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Google updated its AppEngine cloud platform earlier this week with new features and functions that help to address some of the services initial shortcomings.

According to a blog post from the AppEngine development team, new features include multitenancy support (to run multiple instances of an application), high-performance image serving, and increased data storage quotas.

Multitenancy is accomplished via the new Namespaces API, which allows multiple organizations to run the same application, segregating data using a unique namespace for each client. This allows developers to serve the same app to multiple different customers, with each customer seeing their own unique copy … Read more

I've been getting requests to review the HP DreamColor LP2480zx for the better part of the last year. Sorry it's taken so long, but here it is. Better late than never.

It's an interesting endeavor, to review a product that costs well over $2,000. This is especially true when other devices that serve the same basic purpose exist and can be procured for fraction of the cost.

In this situation, the intended audience has to be considered. Does it meet their needs as best you can tell? Are there lower-priced alternatives?

This leads to comparisons that … Read more

A new option for Amazon Web Services has arrived: the raw computing power of supercomputing clusters now widely used in research circles.

The service, called Cluster Compute, is a variation of one of the earliest services Amazon offered, EC2, or Elastic Compute Cloud. Compared with the standard EC2, Cluster Compute offers more processing power and faster network connections among the cluster's computing nodes for better communications, Amazon said Tuesday. The service retains the same general philosophy, though: customers pay as they go, with more usage incurring more fees.

The cluster service, which is available with Linux and a customer'… Read more

At the recent Structure 2010 "Year of the Cloud" conference, Amazon.com CTO Werner Vogels railed against "the false cloud"--the idea that cloud computing can be done internally, within an enterprise. The "true cloud" in this worldview can only be realized using the facilities and resources of network-accessible service provider. Anything else? False. A misappropriation of the cloud name and concept--a pretender that cannot deliver the benefits of cloud computing.

Oddly, another big theme of the conference was the idea that cloud is not defined by specific technologies, but rather by the benefits … Read more

Two men who led one element of Amazon.com's successful cloud-computing services have launched their own a start-up called Nimbula to focus on a private version of the technology.

Cloud computing takes several forms, but Amazon Web Services generally delivers building blocks available over the Internet that developers can use to construct their own higher-level services. Nimbula, in contrast, focuses more on a "private cloud" approach geared for companies building their own computing services based on a similar but in-house approach.… 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

Cloud.com--which until now was known as VMops--is launching on Tuesday the latest salvo in the battle for cloud computing adoption and mindshare as it releases a new product and changes its name.

In addition to rebranding the company as Cloud.com, the company is releasing the latest version of its CloudStack software under both open-source and commercial licenses. (Note: I struggled with both the .com in the name and hitching entirely to "cloud" until they explained that it's great for market and search results.)

Cloud.com describes CloudStack as "an integrated software solution that … Read more

There is a logical argument to be made that tooling for infrastructure and application management is where most of the money will be made when it comes to cloud computing. It's not that cloud providers won't make money, but that the cost of entry to the market is so high that there will be many more consumers than providers, making high-quality tooling a necessity.

I spoke to EnStratus co-founder and CTO George Reese about what customers are looking for. EnStratus provides a suite of tools for managing cloud infrastructure. This includes support for the provisioning, management, and monitoring of applications in multiple public and private clouds.

Reese told me the company is seeing medium to large companies examining the public cloud as a deployment possibility for some apps and they want to do it in a way that they can use their beta code in future applications. But their main concerns come down to security and control.

The public cloud is a trade-off, requiring users to decide what they want to give up in order to take advantage of the computing capabilities. The thing people don't want to lose control over is the data.

According to Reese, there are three control areas that users should look for when considering cloud deployments. … Read more

With Microsoft finally releasing the Windows Azure cloud operating system to the public earlier this week, Amazon Web Services (AWS) took just one day to offer new pricing reductions to re-establish the market price for cloud services.

Effective February 1, AWS is reducing prices by 2 cents per gigabyte based on the tiers of usage offer. Amazon also lowered rates for data transferred out of its Amazon CloudFront content delivery network, cutting rates by 2 cents per gigabyte. And while 2 cents may not sound like much, at the highest usage levels of 1,000 terabytes, that takes the cost … Read more