OpenNebula Celebrates Its 6 Year Anniversary!

When the OpenNebula project started in 2008, we intended to create an open solution to make Enterprise Cloud simple. From the beginning, we understood enterprise cloud computing as en evolution of data center virtualization to host both cloud-aware and traditional applications. So we aimed to combine existing virtualization technologies with multi-tenancy, automatic provision and elasticity, following a bottom-up approach driven by the real-life needs of sysadmins and devops, and the following main principles.

read more

Big Data Analytics Without Complications and Expenses

Cloud computing is changing the IT ecosystem and is now increasingly focused on data analytics.
Cloud computing attention is often paid to moving compute requirements from the enterprise data center to public clouds. While the technology enables a number of innovative solutions around mobile and social environments, analytics is often seen as an in-house solution that requires highly specialized skills.
Cloud providers have upped their game in data analytics. No longer are they just providing you with an environment, managing the underlying machines, they are now managing underlying systems – systems specific to your needs like big data. This fits well with mid-sized companies that are hungry for analytic solutions to enable them to compete with large enterprise competitors.

read more

How Startups Can Benefit from Cloud Technology

With a wealth of technology and online resources, many people are ditching the traditional 9-to-5 lifestyle and opting to become entrepreneurs. Unlike businesses of the past, where a large financial investment was required to get off the ground, today’s startups can get the ball rolling with limited funding.
They can also operate with a high level of efficiency and often compete with much large larger companies. One of the top resources that is fueling startups is cloud technology. Below are some ways that entrepreneurs can benefit and why this technology is so advantageous.

read more

Can We Finally Find the Database Holy Grail? | Part 2

In the first post of this three part series I talked about distributed transactional databases being the Holy Grail of database systems. Among other things the promise of such systems is to provide on-demand capacity, continuous availability and geographically distributed operation. But the historical approaches to building distributed transactional databases have involved unacceptable trade-offs, and as a result general purpose databases systems predicated on a single-server architecture have dominated the industry for decades.
In our quest for the Holy Grail of databases we acknowledge that there are folks who have given up on the highly desirable characteristic of transactional consistency in favor of a distributed operation. That is a trade-off that may be attractive if you can’t find a way to scale-out transactions, but it is a drastic choice that moves a lot of complexity and cost up the application stack. If there is a way to scale out transactional databases then that is clearly a much better outcome. Our Holy Grail discussion is specifically about distributed transactional databases because if such a thing can be built without a substantial downside then no one would want any other distributed data store.

read more

Cloud Expo 2014 New York Call for Papers Now Open

Despite the economy, cloud computing is doing well. Gartner estimates the cloud market will double by 2016 to $206 billion. The time for dabbling in the cloud is over!
The 14th International Cloud Expo, co-located with 5th International Big Data Expo and 3rd International SDN Expo, to be held June 10-12, 2014, at the Javits Center in New York City, N.Y., announces that its Call for Papers is now open. Topics include all aspects of providing or using massively scalable IT-related capabilities as a service using Internet technologies.

read more

Michael Rhodin: IBM Taps App Developers to Help Drive Watson Cloud Tool

IBM will release an application programming interface and software development kit to third-party developers seeking to build cloud computing apps based on the Watson technology.
The company and its venture capital partners will work together to help software entrepreneurs bring Watson-powered apps and services to market, IBM said Thursday.
“By sharing IBM Watson’s cognitive abilities with the world, we aim to fuel a new ecosystem that accelerates innovation, creativity and entrepreneurial spirit,” said Michael Rhodin, senior vice president of IBM’s software solutions group.
“Together with our partners we’ll spark a new class of applications that will learn from experience, improve with each interaction and outcome, and assist in solving the most complex questions facing the industry and society,” Rhodin added.

read more

Michael Rhodin: IBM Taps App Developers to Help Drive Watson Cloud Tool

IBM will release an application programming interface and software development kit to third-party developers seeking to build cloud computing apps based on the Watson technology.
The company and its venture capital partners will work together to help software entrepreneurs bring Watson-powered apps and services to market, IBM said Thursday.
“By sharing IBM Watson’s cognitive abilities with the world, we aim to fuel a new ecosystem that accelerates innovation, creativity and entrepreneurial spirit,” said Michael Rhodin, senior vice president of IBM’s software solutions group.
“Together with our partners we’ll spark a new class of applications that will learn from experience, improve with each interaction and outcome, and assist in solving the most complex questions facing the industry and society,” Rhodin added.

read more

Building Your Hybrid Cloud

Back for Part 3 of the “Building a Hybrid Cloud” series, Keith Mayer and myself chat about and demo the latest networking enhancements made in Windows Server 2012 R2. Keith really shows you how Windows Server 2012 R2 offers networks for your virtualization hosts but also your virtual guests. One of the things that amazed me, is that the configuration steps for the host and guests are nearly identical.

read more