InformationWeek Cloud Computing Weblog

What's The Definition Of Cloud Computing?

Charles Babcock — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 16:47:20 -0500

What's the definition of cloud computing? I keep asking myself that question and hearing different answers. Despite the frequent use of the term, it still means different things to different people. That was evident at the Cloud Computing Conference & Expo this week in Santa Clara, where I thought I would find consensus.

NetSuite: A Study On Cloud Computing's Potential

Mary Hayes Weier — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 12:34:33 -0500

Will companies move their core business applications to the cloud? It's one of the great unanswered questions, and one reason NetSuite is so interesting to watch. Based on NetSuite's third�quarter financial report, the answer to this question remains partly cloudy.

Tech Pros Want Security, Healthcare, Green Certifications

Marianne Kolbasuk McGee — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 13:37:45 -0500

Techies are seeking professional certifications in emerging areas like healthcare and green IT, and especially old standbys like IT security, according to a new survey.

Amazon Serves Up MySQL

Serdar Yegulalp — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 10:25:21 -0500

Amazon's newest cloud offering: MySQL 5.1 in the cloud, also known as Amazon RDS. And there's worry that it'll turn out to be a bad thing for MySQL in the long run, although that might not hold true for other open source repurposed in the same way.

Benioff Discloses All In 'Behind the Cloud' Except...

Charles Babcock — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 21:05:31 -0500

Five copies of "Behind the Cloud" have arrived at my desk, two intended for fellow IW staffers and three for me, an embarrassment of riches. It's Marc Benioff's book on how Salesforce.com was created and built into a successful company. I am reading it avidly� but some disclosures will apparently have to wait for the sequel.

Four Possible Reasons Why L.A. Chose Google Over Microsoft

Mary Hayes Weier — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 16:52:52 -0500

The Los Angeles City Council has chosen Google over Microsoft for 30,000 city employees' email accounts. What better place than Tinseltown for this tech industry drama to play out, with one councilman even delivering a choice line about whether cloud computing could push the city off the edge of a cliff (a drama AND an action film). But we're still waiting for an ending that answers this question: Why Google over Microsoft?

Innovation, Not Cost, New Cloud Battle Cry

Michael Hickins — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 15:08:00 -0500

Maybe folks are simply trying to talk themselves out of the recession (which would be a good thing in itself), but it seems like the conversation around cloud computing is shifting from cost-cutting to unleashing innovation.

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Is Cloud Bigger Than The Advent Of The Personal Computer?

Charles Babcock — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 16:38:43 -0500

Eric Schmidt, Google CEO, says "the cloud" is a phenomenon that is bigger than the advent of the PC. I think he's almost got it right. Cloud is bigger than the PC Revolution, but it's big in part because it incorporates and extends the PC revolution to Internet server clusters. The cloud owes more to the PC than Eric acknowledges.

Alternative IT

Mary Hayes Weier — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 16:08:31 -0500

Cloud Computing. SaaS. They're such over-used marketing words that they've become the butt of jokes (Larry Ellison on YouTube, anyone?). But hopefully the hype machine hasn't generated too much noise to drown out the fact that there have been some significant, permanent changes in how CIOs view software. At InformationWeek, we call it Alternative IT.

Avoid Trap Of Proprietary Cloud Tooling: Use Simple API

Charles Babcock — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 17:11:36 -0500

What's the first thing you should do if you're thinking of developing software for cloud computing? At ZendCon, Zend Technologies user group yesterday, three members of a five member panel answered the same way: adopt Simple Cloud API, the open source cloud services interface.

A 'Bill Of Rights' For SaaS Customers

Mary Hayes Weier — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 14:25:43 -0500

Analyst R "Ray" Wang is a tireless and well-respected customer advocate in the world of enterprise software. Now Wang is bringing his advocacy over to the SaaS side with his recently published "Customer Bill of Rights" for SaaS. I share with you some of the highlights.

How Did T-Mobile Suddenly Recover Unrecoverable Data?

Mary Hayes Weier — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 11:44:39 -0500

Microsoft today said it had recovered most of affected Sidekick customers' lost data. But this past weekend, like a doctor issuing a terminal prognosis, T-Mobile told affected customers that their data "almost certainly has been lost." So, what changed between then and now?

Benioff, Dell Link Arms: Here Comes Hybrid Cloud

Charles Babcock — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 14:59:25 -0500

Marc Benioff set aside his duties as master of ceremonies at the death of software Tuesday and announced on-demand applications and on-premises applications could work together. His venue was a Yerba Buena Center theater in San Francisco next to Oracle OpenWorld. He still took a swipe at enterprise software, but his talk was titled, "The Best of Both Worlds."

The Drama That Didn't Happen At Oracle Open World

Mary Hayes Weier — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 12:02:44 -0500

So Marc Benioff treaded onto Larry Ellison's turf at Oracle Open World yesterday and acknowledged that sometimes, customers use both Oracle and Salesforce.com. Well, unless you're completely gullible to the attention-loving drama kings of the software industry, this shouldn't come as a surprise. Cloud and traditional computing will forever coexist in an IT architecture world that is far more grey than black and white, and both Larry and Marc know it.

Hitachi Data Systems Reaches For The Cloud

Andrew Conry-Murray — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 17:02:27 -0500

HDS announces a move into public and private cloud storage, primarily through rebranding

Swarm: Open Source Web App Scaling

Serdar Yegulalp — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 10:47:13 -0500

A new open source project called Swarm bills itself as "a transparently scalable distributed programming language." It's been written to tackle one of the thorniest problems of today's cloud-centric world: How do you create applications that can scale up and out without driving yourself nuts?

Who Do You Blame For Cloud Computing Failures?

Mary Hayes Weier — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 10:13:44 -0500

Think of the one million T-Mobile Sidekick customers that may have lost important data last week. Think of the dozens of CIOs that anxiously waited for Workday to restore its SaaS service on Sept 24. Cloud computing has created a new era of accountability, and we must demand that tech vendors work harder than ever to prove their trustworthiness.

Is Workday's 15-Hour SaaS Outage Acceptable?

Mary Hayes Weier — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 12:47:11 -0500

On Sept. 24, Workday's SaaS service for human resources, financial applications and payroll was down for 15 hours. That's right, not 15 minutes, not 1.5 hours, but 15 hours. Google Gmail is down for 90 minutes, as it's as if the world has come to an end. So it begs the question: Is 15 hours' downtime for core applications such as accounting and HR acceptable?

The Conversation With Gates And Ballmer That Sparked Microsoft's Cloud Strategy

Mary Hayes Weier — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 15:40:09 -0500

Microsoft's march toward cloud computing is fascinating to watch. Next year, Microsoft will take the most successful desktop software package of all time�Office�and offer it online to businesses, somewhat similar to the Google Apps model. Microsoft's VP of Online recently shared with me some thoughts on Microsoft's strategy�and the conversation he had with Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer that led to Office Web Apps 2010 and other decisions.

LotusLive iNotes: A Necessary Move For IBM

Mary Hayes Weier — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 12:31:24 -0500

IBM released a $3-a-month, online subscription email service this week, called LotusLive iNotes, and really, it had no choice but to get very aggressive on the SaaS front. I know of at least two big company CIOs that recently left Notes and migrated to Google Gmail or Microsoft Exchange online, after considering upgrades to both on-premises Notes and the existing Notes subscription service that starts at $8 a month.

IBM Launches iNotes In The Cloud, More To Come?

Charles Babcock — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 16:48:48 -0500

IBM is wading into online email service, a space where Google, Yahoo and Microsoft already have big presences. Is IBM staging a kamikaze run, giving itself one more place where Lotus Notes will show it's got difficulty competing? Is there a method to this madness? Why does IBM have its head in the clouds?

Amazon's Three Steps To Cloud Computing

John Foley — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 13:11:57 -0500

Amazon CTO Werner Vogels is preparing a paper that summarizes his views on how large companies can adopt cloud services. Here's a sneak peek at his soon-to-be-published report.

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IBM Preparing Self-Service Software Infrastructure

Charles Babcock — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 15:56:43 -0500

IBM has been investing in cloud computing for several years, although Willy Chiu, VP of IBM Cloud Labs, acknowledges it may be difficult for those outside IBM to develop a picture of what its cloud initiative will finally look like.

SaaS Vendor Workday Plans To Grow Big, Remain Independent

Mary Hayes Weier — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 15:29:00 -0500

Workday, an important SaaS company to watch, has hired the former CEO of PolyServe, later acquired by Hewlett-Packard, as its new president. Yet this isn't a case of a startup hiring an experienced exec to shop it around. As Workday's Aneel Bhusri recently told me, "Dave Duffield and I largely control the company, and we did not start Workday to sell it."

Develop Once, Then Deploy To Your Cloud Of Choice

Charles Babcock — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 20:37:02 -0500

IBM's CTO of Cloud Computing, Kristof Kloeckner, says IBM has demonstrated software engineering as a cloud process. At the end of the process, a developer deploys his application to the cloud of choice. As of today, that cloud better be running VMware virtual machines. In the future, the choice may be broader.