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This Week in Cloud, September 29, 2011: New OpenStack release, Google PaaS price hike, Virgin Media’s jargon-free cloud, 10 cloud app dev mistakes to avoid. And more…
Cloud News
- OpenStack launched a new release with several features to make it easier to implement a private cloud for enterprise use. The new release, called Diablo, includes a dashboard for monitoring cloud health. For more detail, read this ReadWriteCloud article.
- Google recently increased the pricing for its App Engine Platform-as-a-Service offering by 100% or more for most users. Following a huge backlash that ensued, Alex Salkever with GigaOm writes about 5 ways to protect against vendor lock-in.
- In federal testimony to the House Subcommittee on Technology and Innovation, senior executives from EMC, Microsoft, VCE and the General Services Administration testified that cloud computing is critical to ensuring the US can remain economically competitive across the globe. They also testified that open standards are overdue and that user security concerns persist. Read this Information Week article and this Information Management article for more.
- Jargon-free cloud? Virgin Media is using Savvis (a CenturyLink company) to launch a business-oriented cloud service that it promises will be jargon-free. The service will help businesses quickly test and develop in-house applications or launch e-commerce services without building out significant infrastructure themselves. Read more in this GigaOm article.
- Salesforce.com purchased Assistly, creator of a cloud-based customer service portal that lets Salesforce users initiate direct contact with customers. Read this ReadWriteCloud article for more.
- Microsoft is investing an additional $150 million to expand its new data center in southern Virginia, according to this Data Center Knowledge article.
Feature article
A Service Taxonomy for Cloud Choices
By Andi Mann
I have been talking with many CIOs for some time about strategic adoption of cloud solutions. A key step in these conversations is always the review of the portfolio of services they provide to business users, so they can choose which clouds to adopt and why.
This has led me to describe a high-level taxonomy that segments the service portfolio according to the different cloud requirements, capabilities, and approaches in different types of applications and services.
Essentially, this work has segmented most (all?) service portfolios into four areas, which (roughly) follow the adoption curve of cloud computing.
Read the full article.
Cloud Views
- Cloud application deployment: 10 deadly mistakes to avoid. ‘Deadly mistakes’ covered in this eWeek article include building an infrastructure cloud rather than an application cloud, treating automation as an afterthought and not controlling golden images.
- How clean is your cloud, really? This GigaOm article explores some additional criteria that should be considered when assessing how green a data center is. Questions that should be asked include: Is the data center in a new facility or refurbished older building? Are the companies handling the e-cycling of old gear correctly? How efficient is their water use? Are the utilities supporting the data center using renewable energy?
- This Information Week article provides guidance on how to incorporate an enterprise content management approach, even as users begin leveraging cloud-based storage and file-sharing services.
- Box.net CEO makes the case that cloud is the ultimate disruptive innovation in this Fortune blog.
- This Cloud Commons article talks about how the cloud is impacting legal departments within the healthcare industry.
MSP Corner
This CRN article on the rise of the cloud provider describes the changing landscape for service providers (the article segments the market into transformative, vintage and progressive service providers). One-third of all solution providers expects to change their business model in the next three years, and solution providers anticipate that 36 percent of their sales will come from off-premise solutions by 2013.
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