cloud

I just wrote a piece about how we use Amazon S3 to manage the downloads of Mule Enterprise. Putting a mule on a cloud: one man's battle with Amazon S3 is now up on El Reg.

We had been managing and maintaining multiple archives on multiple servers. After a while, a server crash, a disk blowout, lack of memory or some other fiasco kept reminding us why we hate computers.

This brings us to reason one for liking S3: you can stop buying and maintaining tons of machines - at least for file serving over the internet.

Software company Engine Yard said Monday that it has closed on a $15 million Series B round of financing from New Enterprise Associates and Amazon.com. Its previous investor Benchmark Capital also participated in the round.

Engine Yard, a 2-year-old company based in San Francisco, handles deployment and operations for developers that work in the Web development environment of Ruby on Rails, an open-source software framework. It helps developers serve applications through so-called cloud computing, or via third-party data centers. Despite Amazon's investment, Engine Yard does not use the online retailer's Web services offering at this time. It … Read more

A large number of Google Docs users couldn't use their online word processor or presentations for about an hour Tuesday. But the glitch illustrates not just the troubles with cloud computing, but also the gradual progress in making the concept palatable.

Cloud computing, in which software runs not on PCs or company servers but instead on computers on the Internet, requires something of a leap of faith both technologically and culturally. Those making the move must get accustomed to a reliance on somebody else's computing infrastructure, and that can be scary.

What's gradually emerging, though, are guarantees … Read more

"Real world" examples of some trend or business model are great. Theory is fine up to a point but eventually it's awfully nice to connect up with a concrete example that gives the theory some real cred.

At the same time, examples can mislead us. Often they turn out to be anomalies. Maybe a company is some sort of historical quirk, a product of a very specific time and place. Or maybe some technology approach is valid enough--but only for a very narrow set of needs. One warning sign is seeing the same tired examples trotted out … Read more

Microsoft detailed on Tuesday its road map and pricing for Web-based software suites built for big companies and growing businesses.

Enabling telecommuting, which many employers and workers increasingly favor, is likely to be a selling point for the productivity and "deskless worker" tools within the Microsoft Online Services lineup.

The move is part of Redmond's push to integrate online and desktop software, shifting much of the heavy lifting to the "cloud."

"Microsoft Online Services is a key component of the software plus services initiative, and we're seeing customers, partners and even competitors embrace … Read more

Sisense, a developer of business intelligence software, has introduced a new dashboard that it says will allow developers to keep better track of their Amazon S3 usage.

This is an interesting first step toward Cloud management. The big question is what happens to the emerging ecosystem if the Cloud vendors decide to shut this kind of thing down (which presumably as long as you pay they won't) or if they start offering the services themselves.

Via TechcrunchIT

Here are seven of the specific security issues Gartner says customers should raise with vendors before selecting a cloud vendor.

1. Privileged user access 2. Regulatory compliance 3. Data location 4. Data segregation 5. Recovery 6. Investigative support 7. Long-term viability

Full article on Infoworld.

I caught a touch of food poisoning yesterday and I'm not still not totally right. While generally not a great experience, something about pulling over in the Tenderloin to hurl felt all too comfortable.

Some links for your enjoyment:

Join me and John Rowell from Opsource, Wednesday, July 9, 2008 9:00am PDT on a webinar discussing how the Cloud affects the Enterprise and vice-versa.

Learn about common concerns organizations face when incorporating SaaS applications into their growing enterprise architecture and how to make the transition from on-site to internet based applications.

Click here to register