Last year, cloud computing pundits predicted that 2012 would be the year when the clouds would open. They were right as cloud computing enthusiasts all over are embracing the open ecosystem; however, denying one vendor the right to serve as the de facto API is only the tip of the iceberg of this computing climate change. In his Day Two Keynote at Cloud Expo New York, Rackspace Chief Technology Officer John Engates discussed the open ecosystem and how, ultimately, winning cloud technologies will be based on the ecosystem they represent.
John Engates is CTO of Rackspace. He joined the company in August 2000, just a year after it was founded, as VP of Operations, managing the datacenter operations and customer-service teams. Two years later, when Rackspace decided to add new services for larger enterprise customers, he created and helped develop the Intensive Hosting business unit.

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Some consider cloud computing to be a cure-all for virtually any type of IT infrastructure. And while the cloud certainly delivers on many of its promises, it will never truly provide all that it’s capable of unless it’s optimized for integration with other applications and evolution for new requirements. What is the best way to provide this? Use a services-oriented architecture (SOA) as the fabric upon which to build your cloud-based applications. In this article, we’ll outline the reasons why an SOA is so important for the cloud, some principles to consider when creating your cloud platform on an SOA.

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«This Nirvanix-TwinStrata pre-packed solution gives enterprises everything they need at a simple, flat annual rate, making cloud storage for businesses more convenient than ever,» said Nicos Vekiarides, CEO of TwinStrata, as Nirvanix and TwinStrata today announced the availability of a pre-tested, fully integrated cloud storage starter kit that combines 50TB of Nirvanix cloud storage with TwinStrata’s enterprise-class CloudArray to provide a complete solution for a single annual rate of $48K all-inclusive.

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NIST defines cloud computing as a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction. My own definition is slightly to the point, I consider cloud computing as Information Technology as a Utility Service. To be clear, I find Cloud Computing no different than Managed Services. It doesn’t matter if you utilize software as a service, platform as a service, or infrastructure as a service, the idea is to treat IT as a utility service to save overall costs.

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In his Opening Keynote at Cloud Expo, Henry Fastert, SHI’s Chief Technologist and Managing Partner, shares insight on how the latest generation of cloud computing is now capable of addressing the needs of the enterprise mission critical applications. These mission-critical applications require computing infrastructure that is secure, optimizes performance, and is highly resilient. The purpose of the keynote is to highlight how the latest cloud computing designs have evolved in terms of security, availability, and overall service quality to meet the needs of mission critical applications.

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At its first full Board of Directors meeting, due to be held Tuesday August 28th, The OpenStack Foundation will be considering among other things applications from VMware, Intel, and NEC to become Gold Members of the foundation. They would be joining prior Gold Members like Cisco, Dell, NetApp and Yahoo! The Foundation already numbers AT&T, Canonical, HP, Rackspace, IBM, Nebula, Red Hat, and SUSE as its Platinum members.

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A critical component of a Private Cloud 2.0 architecture is what Techcello call a ‘CMAP’ – A Cloud-ready Multi-tenant Application Platform.
In the same fashion that Private Cloud internalizes the IaaS model, so this can also be repeated for both the PaaS and SaaS layers too.
Indeed with virtualization well established it’s more so these areas where the enterprise will find the new opportunity growth areas for expanding IT productivity and ROI.

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Skytap expects to put out bait next week at VMworld hoping to attract the enterprise to its cloud.
It will introduce a virtual private Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) that can spin up pre-configured multi-VM Cloud Foundry environments reportedly in under a minute in the Skytap Cloud.
It runs a secure VPN connection from the Skytap Cloud to on-premise infrastructure to create a secure self-contained network-isolated Cloud Foundry environment for experimentation, development and testing next-generation applications.

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Where’s the global action in the ICT business?

The US remains the largest market, by far, four times that of number two China. Other large markets predictably fall within the large G7 economies.

The BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) have received a lot of publicity and investment over the past decade, and a lot of people have gotten excited recently over the potential of Indonesia, the largest ASEAN nation with a population well in excess of 200 million people.

But our research at the Tau Institute over the past year-plus draws a different picture. We don’t look at things on an absolute basis, ie, merely look at the size of something, the percentage of its development, and the percentage of its potential growth.

Instead, we’re creating a series of indices that provide a relative, “pound-for-pound” view of 85 countries and their ICT environments. What countries are doing the most with what they have? What countries are the most dynamic, ie, the most likely to change dramatically? What happens when we integrate and specifically weigh several technology, economic, and societal factors?

Our latest results show South Korea topping the world. We’ve also identified global leaders in overall development and development potential.

Regional leaders include Canada, Chile, Estonia, the Netherlands, Jordan, Morocco, Vietnam, New Zealand, and Ghana.

Our statistics are moderately complex, and placed on a logarithmic curve to get a clear view. We’re happy to enter discussions with anyone who’s interested in them.

We don’t account for population, so small, well-performing Estonia, as an example, will not be as attractive to many people as larger, successful Finland, or very large, lagging Russia. Communist Vietnam may not be as attractive as Communist China, even though it performs somewhat better.

Big regional laggards such as Brazil, India, Indonesia, and South Africa may still be more appealing than countries that do much better in our research, such as Chile, Thailand, the Philippines, and Ghana.

But we forge on. As I wrote yesterday, our research is intended simply to start conversations rather than finish tem. The cases of Kenya and Tanzania provide just one example. They’re neighbors, with similar populations (Tanzania’s slightly larger) and incomes (Tanzania’s slightly poorer).

Kenya has wider access to the Internet, but has done no better in providing broadband to its citizens. Its income disparity is higher, and the perception of corruption there is higher than in Tanzania. Our research shows Tanzania to rank slightly higher overall, and in terms of its potential.

Our result matches up with conversations we’ve had with people doing business in the region, who’ve found that Tanzania is a better place to find entrepreneurs, even as both countries present major challenges to development.

With 85 countries in the mix, there are thousands of permutations and views into this data. We’re working on creating a series of reports, and welcome any inquiries about reports you’d like to see.

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