Service Computing

Enterprise Architects should consider multi-tenancy design patterns & best practices to deliver better shared solutions

2011-07-31T19:09:00.000-07:00

Recently, I came across a few good research papers on Cloud and Multi-tenancy design patterns. Typically, the primary audience for such articles is architects and technologists working for service providers (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, BPaaS…) or software vendors. However, enterprise architects can also apply these architectural principles and patterns to build more cost-effective and easier-to-maintain

Google excludes scheduled maintenance from its Google Apps SLA, but not Google App Engine

2011-01-16T11:25:00.000-08:00

Back in July of 2010, I wrote about how Cloud Service Providers exclude scheduled downtime from their service level agreements. Last Friday, Google made a significant change to their SLA for Google Apps by removing scheduled downtime from their Google Apps SLA: Exclusion of scheduled downtime from availability SLA Exclusion of intermittent downtime (periods of less than 10 minutes) from

A quick & dirty look at web traffic trends on AWS, Azure, Force.com, GAE, and IBM Dev/Test cloud

2010-12-29T14:55:00.001-08:00

Since the introduction of EC2 in 2005/2006, a lot has happened. New service providers such as Google App Engine (GAE) and Force.com have emerged. Existing hosting providers such as GoGrid & RackSpace have transformed to cloudify their service delivery model. And, existing platform vendors such as IBM and Microsoft have raced to implement or acquire solutions to respond to this fundamental

More on VMforce - Part Deux

2010-11-16T06:23:00.001-08:00

I blogged about VMforce a couple of times back in April. In August, VMware/SpringSource and SalesForce.com provided more details about this service in a couple of webinars to introduce Spring framework to Force.com developers, and Force.com & VMforce to Java developers: VMForce–Cloud Computing for Java Developers Basically, VMforce enables developers deploy JEE webapps on Force.com, and access

A brief look at Oracle and its Cloud Strategy

2010-10-17T16:09:00.001-07:00

For the last couple of years, Oracle has shown a consistent strategy to Cloud Computing. It has made strategic acquisitions such as Virtual Iron to gain x86 virtualization management software, and has also made investments in new products such as Virtual Assembly Builder to facilitate configuration and governance of virtual environments. Oracle has made clear that it intends to be a provider of

Cloud Services & Availability SLA – Should scheduled maintenance be excluded from the measurements?

2010-07-31T08:03:00.001-07:00

Availability SLA is an important criterion to enterprise customers when selecting a Cloud service provider. If the service provider doesn’t offer appropriate SLAs, they often don’t even make it to the “short list”. As an example, Amazon’s EC2 availability SLA is 99.95%. Amazon also offers transparency by providing a website that publishes up-to-the-minute status on their services and any

Are you considering your application migration options carefully when moving to the Cloud?

2010-07-31T07:07:00.001-07:00

So, you’ve heard about the Cloud. You’ve done some prototyping on AWS, Rackspace, GoGrid, Joyent, GAE, Force.com, Engine Yard,… You show it to your boss. Bada Bing Bada Boom! This is very timely, because the boss has just come out of a meeting with IT finance. He’s got a big problem justifying the cost of running the company’s website for $2M / year. He’s also pounded daily by business,

A review and analysis of IBM Test & Development Cloud, and opportunities

2010-06-14T08:52:00.000-07:00

IBM finally GA'd its Development & Test Cloud last week: http://www.ibm.com/cloud/enterprise In addition to a public cloud service offering, IBM is also providing an option to deploy such an infrastructure-as-a-service model on-premise (private cloud): http://www-935.ibm.com/services/us/index.wss/offering/midware/a1030965 I believe Cloud Computing is critical to IBM’s future growth. It may even

Chatter has a good potential to increase Salesforce average revenue per customer

2010-06-10T10:26:00.000-07:00

Salesforce.com is extending their SaaS CRM with a whole new suite of Enterprise 2.0 collaboration capabilities called Chatter. From design perspective, Chatter looks a lot like Facebook, and is fully integrated with Salesforce.com. It provides features such as Profiles, Groups, Document Sharing, Feeds, Subscription/Notification, etc: Chatter will also provide a set of APIs to enable existing

More on VMForce

2010-04-28T07:37:00.001-07:00

As expected, VMware and Salesforce unveiled more details on VMForce offering yesterday: VMForce is a service that allows developers write any Java applications using SpringSource framework (AOP-based programming model and reflective abstraction, SpringSource Tool Suite, SpringSource TC Server), and deploy to a virtual environment using vCloud. The deployed code runs on Force.com infrastructure

vmforce: Is Salesforce getting into IaaS?

2010-04-13T07:37:00.001-07:00

VMware and SalesForce.com have scheduled a joint webcast on April 27th. Rumors are circulating that Salesforce is planning to offer IaaS based on VMware virtualization platform. If true, this would be a good move for Salesforce for the following reasons: Currently with Force.com, you can build and deploy only a limited set of applications (i.e. CRM centric, business process-based/

IBM POWER7: Smarter Systems for Smarter Planet

2010-03-19T07:13:00.001-07:00

Yesterday I attended an IBM event on POWER7 in Los Angeles. The event was designed to show how POWER7 is a game changer in terms of form factor, massive parallelism and performance, virtualization, workload consolidation, integrated systems management, high availability, energy consumption, and overall costs. First, Ross Mauri gave an introduction to POWER series and innovation over the last

Technology-centric approach to Enterprise Cloud Computing doesn’t work

2010-03-09T06:01:00.001-08:00

There is a lot of Internet chatter and conversation on Cloud Computing. Since 2007, Google Trends shows growing increase in Cloud search keywords: Majority of these articles and posts though are primarily focused on technologies (i.e. virtualization, dynamic provisioning, security, management & automation, metering & chargeback) that enable building a Cloud infrastructure or platform.

Oracle, AmberPoint, and the SOA Management ecosystem

2010-02-08T08:16:00.001-08:00

Earlier this morning, Oracle announced it had entered into an agreement to acquire AmberPoint. AmberPoint will be integrated and managed under Oracle’s Enterprise Manager division, and over time will be ported to the EM management framework. For both existing customers and new prospects, this is positive news on many levels (i.e. broader/deeper capabilities after integration with EM, removing

Oracle unveils its plans for Sun

2010-01-31T17:55:00.001-08:00

Last week, Oracle held a series of webcasts to communicate details on their product strategy with regards to the Sun acquisition. They unveiled plans for hardware, software, systems, industry solutions, and partner strategies. The webcasts were delivered by some of the most senior folks in Oracle and Sun, and they disclosed a lot of specific information, which was necessary for both customers

What apps are likely to move to the Cloud…

2010-01-09T08:00:00.000-08:00

Earlier this week, IDC published an interesting survey on what applications are likely to move to the Cloud. I thought about blogging about this, because they made some good points & observations in their analysis, and it also follows my previous post on application and workload analysis for Cloud Computing nicely. I am not going to repeat what’s said in their survey, but wanted to add a

Workload Analysis in Cloud Computing

2009-11-10T07:21:00.001-08:00

Not all workloads are the same, and not all Clouds are the same! Different applications have different set of requirements and characteristics. Some Clouds (i.e. GAE or Heroku) are natural fits for certain class of workloads (i.e. WebApps) whereas for other types of workloads (i.e. batch), other Cloud services (i.e. AWS) are more appropriate. In some cases, the business operation and/or legal

The enterprise has to deal with a mixed bag of virtualization vendors…

2009-11-05T05:01:00.001-08:00

A couple of weeks ago, I was at Oracle Open World and attended a good session on JRockit (JRockit: What’s new & What’s coming). The presenters were from JRockit lab in Sweden, and they presented many things from new features, JVM performance, JRockit Mission Control (JRMC), JRockit Real Time (JRRT), and JRockit Virtual Edition (JRVE). JRVE is a JVM that sits directly on bare metal hypervisor

The future of SOA is Cloudy…

2009-11-04T06:38:00.001-08:00

A couple of months ago, I was at an Oracle event in Redwood Shores. The event brought together some of Oracle’s marquee customers & Fusion middleware product management team to discuss challenges/issues with regards to SOA, BPM, infrastructure management... and provide an opportunity to learn more details about FMW roadmap and offer feedback… I seized the opportunity to talk to several

The economics of multi-tenancy and its effect on the overall service offering…

2009-11-03T15:34:00.000-08:00

One of the key design decisions for Cloud Computing implementers is multi-tenancy. The idea is to abstract a pool of sharable resources (i.e. server, database) at the right layer, and to the right degree to optimize the number of tenants served by the resource. Obviously, this needs to be done in balance to the particular service offered, the context in which the service is used, and

IBM Cloud for Development & Test

2009-10-19T07:28:00.001-07:00

IBM has a new service IBM Smart Business - Cloud for Development and Test that offers developers a set of pre-configured images for implementation and lifecycle management of IT solutions based on IBM stack. It looks like it went beta September 30, 2009. This service was mentioned in an IBM press release in June, but I don’t think it got picked up by any Cloud Computing forums/SIGs. IBM itself

Oracle, Sun’s assets, Gridification of FMW, and Cloud Computing

2009-09-12T08:10:00.001-07:00

Oracle’s acquisition of Sun hit a snag in EU earlier this month. According to their statement, the EC is concerned that Oracle (the largest database vendor) + Sun’s MySQL (the largest open-source db) would be an anti-competitive combination in their market. So, they are going to look at this further and make a ruling by Jan 2010. This is unfortunate for Sun’s customers and also business

Linux Foundation Report

2009-08-21T06:54:00.001-07:00

Following my post on VMWare’s acquisition of SpringSource, a friend of mine alerted me to the latest report from Linux Foundation. It contains various statistics on the Kernel development including contributors (both individuals & vendors). On page 11, it shows Red Hat as #1, followed by IBM, Novell, Intel… With all this investment and involvement, Red Hat’s virtualization strategy, and

VMWare’s acquisition of SpringSource

2009-08-17T08:12:00.001-07:00

Last week, VMWare announced that it had entered into an agreement to acquire SpringSource, an open-source enterprise Java vendor. This was a significant development, because SpringSource brings new assets and capabilities beyond virtualization to VMWare (i.e. CloudFoundry). In VMWare’s press release, the motivation for the acquisition is described as follows: “Together, VMware and SpringSource

JVM on “Bare Metal”

2009-08-11T08:51:00.001-07:00

This past weekend, I watched a very good presentation by Mick Jordan, the lead on Sun’s Project Guest VM, discuss challenges and issues in porting Java VM to run directly on Xen hypervisor. The motivation for virtualization at the Java VM-level is as follows: Enhance performance by eliminating the OS layer and also removing some of the redundant activities in different layers (i.e. task