Sprint to the Cloud, Cheaper Azure, Cloud OS's, Amazon GovCloud and Office365 outage

Here we are, it's another week and the Cloud keeps rolling.

1. Sprint to launch Cloud services this year. Unlike it's rivals Verizon who bought themselves a "Cloud Service Provider" in Terremark, Sprint intend to offer their services from their existing datacenter capacity and will be offering collaboration software services as well as infrastructure as a service. There's no word yet on what the software offerings will be, but Sprint's customers are apparently crying out for this kind of thing "it's the no 1 topic of conversation" according to Paget Alves, Sprint's head of Business Markets. Choice and competition in the markets is always a good thing and will make sure that ALL of the providers continue to 'up their game! http://cnet.co/oio3v0
2. Azure is to get cheaper for smaller organisations. Microsoft has announced that, as from 1st October, the price of the extra-small compute-hour will be reduced by 20%. Good news, but also announced is the new that all compute time will reported at the small compute-hour level. This does seem a little confusing but the easy way to think about this is that 1 small compute-hour will equal 3 extra-small compute hours for billing purposes and that customers will now be able to switch between the models based on their requirements. Over all this is designed to get more and smaller developers interested in using the Microsoft Platform for application delivery. http://bit.ly/pRbV1v
3. It's the week of the Could operating Systems – or so it seems. Nimbula have launched their Nimbula Director as "the first Cloud Operating System able to run geographically distributed clouds, meanwhile Joyent believe that their CoudOS - which interestingly they've released into Open Source – is the "only modern OS". Now both of these systems have adopted KVM as the underlying hypervisor which makes them attractive for migration and adoption, but I'm still reserving judgement on the viability of these in the broader market. We'll have keep an eye on the new tech emerging though, you never know it might just work! Nimbula announcement http://zd.net/nGgx86 Joyent details: http://joyent.com
4. Amazon continues to add to it's AWS portfolio. VPC – Virtual Private Cloud – is one, although I'm not really to happy with that choice of words.. And AWS GovCloud is another. GovCloud aims to provide US-centric services capable of being used by Federal Government agencies and departments. It's funny but I'm sure that GovCloud is already out there somewhere…
5. An Office365 outage was caused by "a networking interruption" and scuttlebutt is saying that it was some Cisco kit which failed – although no-one is confirming or denying that! Microsoft are offering a 25% refund to customers affected but he 3-hour service outage and assure them that "the datacenter's networking facilities have been remediated". Now I keep saying that this is all good, solid learning experience and things can only be improved as a result, but really.. They aren't making our lives easier are they?! http://zd.net/oL2ciu
6. And Finally! Yes I've another "and finally" cloud story for you.. An airport was closed this week when what was believed to be a UFO was seen overhead. The perceived threat turned out to be… well of course it was a cloud. A punch-hole cloud in fact, usually cause by aircraft transiting a layer of trapped water vapour – over an airport! Who'd've thunk it!! http://exm.nr/pxWqKr

TTFN – Out!