New Contributors

Jon Beck SVP of Sales, Client Services & Business Development OpSource



Find More Contributors >>




New Content

 
• Article: Some Thoughts on Cloud Adoption Methodology
  Jason Carolan - Director, Global Systems Engineering & Distinguished Engineer at Sun Microsystems, Inc
  Cloud data centers focus on two main areas: time to market and cost management. Technically it provides an abstract platform to deploy services and APIs to manipulate those services. The enabler is automation and the ability to systematically optimize the platforms and services. Granted the focus here is moving forward with a transformational platform but its useful to look backwards to address other challenges beyond technology.
  
  
• Article: The Hidden Costs of Internal Clouds
  Ellen Rubin - Founder & VP of Products at CloudSwitch, Inc
  Concerns about security and loss of control in public clouds have led to an alternative model - the internal cloud - that replicates the cloud environment inside the corporate firewall. Here are some of the reasons why the economics of internal clouds make them inherently less efficient than a public cloud, especially as new technology makes the public cloud safer and more reliable.
  
  
• Paper: NCOIC Analyses Cloud Computing with SCOPE
  Kevin Jackson - Engineering Fellow at NJVC, LLC
  As an analysis tool, the Systems, Capabilities, Operations, Programs and Enterprise (SCOPE) model is used to characterize interoperability-relevant aspects of a system or capability in terms of a set of dimensions. Organized hierarchically, these dimensions (and possible sub-dimensions) represent specific aspects of a system or its surrounding environment. This process enables a quantitative and/or qualitative interoperability assessment of the target system or capability. With the development of a cloud interoperability best practice as a goal, the NCOIC CCWG is working to identify all significant cloud computing dimensions.
  
  
• Video: The Future of the Internet
  Padmasree Warrior - Chief Technology Officer at Cisco Systems
  Cisco CTO, Padmasree Warrior, talks about the past, present, and future of the Internet.
  
  
• Article: Marketing’s Big Disconnect
  Christine Crandell - SVP of Global Marketing at Accept Software
  People do what they are paid to do, and the pay for Sales personnel clearly reflects that. For Marketing, however, the linkage between revenue and compensation is far from clear. So institutionalizing a positive alignment between Sales and Marketing requires changing the way Marketing teams are compensated.
  
  
• Article: Don't Pass on PaaS in 2010
  By Sam Charrington - VP, Product Management & Marketing at Appistry, Inc
  While IaaS solutions are interesting, they fail to fully deliver on the scalability, elasticity and cost improvements enterprises seek to gain by moving applications to the cloud. This is due to the fact that the true costs of delivering applications and services in a cloud environment relate not to the racking and stacking of infrastructure, but rather to the development, deployment and management of applications - and only PaaS solutions can address these costs. Here is a look at what a platform-oriented cloud solution provides.
  
  
• Video: On-Premise, On-Demand & Cloud Computing
  Russ Daniels - VP & CTO, Cloud Services Strategy at HP
  
  
• Podcast: 10 Cloud Computing Trends
  David S Linthicum - Author & Founder of Blue Mountain Labs
  Dave talks about a recent article that discusses the "10 Cloud Computing Trends That are Rapidly Catching On".
  
  
• Article: Part 2: How Much Does it Take to Start a SaaS Company?
  Kevin Dobbs - Founder & Managing Partner at Montclair Advisors, LLC
  It definitely takes a commitment to build a true SaaS company, especially when you consider some facts about companies that have gone public. Hear is an overview of those facts and what they mean for start-ups.
  
  




Upcoming Events

 

Under the Radar 2010 April 16, 2010 Microsoft Conference Center, Mountain View, CA

Find More Upcoming Events >>

New Contributors

Dr Stefan Ried Sr Analyst Forrester Research Inc

Benoit Hudzia Senior Researcher SAP Research



Find More Contributors >>




The Cloudbook Magazine: Issue One

 

The Cloudbook Magazine With the emergence of cloud computing, we felt that the community of writers, suppliers and consumers interested in cloud needed a monthly magazine that reflected both a consolidated view of what happened in cloud for the month, and also provided a place for contributor viewpoints to be published. We invite you to take a look at this first edition. Links are included for all article summaries so you can easily get to the original content. Read the Inaugural Issue >>





New Content

 
• Paper: The Future of Cloud Computing: Opportunities for European Cloud Computing Beyond 2010
  Ignacio M Llorente - Full Professor & Head of Research Group at the Complutense University of Madrid
  This document provides a detailed analysis of Europe’s position with respect to cloud provisioning, and how this affects in particular future research and development in this area. The report is based on a series of workshops involving experts from different areas related to cloud technologies.
  
  In more detail, the identified opportunities are: (1) Provisioning and further development of Cloud infrastructures, where in particular telecommunication companies are expected to provide offerings; (2) Provisioning and advancing cloud platforms, which the telecommunication industry might see as a business opportunity, as well as large IT companies with business in Europe and even large non-IT businesses with hardware not fully utilized. (3) Enhanced service provisioning and development of meta-services: Europe could and should develop a ‘free market for IT services’ to match those for movement of goods, services, capital, and skills. Again telecommunication industry could supplement their services as ISPs with extended cloud capabilities; (4) provision of consultancy to assist businesses to migrate to, and utilize effectively, clouds. This implies also provision of a toolset to assist in analysis and migration.
  
  
• Video: Using Facebook to Grow Your Business
  Clara Shih - Author, Entrepreneur & Director, Social Networking Alliances and Product Strategy at Salesforce.com, Inc
  This webcast features Facebook trends and stats, specific examples and tips for SMBs, and a case study from an Allstate insurance agent who has embraced Facebook for his business's marketing and customer service efforts.
  
  
• Article: Cloud Computing and Commodity
  James Urquhart - Manager, Cloud Computing & Virtualized Data Centers Marketing at Cisco Systems
  Understanding Commodization and Commodification and how they apply to cloud computing.
  
  
• Paper: Improving the Live Migration Process of Large Enterprise Applications
  By Benoit Hudzia - Senior Researcher at SAP Research
  Recent developments in virtualization technology have resulted in its proliferation of usage across data centers. Ultimately, the goal of this technology is to more efficiently utilize server resources to reduce Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) by abstracting hardware and consolidating servers. This results in lower equipment costs and less electrical consumption for server power and cooling. However, the TCO benefits of holistic virtualization extend beyond server assets. One of these aspects relates to the ability of being able to migrate Virtual Machines (VM) across distinct physical hosts over a network. However, limitations of the current migration technology start to appear when they are applied on larger application systems such as SAP ERP or SAP ByDesign. Such systems consume a large amount of memory and cannot be transferred as seamlessly as smaller ones, creating service interruption. Limiting the impact and optimizing migration becomes even more important with the generalization of Service Level Agreement (SLA). In this document we present our design and evaluation of a system that enables live migration of VMs running large enterprise applications without severely disrupting their live services, even across the Internet. By combining well-known techniques and innovative ones we can reduce system down-time and resource impact for migrating live, large Virtual Execution Environments.
  
  
• Article: Oracle's Sudden Jump Into the Cloud
  Dr Stefan Ried - Sr Analyst at Forrester Research Inc
  Oracle is about to launch its Cloud Computing strategy with a worldwide roadshow. What does this mean for Oracle customers and partners?
  
  
• Article: The Cloud Computing Challenge
  Dr Stefan Ried - Sr Analyst at Forrester Research Inc
  Cloud Computing challenges the CIO legally as well as technically. There are many challenges which CIOs will face when running firm critical applications and data over the Internet. The most successful CIOs have built an IT governance strategy to avoid the uncontrolled variety of technologies, meta data and business process evolution in their IT landscape.
  
  
• Article: Yet Another Cloud - How Many Clouds Do We Need?
  Dr Stefan Ried - Sr Analyst at Forrester Research Inc
  A Proposed Cloud Taxonomy. Vendors are increasingly confusing customers as too many different things are related to cloud computing. A first trial of a possible cloud-taxonomy is categorizing cloud services by IT-Infrastructure vs Business Value and by the level of privacy a certain concept embraces.
  
  

New Contributors

Guy Rosen Co-Founder & CEO Vircado

Scott Sanchez Director of Cloud Security Solutions Unisys Corp



Find More Contributors >>




New Content

 
• Paper: Model-Driven Application Deployment for Cloud Computing Environments
  By Jason Carolan and Steve Gaede
  The accepted best practice for creating packages for cloud computing environments is to create a hand-crafted golden master image of the application or service. This golden master can then be versioned, executed, and replicated as determined by the deployment model. While this has been generally accepted as the most efficient approach, it is not. This white paper examines this best practice and demonstrates how a model-based approach can be more efficient, less prone to error, and more secure.
  
  
• Video: An Interview with NASA Nebula CIO Chris C Kemp
  Chris C Kemp - CIO at NASA Ames Research Center
  
  
• Video: Cloud Security & Privacy
  Subra Kumaraswamy - Security Manager at Sun Microsystems
  This webcast discusses current issues in cloud computing with regards to security and privacy. The presenters are the three coauthors of a recent published book, "Cloud Security and Privacy." In this webcast, they discuss cloud issues with infrastructure and data security, identity management, security management, privacy considerations, audit and compliance, Security-as-a-Service (cloud-based security solutions), and the impact of cloud computing on traditional information technology.
  
  
• Video: Cloud Security Deep Dive
  Subra Kumaraswamy - Security Manager at Sun Microsystems
  In this webcast, the three coauthors of "Cloud Security and Privacy" take a deep dive into cloud security issues and focus on three specific aspects: 1 data security: 2 identity management in the cloud, and; 3 governance in the cloud (in the context of managing a cloud service provider with respect to security obligations).
  
  
• Video: Customer Data in the Cloud
  Laef Olson - Chief Information Officer, RightNow Technologies
  C-level executives are hungry for fresh sales, inventory and other data that they can use to make more knowledgeable decisions quickly. But once executives are provided with these business intelligence dashboards, these systems often sit dormant or are under-utilized. 1to1 Media's Tom Hoffman spoke with RightNow Technologies CIO, Laef Olson, about steps that can be taken to increase the adoption of CRM dashboards.
  
  
• Article: Cloud Computing: Enabling the Customer Driven Innovation
  Surendra Reddy - Founder, Stealth Mode Cloud Startup
  For the past decade, businesses focused on the short term profit. Many businesses outsourced the customer service and/or moved toward self-serve models. This not only significantly reduced the customer interactions with the business but also reduced, if not eliminated, critical information flows from the customer to the businesses. Customers are now resorting to social networks for their product search as well as to share their product experiences. Though short-term focus and offshore activities helped businesses to improve their operational costs it also eroded the trust and there is little effort to improve customer satisfaction. Cloud Computing enables businesses to invest their resources in improving and streamlining the customer facing business process and eliminate costly IT infrastructure services.
  
  
• Presentation: Making Channels Work to Grow Your SaaS / Cloud Business
  Lincoln Murphy - Founder and Managing Director at Sixteen Ventures
  
  
• Presentation: SQL vs NoSQL
  Alaric Snell-Pym - Chief Software Architect at GenieDB
  Alaric Snell-Pym from GenieDB talks about the pros and cons of SQL and NoSQL. It's not a simple case of one or the other. The question is: Should we be abandoning ACID properties and the standard SQL interface?
  
  
• Video: Open for Questions: Innovation in the 2011 Budget
  Federal CTO Aneesh Chopra, CIO Vivek Kundra, Diana Farrell of the National Economic Council, and Tom Kalil of OSTP take questions about innovation in the Fiscal Year 2011 budget.
  
  
• Article: Flow Control in a Distributed System
  GenieDB
  As a replicated database, the core of GenieDB technology is multicasting update operations to a number of servers efficiently. Each server runs a daemon which listens for these multicasts, and performs the updates contained therein. However, there are only small fixed-size buffers for pending multicasts; while this daemon is busy applying an update to disk (which can block on locks and disk bandwidth and so on), more multicasts might arrive, so it's very important to satisfy them promptly. Here is an overview of how to stop too many updates coming through the system at once.
  
  
• Article: The German Data Protection Act (BDSG) and Cloud Computing in 2010
  Scott Sanchez - Director of Cloud Security Solutions at Unisys Corp
  Why are the issues for BDSG any different in a cloud computing environment? People see it as a risk, some of which I believe are real and others which I believe are just perception.
  
  
• Article: Invest 15% of Cloud Savings in Security
  Scott Sanchez - Director of Cloud Security Solutions at Unisys Corp
  For each dollar you save by making a move to cloud computing, you should invest 15 cents to improve security and increase compliance efforts. The top areas of focus for most should be application security and real-time monitoring efforts. The security levels that (you thought) worked in your internal datacenters does not necessarily work in the cloud.
  
  
• Article: Revisiting EC2 Instance IDs
  Guy Rosen - Co-Founder & CEO at Vircado
  Updates related to the significance of internal Amazon EC2 resource IDs, and the statistics we can infer from them.
  
  
• Article: Anatomy of an EC2 Resource ID
  Guy Rosen - Co-Founder & CEO at Vircado
  Breakthrough research uncovering stunning usage figures based on supposedly meaningless numbers returned by Amazon Web Services.
  
  
• Report: State of the Cloud - February 2010
  Guy Rosen - Co-Founder & CEO at Vircado
  Monthly rundown of cloud computing providers.
  
  
• Report: State of the Cloud - January 2010
  Guy Rosen - Co-Founder & CEO at Vircado
  Monthly rundown of cloud computing providers.
  
  
• Presentation: Measuring the Clouds
  Guy Rosen - Co-Founder & CEO at Vircado
  An overview of cloud-measurement activities and discoveries.
  
  
• Video: RESERVOIR : Interview with Sun Microsystems
  RESERVOIR conducted an interview with Fritz Ferstl, Director of Grid Engineering at Sun Microsystems, speaking about the benefits of cloud computing and RESERVOIR for an organization like Sun.
  
  
• Video: RESERVOIR: SAP Demo
  Dr Wolfgang Theilmann, Project Manager at SAP Research provides a clear description of both cloud computing and the RESERVOIR project.
  
  




Upcoming CloudTV Event

 

The Real Cloud
February 16, 2010
Webcast

Hosted by Cloud industry insider John Rowell, OpSource’s co-founder and CTO, “The Real Cloud” is not your typical Cloud conversation. Here, you will find no hype, no marketese, no vague product promises. “The Real Cloud” takes a hands-on approach to Cloud computing, featuring the people who are living, breathing and building the Cloud every day. Check your buzz words at the door—and prepare for some frank (and not always politically correct) talk about the state of the Cloud today.

This month “The Real Cloud” welcomes blogger and Vircado Co-Founder Guy Rosen (www.jackofallclouds.com) to help demystify Cloud adoption. Is it really slowing down? Are there any Davids beating the Goliaths? What are the trends and trip-ups in Cloud adoption today? Join John and Guy as they cut through the hype and count the Cloud.

Find More Upcoming Events >>

New Contributors

Killian Murphy Cloud Strategist Cloudscaling

Alaric Snell-Pym Chief Software Architect GenieDB



Find More Contributors >>




New Content

 
• Article: Security Pitfalls and concerns with public Clouds
  Vince Vasquez - Co-Founder at Cloudbook
  The Co-Founder of cloudbook.net, Vince Vasquez, discusses some of the challenges that come with the cloud, as well as some of the benefits.
  
  
• Podcast: Cloudbook Uses Social Media to Gather Best Practices
  Vince Vasquez - Co-Founder at Cloudbook
  One of the Founders of Cloudbook, Vince Vasquez, sits down with Fed Cloud Blog to talk about what his site does, exactly, and why he started it.
  
  
• Paper: GenieDB Technology Overview White Paper
  Alaric Snell-Pym - Chief Software Architect at GenieDB
  Over the past few years, "scaling" and "availability" have come to vie with "cutting costs" and "delivering new features" as major headaches for the CTOs of online businesses. With Moore's Law starting to lose steam, existing applications can no longer be scaled by simply buying faster hardware each year; instead, scaling an application has become an exercise in rebuilding it to utilize techniques such as sharding or non-SQL databases, while struggling to keep the existing live system going despite rising load, before users start leaving in frustration.
  
  But the outlook isn't that bleak. "Clustering", a suite of technologies built around the concept of a group of independent servers co-operating to provide a service, has the potential to cut costs and provide scaling and availability in one fell swoop (sadly, however, they can't really help you deliver new features).
  
  In this white paper we will illustrate the challenges of applying cluster computing solutions to online application problems, and how the latest technologies address those challenges.
  
  
• Video: Explaining Hybrid Clouds
  Joe Weinman - VP of Strategic Solution Sales at AT&T Inc
  There is a great depate in the computing industry over the definition of cloud computing and if there is such a thing as a hybrid cloud strategy. The VP of Strategic Solutions at AT&T, Joe Weinman, has completed statistical research on this matter and explains a hybrid cloud.
  
  
• Video: Cloud Computing Partner Tips
  Chris Barbin - CEO at Appirio, Inc
  In this series of videos from salesforce.com the CEO of Appirio, Chris Barbin, talks to IDC’s Michael Fauscette about the role of cloud computing partners.
  
  • Part 1: Appirio Talks About Building a Business on the Cloud
    Cloud Computing has moved to the mainstream. What opportunities exist for partners? The CEO of Appirio explains the factors that led him to build a cloud solutions business from the ground up. Chris also touches on how cloud computing is enabling SI and ISV partners to get in and quickly prove their value.
    
  • Part 2: Is Appirio an SI, ISV or Both?
    Cloud Computing is Enabling partners to blur the lines between being an ISV, SI and VAR. The CEO of Appirio talks about how cloud computing enables partners to offer organizations of all sizes a range of scalable services and products, as well as business process outsourcing solutions that truly impact the bottom line.
    
  • Part 3: Appirio, What Advice Would You Give an SI?
    If you are looking to build a partner business with a cloud provider, what do you need to know? The CEO of Appirio shares his advice on what partners should look out for when building their business.
    
  • Part 4: Appirio on Building their Professional Services Enterprise App
    Cloud Computing breaks new ground for ISVs. What steps can you take to successfully "productize" your IP and get to market? The CEO of Appirio shares best practices on capitalizing on IP, as well as focusing on solutions that fill unmet needs.
    
  • Part 5: How is Appirio's Business Doing?
    Cloud Computing is growing. The CEO of Appirio reflects on his company's explosive growth, and what is yet to come.
    
  
  
  
• Paper: Cloud Computing Use Cases V3
  The Cloud Computing Use Cases Discussion Group
  The Cloud Computing Use Case group brought together cloud consumers and cloud vendors to define common use case scenarios for cloud computing. The use case scenarios demonstrate the performance and economic benefits of cloud computing and are based on the needs of the widest possible range of consumers.
  
  The goal is to highlight the capabilities and requirements that need to be standardized in a cloud environment to ensure interoperability, ease of integration and portability. It must be possible to implement all of the use case described in this paper without closed, proprietary technologies. Cloud computing must evolve as an open environment, minimizing vendor lock-in and increasing customer choice.
  
  Version 3 has additional security scenarios, requirements and use cases.
  
  
• Video: Aneesh Chopra, Federal CTO, Discusses Cloud Computing
  The Federal CTO, Aneesh Chopra, discusses how the US Government views the importance and possibilities of the cloud.
  
  
• Video: Gov 2.0 Online Conference: NASA's "BE a Martian" Citizen Science
  The Manager of NASA’s Mars Public Engagement Program, Michelle Viotti, discusses how NASA/JPL is using the cloud to drive large-scale engagement with citizenry in the area of Citizen Science with the recently launched "Be a Martian" website and Pathfinder Innovation Challenge.
  
  
• Video: Gov 2.0 Online Conference: NASA's "Be a Martian" Townhall Dialogues
  The Manager of NASA’s Mars Public Engagement Program, Michelle Viotti, discusses the recently launched "Be a Martian" website, specifically how NASA/JPL is using the cloud and Microsoft Town Hall to engage with the public on their questions and ideas.
  
  
• Video: Linda Cureton, NASA CIO, Discusses Cloud Computing
  Take it from the agency that knows all about the stars, NASA has been working in the cloud for a long time.
  
  




Upcoming Events

 

2nd Annual PoweredByCloud Conference & Cloud Law Summit February 10, 2010 America Conference Centre, London

SIIA SaaS/GOV 2010 February 11, 2010 The Westin Washington, DC City Center

Find More Upcoming Events >>





New Company Profile

GenieDB Next Generation Distributed Database Technology GenieDB is a webscale database technology with MySQL plugin convenience for today's high demand web applications & those hosting them: For scaling, resilience & cost efficiency. View all Products & Services from GenieDB >>

New CloudTV Shows

• CloudTV: The Real Cloud - Episode 1: The 2010 Movers & Shakers
  John Rowell - Co-Founder & CTO at OpSource
  John Willis - VP of Services at Opscode
  This is the first in a series of shows hosted by John Rowell, the Co-Founder & CTO at OpSource. In this Episode John discusses the Current state of the Cloud with John M Willis, the VP of Services at OpsCode.
  
  

New Content

• Article: Payload Descriptor For Cloud Computing: An Update
  James Urquhart - Manager, Cloud Computing & Virtualized Data Centers Marketing at Cisco Systems
  Without a universal way to describe and evaluate payloads, a liquid marketplace for cloud capabilities may not be possible without significant changes to the design of applications, data center infrastructure, and the Internet itself. Here is a much better proposal for what is needed to allow for simpler real-time selection of cloud infrastructure.
  
  
• Podcast: The Wild West Era of Cloud Computing
  Jeff Kaplan - Founder & Managing Director at THINKstrategies
  The Founder of THINKstartegies, Jeff Kaplan, discusses the current state of cloud computing, where it's going, and what it must do to keep growing.
  
  
• Papers: Cloud rEvolution
  Doug Neal - Research Fellow at CSC Leading Edge Forum - Executive Programme
  As cloud computing changes the game in IT and opens up enormous agility and innovation for the business, enterprises are seeking to understand how they can benefit from cloud. Cloud rEvolution is a four volume series which probes the cloud continuum from its foundational technologies to abstract technologies to the ultimate abstraction: the cloud itself. The series explores IT and business implications, covering technology advances, examples, concerns and practical guidelines.
  
  
  • Volume 1: Laying the Foundation
    Laying the Foundation examines the core building blocks of the cloud, focusing on three areas: universal power, universal information and universal access. Armed with a solid understanding of cloud's foundations, enterprises will be better equipped to take advantage of advances in cloud computing, address its current limitations, and cut through the hype and doubt that currently surround cloud.
    
    
  • Volume 2: The Art of Abstraction
    Abstraction, long used in IT to mask complexity, is an essential ingredient for cloud computing. It's the secret sauce that sets up hardware and software to be delivered as a service from the cloud. The Art of Abstraction shows clients how to mix the sauce for their specific needs.
    
    
  • Volume 3: The Cloud Effect
    Where once it was important to understand the "network effect" of the Internet on your business, today it's the "cloud effect." The cloud effect is the influence of cloud computing - of on-demand, elastic, pay-per-use IT - on IT and the business. This influence is significant and far-reaching, for when a fixed asset like a computer becomes variable and on demand, all sorts of agility and new cost structures open up.
    
    
  • Volume 4: A Workbook for Cloud Computing in the Enterprise
    This workbook is intended to help you get up to speed on cloud computing, considering issues such as quality, cycle time and customer/employee satisfaction, and then run a workshop jointly with business and IT staff that: Examines cloud opportunities; Reviews potential issues; and Considers where and how specific information should be processed. The Workbook also contains tables and a quiz that are available as Powerpoint files.
    
    
• Article: How Much Investment Does it Take to Start a SaaS Company?
  Kevin Dobbs - Founder & Managing Partner at Montclair Advisors, LLC
  Here is a list of Public SaaS companies and the initial investments they required to get started. Entrepreneurs and investors may need a good deal of money to get going, but for those that reach critical mass and go public, there is a tremendous payback.
  
  
• Video: Healthcare & the Cloud Summit Panel Discussion
  Mike Grandinetti - Sr Lecturer, MIT Sloan School of Management
  
  
• Papers: Intel/Microsoft Eco-Technology Research Papers
  Dr Jonathan Koomey - Independent Researcher
  Intel and Microsoft funded a series of peer-reviewed research papers that assess the energy and environmental impacts of information technology in several unique cases. The three papers explore, in a peer-reviewed method, the historical trends and future implications of Information Technology making a positive impact in reduced energy consumption and carbon emissions.
  • Trends in Electrical Efficiency in Computer Performance
    Research on the long term trends in the electrical efficiency of computation, which implies that mobile devices will rapidly become much more power-efficient and ubiquitous. The energy efficiency of computation has doubled about every 1.6 years since 1945 with remarkable consistency - a trend that has important implications for mobile computing technologies.
    
    
  • Server Energy Efficiency Implications on Large Scale Datacenters
    Trends in servers are pushing cloud computing providers and in-house data center operators to restructure their organizations, eliminate misplaced incentives, increase capital utilization, and change the ways they specify and purchase equipment.
    
    
  • The Energy and Climate Change Impacts of Different Music Delivery Methods
    The research compares the energy and CO2 emissions associated with downloading music to those from buying a physical CD, concluding that downloading music yields 40-80% reductions compared to buying a CD. These findings demonstrate one concrete example of effectively using technology for improved environmental outcomes, i e, the benefits of dematerialization using IT.
    
    
• Paper: 10 Questions You Need to Ask a Collaboration Vendor
  By Ben Kepes & Krishnan Subramanian
  In just the last few years, the enterprise collaboration software market has become one of the most crowded areas in IT. It seems as though new vendors are appearing on a weekly basis while traditional software vendors are working feverishly to retrofit their legacy offerings by introducing new collaboration add-ons. Further clouding the issue are the various delivery models available to customers today - on-premise, on-demand and cloud-based options are available. This combination of a multitude of vendors and delivery models has created a confusing landscape, where messaging collision has become the rule, not the exception. This primer is intended to help those organizations researching enterprise collaboration by arming them with the most important questions to ask the collaboration vendors they are evaluating, in hopes of helping them make buying decisions based on empirical evidence, rather than flashy positioning and messaging.
  
  

New Research Projects

Tsinghua Cloud Tsinghua Cloud is an all-in-one Cloud Computing solution developed at the Grid Computing Division of Tsinghua University in China. The Cloud is composed of three components: Nova (virtual computation system: computing cloud), Carrier (distributed file system) and Corsair (distributed file manager based on Carrier: storage cloud), which can be utilized independently or in combination.

New Contributors

David S Linthicum Author & Founder Blue Mountain Labs

Kevin T McDonald Sr IT Analyst & Cloud Strategist ICF International, Inc



Find More Contributors >>




New Content

 
• Article: Debunking the "No Such Thing as a Private Cloud" Myth
  Randy Bias - Founder at Cloudscaling
  The Private Cloud Myth is misguided because it assumes that all cloud computing is a financial model rather than a technology or service model. Providing a public utility service requires cloud computing, but cloud computing does not have to be delivered with a predetermined financial model.
  
  
• Paper: The Reality of Freemium in SaaS
  Lincoln Murphy - Founder and Managing Director, Sixteen Ventures
  
  
• Article: Does the Fourth Amendment Cover The Cloud?
  James Urquhart - Manager, Cloud Computing & Virtualized Data Centers Marketing at Cisco Systems
  One of the biggest issues facing individuals and corporations choosing to adopt public cloud computing is the relative lack of clarity with respect to legal rights over data stored online. A recent note written for the Minnesota Law Review gives a thorough outline of where we stand with respect to the application of Fourth Amendment law to Internet computing.
  
  
• Article: The Busy Executive's Service Oriented Architecture Reference Guide
  JP Morgenthal - Sr Principal Architect, Mission Systems Group at QinetiQ North America
  There is so much confusion and misunderstanding of SOA in the market right now. Here is a guide to help get a quick understanding of what SOA is without getting mired in heaps of technology jargon and hype.
  
  
• Article: How to Create Customer Experience Innovation
  Lynn Hunsaker - Customer Experience Strategist at ClearAction
  Published by Cincom Expert Access
  
  
• Article: Loyalty is Not Just for Customers
  Lynn Hunsaker - Customer Experience Strategist at ClearAction
  Published by Customer Think
  
  
• Podcast: Untapped Gold Mines in Customer Experience Data
  Lynn Hunsaker - Customer Experience Strategist at ClearAction
  Interview with Cisco Systems.
  
  
• Podcast: Improve Customer Experience Results by Enhancing Operations
  Lynn Hunsaker - Customer Experience Strategist at ClearAction
  Interview with Virgin Mobile - Sprint USA
  
  
• Presentation: Where Cloud Computing Meets Enterprise Architecture
  David S Linthicum - Author & Founder of Blue Mountain Labs
  
  
• Presentation: Winning with Cloud Computing Step-by-Step
  David S Linthicum - Author & Founder of Blue Mountain Labs
  
  
• Presentation: Finding the Intersection of SOA and Cloud Computing
  David S Linthicum - Author & Founder of Blue Mountain Labs
  
  
• Presentation: Moving to Cloud Computing Step-by-Step
  David S Linthicum - Author & Founder of Blue Mountain Labs
  
  




New Books

 

Cloud Computing and SOA Convergence in Your Enterprise: A Step-by-Step Guide By David S Linthicum October 2009 Massive, disruptive change is coming to IT as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), SOA, mashups, Web 2.0, and cloud computing truly come of age. David S Linthicum explains why the days of managing IT organizations as private fortresses will disappear as IT becomes a global community. He demonstrates how to run IT when critical elements of customer, product, and business data and processes extend far beyond the firewall - and how to use all the information to deliver real-time answers about everything from an individual customer's credit to the location of a specific cargo container. This book offers a clear assessment of the challenges associated with this new world - and offers a step-by-step program for getting there with maximum return on investment and minimum risk. If you're ready to begin driving real competitive advantages from cloud computing, this book is the start-to-finish roadmap you need to make it happen.

Above the Clouds Kevin T McDonald Buy Now

Above the Clouds: Managing Risk in the World of Cloud Computing By Kevin T McDonald February 2010 Above the Clouds: Managing Risk in the World of Cloud Computing acts as a primer and strategic guide to identify Cloud Computing best practices and associated risks, and reduce the latter to acceptable levels. From software as a service (SaaS) to replacing the entire IT infrastructure, the author serves as an educator, guide and strategist, from runway to getting the organization above the clouds. Valuable tips on how to choose your provider of Cloud Services are also offered.



Find More Books >>

New Contributors

	Charlton Barreto Technology Strategist & Principal Architect Intel		John Rowell Co-Founder & CTO OpSource
	Bhaskar Prasad Rimal Master's Candidate Kookmin University		Subraya Mallya Principal PrudentCloud.com



Find More Contributors >>




New Content

 
• Video: What is Cloud Computing
  Argonne experts Pete Beckman and Ian Foster explain what Cloud Computing is and how you probably already use it on a daily basis.
  
  
• Video: Forcasting Fisticuffs - Predicting the Cloud in 2010
  Phil Wainewright - CEO Procullux Ventures and ZDNet Blogger on SaaS
  Vinnie Mirchandani - The Deal Architect
  There have been many predictions regarding the future of technology and the cloud. To make sense of the myriad of forecasts and create clarity Appirio invited leading thinkers to battle it out. Dennis Howlett of Irregular Enterprise, The Deal Architect Vinnie Mirchandani, Phil Wainewright from Procullux Ventures, and Narinder Singh of Appirio give competing views of what's really going to happen with the cloud in 2010. Moderated by Ryan Nichols of Appirio.
  
  
• Podcast: Government Cloud Computing for 2010: Moving Towards Efficient Operations
  Chris C Kemp - CIO at NASA Ames Research Center
  The Federal Cloud Blog sits down with Chris Kemp, CIO at NASA's Ames Research Center, after a presentation delivered at the Digital Government Conference. He discusses the progress with the Nebula Cloud Computing Platform and what to look forward to in the near future. They discuss how Nebula has partnered with Microsoft and Google to give the public greater access to NASA data and imagery. People will be able to view the surface of Mars in real time and eventually take tours of planets and constellations.
  
  
• Article: A Flexible and Interoperable Cloud Operating System
  Ignacio M Llorente - Full Professor & Head of Research Group at the Complutense University of Madrid
  Future enterprise data centers will look like private clouds supporting a flexible and agile execution of virtualized services, and combining local with public cloud-based infrastructure to enable highly scalable hosting environments. The key component in these cloud architectures will be the cloud management system, also called cloud operating system (OS), being responsible for the secure, efficient and scalable management of the cloud resources. Cloud OS are displacing "traditional" OS, which will be part of the application stack.
  
  
• Article: Cloud Federation and the Intercloud
  Ellen Rubin - Founder & VP of Products at CloudSwitch, Inc
  There has been lots of discussion about the concept of the "Intercloud", a direction for cloud computing that is closely related to federation. The Intercloud refers to a mesh of clouds that are interconnected based on open standards to provide a universal environment for cloud computing. Like the name suggests, it's similar to the Internet model, where everything is federated in a ubiquitous, multiple-provider infrastructure.
  
  
• Article: Understanding Infrastructure 2.0
  James Urquhart - Manager, Cloud Computing & Virtualized Data Centers Marketing at Cisco Systems
  As we move into an era of data center virtualization and cloud computing, logging into switches one by one, or even executing a manual update to a set of switches at once isn't fast and agile enough to react to the changing needs of an automated application and server infrastructure. We need to take a systems view of our entire infrastructure, and build our automation around the end-to-end architecture of that system.
  
  
• Video: Cloud Foundry and Cloud Computing
  Chris Richardson - Founder at Cloud Foundry & Chris Richardson Consulting, Inc
  The Founder of Cloud Foundry, Chris Richardson, discusses the evolving cloud computing landscape, cloud computing tools, the difference between local machines and cloud-based virtual machines, Cloud Foundry offerings, deploying a Java application to Cloud Foundry, Cloud Foundry vs other offerings, future Cloud Foundry developments, and the future of enterprise Java development.
  
  
• Article: Customer Acquisition Process in Cloud Computing Services
  Ranjit Nayak - Founder & President of Marketing at eVapt, Inc
  Customer acquisition is one of the important phases in the Cloud Computing business process. There are certain best practices to increase the customer acquisition rate and reduce churn. Streamlining the customer acquisition process will boost the sales of any cloud service provider.
  
  
• Article: Software Delivery Models in the Era of Cloud Computing
  Geva Perry - Founder & Blogger at Thinking Out Cloud
  Increasingly, software companies are facing a dilemma as to the best delivery model for their business and many are opting for a "multi-delivery" model or multi-model software delivery. As we continue to figure out the bold new world of marketing cloud computing, the delivery model is a key question. The answer varies by the vendor's analysis of the future of their product category, particular situation of the vendor, the nature of the product and marketplace conditions.
  
  
• Article: Declarative Programming in the Cloud
  Dustin Amrhein - Technical Evangelist, WebSphere Emerging Technologies at IBM
  While some optimizations to code written in the imperative style can be inserted by a compiler, it doesn't lend itself to the same optimizations that code written in a declarative style does. When coders tell a system what they want to do, as is the case in the declarative style, the system can decide the most efficient way to carry out the action. This programming model is particularly useful in the realm of cloud computing.
  
  
• Video: Argonne's Magellan Cloud Computing Research Project
  The head of Argonne's Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF), Pete Beckman, discusses the Department of Energy's new Magellan project, which is designed to test how cloud computing can be used for scientific research.
  
  
• Presentation: Cloud Computing at NERSC
  NERSC Systems Department Head, Jeff Broughton, introduces the NERSC Cloud Computing program and summarizes ideas of cloud research projects that might be undertaken.
  
  
• Presentation: The OGF Open Cloud Computing Interface
  The Open Grid Forum Open Cloud Computing Interface (OCCI)
  An introduction to the OGF Open Cloud Computing Interface (OCCI) standard.
  
  
• Video: Get Your Head in the Cloud
  Jeff Barr - Senior Manager, Cloud Computing Solutions at Amazon.com
  
  
• Video: Amazon Web Services: Building Blocks for True Internet Applications
  Jeff Barr - Senior Manager, Cloud Computing Solutions at Amazon.com
  The Sr Manager of Cloud Computing Solutions at Amazon, Jeff Barr, discusses how Amazon Web Services Can help Web developers solve common but vexing problems, including scaling. The Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and Simple DB are discussed in detail along with the Simple Queue, Simple Storage, and Flexible Payment Services. Each discussion covers basic concepts, example APIs, and brief introductions of case studies.
  
  
• Video: The Future of MapReduce
  Owen O'Malley - VP of Hadoop at Apache Software Foundation & Software Architect at Yahoo
  Hadoop architect at Yahoo, Owen O'Malley, describes the current state of affairs for MapReduce jobs in Hadoop, and walks through a variety of approaches that are being implemented to ensure better forward and backward compatibility.
  
  
• Video: The Sun Cloud and Hadoop
  Juan Carlos Soto - VP, Global Market Development and Engineering at Sun Microsystems, Inc
  The VP of Global Market Development and Engineering at Sun, Juan Carlos Soto, talks about the Sun Cloud and how it's an ideal service for Hadoop users. He presents Sun's perspective on the benefits of cloud computing for developers across the industry, in a startup or a large enterprise environment.
  
  
• Video: Government 2.0: How the Cloud Can Improve Government
  Zach Nelson - President & CEO at NetSuite
  The CEO of NetSuite, Zach Nelson, discusses how using cloud-based application technologies has revolutionized private sector business technology infrastructure and can do the same for government based systems.
  
  
• Paper: Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud Architecture
  Simon Wardley - Manager, Software Services & Cloud Computing at Ubuntu / Canonical Ltd
  Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (UEC) brings Amazon EC2-like infrastructure capabilities inside the firewall. The UEC is powered by Eucalyptus, an open source implementation for the emerging standard of the EC2 API. This solution is designed to simplify the process of building and managing an internal cloud for businesses of any size, thereby enabling companies to create their own self-service infrastructure. This white paper tries to provide an understanding of the UEC internal architecture and possibilities offered by it in terms of security, networking and scalability.
  
  
• Article: SaaS Sales Strategies:SaaS vs On-Demand
  Subraya Mallya - Principal at PrudentCloud.com
  SaaS has some clear financial advantages over a traditional on-premise implementation. Large upfront investment into IT infrastructure, resources, longer implementation cycles, cost of upgrades characterize traditional software implementation. SaaS eliminates those very challenges while reducing risk and providing higher quality service.
  
  
• Paper: A Taxonomy and Survey of Cloud Computing Systems
  Bhaskar Prasad Rimal - Master's Candidate at Kookmin University
  In Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Network Computing and Advanced Information Management and Service (NCM 2009), IEEE Computer Society Press, pages 44-51. This paper describes the taxonomy and survey of cloud computing.
  
  
• Paper: A Metamodeling Approach for Resource Management in Grid System
  Bhaskar Prasad Rimal - Master's Candidate at Kookmin University
  Model Integrated Computing (MIC) is an effective and efficient method for developing, maintaining, and evolving large-scale, domain-specific software applications for computer-based systems. The main advantages of domain specific modeling are agility, re-usability and flexibility. MIC promotes the use of models as a “backbone” of model-integrated system development. The purpose of this paper is to describe the development of application within the Globus toolkit context by creating graphical RSL meta-model using domain-specific modeling techniques. This paper describes the strategy to develop RSL interpreter from its Meta model. The expected impact of this effort, as is often the case in automating systems approaches, such as reduction in development time involved in generating RSL for the Globus Toolkit. An additional advantage is to provide a high level of abstraction for the construction of Grid applications using the Globus Toolkit that avoids some of the intricacies and accidental complexities documented for other (current) approaches.
  
  
• Article: Rich Services Cloud - The Value Proposition
  Charlton Barreto - Technology Strategist & Principal Architect at Intel
  Rich Services for Cloud Computing for businesses represent a growing trend from software users wanting responsive and immersive interactions from any location. As business applications begin presenting information the same way as the social web - interactive and visual - and carry the same reach, IT departments must adapt. This session will discuss how companies can develop and deploy Rich Services Cloud applications on premise or in the Cloud, enhancing the user experience like never before.
  
  
• Paper: Cloud Reference Architecture
  Charlton Barreto - Technology Strategist & Principal Architect at Intel
  Architecting Software as a Service for the Enterprise is an Intel white paper that describes how Intel IT has opportunistically taken advantage of external offerings of software as a service (SaaS) applications. In order to prepare for broader SaaS adoption, we’ve designed a SaaS architecture that will enable Intel to shift to a more strategic view and facilitate faster, more standardized implementations. This paper shares key artifacts in Intel's SaaS Reference Architecture.
  
  
• Paper: Better Together: Rich Client PCs and Cloud Computing
  Charlton Barreto - Technology Strategist & Principal Architect at Intel
  As more services are delivered via cloud computing, which combination of client platforms and service delivery methods best meets the needs of users and IT organizations? Intel IT has found that whether services are kept in-house or outsourced to the cloud, the ability to perform local computing on the client offers the best user experience and the flexibility to run different types of applications. Rich clients support the full range of service delivery methods and provide mobile computing capabilities for our users.
  
  
• Paper: Developing an Enterprise Cloud Computing Strategy
  Charlton Barreto - Technology Strategist & Principal Architect at Intel
  Learn about Intel’s enterprise cloud computing strategy, from expected benefits/risks and key IT considerations, to suitable applications and our current implementations.
  
  
• Paper: Unlocking the Promise of Cloud Computing for the Enterprise
  Charlton Barreto - Technology Strategist & Principal Architect at Intel
  "Unlocking the Promise of Cloud Computing for the Enterprise," addresses the impact cloud computing's rapid evolution is having on the enterprise, helping enterprise architects better understand the characteristics of what a cloud is, its development and how enterprises can benefit from cloud computing. The paper also draws a distinction between the definitions of public and private clouds, as well as infrastructure-oriented and platform-oriented services.
  
  




New Books

 

Host Your Web Site On The Cloud Amazon Web Services Made Easy By Jeff Barr November 2009 Authored by Amazon's Senior Manager of Cloud Computing Solutions this book teaches you how to host your website, applications or data on the Amazon Elastic Computing Cloud. It Covers file and database storage, server management, querying services, application management, performance and maintenance, scaling and load balancing, and much more. This books straightforward, practical advice and step-by-step guides will have you running your website on the cloud in no time.

Entrepreneur Journeys Vol 3 Positioning: How to Test, Validate, and Bring Your Idea to Market By Sramana Mitra September 2009 This is the third book in Sramana Mitra's Entrepreneur Journeys series. In Volume three she showcases case study after case study of successful entrepreneurs who have analyzed their markets and defined their value propositions through differentiation, competitive analysis, market sizing, and, among other core elements of a compelling strategic marketing plan, segmentation. The process she takes her readers through is akin to the grilling venture capitalists typically put entrepreneurs through. A grueling test to any business idea, Mitra's book stimulates a due diligence exercise, which no matter if you are bootstrapping or raising venture capital, you must put yourself through to avoid wasting precious years and scarce resources.



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