Google Flies In A Very CLOUDy Sky

Google has offered an explanation about it's service disruption yesterday that made many people wonder about the cloud computing. It all boils down to a routing issue.
Official Google Blog: This is your pilot speaking. Now, about that holding pattern...

Tags: Google Outage, Cloud Computing

Cloud Computing The Google Way!

When We speak or think of enterprise computing we always think of enterprise hardware. multi core processors, terabytes of high end storage and globs of memory.
Then we get our software on these heavy handed structures and run happily for about a year and in most cases six months as new better hardware comes around and our software begin to lag. So we rinse and repeat.
It seems Google is doing this in a bit of different way. The difference is that Google build its system from ground up, on low cost hardware. It is their software infrastructure that scales and manage to run on every possible hardware solution thrown at them.
Google work with the premise that even the best and most expensive hardware have a limit of not being 100% reliable. So they make their software the resilient one.
There is one good story that I read at Google Enterprise blog which explains very well the Google Enterprise architecture. I learned about it of course at Google official blog. You will find the links to both below.
Official Google Enterprise Blog: What we talk about when we talk about cloud computing
Business in the cloud

Tags: Cloud Computing, Google, enterprise computing

HP / NetSuite Takes Small Business To Cloud Computing.

Hewlett-Packard (HP) announce that it will offer software from NetSuite to bring software as a service (SaaS) business applications to the small and midsize business (SMB) market.
With the Netsuite, small businesses can manage their operations online like ecommerce to managing inventories, order fulfillment, customer relationships.
If you see similarities with Salesforce offerings, yes you are right and the Netsuite competes with the Salesforce. But it caters to companies with fewer than 1000 users.
The Netsuite stand to gain a lot from the relation ship with HP and it's 15000 strong value added resellers in the HP chnnel in the United States.
"This collaboration with HP will accelerate our penetration of the SMB market worldwide and demonstrate that the channel can play a major role in delivering cloud computing solutions," said Zach Nelson, chief executive officer, NetSuite.
You will find the official press release here.

Tags: Cloud Computing, HP, Netsuite, SalesForce, SaaS, SMB Market

Azure, Cloud Computing Platform From Microsoft.

Microsoft has released a CTP, Customer Technical Preview of Windows Azure, a cloud services operating system that serves as a development, service hosting, and service management environment for the Azure Services Platform.

Windows Azure provides developers with on-demand compute and storage to host and manage web applications on the internet through Microsoft data centers.

So if you want to be up in the clouds, follow this link.

Tags: Windows Azure, Cloud Computing

IBM Announces European Cloud Computing Hub in Dublin

DUBLIN, IRELAND and ARMONK, NY - 19 Mar 2008: Today IBM (NYSE: IBM) and the Industrial Development Agency of Ireland (IDA Ireland) announced the establishment of Europe's first Cloud Computing Center. Located in Dublin, the new facility will serve as a hub that will deliver Cloud Computing research and services to a number of satellite facilities to be built in Europe, Middle East and Africa. IBM experts from these centers will work directly with clients in the region, helping them adopt cloud computing solutions that spur technology research and business development.

One of the Dublin center's first offerings for clients, called IBM Idea Factory for Cloud Computing, is a new service delivered directly to clients over a cloud computing environment. Using Web 2.0 technology, it allows communities of business professionals to be assembled into social networks to facilitate the development of new business ideas. IBM Idea Factory for Cloud Computing captures business processes -- from their beginnings as ideas to commercialization -- speeding up brainstorming among employees, partners, software developers and other third party participants.

"The selection of Ireland as the location for IBM's European hub for Cloud Computing highlights Ireland's role as an important contributor to IBM's global research, development and innovation strategy," said Micheál Martin TD, Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment for the Irish government. "The investment further establishes IBM Ireland's growing reputation as a high performance computing centre within IBM Corporation. IDA Ireland and IBM have a proactive long-standing relationship in advancing the Irish business and the implementation of strategic high value knowledge-based research and development investments."

"Our investments in cloud computing are a prime example of how IBM is seeking out emerging global market opportunities and new computing models that benefit IBM clients," said Steve Mills, Senior Vice President and Group Executive, IBM Software Group. "Through this new facility and the cloud computing model, the wealth of talent at IBM's software lab in Ireland will be accessible to not only the rest of Europe, but Africa and the Middle East as well."

Cloud computing is an information technology (IT) infrastructure in which dynamically shared computing resources are virtualized and accessed as a service. Cloud computing replaces the traditional data center model in which companies own and manage their own stand alone hardware and software systems. Cloud computing is an attractive proposition for small to large-sized companies. It also is a green technology model that reduces energy consumption by improving IT resource utilization, therefore requiring fewer servers to handle equivalent workloads.

The need for cloud computing is fueled by the dramatic growth in business collaboration, connected devices, real-time data streams, and Web 2.0 applications such as streaming media and entertainment, social networking and mobile commerce.

The first client of the center at Dublin will be the Sogeti Group, a specialist provider of Local Professional IT Services. Sogeti plans to use the IBM Idea Factory for Cloud Computing, providing its employees around the world with the technology to collectively brainstorm online and generate new ideas about building the "Sogeti of the Future."

"Innovation is at the heart of every successful company," said Michiel Boreel, CTO of Sogeti. "By utilizing IBM Cloud Computing Center resources, we expect to generate a wealth of real-world solutions for accelerating Sogeti's international growth and delivering step-change for our clients. Another positive benefit is increased interaction and collaboration between our consultants around the world, as well as hands-on experience with this leading-edge computing power."

"Responding to demand in the market, we are moving fast to build an integrated cloud computing operation. We are adding Europe's first Cloud Computing Center at Dublin and more facilities into a network of existing centers in China, Vietnam and the U.S. The centers can bring skills and expertise to serve our clients in building their own new enterprise data centers," said Dr. Willy Chiu, Vice President of High Performance On Demand Solutions, IBM Software Group. With such a network of centers, Dr. Chiu pointed out, "We will also address the need for open interoperability standards."

The IBM High Performance on Demand Solutions Lab will work with IDA Ireland to build this center using IBM's "Blue Cloud" technologies, a series of cloud computing offerings based on industry open standards and open source software. IBM Tivoli systems management software will manage the Cloud Computing environment.

The center will place a focus on innovation and research activities. As part of its ongoing educational initiatives, IBM has also agreed to facilitate cloud computing training for lecturers at the Dublin Institute of Technology's School of Computing. The training will help the school to foster new skills that meet the needs of this emerging computing model.

IBM Cloud Computing Milestones
IBM has been expanding its cloud computing capabilities around the world. Over the past year, IBM has provided cloud computing services to clients such as China Telecom, Wuxi Municipal Government of China, the Ministry of Science and Technology of Vietnam and others. IBM also launched "Blue Cloud," a series of cloud computing offerings, and entered into partnerships for cloud computing programs with a number of partners in Europe.

For more information about IBM cloud computing, please visit http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/websphere/zones/hipods/

tag: Cloud Computing, IBM Idea Factory, Web 2.0 technology, social networks, HPC centre, Tivoli, China Telecom, Wuxi Municipal Government of China, Blue Cloud,