Daytona, OpenStack turns 1, cool storage and IBM

Hi all, Once again it's that time of the week.

1. Project "Daytona" bringing iterative MapReduce to Azure for Scientists. The massive data processing system has been produced by Microsoft as an alternative to Hadoop and will, so say the Microsoft Research folks, allow scientists to take advantage of the massive compute resources available without needing to learn about cloud programming. Here's the inform from the MS site: http://bit.ly/qiYwhF
2. OpenStack turn 1 year old. The open source cloud OS has blitzed all expectations, including those of RackSpace who started the project, in terms of both interest and uptake with Cisco, Citrix and DELL now among those contributing. Outside of the "Big Brands" OpenStack is going to be of significant interest to folks over the next 12 months. http://bit.ly/oXffLi
3. A report from the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) shows how organisations have saved millions of dollars through a move to Cloud services or to the technologies underpinning those services. The report cites both real-life examples (Boeing, Novartis and Citigroup) along with some general examples for digestion and reference. Article here: http://bit.ly/n1y5fu There are detractors from this report however, the GreenMonk http://bit.ly/nxDHqA provides an interesting perspective on the assumptions which CDP (and others) use in their CO2 emissions calculations. Although the cost savings of a move to Cloud – or at least virtualisation – solutions are made clear, the green credentials of moving to hosted platforms should still be viewed on a case- by-case basis.
4. 800 US Government datacenters to close. If reports are to be believed, the USG is to shutter around 40% of it's 2000 datacenters in an effort to both reduce costs and improve the way technology is used. Part of those efficiencies and improvements will be the adoption of Cloud services delivered either internally as consolidated platforms or by third-party vendors. Opportunities abound! http://nyti.ms/r9tUAY
5. Cheap storage? This one gets into my list as a purely selfish 'geeky' interest story. BackBlaze provide cheap cloud storage and have release details – and some very cool DC pictures – of how they do it. They produce their own storage 'pods' each delivering 135TB of raw storage for less that $7500. Oh and they are bright red too! We spend a lot of time talking about how Cloud abstracts away from the hardware but it's still cool to see hat hardware sometimes too! http://bit.ly/cYfIRQ
6. We don't really talk about IBM that much, but their Federal Community Cloud is a FISMA certified solution for communication and collaboration which seems to have been designed specifically to address the "Cloud first" requirements in place and is implemented in a Private Cloud deployment model. IBM… we'll have to watch them! http://bit.ly/nb3rjr
7. MAP 6.0 for Cloud planning. Microsoft have release v6.0 of it's Migration and Planning toolkit (MAP). This version is of particular interest because it covers not only analysis for Azure and Hyper-V Cloud, but also includes an Office 365 client evaluation tool and analysis tools for VMware workload and Oracle database schemas. For anyone with a passing interest in moving anything to a Microsoft 'cloud' solution this is a must-have piece of kit. http://bit.ly/n3dn9T

I think that'll do for now! The outlook? Cloudy with a bright future!