AppFog, Fort of Awesome & Node PDX Updated!
Time for the secret to be out of the bag. I’m currently working on contract with the awesome company of AppFog in the Fort of Awesome. Let me tell you, it is indeed awesome too! You might ask why I am working with them? How do I align with them? What is it they do? [...]
Google Apps Security Tool from BetterCloud
One of the key issues for organizations moving to Google for office productivity applications is the ability to enforce policy on end users around sharing outside of the organization. This issue is a good example of the tension that exists between keeping an offering as simple as possible, and ensuring
VMware Pushes Hard With vCloud Integration Manager
Yesterday, VMware announced the release of vCloud Integration Manager, a missing piece in their quest to create a service provider ecosystem running VMware’s cloud infrastructure platform. Essentially, it is an orchestration and automation piece needed for service providers to provision resources requested by their customers using a REST API or a web GUI. Many other [...]
A conversation with Richard Wallis, an experiment, and a survey
Richard Wallis left Talis (my former employer) last month, and has set up as a consultant at DataLiberate. In this short podcast, Richard shares some of his thoughts on data, semantics, and ‘the power of the link.’ Our conversation is also an excuse for an experiment. I have been producing audio-only podcasts here and elsewhere [...]
Future Of GlusterFS – From Open Core to Open Source
In October of 2011, Red Hat (previous CloudAve coverage) announced the acquisition of Gluster, the company behind GlusterFS (previous CloudAve coverage) open source distributed storage solution. Even though Red Hat is a company based on open source philosophy, there were questions about what is in store for GlusterFS under Red Hat. Last week Red Hat [...]
CloudCamp London: the Big Data Special
Image by Kevin Krejci via Flickr The CloudCamp unconference returned to London for the 14th time this evening, regaling a capacity crowd in the Crypt below Clerkenwell’s St James Church with several hours of discussion and debate on the somewhat elusive topic of ‘Big Data’. Rather rough notes of the proceedings follow, after the break. [...]
TOSCA may prove a prescient name for new cloud standards effort
Image via Wikipedia Last week, open standards body OASIS unveiled yet another shiny new standards effort. The OASIS Topology and Orchestration Specification for Cloud Applications (TOSCA) Technical Committee hopes to make it “easier to deploy cloud applications without vendor lock-in,” and to support moving from one cloud to another. The usual suspects — the likes of IBM, [...]
On TOSCA and Cloud Standards. MyPOV
Recently OASIS standards body started work on the proposed Topology and Orchestration Specification for Cloud Applications (or TOSCA) for short, standards specification. The standard aims to deliver on the long-heralded, but much disputed concept of cloud bursting – the ability to move workloads between public and private infrastructure in a transparent way. I posted about [...]
Is agility and focus worth a price premium – on converged infrastructure costing more…
Krish wrote a post covering a report which showed that the costs involved in utilizing converged infrastructure (ie a consistent approach towards hardware and software that sees everything in a data center fit together like lego) runs to some 15% more expensive than when using a more “Do It Yourself” approach. The topic of [...]
ActiveState Stackato Now Supports Private PaaS on HP Cloud Services
With the multitude of PaaS vendors that now exist, most providing an all-things-to-all-people polyglot solution that is (in my view at least) largely undifferentiated from their competitors, there is an increasing focus on vendors making partnerships that allows them to build both mindshare and market penetration. The latest is ActiveState who has announced that their [...]
Data Market Chat: the podcasts are a-coming…
Image via Wikipedia To follow up on my Data Markets post earlier this week, I’m now scheduling a series of podcasts in which the conversation can — and will — delve an awful lot deeper. I’ve contacted representatives from most of the obvious data markets, some startups working in closely related areas, and several of the key [...]
Cloupia Gets Flexpod Validation As They Push Hard Into Converged Infrastructure Space
Cloupia (previous CloudAve coverage), the Santa Clara based startup offering automation and orchestration solutions, today announced that their FlexPod Management and Automation solution is validated by Cisco and NetApp. This is a big boost for the startup taking a different route compared to the other cloud management players. Unlike companies like Rightscale which are solely [...]
Top Level Domain for data answers the wrong question
Image of Stephen Wolfram via Wikipedia British-born computer scientist Stephen Wolfram sees ongoing efforts to extend the Internet’s top-level domains (TLDs) beyond the familiar .com, .org, .uk etc as an opportunity to raise the profile of machine-readable data. In a blog post published yesterday, he argues that a new .data domain would increase “exposure of data on [...]
Cloud Complexity ? It’s A Wrench.
A new year, a old topic. Complexity. “CLOUD IS COMPLEX” screamed the headline of two recent blog posts from my Clouderati alumni, James Urquhart and Sam Johnston. Really ? Who would have thought ? There really is nothing that gets past these two guys, is there ? Joking aside, their respective copy brings a sharp [...]
Quick Take: AT&T Joins OpenStack
OpenStack (previous CloudAve coverage) got a big boost today with the announcement that AT&T is joining the OpenStack community. According to a blog post by AT&T, they are becoming the first US Telco to join OpenStack community. We also announced today that AT&T has become the first U.S. telecom services provider to join the OpenStack [...]



