IAAS (infrastructure as a service)

HP, Intel, and Yahoo are announcing Monday at the first Open Cirrus Summit that they have signed on three more research organizations to their joint cloud test bed. The new institutions include the Russian Academy of Sciences, South Korea's Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute, and MIMOS, a strategic research and development organization under the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation in Malaysia.

Open Cirrus, described by the companies as "a global, multiple data center, open-source test bed for the advancement of cloud-computing research," was launched in July of 2008, and represented one of the first large-scale systems … Read more

One of the most common questions I get from those exploring cloud computing for the first time is "what is the difference between cloud computing and virtualization?" It is an excellent question, as most IT departments are currently exploring the ways in which virtualization enables automation and provisioning agility. Given the fact that cloud is often touted for providing similar benefits, it can be confusing to understand why the two terms aren't equivalent.

My response to that question requires a bit of explanation, so let's step through the differences between the two concepts.

Virtualization is a … Read more

In conjunction with the well attended Interop and Enterprise Cloud Summit conferences in Las Vegas this week, cloud infrastructure and service vendor 3TERA announced the 3TERA AppStore, an online portal containing a variety of "cloud ready" components for use on their AppLogic platform. This is the latest commercialization of cloud image stores, and another example of how cloud computing enables marketplaces that were difficult or impossible to do before.

One of the earliest example of this trend comes from none other than Amazon, which provided a commercial payment system (called DevPay) for their Amazon Machine Image store some … Read more

While most readers probably think "portability or mobility" when they think of cloud interoperability, the vendor community sees a shorter-term opportunity in standardizing the operation of clouds and cloud infrastructures. It's not that vendors don't care about image portability; it is an especially critical opportunity for so-called "cloud operating system" vendors.

However, the cloud operations opportunity--building a full-featured operations API and user interface for a cloud--is a daunting task, requiring tools for provisioning, management and monitoring, among others.

(Note that I am calling the term "operations" tools, not "management" tools. … Read more

Last week's announcement of enhancements to Citrix Cloud Center (C3) at Citrix Synergy 2009 was one that made me sit up and take notice. Awhile ago, I proclaimed that the era of the "cloud OS" had begun, and I called out VMware vCloud, Citrix, C3 and 3TERA AppLogic as examples of what would eventually become cloud operating systems.

Strangely, however, Citrix (and the former XenSource team) has been strangely silent since that post. Yeah, there have been one or two "announcements" that basically positioned existing Citrix technologies as being cloud infrastructure, but all in all … Read more

Update: Corrected Reuven Cohen's title and added link to Chris Hoff's post.

Update 2:The NIST has added a Web page with links to the definition, and an email address where one can send comments.

Reuven Cohen, CTO of cloud infrastructure vendor Enomaly, recently posted a review of his trip to Washington, D.C. to speak to a variety of federal officials about the potential for cloud computing in government. Reuven points out that the enthusiasm with which the federal government is pursuing the cloud may in fact be putting the private sector to shame.

And it makes … Read more

What is the core value proposition of cloud computing today? What is it that your public cloud provider is providing? What does your private cloud environment allow you to provide your own IT customers? Why are end users in the know so excited about the new capabilities they gain from using various cloud offerings?

I'll give you a hint. The three acronyms by which cloud fare is usually categorized all end in three letters: "aaS," short for "as a Service".

Service is the name of the game in cloud computing. It is at the heart … Read more

The clouds seem to be revolving around the Sun today.

As CNET reported earlier, Sun Microsystems has announced the Sun Cloud Compute Service to attendees of their CommunityOne developer event. In short, Sun is following through on its promise of delivering a cloud infrastructure service, initially targeting developers, students, and start-ups.

What I love about this announcement is how well it leverages Sun's extensive cloud-computing DNA. Open source/open APIs, a focus on developers, great use of Sun hardware and software assets--it's all there. In fact, I have to give Lew Tucker, Sun's CTO of cloud computing, … Read more

Ten years after the creation of Salesforce.com, the future of cloud computing is not in doubt; it is just being heavily debated. Two opposing views of how cloud computing will play out--especially enterprise cloud computing--are making the rounds among thought leaders and customer decision makers alike. Interestingly, there is enough to question about both approaches that a third option may, in fact, gain importance.

What all sides agree on, however, is that some form of cloud computing is coming your way. As always, the devil is in the details.

Marc Benioff, Salesforce.com's "pull no punches" … Read more