http://www.informationweek.comInformationWeeken-usCopyright 2012, UBM LLC.2013-06-19T11:10:00ZBluelock Recovery-as-a-Service allows midsized companies to avoid physical duplicates and store virtual machines at a distant location.http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/infrastructure/bluelock-makes-cloud-disaster-recovery-a/240156911?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Services_smb<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <div class="inlineStoryImage inlineStoryImageRight"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/storage/data-protection/8-great-cloud-storage-services/240151180"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/967/Cloud_Storage_Services_01_tn.jpg" alt="8 Great Cloud Storage Services" title="8 Great Cloud Storage Services" class="img175" /></a><br /><div class="storyImageTitle">8 Great Cloud Storage Services</div><span class="inlinelargerView">(click image for larger view and for slideshow)</span></div> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> eMeter is a 200-employee unit of Siemens that produces software for electric, natural gas and water utility management systems. Its EnergyIP platform is meant to allow a utility to combine information from smart meters with information on the grid's operation to better serve customers. <P> With part of its development in India and part in Redwood City, Calif., eMeter turned to Bluelock cloud data centers in Indianapolis and Las Vegas to store the recovery copies of its systems. Under a Bluelock service launched in early May, virtualized copies of first-tier production systems were created and stored in a Bluelock data center, with a constant data feed from production systems linked to the same data center. <P> In the event of a disaster, the sleeping virtual machines would be woken up and data fed into them reflecting the last known point of data integrity. <P> That became necessary, recalled Pat O'Day, CTO of Bluelock, when an eMeter customer in India botched its attempt to install a needed energy management system last month. eMeter senior systems administrator Bryan Bond got a call in the middle of the night asking for help in getting it back up. He did so in three hours by activating the backup copy in a Bluelock cloud center and resurrecting its data feed, a task that would have taken four to five business days under the prior recovery system, O'Day recounted. <P> "A lot of midsized companies in the past didn't have access to this type of recovery system, due to cost," said O'Day in an interview. Bluelock's Recovery-as-a-Service (RaaS) relies on keeping an up-to-date copy of complete system files in the cloud, and replicating data at the hypervisor level. <P> <strong>[ Cloud storage vendors claim tape is dead ... but they're wrong. See <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/storage/disaster-recovery/3-roles-for-tape-in-the-cloud/240156114?itc=edit_in_body_cross">3 Roles For Tape In The Cloud</a>. ]</strong> <P> The Bluelock recovery system places an agent on the primary system that watches the I/O stream to storage. When a change has been made in the configuration or any files of the primary system, that information is captured and sent to the recovery system. Likewise, as data is worked on by the system, a duplicate copy in the cloud is kept in sync. If the customer wants a guarantee of complete data recovery, the customer must invest in a high-speed network link that can transmit large amounts of data as a shutdown of a primary system approaches. <P> Usually customers settle for some last-second loss of data in exchange for the ability to restore data integrity up to the approximate point of failure. Attempting to maintain real-time failover to a backup system at a distant site incurs steep costs. Bluelock RaaS is meant to be an alternative to that. <P> O'Day said companies used to come to Bluelock with a pilot workload and secondary production systems to run as get-acquainted exercises. Now new customers are getting acquainted by using the cloud as a recovery mechanism for a running production system. As they learn how it can function in this way, they gain confidence in their ability to use infrastructure-as-a-service for other purposes. <P> "At least half of our new business is coming to us" through the recently launched Recovery-as-a-Service, he said. <P> "Cloud services are not an experimental option. They're seen as an alternative to purchasing your own assets," he said. <P> Such a claim could be expected from a cloud services provider. Bluelock remains a small one compared to Amazon Web Services, Google or Microsoft. It closed its data center space in Salt Lake City after expanding space in Las Vegas. That leaves customers that are, let's say, in the path of <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/hardware/data-centers/hurricane-sandy-surge-challenges-nyc-dat/240012583">Hurricane Sandy</a> on the East Coast with basically one place to link to -- Las Vegas. It's not unheard of for a winter storm that shuts down the East Coast to also severely impact Indianapolis, Bluelock's headquarters and initial data center location. <P> Las Vegas is a long ways from Chapel Hill, N.C., Washington, D.C., or Boston, conceded O'Day. But customers can are better off having a greater latency in their backup system than having no backup system at all. In addition, they can engineer the data feed with as much communications line capacity as they care to purchase. "They can be as real time as they care to afford," he noted. <P> Journaling events at the recovery site allows data to be recovered for a period of up to two days prior to the occurrence of a failure, ensuring a deep enough record to restore data integrity at a recovery point before the failure, O'Day noted. <P> In addition to hurricanes, there are other reasons to keep a backup system readily available at a distant site. Sometimes it's an intruder who's gotten into the system and IT must turn to a clean copy and recovery point where it knows the data was unaffected. Other times it's not a natural disaster but a manmade one -- a failed attempt to upgrade a production system that leads to the need for a rollback and reactivation of a sound copy. <P> O'Day's point is that virtualization and cloud computing have turned what used to be a difficult proposition -- keeping complete duplicate systems on hand for disaster recovery -- into a much more practical one. His firm has pioneered a service, primarily for midsized companies that use VMware but don't have big IT staffs or budgets. <P> "Midsized companies have enterprise IT requirements but don't have enterprise IT staffs. [RaaS] adds a critical capability to companies that wouldn't have been able to do it before," he said.2013-06-19T09:35:00ZVMware says pre-paying for hybrid cloud services gives customers more control over "rogue IT spend," hopes it will keep them in the VMware fold.http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/infrastructure/vmware-fights-rival-amazon-with-cloud-cr/240156890?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Services_smb<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <div class="inlineStoryImage inlineStoryImageRight"> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/infrastructure/vmware-vs-microsoft-8-cloud-battle-lines/240155221"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/996/Intro_Microsoft_v_vmware_01_tn.jpg" alt="VMware Vs. Microsoft: 8 Cloud Battle Lines" title="VMware Vs. Microsoft: 8 Cloud Battle Lines" class="img175" /></a><br /> <div class="storyImageTitle">VMware Vs. Microsoft: 8 Cloud Battle Lines</div> <span class="inlinelargerView">(click image for larger view and for slideshow)</span></div> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> VMware has implemented Cloud Credits for its customers to purchase hybrid cloud services from VMware or a VMware partner. By putting Cloud Credits in place, virtualization managers "can reduce the rogue IT spend" on public cloud services, according to the program's explanation on the VMware website. <P> By "rogue IT spend," think of enterprise business units taking their computing needs to a fresh account at Amazon Web Services (AWS). The constant migration of enterprise computing from inside the data center, where VMware dominates, to the outside is what worries VMware these days. Countering AWS's appeal has been a target since February. <P> Cloud Credits came into existence Feb. 26, long before VMware announced plans to open four of its own vCloud Hybrid Service data centers May 21. The hybrid service became available on a limited basis this month in Santa Clara, Calif.; Dallas; Sterling, Va.; and Las Vegas. They are due to become generally available in the third quarter. VMware spokesmen didn't immediately say whether the Cloud Credits, originally intended to be used at partners' cloud services, could be used in its own facilities. But from its website description, they appear to be a fit. <P> The credits' purpose is to bring the outside cloud spending into one account, where it can be more easily supervised and managed. According to a <a href="http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/solutions/cloudcredits_datasheet.pdf ">VMware data sheet</a>, with the credits "you can take advantage of cloud economics and improve business agility while reducing IT capital expenditures on new equipment. [The credits] give you increased budget flexibility and you maintain control and visibility of your cloud spend through your My VMware account." <P> <strong>[ Want more about VMware's new vCloud Hybrid Service? See <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/infrastructure/vmwares-hybrid-cloud-not-amazons-model/240155357?itc=edit_in_body_cross">VMware's Hybrid Cloud: Not Amazon's Model</a>. ]</strong> <P> Cloud Credits are purchased from VMware to set up a kind of revolving account for cloud use through a vCloud partner. In the U.S., one dollar purchases one cloud credit. In the U.K. one British pound equals one cloud credit for a service provider there. The Australian dollar governs Cloud Credits one-for-one in Australia and the yen in Japan. <P> There are three vCloud data center partners in the U.S., and hundreds of regional vCloud "powered" partners. However, only nine of the vCloud powered partners are approved to take Cloud Credits. The U.S. data center partners are AT&T, Bluelock and CSC. Dell dropped off the list on May 20 when it left the infrastructure-as-a-service business (although it is still listed on the VMware <a href="http://vcloud.vmware.com/partners/vspp">data center partner list</a>). In Europe, Colt is a data center partner. <P> Data center partners implement the full VMware vCloud suite and represent the most fully equipped partners to serve VMware customers. Bluelock and Colt are listed as Cloud Credit program participants among data center partners. "VCloud-powered" partners represent a less full implementation but are prepared to take workloads from VMware customers. <P> Out of many vCloud-powered partners, <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/infrastructure/vmware-partners-wrestle-with-cloud-co-op/240155659">Peak Colo</a>, Earthlink, Iland, RackForce and Savvis are among the 10 service providers that are Cloud Credit participants. <P> There are no markdowns on cloud services or credits earned through the purchase of VMware products in the Cloud Credit program. It's simply a more flexible way to administer the purchase of cloud services from within the VMware ecosystem. An account is set up in the MyVMware license and permissions management portal. The buyer deposits a Cloud Credit amount purchased from a service provider. The credits are good for one year from the date of purchase. <P> "Customers will work closely with their (VMware) partner to identify potential workloads and estimate the credits required to deploy the workload in the cloud," wrote Geoff Thompson, director of the Cloud Credit strategy, in a Feb. 26 <a href="http://blogs.vmware.com/vcloud/2013/02/new-vmware-cloud-credits-purchasing-program-provides-an-easy-on-ramp-to-the-cloud.html">blog heralding Cloud Credits' introduction</a>. The program "provides a very effective mechanism to control cloud spend," he said, limiting users to the credits established in their name and showing Cloud Credit expenditures alongside on-premises license expenditures on the MyVMware portal. <P> The credits are another tool with which VMware is trying to help customers reach outside the enterprise data center into cloud services, without risking the possibility they will cease to be the firm's customers. Cloud credits are "a new way for customers to take advantage of public or hybrid cloud as a key component of their comprehensive IT strategy," wrote Thompson.2013-06-17T17:00:00ZForrester examines IaaS and PaaS options for developers, as the line blurs between these two types of public clouds.http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/platform/forrester-rates-public-cloud-choices-for/240156802?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Services_smb<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --><div class="inlineStoryImage inlineStoryImageRight"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/storage/data-protection/8-great-cloud-storage-services/240151180"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/967/Cloud_Storage_Services_01_tn.jpg" alt="8 Great Cloud Storage Services" title="8 Great Cloud Storage Services" class="img175" /></a><br /><div class="storyImageTitle">8 Great Cloud Storage Services</div><span class="inlinelargerView">(click image for larger view and for slideshow)</span></div><!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE -->Public cloud computing is often discussed in simplistic terms when it comes to a crucial interest group: developers. It's either plain-vanilla infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), or a specialized platform with built-in tools for developers, a.k.a. platform-as-a-service (PaaS). <P> In fact, says Forrester Research, both types of public clouds serve developers well, and in some cases, the lines are rapidly blurring between them. Analysts James Staten, John Rymer, Vivian Brown and Phil Murphy interviewed 28 developer organizations to reach their conclusions on developers' uses of the cloud. Their findings were published in "Forrester Wave: Enterprise Public Cloud Platforms, Q2 2013." <P> The June 14 report not only covers the three best-known PaaS platforms, Salesforce.com's Force.com, Microsoft's Azure and Google's App Engine, and runners-up IBM, Rackspace and Verizon Terremark, but some lesser-known public cloud suppliers as well that have proven popular with enterprise developers: SoftLayer, CloudBees, Cordys, Engine Yard, GoGrid, Miosoft and Mendix. <P> Amazon Web Services is not, strictly speaking, a PaaS platform, but it nevertheless hosts many developers, noted James Staten in an interview following the release of the report. It does so by putting together a string of services that speed a developer's work and allows him to proceed without worrying about configuring infrastructure. <P> <strong>[ Want more on Google Compute Engine? See <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/infrastructure/google-opens-compute-engine-to-cloud cus/240152366?itc=edit_in_body_cross"> Google Opens Compute Engine To Cloud Customers.</a> ]</strong> <P> Other PaaS platforms offer specific language tools and software stacks that cater to particular developer interests, such as an interest in Ruby on Rails and other scripting languages at Engine Yard. Only one software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform was included, Salesforce.com's Force.com, which can be used to customize Salesforce online applications or develop new ones that work with Salesforce.com data. Most SaaS vendors have not built out a full-fledged development environment, although several are working on one. Salesforce runs Force in its own data centers, but Salesforce still runs its acquisition, the Heroku platform, as a service on Amazon Web Services. <P> Instead of one undifferentiated body of developers, there are in fact several different types bringing their work to the cloud. Developers who want quick turnaround on applications, rather than "deep resource control," value graphical development environments with automated processes working beneath them, the report said. These developers are working in Ruby, Javascript, PHP or Python or other dynamic, scripting languages and want a platform that supports rapid development. Microsoft, Google App Engine, Force.com, Heroku and Engine Yard to varying degrees are such platforms. <P> "They see public cloud platforms as a fresh start with the potential to yield massive gains in the quantity, velocity and quality of applications delivery," and they want that delivery to occur in a few weeks or few days, not months, the authors wrote. <P> A second group, which Forrester termed "coders," wants to generate complex business logic in reliable and fast-running code and do not wish to set up, configure and manage infrastructure. They like cloud platforms that offer them the tools they wish to use, such as Microsoft's Azure, Google's App Engine with its Python programmer orientation, IBM's SmartCloud with its Rational and WebSphere developer tools, and others. These development settings offer many services, such as automated connections to a database system and pre-configured, supporting middleware that speed development and ease deployment. Coders can change their applications and perfect them, with many deployment choices made by the development platform. <P> The third group, DevOps pros, want configuration control when they need it, the report stated. They are seeking optimized, modifiable production applications and might want to configure the database to work with the application, not receive a standard database service. They are skilled programmers who don't want graphical tools that make some configuration decisions for them. <P> Among other things, they are C, C++, C# and Java programmers who know how to assemble and deploy a complete software stack, then improve its performance. They are IaaS users and in some cases adopt some services on top of the public cloud, but don't wish to be impeded in having access to all the "tuning knobs," the authors wrote. Windows Azure infrastructure, Google Compute Engine and AWS as well as smaller IaaS providers can satisfy this group's needs. <P> Microsoft, with its Visual Studio tools and .Net technologies, concentrated on PaaS for its Azure cloud from 2009-2013, before adding IaaS in April. Despite that, it hasn't emerged as the overwhelming leader in PaaS the way Amazon dominates the market for IaaS. Asked to comment on that, Staten in an interview said Microsoft's customer base has largely been absent from the early adopters of cloud computing. <P> "Its customers have tended to wait for Microsoft to make something easy for them," he said. Most Windows developers have not modified their applications to run in Azure, and Microsoft "needs to find something to get that market moving," he added. <P> The adventurers in the customer base who wished to try cloud computing have found ample tools and opportunities to do so through open source code, such as the Ruby, Python, JavaScript and PHP languages and KVM and Xen hypervisors, he said. <P> At the same time, Microsoft is a keen observer of when a market is approaching the mass-market size that it prefers, "and they are a fast follower, once a market develops. There's more opportunity in front of Microsoft than what it's lost by not being on the front edge," Staten noted. <P> Authors James Staten and John Rymer will discuss the report in a webinar titled "<a href="http://www.forrester.com/Developers+Which+Public+Cloud+Platform+Is+Right+For+You/-/E-WEB13943">Developers: Which Public Cloud Is Right For You?</a>" on Tuesday, June 18.2013-06-17T09:11:00ZCenturyLink's cloud company, Savvis, broadens cloned app capabilities by acquiring automation platform AppFog.http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/platform/what-savvis-cloud-services-gain-from-app/240156744?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Services_smb<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --><div class="inlineStoryImage inlineStoryImageRight"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/storage/data-protection/8-great-cloud-storage-services/240151180"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/967/Cloud_Storage_Services_01_tn.jpg" alt="8 Great Cloud Storage Services" title="8 Great Cloud Storage Services" class="img175" /></a><br /><div class="storyImageTitle">8 Great Cloud Storage Services</div><span class="inlinelargerView">(click image for larger view and for slideshow)</span></div><!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> Savvis, the cloud unit of the third largest telecom supplier in the U.S., CenturyLink, has acquired AppFog, a platform as a service (PaaS) that supports deploying applications to multiple cloud environments. <P> As part of Savvis, AppFog will add features that let developers create applications that link to data sources across different data centers or instantly clone themselves in a new location. The AppFog platform already contains a "clone" button that replicates an application and generates an up-to-date data feed to the new location. When placed on top of the extensive CenturyLink network, "clone" could start to take on system backup and disaster recovery characteristics. <P> "You can not only work on an application for a single infrastructure as a service. You can pick the infrastructure you want it to work on," Lucas Carlson, founder and CEO of AppFog in Portland, Ore., said in an interview. Savvis has completed the acquisition of AppFog and Carlson will serve as VP of cloud evangelism at the parent company. <P> Savvis has 55 data centers offering infrastructure services to enterprise IT managers, CTO Andrew Higginbotham told <em>InformationWeek</em> . Savvis wants to broaden its reach to enterprise developers as well, making it more likely that new applications designed for the cloud will run on its infrastructure as well. <P> <strong>[ Want more on Savvis' global chain of data centers? See <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/infrastructure/savvis-expands-worldwide-data-center-foo/240155663?itc=edit_in_body_cross"> Savvis Expands Worldwide Data Center Footprint.</a> ]</strong> <P> But its acquisition of AppFog, with its ability to deploy to Amazon Web Services or OpenStack-based clouds such as HP Cloud or Rackspace, proves Savvis is not trying to tie customers up in Savvis' knots, said AppFog's Lucas. "It's not sufficient just to be able to move virtual machines around," said Lucas. Any application migration has to deal with data integrity issues as well, he said. The AppFog platform has automated the transfer and integrity of the data feed with the application. <P> Lucas said his 20-employee firm has built a flexible development platform that can reconfigure a VMware virtual machine, the type frequently found running in the Savvis infrastructure, to an Amazon Machine Image or the KVM virtual machines favored by OpenStack. <P> The platform also allows the use of Java in the Spring Framework, Ruby, Node.js, Python and PHP. It will soon add Microsoft's .Net languages as well, Lucas said. <P> AppFog automates a number of application management problems, such as allowing developers to scale out their applications by changing the setting on a sliding scale. AppFog then does the rest by ordering the additional virtual servers needed and adjusting load balancers. <P> Higginbotham said Savvis will push this type of automation further because AppFog will now be sitting on top of the CenturyLink network. The platform already forms a map of the links between an application and its surrounding resources, such as the databases to which it's connected. "It has a map of the topology and how the pieces are connected," he said. That map now can be extended to different pieces of an application in different data centers or different data sources in various locations. <P> In addition to Savvis' locations, AppFog can map to three Amazon locations in Ashburn, Va.; Dublin, Ireland; and Singapore. It also recognizes a primary HP Cloud location, Lucas said. <P> By prioritizing Savvis traffic on its network, CenturyLink can insure its cloud customers will experience lower latencies as they operate interdependent applications in Savvis data centers, Higginbotham said. <P> The AppFog platform is available as a limited free service; supported subscriptions start at $20 a month, depending on the number of developers, with some users paying thousands of dollars a month, Lucas said. The platform can build applications around several major pieces of open source code, including Drupal and WordPress. <P> VMware has seen the value of PaaS and built out its open-source Cloud Foundry, which has attracted thousands of developers. Microsoft has made sure Azure functioned as a developers' platform, and Red Hat added Red Shift to its lineup to give Linux developers a cloud platform. Progress Software recently bought the Rollbase platform to move itself into the world of cloud computing.2013-06-14T09:55:00ZRed Hat combines its Enterprise Linux with OpenStack to push its own private cloud stack alternative to VMware, Microsoft platforms.http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/infrastructure/red-hat-escalates-private-cloud-fight-wi/240156688?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Services_smbRed Hat is offering companies with a big stake in Linux an alternative to building their private clouds with either VMware or Windows Server. It's combined its Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) with the open source code modules of OpenStack to produce its own cloud computing platform. <P> In effect, Red Hat would like its success with an enterprise version of Linux to translate into a second generation of success in private cloud computing. At its <a href="http://www.redhat.com/summit/">Red Hat Summit</a> user group meeting this week in Boston, it announced the combination of RHEL and OpenStack as "Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform." <P> It also announced on Wednesday a partnership with the OpenStack consulting firm Mirantis to allow greater ease of implementation of on-premises, OpenStack clouds. Mirantis has produced Fuel, a deployment system that automates many steps in creating an OpenStack cloud. Red Hat, along with other investors, provided Mirantis with $10 million in venture capital on June 6. <P> For those who think of Red Hat as just an open source operating system, and perhaps JBoss middleware company, remember Red Hat bought the company that produced the open source KVM hypervisor, Qumranet. That move laid the groundwork for future moves because OpenStack uses KVM as its default hypervisor over other choices, such as open source Xen. <P> <strong>[ Want to learn more about Red Hat's push into cloud computing? See <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/infrastructure/red-hat-enters-openstack-rodeo/240153059?itc=edit_in_body_cross">Red Hat Enters OpenStack Rodeo</a>. ]</strong> <P> Red Hat already enjoys a great deal of success in public clouds. RHEL is frequently powering workloads on Amazon Web Services or Rackspace because companies have come to depend on it in production settings. That's one reason Piper Jaffray analysts three years ago named Red Hat as one of three companies <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/piper-jaffray-3-firms-to-grow-big-in-the/229203416">most likely to benefit</a> from IT's interest in cloud computing. <P> Red Hat has made a number of moves recently that saw it edging up to a private cloud platform. It previously launched its OpenShift platform-as-a-service for building applications in the cloud, and CloudForms for managing workloads on premises or in the public cloud. This April, it offered its own distribution of the OpenStack code, but had not yet integrated it with its server-side Linux. <P> Companies that already use RHEL can build out private clouds with the Red Hat platform and find that they're largely compatible with public cloud offerings from HP, Rackspace and IBM. Third parties like <a href="http://www.ravellosystems.com">Ravello</a> are even trying to make it easier to run KVM on Amazon's EC2. <P> Red Hat's cloud platform includes Red Hat Storage Server, which allows the combination of distributed storage into a private cloud storage system. <P> Red Hat also announced Wednesday a second piece to its approach to private cloud construction: Red Hat Cloud Infrastructure. It combines Red Hat's virtualization environment with management capabilities derived from its ManageIQ acquisition last December. They include end-user self-provisioning, host cloud server provisioning and workload middleware provisioning. The infrastructure software set is meant to move existing Red Hat virtualized data centers several steps forward into more of an automated, end-user, self-service operation. <P> Both Red Hat Cloud Infrastructure and Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform will become generally available in July. No subscription pricing was announced.2013-06-13T16:01:00ZMetacloud proposes a new way to implement cloud computing -- your own OpenStack private cloud that it will run on your premises.http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/infrastructure/metacloud-will-build-run-your-private-cl/240156652?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Services_smb<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <div class="inlineStoryImage inlineStoryImageRight"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/infrastructure/10-tools-to-prevent-cloud-vendor-lock-in/240148635"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/948/01_Intro_tn.jpg" alt="10 Tools To Prevent Cloud Vendor Lock-in" title="10 Tools To Prevent Cloud Vendor Lock-in" class="img175" /></a><br /><div class="storyImageTitle">10 Tools To Prevent Cloud Vendor Lock-in</div><span class="inlinelargerView">(click image for larger view and for slideshow)</span></div> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> OpenStack is a good foundation for a private cloud, but some say it's hard to master all the skills you need to get the different components to work together. Maybe Python isn't your thing. Still, you want your cloud operations to be on your hardware in your data center. OpenStack is one way to do it. <P> Metacloud says it will do that for you -- build an OpenStack cloud on your hardware at your premises -- then operate it for you remotely. "It's a new paradigm," said Metacloud CEO and co-founder Sean Lynch, a former senior VP of technical operations at Ticketmaster. Metacloud has released its Metacloud Carbon|OS version of OpenStack to serve as the foundation for private clouds. <P> Is this private cloud as a service (PCaaS)? Is it private cloud with a public operator -- Metacloud will manage many private clouds simultaneously from its own data center. Or is it private cloud with a split, hybrid-style operation? Even the National Institute of Standards and Technology, with its long cloud definition, would be challenged this time around. But it's an idea that many companiesm -- daunted by the pace of change, the 1,031 contributors, and the sheer volume of the OpenStack software stack -- might find attractive. <P> There are already firms in the marketplace seeking to help you build your OpenStack cloud, such as HP, Red Hat, Ubuntu, Rackspace and Mirantis. But Metacloud will build and operate your private cloud infrastructure. <P> <strong>[ VMware is the main alternative to OpenStack for on-premises cloud. See how OpenStack founder Rackspace views that option. <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/infrastructure/rackspace-meets-vmware-halfway-on-hybrid/240155786?itc=edit_in_body_cross">Rackspace Meets VMware Halfway On Private Cloud</a>. ]</strong> <P> Lynch and co-founder Steve Curry, who is the company's president and a former team leader for Yahoo's international storage of 100 PBs of data, dispute the notion that OpenStack isn't ready yet for private cloud prime time. "OpenStack is not immature. It's just that IT talent doesn't have all the skills [needed to integrate the parts]. We see a misalignment of IT with OpenStack," said Lynch. <P> Carbon|OS is one of the few commercial systems based on the latest Grizzly release of OpenStack, which became available in April. It will run on a variety of hardware, provided the hardware meets Metacloud's minimum requirements for private cloud operations. That's in contrast, Lynch said, to being subject to VMware's requirements that customers use one of its Nicira switches for software-defined networking, he said. <P> Metacloud's default hypervisor, which will run the workloads in its private clouds, is open-source KVM, the standard hypervisor of OpenStack. Metacloud establishes three servers as cloud controllers on a customer's premises, and they carry out OpenStack management functions under the supervision of the Metacloud master cloud managers. One cloud controller may fail and its tasks will be assumed by another. <P> In addition to high availability, Metacloud believes its ability to build a unified storage system out of commodity server disk drives brings a valuable new feature to OpenStack clouds. The storage system is based on an implementation of Ceph open-source code, which builds storage clusters from distributed disks. <P> Metacloud was founded in 2011 in Pasadena, Calif. It has 10 clients, with a typical installation of 40 CPU sockets as a private cloud. Tableau Software is an early adopter, and Curry said two streaming media companies are also early customers, though he declined to name them. <P> Metacloud charges a monthly subscription fee, with a 12-month minimum, based on the number of server sockets under management. Spokesman would not disclose a per-socket fee, but said a typical entry-level configuration consists of a half rack of servers at $300 per socket, or $6,000 a month. A larger deployment would get what spokesmen described as "scale-out pricing" based on higher numbers of sockets.2013-06-13T10:37:00ZCloudAware finds Salesforce.com's Chatter social platform a boon to helping companies monitor compliance, performance in Amazon Web Services workloads.http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/software/cloudaware-uses-chatter-in-amazon-cloud/240156607?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Services_smb<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <div class="inlineStoryImage inlineStoryImageRight"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/infrastructure/10-tools-to-prevent-cloud-vendor-lock-in/240148635"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/948/01_Intro_tn.jpg" alt="10 Tools To Prevent Cloud Vendor Lock-in" title="10 Tools To Prevent Cloud Vendor Lock-in" class="img175" /></a><br /><div class="storyImageTitle">10 Tools To Prevent Cloud Vendor Lock-in</div><span class="inlinelargerView">(click image for larger view and for slideshow)</span></div> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> CloudAware, a young firm that helps companies monitor and manage workloads in Amazon Web Services (AWS), announced Wednesday a novel way for companies to ensure their cloud rules and policies are being followed: It has incorporated Salesforce.com's Chatter social networking into the cloud management process. <P> It sounds incongruous. Chatter is associated with the Force.com platform, which runs in Salesforce.com data centers, not Amazon's. But 99% of CloudAware's customers are using Amazon cloud services, and it's built monitoring and management systems on Force.com to track their workloads there. Now, if there's something going wrong with your workload, chances are one of your Chatter feeds will contain the information you need to take care of it. <P> If you're not aware of CloudAware, don't feel bad. The 10-employee, Manhattan, N.Y., engineering consulting firm has been helping companies migrate workloads to the cloud since Amazon Web Services first went public in 2007. It saw the same tasks recurring so many times it decided to produce a service that captured best practices and automated execution of those tasks. <P> "We've been operating in stealth mode. Most people are not aware of us. We didn't have a <a href="http://www.cloudaware.com">website</a> until six months ago," said Mikhail Malamud, founder and CEO of CloudAware. <P> Malamud expects CloudAware to eventually support Google Compute Engine and Microsoft Azure, but said so far "we haven't seen the demand for them." Also, from the start, the firm was focused on the early activity on AWS's EC2 and related services and built capabilities for monitoring and managing them. The CloudAware service, for example, implements about 50 best practices derived from Amazon's own Trusted Advisor, the rules engine that helps customers configure and deploy workloads. It's added 50 best practices policies of its own to help customers get their applications up and running with the least difficulty. <P> <strong>[ Want to learn more about Amazon's own Trusted Advisor? See <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/infrastructure/amazon-tool-helps-shape-your-cloud-workl/240150228?itc=edit_in_body_cross">Amazon Tool Helps Shape Your Cloud Workload</a>. ]</strong> <P> CloudAware didn't create the service entirely on its own. Two Fortune 500 companies financed CloudAware's R&D to create the system so that they could use it. That means CloudAware, which hasn't yet taken a penny of venture capital, has a launched a service that counts Thomson Reuters, Reed Elsevier, Pearson, Sony, AOL and others as paying customers, and is breaking even. Revenue has increased 150% at the privately held company since the start of the year, although Malamud won't disclose what that amount is. <P> The service charges customers 2-7% of their total Amazon bill, depending on the number of service components that they use. It also charges a minimum of $1,500 a month. There's no freemium version with CloudAware. "We're going after the enterprise," not small businesses, startups or mom & pop e-commerce sites, he said. <P> The service includes the open source configuration engine, Puppet, along with other deployment components, so customers may use it to actually deploy their workloads as well as monitor them. <P> The use of Chatter kicks in as multiple users at an enterprise start deploying workloads to Amazon through CloudAware. It ties a set of security policies to a security feed in Chatter, and an incident with any workload triggers a message on Chatter to those receiving the feed. <P> Likewise, feeds can be set up for compliance, intrusion detection, governance, backup, cost control and other areas of workload management. If a developer changes a production system, that event would trigger a message on the Chatter governance feed. The systems administrator could then ask the developer through Chatter (perhaps from his mobile device) why he had made the change. <P> "Everything is out in the open. You can no longer sneak a change in. Everyone knows you did it, and you'll get scolded if it doesn't work. It generates a culture of responsibility," said Malamud. <P> The Chatter feeds can cross boundaries and siloed skill sets that still keep one side of the data center from talking to the other. Instead of just generating talk, the service also allows customers to set up approval processes so that a change to a running system goes through a set process. It offers 50 prototype processes that a customer may choose from to set up its own process. <P> When a virtual machine is generated or a workload is launched from CloudAware's app store, the service cross references the statistics that stream from Amazon's CloudWatch monitoring service with the information it collects and stores in its own repository. Analytics are applied to the operational data with the goal of spotting trouble as it develops and getting a "case" launched via Chatter to alert the responsible parties. <P> CloudAware tries to go farther than Amazon CloudWatch by monitoring information on the running application. "Amazon doesn't understand the concept of an application, whether it's in production or development," said Malamud, but CloudAware does. It includes tagging and labeling that lets a system administrator to develop a more detailed view of the running workload than can be obtained under CloudWatch.2013-06-12T09:20:00ZAmazon's slashes prices 18%-28% on its popular cloud database service, which includes Oracle, MySQL and SQL Server.http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/software/amazon-cuts-prices-on-relational-databas/240156499?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Services_smbAmazon Web Services (AWS) is lowering the price of its on-demand Relational Database Service (RDS) by 18% to 28%. The service allows a user to commission an Oracle, MySQL or SQL Server database on EC2 and be charged by the hour for its use. <P> Pricing on reserved instances under three-year contracts was cut even more. All the new prices took effect June 11. <P> MySQL and Oracle charges have been reduced 18%. An Oracle instance user must bring license rights from a purchase of Oracle made on premises or purchase them outright for use on Amazon. Oracle on an extra-large server is now 64 cents an hour. MySQL, which is open source code and doesn't have a "bring your own license" requirement, is also 64 cents an hour. <P> Microsoft's SQL Server has been reduced 28% for the on-demand, bring your own license instance. The price for a standard deployment, extra large server instance, is now 88.8 cents an hour. <P> <strong>[ Want to learn more about how Amazon's low-margin pricing is impacting the industry? See <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/infrastructure/amazon-cloud-pricing-threatens-tech-tita/240155867?itc=edit_in_body_cross">Amazon Cloud Pricing Threatens Tech Titans</a>. ]</strong> <P> All of the above pricing applies to AWS's most heavily trafficked data center complex in Ashburn, Va., known as US East. Prices vary from one Amazon region to another, with US East usually having the lowest prices, as is the case with the database service offerings. <P> Amazon's chief cloud evangelist Jeff Barr posted a <a href="http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2013/06/amazon-rds-price-reduction-on-demand-and-reserved.html">comparison of before and after pricing</a> for reserved instances in a June 3 blog. He did the comparison only for three-year reserved instances, where the price reductions show up in dramatic fashion. To use reserved instances, a customer signs up for a set number of hours per year over a one-year or three-year period and makes an upfront payment. The customer then pays a lower hourly rate than on-demand users. <P> Reserved instance pricing for MySQL and Oracle for three-year contracts have been reduced 21% in US East and US West (Oregon). MySQL on an M2 or memory optimized, extra-large server before June 1 was priced at $4,441. After June 1, it is priced at $3,507. <P> By way of contrast among regions, the same database instance in Amazon's Silicon Valley data center, US West (Northern California), was priced at $6,044; after June 1, it is $4,410. The reduction is 27% in those cases. <P> The same database instance in the Amazon's GovCloud, also located at its US West Oregon data center, used to be $4,835 for a three-year reserved instance contract. After June 1, it moved to $4,217, a 13% reduction. <P> As usual, the Amazon announcement tended to tout the fact of the reductions without offering any insight into the rationale for why they varied widely among regions, or why reserved instances tend to fare well in most AWS price reduction schemes. The reserved instances appear to provide Amazon with something close to a steady-state customer and make its overall capacity planning problem simpler than with the widely fluctuating, on-demand customers. Amazon's growing emphasis on reserved instances reflects its desire for longer term, more predictable customers. <P> "We have made a lot of progress since releasing Amazon RDS just 3.5 years ago. ... You have the ability to provision up to 30,000 I/O operations for demanding production workloads, encryption at rest using Oracle's Transparent Data Encryption, and simple disaster recovery using multi-availability zones and read replicas," Barr wrote in the announcement. <P> The Relational Database Service now has "tens of thousands" of customers, Barr wrote in an earlier blog. <P> <a rel="author" href="https://plus.google.com/115152004403021879577/about"> <img src="https://ssl.gstatic.com/images/icons/gplus-16.png" width="16" height="16"align="right"> </a>2013-06-11T10:05:00ZVMware has integrated server log file management into its overall operations product, bringing real-time analytics to server info.http://www.informationweek.com/software/application-optimization/vmware-tackles-server-log-data-pain/240156403?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Services_smb<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --><div class="inlineStoryImage inlineStoryImageRight"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/infrastructure/vmware-vs-microsoft-8-cloud-battle-lines/240155221"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/996/Intro_Microsoft_v_vmware_01_tn.jpg" alt="VMware Vs. Microsoft: 8 Cloud Battle Lines" title="VMware Vs. Microsoft: 8 Cloud Battle Lines" class="img175" /></a><br /> <div class="storyImageTitle">VMware Vs. Microsoft: 8 Cloud Battle Lines</div><span class="inlinelargerView">(click image for larger view and for slideshow)</span></div> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE -->VMware is applying big data analytics to server log files to get information useful in real-time operations, which is usually mined after the fact for historical purposes. <P> VCenter Log Insight is a stand-alone product being added to VMware's lineup. With a $200 license fee per monitored operating system , it's meant to work hand-in-glove with a preexisting VMware data center product, vCenter Operations. VCenter Operations is used to capture and help manage configuration settings, performance management and capacity management. <P> Log Insight will supply an analytics engine to the log file data, which captures a record of server events, such as when the application gets a new user or contacts a database server for records. A vSphere host system, generating a large virtualized environment in the data center, produces 250 MB of log file information a day, Martin Klaus, group product-line manager, said in an interview. A Microsoft Exchange email server will generate 1 GB of log file information a day. <P> The Log Insight analytics engine will do what the human eye cannot do as it confronts the thousands of streaming alerts and notices of software events in a running virtualized infrastructure. It will separate the reporting that reflects normal operations and not bother the system administrator with it. It will perform diagnostics on exceptions or information patterns that might indicate an operational issue is taking shape. <P> <strong>[ Want more VMware news? See <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/hardware/virtualization/vmwares-next-act-operations-expert/231600454?itc=edit_in_body_cross">VMware's Next Act: Operations Expert.</a> ]</strong> <P> There are lots of metrics being generated in the data center as servers, switches and storage systems file data on their states of operation. The Log Insight integration with the data collection by vCenter Operations is meant to make it easier to understand what those metrics mean, Klaus explained. <P> Log Insight can collect server data not only from virtualized workloads or host servers but also from firewalls, load balancers, Web servers, database servers -- or any server assigned to it. One installation of the product can collect log files from thousands of servers, according to Klaus. <P> A virtualization manager at the vCenter Operations management console can perform a deep dive into server operations information and receive automated feedback on developing problems. In many cases, the Log Insight analysis engine will come up with a recommended course of action, Klaus said. <P> Asked how close to real time the data collection and analysis occurs, Klaus explained that the product had been engineered to scale out to a large number of servers without losing its high-speed performance to specific inquiries. "The response time is really fast. Think of it as the Google Search engine for log data," he said. <P> The new product is being launched in a public beta test Tuesday and will become generally available in the third quarter. Klaus said vCenter Log Insight is a finished product, but VMware wants third parties that can supply extensions to have more time to bring forth "content packs." A content pack would tailor Log Insight to work with specific third-party products, such as recognizing what the key words captured in the log file of a particular database system mean and how they can be used to troubleshoot for root cause analysis of a performance issue. <P> <i>Cloud Connect comes to Chicago, Oct 21-23, 2013, for three days of summits, panels and boot camps on a comprehensive selection of cloud topics taught by leading industry experts. Join us to see new products, keep up-to-date on industry trends and create professional relationships. Use Priority Code MPIWK by July 28 to save an extra $200 off the Early Bird price of Conference Passes. <a href="http://cloudconnectevent.com/chicago/?_mc=MP_BTMEDIWKAXE">Register for Cloud Connect now</a>.</i> <P> <a rel="author" href="https://plus.google.com/115152004403021879577/about"> <P> <img src="https://ssl.gstatic.com/images/icons/gplus-16.png" width="16" height="16"align="right"> </a>2013-06-11T09:39:00ZMicrosoft survey of 211 small businesses finds half use the cloud and after early experience, find it more reliable, secure.http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/infrastructure/microsoft-smb-cloud-security-worries-eas/240156402?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Services_smb<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <div class="inlineStoryImage inlineStoryImageRight"> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/infrastructure/vmware-vs-microsoft-8-cloud-battle-lines/240155221"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/996/Intro_Microsoft_v_vmware_01_tn.jpg" alt="VMware Vs. Microsoft: 8 Cloud Battle Lines" title="VMware Vs. Microsoft: 8 Cloud Battle Lines" class="img175" /></a><br /> <div class="storyImageTitle">VMware Vs. Microsoft: 8 Cloud Battle Lines</div> <span class="inlinelargerView">(click image for larger view and for slideshow)</span></div> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> Many small and medium-sized businesses fear the loss of security and data privacy in the cloud. Once they use the cloud, however, they find they are in a more secure and private environment than they were on their own premises, a Microsoft-sponsored survey has found. <P> Comscore contacted 211 small and medium-sized companies in the U.S., defined as having between 25 and 299 PC users, and a similar number in each of Germany, France and the U.K. By a narrow margin, slightly more than half had become cloud service users, while the rest had steered clear of IaaS, SaaS and PaaS. <P> All 211 representatives contacted were asked how they viewed the cloud -- prior to adoption, if they were among those who were now using it. Sixty percent said they had viewed it as insecure, 45% said they believe it would result in the loss of control over the privacy of their data and 42% were concerned about the cloud's reliability. The results paralleled many other surveys that found security, privacy and reliability of cloud to be the top concerns of IT managers. <P> Asked how they viewed the same concerns after using cloud computing, 94% said they possessed a level of security "that they didn't previously have on-premises," said Adrienne Hall, general manager of trustworthy computing at Microsoft. Sixty-two percent said the level of privacy protection increased in the cloud versus on premises, and 75% said they experienced improved reliability of service. In addition, 61% said the frequency and length of downtimes decreased with their move to the cloud. <P> <strong>[Want to learn more about AWS as a Microsoft cloud rival? See <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/infrastructure/amazon-to-cloud-rivals-try-to-catch-us/240154827?itc=edit_in_body_cross">Amazon To Cloud Rivals: Try To Catch Us</a>.]</strong> <P> Asked whether these results fit the Microsoft Azure cloud or cloud services in general, Hall said they fit Amazon Web Services, Rackspace and clouds in general, not just Microsoft's. "We could have done a Microsoft-only study, but it would have been viewed as self-serving," said Hall in an interview. She conceded that one reason Microsoft commissions a survey on SMBs is because "we're hoping studies like this will bring home the benefits of cloud computing" to prospects who have been among the most resistant to using it. <P> The canvasing of respondents was a blind survey, without Comscore knowing what products or cloud services the survey participants were using or the respondents knowing that Microsoft sponsored the survey. Comscore is the 1,000 employee Reston, Va., company that conducts surveys on the use of digital services, such as the question, will the Tumblr acquisition <a href="http://www.comscoredatamine.com/"> bring a younger crowd</a> to Yahoo's site. <P> Many surveys have shown the concern among potential users about security and privacy but few have underscored, "a positive change after they actually adopted cloud services," Hall noted. <P> The study also claimed that among small business users of the cloud, the result was not simply a more agile and secure environment, but one in which cost savings materialized, as the implementers had hoped. Seventy percent of the cloud users in the survey said they were able to reinvest savings in new products or other parts of the business. Fifty percent said the time they saved on security was re-invested in new revenue opportunities for the business. <P> One way cloud users can compare the level of security in different clouds is to go to the Cloud Security Alliance's Star Registry and scrutinize the entries. Microsoft's can be found <a href="https://cloudsecurityalliance.org/star-registrant/microsoft-windows-azure">here</a>. Not every cloud vendor has submitted what the alliance has attempted to solicit as a standardized report, pointed out Hall. Both Google and Rackspace, for example, have not. One vendor that has, however, is Microsoft's main competitor for cloud customers, <a href="https://cloudsecurityalliance.org/star-registrant/amazon-aws/">Amazon Web Services.</a> <P> <i>Cloud Connect comes to Chicago, Oct 21-23, 2013, for three days of summits, panels and boot camps on a comprehensive selection of cloud topics taught by leading industry experts. Join us to see new products, keep up-to-date on industry trends and create professional relationships. Use Priority Code MPIWK by July 28 to save an extra $200 off the Early Bird price of Conference Passes. <a href="http://cloudconnectevent.com/chicago/?_mc=MP_BTMEDIWKAXE">Register for Cloud Connect now</a>.</i> <P> <a rel="author" href="https://plus.google.com/115152004403021879577/about"> <P> <img src="https://ssl.gstatic.com/images/icons/gplus-16.png" width="16" height="16"align="right"> </a>2013-06-11T09:06:00ZDatadog differs from competing cloud monitoring systems by aggregating, analyzing data from other tools and systems. HP is a customer.http://www.informationweek.com/software/infrastructure/datadog-retrieves-cloud-performance-data/240156251?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Services_smb<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <div class="inlineStoryImage inlineStoryImageRight"> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/infrastructure/vmware-vs-microsoft-8-cloud-battle-lines/240155221"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/996/Intro_Microsoft_v_vmware_01_tn.jpg" alt="VMware Vs. Microsoft: 8 Cloud Battle Lines" title="VMware Vs. Microsoft: 8 Cloud Battle Lines" class="img175" /></a><br /> <div class="storyImageTitle">VMware Vs. Microsoft: 8 Cloud Battle Lines</div> <span class="inlinelargerView">(click image for larger view and for slideshow)</span></div> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --><p>Datadog is a newcomer in cloud operation monitoring, with a claimed 27,000 servers under its watchful, online service. It's different from other young monitoring systems, which are proliferating alongside increasing cloud use, in that it draws data from many existing tools and monitoring systems and applies analytics for a composite picture.</p> <P> It's different in another way: It has major cloud vendor HP, with its OpenStack cloud, as a customer. <P> Today's monitoring systems tend to come either from the system's manufacturer or from a little-known, third-party startup. Datadog is one of the latter. But with composite applications often operating across several systems, or workloads running both on-premises and in the cloud, the value of monitoring is rising. Manufacturers tend to be too narrowly focused on their own systems. The most skillful third parties are likely to gain attention quickly, or become acquisition targets over the next few years as hybrid cloud operations monitoring becomes more frequent. <P> <strong>[ Do you agree with VMware that Puppet data is important to operations? Read <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/infrastructure/vmware-invests-30-million-in-puppet-labs/240146864?itc=edit_in_body_cross">VMware Invests $30 Million In Puppet Labs</a>. ]</strong> <P> "Our system is collecting 15 billion data points a day" from the customer base, scrutinizing them and notifying customers if something appears to be amiss, said Alex Rosemblat, Datadog director of marketing, in an interview. <P> Instead of using agents on applications or network sniffing to get operational data, it's plugged instead into the configuration engines Chef and Puppet; the build engine Jenkins; the NoSQL systems MongoDB, CouchDB and Cassandra; the cloud metrics system of Amazon's CloudWatch; relational databases; and other sources. <P> Datadog aggregates information from various systems, digests it and puts relevant graphs, charts and specific indicators into a continuously updated dashboard to show what's going on. It collects information from open source code management systems Git and Github, Nagios system management, the Apache Web server, and Airbrake's monitoring system. <P> Datadog CEO Olivier Pomel said in an interview that an operations manager can drill down into the information "to find out who's doing what." Because Datadog collects information from code change management and configuration management systems, a manager can find out what's recently changed and who made the change, if a system starts to slow down or fail. <P> Datadog is designed to be used by both the operations managers and developer teams trying to frequently update key production systems. At one customer, "the DevOps team spends quite a bit of time studying the information on the screenboards," Pomel said. Datadog uses the term "screenboards" to describe the combination of key performance indicators, reported infrastructure software events and system metrics on its dashboards. <P> Screenboards can be configured to show the combination of information from the various systems that developers or operations managers think is most relevant. Information collected by Datadog can be dragged to a screenboard and dropped to become part of its display. The screenboards can be given a URL to provide information to distributed team members or external stakeholders. The screenboards are updated in real time and can combine information into charts and graphs, widgets, HTML iFrames or alerts. Users may apply their own metrics, if they want a custom display of the information available. <P> Datadog supports Yammer, and custom metrics for a Java application can be constructed using the Yammer Metrics library. Its analytics engine can correlate information from Nagios systems management with other information it's been directed to collect. When necessary, Datadog places its own reporting agent on the open source systems that it is monitoring. <P> The content delivery network MaxCDN uses Datadog to take operational snapshots of its software infrastructure. In the announcement Tuesday, Kevin Meinert, MaxCDN VP of operations, said Datadog "can take a snapshot of our infrastructure specific KPIs in seconds. We previously had to develop custom dashboards that had to process huge amounts of data ..." <P> Tuesday's announcement marked the addition of the screenboards to a monitoring product that has been available since summer 2012. Datadog is software-as-a-service available at a charge of $15 a month per monitored server. Datadog has 20 employees, 15 of them engineers, said Pomel. <P> <i>Yesterday&#8217;s innovative data center may be today&#8217;s money pit. Is it time for a new plan? Also in the new, all-digital <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/gogreen/061013?k=axxe&cid=article_axxt_os">Data Center Decision Time</a> issue of InformationWeek: Data center consolidation is tough, as the government's experience shows. (Free registration required.)</i>2013-06-10T10:02:00Z<em>New York Times</em> misses the big picture with its take on data centers as "wildcat" utilities that require government oversight.http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/infrastructure/data-centers-dont-need-to-be-regulated-u/240156276?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Services_smb<em>The New York Times</em> has renewed its series on the data center industry, zeroing in on the concentration of data centers in northern New Jersey and questioning whether data center operators should be regulated as de facto brokers of electrical power. <P> There's a limited amount of power available at any one data center in northern N.J., and James Glanz's May 13 story, "<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/14/technology/north-jersey-data-center-industry-blurs-utility-real-estate-boundaries.html">The Cloud Factories: Landlords Double as Energy Brokers</a>," argues that data center operators should be governed by the public utility commissions that govern the generation and distribution of electricity. <P> The tone of <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/infrastructure/ny-times-data-center-indictment-misses-b/240007880">Glanz's previous articles</a> has been critical, coming across as if he has seen what's going on in the industry and thought through the implications, while others have not. Nothing wrong with being critical, and the data center industry is a burgeoning business that deserves greater scrutiny. But the reason only John Glanz has reached some of these conclusions may be due to the fuzzy logic involved. <P> Northern New Jersey, like northern Virginia, Miami and California's Silicon Valley, has a concentration of wholesale data center space, built to be rented to customers who install their own equipment and gain access to good network connections. <P> <strong>[ Want to learn more about electricity consumption by the data center industry? See <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/hardware/data-centers/data-centers-may-not-gobble-earth-after/231300144?itc=edit_in_body_cross">Data Centers May Not Gobble Earth, After All</a>. ]</strong> <P> "When the centers opened in the 1990s ... the tenants paid for space to plug in servers with a proviso that electricity would be available. As computing power has soared, so has the need for power, turning that relationship on its head: electrical capacity is often the central element of lease agreements, and space is secondary," Glanz wrote. To buttress his point, he quotes a senior VP of a commercial real estate firm as saying the language of data center deals refer to real estate, but "these are power deals, essentially." <P> The ability to virtualize applications and concentrate more of them on a single server has led to the consumption of more power for each square foot of data center space occupied. That's a trend we're all acquainted with. But the writer doesn't stop there. <P> "A result, an examination shows, is that the industry has evolved from purveyor of space to an energy broker -- making tremendous profits by reselling access to electrical power, and in some cases, raising questions of whether the industry has become a kind of wildcat power utility," Glanz wrote. <P> Let me note that the term "wildcat," as in wildcat oil drillers, refers to those who go into territory not known to contain oil and try to find it by drilling. Hence, it has come to connote a risky business. How the term applies to data centers as utilities I would leave to John Glanz to explain. He says they are anything but a risky business. <P> Glanz suggests regulators need to step in and direct the power distribution in an equitable manner. When a for-profit company does so, it gets away with charging "double" for the power consumed by tenants because customers want guaranteed access to more power than their steady-state usage. That's because their needs ramp up, even though much of the time they're not using the amount they have contracted for. <P> This is typical over-provisioning by the enterprise data center managers; it looks bad until the business really needs more capacity, with a large volume of customer business at risk, and then having standby capacity appears brilliant. The cost of paying for double the amount of electricity typically used must be weighed against the cost of losing business, if you don't have the power available when needed. Enterprise data center managers have been making such calculations for a long time. <P> "Interviews with regulators in several states revealed widespread lack of understanding about the amount of electricity used by data centers or how they profit by selling access to power," Glanz wrote. <P> This is where the second part of the confusion sets in. Glanz is rather offhandedly claiming regulators fail to see the data centers in their proper light as electricity brokers. But what if they are not? <P> To be a broker of electrical power in the same sense that a regulated utility is, the broker needs to either generate the power being distributed, as many public utilities do, or be a distributor with long-term relationships with say, hydroelectric power generators in Ontario, Canada. With a source of supply, a regulated utility is then guaranteed all the business in its defined region; it's a monopoly. At the same time, it must serve all customers who come to it, using a set rate schedule approved by the public utilities commission. <P> When a new data center is built in northern New Jersey, such as the NYSE Euronext data center in Mahwah, N.J., it often opens with some of its space unoccupied to allow for further growth. It likewise has power supply outlets that are unused because there are not yet enough customers to fill the space. But as business picks up, the data center's ability to serve more and more customers has a limit. The space fills, the circuits get loaded up, the chillers work at capacity and eventually additional customers must be turned away.A "wildcat power broker" in this position, if I understand what Glanz means, might use the scarcity of power as a means to increase prices at will, or worse, help generate the shortage in the first place. The northern N.J. data centers are not power brokers, in that sense. They are subject to the limits of what their supplier and the grid can deliver to them. Their control is over a set of resources that defines a data center -- the network connections, the secure space, the cooling system -- with electricity as one element of that offering. <P> If they charge double for power, it's possible that's because they have signed contracts to deliver twice the amount the customer typically uses and must bear the expense of keeping that supply available, even if the customer isn't using it 85% of the time. Failing to do so could lead to financial penalties written into a customer's service level agreement. While there may be some calculated risks undertaken by the data center owner in allocating power, the reckless reselling of power would surely lead to a day of reckoning. <P> In addition to having to supply direct power, the data center operator must also have an uninterruptible power supply installed, in case of grid delivery failure. The backup must kick in the instant the grid fails. Otherwise data will be lost in running applications and data integrity will be compromised as systems try to come back online. In some cases, that's a bank of 12-volt batteries siphoning off a trickle charge from the incoming power supply. Today it's usually a more sophisticated mechanism that attempts to minimize the power lost, such as <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/hardware/data-centers/how-to-build-a-modern-data-center/229402354?pgno=2">Vantage's insulated gate bipolar transistor unit</a>. In this case, it's good to be bipolar; it cuts resistance to the electricity supply's flow and reduces power loss. <P> In addition, for space to be suitable as a data center, it must have emergency backup generators capable of replacing all the power that's normally imported. Perhaps Glanz knows how to amortize the expense of insulated gate uninterruptible power supplies and backup systems, but I suspect most public utility commissions do not. (But the N.J. utility commissioners know quite well the value of backup systems in the wake of a storm, such as Hurricane Sandy.) <P> A wholesale data center is not a wildcat power broker with the goal of profiteering from a stranglehold on the power supply. It's a combination of services in a location where such a set is in high demand, such as outside New York in close proximity to the trading exchanges. A public utility, seeing potential business at risk, can contract for more power, add substations, upgrade its grid. The wholesale data center cannot. Power is brokered to it, but it cannot become a power broker with the ability to, at will, expand or contract the supply. <P> "The sale and resale of power is subject to a welter of regulations and price controls ... But the capacity pricing by data centers ... appears not to have registered with utility regulators," Glanz concludes. In this case, the absence of regulation is a good thing. <P> There is no data center monopoly in northern N.J. On the contrary, it is one of the most competitive regions for building data center space in the world. Let the data center operators run their business as they see fit. They're the ones who know it best. And let's hope the regulators who read <em>The New York Times</em> keep their common sense and don't take Glanz's recommendations too much to heart.2013-06-04T14:48:00ZCompuware PureStack offers a 3-D view of software interactions as they cross systems to identify problems with individual components.http://www.informationweek.com/software/application-optimization/compuware-dives-deep-into-remote-applica/240156043?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Services_smb<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --><div class="inlineStoryImage inlineStoryImageRight"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/software/google-apps-to-microsoft-office-365-10-l/240154989"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/993/GoogleApps_Office365_01_tn.jpg" alt="Google Apps To Microsoft Office 365: 10 Lessons" title="Google Apps To Microsoft Office 365: 10 Lessons" class="img175" /></a><br /><div class="storyImageTitle">Google Apps To Microsoft Office 365: 10 Lessons</div><span class="inlinelargerView">(click image for larger view and for slideshow)</span></div><!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE -->In the past, Compuware has been able to follow a software transaction, say a request for a Web application response, across different systems and maintain a horizontal view of its execution. Now it's adding the ability to take a deep vertical dive into the same transaction to explore what might be going wrong with any individual component. <P> Different products already do one of these things. Compuware is trying to pull both together in one product, PureStack, so that an application performance issue affecting end users can be located and identified, regardless of where it's hiding. <P> In the cloud era, newcomers such as AppDynamics, New Relic, ExtraHop Networks and Boundary are bringing enhanced views of app performance to remote IT managers. If it works as advertised, Compuware's ability to keep a view of software interactions as they cross systems, without losing the ability to analyze each part, is likely to find an audience. <P> <strong>[ Want to learn more about application performance monitoring? See <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/software/application-optimization/why-application-performance-management-m/240145854?itc=edit_in_body_cross"> Why Application Performance Management Matters Now</a>. ]</strong> <P> Released Tuesday, PureStack is an automatic discovery, mapping and data collection engine for running applications. Compuware requires that a PureStack agent be embedded in the application, and can use the data it sends to a collector, which turns it over to an analysis engine. PureStack runs on premises, but can provide a view of how an application is running in a cloud environment if a PureStack agent was placed on the workload's application. <P> "PurePath can go down to the code level and look for memory leaks," those freshly built, used and discarded software objects that begin to clog up a system's main memory if they're not cleaned up, said Kieran Taylor, director of product marketing for application performance management. PureStack is available at an entry-level price of $15,000 for small environments with a limited number of transactions. The price varies according to size of software infrastructure and volume of transactions, Taylor said. <P> He describes what PureStack does as developing a three-dimensional view, as opposed to the more typical two-dimensional view of monitoring or single-system in-depth view of an analysis system.2013-06-04T09:31:00ZZynga CEO Pincus reducing staff by more than 500 in bid to bring costs more in line with revenues; stock price drops again.http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/software/zynga-cloud-pioneer-must-fix-revenue-woe/240156007?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Services_smbZynga has been forced to slash more than 500 employees from its workforce, about one-fifth of the total and its largest layoff to date, after projecting weak bookings for the second quarter. <P> The moves indicated that Zynga, once a leading light of the social networking craze, has not yet found its footing in converting online games that bring people together into a revenue stream. In addition to cutting staff, Zynga will close some offices, Monday's briefing of Wall Street analysts indicated. <P> At one time, Zynga was a major generator of Facebook traffic, but the two negotiated an agreement where Facebook received 30% of the credits that Zynga players purchased when playing games like Mafia Wars and Farmville on Facebook. That was disclosed as Zynga approached its IPO in July of 2011. <P> In order to produce a more independent revenue stream, Zynga <a href=" http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/software/zynga-regroups-in-quest-for-profit/240145391"> closed down</a> some games that had gotten their start on Facebook and redirected development toward producing mobile games that wouldn't be dependent on Facebook as their host platform. But so far, nothing has allowed Zynga to turn the corner toward sustained profitability. <P> <strong>[ Want to learn related moves Zynga has made? See <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/software/zynga-regroups-in-quest-for-profit/240145391?itc=edit_in_body_cross">Zynga Regroups In Quest For Profit</a>. ]</strong> <P> The announcement of layoffs to Wall Street analysts Monday was an attempt to bring costs into line with those revenues. The report on second-quarter bookings and an accompanying forecast prompted Michael Pachter, analyst at Wedbush Securities, an investment wealth management firm, to tell Reuters, "I admire them for aligning costs with revenue." But investors "thought (Zynga) was already guiding to a low number that they would sail over. It's come in even lighter." <P> "Are they in a state of persistent revenue declines? One quarter doesn't tell the story, but we need to hear what else they're doing," Pachter said. <P> Observers thought Zynga was on a new tack last January, when CEO Mark Pincus announced that 13 "older" games would be discontinued and 5% of the staff laid off. Those moves promised to put more resources back in the Zynga fold as it reduced its dependence on both Facebook and running part of its infrastructure on Amazon Web Services. <P> Zynga shares closed at $3.40 Friday, then dropped on the bookings news to close at $2.99 Monday, a 12% drop. The company began laying off employees Monday afternoon and Pincus issued a company-wide memo that said the San Francisco firm continued to struggle to achieve revenue in mobile games. <P> "The scale that served us so well in building and delivering the leading social gaming service on the Web is now making it hard to successfully lead across mobile and multi-platform, which is where social games are going to be played," wrote Pincus, according to Reuters. <P> The series of cuts contrast starkly with Zynga in early 2012, when it paid $183 million to acquire game studio OMGPOP, which became its New York studio, and total headcount ballooned to nearly 3,000. <P> Zynga has lost 70% of its market value since its 2011 debut as a public company. Pincus founded the company in 2007 and still maintains majority control. <P> Trading was briefly suspended twice on Monday afternoon, and the stock drop marked Zynga's largest single-day loss since July 26, when it badly missed its projected earnings. Shares declined 37%. <P> Zynga pioneered use of hybrid cloud computing, relying early in its existence on Amazon's infrastructure for 80% of its compute power, then establishing what former Zynga cloud architect Allan Leinwand called its <a href=" http://www.informationweek.com/hardware/virtualization/zynga-trades-amazon-cloud-for-in-house-s/232600776">Z Cloud</a>, a set of its own data centers that it managed as a unit. They were located close to Amazon and Facebook facilities, linked through an Equinix hub. <P> Leinwand said Zynga found that Z Cloud facilities, custom-designed to Zynga's needs, were three times more efficient than general purpose infrastructure. With the Z Cloud, Zynga flipped its dependence to 80% on its own facilities and 20% on Amazon by mid-2012. <P> Zynga's role as a cloud pioneer was profiled in the <em>InformationWeek</em> story, <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/infrastructure/zyngas-unusual-cloud-strategy-is-key-to/231000908">"Zynga's Unusual Cloud Strategy Is Key To Success</a>." On the July 1, 2011, magazine cover, the story was touted as "Lessons From Farmville." <P> <i>E2 is the only event of its kind, bringing together business and technology leaders across IT, marketing, and other lines of business looking for new ways to evolve their enterprise applications strategy and transform their organizations to achieve business value. Join us June 17-19 for three days of 40+ conference sessions and workshops across eight tracks and discover the latest insights in enterprise social software, big data and analytics, mobility, cloud, SaaS and APIs, UI/UX and more. <a href="http://www.e2conf.com/boston/?_mc=MP_BTMEDIWKAXE">Register for E2 Conference Boston today</a> and save $200 off Full Event Passes, $100 off Conference, or get a FREE Keynote + Expo Pass! </i> <P>2013-06-03T15:47:00ZKaiser Permanente partners with Apigee to make information about its facilities available for mobile app developers.http://www.informationweek.com/healthcare/mobile-wireless/kaiser-api-opens-healthcare-data-to-mobi/240155965?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Services_smbHealthcare provider Kaiser Permanente published a developers' API Monday that will allow independent application developers to access its healthcare facility information and produce user applications with it. <P> Over the last two years, Kaiser has itself produced four mobile applications for iPhone and Android smartphones that allow Kaiser healthcare plan participants to set up doctors' appointments, see electronic medical records, view most lab results and refill prescriptions, among other things. One of those applications, <a href="http://everybodywalk.org/app.html">Every Body Walk</a>, has been downloaded from the iTunes store 85,000 times, while the app that allows patents to schedule appointments has been downloaded over 500,000 times to iOS and Android devices. That outcome has prompted Kaiser officials to realize what a valuable new channel has been opened between itself and its members. <P> But Kaiser business and marketing officials think a lot of additional creative thinking might go into additional apps if it made available the information that could go into the public realm, but without endangering patient records or histories. "We can't do it all ourselves," said Madhu Nutakki, VP of digital presence technologies, at Kaiser's headquarters in Oakland, Calif. <P> The first database that Kaiser is making available through its new <a href="http://interchange.kp.org/">Interchange API</a> contains the services available at each facility, along with the location and hours that they're open. Nutakki isn't sure what developers will do with such information, but he thinks it's possible "someone might come up with an app showing what parking is nearby, or what coffee shops, or what public transit stops," he said in an interview. <P> <strong>[ Want to see how electronic medical records helped Kaiser get command of its data? See <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/healthcare/electronic-medical-records/big-data-helps-kaiser-close-healthcare-g/240150269?itc=edit_in_body_cross">Big Data Helps Kaiser Close Healthcare Gaps</a>. ]</strong> <P> Kaiser hospitals and clinics have in-house pharmacies, and an app that captured the hours they&#8217;re open would be useful to patients, he suggested. <P> But Nutakki made it clear that the facilities' information is just a cautious, first step. Kaiser is unusual in that it not only has healthcare facilities, but it's also the health insurance plan provider for the people using those facilities. "We are an integrated delivery model," able to relate a user's need for services to the scheduling and billing for those services, the existing balance in a healthcare account, the deductible required, etc. <P> In the long run, there's the opportunity for "a very rich user experience" to be created in mobile apps that will help Kaiser operate its facilities efficiently and help patients find and access the services they need. <P> The applications Kaiser itself developed illustrate some of that potential. In addition to the application that makes doctor appointments and refills prescriptions, there's one that focuses on preventative healthcare, with personalized health reminders. A third tracks a member's health account balance, including one where dependents' expenses are added into the family plan. In addition, Kaiser offers an application called Every Body Walk, which logs distances members walk, routes taken and calories burned. This application has more to do with the preventative side of Kaiser than the treatment side, but Nutakki said "the Web channel" will offer new possibilities, not only for getting people to the hospital, but keeping them out of the hospital as well. <P> "Kaiser has a rich history of being an information technology company in healthcare," as well as being a healthcare provider, he noted. The <a href="https://developer.KP.org">developer API</a> and an <a href="https://interchange.kp.org">API for marketers</a> were the brainchildren of IT and business teams inside Kaiser, which are debating what additional information can be made available. Kaiser uses <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/big-data/news/big-data-analytics/apigee-analyzes-big-data-from-public-apis/240148544">Apigee</a> to manage its APIs, authorize developer applications and maintain API security and change control. <P> Nutakki thinks Kaiser might be in a position to offer better care if the mass of patient treatments and treatment outcomes could be made available to outside researchers. The information is stripped of patient identities and already made available through more conventional routes; why not a public research API, he asks. There's no consensus within the business to make such information available -- yet. <P> But that doesn't mean it won't be available at some point in the future. Kaiser is one of the few healthcare organizations to make the integrated model work and has built itself into an organization with 9 million members and an extensive chain of hospitals. To keep its track record going, "we're looking for guidance from consumers," who are concerned about their total health, not just acquiring medical services when something goes wrong. <P> As provider of both an insurance plan and a medical care system, Kaiser officials think they are in an unusual position to use the information they have to help customers link "the clinical side of their medical record to the preventative, total healthcare side of the record." That would be breaking new ground, perhaps, even lowering healthcare costs through incentives in the insurance plan for those who establish and document good preventative care practices in their daily lives. <P> It's too soon to predict such lofty results, with the initial step of opening up facilities information. But Nutakki sees a more rewarding, more friction-free experience developing between customers and the Kaiser system, aided by public APIs that enable more "guidance from consumers."2013-05-31T09:56:00ZAWS may be a $24 billion annual IaaS supplier within a decade, Morgan Stanley says. That's bad news for Red Hat, Oracle, SAP, Microsoft, IBM and Brocade.http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/infrastructure/amazon-cloud-pricing-threatens-tech-tita/240155867?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Services_smb<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <div class="inlineStoryImage inlineStoryImageRight"> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/infrastructure/vmware-vs-microsoft-8-cloud-battle-lines/240155221"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/996/Intro_Microsoft_v_vmware_01_tn.jpg" alt="VMware Vs. Microsoft: 8 Cloud Battle Lines" title="VMware Vs. Microsoft: 8 Cloud Battle Lines" class="img175" /></a><br /> <div class="storyImageTitle">VMware Vs. Microsoft: 8 Cloud Battle Lines</div> <span class="inlinelargerView">(click image for larger view and for slideshow)</span></div> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> Amazon Web Services, which could be a $24 billion-a-year infrastructure-as-a-service supplier by 2022, is applying <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crazy_Eddie">Crazy Eddie</a> prices to traditional IT services. One result is that a large number of established IT companies are at risk, says a report from Morgan Stanley research. <P> "Most at threat are VMware and Red Hat," the Morgan Stanley authors concluded. "To the extent companies move workloads from private cloud type environments to AWS, the $4 billion virtualization market could face headwinds," the report said. <P> But Oracle, SAP, Microsoft, IBM and Brocade are also at risk. EMC and NetApp are likely to gain share in the storage market from server vendors, such as IBM, the report said. It should possibly have included Dell and HP as well, since all three tend to sell storage associated with servers. Brand name server vendors in some cases are being replaced by no-name, white box server manufacturers, such as Quanta and Wistron, the report said. <P> VMware is at risk because some observers think server consolidation in the data center is just a transition phase to the larger movement to greater use of public cloud services. VMware is dominant in data center server virtualization. But <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/hardware/virtualization/hp-ibm-bruised-by-sluggish-server-market/240155820">server sales</a> for data center installation are slowing, while server sales for cloud use are picking up. <P> <strong>[ Analysts think Amazon will ultimately spin out AWS. See <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/infrastructure/amazon-unlikely-to-spin-off-aws-cloud-un/240148747?itc=edit_in_body_cross">Amazon Unlikely To Spin Off AWS Cloud Unit</a>. ]</strong> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/infrastructure/vmware-partners-wrestle-with-cloud-co-op/240155659">VMware's recent statements</a> show concern, if not nervousness, about whether it will be able to transition virtualized data centers into cloud computing. On May 21, it announced four IaaS locations in the U.S. to interoperate with its customers' data centers. The move was meant to provide a VMware-compatible public cloud alternative and stave off the Amazon threat. <P> The Morgan Stanley equity research by Scott Devitt, Keith Weiss, Ehud Gelblum, Simon Flannery, Katy Huberty, Joseph Moore and Adam Wood was the subject of a long report in Barron's <em>Tech Trader Daily</em> by columnist Tiernan Ray. Amazon is "an emerging IT mega-vendor," and it could <a href="http://blogs.barrons.com/techtraderdaily/2013/05/29/amazons-web-services-threatens-almost-all-it-says-morgan-stanley/">take away 3% to 17%</a> of spending with traditional IT vendors as it matures, Ray wrote. <P> That's 3% - 17% of what they describe as a $152 billion market, which includes compute, storage, networking, database service and application deployment and management. Seventeen percent of $152 billion is nearly $26 billion. The writers pegged AWS's revenue as likely to reach $24 billion by 2022. <P> Why Red Hat was named as an IT vendor at risk is not clear. It plays a much smaller role than VMware in data center virtualization through its KVM hypervisor and related virtualization software. KVM, on the other hand, is the default hypervisor in <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/infrastructure/rackspace-meets-vmware-halfway-on-hybrid/240155786">OpenStack clouds</a>, which may prove one of the few long-term competitors to Amazon. It's also possible the Morgan Stanley authors didn't understand that many of the workloads sent to Amazon's EC2 are running under Red Hat Enterprise Linux. <P> Oracle is at risk because Amazon is seeing some uptake of its database service offerings, which include MySQL, SQL Server and Oracle itself. Whatever gains Oracle may see in the public cloud may be offset by losses to AWS's SimpleDB or the AWS NoSQL system, DynamoDB. <P> Microsoft is also likely to see database revenues erode if cloud-based systems catch on. Oracle, SAP and Microsoft are all exposed to the possibility that online applications from software-as-a-service specialists will replace their CRM, ERP and other applications. <P> AWS's content delivery system, CloudFront, is expected to exert "pressure on premium solutions operating at the high end of the market over time." The Morgan Stanley authors specifically mentioned Akamai Technology. <P> Consulting and systems integration vendors, on the other hand, will experience at least short-term benefits due to "the increased need to link on-premises workloads with those sitting in the public cloud," the authors said.In one sense, the report signals that the investor community is starting to recognize what senior VP Adam Selipsky and other AWS officials statements have been saying for some time. Amazon has brought a retailer's low-margin attitude to IaaS, and is piling on top of that infrastructure what appears to be more and more like traditional IT services -- load balancing, automated deployment and scaling, etc. <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/infrastructure/amazon-brings-price-cutter-mentality-to/232601304">Selipsky launched that line of thought</a> more than a year ago in an <em>InformationWeek</em> interview, when he said, "A lot of technology business is a good business with high margins. But that's not Amazon's strategy ... Amazon's approach reflects its roots in the business of retail. We drive the scale of business and lower prices." <P> Amazon.com, the online retailer, doesn't break out revenue for Amazon Web Services, but best estimates from Macquarie Capital, an Australian equities research firm, put them at <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/infrastructure/amazon-cloud-revenue-mystery-persists/240153962">$2.1 billion in 2012</a>, likely to grow to $3.8 billion in 2013 and $6.2 billion in 2014. On that basis, Macquarie analyst Ben Schacter concluded that AWS as an independent business could be valued at $19 billion by 2015. But the Morgan Stanley authors are the first researchers to take Amazon's early growth and project it forward a decade to $24 billion in 2022. <P> There could be reason to doubt that projection. As its online retail operation has grown rapidly, Amazon.com has cloaked what it was spending on its Web services unit by declining to break it out as a separate business unit. The retail operation now runs on the same cloud infrastructure as AWS services, so the expenses of the two are intertwined, and Wall Street analysts haven't had the opportunity to criticize Amazon's AWS spending because they don't know what it is. <P> On the other hand, it's clear at least some of the AWS build-out has been financed by Amazon.com's strong cash flow. As long as retail sales are increasing rapidly, CEO Jeff Bezos and the rest of Amazon.com management don't have to explain how much they are spending on AWS. The infrastructure can be built out, financed out of free cash flow, where the money coming in always exceeds expenses. That's easier than being limited by AWS's early revenue-generating capability. <P> That surplus has been shrinking of late, according to Amazon.com's first-quarter earnings report. Free cash flow peaked in 2010 as Amazon's sales expanded rapidly, amounting to $2.32 billion for the year. In the first quarter of 2013, it was $177 million, an 85% decline over the year before, although the quarter included the purchase of $1.5 billion of office space. While sales continue to increase, the rate of increase has slackened, inhibiting spending from free cash flow and bringing Amazon closer to a more detailed accounting of its costs. Another measure: sales have increased an average 31.4% a year for the last eight years; net income has increased 2% a year. <P> Instead of net income and profits, Amazon is entering new businesses, such as its expanded Kindle Fire tablet business, its Zappos acquisition, its Instant Video movie and TV show streaming business, and its Prime retail business, where it eliminates customer shipping costs and guarantees quick delivery in exchange for an annual fee. All of these, like AWS, require investment in distribution centers, video production by Amazon Studios and other infrastructure. <P> Bezos and company are bent on building a juggernaut of future cloud services and online retailing. And they are likely to succeed in doing so as long their investors have confidence in the way they're managing the company. Its stock price is up 600% over that previously mentioned eight-year period, and closed Thursday at $266.83. <P> But Amazon is also facing increasing competition from Google, which just started its own B2B online retail service, eBay, Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Wal-Mart, among others. To some extent, it's set a pattern that other successful Web companies can emulate, and Amazon is now in competition with other growth companies for the same space. That may mean sales and free cash flow continue to slow and, potentially, its soaring stock price will start gliding back to Earth. <P> If that happens, then Bezos' ability to justify his investments will come under review, if not criticism. And the threat that Amazon poses to the traditional IT companies may abate somewhat, as they gain time to adjust to the new circumstance and try to stage their own entrants into the field.2013-05-30T10:36:00ZAmazon Web Services urges developers to use its single sign-on option, which would let Amazon, Facebook and Google users log in once.http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/software/amazons-vision-for-single-sign-on/240155743?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Services_smb<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --><div class="inlineStoryImage inlineStoryImageRight"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/storage/data-protection/8-great-cloud-storage-services/240151180"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/967/Cloud_Storage_Services_01_tn.jpg" alt="8 Great Cloud Storage Services" title="8 Great Cloud Storage Services" class="img175" /></a><br /><div class="storyImageTitle">8 Great Cloud Storage Services</div><span class="inlinelargerView">(click image for larger view and for slideshow)</span></div><!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE -->In the past, businesses were able to grant employees access to Amazon.com services through their corporate identities. Now, the same <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federated_identity">federation</a> can be achieved between Amazon and Facebook and Google identities for a single Web user sign-on. <P> All three use the same OAuth 2.0 protocol to authenticate a Web application, and federating identities of the three Web giants means 200 million active Amazon users will be able to reach any of the three service providers with just their Amazon user name and password. Likewise, Facebook and Google users will be able to reach additional services through just one of their existing passwords. <P> Developers are eager to find such a reach-extending mechanism for their mobile applications. The service is available to mobile Apple iOS and Android applications and Web-based applications. They're more likely to find regular users if newcomers can use a frequently used password instead of having to register and remember a new password. The AWS Developer Center makes it simple for developers to add a button for the log-in to their application. The button triggers use of the federated directory. <P> <strong>[ Want to learn more about federated directories in the cloud? See <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/security/application-security/cloud-identity-problems-solved-by-federa/231300264?itc=edit_in_body_cross">Cloud Identity Problems Solved By Federating Directories</a>. ]</strong> <P> In a blog entry posted Tuesday, Jeff Wierer, principal product manager for AWS identity and access management, said developers may easily <a href="http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2013/05/aws-iam-now-supports-amazon-facebook-and-google-identity-federation.html"> incorporate an Amazon log-in button into their mobile or Web applications</a>. A user sign-on triggers a call for the user's profile, his name, email address and zip code, if the user has consented to the use of that information. <P> "Web identity federation enables your users to sign in to your app using their Amazon.com, Facebook, or Google identity and authorize them to seamlessly access <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/infrastructure/amazon-cloud-revenue-mystery-persists/240153962">AWS resources</a> that are managed under your AWS account," wrote Wierer in his May 28 blog. <P> Amazon.com possesses credit card information on its customers as well as names and email addresses, but that information is not shared. A developer asked AWS Wednesday on a forum if he could use the Amazon log-in process to obtain information on a user's recent purchases via his Kindle tablet. Such information would reveal a customer's interests and be a boon to personalized marketing by content providers, he wrote. No Amazon spokesman had responded to his query as of this writing but such information isn't listed as available with the initiation of the service. As the holder of both Kindle and credit card purchase information, Amazon is in a potentially powerful position to supply user profiles on top of the bare-bones profile information currently available to application developers. As of Wednesday, user consent is needed for any profile information to be provided. In the future, as the manager of the log-in process, Amazon would be in a strong position from which to dispense additional information, if allowed or if it chose to do so. <P> Part of Amazon's argument to developers to adopt its federated log-in button is that it will allow them to build more personalized applications, and spend less time worrying about the fundamental operations of the app. <P> The use of Amazon single sign-on also gives AWS the means to authorize Google and Facebook users to use AWS resources. The user of a developer's registered application receives a security token through the log-on, which lets the user access S3 to store a picture or retrieve a shared file, or access DynamoDB to analyze data. Such services would allow developers to produce richer applications that make use of AWS resources, without users needing to access them separately.2013-05-30T09:30:00ZRackspace president Lew Moorman agrees on the power of hybrid cloud, but says rival VMware has the wrong notion of how it should work.http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/infrastructure/rackspace-meets-vmware-halfway-on-hybrid/240155786?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Services_smb<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <div class="inlineStoryImage inlineStoryImageRight"> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/infrastructure/vmware-vs-microsoft-8-cloud-battle-lines/240155221"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/996/Intro_Microsoft_v_vmware_01_tn.jpg" alt="VMware Vs. Microsoft: 8 Cloud Battle Lines" title="VMware Vs. Microsoft: 8 Cloud Battle Lines" class="img175" /></a><br /> <div class="storyImageTitle">VMware Vs. Microsoft: 8 Cloud Battle Lines</div> <span class="inlinelargerView">(click image for larger view and for slideshow)</span></div> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> Lew Moorman, president of Rackspace, thinks the San Antonio supplier of public cloud services knows a thing or two about hybrid cloud. <P> For the record, Moorman said VMware, which <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/infrastructure/vmwares-hybrid-cloud-not-amazons-model/240155357">announced a hybrid cloud service</a> last week, is right to be concerned about the development of hybrid cloud computing. "We agree with VMware on hybrid cloud, to some extent," Moorman said in an interview. <P> It goes without saying that Rackspace disagrees with VMware on quite a few things, as well. For one, the public part of the hybrid cloud should be based largely on open source code, not one company's proprietary code, he said. For another, if you want hybrid cloud operations, the private cloud inside the enterprise should, in many ways, resemble the public cloud with which it will operate. <P> "VMware recognizes public cloud is a crucial part of IT now, and its partner ecosystem is not going to get the job done. They don't have an ecosystem that contains a strong public cloud," Moorman said. <P> <strong>[ Want to know more about how VMware's ecosystem is responding to its new hybrid cloud venture? Read <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/infrastructure/vmware-partners-wrestle-with-cloud-co-op/240155659?itc=edit_in_body_cross">VMware Partners Wrestle With Cloud Co-opetition</a>. ]</strong> <P> AT&T, with its Synaptic Compute Cloud, and CSC, with CSC Cloud in Atlanta, might disagree with that statement; both are VMware vCloud partners and provide VMware's full software stack as a public cloud environment. But outside of AT&T and CSC, VMware is limited to large regional players, such as Bluelock in Indianapolis, Salt Lake City and Las Vegas; Singtel in Singapore; or Colt in several European centers. VMware has acknowledged it's difficult to counter the thrust of Amazon Web Services and other growing public cloud suppliers with such a decentralized approach. On May 21, it announced it will operate four public cloud locations of its own in the U.S. and one in London to better serve customers with an interest in hybrid cloud operations. <P> Moorman said the alternative, besides Amazon Web Services, is the OpenStack project, with its widely supported open source code producing innovations and features at a rapid clip. The project is currently on its seventh release, Grizzly, since its launch in fall 2010. <P> "The idea of using public and private cloud together is a powerful thing," Moorman said. <P> And one of the best enablers, from his point of view, is the OpenStack set of code modules that allow a cloud user to run similar workloads behind the firewall or in the multi-tenant, public cloud. OpenStack software provides server provisioning, storage, networking, dashboard, image management and identity management. Companies are free to adopt OpenStack as the software for their private clouds. And both Rackspace and HP provide large public clouds with which they can interoperate. IBM is committed to do likewise with its Smart Cloud. <P> Intel, PayPal, Cisco's WebEx business unit and the Department of Energy's Argonne National Lab have implemented their own private versions of the OpenStack cloud. <P> Moorman's company sells public cloud services, but he acknowledged that the unbridled enthusiasm for public cloud as a concept is coming down to earth. "The idea of the public cloud was so exciting when it came out, so amazing, so intoxicating. But now cloud users are looking at the tradeoffs," when they want to be sure of keeping their data use in compliance with HIPAA or Sarbanes-Oxley regulations. <P> Now companies are taking a more mature approach to cloud computing that includes some notion or plan for operating in a hybrid cloud manner. The public cloud "is not a cure-all, not the ultimate solution" when it comes to meeting the needs of the enterprise. But hybrid cloud is a more balanced concept that will yield many of the benefits first associated with public cloud operations, he said. <P> Instead of waiting for VMware to produce its own version of the public cloud, companies should consider basing their private clouds on OpenStack, and then find an OpenStack-based public cloud partner willing to work with them, said Moorman. <P> "We not only run a big public cloud ourselves; we can help people in implementing a private cloud. We know how to do it," and OpenStack will provide the building blocks, he said.2013-05-29T09:26:00ZVMware's strengths include its partner ecosysytem. But those partners must stare down some risk as VMware itself ventures into hybrid cloud services.http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/infrastructure/vmware-partners-wrestle-with-cloud-co-op/240155659?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Services_smb<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <P> <div class="inlineStoryImage inlineStoryImageRight"> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/infrastructure/vmware-vs-microsoft-8-cloud-battle-lines/240155221"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/996/Intro_Microsoft_v_vmware_01_tn.jpg" alt="VMware Vs. Microsoft: 8 Cloud Battle Lines" title="VMware Vs. Microsoft: 8 Cloud Battle Lines" class="img175" /></a><br /> <div class="storyImageTitle">VMware Vs. Microsoft: 8 Cloud Battle Lines</div> <span class="inlinelargerView">(click image for larger view and for slideshow)</span></div> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> One of VMware's hidden strengths is the extensive partner network that it built up as it pushed virtualization deep into the enterprise data center. In the subcategory of cloud partners, it lists 168, most of whom have taken training in VMware vCloud products. <P> Now the company is crowding some of those VMware-certified partners as it pushes into hybrid cloud computing, providing services that some of these partners already provide themselves. Indeed, as VMware put the final touches to its vCloud Hybrid Service announcement, one of its handful of full-fledged, "data center" partners, Dell, withdrew from offering vCloud-based public cloud services. As a company in the midst of going private, Dell isn't representative of the many smaller firms on the partner list. On the other hand, Dell may have understood how providing vCloud-based services was about to get more difficult. <P> In addition, VMware remains primarily an enterprise-focused company. It cannot put the resources behind evolving public cloud infrastructure at the same rate as Amazon Web Services or Google, which have major revenue producing operations that depend on that infrastructure. As VMware pushes into the public side of hybrid cloud computing, some suppliers will weigh how well it's keeping up with changes in the field and whether their lot might be cast more profitably with someone else. <P> One of VMware's oldest and ablest partners, Bluelock, with data centers in Indianapolis, Salt Lake City and Las Vegas, has been an innovator in the vCloud and provided <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/software/infrastructure/vmware-bluelock-to-offer-beta-hybrid-clo/227300207"> the first hybrid cloud technology</a> linking VMware-focused data centers to Bluelock's public cloud services in 2010. VMware made similar, more generalized linkage technology <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/infrastructure/vmware-offers-hybrid-cloud-management-co/229203097"> available in 2011</a>. <P> <strong>[ Want to learn more about VMware's recent hybrid cloud announcement? See <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/infrastructure/vmwares-hybrid-cloud-not-amazons-model/240155357?itc=edit_in_body_cross">VMware's Hybrid Cloud: Not Amazon's Model</a>. ]</strong> <P> Bluelock CTO Pat O'Day said VMware's new hybrid service "is the same thing we've been doing for years," including the ability to manage workloads both in the cloud and in the data center from a single vCloud management console window. Does that mean Bluelock and VMware now compete? "Absolutely, yes," said O'Day. <P> At the same time, he said in an interview: "I would agree with everything they're saying. I would agree the only way they can understand what a public cloud supplier needs is to become one themselves." He acknowledges VMware may be in a position to take away some customers but it's also gaining the experience needed to make VMware's own cloud management products better -- and sharing that technology with partners. <P> O'Day points to VMX virtual networking interface card capabilities being built out by VMware, and other virtual networking capabilities coming from its Nicira unit as examples where Bluelock and other partners benefit from VMware's investments. Another is <a href="http://www.vmware.com/products/datacenter-virtualization/vcloud-automation-center/overview.html"> vCloud Automation Center</a>, a product that enables end users to self provision cloud servers. It resulted from VMware's acquisition of DynamicOps. <P> A third area that O'Day pointed out was "the faster evolution of tools" for remote cloud workload monitoring and management, tools that each VMware partner has difficulty producing on its own. <P> At the same time, Bluelock and other public cloud partners need to stay in synch with VMware's vCloud API, a standard way to open the door to provisioning and management of vCloud services. In a recent interview, John Considine of Terremark said his firm needed to use its own version of a cloud API to reach the scale of service that Terremark needed. <P> Terremark was an early cloud service supplier that came out of the managed services business with many enterprise customers. Most VMware partners grew up in the more recent period of data center server consolidation-through-virtualization and can afford to stay in step with the vCloud API. But the most aggressive partners will ask whether that API is keeping up sufficiently with the capabilities of Amazon, Rackspace and Google. <P> Bluelock has remained a cloud partner as VMware sought to get its feet on the ground. Bluelock differentiated its services, rather than simply supplying a look-alike VMware environment in the public cloud. It offers a second data center <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/infrastructure/vmware-users-gain-bluelock-recovery-opti/240154402">recovery service through a partnership with Zerto</a>. That's a cloud-oriented feature that VMware itself doesn't have yet, O'Day said. <P> In the past, VMware research has flowed more readily into enterprise data center products than cloud products, O'Day said. He estimates a 90% to 10% split in the past. With the launch of vCloud Hybrid Service, he hopes to see that split look more like 70% to 30%, he said.A second partner, PeakColo in Denver, Colo., is even clearer that VMware is now a competitor as well as partner. <P> CEO Luke Norris acknowledged he "didn't quite understand that statement" that VMware needs to enter the public cloud business in order to understand it and build better products for cloud suppliers. VMware will need to carefully calibrate what it does or lose partners who conclude that "co-opetition" with VMware has descended into outright competition, he said. <P> "This move, with the lack of messaging and marketing around it, is definitely going to be watched carefully," he said in an interview. <P> That might happen, for example, if VMware decided it needed to expand its initial four public cloud data centers, adding many more that encroach more directly on partner territories. <P> Norris also noted uncertainty among VMware partners about whether VMware will maintain its dominant share of customer hypervisor use. If Microsoft's Hyper-V or Red Hat's open source KVM, the first choice of many OpenStack users, appear to be taking market share away from VMware, some partners may gravitate away from a focus on VMware's ESX Server to workloads based on other hypervisors. <P> Both PeakColo and CSC, another VMware partner, both have multiple hypervisors built into their business plans. VMware's cloud products tend to be oriented exclusively toward ESX Server, he noted. <P> The stakes are higher for PeakColo than other VMware partners because it converted away from co-location services into becoming a 100% public cloud services provider. It has specialized in serving as a white label host for value-added resellers and managed service providers. By turning to PeakColo, VARs and MSPs can offer their wares under their own brand on PeakColo without needing to build out their own physical infrastructure. <P> PeakColo has been rapidly expanding its business by catering to VARS and MSPs working with VMware, Cisco, EMC, NetApp and other major suppliers. Peak came up with a way of sharing support responsibilities and crediting each vendor that's involved in an integration deal or cloud stack-build out on its infrastructure. Peak assigns each one credits, which translate into a share of the revenue of the deal. <P> When they bring their business to Peak, the VAR or MSP is allowed to continue to own the direct customer relationship, even though Peak stands ready to support the VAR or MSP customer on infrastructure issues. For that reason, many VARS and MSP's have gravitated to Peak as a way to transition their businesses into cloud computing. "They're not cutting off their own legs as they do this," Norris noted. Peak's own business is growing at the rate of 100% a year, he said. <P> Some of this new business could gravitate just as easily into new VMware public cloud data centers as Peak's six facilities in the U.S. VMware has thousands of ISV, VAR and MSP partners of its own. Watching Peak's example, VMware executives must have wondered how much of their business would have gravitated into various public cloud suppliers if VMware itself didn't get into the public cloud business. <P> VMware has a great opportunity in front of it, if it can maintain a balance between its own interests and those of its partners, said Bluelock's O'Day. VMware's partners are constantly feeding industry expertise and specialized skills into the VMware ecosystem, allowing their customers to use more VMware products. But everyone has reached a point where they need to be able to tap into public cloud services. As a result, VMware "is seeking a little more control over its hybrid cloud destiny," he said. <P> <i>E2 is the only event of its kind, bringing together business and technology leaders across IT, marketing, and other lines of business looking for new ways to evolve their enterprise applications strategy and transform their organizations to achieve business value. Join us June 17-19 for three days of 40+ conference sessions and workshops across eight tracks and discover the latest insights in enterprise social software, big data and analytics, mobility, cloud, SaaS and APIs, UI/UX and more. <a href="http://www.e2conf.com/boston/?_mc=MP_BTMEDIWKAXE">Register for E2 Conference Boston today</a> and save $200 off Full Event Passes, $100 off Conference, or get a FREE Keynote + Expo Pass! </i>2013-05-29T09:22:00ZCenturyLink unit adds space in 9 locations, plans to focus on recovery services.http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/infrastructure/savvis-expands-worldwide-data-center-foo/240155663?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Services_smb<a href="http://www.savvis.com/">Savvis</a>, the cloud unit of CenturyLink, is expanding its global data center footprint into nine locations in which it was previously underrepresented. Five of the additions are already in place, and four will be completed by November. <P> Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, Rackspace and Google all operate and serve customers from multiple cloud data centers. Savvis and Terremark are among the most ambitious on that front. Terremark has 50 data centers offering cloud services around the world; Savvis now claims 55. <P> The new additions that were completed in April are located in Boston, Atlanta, Singapore and London; in May the company also completed a facility in Washington, D.C. Still to come are additions in Dallas, scheduled to be done in July; Piscataway, N.J., to be completed in August; Tampa, Fla., to be completed in October; and Hong Kong, to be completed in November. <P> <strong>[ Want to learn more about how telcos and Amazon Web Services are likely to collide? See <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/infrastructure/amazon-telcos-will-battle-for-cloud-cust/240150631?itc=edit_in_body_cross">Amazon, Telcos Will Battle For Cloud Customers</a>. ]</strong> <P> The additions represent Savvis equipment set up in co-location and wholesale data center space as opposed to major new data centers. Drew Leonard, Savvis VP of colocation product management, said the new Washington, D.C., site was inside a Digital Realty Trust facility. DRT is a major builder of wholesale data center space, doing business as a real estate investment trust. An REIT has lower tax rates than firms organized as more conventional builders. <P> The additional facilities give Savvis greater reach as a provider of managed services and cloud services. Each of the new facilities is a communications hub with links to Savvis' three cloud data centers, located in Northern Virginia, Santa Clara, Calif., and Singapore. Cloud customers may link directly to one of these three facilities or choose a Savvis data center close to their own location to invoke a more secure, private network link, Leonard said. <P> The added facilities add 85,000 square feet of space to Savvis' global presence, boosting it to 2.4 million square feet of data center space. <P> Leonard said the new facilities will help add customers in one of its fastest-growing customer services: recovery services. Recovery service used to consist of a passive set of servers that could be activated if the primary systems failed. Today, Leonard said, recovery often means active/active, with the recovery system sharing part of the production workload. <P> With its communications links, a Savvis customer can set up recovery services in a different data center or different geographic region. Leonard noted that many customers used to use backup and recovery facilities that were not too distant from their headquarters on the East Coast. After Hurricane Sandy, Savvis has a leading alternative site for backup in Chicago. <P> Leonard said Savvis takes pride in the fact that none of its data centers went down during Hurricane Sandy, even though five were located in New Jersey, close to the center of the storm. The company had its own disaster recovery plans in place when the hurricane struck and needed to leverage some of its emergency fuel delivery contracts to keep all five running. When diesel fuel supplies ran low in New Jersey, untapped deliveries further south in Virginia found their way to Savvis data centers. <P> In the aftermath of the hurricane, some New Jersey and New York data centers found authorities closing delivery bridges and tunnels, or countermanding their disaster recovery plans by ordering fuel to hospitals and nursing homes. Savvis kept running by improvising deliveries under contract but outside the northern N.J. region, Leonard said. <P> Savvis is an example of how cloud services are now often co-resident with more traditional managed services or co-location services in the same data center. <P> <i>E2 is the only event of its kind, bringing together business and technology leaders across IT, marketing, and other lines of business looking for new ways to evolve their enterprise applications strategy and transform their organizations to achieve business value. Join us June 17-19 for three days of 40+ conference sessions and workshops across eight tracks and discover the latest insights in enterprise social software, big data and analytics, mobility, cloud, SaaS and APIs, UI/UX and more. <a href="http://www.e2conf.com/boston/?_mc=MP_BTMEDIWKAXE">Register for E2 Conference Boston today</a> and save $200 off Full Event Passes, $100 off Conference, or get a FREE Keynote + Expo Pass! </i>2013-05-28T10:14:00ZMere seconds in response time cost Amazon and Yahoo plenty. EdgeCast's Transact provides a separate delivery network for distributing online retailers' content.http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/software/edgecast-knows-what-seconds-cost-online/240155553?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Services_smbEdgeCast announced its Transact content distribution network (CDN) for large e-commerce firms on May 22. Transact is a newly built network in major cities around the world that accelerates distribution of online retailers' content. <P> Transact is targeted to the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payment_card_industry">PCI-compliant</a>, online retailer segment. The network is optimized for their use; they won't have to share it with the many other users of distributed content. An EdgeCast study on the importance of service speed with a transactional system explains why online retailers are so conscious of response time. According to <a href="http://blog.edgecast.com/post/42404930702/ecommerce-performance-website-speed-impacts-your /">an EdgeCast blog</a> posted three months before <a href="http://www.edgecast.com/solutions/ecommerce/">Transact's</a> debut: <P> -- Google found a half-second slowdown in response time equaled a 20% decrease in ad revenue. <P> -- Microsoft's Bing search engine unit found a two-second slowdown meant a 2.5% reduction in queries and clicks. <P> -- Amazon.com found a tenth-of-a-second slowdown equated to a 1% loss in e-commerce revenue. <P> -- Yahoo found that improving response time by 0.4 seconds resulted in a 9% increase in traffic. <P> -- Mozilla found a 2.2-second improvement in download times for the Firefox browser led to 60 million additional downloads. <P> It sounds farfetched that such small time changes have such a big impact, but study after study has concluded that a delay of up to three seconds in response time can result in a huge loss of traffic, with customers going elsewhere. Four years ago, Forrester Research came to the not-surprising conclusion that slow response times translated into not only a drop in click-through and repeat business, but also a drop in the overall brand image. That's why the CDN market is growing at a <a href="http://www.timesunion.com/business/press-releases/article/BCC-Research-Projects-the-Content-Delivery-4532823.php">13.9% rate annually</a>, worth $3.6 billion in 2012 and growing to $6.9 billion by 2017, according to BCC Research, a Wellesley, Mass., market researcher. <P> <strong>[ Want to learn how EdgeCast teamed up with Dell to disrupt the content delivery network market? See <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/software/application-optimization/dell-edgecast-shake-up-content-delivery/232900093?itc=edit_in_body_cross">Dell, EdgeCast Shake Up Content Delivery Networks</a>. ]</strong> <P> EdgeCast is often portrayed as one of the top-five content distribution systems, in the company of Akamai, CDNetworks, LimeLight Networks and Level 3. More recently, cloud service providers, such as Amazon Web Services, have added CDNs to their product lineups. Amazon's is Cloud Watch; Microsoft offers Azure CDN; Rackspace has Cloud Files; and Google has Google CDN. Telecommunications companies, with their existing worldwide networked data centers, want to get into the business, too. <P> Ted Middleton, VP of EdgeCast product management, said some of the Internet's top retailers told EdgeCast they wanted a network they didn't have to use alongside thousands of other content distributors in other business segments, one that "they have to share with other types of content." They also wanted it to be PCI credit-card transaction compliant and optimized for their needs. <P> Although there are many CDN suppliers, Transact is "the first and only network purpose-built for accelerating and delivering the busiest e-commerce sites," he said. <P> EdgeCast claims 6,000 customers, including Twitter, Yahoo, EMI Music, Break Media, Dun & Bradstreet Credibility, Examiner.com, Tumblr, Pinterest, WordPress and Imgur. Deloitte ranked EdgeCast the fastest growing Internet company on its 2012 <a href="http://www.deloitte.com/view/en_US/us/Industries/technology/technology-fast500/c75a1ec6f6001210VgnVCM100000ba42f00aRCRD.htm">Technology Fast 500</a> list.2013-05-24T09:20:00ZJoyent expands instance types to match Amazon's in size and price, adds "reserved" instances to better compete.http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/infrastructure/joyent-matches-amazon-cloud-infrastructu/240155506?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Services_smb<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <div class="inlineStoryImage inlineStoryImageRight"> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/infrastructure/vmware-vs-microsoft-8-cloud-battle-lines/240155221"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/996/Intro_Microsoft_v_vmware_01_tn.jpg" alt="VMware Vs. Microsoft: 8 Cloud Battle Lines" title="VMware Vs. Microsoft: 8 Cloud Battle Lines" class="img175" /></a><br /> <div class="storyImageTitle">VMware Vs. Microsoft: 8 Cloud Battle Lines</div> <span class="inlinelargerView">(click image for larger view and for slideshow)</span></div> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> Joyent president CEO Henry Wasik keeps a recent news story on the wall of his office "to remind the staff of what we're up against." The headline reads, "<a href="http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/infrastructure/amazon-to-cloud-rivals-try-to-catch-us/240154827">Amazon to Cloud Rivals: Try To Catch Us</a>." <P> Joyent is determined to catch Amazon. Wasik said the Joyent cloud was initially equipped with a basic set of 10 virtual server selections. On Thursday, the company introduced 13 instance types that closely align with Amazon's most popular virtual server types, from AWS Micro up to Standard Extra Large and Quadruple I/O Extra Large. <P> "As people move off of Amazon [Web Services], we want them to be able to slide over to the equivalent instance" in Joyent, said Wasik. <P> Joyent is actually increasing its virtual server selection with additional choices, 71 in all, to make its cloud service more attractive to customers. That means Joyent now has a match for AWS Store Eight Extra Large and AWS High-CPU Extra Large, along with many <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/">other options</a>. <P> <strong>[ Want to learn more about Joyent? See <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/infrastructure/joyents-cloud-competes-with-google-amazo/240003345?itc=edit_in_body_cross">Joyent Cloud Competes With Google, Amazon</a>. ]</strong> <P> It also adjusted its pricing so a given instance type is a near match to its AWS equivalent. In some cases, the price appears to be less than Amazon's, but Wasik said Joyent in some cases offers a slightly smaller resource, either in memory or storage, than Amazon and sought to maintain equivalent, not lower, pricing. <P> Joyent has added "reserve" pricing to its server instance pricing structure to match Amazon's Reserved Instance pricing. As with AWS, reserve pricing will commit the customer to a designated amount of use of a server type for either a one-year or three-year period, in exchange for a lower price. <P> Joyent's expansion of server types coincides with Dell's decision, announced Monday, to <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/infrastructure/vmware-reveals-hybrid-cloud-details/240155301">abandon the infrastructure-as-a-service</a> (IaaS) market. Instead, it will resell Joyent's cloud services. "We're pleased with Dell's selection of us," Wasik said. Out of three named partners, Joyent is "the partner to be the public cloud provider," he said. Until Monday, Dell said it was operating two IaaS facilities of its own, planned to add more and expected to be a major converged hardware supplier to cloud service providers. The latter is still the case. <P> Even as a Dell partner, Joyent can't quite match Amazon Web Services' global spread. It operates data center facilities in Emeryville, Calif., Ashburn, Va., Las Vegas and Amsterdam, serving what Wasik termed "thousands" of customers, including large enterprises. <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/infrastructure/joyent-gets-new-ceo-preps-cloud-tools/240142476">Wasik joined Joyent</a> as CEO in November. His former company, Force10, was acquired by Dell in August 2011, and Wasik for a time served as head of Dell Force10 unit. With Joyent's designation as a prime Dell partner, it's clear he still maintains his connections inside Dell. <P> Joyent is known in some ways as the residual brain-trust of Sun Microsystems' Solaris expertise, where the open source version of Solaris operates as SmartOS. It's also known for employing the authors of and sponsoring Node.js, the increasingly popular server version of JavaScript that shows up in mobile applications. But Joyent also hosts workloads running Linux and Java, and thus is in a position to substitute for Amazon's EC2, if customers choose to switch allegiance. <P> "We're really oriented toward giving the customer a lot more choices," said Wasik. In other words, watch this space for how effectively Joyent IaaS competes with Amazon IaaS.2013-05-24T09:03:00ZGoogle reduces per-gigabyte pricing for Cloud Datastore by 25%, reflecting falling cloud storage prices; read operations are cheaper, too.http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/infrastructure/google-cuts-prices-on-new-datastore-serv/240155519?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Services_smb<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --><div class="inlineStoryImage inlineStoryImageRight"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/storage/data-protection/8-great-cloud-storage-services/240151180"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/967/Cloud_Storage_Services_01_tn.jpg" alt="8 Great Cloud Storage Services" title="8 Great Cloud Storage Services" class="img175" /></a><br /><div class="storyImageTitle">8 Great Cloud Storage Services</div><span class="inlinelargerView">(click image for larger view and for slideshow)</span></div><!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE -->Google has reduced the price on its Google Cloud Datastore, introduced a week ago at its Google I/O conference in San Francisco, from 24 cents per gigabyte per month to 18 cents a GB per month, or 25%. <P> Google Cloud Datastore is unstructured data storage similar to Amazon Web Service's Simple Storage Service or S3. By quickly reducing its price, Google is encouraging greater use of Google Cloud Datastore for object storage purposes. Customers may choose to use it as a standalone service or use it in connection with their Google App Engine and Google Compute Engine operations. Google manages the data storage system; it's only available as a cloud service. <P> Google announced the price reduction in a post to its <a href="http://googlecloudplatform.blogspot.com/2013/05/reducing-app-engine-datastore-pricing-by-up-to-25-percent.html">Cloud Platform blog</a> Thursday. Google Cloud Datastore is an offshoot of the <a href="https://developers.google.com/appengine/docs/python/datastore/structuring_for_strong_consistency">Google App Engine's High Replication Datastore system</a>, established in 2011, which now processes 4.5 trillion transactions per month, engineering director Peter Magnusson wrote in the post. It is a highly scalable, reliable system of the type that has made Google cloud architecture famous. It has a 99.95% uptime record, Magnusson said. <P> <strong>[ Wondering what other services Google introduced at its Google I/O developers' conference last week? Read <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/internet/google/google-strengthens-cloud-platform/240155040"> Google Strengthens Cloud Platform</a>. ]</strong> <P> Although similar to <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/government/cloud-saas/amazon-cloud-gets-federal-stamp-of-appro/240155281">Amazon Web Services S3</a>, Google Cloud Datastore is something less than a direct competitor, even with the price reduction. The reduction probably has more to do with keeping existing Google App Engine and Compute Engine users attached to Google services than it does with competing directly in the larger field. Compared to Google's Datastore, Amazon's S3 standard storage is 9.5 cents per GB per month for up to one terabyte of object storage. It also comes in Reduced Redundancy (7.6 cents per GB) and Glacier (1 cent per GB) forms. <P> Like the High Replication Engine system from which it sprang, Google Cloud Datastore is based on coordinated copies of replicated data, ensuring that a copy with data integrity survives, regardless of a hardware or system failure. High Replication Engine uses the well-established Paxos algorithm to achieve the survivability characteristic. The objects stored may be of different data types, as opposed to more structured data. <P> Read operations under the new pricing structure went from 7 cents per 100,000 operations to 6 cents per 100,000 operations. Write pricing went from 10 cents per 100,000 operations to 9 cents per 100,000.2013-05-23T10:45:00ZAmazon cloud performance monitoring system goes a step further than competitors with specialized version that complies with federal security regulations.http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/infrastructure/cloudcheckr-monitors-amazon-govcloud/240155417?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Services_smb<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <div class="inlineStoryImage inlineStoryImageRight"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/infrastructure/vmware-vs-microsoft-8-cloud-battle-lines/240155221"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/996/Intro_Microsoft_v_vmware_01_tn.jpg" alt="VMware Vs. Microsoft: 8 Cloud Battle Lines" title="VMware Vs. Microsoft: 8 Cloud Battle Lines" class="img175" /></a><br /><div class="storyImageTitle">VMware Vs. Microsoft: 8 Cloud Battle Lines</div> <span class="inlinelargerView">(click image for larger view and for slideshow)</span></div> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> Last November a small startup called CloudCheckr launched the beta of its performance-monitoring system for Amazon Web Services. Now, it's bringing out a specialized version, CloudCheckr Gov, suitable for monitoring performance on AWS GovCloud, no mean trick because security requirements keep most independent monitors out. <P> CloudCheckr is part of a small but thriving third-party market consisting of companies that shed more light on what's going on inside the AWS cloud. Cloudability, Cloudyn, Cloud Cruiser, Newvem, ExtraHop Networks and Uptime Software occupy this space and compete for AWS users. <P> CloudCheckr is an online service that provides basic AWS monitoring for free, and advanced, CloudCheckr Pro for $179 a month. CloudCheckr Gov is also priced at $179 a month. It's more than a passive monitor. It checks for up to 150 best practices in cloud workload configurations and security alignments. It can advise what should be done when it spots an exposure or shortcoming. With evident foreign interest in hacking U.S. government agencies, expertise in security and the ability to monitor GovCloud help set CloudCheckr apart. <P> <strong>[ Want to learn what Amazon Web Services offers in its own Trusted Advisor performance tool? See <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/infrastructure/amazon-tool-helps-shape-your-cloud-workl/240150228?itc=edit_in_body_cross">Amazon Tool Helps Shape Your Cloud Workload</a>. ]</strong> <P> CloudCheckr, based in Rochester, N.Y., must provide built-in controls that assure GovCloud is being accessed by U.S. citizens. It can do so in part through its partnership with JHC Consulting, a veteran-owned business that specializes in, among other things, reselling AWS infrastructure to government agencies. <P> "The expertise of the team at JHC Technology has been critical in accelerating the launch of CloudCheckr Gov," said Aaron Klein, COO of CloudCheckr, in an email message following the announcement. <P> CloudCheckr uses that capability to dismiss some of its rivals. "Other chief vendors in our space, Newvem and Cloudyn, are not able to provide GovCloud support since each is based in Israel (and thus does not meet the U.S. Persons-only standard for GovCloud access). But the CloudCheckr development team was initially based in Argentina, and CloudCheckr still lists a "satellite office" in Argentina, which isn't so different from its rivals. <P> Regardless of the issue of national boundaries, both AWS and AWS GovCloud meet the "moderate" standard set by Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) for computing infrastructure. CloudCheckr assesses workloads sent to GovCloud to alert their owners to any FISMA moderate control exceptions and benchmark compliance and performance in the areas of shared control with GovCloud. CloudCheckr Gov also ensures compliance with International Traffic In Arms regulations. <P> GovCloud has its own API, which is formatted differently from the standard AWS CloudWatch monitoring service. CloudCheckr has integrated its monitoring and performance analysis into the GovCloud API. Likewise, GovCloud has different purchasing options and pricing tables from the standard AWS pricing, including the option to purchase physical hardware on which to run an instance. <P> The CloudCheckr Gov service arrived as sequestration cuts decrease federal agency budgets and reduce capital expenditures. Company spokesmen say the GovCloud service can aid agencies in adopting cloud computing and meet the FedRamp directive for agencies to move more operations into the cloud. <P> To encourage adoption, Amazon recently made a GovCloud Management Console available that mimics the functions of the regular Amazon management console, but access to the GovCloud console is restricted to authorized GovCloud users. <P> CloudCheckr isn't oriented toward one industry segment. It launched CloudCheckr Gov because it wants to help "a broad range of companies and organizations" use the Amazon cloud, Klein said via email. <P> CloudCheckr received $2 million from Genesee Capital and Garrison Capital in its Series A round of funding April 11.2013-05-22T09:41:00ZVMware's Hybrid Cloud Service has important differences compared to Amazon Web Services. Customers will have to weigh the partner model and pricing.http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/infrastructure/vmwares-hybrid-cloud-not-amazons-model/240155357?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Services_smbVMware will establish four data centers from which it will offer its competition to Amazon Web Services (AWS) infrastructure-as-a-service, the company announced Tuesday. But there are big differences between what VMware is doing and what an AWS, Google or Rackspace does. <P> Not one existing Amazon customer is likely to abandon EC2 to take up residence in a soon-to-be-launched VMware facility. But many existing VMware customers are likely to remain comfortably in the VMware fold because of those four centers, if they work out as planned. <P> VMware wants partners to supply compatible public cloud facilities, but has been frustrated at the lack of sophistication and willingness to adopt full-scale VMware implementations. Bill Fathers, VMware's new senior VP and general manager of its Hybrid Cloud Services unit, acknowledged in an interview he was hired to build up the capabilities of the VMware ecosystem, and that includes training and equipping more hybrid cloud providers. He was recruited for the task in March from a seasoned cloud supplier, Savvis, now a unit of CenturyLink. <P> While it looks like VMware wants to take hybrid cloud business away from partners, it literally can't provide an Amazon-scale alternative to the public cloud and must rely on partners to fill in many gaps. That makes establishing four VMware data centers something of a balancing act. <P> <strong>[ Want to see how one VMware partner maintained an arm's length from its cloud software, even though its hosts many VMware-based customers? See <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/infrastructure/terremarks-vmware-cloud-software-story-i/240155253?itc=edit_in_body_cross">Terremark's VMware Cloud Software Story: It's Complicated</a>. ]</strong> <P> VMware is also in a poor position to compete by building ultra-modern data centers, as Facebook did in Prineville, Ore., and Forest City, N.C., and then offering low-cost compute cycles out of such infrastructure. On the contrary, VMware won't build anything. It will lease space from wholesale data center builders. It will then wheel in racks of servers, most likely from its Virtual Computing Environment (VCE) subsidiary, based on partner Cisco's converged compute and networking infrastructure, and throw on the switch. <P> One such data center will be located in Santa Clara, Calif., a leading site for wholesale space built by CoreSite, Digital Realty Trust and Vantage. Other VMware centers will take shape in Las Vegas, Dallas, and Sterling, Va. These facilities, to some extent, represent the opposite of those that Facebook, Google and Amazon have built. Those three companies compete from their own supersized facilities, stacked with servers built to their own designs. VMware will rely on smaller leased facilities using more standard parts. <P> Renting third-party space, VMware will be able to establish such centers quickly. Left unsaid is that they can phase-out leases and wheel away equipment almost as fast as they wheeled them in, if, for example, demand slackens or customers express more interest in the public cloud elsewhere. But for now, VMware isn't going anywhere but straight into hybrid cloud computing. <P> One possible outcome is that these facilities will serve as a model for VMware partners to emulate, and within three to five years the partners will do such a good job that VMware won't want to operate its own hybrid cloud service data centers in perpetuity. VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger, given the chance to comment further after the announcement, said he saw the hybrid data centers as both a role model and a place where VMware "could set the bar higher and higher" for implementing hybrid services, based on its evolving product set. For now, VMware believes it can implement a fuller set of services and make them easier to use than partners can. And it wishes to do so to forestall more customer movement to AWS. <P> Fathers amplified that description further in an interview after the announcement: "By becoming a service provider ourselves, we will learn a lot of important lessons that we can bake into [vCloud Director]."Those lessons may still need to be learned. VMware has heard frustration in its own customer base that it isn't easy to move into a hybrid computing environment from the present vSphere and ESX Server-based part of the data center. At the same time, some knowledgeable voices among service providers have said VMware software is more enterprise-oriented than service-provider-oriented. Service providers have to meet a different set of needs and a larger scale of operations. One such voice, John Considine, CTO of the Terremark cloud unit of Verizon, said Verizon found it expedient to continue to <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/infrastructure/terremarks-vmware-cloud-software-story-i/240155253">use its own cloud provisioning software</a>, even though it wishes to host as many ESX Server-based workloads as possible. <P> In that fashion, Terremark didn't become what VMware terms a "vCloud Data Center Partner." In the U.S., those partners are Bluelock, headquartered in Indianapolis; the AT&T Synaptic Cloud; and CSC, which plans to integrate its customers with multiple cloud vendors as well as VMware. Overseas, the data center partners are Colt in Europe, Singtel in Singapore and SoftBank in Japan. In addition, there are hundreds of "vCloud powered" partners, a lower-level designation of their VMware environments. <P> Given its strong position in the enterprise, VMware also sees an opportunity to evolve the nature of hybrid cloud itself. It will make what are sometimes described as legacy applications available as a service in its four hybrid data centers. One of its announcements Tuesday at its Palo Alto, Calif., headquarters was that SAP applications, including the in-memory database engine Hana, will be available through its vCloud Hybrid Service. <P> Fathers hopes many additional independent software vendors come to its hybrid cloud centers and use them to get their main applications to work in the cloud for multi-tenant use, while allowing customers to keep their data on premises by putting a piece of the same application on the customer's premises. "It would be a new pattern in software distribution if we can divide up applications that way," he said. The inability to allow enterprise data to remain on premises while using the cloud "has been a big barrier to the adoption of cloud computing," he said. <P> VMware Hybrid Cloud will have limited availability through an early access program that starts in June. General availability in the U.S. is expected in the third quarter. Availability in Europe, the Middle East and Asia will follow in 2014. <P> Pricing, while announced, also remains somewhat cloaked. As vCloud Hybrid Service becomes available in June, early access users will pay by the hour but will gradually graduate into monthly or annual rates, depending on the nature of the service used. The pricing listed for multi-tenant service, 4.5 cents an hour for one virtual CPU and one GB of memory, sort of approximates the medium-sized servers of Google and Amazon, if multiplied by three. So for a rough comparison, the VMware pricing comes out at $0.135 for VMware; $0.132 for Google and $0.12 for Amazon. <P> But, of course, there's no shutting down a virtual machine and saving money during the nighttime hours if you're going to be charged by the month or the year. The base unit of pricing is also too small a virtual machine to be of much use in most enterprises. Details remain to be explained in how the pricing will actually work out. Fathers said listing a price for a basic VM unit was an effort to impose simplicity on a complicated subject. It is also likely to impose some confusion as well.