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The growing buzz around cloud computing sounds eerily familiar to the utility computing noise of a few years ago.

But there is a difference--or at least people in the business swear there is.

In reading blogs and speaking to a few people, I've found that cloud computing does indeed rehash some of the ideas of the past, but there are significant technology advances, notably virtualization, that set it apart.

Cloud computing: looking for that data center in the sky

(Credit: IBM)

One such cloud company, Elastra, launched on Tuesday its server for public and private clouds. Executives at another start-up, 3Tera, told me on Monday that later this year their AppLogic "grid operating system" will let people use a single tool to deploy applications that run on a mix of Linux, Windows, and Solaris machines.

What's the link between cloud and utility computing? For starters, there's pricing. With utility computing, you get computing "power" when you need it and you pay based on consumption.

This makes sense for people who don't want to invest in building their own data centers or don't want to buy all the hardware required to handle "peaks" in demand. You can rely on outside provider to give you servers, storage, and bandwidth as you need it.

Cloud computing builds on that pay-per-drink model but makes it easier to deploy and manage applications at remote hosting providers, according to adherents.

Perhaps the most high-profile company now doing this is Amazon Web Services, which is aimed primarily at tech start-ups that like the low up-front cost.

(Credit: Forrester Research)

As Microsoft builds out its own "cloud infrastructure," it's very likely the company will offer similar hosted computing services, such as hosted storage and servers. Last month, it announced a hosted database offering. Meanwhile IBM, Sun Microsystems, and Hewlett-Packard all offer some variation of hosted utility computing.

To run an outsourced computing service effectively, service providers need automation tools. After all, there's a limit to how many servers a single person or small group of people can manage; productivity tools for IT administrators help operations scale.

A whole wave of companies were formed in the beginning of this decade to automate various tasks of data center operations, from provisioning servers to managing configurations.

Memorable "exits" from this wave of start-ups were HP's purchase of Opsware for $1.6 billion and BMC's acquisition of BladeLogic earlier this month for $800 million.

These go to '11'
But now there are new start-ups promising to do that data center automation better than before and make it easier to deploy applications out onto the Internet "cloud."

In a recent study, Forrester Research identified 11 companies that it called "cloud providers." The list includes hosting companies like Rackspace, as well as development platform providers like Salesforce.com. Systems management expert John Willis has also created a list of cloud providers and tries to demystify the concept here.

Prominent in Forrester's list is 3Tera, a company that released its first product last year. Its AppLogic creates "virtual appliances" that define which resources an application needs in order to run. A Web server, for example, may need a certain amount of memory and storage.

This allows system administrators or application architects, using a Web-based graphical tool, to set up an application choosing from a pool of servers or storage devices made available by a hoster.

"We do believe there is a difference between utility computing and cloud computing, but we believe that they aren't mutually exclusive," said Barry Lynn, 3Tera's CEO and the former CIO at Wells Fargo. "We don't understand how you can have an effective cloud unless it's deployed on a cloud platform."

The company's own software is, of course, hosted. Lynn said he believes that the next Google won't run a data center--it will get computing from the cloud.

What's different from 3Tera's approach and previous grid and utility computing automation tools is that people can work with an entire application rather than taking a piecemeal approach, company executives say.

By contrast, previous generations of tools were built to handle specific tasks, like provisioning servers, which are needed to get an application online, said 3Tera co-founder and vice president of sales and marketing Bert Armijo. The result is that application architects can get applications deployed quickly and system administrators can handle more equipment, he said.

3Tera's AppLogic tool for deploying applications to a hosting provider

(Credit: 3Tera)

Elastra makes the same claims of making it easier to deploy databases to a cloud and manage them. EnterpriseDB is using the Elastra software to have its database hosted on Amazon.

The Elastra Cloud Server creates files that define what's needed to run and manage an application. Dana Gardner at InterArbor Solutions has more here.

Elastra CEO Kirill Shaynkman, who founded portal company Plumtree, said that the software allows people to deploy databases quickly at both remote locations (hosters) or in corporate data centers.

"There are other clouds that are coming; Amazon is the most public and friendliest right now," he said. "There are private clouds already. They are just unmanageable right now."

Of course, issues associated with outsourcing remain despite all the technological progress.

When Amazon Web services went down for several hours in February, it was a rude awakening for many Web 2.0 companies that use the service without an offline backup.

But even with glitches along the way--and a healthy dose of hype from vendors--cloud computing makes it look like the idea of having computing flow like electricity is inching closer to reality.

(Credit: Symantec)

Who says there are no second chances? (Maybe Patriots fans, I dunno.) If you missed out when Fry's offered Norton AntiVirus 2008 free after a pair of mail-in rebates, the deal has returned at Buy.com.

Once again, it's the three-user edition, meaning you can install it on up to three PCs. The software protects against viruses, spyware, rootkits, and the like. CNET liked it, though readers definitely did not. As I said last time, if you're unhappy with the software yourself, you're only out a couple stamps.

Speaking of the rebates, this deal requires a pair: one for $34 on the software itself, the other a $20 competitive rebate. That means you need to provide proof of purchase/ownership for just about any other software utility (get the full deets here). The first rebate offer expires February 9, so you've got the week to pull the trigger. Shipping costs--nada.

(Credit: Symantec)

Are you making regular backups of your PC? Please, don't lie--it just embarrasses both of us. Don't tell me it's because you don't know how or you can't afford pricey backup software. Excuses don't pay the rent (or restore your data).

Buy.com has Norton Save & Restore 2.0, by all accounts a solid backup utility, for a mere $2.99 (shipped!) after a pair of mail-in rebates. Granted, one of them is a competitive upgrade, but just about any utility software qualifies: antivirus, antispam, firewall. You supply the proof of purchase (confirmation e-mail, a page from the manual, or even the CD itself), and Norton supplies the $20.

Save & Restore 2.0 can back up your entire hard drive or selected files and folders. It can also round up specific file types, like digital photos and MP3s. Computer Shopper rated it 7.0 (out of 10), the biggest knock being the price. That's hardly an issue now, right? Do yourself a favor and make regular backups, because hard-drive disaster isn't a matter of if, but when.

"If you want something done right, do it yourself."

"Why reinvent the wheel?"

That sums up a conversation I had with a coworker after I told him about the macro I created in Microsoft Word that converts my Ctrl-V keyboard shortcut into one that pastes text from a Web site, some other app, or elsewhere, minus the formatting, images, and any other nontext stuff. The fact is, I rarely want to paste anything but the text, and I want it in the format of the file it's being added to, not the format of the source.

I thought this handy-dandy trick was a first-rate time-saver, especially when you consider that for those rare instances when I want to preserve the formatting of the source, or to include elements other than text, I simply press Shift-Insert.

My buddy said he could do me one better: He presses the Windows key and V to paste plain text he has copied from just about anywhere, into just about any application, not just Word. And he didn't have to go through a multistep process to create a Word macro. All he did was download Steve Miller's free PureText utility.

The PureText freebie from Steve Miller makes pasting plain text a breeze.

After you download the program, it puts an icon in your system tray. Then you just copy the text you want, click the icon before you press Windows-V to paste it without the formatting, or anything else except the text. You can choose another key combination as long as one of the keys is either the Shift, Ctrl, or the Windows key, but I stick with the default keys because they avoid conflicts with other shortcuts. Speaking of which....

Tomorrow: I'll give you a list of the most useful keyboard shortcuts you probably don't know about.

IBM on Thursday announced an offering called Blue Cloud meant to make it easier to run large-scale applications with massive databases over the Internet.

The computing giant said it has dedicated 200 researchers to the project and will have services available as of the first quarter next year.

The first product will be an IBM BladeCenter with Linux-based servers equipped with a suite of "cloud" software.

IBM's Blue Cloud includes a Blade Center rack of Linux servers and data center software for handling data-intensive applications.

(Credit: IBM)

That includes grid-computing software, virtualization tools Xen and PowerVM, and the open-source Hadoop parallel workload-scheduling software originally developed by Yahoo. The suite will also include IBM's Tivoli data center management software for automatically provisioning hardware to adjust for fluctuating computing demand.

The offering came out of internal work IBM did in creating its own clouds--essentially a server installation that is capable of handling very large sets of data and can operate efficiently by drawing on virtualization and other data center management software.

IBM and Google last month announced a plan to set up a few of these server infrastructures to help college students learn how to write applications that could run on hundreds or thousands of servers.

As more Web 2.0-style applications, which include lots of content contributed by end users, come online, companies will need to have better tools to handle them, said Dennis Quan, chief technology officer of high performance on demand solutions at IBM.

"What's at the heart of this is the realization that this technology is not restricted to universities or academic institutions. There's a broad applicability for this technology," Quan said.

Initially, customers will run the hardware-software bundle internally. But IBM is also looking at offering outsourced computing services based on the Blue Cloud suite, Quan said.

He said it builds on the much-discussed notion of outsourced utility-computing services by using the most current software, notably virtualization. Also, the suite is designed to handle changes in computing demand driven by end users, such as a large number of mobile users coming online at the same time.

Microsoft is also building a "utility-computing fabric" to offer what it calls a Cloud OS for running Internet-scale applications. Amazon Web Services, too, offers software developers outsourced computing services that run on Amazon's data centers.

EnerNOC, a company that sells software to businesses for lowering their energy bills, said on Monday that it has bought energy consulting firm MDEnergy for $7.9 million in cash and stock.

MDEnergy, based in Stamford, Conn., provides consulting and market information to large energy buyers looking for competitive bids in deregulated markets, according to an EnerNOC representative. The company organizes request for proposals and hosts auctions where suppliers bid on both electric and gas contracts.

The company also provides detailed industry data on usage patterns to aid in contract proposals. MDEnergy's platform will operate independently in the near future, the EnerNOC representative said.

EnerNOC sells so-called demand response software that is designed to dial down energy consumption at large organizations. With the system, a company could, for example, automatically turn off unnecessary fans or turn up air-conditioner thermostats to avoid paying for pea-time electricity prices.

"It has been our vision to simplify the process of purchasing energy and green power solutions in restructured markets," said Tim Healy, EnerNOC's CEO, in a statement.

EnerNOC, founded in 2001 and based in Boston, went public earlier this year and is considered one of the most successful clean tech companies to launch in the past five years.

Sun Microsystems CTO Greg Papadopoulos suggests that enterprise applications are dividing into Web and data-enabled applications and more traditional enterprise applications. Those that are Web and/or data-enabled are exploding (confirming Tim O'Reilly's theory of where the value is, perhaps). The rest are not.

What does this mean?

GreenVolts, which builds utility solar power plants that feature high-performance concentrators, has signed a deal with Pacific Gas & Electric to build a 2-megawatt solar power plant near Tracy, Calif., in 2008.

When built, it will be the largest concentrator solar plant for utilities in the world.

In Germany, utility solar power plants--which essentially are large numbers of solar panels sitting in a field or on top of a roof--are a big deal. That's because the government subsidizes them. Sellers get 45 cents a kilowatt hour for electricity they send to the grid, far higher than the normal price. Farmers are ripping up pastures to erect solar plants.

In the U.S. the benefits aren't as great. Thus, most solar panels are sold to individuals, who put them on their roofs. In some states, however, utilities are required to start getting more of their energy from renewable resources. PG&E has a mandate to get 20 percent of its power from renewable resources by 2010. Hence, PG&E wants to build its own solar fields. (Las Vegas has strong mandates too.)

GreenVolts will try to stand out of the crowd with its concentrator, which was originally developed at the national labs. By concentrating vastly more sunlight onto the solar cell than would shine on it in ordinary circumstances, an individual solar cell can generate more electricity than they would in normal circumstances. According to Bob Cart, the light that his company's concentrator can deliver to a cell is the same amount that the cell would get if there were 625 suns in the sky.

The technology also has sort of a nice "Conan the Destroyer" ring to it. It could also be good for Tracy's image. The town has previously been associated with the Altamont concert and a large tire fire.

The Electric Power Research Institute has also kicked off research into the feasibility of building large--like 500 megawatts large--solar plants with concentrators.

The solar panels also rotate on what GreenVolts calls the CarouSol. There's no shortage of puns in the solar world.

Powerit Solutions, a company that does automated energy efficiency systems, said on Thursday that it has secured $7.1 million in financing.

The series A round included $3 million from @Ventures, along with $3 million from Expansion Capital Partners, with the balance coming from existing investors.

Although not as high profile as solar or wind power, energy efficiency companies--sometimes referred to as "negawatt" suppliers--have proven to be good investments in the current clean tech boom. Two energy efficiency companies--EnerNoc and Comverge--went public earlier this year.

Powerit differs from what those two companies do, which is help utilities reduce peak demand--the points during the day of the highest power consumption.

The Seattle-based company does so-called demand management products, specifically for industrial facilities like factories. The technology, which is a combination of hardware and software, is designed to automatically dial down energy usage at facilities to save money on peak-demand charges.

For example, the system could turn off a fan or a pump for few minutes to reduce power consumption. The software lets site operators set rules so that turning off or dialing down equipment won't impact production of, say, a factory, or damage equipment, said Bob Zak, president of Powerit.

Combined, these measures can have a big impact, particularly on peak demand charges--the fee levied by utilities on commercial customers for their high-capacity power consumption, Zak said. The company's system is able to reduce peak demand charges between 10 and 40 percent which can be between 7 and 15 percent of the overall electricity bill, he said.

Peak demand charges, which are separate from consumption fees, can be significant--up to 35 percent of the total bill, said Zak. Utilities, looking to even out there power generation and distribution over the course of the day, provide incentives to customers to reduce peak demand because meeting those peaks often means bringing back-up generators online.

"It's as if you had a pedometer (to measure consumption) but also a speedometer to see what your fastest speed is," he said. "Peak is the highest level (of power) utility has available to you."

Powerit's software can automate the process of reducing demand at the optimal moments for several pieces of equipment which already have controls on them. It also has a system to put wireless controls on equipment, Zak said.

The $7.1 million will be used to expand sales and marketing his will as product development, he said.