Cloud Computing Articles

According to Chris Petersen, APAC director of channels at Open Text, it is unlikely that enterprise data will ever go to the cloud due to regulatory issues and bandwidth costs.

In a recent interview with ZDNet Asia, Petersen gave his outlook on the enterprise future in the cloud.

Despite the fact that many and many more companies warm up towards cloud computing, Petersen insists the organizations will continue to store a large part of data in-house and demand on-premise software. He attributes his reasoning to regulatory compliance and the higher bandwidth costs associated with moving data offsite as substantial barriers to mainstream enterprise adoption of cloud computing technology.

The funny thing is that Petersen’s employer tends to think otherwise, judging by Open Text’s recent move into the Windows Azure cloud by offering a “first-of-its-kind” records management and archiving capability for Microsoft’s new cloud-based operating system Windows Azure. Open Text will incorporate these cloud-based capabilities into its Enterprise Library Services offering early next year.

Records management is a pretty extensive part of any enterprise, often taking up massive amounts of server space. Petersen is making his point only to prove that cloud computing is not a threat to the Enterprise CMS industry players like Open Text because the need to keep thorough records of in-house data will persist, he said.

But we all know his attempt is a futile one. Gartner predicts cloud computing to be one of the top 10 strategic technologies for 2009 for enterprise-level businesses. SaaS is thriving, CMS market included, as predicted earlier this year.

If anything, today’s customers with tight IT budgets, especially in the SMB sector, will look beyond such expensive solutions as Open Text and explore cloud- or SaaS-based alternatives.

Yes it’s true. We are suggesting you forget about that diamond necklace or that life subscription to GQ magazine and spend your money on a conference or two. Forget about Christmas. It’s highly overrated anyway.

Now conferences, that’s the ticket. Need to get some good networking done, learn some new tips and tricks for content management, Web 2.0, social media, maybe cloud computing. After all, we spend three quarters of our lives working. Here are a few that might tempt you…

One advantage to storing your data in-house, as opposed to storing the data remotely, is the ability to keep and track key metrics on this data. Visualization and reporting tools allow us to keep tabs on data storage, usage and harvest these data for analysis.

For those looking at cloud computing options, what avenues for data visualization exist? Not many, which is why Google has announced new and expanded capabilities of Google Visualization API that will allow users to display data from virtually any data source connected to the Web.

Some people enjoy the thrill of the crowds, the keynote speeches, meeting partners and vendors, and seeing first hand all the neat new things to come — that’s why they go to conferences like Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference 2008 (PDC2008).

Some are either too cheap to go, or their companies are too cheap to send them. For those of you that fall into this category, you must live vicariously through the media and other bloggers to get your conference thrills.

We didn’t get to the PDC2008 Conference either, but here’s some highlights we have gleamed by listening to those that did go.

Enterprise content management provider Open Text has announced a “first-of-its-kind” records management and archiving capability for Microsoft’s new cloud-based operating system Windows Azure.

Azure is Microsoft’s new cloud-based operating system. Open Text will incorporate these cloud-based capabilities into its Enterprise Library Services offering early next year.

You can just imagine the excited faces in the crowd at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference this week when Ray Ozzie started talking about Microsoft’s move to the cloud. We’re sure anyone who develops on and uses their technologies is likely thrilled to finally be heading there.

But does it really matter to the larger IT world? To those who work with Amazon or Google? Has Microsoft merely met up with the competition, only to continue to support its own technologies and solutions?

Are you one of those people who stare longingly at the cloud and wonder what it’s really all about? Do you want to learn, but can’t get away for more than a day? Well then head on over to the Cloud Computing Expo and sign up for the Cloud Computing Bootcamp scheduled for November 19, 2008 in San Jose, California.

Rackspace, the widely-used Web hosting provider, has announced two major acquisitions that will add value to its cloud computing offerings. In a tandem move, the hosting company has purchased JungleDisk and Slicehost.

JungleDisk is a popular client that gives Windows, Mac and Linux users easy access to Amazon’s Simple Storage Service (S3) by providing the cloud storage offering as a drive letter on their computer. Additionally, by acquiring SliceHost, Rackspace picks up a hosting competitor and will integrate Slicehost’s storage capabilities with JungleDisk as an additional storage facility within the JungleDisk client.

An integral part of Amazon’s cloud computing services is showing a sign of maturity, while adding a much anticipated element. The Elastic Compute Cloud (aka EC2), which facilitates a Linux server environment as a service for Web developers, has come out of beta.

Additionally, as previously rumored, Amazon.com has added an on-demand Windows Server environment to accompany the already existing OpenSolaris and Solaris Express Community Edition offerings.

At the recent Gartner Symposium/ITxpo, Gartner analysts presented their insights into the top 10 technologies and trends to rule the world in 2009.

With emphasis on virtualization, organizations should also pay close attention to cloud computing, green IT, Business Intelligence (BI) and social software — among other strategic trends.

New Bamboo, a software company that’s been developing solutions using the infamous Ruby on Rails since its conception, released Panda — a new Open Source platform designed for the easy uploading, transcoding and streaming of videos on websites.

We’ve recently discovered two resources that will make your life a little easier should you work with Amazon Web Services (AWS) either as a data manager or developer.

Ylastic is a tool built upon AWS Infrastructure Services. With this tool, you can manage Amazon S3, EC2, SQS, and SimpleDB all from one easy to use interface. The Ylastic tool also allows users to set up monitoring, alerts, reporting tools and functional dashboards to keep tabs on one’s AWS cloud computing utilization and health.

Also, if you are a developer, the Amazon Web Services Developer Relations team has collected the most used data types, function calls and command line tools for their popular services in Quick Reference Cards. The cards are available for Amazon EC2, Amazon SQS, Amazon DevPay, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Fulfillment Web Service and Amazon Associates Web Service, with more guides to come in the coming months.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said he wants more powerful software for the Web. Well, Ballmer also happens to have a corporate technological powerhouse under his direction — shouldn’t be too hard, right?

At the 2008 Professional Developers Conference (PDC2008), Microsoft will be divulging information to the world about Windows 7, but the Windows cloud-based operating system is going to be the highlight of the conference.

Amazon has recently informed its AWS customers that Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) will allow users to run Microsoft Windows Server or Microsoft SQL Server later this fall. For those who take advantage of those two Microsoft products, this is surely news to get excited about.

Amazon Web Services (AWS), a provider of Internet data storage and delivery services, is expanding options for developers and enterprises looking to host their databases on the AWS cloud computing platform.

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), a scalable web service solution offered by AWS, is now the first authorized cloud computing platform to run supported Oracle databases.

Amazon Web Services (AWS), a provider of Internet data storage and delivery services, is planning to release an unnamed content delivery service that will likely undercut the existing Content Delivery Network (CDN) competition to provide customers with faster and cheaper digital content delivery options.

Gartner has released its latest Hype Cycle Research Report: Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, 2008 . Of the 27 technologies they list as emerging technologies over the next few years, they predict that technologies like cloud computing, social computing, SOA and Web 2.0 will find their place in organizations within the next 2-5 years.

This SharePoint as a service thing has been in the works. Previously we had a chance to talk with Tom Rizzo, Redmond’s Director of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, just after the official announcement at the SharePoint Conference 2008 about the why fores and the hows.

Now we’ve got the scoop on pricing, including how Microsoft’s partners are getting compensated for potentially loosing integration business. The short story is that Redmond is walking through the doors of change, but doing its best to keep the channel in the loop and incented to generate business.

You’ve got an idea for the next great Facebook application, assuming Scrabulous and Vampires are not great enough, and you want the application to be available to all 55 million active (and growing) Facebook members.

What you don’t have is a bucket full of money (or venture funding) to pay for a server farm?

What do you do, hot shot? What do you do?