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This Week in Cloud, March 3, 2011 Duck…Duck…Disruption!, Oops at Google, Juniper QFabric, Amazon CloudFormation, Tales of hybrid cloud security. And more…
Feature Article
Duck…Duck…Disruption! (Who Wants to Go First?)
By Matt Richards, CA Technologies
I was fortunate enough to see Nicholas Carr of "Does IT Matter?" and "The Big Switch" fame speak in mid-February, and he weaves an interesting story on the cloud and disruption. What usually happens with disruptive technologies is customers sit on the current trend, evolving themselves to achieve incrementally better results until there is this big switch - and the disruptive technologies take over and are widely adopted. The early adopters often get to make the market and build in their advantage, while the slower movers are seriously disadvantaged playing catch up.
This got me thinking. Why, with many statements that "cloud" is a disruption to the business of IT, are we intent on applying existing technology to try to solve a problem that by its very nature requires disruption to achieve its promise? Read the full article.
Cloud News
- Over the weekend, Google accidentally deleted about 150,000 email accounts due to a software bug, according to this PC Mag article. Meanwhile, Cisco killed its hosted email service, 13 months after launching it, according to this eWeek article.
- Last week Google introduced Cloud Connect, a plug-in for Microsoft Office that allows users to sync, edit and store Microsoft documents in Google Apps (not to be confused with next week’s Cloud Connect event in Santa Clara). This week, Microsoft went on the offensive to play down the capabilities of Google Cloud Connect. Read more in this LiveSide article and this product review in Ars Technica.
- Juniper Networks introduced QFabric, a data center architecture that it claims is up to 10 times faster, uses 77% less power, occupies 90% less floor space and cuts operating resources nine-fold compared to Cisco Nexus 7000 and Nexus 5000 series platforms. This ComputerWeekly article has more details.
- Amazon launched CloudFormation, a service it says will make it easier to build complex cloud applications. According to this ZDNet article, bundled Amazon Web Services infrastructure stacks can be created and deployed in a single text-based template document.
- New Relic, which provides SaaS offerings for managing, monitoring and troubleshooting cloud-hosted applications, is offering its Bronze-level accounts (which usually sell for $75/month) for free to Rackspace cloud customers. This ReadWriteWeb article has details.
- SpiceWorks, which offers a free, ad-supported IT help desk, server monitoring and inventory tools launched an iPhone app, so it can be used by mobile workers, according to this ReadWriteCloud article.
Cloud Views
- The total market for cloud-based IT at small and medium businesses was $8.6 billion at the end of 2010, according to data from Parallels. This Information Week article has more detail.
- This SearchCloudComputing article titled ‘Applications interfere with cloud computing adoption,’ includes commentary from Thermo Fisher Scientific, Wells Fargo and Honeywell International on their cloud computing forays and challenges.
- This CSO article covers real life tales of hybrid cloud security.
- This Wall Street Journal article explores ‘The truth behind the Salesforce.com hype,’ questions whether Salesforce’s soaring stock price is justified.
Upcoming Cloud Events
- ComputerWorld IT Leaders Conference: Extreme Convergence: Fusing IT and Business in a Leaner, Global, Virtualized World, March 6 – 8, Palm Springs, California
- Cloud Connect: March 7 – 10, Santa Clara, California
- CloudSlam 2011: April 18 – April 22, global virtual conference
