The sun seems to be shining and the world is out on the beach, but there were still a few interesting stories around last week.

1. Gartner Hype Curve and report. Gartner have released this years 'Hype Curve' which shows some interesting shifts. In particular the positioning of Private Clouds and the Peak of Inflated Expectations and the slide of Cloud Computing downwards towards the Trough of Disillusionment, not a huge surprise that one. Curves.. http://rww.to/qJwujs Of interest to me was the quote in ReadWriteCloud from Carsten Casper – a Gartner Research Director – indicating the most Cloud Service Providers will be changing their privacy policies in the next 12 months to more effectively protect their customers data. http://rww.to/nuK8ud
2. The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) has updated it's organizational presentations decks including it's Roadmap. If you using the CSA's stuff – even in passing – you should grab the new decks. In addition the organization has announced STAR, the Security, Trust & Assurance Registry, which will be a publicly accessible registry of the security controls in place at registered service providers. The information is all submitted using the CSA's controls matrix by the organizations themselves so should provide a like-for-like comparison invaluable to organisations seeking to make the best supplier decision. https://cloudsecurityalliance.org/star/
3. With Amazons most recent outage – there's a phrase to ponder over… most recent! - apparently being caused by a lighting strike to a power transformer which took out primary and secondary power sources – mains and backup generator – the finger-wavers have been quick to flock around, shake their heads and suck on their teeth in that 'see I warned you about these new fangled gizmos' kind of way. But this is why Cloud Computing is on that downward slope into the trough of disillusionment on Gartner's hype cycle and we've seen this before. Web-selling got almost exactly the same bad press and look at where we are now! Be stout of heart and firm of mission, on-line service delivery IS the future and the lessons being learned today will simply add strength to those ultimate systems. The article at ReadWriteWeb (http://rww.to/nHwkfr) hits the issue squarely on the head but pointing out that it's not about IF you use Cloud Services it's about how well you use them. Relying on 1 provider in 1 location is very much akin to putting all of your eggs into that singular metaphorical basket.

Hello all! It's time, once again, for my pick of the week's news.

1. The Open Data Center Alliance has published a set of documents supporting "user-driven cloud usage "models" and data center requirements for use in RFIs and RFPs. The documents include eight usage models or guidelines that address what the organization believes are the most urgent issues involving cloud adoption today. ". This one is going to occupy not a little of my time of the next few days as there seems to be some good stuff here. For info. The ODCA is made up of representatives of major enterise organizations from arounf the world including BMW, Disney, Capgemini, Marriott and more. Story here http://bit.ly/mtZYtt, more information on the ODCA and the documents here http://www.opendatacenterallian...

2. Standards of measurement. Most of the services being offered today use different indices for their service measurement. The smart folks of at Carnegie Mellon – now joined by TPI – are producing standardized set of references against which differing services will be able to be effectively measured. Interesting work but I still wonder if the results will be accepted by the providers… http://bit.ly/m8T4Tt

3. Cloud is the future! OK not big news, but that's just one of the notes from this interview with Microsoft's European President, Jan Muehlfeit, The interviewer is pretty straight shooting, but this is Bloomberg. http://wapo.st/m1qxds

4. Google's enterprise view - Mobility. Google are pushing ahead with the concept that mobility and mobile devices are the way to drive Enterprise productivity "we need to change from individual productivity to group productivity". Then of course they would say that, but we shouldn't sniff and move on too quickly. http://rww.to/iG8ubB

Yes, it's that time again when you all get my view of the weeks Cloud News.

1. SharePoint and Hybrid Cloud Storage. The storage company behind this, StorSimple, seem to have devices and solutions which work for SharePoint and Exchange. I found these genuinely interesting and, I think, my first exposure to "Cloud storage" solutions which had a focus. http://bit.ly/kyb94K
2. Veeam tools coming to Hyper-V. Veeam have, until now, been primarily associated with VMware in terms of visualization platform support. This has now changed with the introduction of their backup and replication solution for Hyper-V. This is good in a couple of way, firstly is shows hoe Hyper-V is growing in terms of significance in the eyes of other vendors and secondly, the Veeam solution gives the Microsoft DPM team a shove to continue to enhance and improve that product too. There isn't a huge amount of information around, but there is a video here http://bit.ly/ixuBcj which explains things a bit
3. Rackspace are, once again, proving to be real leaders in delivering 'Cloud' services. This time they're launched Hosted Virtual Desktop based on the Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop solutions. I don't often pull quotes out into bullets like this but this one was significant… "… Rackspace got the customer up and running with 8,000 virtual desktops in about three weeks, and that the customer has plans to host 40,000 virtual desktops with Rackspace" Full story at http://bit.ly/kZm4Fx
4. Cloud services mean more office space! This is a 'benefit' I'll admit I've never had in my list, but I'm sure it's quantifiable in some cases! A move to the adoption of Cloud services means that office space can be freed up for more 'productive' purposes that housing servers and there associated kit. Interesting perspective! http://bit.ly/jbj3sX
5. Privacy of data held on cloud services is now being examined before the Senate as a Bill has been proposed to require a search warrant and just cause to be established before data can be accessed. I'm sure this will be much discussed before it's passed, but it's an interesting item if you're involved in data privacy. http://bit.ly/j9lCMz
6. The need for solid, standardized education on Cloud is growing. Organizations ARE confused and I'm afraid Microsoft's "to the Cloud" ad's get another beating in this article. http://bit.ly/jwTZ3Q The great thing about this is, we've been doing the right things and already have the right language to use!

More next time!

The story of growth and innovation continues as Cloud services and technologies develop and take shape. And so far 2011 has been a great year for Cloud Computing, and yes - it's only January. Here are some of the recent news with a potential for big impact:

• First, a clear example of how Cloud services are maturing and coming of age - "Microsoft will give cloud customers a minimum of 12 months notice before discontinuing online services, or making any disruptive changes or upgrades, in an effort to standardize the support life cycle for cloud-based software." Read more about this here.
• Amazon continues to push forward , this time with Amazon Simple Email Service (Amazon SES) - a highly scalable and cost-effective bulk and transactional email-sending service for businesses and developers. Yes, there's some serious competition out there, but the price seems right and Amazon's excellent Cloud pedigree can only help. Read more about this here.
• And how about Amazon's entry into the PaaS market - Elastic Beanstalk? Yes, for now it only supports Java, but support for additional languages and application environments is promised in the near future. Seems like all the right moves from the true Cloud pioneer! Read more about this here.
• GoGrid continues to build upon its already pretty impressive portfolio of services with - Hosted Private Cloud Service. What's a "hosted private cloud"? - A hosted private cloud provides dedicated physical resources hosted off-site. Customers get their own private infrastructure that's managed by the host but not used by other customers. Read more about this here.  
• On the heels of multiple acquisition comes the following recent tweet from Logan McLeod, director of cloud at Dell - "Dell as a public cloud end-to-end service provider? Yes. IaaS & PaaS. Coming soon. Dell DC near you." You can follow him at http://twitter.com/loganmcleod
• Rackspace expands its footprint with an announcement of its first European data center in the UK. Read more about this here.

• "Verizon Communications plans to buy cloud service provider Terremark Worldwide for about $1.4 billion in a deal that could significantly expand its cloud offerings for enterprises." Read more about this here.
• Hot on the heels of Verizon's acquisition of Terremark, Time Warner Cable is acquiring NaviSite, an enterprise cloud hosting and management company. Time Warner Cable will pay $5.50 a share, or approximately $230 million. Read more about this here.
• Amazon Web Services (AWS) lets you rent Oracle Database Services by the hour. Read more about this here.
• You can now buy up to 16 terabytes of storage from Google. Read more about this here.

I think this is a very promising start (for 2011), what do you think?

As the largest buyer of IT products and services United States Government is well positioned to provide a tremendous boost to cloud computing, while cloud computing could be quite instrumental in powering Government's consolidation and cost reduction efforts. And this just might be a first sign of what seems like a "marriage made in heaven" - "Office of Management and Budget will now require federal agencies to default to cloud-based solutions whenever a secure, reliable, cost-effective cloud option exists." For more information check out the following Washington Post article.

It has been obvious for quite some time that Amazon is not just an online bookstore anymore. One of the pioneers of online commerce also happens to be one of the Cloud Computing "founding fathers", and the story of innovation continues. Check out the following post on the Amazon Web Services Blog: "New EC2 Instance Type - The Cluster GPU Instance". The massive compute power is delivered at the cost of $2.10 per hour:

• A pair of NVIDIA Tesla M2050 "Fermi" GPUs (each of the Tesla M2050s contains 448 cores and 3 GB of ECC RAM)
• A pair of quad-core Intel "Nehalem" X5570 processors offering 33.5 ECUs (EC2 Compute Units)
• 22 GB of RAM
• 1690 GB of local instance storage
• 10 Gbps Ethernet, with the ability to create low latency, full bisection bandwidth HPC clusters

And suddenly all lines between Cloud, Utility, and High Performance Computing start to blur. Without a doubt, these are exciting news!

At Forrester James Staten's focus is on Infrastructure and Operations and his research covers many related areas; most interestingly, from this blog's point of view, Cloud and Utility Computing. I found James Staten's recent blog post - "Cloud Predictions For 2011: Gains From Early Experiences Come Alive" to be very interesting and insightful. Check it out.  

A quick check into recent acquisitions (or recently jumpstarted internal initiatives) by some of the computing industry “big guns” as well as their type suggests that something is afoot. Is it a quest for a more complete portfolio of products and services (whether it is driven by the necessity to expand into different lines of business to sustain growth or by an ambitious desire to be a one-stop-shop for all things computing) or are new technologies, such as virtualization and Cloud Computing, blurring the line between hardware, software, and services?

Fundamentally, it is probably the former, but at the moment it is probably the latter. I recall one of the industry executives observing that IT seems to be more fashion driven than the fashion industry itself (or something similar to this effect), and at the moment there’s nothing more fashionable than Cloud Computing. The term may be somewhat nebulous and the underlying concepts may provide an abstraction at a very high level, but make no mistake – there’s a datacenter (or even multiple datacenters) and a plethora of hardware and software behind every [worthy] cloud.

Hence, a tendency towards gobbling up or developing the technologies that Cloud Computing encapsulates – from power generation to compute and storage hardware platforms; to software necessary to run, manage, and monitor large scale systems; to ecommerce services required to monetize the use of those systems; to professional services essential for powering up cloud integration, migration, and overall adoption. So, let’s look at some of those acquisitions and internal initiatives (or the symbiosis of both):

• IBM – Cast Iron Systems (cloud integration), Sterling Commerce (business systems and integration solutions), Big Fix (intelligent security and systems, management), Netezza (data warehousing, business analytics, compliance).
• Oracle – ATG (ecommerce), Sun (storage and compute technologies, Solaris, Java, Star Office, Virtual Box, and other software assets), Amber Point (SOA management).
• CA – Oblicore (Service Level Management), 3Tera (turnkey cloud computing), Nimsoft (unified monitoring, cloud monitoring), 4Base (cloud integration), Hyperformix (capacity management).
• HP – 3Par (data storage and information management), Palm (mobile products), ArchSight (security and compliance), Fortify (software security assurance).
• Dell – Ocarina Networks (storage), Exanet (storage), KACE Networks (appliance based system management), Boomi (SaaS integration).
• Cisco – WebEx (SaaS email, web/phone/video conferencing), Jabber (on-premise and cloud collaboration services), ScanSafe (SaaS security), NeoPath (storage). Big internal initiative – Cisco’s Unified Computing System.
• Microsoft – Sentillion (identity and access management), Opalis (IT automation and orchestration), Canesta (3D chips and user interface technology).
• Google – a barrage of companies and products related to the following on-line technologies: marketing, search, gaming, audio, video, photo, social, and travel. Internal initiatives – Android OS and mobile devices, Google Energy (clean, renewable energy), robotic car.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology unveiled Nov. 4 a strategy for developing a governmentwide cloud computing roadmap as agencies work to adopt the new computing paradigm.

Rather than build a roadmap independently and send it out for comment, NIST's strategy has been to collaboratively develop a government cloud computing roadmap based on the group's May cloud computing workshop, CIO council meetings and input from industry, said Dawn Leaf, senior executive for cloud computing at NIST.

"I can't emphasize enough that our perspective, in this strategy is that the ownership is a community ownership," said Leaf. "We see industry really driving and leveraging their expertise, in terms of the reference model, ontology and technology."

For the first step of the roadmap, NIST hopes to define target government cloud computing business use cases. This does not include current use cases, but opportunities for deploying the cloud that have yet to be implemented.

Secondly, NIST and related stakeholders hope to define neutral cloud computing reference architecture and taxonomy for the purpose of supporting this process. This needs to be a model that does not prescribe a particular implementation, does not inhibit or prevent innovation and is useful in that we can relate different cloud services and map them to the overall model, explained Leaf.

And finally, the working group will generate a cloud computing roadmap that iteratively translates, defines and tracks cloud computing priorities. (See a graphical representation of the entire roadmap below.)  

Thus far, NIST has been focused on providing guidance in the form of special publications to agencies. In July, the institute released for public comment a special publication on security and virtualization--SP 800-125 (.pdf)--and it is on track to issue a second, cloud-computing specific draft publication in December, tentatively called "Cloud Computing Synopsis & Guidelines."

Leaf also said that the NIST IT Lab's complex information systems group has been working on a cloud computing model simulation, internally know as Koala. The objective of the simulation is to assess and characterize resource allocation algorithms within a public, infrastructure as a service cloud component. Leaf said the findings will be released publically in early 2011.

NIST has also been building it's Standards Acceleration to Jumpstart Adoption of Cloud Computing--an initiative started in May that's aimed at the gap between when a technology emerges and when the standards are formalized; SAJACC is primarily aimed at identifying interoperability, portability and security requirements. In September, NIST launched the SAJACC website and on Nov. 5, NIST published the first set of 25 use cases for public comment.

Source: NIST kicks off collaborative development of cloud computing roadmap - FierceGovernmentIT 

Yes, you have guessed it right - the subject of this post is not "The Big Blue" (Le Grand Bleu) a 1988 English-language film by French director Luc Besson (though it would be an interesting topic in and by itself), it is the corporation - International Business Machines (better known as simply IBM). Established in 1896 under the name of Tabulating Machine Company it adopted its current name in 1924 under the leadership of Thomas J. Watson.

In my opinion, IBM holds a special place in the history of computing as over the years the company has made tremendous contributions to the science and the industry through its continued research and innovation. Metaphorically speaking, it is one of computing founding fathers. So, it should not come as a surprise that IBM is also one of the Cloud Computing pioneers. The company’s research into large scale computing, its long history and a wealth of experience with building and running complex systems and large datacenters, coupled with an impressive portfolio of hardware and software products and a world-wide professional services organization, provides a perfect foundation for the Cloud Computing platform of the future. And for IBM this is a natural progression of things, to quote one of the IBM sites dedicated to cloud computing – “workstations used to be tied to a mainframe, now they're conversing with a cloud.”

That said, it often seems that IBM does not get enough exposure and recognition. While Google Apps and Microsoft’s BPOS/Office 365 get a lot of press, similar offering from IBM – LotusLive Collaboration Suite goes almost unnoticed. Similarly, both Google’s and Microsoft’s strides towards FISMA certified cloud services were well publicized and covered by many industry periodicals. Meanwhile, IBM has readied its own cloud offerings for Federal and Municipal Governments, see the following article.

So, it may not be hip and trendy, but the amazing longevity IBM has demonstrated in this fast paced and even faster changing industry demands attention to what it has to offer. I suggest you take a closer look and decide for yourself what is the value - http://www.ibm.com/ibm/cloud/. Also, check out the the following quick video: