an explosion in the interest and uptake of cloud computing. The noise is increasing, and it’s getting harder to pick out the real signals about where the industry is headed. Structure 09 is your amplifier. For our second annual event, we bring out the industry’s biggest influencers to help clarify the present situation and investigate the evolution of the cloud computing ecosystem.

Structure 09 is a focused single day event, programmed to make the most efficient use of your time. The event is produced by Om Malik of GigaOM, who has covered cloud computing from the beginning. We don’t just talk about cloud computing once a year; it’s a part of our ongoing editorial coverage on GigaOM every day. Attend Structure 09 and be part of the conversation.

——————————— Schedule of topics

We have just announced our programming schedule for Structure 09. Full details available here: http://events.gigaom.com/structure/09/schedule/

Hot topics of discussion include:

The myth of the one-size-fits-all cloud. As enterprises begin to evaluate cloud computing, some are asking if the current model of commodity servers and virtualization meets their needs. Is there money to be made creating specialized clouds for industries that require highly specific computing tasks, from video trans-coding to fiscal transactions and medical records?

From databases to dataspaces. Web-scale computing is creating a physically distributed infrastructure, which has led to the emergence of distributed data storage and processing layers like Hadoop, HyperTable and Couchdb. The new database paradigms will force us to rethink some of our existing practices, but they’ll also offer many benefits and opportunities.

Better broadband: Enabling the cloud era. We’re building huge Cloud Computing cities, but are we neglecting the already clogged broadband highways between them? As internal data center networking speeds start to exceed 40 Gbps, the pipes that connect those clouds to the outside world and each other will hit their limits. This panel examines what stress fractures we may see initially, what technology can do about it, and who will ultimately pay for it.

The Internet: Starting from scratch. The infrastructure we rely on today was invented in the late ’60s and scaled up in the booming ’90s. With hindsight, is it time we just wiped the slate clean and started again? We assemble some of the greatest leaders from Technology R&D and ask them: What we have done right? What needs fixing? What needs replacing altogether?

On the shoulders of giants. Innovation occurs when you push at the edge of reasonable practice. When your job is to manage some of the world’s largest infrastructures, with demands that test the limit of technology and budgets, innovation is your only option. Keepers of six of the largest collections of boxes, bits and bandwidth on the planet will share their successes with current technology and their desires for and opinions on the future.

Click here to see the detailed program agenda.

Meet our thought leaders

All of the key influencers in cloud computing and the web infrastructure industry will be on hand to discuss the future of the business.

Keynotes:

Marc Benioff – Founder and CEO, salesforce.com

Paul Sagan – President and CEO, Akamai

Confirmed speakers include:

Jonathan Heiliger – VP Technical Operations, Facebook

Dr. Michael Stonebraker – CTO and Co-Founder, Vertica Systems

Richard Buckingham – VP Technical Operations, MySpace

Dr David Yen – EVP Emerging Technologies, Juniper Networks

Werner Vogels – VP and CTO, Amazon

Greg Papadopoulos – CTO and EVP, Research and Development, Sun Microsystems

Raj Patel – VP of Global Networks, Yahoo!

Yousef Khalidi – Distinguished Engineer, Azure, Microsoft

Vijay Gill – Sr. Manager, Production Network Engineering and Architecture, Google

Jeff Hammerbacher – Chief Scientist, Cloudera

Michelle Munson – President and Co-Founder, Aspera

Lloyd Taylor – VP Technical Operations, LinkedIn

Michael Crandell – CEO and Founder, RightScale

Jason Hoffman – CTO and Founder, Joyent

Click here to see the full speaker list.

Register now and get a special discount for VentureBeat readers.

If you have more questions, contact me at structure@gigaom.com. I look forwarding to seeing you at the show!

Best Regards,

Om Malik

(Via VentureBeat.)

Virtualization Online Forum June 9 & 10

2009-06-09T00:16:00.001-07:00

VMware :: Forum 2009 :: Online Forum:

Don't miss this opportunity to learn about vSphere™ 4—The Next Generation of VMware's market leading virtualization products!
Come see how companies within different industries like the Public Sector, Education, Healthcare and Technology are simplifying IT and increasing flexibility while cutting IT costs by 50%.

Attend the Online Virtualization Forum on June 9th and 10th, 8:00am–1:00pm PDT. Don't miss this opportunity to:

Network with VMware product experts, customers, partners and other IT Professionals.

Attend 30-minute presentations and get the latest info on VMware solutions, products and industry trends.

Access real-time information from industry leaders without the hassle or expense of travel.

Create a multi-media resource kit, including white papers, videos and podcasts.

June 9th & 10th, 2009 8:00am – 1:00pm PDT

(Via VMTN Blog.)

Open Cirrus research cloud gains new members

2009-06-08T11:57:00.001-07:00

Open Cirrus research cloud gains new members:

HP, Intel and Yahoo are announcing today at the first Open Cirrus Summit that they have signed on three more research organizations to their joint cloud test bed. The new institutions include the Russian Academy of Sciences, South Korea's Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute and MIMOS, a strategic research ...

(Via The Wisdom of Clouds.)

The cloud conversation is changing

2009-06-06T06:48:00.001-07:00

James Urquhart reports on the recent Enterprise Cloud Summit:

I was privileged to be a part of the Enterprise Cloud Summit that took place at the beginning of Interop in Las Vegas a few weeks ago. The program was excellent, with an all-star list of cloud expertise and a surprisingly large number of attendees that were new to cloud, and trying to get a sense of what it was all about.

(Via The Wisdom of Clouds.)

Ray Ozzie's cloud hangs over the Valley

2009-06-04T19:58:00.001-07:00

Ray Ozzie's cloud hangs over the Valley: "In a talk in Palo Alto, Microsoft's chief software architect discusses the impact cloud computing will have on the tech industry."

(Via CNET News.com.)