Amazon introduces the AWS Private Cloud, and the question that arises is if this new service enables the deployment of real Private Cloud..

August 26, 2009 in IT Departments, News by pcalcada | No comments

Amazon has introduced today the new AWS Virtual Private Cloud service, more details on it could be found here: http://aws.amazon.com/vpc

On the follow up of this new service, some doubts have arisen about the real type of the cloud built with this new service, and also if this kind of cloud could even be difined as Private Clouds.

Using the NIST definition:

” Private cloud. The cloud infrastructure is operated solely for an organization. It may be managed by the organization or a third party and may exist on premise or off premise. ”

It’s very clear, a Private Cloud could be on premise or off premise. The next question is what should be considered the premises of the cloud. Should it be the wall of the datacenter, the box of the server or the VM where the OS is running? For one company their premises could be a single room, whereas to another it could be the entire building, in the cloud computing paradigm the private cloud is, in my perspective, a sandbox, which has boundaries well definite and on which we trust. These boundaries are the set of features that are available (CPU, network, storage, development API, etc) and the trust comes by means of contracts, cloud provider reputation, etc…

It’s easy to understand that this kind of definition are not closed to discussion, but in my prespective, the service introduced by Amazon should be consider a very interesting tool to build effective Private Clouds.

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Lets start controlling the Internet…

July 30, 2009 in User Experiences, short-thoughts by pcalcada | No comments

Controlling the Internet is not on the plans of CloudViews.Org, but if we were allowed or have the opportunity to do it we will definitely choose to do it as Rives is planning.

This is very off-topic, but at the same time it’s a very thoughtful presentation, specially for those who are planning vacations… :)

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Cloud Computing Views: Week 20 to 26 July 2009

July 28, 2009 in News by Maria Spínola | No comments

This list is a summary of Cloud Computing news that I posted during the past week on Twitter :

- Unisys & #CloudComputing: Exclusive Q&A with Rich Marcello http://bit.ly/JmBad (via @cloudnomics) #Security & #Privacy are big concerns…

- Sun Microsystems view on #CloudComputing: http://bit.ly/1cm61n

- List of advantages of #CloudComputing http://bit.ly/X8mKB (via @CloudMarkets) ME: and list of advantages vs risks: http://bit.ly/oBwga

- How is Your Cloud Computing Provider Doing? http://bit.ly/nXWYM (via @cloudysaas)

Read the rest of this entry »

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White Paper: An Essential Guide to Possibilities and Risks of Cloud Computing

July 19, 2009 in Basic Views, CloudViews, IT Departments, Interoperability, News, Technical by Maria Spínola | 1 comment

Cloud Computing is quite possibly the hottest, most discussed and often misunderstood concept in Information Technology (IT) today.

In short, Cloud Computing proposes to transform the way IT it’s deployed and managed, promising reduced implementation, maintenance costs and complexity, while accelerating innovation, providing faster timeto-market, and the ability to scale high-performance applications and infrastructures on demand.

But business managers know that in spite of the benefits of every new technology/business model there are also risks and issues (like for example: trust, loss of privacy, regulatory violation, data replication, coherency and erosion of integrity, application sprawl and dependencies, etc.) and that rushing things when it comes to Cloud Computing can be a very bad decision, but blowing off Cloud Computing all together because you think you can secure your own stuff better than a service provider or because many claims, made about Cloud Computing, have lead you to the point of “irrational exuberance” and unrealistic expectations, isn’t smart, either.

The goal of this White Paper is to provide a realistic perspective of the possibilities, benefits and risks of Cloud Computing; what to look for, what to avoid, and also some tips and best practices on implementation, architecture and vendor management strategies. It is important to consider all those aspects before you decide either to move (but without putting the carriage before the horse) or not to move your systems, applications, and/or data to to the “Cloud”, in a “hype free” approach.

Click here to download the White Paper (or click on the image at left side)

Thanks and please let me know how I can help you.

P.S. And of course your comments, feedback’s and thoughts are always welcome.

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Google Chrome OS – more thoughts about it

July 9, 2009 in Technical, short-thoughts by pcalcada | 1 comment

I have to admit that this type of short post could transmit the idea of a follow-the-hype initiative, but that was not the intention. So following some feedback on the Google Groups I’ve decided to clarify some of my initial thoughts.

First, I have to clarify on what part of Cloud Computing I was talking about. As I’ve written here (http://www.cloudviews.org/2008/12/cloud-computing-the-internet-becomes-our-computer/) the SaaS layer is the one, in my perspective, that could have more relevance to the user’s daily work or in the user’s perspective of the Cloud. And it’s precisely there where I think that products such as the Google Chrome OS and the Palm WEB-OS could have a strong impact. Not because they are thin clients to access the Cloud but because they will put the cloud working for users.

The perfect sandbox or ecosystem for SaaS applications is the web browser, but because its development is so dependent on the development of the underlying OS, I think that having both developed in an integrated way could be a major step forward.

To be able to have a perfect Could OS we still need to develop simple things as:

Those are simple examples that I think could be easily developed if they are built in a integrated way.

It’s obvious that in a commercial perspective, and being Google one of the top developers on the SaaS market, to have a complete Could ecosystem is something that they would love to have, and it’s precisely here that they should be careful and try not to close this platform and make it only available to their products. Taking the VMware (Virtualization) example, don’t forget that we are now trying to discussed which Virtual Machine Open Format is more suitable to prevent the vendor lock-in problem.

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Google Chrome OS – The so expected and speculated (Cloud) OS

July 8, 2009 in News, Technical by pcalcada | No comments

A couple of months ago I have written a short post about how amazing the new Palm WEB OS is and how their engineers (marketeers, developers, etc ) have captured so well the essence of the Cloud Computing Paradigm (http://www.cloudviews.org/2009/01/squeeze-the-cloud-to-fit-into-your-hand/).

When Google introduced the Chrome browser. A broad discussion about it and about how it could be transformed in the OS of the Cloud emerged, without a great surprise Google introduced yesterday (http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/introducing-google-chrome-os.html) their plans to the Google Chrome OS.

Apparently this new OS is a real OS, based on Linux, it’s not a browser working as a sandbox for Cloud Application (Cloud OS) but I’ve no doubts that it will be a major step forward in the Cloud Computing paradigm.

The Web OS from Palm has a large set of features that they should use as example, but there is one important thing that they must have – the platform should be as open as the web. If Google would have any kind of temptation to close this new Chrome OS on their platform (GDocs, Gmail, etc, ) they will definitely end with their foot on moving sands and they will sink…

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Cloud Computing Briefings about Research, Companies, Key Players and Platforms

July 5, 2009 in Basic Views, News by Maria Spínola | No comments

I just found this nice resource about Cloud Computing (it’s owned by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology):
http://www.technologyreview.com/briefings/cloud/

There we can find information about Research, Companies, Key Players and Platforms – click on the Cloud Scene “blue image” and see by yourself :)

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