The Wisdom of the Clouds

In August of 2008, I wrote a blog post that generated quite a bit of discussion among the cloud-computing and Internet communities of the time. The post described what I felt was a simple "bill of rights" of sorts for the consumers and vendors of cloud-computing services.

Later that month, I posted an update that incorporated feedback from a variety of sources, and added some provisions targeted at governments' relationship with both cloud providers and cloud consumers. That post generated even more discussion, as people from both the technology and legal communities took notice and contributed their thoughts.… Read more

The LAMP stack is a collection of open-source technologies commonly integrated to create a platform capable of supporting a wide variety of Web applications. LAMP typically consists of Linux, Apache Tomcat, MySQL, and either the PHP, Python or Perl scripting languages. Famously used at some of the best known Web businesses (such as Wikipedia), LAMP has seen widespread adopting in corporate and government settings in the last several years.

My cohost on the occasional Overcast podcast, Geva Perry, recently wrote a blog post asking a simple but profound question: who will build the LAMP cloud? Who will create the first … Read more

May 6, 2010, may long be remembered as one of the most significant events in the young history of electronic trading. As has been widely reported, at about 2:15 p.m. EDT on that Thursday, several financial indexes experienced a sudden and precipitous drop, losing around 8 percent of their value at the beginning of the day in a matter of minutes. The market recovered much of that loss quickly but closed the day down overall.

While there has been no definitive cause identified for the day's events, many financial market experts have identified the increasing presence of … Read more

While it is often cited that cloud computing will change the economics of IT operations, it is rare to find definitive sources of information about the subject. However, the influence of economies of scale on the cost and quality of computing infrastructure is a critical reason why cloud computing promises to be so disruptive.

James Hamilton, a vice president and distinguished engineer at Amazon.com, and one of the true gurus of large-scale data center practices, recently gave a presentation at Mix 10 that may be one of the most informative--and influential--overviews of data center economies of scale to date. … Read more

One of the most common statements made by IT vendors and "experts" about cloud-computing models is that somehow the economic crisis of the last few years is pushing enterprises to use cloud to save money on IT operations costs. Statements like the following are all too common:

The trend toward cloud computing, or Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), has accelerated during the economic crisis.

Or this one:

The fact that cloud computing is becoming a growing focus of attention right now seems to be no accident. "It is clear that the economic crisis is accelerating the adoption of cloud computing,&… Read more

The first two parts of this series laid out a case for why cloud computing is driving an applications focus in operations instead of a server focus, and why that applications focus forces a change in the core responsibilities of IT operations personnel, respectively. Those posts triggered a very lively discussion on Twitter and in what I call the "cloud-o-sphere" about the consequences--and limits--of "devops."

I know I promised some examples of devops in action, but that will have to wait until a later post. For now, let me lay out some of the more interesting … Read more

In the first part of this three-part series on cloud computing and the convergence of development and operations known as "devops," I explained how cloud computing is shifting the unit of deployment from the server to the application. This fundamental change in the focus of operations is having a profound effect on the nature of IT operations.

Why? The answer begins with understanding the relationship between applications, services and data (aka "payloads"), and cloud services. The infrastructure and platforms that you find in cloud computing are designed specifically so they can handle as wide a variety … Read more

Cloud computing has brought many changes to IT operations, and there are new organizations and technologies that operations professionals need to understand to embrace those changes.

During a "cloud operations boot camp" prior to the Cloud Connect conference in Santa Clara, Calif., last week, I spoke about theses changes and challenges. If you are interested in reviewing the slides from that presentation, titled "The New DevOps Designers: Cloud and The Big Rethink," they are available at Slideshare.

This is the first of a three-part series intended to explore the concepts that I covered in that boot … Read more

I've been spending this week at the Cloud Connect conference at the Santa Clara Convention Center, in Santa Clara, Calif., listening closely to the broad range of opinions and concerns raise by both the customers of cloud and it's vendor community. The conference has been an amazing place to get a sense of what those deeply involved in cloud believe will happen in the next few years.

What has surprised me a little bit has been an apparent consensus that more and more applications will leverage public clouds, and that a large number of enterprises will adopt those … Read more