Amazon's new offering promises to bridge the gap between the cloud and the corporate on-premises network. It's pretty intriguing, actually, given that, in Amazon's model, companies pay only for what they use (like paying for electricity, as this story notes), and they can create chunks of the cloud for themselves that are totally independent from those of other customers. It's a new turn, from what we can tell, on the multi-tenant hosting idea, and many companies skeptical of moving into the cloud might just be tempted to take a look at it.
Posted by Lee Pender on August 27, 20090 comments
Legendary Editor in Chief Scott Bekker explains in Redmond Channel Partner (the magazine) about how Microsoft is taking the unusual step of laying out plans for its Services Ready consulting packages for partners.
Posted by Lee Pender on August 27, 20090 comments
One of the things we love most about cloud computing is the name; it simply lends itself to a massive library of plays on words, metaphors and jokes. In this edition of RCPU, we're devoting the entire newsletter to cloud computing. And the timing is good for that, too, because there's a storm brewing in the cloud computing space (see?).
Just this week, F5 Networks (yes, we know, a vendor) released results of a study it commissioned somebody called Applied Research West to undertake. Applied Research West surveyed 250 IT managers, each at a company of 2,500 people or more, and found that clouds are indeed rolling in on the corporate horizon. Check out a few key numbers from the linked story:
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Posted by Lee Pender on August 26, 20090 comments
You know that huge deficit prediction we all read about this week? Don't blame the national IT department (or whatever it's called) for it; the CIO of the U.S. is, apparently, all about saving money with cloud computing. (By the way, we try to keep RCPU as apolitical as possible, so please spare us the e-mails attacking or defending one party or the other over the deficit. We just thought it made a semi-clever lead-in to this entry. That's all.)
Posted by Lee Pender on August 26, 20090 comments
In case you missed it, some hack who writes for Redmond magazine (ahem) wrote an article on hosted ERP a couple of months back. The take-away? Hosted ERP, once feared by many organizations as unsecure or insufficient, can work very well and save a lot of money in the right scenarios and when properly implemented. Allay your fears here.
Posted by Lee Pender on August 26, 20090 comments
Remember Application Service Providers? Even if you do, you might not want to mention them in the office or on a job interview, this semi-snarky article advises. The correct phrase now is Software as a Service or, of course, cloud computing. (By the way, the folks who commented on this article received it fairly poorly; we thought it was kind of clever. You never know what you're going to get on the Infobahn.)
Posted by Lee Pender on August 26, 20091 comments
"The snow leopard is a powerful hunter, able to kill prey three times its weight."
-- From the Snow Leopard Trust Web site
OK, so it's not a real snow leopard, but it is on the hunt for game much bigger than itself. Apple is releasing the latest version of its Mac operating system -- called Snow Leopard, of course -- on Friday. In fact, folks who pre-order now can actually take delivery of the new OS by the end of this week.
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Posted by Lee Pender on August 25, 20094 comments
That Microsoft and Yahoo search deal that's meant to somehow take on Google, even though neither one can come close to touching Google's market share in search? Well, it might not be on after all if the two companies can't get by antitrust watchdogs. You think anybody in the U.S. Department of Justice would like a shot at Microsoft on this one? Yeah, so do we.
Posted by Lee Pender on August 25, 20090 comments
The dog days of summer have started to heat up at RCPU, with lots of great comments and e-mails on browsers, how they do or don't make money, why they're important and whether having IE embedded into Windows is really that big of an advantage for Microsoft.
We've had quite a lot of activity on the blog site itself (spurred on by a great e-mail from reader Andy, which you can see here), which is fantastic. And we've had some great, thoughtful e-mails that have followed Andy's contribution. Let's get to some, shall we?
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Posted by Lee Pender on August 20, 20093 comments
Good news for the channel, everything considered: Apparently Red Hat realizes the value of partners in the enterprise and is
making improvements
to its partner program.
Posted by Lee Pender on August 20, 20090 comments
It didn't seem possible, but Microsoft's Windows Mobile strategy now seems less comprehensible than ever before. Apparently, Redmond is going to some sort of two-platform approach, through which it'll see a couple of different versions of WinMo -- one updated and one not so updated. Om Malik's take? Disaster. And we can't see why he'd be wrong.
Posted by Lee Pender on August 20, 20090 comments