Cloud Trends

What is Cloud Computing?

ryan — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 13:50:38 +0000

The term Cloud Computing is on the rise according to google trends. But what does it all mean? Just like “Web 2.0″ it’s an overloaded phrase with tons of connotations and many attempts at definition. While perusing a cloud blog by James Urquhart, I was inspired to try to define the term myself. So here’s what cloud computing means to me.

Clouds are vast resource pools with on-demand resource allocation. The degree of on-demandness can vary from phone calls to web forms to actual APIs that directly requisition servers. I tend to consider slow forms of requisitioning to be more like traditional datacenters, and the quicker ones to be more cloudy. A public facing API is a must for true clouds.

Clouds are virtualized. On demand requisitioning implies the ability to dynamically resize resource allocation or moving customers from one physical server to another transparently. This is all difficult or impossible without virtualization.

Clouds tend to be priced like utilities (hourly, rather than per-resource), and I think we’ll see this model catching on more and more as computing resources become as cheap and ubiquitous as water, electricity, and gas (well, maybe not gas). However, I think this is a trend, not a requirement. You can certainly have clouds that are priced like pizza, per slice.

[shameless plug] check out Elastic Server On-Demand.

DevX Introduction to Amazon EC2

ryan — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 13:47:39 +0000

Introduction to Amazon’s EC2

CohesiveFT Delivers Elastic Servers to Skytap’s Cloud-Based Platform

ryan — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 23:12:22 +0000

CHICAGO and SEATTLE – June 25, 2008 – CohesiveFT, providers of the Elastic
Server Platform, an on-demand service for dynamic assembly and deployment of virtual
machines, and Skytap, the leading provider of cloud-based virtualization solutions, today
announced a technology partnership to distribute CohesiveFT’s Elastic Servers to Skytap’s
Virtual Lab platform. The combined solution will provide application development and test
teams the capability to dynamically assemble and deploy custom application stacks to a virtual
test cloud, freeing them from time-consuming build and set-up tasks and the constraints of
traditional test lab environments.
As a first step in the partnership, Elastic Server-branded virtual machines will be
available as templates in the Skytap Library™ for deployment to Skytap’s Virtual Lab
environment. The Skytap Library includes pre-built virtual machine images of common
operating systems, servers and applications. With the addition of virtual machine images
generated by Elastic Server, Skytap Virtual Lab™ users have access to these custom images on
demand, eliminating the assembly of application stacks “by hand”.
“Development and test teams are on the leading edge of exploiting cloud-based virtual
infrastructure to deliver tangible results to the business in terms of a more agile delivery platform
and reduced costs,” said Scott Roza, chief executive officer of Skytap. “Adding Elastic Server
virtual images to the Skytap Library demonstrates how combining cloud-based services can
deliver significant value and productivity gains to customers.”
“Both Cohesive FT and Skytap share the vision of how cloud-computing services will accelerate
the adoption of virtualization by companies looking to streamline their IT infrastructure,” said
Pat Kerpan, president and chief technology officer of CohesiveFT. “Our partnership with Skytap
will deliver a new class of solution where the ability to dynamically assemble and provision
virtual machines is possible over the Web. This not only eliminates the typical administrative
overhead of assembling virtual machine images “by hand,” but also enables these images to be
deployed and hosted in a virtual environment on demand.”
CohesiveFT and Skytap’s joint solution enables:
● Publishing virtual machine images created by CohesiveFT’s Elastic Server On Demand to the
Skytap Library
● Browsing and searching of CohesiveFT’s virtual machines through Skytap Virtual Lab’s user
interface
● One-click deployment of CohesiveFT’s virtual machines into Skytap Virtual Lab
“Skytap and CohesiveFT’s combination of cloud-based services gives us a glimpse into how
application teams will develop and test software in the future,” said Theresa Lanowitz, an analyst
with voke. “As a new model for application delivery matures, we’ll see rapid adoption of cloud-
based services by organizations of all sizes. Just as tool and process integration was driven by
dramatic improvements in productivity and the resulting economic benefits, the shift to cloud-
based services will be driven by the same market forces.”
Skytap and CohesiveFT’s integration roadmap includes providing full dynamic connectivity
between the Elastic Server platform and Skytap Virtual Lab. This will give users the ability to
assemble a virtual machine from CohesiveFT’s extensive repositories of components and
immediately deploy it to their virtual lab environment using their Skytap credentials.
About CohesiveFT, Inc.
Cohesive FT was founded in 2006 by principals with deep backgrounds in Enterprise IT,
Commercial ISVs and multiple successful startups. Cohesive Flexible Technologies enables
customers to build and manage applications for virtualized infrastructure. Our solution, the
Elastic Server Platform, is a cost-effective, virtual machine automation solution that enables
customers to gain business advantage from the new opportunities in data center computing,
reducing application infrastructure complexity while increasing agility and customer control.
CFT has offices in London, Chicago and Palo Alto. Additional information about CohesiveFT is
available at www.cohesiveft.com.
About Skytap, Inc.
Skytap is the leading provider of cloud-based virtualization solutions available as on-demand
services over the Web. The Seattle-based company has an experienced executive team and
advisory board, including industry veterans from HP, Microsoft, Mercury Interactive, Rational
Software and EMC. Skytap was founded in 2006 and has received venture funding from
Madrona Venture Group, Ignition Partners, Bezos Expeditions, and Washington Research
Foundation Capital. For more information about Skytap, please visit www.skytap.com.

Eucalyptus is an open source Amazon EC2 clone

yan — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 23:06:13 +0000

Eucalyptus is an interesting new project out of UC Santa Barbara which aims to produce an EC2 compatible private cloud in your own data center. What I really love about this idea is that instead of reinventing the wheel, they’ve decided to be API-compatible with EC2. Not only does this make adoption easier for them, it also starts to establish a de facto cloud API standard, making the production of cross-cloud management tools a breeze.

For more on Eucalyptus, check out the Eucalyptus post on ostatic and the insightful analysis at James Urquhart’s blog.

As James says, they’ve got a long journey ahead and I wish them the best. It’s an exciting day for cloud computing.

CohesiveFT’s Elastic Servers Available for Deployment to FlexiScale’s On-Demand Cloud

yan — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 22:44:38 +0000

CHICAGO and LIVINGSTON, Scotland – June 24, 2008 – CohesiveFT, providers of the Elastic Server Platform, an on-demand service for dynamic assembly and deployment of virtual machines, and FlexiScale, a leading provider of true on-demand Cloud computing, today announced a technology partnership to enable deployment of CohesiveFT’s Elastic Servers to FlexiScale’s Cloud.

The integration of technologies from CohesiveFT and FlexiScale will enable true on-demand application stack assembly and deployment on a pay-as-you-go Cloud. This combination allows genuinely scaleable, high availability production environments that do not require in-house operations expertise to build and maintain such a facility. Beyond substantial manpower savings the combined solution significantly reduces capital and energy expenditures.

This partnership will also allow ISVs, application developers and QA teams to dramatically increase their productivity throughout the development lifecycle. These teams will not be dependent on resource constrained operations departments to provision development and testing environments and will be able to change their application stack definitions with the click of a mouse. Further, these development environments need only be retained while they are actively in use, and can be recreated with speed and quality whenever they are required.

Initially Elastic Server-branded virtual machines will be available from FlexiScale’s Control Panel as templates built in a Xen virtual format for deployment into Virtual Dedicated Servers (VDS) in FlexiScale’s Cloud. The Elastic Server templates will feature application stacks as pre-built virtual machine images of popular components. Users will have access to these custom images on demand, eliminating the typical administrative overhead of assembling virtual machine images “by hand”.

The combination of FlexiScale and CohesiveFT provides customers with a self-service, rapid-response environment for deploying any kind of application” said Tony Lucas, CEO of FlexiScale. “Anchored by FlexiScale’s on-demand computing Cloud and CohesiveFT’s dynamic virtual server assembly capabilities, this new approach takes all the upfront financial capital, human capital and lead time opportunity costs out,” he added.

Cloud computing is revolutionizing the application development lifecycle,” said Pat Kerpan, president and chief technology officer of CohesiveFT. “Our partnership with FlexiScale will provide companies the ability to build and deploy a custom virtual server to a cloud in minutes which brings massive efficiencies to the adopters of this approach,” he added.

FlexiScale’s and CohesiveFT’s collaboration will enable full dynamic connectivity between the Elastic Server platform and FlexiScale’s Cloud in the very near future. This will provide users with the added benefit of building exactly what they need in their application stacks and the ability to provision and start-up the server in minutes using their FlexiScale credentials from within the Elastic Server platform.