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This Week in Cloud, March 31, 2011: VMware R&D head starts VM storage company, OpenStack founder leaves Rackspace, Why the cloud is no celebrity diet, Top 20 cloud infrastructure vendors, Cloud economics. And more…
Pragmatic Cloud: A Tale of Two Write-Downs
By George Watt, CA Technologies
It was the best of times, it was a cell with a view.
Recently there has been a lot of discussion and debate regarding the capitalizing and amortizing of cloud-related expenses (sample posts here and here). Through most of what I read, people are on to the key items and we may have more of a semantic difference than a difference of opinion. In a previous article I discussed how beneficial, if not how absolutely necessary, a close relationship between a private cloud provider and their Finance team is.
This debate is a great illustration of why I believe that to be the case. So I encourage you work with your Finance team to determine the best (and legal) course of action for your circumstance. What follows is based upon my specific experience wrestling with this issue. Read the full article.
Cloud News
- VMware’s former R&D head has launched a new company, Tintri, along with a product focused on addressing storage issues related to VMs. This VMblog article highlights the VM storage limitations that Tintri plans to address.
- OpenStack founder, Rick Clark, has left Rackspace over concerns about openness. Read this ReadWriteWeb article and this blog written by Rick for more info.
- Amazon Web Services now allows customers to run cloud applications on hardware dedicated to them, according to this PCWorld article.
- RSA suffered a major breach last week; attackers stole information for 40 million two-factor authentication accounts. This Trusted-Cloud article analyzes the impact of this breach and what it means for IT pros.
- Cloud-based wireless LAN company Aerohive Networks has raised $25 million in financing, bringing its total to $70 million, according to this TechCrunch article. \
- On the consumer side of cloud, the industry was all abuzz this week because Amazon announced its Cloud Drive service, beating Apple and Google to the punch. The service will allow users to store music on its cloud servers and access it from anywhere through a web browser or app, according to this Technology Review article. An article at CNN.com amusingly assured readers that “cloud music” was “not a new soft-rock genre that leans heavily on harp solos.”
Cloud Views
- CRN published a list of the Top 20 cloud infrastructure vendors and the top 20 cloud platforms this week.
- In this blog about ‘why the cloud is no celebrity diet,’ Lori MacVittie advises “if you view cloud computing and virtualization as merely a temporary datacenter weight-loss program to allow you to fit into that new budget, you're ignoring the chance to transform the datacenter and its health for a lifetime.”
- In this Information Week article titled ‘Cloud Economics and the Customer Experience,’ Joe Weinman shares key takeaways from the Cloudonomics sessions at Cloud Connect.
- In this Datamation article, Jeff Vance writes about 5 overlooked threats to cloud computing. He describes how security threats are changing as we move from physical to virtual and cloud-based environments.
- In this article, Bernard Golden describes 3 private cloud use case scenarios: 1) agile development, static operations 2) agile development, semi-agile operations 3) agile development, bypassed operations.
- 4 in 10 small businesses plan to use cloud services within the next three years, according to research sponsored by Microsoft and described in this PCWorld article.
Upcoming Cloud Events
- CloudSlam: April 18 – April 22, global virtual conference
- Closer 2011: 1st International Conference on Cloud Computing & Services: May 7 – 9, Noordwijkerhout, The Netherlands
- TMForum Management World: May 23 – 26, Dublin, Ireland
- Forrester’s IT Forum, May 25 – 27, Las Vegas, Nevada
- Cloud Expo East, June 6-9, New York City
- The Business of Cloud Computing: June 13 – 15, San Diego, California
