CSix Cloud Computing SIG Blog

Cloud Enablers

2010-05-19T13:09:00.000-07:00

We had a brief discussion at one of the meetings recently. One member asked what VMware's relationship to Cloud Computing is. I think there was some agreement that virtualization is an enabler of CC, but we didn't get to the crux of how it is one. I've seen some discussions which put Cloud Computing at the intersection of a number of technological advances, but it seems to me that there are three technologies that get the nod as economic enablers of CC. Without these three, the financial numbers don't work out for putative CC providers, and therefore, for the industry.

Virtualization is certainly one economic enabler, allowing a single server to hold multiple instances of an application, and thereby drive utilization, multitenancy, and rapid re-provisioning in the datacenter.

A second economic enabler is SaaS. This allows centralized management of applications, reduces the cost and complexity of upgrades and release management, and allows new generations of end user devices to have access to heretofore inaccessible computing resources and functionalities.

Finally, there is the hardware component - blade computers. As blades became mainstream, datacenters were able to scale horizontally, but without the space, power, and cooling concerns that plagued large datacenters in the era of "server racks". Now, the same footprint in a datacenter can accomodate 4-16 times the number of compute engines, (each a potential virtualization platform) and each with an acquisition cost that averages 1/4 to 1/3 of the typical cost of a rack-based server of the previous generation.

With these three technologies in place, the idea of offering on-demand computing became economically viable as a business model. The financial value proposition to the end user could be realized at a substantial profit to the supplier.

Of course there are many more technologies that were needed, and continue to be needed, but these are enhancers, in my view, not necessarily enablers. Storage virtualization, management paradigms, security, secure multitenancy, etc. are all critical technologies, but they allow differentiation, value creation, and cost optimization. While their impact is partly economic, they enhance, not enable the business model.

Your comments welcome.

Jim

Chatter!!

2010-04-03T15:46:00.000-07:00

Chatter is a new way for people to communicate in the company. It is considered Salesforce.com’s collaboration cloud. It allows an individual the opportunity to follow anyone in the company on any project. Everything is in one place, Chatter has the same collaboration features on Facebook or Twitter combined with the sharing and security rules of Salesforce. One of the coolest things about Chatter is the filters, you can follow just your team or you can follow your largest account, it is your call. Twitter is also integrated into this tool, when relevant accounts or topics get mentioned on Twitter it goes into the Chatter feed. Preview and comment on a newly posted project plan directly in the feed. It also allows you to follow back end applications such as HR. Custom apps that are developed on the force.com platform will update automatically to a live feed that filters into Chatter. You can follow everything that goes on inside of the company making sure no one is left out of the loop. With the force.com platform, you can track any data you want, such as orders, discounts, references, competitors... anything. This CRM app reflects your business in a real time feed which, allows developers using force.com to build a social app with just a few mouse clicks. Of course Chatter works with your iPhone and Blacberry. Real time insights that lead to better decisions that is what Chatter stands for!!

Interview with David Skyberg

2010-04-01T19:17:00.000-07:00

On 3-30-2010 I talked with David Skyberg an alum of the CSIX Cloud Computing SIG. He is a technical product manager for Ping Identity. His job is to seek out what the market needs and where the market is going. He then delivers his ideas to the engineers that create the product for Ping Identity customers. Ping Idenity has over 125 SaaS customers and Federated Identity is his business. Federated Identity, in a non technical description, allows you to make a reservation for a flight and that same check in (Identity scan) would allow you to make a reservation for a hotel, allowing you to surf the internet with one ID scan. What Dave loves most about the position Ping Identity has in the Cloud is that it makes it viable and accessible. He mentioned to look out for SAML claims based integration of authorization and authentication of Federated Identity. He also mentioned claims based authentication by Microsoft leveraging WCF and WIF smart clients Integration with AZURE. One thing he expects to change is the adoption or migration away from OPENID. A big thanks to David Skyberg for making room in his busy schedule to participate in a short interview, CSIX Cloud Computing SIG wishes him the best at Ping Identity.

Cloud as Disruptive Technology

2010-03-21T12:14:00.000-07:00

In 2008, Gartner identified Cloud Computing as one of top 10 most disruptive innovations through 2012. http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=681107. In 2010, the prediction seems reasonable, and it may be possible at this point to suggest some of the winners and losers that may be created by the increasing adoption of Cloud Computing. While there is still a lot of water upstream of the bridge, let's consider a few examples:

Clear winners: Storage companies. The demand for storage, both in internal and external clouds continues to grow at a breakneck pace. Companies that supply storage arrays, and the software to provision, manage and protect the data they contain, should thrive in the Cloud.

SaaS Providers. As one of the enabling technologies in the Cloud, the companies who have mastered this approach will reap the benefits as demand for both custom and standardizes apps grows.

Managed Service Providers: Many former VARS are morphing into this type of service provider, and the value proposition for the SMB is real and compelling. A major shakeout is probably in the offing, but there will be a number of clear winners.

This is just a start - Virtualization providers, networking providers, and green technologies are also likely beneficiaries of the Cloud. What do you thnk?

Probable Losers: White Box Suppliers: The predominant paradigm has moved to virtualized blades for datacenter and cloud supplier. The concentration of demand - focused in larger datacenters and in the cloud suppliers themselves will likely move demand to the largest players in this market - the clone wars may be over.

Traditional hardware distributors: These players have adapted to changing conditions over many tech cycles and will need to do so again. Professional services and online software need to occupy their offerings.

System admins: One of the mantras of virtualization and SaaS is the reduced need for administrative resources. Going forward, there will be lower demand for the traditional sysadmin, although other skillsets may provide career options.

This is just a first look - please add your ideas.

A Snapshot of the Internet Marketing Industry

2010-03-12T08:21:00.000-08:00

After attending SMX (Search Marketing Expo) West, it inspired me to delve further into the Internet Marketing Industry and this is what I have so far. In 2008 the Internet Marketing Industry was valued at $23.4 billion, according to engineworks.com. It is clear that the industry is growing and Google is proof of that. Larry Page and Sergey Brin share the number 11 spot on the Forbes 400 richest Americans list. Google AdWords brings in 97% of Google’s revenue, according to organicspam.com. Let’s take a closer look into their PPC madness. Google AdWords is a text based advertising strategy that is easily integrated into site search results, mobile webpages, feeds, videos, online games, and TV inventory. It has also found its way into social gaming sites such as Zynga, Playfish, and grab.com.

What does this mean? This gives companies the ability to target their advertising to the places customers live on the web, pretty exciting stuff. http://bit.ly/thegoogleeconomy According to this blog post Google has the clear majority of market share at 81%. As long as Google has 81% of the market they can taylor their Google AdWords revenue based on how much they promised they were going to report to Wall Street.

Yahoo! converted their company Overature to Yahoo! Search Marketing (SM), which as of right now doesn’t stand a chance to Google. Now for my thought, since I am not using these techniques or in the Industry for that matter, I see Google being the clear winner. Google Adwords is very well known and it is easy to start an account.

Marketing and the Cloud – II Using Social Media

2010-03-06T10:11:00.000-08:00

Using social media as a marketing tool is growing rapidly in virtually all segments of the market today. Marketing teams dream of coming up with a strategy to engage large numbers of potential customers with compelling messaging – the YouTube video that “goes viral”; the Twitter superstar who attracts an instant following; or a Facebook page that creates “fan-demonium”. If you are looking for the magic formula here, please move on to the next post. However, I do think that there are three principles that are emerging, that, not surprisingly, echo some of the key learning from internet marketing, and even from good old-fashioned direct marketing, and that make success more likely.

First, let’s be clear. Social media marketing is not “free”, nor is it “easy”. The basic tenets of marketing still apply. Know your audience. Know what you want to say to them. Know what you want your audience to do next. And know what you want to do next. That said, here are three things to consider.

1) Content is king. What you say is important. If what you say is important to your audience, they will follow along. If it looks like a commercial, they will skip it. So, it is critical to create interesting, relevant, and timely content. The goal is to get potential customers to hear your message.

2) Follow-through is the name of the game. Most marketing teams know what to do with someone who responds to an ad, offer, or invitation. Social media contacts are no less important. Deciding how to reinforce the messages that attract fans and followers is one thing. But keeping the interest of the fans and followers is a time-intensive and thought-intensive process. Let them drift away at your peril.

3) Fans and followers don’t just happen. And, they are not permanent. From a business perspective, they follow because there’s something of value for them. Attracting them takes time, as does finding the right content to keep them around. Once you start the process, the worst thing you can do is let it get stale.

As always, comments are welcome, encouraged, solicited, and hoped for.

Shedding Light on the Cloud Phenomenon

2010-02-13T12:50:00.000-08:00

The last few years in the technology sector have been in a perfect storm based on a weak economy, high unemployment and Cloud Computing. That’s right, Cloud Computing! Many business leaders concerned with the bottom line have been looking at the various aspects of Cloud Computing as a way to reduce headcount and therefore fattening the bottom line.

Cloud Computing in its various forms like Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) can reduce costs normally associated with setting up a company’s technology infrastructure base. The key area the business executives immediately draw attention too is the reduction or elimination of IT personnel and the associated savings saved by not investing in servers.
It is true, putting key services in the cloud can have an impact on head count but you will pay subscription fees for every service you sign up for. We’ll come back to subscription fees shortly. An area most companies forget to address as they move more services to the cloud or bring on additional staff is in the actual technology infrastructure needed to get everyone out to the cloud provider(s)! That’s right, we’re talking bandwidth, switching and routing. Go cheap on equipment and bandwidth you choke productivity and create problems you hadn’t expected.

Back to the cost savings by reducing headcount, licenses are less expensive than personnel but there is a breakeven point and it’s not the typical support person salary vs. licensed seats. The breakeven point will occur when your business needs to make a change and the current subscription/Service Level Agreement does not cover changes you want/need to make to your business. This becomes very evident when you have several different SaaS applications from different venders and you need to move data and/or expand a key application or add something else to your cloud infrastructure.

Cloud based computing can save dollars via headcount but has associated costs to purchase, maintain, expand and change and access. Understand that the cloud computing arena is still very young and still changing. In my opinion the market has not seen major fallout from merger and acquisition and the usual consolidation that has traditionally occurred in the technology sector.

So what does all this cloud stuff mean to the business owner or CEO? It means you can reduce or eliminate headcount but you will still have operational expenses that will need to be adjusted over time. The cloud is a good thing but seek out an expert if you don’t have one on site to help you navigate through the fiction so you don’t get rained on under your cloud.

By Ted Franklin

Cloud Computing meets Smarter Planet Initiative

2010-02-11T20:54:00.000-08:00

Earlier this week, I attended an IEEE Cloud Computing meets IBM's Smarter Planet Initiative event put on by the Santa Clara Valley Chapter Computer Society. The speaker, Lennart Frantzell, PhD of the IBM Innovation Center, San Mateo, has the goal of pushing technology until computers replace mankind.

Cloud Computing Adds Value in Specific Ways

The core of Cloud Computing made up of
- virtual machines
- high capacity broadband
- open source SW
- smartphones
- app stores such as Amazon Web Services (AWS)

I liked how Lennart Frantzell tied in current trends of smartphones and social networking to the growth of cloud computing. Without demand for more bandwidth and vendor neutral infrastructure by web users, the challenge of cloud computing activity may have stayed in the enterprise domain. Social networking is driving the growth of cloud computing.

Cloud Computing Globalization and Globally Available Resources

Frantzell explained how IBM Innovation Centers play a role in expanding the global digital infrastructure. A behind the scenes innovator in converting the world from analog to digital. The demo of one hospital based Cloud Computing implementation looked a lot like Big Brother. Wearable tracking systems allow computers to determine how well a doctor sticks to a predetermined checklist. Medical practitioners are at risk for being beeped at for failing to wash their hands long enough. The level of remote monitoring gave me shivers. Other remote management, like reading energy meters, are less intrusive.

Lennart Frantzell also discussed the differences between private clouds, public clouds and hybrid clouds and how they interact. Hybrid and public clouds can act as storage or computing capacity backup or fail over. Hybrid and public clouds give enterprises the flexibility to have an internal private cloud as well immediate ability to absorb short term spike in need.

Three co-existing Cloud Computing delivery models

Post by devans00

________________________________________
________________________________________

Abstract of Talk

As the world becomes more and more global, integrated and "flat", it is also facing an array of problems: a financial crisis, climate disruption, energy geopolitics, food supply hazards etc. This is coinciding with technological innovations such as the following developments that can assist in resolving these problems:

The world is becoming instrumented. There are a billion transistors per human, each one costing one ten millionth of a cent.

Cloud computing and mobile computing are changing how software is deployed and used throughout the world.

All things are becoming intelligent. Algorithms and powerful systems turn those mountains of data into decisions and actions that can make the world work better. Smarter.

As the world's leading globally integrated IT company, IBM is attempting to use modern IT technology to tackle many of the world's problems. In this presentation, Lennart Frantzell will talk about IBM's global smarter planet initiative in its quest to make the world a smarter place.

IBM presentations of their cloud computing offerings available on cloud homepage.

About the Speaker
Lennart Frantzell, PhD, is a technical consultant at the IBM Innovation Center, San Mateo. He works with IBM Business Partners and startup companies in the IBM smarter planet initiative. The IBM Innovation Centers is a world-wide network of IBM business partner centers that provide business- and technical support to help companies get started and deploy applications in the IBM smarter planet space.

Lennart Frantzell has expertise in Cloud Computing, IBM Industry Frameworks, IBM Tivoli systems management, WebSphere and other IBM middleware products. He has worked in artificial intelligence, object-oriented programming and computer games.

Marketing and the Cloud - I

2010-01-21T08:04:00.000-08:00

Cloud Computing raises some interesting questions about marketing. How can/should cloud companies market their services? Does Cloud Computing change marketing? How? How do social media play into the marketing mix? How does a latter-day marketing organization use the cloud to drive business? Undoubtedly, there are many other questions, and perhaps this blog can surface and answer some of them as we go along.

We’ll pose the questions one at a time, create a stake in the ground around a potential answer, and look for some collective wisdom.

Let’s start with the broad question, “Does Cloud Computing change Marketing?” At its core, I think the answer is no. Marketing still has the same set of goals: building and sustaining a Brand; finding, attracting, and (perhaps) acquiring customers; understanding, selecting and conditioning target markets; listening to customers and prospects to inform both the brand and future offerings, and shortening the selling cycle for sales and partners.

However, what do change are the processes and tools that can be used to achieve those goals. These tend to fall into three broad categories:

1) Listening tools: In the past, it was difficult to understand how your brand was perceived, or how your product experience was rated, except through cumbersome, time-consuming, and not-very accurate surveys, or focus groups. Today, with a variety of social media tools, it’s possible to listen and respond to customer conversations about your company, and to leverage that knowledge directly into your company strategy.

2) Content Management: Using the Cloud as a repository for marketing tools (brochures, sales tools, presentations, etc.) facilitates communication with, and support for, sales teams, partners and even customers. Access can be managed, usage monitored, and actionable feedback collected from a broader audience than in the past.

3) Customer acquisition: Many potential customers are in the Cloud already – on social media, conducting searches, asking questions, and interacting with self-selected peer groups. The ability to find and listen to these conversations, to engage without disruption, and to attract potential users is fast becoming an art/skill that can set one competitor apart from the others.

In future posts, we’ll look to dissect each of these questions and categories a little more. Meanwhile, all flak, questions, comments, etc. are gratefully requested.

Jim Lee

MySQL gets cloudy with Amazon's new database service

2009-10-27T23:11:00.000-07:00

Amazon is offering a new relational database service for EC2 that is powered by MySQL. (By Ryan Paul, October 27, 2009)

Amazon is expanding its Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) infrastructure with a new offering based on the open source MySQL database system. The Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) allows users to rent database capacity in the cloud and use it just like a regular MySQL database. Amazon has also introduced support for a new class of EC2 instances intended for high-memory workloads.

Amazon's EC2 service is an increasingly popular solution for deploying Web applications in the cloud, but its database options were previously somewhat limited. Amazon offers a custom database system called SimpleDB that is designed to store rows with simple attribute/value pairs. It lacks the sophisticated features of true relational databases and obviously isn't compatible out of the box with the multitude of existing Web applications that are designed to work with SQL. The new RDS option is a welcome enhancement for EC2 and it addresses one of the service's major deficiencies.

EC2 customers will be able to obtain RDS capacity by renting Amazon DB instances. The cheapest package, the Small DB Instance, provides 1.7GB of RAM and 1 ECU* for $0.11 per hour. A large instance provides 7.5GB of RAM and 4 ECUs for $0.44 per hour. There are five different packages altogether, the most expensive of which is the Quadruple Extra Large DB Instance, which provides 68GB of RAM and 26 ECUs for $3.10 per hour.

The Quadruple Extra Large instance is also available for regular EC2 computing for $2.40 per hour. Amazon introduced it today along with a Double Extra Large instance which provides 32GB of RAM and 13 ECU. Regular EC2 Double Extra Large instances cost $1.20 per hour and the RDS variant costs $1.55 per hour. RDS data storage capacity can be provisioned for $0.10 per GB. The database service includes an automated backup feature that can use the provisioned database storage.

"RDS provides cost-efficient and resizable capacity, while managing time-consuming database administration tasks for customers. The service takes much of the hassle out of setting up and managing relational databases, such as backups and code patching, freeing up its users to focus on their applications and business," wrote Amazon CTO Werner Vogels in a blog entry. "Amazon RDS provides the full capabilities of a MySQL Database, which means that libraries, applications and tools that have been designed for use with MySQL can be used without modification."

Indeed, EC2 users have already figured out and documented the proccess of deploying Django on Amazon's cloud using RDS for database hosting. RDS is clearly a lot easier than trying to manually set up and manage MySQL on EC2 with Elastic Block Storage (EBS).

Amazon's cloud services are evolving and becoming increasingly affordable, but aren't quite ready for everyone yet. Recent studies show that the service still can't match the uptime of in-house data centers and isn't cost-effective for large enterprises with heavy workloads. Amazon aims to change that eventually. In addition to the new features, the company has also announced plans today to reduce per-instance EC2 pricing next month. Amazon says that reduction, which is as much as 15% for some kinds of instances, was made possible by ongoing efforts to bring down its operating costs.

http://arst.ch/9b7

*Note: ECU = "EC2 Compute Unit". One ECU provides the equivalent CPU capacity of a 1.0-1.2 GHz 2007 Opteron or 2007 Xeon processor.

Ping Li comments on Big Data In The Cloud

2009-10-26T13:44:00.000-07:00

I briefly spoke with Ping Li (VC firm Accel) at the Orrick event on "Loving The Cloud" which I wrote up earlier. Over the weekend he posted the following which expands on that subject:
http://gigaom.com/2009/10/25/the-future-is-big-data-in-the-cloud/

=Bill=

Hadoop presentations

2009-10-26T13:27:00.000-07:00

I attended the Hadoop Users Group on 10/21/09 over at Yahoo! HQ where 3 different speakers made presentations. Their slide decks have now been posted at: http://tiny.cc/Hadoop_User_Group_Oct_21

=Bill=

Yahoo! is hiring for Hadoop team

2009-10-24T17:17:00.000-07:00

This might be of interest to the CSIX Cloud SIG. One of the best examples of new applications made practical by cloud computing is an Apache open source project named Hadoop. The biggest contributor (by far) to the Hadoop project is Yahoo! They are looking to expand their team as described below. Sorry, I don't have any internal contacts there. =Bill=

Yahoo! Inc. - Cloud Team SW Architects & Engineers - Hadoop, MapReduce, databases & database internals
Contact jwallace@yahoo-inc.com

Software Architects & Engineers Sunnyvale CA, USA
Yahoo! is looking for engineering team members to work on MapReduce and related projects that build database abstractions on top of Apache Hadoop. Understanding of distributed computing, databases, data warehouses, and especially database internals is a big plus. The Hadoop team moves as fast as any startup does, even though the scale of the problems it solves would make any startup founder deeply envious. We need engineers who can develop systems that can handle multi terabytes of new data daily and which runs on thousands of machines. The Hadoop team is growing fast! This is not surprising - all of Yahoo! batch data processing is moving to Hadoop, and we need many more great people to join this team.

For a complete list of available positions please contact jwallace@yahoo-inc.com An example of what we seek is below:

We are looking for great Software Architects & Engineers who have a wealth of experience with complex distributed software systems, algorithms, data structures, and performance optimizations. Understanding of grid computing, databases, data warehouses, and especially database internals is a big plus. Solid Java skills are required. Experience with agile development and open source development is desired. 6+ years of relevant software development experience are desired. Please advise me as to your interest and send me a resume. Also feel free to send me a LinkedIn invite so we can stay in touch.

Thanks,
John Wallace
Talent Acquisition Team
Advertising Technology, Cloud Computing & Search jwallace@yahoo-inc.com netrecruiter05@yahoo.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/wwwrecruiter

CSix Eco-Green Website

2009-10-19T21:48:00.000-07:00

The following message thread occurred in the old CSix Cloud Computing Yahoo Group starting 10-19-9. The text was transferred in case anyone wants to continue the discussion here.

CSIX Eco-Green website

Posted by: "bill_slagle" bill_slagle

Mon Oct 19, 2009 9:48 am (PDT)

The CSIX Eco-Green SIG (EGG) has their website up and running. If you
want to take a look then see http://www.ecogreen group.org

I think it's interesting that they are using a Content Mgmt System (CMS)
called Joomla. I attended the Drupal BAD Camp this weekend at
UC-Berkeley. I wonder how Joomla and Drupal compare? Just curious.

=Bill=

Re: CSIX Eco-Green website

Posted by: "Glenn Reitsma" greitsma

Mon Oct 19, 2009 9:56 am (PDT)

Joomla and Drupal are very similar. From what I've read Joomla is a bit
easier to learn and get something up quickly while Drupal has greater
flexibility but with a steeper learning curve to get started building the
site. Once the site is built the content management is easy from either one.

Glenn Reitsma
408-307-3058

http://glennreitsma .emurse.com/ (on-line resume)
http://www.linkedin .com/in/glennrei tsma

Re: CSIX Eco-Green website

Posted by: "Raj V" rajvish

Tue Oct 20, 2009 10:22 am (PDT)

It would depend on the job.

Joomla is very good if you want a quick professional looking site. But Joomala has its own way of looking at things.

Drupal is more complicated but has a better abstraction that makes it a better Content Management System and Framework.

I also notice that Drupal seems ( no numbers yet) to consume less system resources than Joomla.

Having said that they are fast approaching the status of "What is better? Emacs or vi?"

Googling Drupal Vs. Joomla produces 4,650,000 sites. :-)

Raj

Cloud Computing Snafu Deletes Microsoft Sidekick T-Mobile Data

2009-10-13T18:33:00.000-07:00

The following message thread occurred in the old CSix Cloud Computing Yahoo Group starting 10-13-9. The text was transferred in case anyone wants to continue the discussion here.

Cloud computing snafu deletes Microsoft Sidekick T-Mobile data

Posted by: "jmcd0205" jmcd0205

Tue Oct 13, 2009 8:42 am (PDT)

FYI, Blog posting from sfgate.com by Yobie Benjamin. Companies need to remember some basics, like backing up data, maybe 2-3x...?

Eight hundred thousand T-Mobile subscribers who use Microsoft's Danger Sidekick smart phones suffered the worst possible failure that can occur to anyone's personal data. All the customers' data - address books, calendars, to-do lists and photos was wiped out... kaput... gone... destroyed... forever and ever.

This computing nightmare affects not only Sidekick owners but everyone who owns a smart phone who now have to question the integrity of their own devices.

T-Mobile, the operator of the Sidekick's data service and Microsoft fumble to explain how this massive clusterfoot happened.

T-Mobile's web site explains:

Regrettably, based on Microsoft/Danger' s latest recovery assessment of their systems, we must now inform you that personal information stored on your device -- such as contacts, calendar entries, to-do lists or photos -- that is no longer on your Sidekick almost certainly has been lost as a result of a server failure at Microsoft/Danger. That said, our teams continue to work around-the-clock in hopes of discovering some way to recover this information. However, the likelihood of a successful outcome is extremely low... Sidekick users "NOT reset their device by removing the battery or letting their battery drain completely, as any personal content that currently resides on your device will be lost."

The implication of the statement is Microsoft servers suffered a catastrophic failure and that there was no backup. How the f&^% is it possible there was no single backup on an enterprise so critical to the personal lives of tens of thousands of T-Mobile/Microsoft Sidekick users?

This isn't the first time a Web service has crashed and left its users without access to data stored "in the cloud." Google's Gmail has had multiple outages but it has very quickly recovered with no data loss.

This is the FIRST TIME a MAJOR cloud-computing vendor didn't have any backups. It is a total failure of systems from Microsoft's server operating systems, storage systems, processes, procedures and everything that shoulda, woulda, coulda happened.

Folks, this is Microsoft we're talking about here. It's the same company who wants us to upgrade to Windows 7. It's the company who wants to be your cloud computing company of choice. It's the same company who sells server operating systems.

The blame is also being shared with Hitachi Data Systems who provided the failed backup systems. It is being reported Microsoft contracted Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) to do remedial work on the server infrastructure and that, during the work, the server infrastructure failed. There was no backups or replicated data set and so the data was lost forever.

Further this involves a major telecommunications company - T-Mobile, not some small rural mobile phone provider. We need to understand so consumers know what to avoid in the future.

In every company I have ever worked in or consulted for, backing up is part of Information Technology 101. I always advocate not only one backup but sometimes double and triple backups and minimum 30-day archives. How can Microsoft, Hitachi and T-Mobile allow this massive failure?

Microsoft, Hitachi and T-Mobile must come clean and explain where and how the failures occurred lest they suffer the consequence of loosing the public and corporate enterprises' trust. For now till they explain their names are all in the mud.

This is a complete failure. It would be a tough day to sell Microsoft server operating systems software today and even harder to sell Hitachi Data's backup systems... unless Microsoft, Hitachi and T-Mobile comes clean and explains how this massive failure can happen. If I were a company chief information officer or chief information security officer, I would have to do a complete double-take before I commit to a server operating system or backup solution that can suffer such catastrophic failure.

The worst part of this (having owned a Sidekick) is there is NO EASY WAY to backup your Sidekick. It's supposed to do it for you. This absolutely sucks for T-Mobile subscribers who use the Microsoft Sidekick dumb phone.

It's small comfort that T-Mobile suspended the further sales of Microsoft's Sidekick smart phone.

Re: Cloud computing snafu deletes Microsoft Sidekick T-Mobile data

Posted by: "Bob Sutterfield" bsut2002

Sat Oct 17, 2009 11:16 am (PDT)

Here's how I understand the situation, from other sources:

Microsoft bought Danger some time ago. This acquisition included their
products, staff, physical assets (like servers and software), and their
revenue contracts (like that with T-Mobile). Microsoft is partway through
ingesting their acquisition, and came to the point of technical
integration. The Danger services were singly homed, without redundancy,
which is why they wanted to move onto Microsoft's cloud. They were
re-installing the OS, and preparing to later install the cloud management
software and Danger-specific service software, onto the Danger servers.
This task was being performed by a Hitachi contractor working for
Microsoft.

The project plan assumed (it turns out mistakenly) that the servers and
services and databases were already configured in a manner compliant with
the Microsoft cloud infrastructure spec, so the technician was simply
re-installing everything. If that assumption had been accurate, the
services and databases would have been in service redundantly someplace
else, and removing the Danger infrastructure from service would have
triggered a fail-over to those other instances. (This is why I always
design services with tripled infrastructure: one I can put under
maintenance, one in service, and another backup in case the primary fails
while I'm doing maintenance. Plus I never use cold backups, I always use
hot-hot load balancing between multiple primary active instances.)

I don't know why the integration project plan didn't include an assessment
of the existing infrastructure and dependencies. I don't know why the plan
didn't include the task of backing up the Danger user databases before
FDISKing the servers. I hope the technician didn't lose her job - the
outage was the project manager's fault.

Re: Cloud computing snafu deletes Microsoft Sidekick T-Mobile data

Posted by: "Bob Sutterfield" bsut2002

Sun Oct 18, 2009 4:45 pm (PDT)

I forgot to mention: This is getting publicity as a Cloud Computing
Failure. It's SAAS (in the sense that we can now label anything that's
hosted "someplace else" as SAAS to replace the old-fashioned ASP label) and
therefore a Cloud application, but it's not running on a Cloud
infrastructure (elastic pools of virtualized resources). They intended to
move it from a traditional hosting infrastructure onto a Cloud, and that
move plan is where the mistakes happened.

Using AWS S3 Service as an External Disk for my Laptop

2009-10-05T19:41:00.000-07:00

The following message thread occurred in the old CSix Cloud Computing Yahoo Group starting 10-05-9. The text was transferred in case anyone wants to continue the discussion here.

Date: Mon, 5 Oct 2009 19:41:48 -0700 (PDT)
To: CSix-Cloud@yahoogroups.com
From: Chaganti Radhakrishna <chaganti.radhakrishna@...>
Subject: Using AWS S3 service as an external disk for my laptop

Folks,

Want to experiment with a simple cloud use case - that of backing up my personal laptop hard-drive on AWS S3 instance. Has anyone done this before? What do you see as the pros and cons of doing this? Like to hear your thoughts on this use case.

RK Chaganti

Date: Mon, 5 Oct 2009 22:44:05 -0700
From: "Waiming Mok" <wmm@...>
To: "'Chaganti Radhakrishna'" <chaganti.radhakrishna@..., CSix-Cloud@yahoogroups.com>
Subject: RE: [CSix-Cloud] Using AWS S3 service as an external disk for my laptop

Might be cheaper with Carbonite (www.carbonite.com )

if you just want to backup your (1) computer.

We can consider carbonite to be in the cloud.

Amazon S3: 15 cents / GB/mo @ 100 GB = $15 / month

(not including upload bandwidth costs)

Vs

Carbonite: $3.61 / month for unlimited backup storage per computer.

Waiming

Date: Wed, 7 Oct 2009 16:48:05 -0700
From: "Rich Zbriger" <rich.zbriger@...
Reply-To: <rich.zbriger@...
Subject: RE: [CSix-Cloud] Using AWS S3 service as an external disk for my laptop

I have been using Carbonite for about 6 months with my desktop computer at
home and it works very well. It runs in the background and backs up new
files and updates to existing files. Backups are not performed immediately,
but seem to be sufficiently often. The initial system backup can take quite
a long time about 12-15 GB per DAY. They recommend not trying to back up a
complete system just user data, but you can specify whatever you want backed
up.

Rich

Grid vs Cloud

2009-09-03T09:49:00.000-07:00

The following message thread occurred in the old CSix Cloud Computing Yahoo Group starting 9-3-9. The text was transferred in case anyone wants to continue the discussion here.

Date: Thu, 3 Sep 2009 09:49:19 -0700

To: CSix-Cloud@yahoogroups.com

From: Glenn Reitsma <glenn.reitsma@...>

Subject: grid vs cloud

Is there a common distinction between grid computing and cloud computing or are the two terms synonymous ?

Glenn Reitsma

408-307-3058

http://glennreitsma.emurse.com/ (on-line resume)

http://www.linkedin.com/in/glennreitsma

Date: Thu, 3 Sep 2009 10:35:07 -0700

To: CSix-Cloud@yahoogroups.com

From: Bob Sutterfield <bob@...>

Subject: Re: [CSix-Cloud] grid vs cloud

Glenn Reitsma wrote:

Is there a common distinction between grid computing and cloud computing or are the two terms synonymous?

At the layer that's now called IaaS "Infrastructure as a Service", I think of the three RADlab distinctives (infinite resources, no commitment, pay by the drink) as distinguishing Grid from Cloud. I think of Grid as denoting a large number of identical elements in a loosely coupled parallel architecture. Many users do Grid-style large scale computing on a Cloud, but not all Grids are managed in a Cloud-y way.

At the layer that's now called SaaS "Software as a Service", there's not much difference from the user's point of view.

To: <CSix-Cloud@yahoogroups.com>

Date: Thu, 3 Sep 2009 12:55:35 -0700

From: "Waiming Mok" <wmm@...>

Subject: RE: [CSix-Cloud] grid vs cloud

From my experience, grid (ala grid computing) tends to focus on

Solving computational intensive applications

(e.g. SLAC and CERN use grid for nuclear physics).

Grid has been around since the early days of

lower-cost rack-mount servers (sparc or x86).

There tends to be master job scheduler that dispatches jobs

To the various compute nodes (e.g. Rock, LSF, Sun Grid Engine).

There is a distributed file system shared between the nodes.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_computing

Some differences I know about between grid and cloud:

1) Because grid tends to server computing intensive jobs, grid does not

Use virtualization to partition the hardware node, whereas cloud

Tends to use virtualization partitioning to get multiple OS and workloads

Running in a single node.

2) Grid dispatches jobs (in form of applications) to the nodes running specific OS.

Cloud tends to spawn virtual machines at the IaaS level.

As Bob says, it’s possible to deploy grid within cloud – should take above into account.

Waiming

Cloud Organizing Concepts (Disorganized)

2009-08-28T17:49:00.000-07:00

The following message thread occurred in the old CSix Cloud Computing Yahoo Group starting 8-28-9. The text was transferred in case anyone wants to continue the discussion here.

Date: Fri, 28 Aug 2009 19:49:04 -0700
To: csix-cloud@yahoogroups.com
From: Bob Sutterfield <bob@...>
Subject: Cloud organizing concepts (disorganized )

Here are some disconnected organizing concepts that have been sitting in my drafts folder for a while...

UC Berkeley RAD Lab "Above The Clouds" definition of Cloud Computing includes three primary characteristics:

Huge Resources - The illusion of infinite computing resources available on demand, thereby eliminating the need for Cloud Computing users to plan far ahead for provisioning
No Commitment - The elimination of an up-front commitment by Cloud users, thereby allowing companies to start small and increase hardware resources only when there is an increase in their needs
Pay by the Drink - The ability to pay for use of computing resources on a short-term basis as needed (e.g., processors by the hour and storage by the day) and release them as needed

Some would say, if it doesn't meet these criteria, it's not Cloud.

Key benefits of each of these three characteristics:

Huge Resources - IT agility as systems can be sized to meet demand -- as load scales, system resources are easily obtained to ensure SLAs can be met
No Commitment - No longer face the tradeoff between overprovisioning (waste of capital) and underprovisioning (waste of users)
Pay by the Drink - Move IT payments from CAPEX to OPEX. Pay only for actual resources consumed. Tie IT cost to business benefit received

See the taxonomy diagram on page 22 of Guidance for Critical Areas of Focus in Cloud Computing for discussion of IaaS, PaaS, SaaS layering - also the nearby discussion of features, openness, and security.

Deployment Options:

        |                  |
Public  | Virtual Private  | Public Cloud
        |    (AWS++)       |        

        |------------------+---------------------
        |                  |

        | Internal Private | External Private Cloud
Private |                  |   (outsourcing++)

        |------------------+---------------------
             Dedicated     |  Shared

Here's a good presentation on Risk and Security in the Enterprise Cloud

To: <csix-cloud@yahoogroups.com>
From: "Junaid Qurashi" <junaidqurashi@...>
Subject: Re: [CSix-Cloud] Cloud organizing concepts (disorganized )

Re: [CSix-Cloud] Cloud organizing concepts (disorganized )

"Some would say, if it doesn't meet these criteria, it's not a Cloud"

How does private cloud fit in this definition. Some private cloud are restricted to a defined set of resources. Or are they not a cloud?

Junaid

Date: Thu, 3 Sep 2009 22:20:42 -0700
To: csix-cloud@yahoogroups.com
From: Bob Sutterfield <bob@...>
Subject: Re: [CSix-Cloud] Cloud organizing concepts (disorganized )

Huge Resources - The illusion of infinite computing resources available on demand, thereby eliminating the need for Cloud Computing users to plan far ahead for provisioning

Junaid Qurashi wrote:

How does private cloud fit in this definition. Some private cloud are restricted to a defined set of resources. Or are they not a cloud?

From the private cloud's users' perspective, any resources they want are available, on demand, without planning for provisioning. They probably have a better-informed view of the limits of the private cloud than do the users of a public cloud, but still they get what they need when the ask for it, within those constraints.