By David Krozier, Principal Analyst, Network Infrastructure Practice

On July 23 VMware, the server virtualisation powerhouse, agreed to acquire software-defined networking pioneer Nicira for $1.26bn; both parties expect the transaction to close in 2012.

VMware, a subsidiary of EMC, expects the acquisition to advance its progress towards programmatic control of virtualised compute, storage, and network resources – what it calls software-defined data centres.

Although Nicira’s current annual revenues are only in the $10m range, its technology complements VMware’s cloud strategy and will allow the combined entity to attack data networks with a comprehensive software-based cloud solution that is completely hardware-agnostic.

The acquisition certainly complicates the relationship between EMC, VMware, and longtime ally Cisco in providing virtualised infrastructure for cloud data centres.

While the companies have been long-term partners they also compete in the market, and Ovum expects the acquisition will end up polarising the EMC and Cisco camps …

What’s an example of on-premise software being threatened by the emergence of a SaaS upstart operating in the cloud?  Answer: Mint Vs. Quicken

Quicken, for years, had cultivated a devoted base of users who waited for each new version of the software to appear from Intuit. This nifty little personal finance tool is easier to use than QuickBooks albeit more limited in scope.  

Then came along this amazingly simple and intuitive online offering called Mint, which promised to integrate all your personal finance into one single web interface, with no requirement to download software. And it was free!

In 2009 TechCrunch reported that Mint claimed it gained 3000 users per day jumping from 600,000 to 850,000 in just a few short months. The numbers were disputed by Intuit, who suddenly understood how the cloud could reshape a landscape it had for years dominated.

This led Intuit to …

It’s been a pretty heavy week for the cloud, with three major providers suffering outages of varying severity, giving us another reminder that no cloud is perfect.

Microsoft’s Windows Azure cloud was down across Western Europe for approximately two and a half hours, with a flag on the Azure service dashboard stating:

“We are experiencing an availability issue in the West Europe sub-region, which impacts access to hosted services in this region. We are actively investigating this issue and working to resolve it as soon as possible”.

Indeed, the situation was eventually resolved with full service functionality restored. Similar problems were experienced in the West US region concerning management degradation; this took just over four hours to rectify.

This isn’t the first time Windows Azure has felt the wrath of the cloud gods. Back in February Microsoft’s cloudy outing was down for several hours, and during …

A detailed study from the International Data Center (IDC) has shown that companies who use the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud make substantial savings over time.

The report, titled ‘Business Value of Amazon Web Services Accelerates Over Time’ and commissioned by AWS, saw the research house interview representatives from 11 organisations which had deployed AWS onto their services.

According to IDC, after three years enterprises should expect to see three and a half times their investment in AWS; and after five years the realisation would be $8.40 per every $1 invested.

“While all customers had enjoyed positive returns on their investment, there is a definite correlation between the length of time they had been AWS customers and their returns”, the report states.

The key statistics from the report are:

• Those who used AWS saw a 626% ROI over five years
• Overall companies in the cloud saved an average of …

A survey of mobile enterprise app developers has found that a significant percentage plan to integrate some kind of cloud service into their apps in the near future.

Mobile platform company Appcelerator’s quarterly survey of its developers, carried out by IDC, found that 83% of devs will utilise cloud services and also intend to use a cloud solution for the back end of their apps.

The numbers are roughly in line with a similar study from Appcelerator conducted during the same quarter last year. Analysts suggested a number of factors encouraging cloud utilisation for enterprise app developers, including the increasingly compelling nature of some of the services available, like push notification.

Also, difficulty in developing back-end-server-side capabilities in-house, particularly for developers focused on client side activities, was a factor, combined with the increasingly complex job of managing the myriad connections that modern mobile apps require.

Push notification was the …

It has been reported this week that 65% of US small to medium sized businesses (SMEs) say that cloud computing is absolutely essential to their organisation and future growth plans. Meanwhile 59% have stated that their selection of cloud service providers is largely impacted by their privacy policies.

This was revealed via research that was carried out by Microsoft Corporation.

The study also uncovered the fact that SMEs have been attracted to the cloud due to the opportunity for improving efficiency that cloud computing naturally presents. Cloud computing will also drive down costs. However, the main concern is still regarding privacy and security.

It has been revealed that the cloud policies and practices that SMEs seem to be most concerned about are transparency about location of data, segregation of data between customers and commitments not to mine cloud data for advertising.

The chief privacy officer at Microsoft Trustworthy Computing, Brendon …

By Tim Stammers, Senior Analyst, Infrastructure, Ovum.

Paul Maritz, CEO of EMC subsidiary VMware, is to be replaced by Pat Gelsinger, who is currently president and COO of all of EMC’s business other than VMware. The swap will happen in September, when Maritz will move in the opposite direction to become EMC chief strategist.

The move does not signal immediate or major changes at VMware. While the company faces increasing competition, its dominant position in the server virtualization market is not under immediate threat, and its revenue is still growing quickly.

EMC has also dismissed rumors that VMware plans to spin out its Cloud Foundry operation, at least for now. Although Maritz offered to step down during board discussions of VMware’s strategy, he has not been sidelined, as shown by his new role, his continued presence on VMware’s board of directors, and his high profile this week …

The cloud uptime debate rumbles on with Hewlett Packard promising their Cloud Object storage service will have at least 99.95% availability, with customers receiving service credits if it’s down.

The credits, as one would expect, increase the longer the cloud is down.

Customers who experience between 99.95% and 99.9% uptime get 5% of their bill credited; anything above 99.5% gets one tenth credited; while 99.0% gets one fifth of their bill back and if the Object Cloud is down more than 1% of the time, users get 30% of their bill credited.

Hewlett Packard discussed the variation to their service level agreement (SLA) as part of an overall announcement that their Cloud Object Storage and Cloud Content Delivery Network (CDN) was moving to general availability.

Gavin Pratt, senior cloud product manager, said that HP “continuously monitor[s] for downtime”.

“We are deeply committed to …

What is it they say…you get what you pay for, right? In most cases, that is a spot on assessment but in terms of the cloud-based security, the numbers tend to add up towards the benefit of the user. But let’s get the whole idea of numbers down straight. It’s all relative. 

What is pricy for one organization is downright affordable to another, so in terms of costs let’s look squarely at the moving target of return on investment. What makes cloud security compelling is how the costs break down in terms of hard and soft cost savings.

First let’s compare apples to apples. I am not talking about just applying a single sign on solution or identity management, or even SIEM, but rather analyzing cloud security holistically. Each of these components are a growing necessity for any company who deals with proprietary data, responsibly …

Cloud computing will be a part of the 2012 Olympic legacy when the dedicated media centre is turned into a London City cloud hub following the games.

The £295m ($461m) Main Press Centre and International Broadcasting Centre at the Olympic Park in East London contains over 31,000 square metres of office space and includes a number of hi-tech facilities such as 1,300 internet ports with fibre optic cabling.

The highly connected building is in close proximity to the key business district of Canary Warf.

iCITY, a joint venture between data centre firm Infinity and property company Delances, has emerged as preferred bidder for the project, and says it will turn the site into  a world-class centre of innovation and enterprise to deliver a lasting legacy, creating over 6600 new jobs in and around the area.

The bidding process, in which there was one other final contender, came to …