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This Week in Cloud, July 21, 2011: OpenStack turns 1, Citrix + Cloud.com analysis, Users react to VMware’s new pricing, Strategies for cloud mavericks, 10 hard truths IT must learn to accept. And more…
Cloud News
- OpenStack, the open-source cloud software project funded by Rackspace and NASA, turned 1 this year. This GigaOm article that ran in the New York Times describes the milestones of the past year and speculates on what’s next. The article states that momentum has generally been overwhelmingly positive, although some contributors have been concerned with the amount of control that Rackspace maintains over the project.
- Jo Maitland speculates on why Citrix purchased Cloud.com for $200 million and who some of the other bidders were that drove up the offer price, in this SearchCloudComputing article. According to Maitland, industry-watchers are questioning Citrix’s commitment to OpenStack (it had earlier announced plans to ship a commercial distribution of OpenStack). Also, despite Cloud.com’s announced intention to merge the code base of Cloud.com’s CloudStack with OpenStack, some experts are saying that merging would require a complete re-write.
- This Information Week article titled ‘Users outraged over new VMware pricing policy,’ delves into the new change to base pricing on memory usage for vSphere, and gives a few examples of how specific customers are being impacted.
- In this GigaOm Structure blog, Rodney Rogers compares the Citrix and VMware cloud battle to a battle of mixed martial arts champions and identifies three market shifts that recent moves foreshadow: a cloud OS will reign, the hybrid cloud will become the most important cloud, and CSPs will need it all.
- Amitabh Srivastava, the former SVP in charge of Microsoft’s Server and Cloud Division has resurfaced at EMC as president of its Storage Division, according to this ZDNet article.
Feature article
Pragmatic Cloud: The LAN that time forgot
By George Watt
Four caveats for those evaluating the costs and benefits of cloud solutions
As a service provider, an advisor, and in friendly debates, I have been witness (and participant) to many discussions (debates, slugfests) regarding which type of cloud is less expensive. While these discussions have been, for the most part, either useful, productive, or simply fun (I really need to get out more often), there are a couple of things about these discussions that are cause for concern, especially in the context of the selection of a business service. Too often I witness either loyalty to a specific style of service or a tendency for highest order analysis, especially when the debate is heated.
These two can be closely related, and each is potentially as damaging as the other. Read the full article.
Cloud Views
In this Cloud Commons article, Ravi Rajagopal summarizes the recommendations from a recent panel at the GigaOm Structure conference titled ‘Cloud Mavericks: Go out on a limb without falling out of the tree.’
This IDG article outlines ’10 hard truths IT must learn to accept.’ The list includes unsanctioned devices and cloud services, challenges the cloud will not fix (reliability, security and data loss), and more.
IDC predicts that by 2012, “85% of net-new enterprise apps will be specifically designed to live in the cloud.” But will the network be able to support those apps? This SearchNetworking article explores the challenges.
SolarWinds released a free tool that helps business calculate the cost of moving virtual machines to the cloud. The app connects to your VM environment to detect all of the VMs deployed and approximates the cost of running those VMs in public cloud platforms, including Amazon EC2, Windows Azure and Rackspace, according to this PC Mag article.
More than 60% of IT decision makers were disappointed by the cost savings realized from virtualization implementations, according to research sponsored by CA Technologies. Read more in this CloudPro article.
Read about why Subway chose to subscribe to a SaaS solution for a spending-management system, even though it had initially planned to create and host its own solution in this IDG article.
MSP Corner
- This Channel Insider article provides some guidance for managed service providers on how to gain a competitive edge and become a high-end MSP. The author explains the role professional services automation tools can play and provides questions for vetting your cloud service vendor.
- This MSP Mentor article describes updates to the Nimsoft Monitor to enhance its ability to manage Cisco UCS environments and the benefits this can deliver to MSPs.
Upcoming Cloud Events
VMworld 2011: August 29 – September 1, Las Vegas
Hosting & Cloud Transformation Summit: September 25 – 27, Las Vegas
MSPWorld: September 13 – 15, Austin, Texas
