Last week came the news that Paul Maritz will step down from his position as VMware CEO on Sept. 1 to become chief strategist of parent company EMC.
The unexpected management shakeup at VMware leads to the question, "Is VMware succeeding in its effort to reshape its image as a supplier of datacenter virtualization technology to that of a cloud infrastructure and platform provider?" More
Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on July 26, 20120 comments
On the heels of its announcement last month that Windows Azure customers will be able to run virtual machine instances, Microsoft this week released the community technology preview (CTP) of Windows Server for Hosting Providers in a move that would enable third-party hosting providers to build cloud service offerings running on Windows Server.
Based on Microsoft's forthcoming Windows Server 2012, the suite will allow hosting providers to provision and manage through System Center, Windows Azure Web Sites, virtual machines, the Service Management Portal and API. More
Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on July 12, 20120 comments
It's official: Google will offer an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud. The company launched Google Compute Engine at its annual Google I/O developer conference -- a move that was widely expected, though overshadowed by the announcement of the Nexus 7 tablet.
By launching an IaaS, Google is taking on some large players like Amazon Web Services, Rackspace, Verizon, IBM, Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft, which earlier this month launched its own long-anticipated IaaS service. More
Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on June 29, 20120 comments
Microsoft and Symantec have inked a co-development agreement to build a so-called Disaster-Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS), the companies announced at this week's Tech-Ed conference in Orlando, Fla.
Under the terms of the pact, which appears to be in the early stages, Symantec will extend its Storage Foundation High Availability for Windows and Veritas Volume replicator disaster recovery (DR) software to Microsoft's Windows Azure cloud service. While the resulting deliverable will be a continuously available data protection service, Symantec officials said the new data replication software will use Windows Azure as a storage target sometime in 2013. More
Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on June 14, 20121 comments
After billions of dollars in investment and seven years of development, the Oracle Public Cloud launched last Wednesday as expected.
CEO Larry Ellison said at the launch event that all of his company's key infrastructure and applications are now available as cloud services.
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Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on June 13, 20120 comments
Whether or not Microsoft succeeds in making Windows Azure a viable alternative to Amazon Web Services, it won't be for lack of trying. Last week's major refresh of the 2-year old Windows Azure platform could make it a formidable infrastructure as a service (IaaS) provider.
Microsoft corporate VP Scott Guthrie officially outlined the new Windows Azure at a webcast event in San Francisco on Thursday, as well as in a blog post. In addition to offering IaaS, Microsoft is adding support for Linux servers, Guthrie said.
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Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on June 11, 20120 comments
Hewlett-Packard this week said it is extending links to Amazon Web Services EC2 as well as its own forthcoming HP Cloud service in an effort to broaden connectivity from its private cloud portfolio of hardware and software.
HP made several noteworthy announcements at its Discover 2012 conference taking place in Las Vegas this week. The company also announced its first vertical market cloud service with solutions aimed at the commercial airline industry, a new version of its CloudSystem Matrix templates, Cloud Service Automation software and a cloud-based service that allows users to print from any mobile device without requiring print drivers. HP is also rolling out new cloud consulting services for enterprises seeking to build hybrid deployments. More
Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on June 07, 20120 comments
10gen, the company backing the popular open-source NoSQL-based MongoDB database and a cloud-based monitoring service to support it, today said it has received a cash infusion of $42 million.
Leading the latest round of venture funding was New Enterprise Associates and backed by existing investors Sequoia Capital, Flybridge Capital Partners and Union Square Ventures. In total 10Gen has raised $73 million. The huge investment is the latest sign that MongoDB is gaining momentum as a repository for emerging big data applications. More
Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on May 29, 20120 comments
Google's cloud-based productivity suite picked up another key security certification on Monday: the ISO 27001 standard.
ISO 27001 is recognized internationally. Like other cloud security certifications -- SAS 70, SSAE 16/ISAE 3402 and FISMA, for starters -- ISO 27001 is important to enterprise customers who are wary of the cloud because they don't know if their data is safe. More
Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on May 29, 20121 comments
Bellevue, Wash.-based Opstera, which launched in January, is rolling out a free cloud app monitoring tool designed to measure the quality of service (QoS) of Microsoft's Windows Azure platform and, eventually, other platform as a service (PaaS) offerings.
CloudGraphs provides continual workload tests against Windows Azure and scans the various Windows Azure datacenters throughout the world roughly every 15 minutes. The online tool will determine latency and other service-level characteristics, drilling into specific datacenters and services offered as part of the Windows Azure platform like compute storage and content delivery network. The dashboard will provide real-time and historical information. More
Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on May 17, 20120 comments
As promised, Hewlett-Packard today released an open beta of its public cloud service and disclosed more than three dozen partners that are supporting it.
The company's HP Cloud Services, as reported, is an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) offering targeted at enterprises, developers and ISVs looking for an off-premises alternative for compute and storage capacity. Available for testing immediately is HP Cloud Compute, HP Cloud Object Storage (announced earlier this week) and the HP Content Delivery Network, all of which will be made available on a usage basis. More
Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on May 10, 20121 comments
On the heels of its move to expand its partner ecosystem, Amazon Web Services (AWS) on Wednesday said it will hold its first conference aimed at bringing partners, customers and the AWS team together.
Amazon will hold "AWS re: Invent 2012" on Nov. 27 to 29 at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas. Targeted at developers, enterprise IT and startups, the conference will consist of over 100 sessions, though the company has not announced specific content. According to the preliminary conference Web site, AWS is looking to bring together its product and development teams and its systems integration and ISV partners with customers, venture capitalists and press. More
Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on May 09, 20120 comments