VMWare Cloud Foundry

VMWare launched Colud foundry, an open extensible PaaS cloud built entirely on Ruby. VMWare is focusing on the following 3 key differentiators

• Multi-cloud - Enables seamless transition between Private,  public and hybrid clouds
• Multi-framework - Spring (Java), Rails (Ruby) and Node.js - extensible to other frameworks
• Multiple applications

Checkout this quick intro

 

VMWare is pitching the Cloud Foundry directly to the developer community. This strategy is well summarized by this quote by one of the VMWare developers "Developers should write code, not IT trouble tickets"..

Time will tell how well the developer community adopts this new service. Nonetheless, VMWare has managed to set itself apart from the multitudes of 'also ran's (read other run of the mill cloud service providers). 

Cloud Taxonomy

'Cloud', probably is the most over used word in the IT Industry in 2009. Big enterprises to small start-ups alike are rushing in slew of cloud based products to rake in first mover advantage. The usage of the term 'cloud' is getting muddled in the process.

I was pleasantly surprised to see a Forrester research paper on a 'Proposed Cloud Taxonomy'. Sharing the excerpts to clarify confusion around what 'Cloud' really means.

The article proposes to map all cloud flavors in the following two dimensions:
- Level of Sharing: Extent of sharing infrastructure services or business applications with other companies and tenants
- Business Value: Complexity of business process



As the diagram suggests, most of today's existing software products and services can be positioned along a level-of-sharing axis and a business value axis. The illustration uses a cloud symbol for services that will resonate as cloud services, while a squared box represents other concepts that should not be simply relabeled as cloud services.

The Meta Cloud - Part II

The Meta Cloud concept (my earlier blogpost introducing Meta cloud) has taken a step closer to reality.

Cloudkick (a San Jose based start-up) unveiled an open source project named libcloud, which aims at providing a single programming interface for a host of infrastructure clouds such as Amazon EC2, Rackspace, Slicehost and GoGrid. For example, using libcloud you can make a single API call to potentially reboot your server instances across Amazon EC2, EC2-Europe, Slicehost and Rackspace.

In long run, the plan is to extend these Python based APIs to cover more and more infrastructure clouds such as Linode, Flexiscale and the open source Eucalyptus. If things go as planned, this concept can potentially enable partial interoperability, there by breaking the biggest entry barriers for enterprise adoption of clouds.

For those of you interested in contributing to libcloud project, here is the source code on Github.

Open Cloud Manifesto

Checkout the Open Cloud Manifesto: http://www.opencloudmanifesto.org/

The manifesto outlines the following six principles

1.Cloud providers must work together to ensure that the challenges to cloud adoption (security, integration, portability, interoperability, governance/management,(metering/monitoring) are addressed through open collaboration and the appropriate use of standards

2.Cloud providers must not use their market position to lock customers into their particular platforms and limit their choice of providers

3.Cloud providers must use and adopt existing standards wherever appropriate. The IT industry has invested heavily in existing standards and standards organizations; there is no need to duplicate or reinvent them

4. When new standards (or adjustments to existing standards) are needed, we must be judicious and pragmatic to avoid creating too many standards. We must ensure that standards promote innovation and do not inhibit it

5. Any community effort around the open cloud should be driven by customer needs, not merely the technical needs of cloud providers, and should be tested or verified against real customer requirements

6. Cloud computing standards organizations, advocacy groups, and communities should work together and stay coordinated, making sure that efforts do not conflict or overlap

Reuven Cohen's introductory blog post on Open Cloud

In-spite of Amazon/Google's resistance and Microsoft's frontal attack, Open Cloud manifesto is getting attention. An active user group is already into writing the Open cloud use cases.

My personal take, the might of Microsoft / Google, may be able to kill the initiative, but idea would live on.

The Meta-Cloud

There is a buzz around Cloud computing these days. Amazon leads the pack and many start-ups are lapping on to the services offered. However the big question remains, are the enterprises tuning in? Answer is 'Not Yet'.

There are still concerns on the data security, cloud availability (more so after the GFail episode). There are question marks on near infinite storage space claim and the need for maintaining redundant sites for fail over. More so, not all enterprises will be willing to put all their data with a single cloud vendor.. So where do we go from here?

In comes the concept of 'Meta-Cloud'. How about having a service which let's enterprises 'pool infrastructure resources from multiple clouds' - giving you near infinite storage space? How about having a portability layer, which can become a neutral cloud management ? How about having an option to move your data from one cloud to another..seamlessly - ensuring that your infrastructure is available always?

Sounds interesting? keep a watch on the following companies as we will hear more from them in near future
- Elastra
- RightScale
Welcome to the fourth dimension of the cloud.

10 Cloud Computing Predictions

follow-up to my last post, here are InformationWeeks top 10 predictions on cloud computing.
http://www.informationweek.com/shared/printableArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=5NF45EUOCF3EUQSNDLPCKH0CJUNN2JVN?articleID=213000074&_requestid=72451
Interesting read!

The 'Azure' Cloud

Yet another cloud over the horizon...

Microsoft has launched it's very own cloud computing platform named Azure. Services being offered by Azure looks promising ..at least to developers at this point. Only time will tell how 'Azure' fares against it's established rivals such as .. 'Amazon Web Services', 'Google App Engine' and 'VMware vCloud'.

For starters, here is a comparison of the services being offered by the above mentioned players in the space of cloud computing. 

Any bets on who would win the race??