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 [...]
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, [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Cloud Computing Came to a Head in 2011
Happy New Year! I hope you all had a fantastic holiday. This is a review post that I think you will find particularly compelling. Rather than predicting the future I thought I would take a look back at five long years of ‘cloud computing’. As many of you long time readers know, I’ve been ‘in [...]
Two Events That “Clouded” Our Thinking In 2011
2011 is long gone and I should have done this post last week. However, I still think it is relevant to highlight some changes in our thinking about the cloud that happened due to events in 2011. Whether many agree with me or not, I see 2011 as a year where cloud computing moved from [...]
Alcatel Jumps In With Network Services On The Cloud
Alcatel-Lucent (previous CloudAve coverage), a leading vendor in mobile and networking space, last week announced Alcatel-Lucent Cloudband, set of network services offered through the cloud. Networking is a significant part of cloud infrastructure but it has attracted much less media attention than its counterparts, compute and storage. Part of the reason is somewhat of a [...]
Rackspace Private Cloud: Repackaging Fanatical Support Around OpenStack
Yesterday Rackspace announced Rackspace Cloud Private Edition, a repackaging of their Cloud Builder services around the OpenStack product. If you want to hear a purely open source perspective on this move, I recommend you to read Christian Reilly’s article on the topic. However, I am going to approach the topic from the business strategy point [...]
Cutting Through the Fog of Cloud Computing Definitions
In recent years, the term “cloud computing” has been used and abused by vendors and their marketing groups to denote just about anything the vendor offers other than on-premise systems. Analysts too have piled on, each offering their own definition of cloud computing. This 2009 Wall Street Journal article outlined the confusion. The result has been fruitless [...]
enStratus On A Roll
enStratus (previous CloudAve coverage), the Minneapolis based company focussing on cloud governance, has raised $3.5 Million according to this MarketBrief from SEC filing. Enstratus Networks, Inc reported today in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission it had raised $3.5M of a $4M private offering. Companies file this special form with the U.S. Securities and Exchange [...]
Cloudability Opens To Public
Cloudability, the Portland based startup, today opened up to public after staying in private beta since June. They launched in GigaOm’s Structure Conference this year and their SaaS offering is targeted towards cloud users who are worried about surprises in their next bill. Right now, their service is free and I am expecting them to [...]
Contegix Moves Beyond VMware To Offer Their Cloud Solutions
Contegix, St. Louis based managed hosting provider morphing into a cloud provider, this week unveiled their cloud strategy with the introduction of their Miracloud platform. Contegix is offering a public cloud service with a twist. Unlike Amazon Web Services who offer a self service cloud solution, they offer tiered cloud services where the lowest tier, [...]
Defining Federated Cloud Ecosystems
Recently, a friend of mine came up to me and asked “Can you succinctly define Federated Cloud Ecosystems?”. That lead to an instantaneous brainstorming between three of us and we came up with a few characteristics that defines Federated Cloud Ecosystems like NIST did for cloud computing. I tweaked the gist from our discussions to [...]
Ubuntu Ensemble Is Now Juju
Yesterday, the folks at Ubuntu announced that they are renaming Ensemble project as Juju. Since the names Ensemble, Formula and Principia didn’t connect well in their original incarnation, they have decided to move on to a new name. Juju is an African word for magic. While we liked the sophistication and refinement that went along [...]
Loss Of Control And Transparency In The Cloud Era
One of the biggest worries organizations have about cloud computing is the unexpected outages and the impact of associated disruptions. In fact, some of the traditional vendors use this very issue to push FUD among their customers so that they can lock them in for the foreseeable future. Similarly, if anyone evangelizing cloud tells you [...]
