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This Week in Cloud, June 16, 2011: VMware buys Digital Fuel, launches vFabric 5, Open Data Center Alliance and PCI publish new guidelines, Cloud metrics that matter, Top 50 MSPs & VARs in cloud. And more…
Feature article
Did the global summer of cloud start in NYC?
By Gregor Petri, CA Technologies
Having just returned from a scorching hot New York (host of Cloud Expo East 2011) to a definitely cooler Europe, it makes sense to see whether these differences in temperature also apply to the cloud market.
This 8th Expo was definitely the biggest so far. If Cloud Expo West in November signaled the entry of the large mainstream vendors like Oracle, Dell and Microsoft as major sponsors, then this edition was signified by the larger turnout of end user organizations and even some coverage on mainstream news channel such as CNN. A quick audience poll revealed that about 90% of the audience is in the orientation phase, getting ready to do some serious spending (you could almost hear the vendors sigh in relief as it is starting to appear that their investments will indeed pay off). Read the full article.
Cloud News
- VMware purchased Digital Fuel, a SaaS vendor that helps service providers track IT services usage for billing and infrastructure planning, according to this CRN article. VMware also introduced vFabric 5, an integrated application platform for virtual and cloud environments that blends the Spring development framework for Java with vFabric application services for building, deploying and running applications. VMware introduced new pricing based on virtual machines rather than physical hardware and enterprises will only be charged for the licenses in use. For more information, read this CIO-Today article. GigaOm analyst Derrick Harris comments that the on-premise vFabric solution and VMware’s public cloud Cloud Foundry offering are surprisingly disconnected.
- The Open Data Center Alliance (ODCA), a vendor-neutral group dominated by large cloud users and representing $100 billion in annual IT spending, published requirements for eight cloud use cases. The ODCA has expanded to 250 members since its launch 7 months ago. Companies on the steering committee include Lockheed Martin, JP Morgan Chase, Deutsche Bank and China Life, all of whom say they’ll spend with suppliers that follow the group’s requirements. This Information Week article has more detail.
- The Payment Card Industry (PCI) council issued new guidance for organizations that handle cardholder data in a virtualized or cloud environment. The new guidelines specify four principles of ensuring security in virtualized environments and describe techniques for assessing risk in virtualized environments. Read this InformationWeek article for more detail.
- Open source software companies Acquia and Engine Yard are developing a fully-managed open source PaaS offering for Drupal and Ruby on Rails, according to this OpenSource Magazine article.
Cloud Views
- This ZDNet UK article titled ‘Counting clouds: which metrics matter?’ identifies four main factors you should consider when thinking through the efficiency and cost-savings your cloud strategy will yield. The factors identified and explored in the article are: networking, storage, processor and energy.
- In this CIO article, Maryfran Johnson explores ‘How the cloud changes the CIO-CFO conversation.’ Johnson makes the case that the shift to cloud is deepening the partnership between CIOs and CFOs.
- Research conducted by 3 open source vendors (BitRock, Cloud.com and Zenoss) found that 69% of IT pros use open-source software whenever possible in their cloud computing environment. Linux is the dominant guest OS in the cloud, according to the research cited in this CRN article.
- In this blog, BT senior engineer Darren Jones outlines what he sees as the five challenges of cloud security, namely: agility, isolation, improved reliability, scalability and sustainability.
MSP Corner
- The Talkin’ Cloud 50 report by Nine Lives Media recently identified the top 50 VARs and MSPs in terms of revenue earned from IaaS, SaaS and PaaS services. The companies in the Talkin’ Cloud 50 generated $321 million in annual cloud revenues in 2010, up 47% from the year prior. The top 3 companies on the list are OpSource, Apptix and mindSHIFT Technologies. For more information and to access the full report (registration required), click here.
- Interxion, a European provider of collocation data center services is partnering with Microsoft, KPN International, NL-ix and HP to offer a cloud hosting test environment for service providers. Read this TMCnet article for more information.
Upcoming Cloud Events
- Gartner IT Infrastructure & Operations Management: June 11 – 13, Orlando, Florida
- The Business of Cloud Computing: June 13 – 15, San Diego, California
- Cloud Computing World Forum: June 21 – 22, London
- GigaOm Structure: June 22 – 23, San Francisco, California
- Hosting and Cloud Transformation Summit: June 28 – 29, London
- IEEE Cloud 2011: July 4 – 9, Washington DC
