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With the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention this week reporting widespread H1N1 flu outbreaks in 32 states, many companies are dealing with or anticipating the need for staff to work remotely in the months ahead. This can present a challenge for IT organizations that haven't in the past dealt with large numbers of remote workers.

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IBM has already established cloud computing centers in the Chinese cities of Dongying and Wuxi. In the former, the cloud will serve as a "smarter city" platform for development of services. In Wuxi, it will serve as a collective platform for software development. Now it's on to Ho Chi Minh City.

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Four days before Microsoft launches its Azure cloud platform to developers at a conference in L.A., Amazon has come up with a .Net software development kit to help Windows developers produce code that runs in Amazon's EC2. It's probably just coincidence. But let's see what they're getting with AWS SDK for .Net.

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

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Whether your company's data center is a couple of servers stashed in a closet or a gleaming, state-of-the-art climate-controlled facility, you're still facing the same set of challenges: how to keep the IT lights on while controlling costs, take advantage of new technologies to stay competitive, and position your company for an economic recovery in the midst of the toughest times for IT that many of us can remember.

On Wednesday, October 21, 2009, help is on the way.

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

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What's notable about the open source project announced yesterday, Simple API for cloud computing, are the names that are present, IBM, Microsoft and Rackspace, and the names that are not: Amazon, for one, is not a backer, and let's just stop right there.

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In a relatively brief period, VMware has gone from a small company to 2008 revenues of $1.9 billion. At VMworld in San Francisco, I got a sense of how that rapid growth leads to growing pains. For one thing, some of your best customers prefer your little competitors to you.

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It's no secret enterprises are making heavy use of virtualization in the data center. Market research shows their leading provider is VMware. With Microsoft offering virtualization in Windows Server 2008 and other free alternatives available, it's hard to see how VMware's grip will last. But VMworld offered a glimpse of why it may.

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Amazon, purveyor of the EC2 public cloud, suddenly announced Aug. 26 it’s a private cloud supplier. Isn't there something wrong with a multi-tenant, shared resource provider transforming itself into a private cloud service? I'm not sure Amazon can offer a private cloud --yet. Then again, I see no reason why it couldn't sometime in the future.

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VMware's acquisition of SpringSource is not a match made in heaven. It's going to take an effort by both parties to make this marriage work. Still, it looks like one of the few responses VMware could make to counter Microsoft's dangerous invasion of its turf.

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Cloud computing and virtualization function hand in glove. We knew that. What we didn't know was that there are likely to be efficiencies if the application is built from the ground up for the cloud. The Spring Framework is one of those new development platforms that make it easier to develop Java applications--for the cloud.

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Apptio's newest service tackles chargebacks for server virtualization.

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Investments rose 15 percent in the second quarter of 2009, with IT earning the most VC dollars. But funding remains significantly low compared to previous years.

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Startup Altor Networks launches a new version of its VM firewall that's built for speed and includes an intrusion detection engine from Sourcefire.

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Tim Grance, program manager for cyber and network security at National Institute of Standards, says standards are essential to cloud computing. And among those standards must be additional standards for moving virtual machines from cloud to cloud, something we still lack.

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Sameer Dholakia of VMLogix is not the most prominent spokesman for virtualization. But his firm's product, LabManager, supplies a strong core function--provisioning the virtual server. Furthermore, VMLogix doesn't care whether it’s a VMware, Citrix or Microsoft virtual machine, making Dholakia one of the few CEOs with a vision of a multi-hypervisor future.

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I chatted up a group of IT pros running full tilt towards virtualization. They all seemed to have left their management hats at home... How 'bout you? We'd love to get your view on VM management.

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What standards do you follow if you're interested in getting started in cloud computing? The short answer is, there are few clearly defined standards in what remains a loosely defined area. Nevertheless, the main outline is clear. Follow the leaders and follow the Web.

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Cloud models are starting to provide an attractive option for large and influential regional medical centers to get lots of small, local, laggard doctor offices trading in their paper patient files for electronic medical records. Are there clouds in your forecast?

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Over the last two years, Intel commissioned a study on how companies were delivering virtualization to end users. It's one of the few indicators of where this confused segment is headed. Several approaches are still on the table, but the fastest growing one is where the virtual machine resides on the end user's PC.

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The user conference is labeled "EMC," but its VMware that has the potential for world domination.

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The migration of a running virtual machine from one physical server to another was referred to by one VMware user as "a god-like power" that he gained by using VMware's VMotion product. At the end of this year, Microsoft will catch up by offering live migration on Hyper-V.

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Every IT person has dreams about the technologies they really want for their business. In current economic conditions, however, you may need to downsize your expectations.

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Is Windows 7 with XP on its back going to be your next corporate desktop? How about XP-in-a-can, delivered, somehow, to the device of your choice?

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Greg Scherer, CTO of the I/O device maker Neterion, explains a weakness buried in virtualization's hypervisor. When it comes to virtual machine I/O, the hypervisor has to deal with it through a software switch, and lots of I/O means frequent interruption of the hypervisor's main job, processing guest application needs.

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It's often seemed obvious to me that clouds and Linux go hand in hand. Amazon's EC2 started out running workloads under Linux in a modified open source Xen file format. So why couldn't the operation of the whole cloud be based on open source code?

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I dialed in recently to an online technology discussion sponsored by Wikibon.org, a community of technology professionals. Speaking was Rich Avila, director of server and network operations at California State, who said saving power wasn't a fuzzy, feel good goal for him. It was a necessity.

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What was interesting about Cisco's entry into blade servers Mar. 16 was the key role that it expects virtualization to play. It trumpeted its convergence of storage and networking data on the blade. But what about its assumption that the blade will be virtualized?

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There's been a persistent rumor circulating that Virtual Iron is about to be acquired, fueled in part by a recent Jefferies & Co. research report that said Oracle was interested in the virtualization startup. Why would Oracle, with its own Oracle VM, want a third-tier player in the virtualization market?

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VMware last week continued its push into the cloud computing market with updates to its vCloud initiative and API, Virtual Data Center Operating System (VDC-OS), and more. So, how many of its customers does VMware expect to deploy internal "private" clouds? Answer: all of them.

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Red Hat has moved from being a bolt-it-on virtualization vendor to a build-it-in supplier. It will include the KVM hypervisor in its next release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, earlier than expected. It's doing so because it wants to get competitive in virtualization. And it realizes the time to do so is now.

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At the Cloud Computing Forum, InformationWeek asked a distinguished panel why it was necessary for every hypervisor vendor to launch its own virtual machine runtime format. If we can see the need to move workloads from one cloud to another, a common runtime format would simplify the process. What will it take, I asked, a user revolt?

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It's been six months since VMware announced vCloud, the company's grand plan for public, private, and hybrid computing clouds. It's almost time for an update on VMware's progress.

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VMware is bidding for thin client device makers and independent software developers to develop for its Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, now called VMware View, with a piece of open source code, Open Client, it's first Lesser GPL open source, as best I know.

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Could Microsoft take its cash reserves and buy an open source company? Why not? Who expected Oracle and Citrix Systems to become such big investors in open source. Citrix' purchase of XenSource sure has worked out--for Microsoft, in my opinion. And that example might seed a desire for more open source code in Microsoft's camp.

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No, VMware isn't going open source with their core products any time soon -- at least, I don't think so. But there's little question they understand how important it is to have at least one toe in that water. To wit: the VMware View Open Client, an open source app that lets you connect from Linux desktops to remote Windows machines managed by VMware View.

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Desktop virtualization is not like what it sounds. It does not start with a one-by-one conversion of each user's desktop from a straightforward piece of hardware to one that runs only a virtual machine.

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How is Citrix's upcoming desktop hypervisor different from its XenDesktop already on the table? Mainly, end users gain the ability to leave the network that connects their client to a host server and still operate their personal virtualized desktop. XenDesktop, on the other hand, is tethered, not free roaming.

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The savings that flow from server virtualization are well known and accepted. The potential savings on the client side, I believe, are even greater. But that premise is much less widely accepted, and even less frequently implemented. Perhaps virtualizing end users one application at a time is the way to go.

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It's getting more common to see a proprietary company partner with an open source one, but even so, the alliance of SpringSource and VMware is notable. Each is a leader in its field, and their ability to work together is a boost for both.

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I spend 80% of my work life in a 100% Mac shop. While I’ve used VM solutions from Sun, VMware, and Parallels on Apple hardware for InformationWeek, we've been a Parallels shop at my day job 'cause, frankly, the company was first top market with Mac desktop and server offerings. We’re much happier with this latest rev of Desktop.

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Long-time readers know that a Dell iSCSI array currently lies at the heart of our virt lab. Our December wishes came true when Dell offered us not one, but two updated arrays just in time for the holidays.

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bMighty.com's latest virtual event -- a "deep dive on IT infrastructure for growing companies" -- is a wrap, but now you can check out the whole thing any time you want.

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Is your IT organization hiring? If so, you'll likely be getting a flood of resumés soon. A new report says that there's been a pretty recent sharp decline in hiring plans by IT organizations for the next six months.

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Novell's Richard Whitehead is a pretty sharp guy. I tend to tout shiny new startups in the world of VMs; I'm a big fan of up-and-comers. I'm also an open source fan. Well. It is easy to forget that Novell is an open source shop and that PlateSpin offers pretty snazzy Swiss-army knife functionality for physical and virtual server management. Richard, bless his heart, won't let me forget.

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Intel has its own definition of cloud computing and it makes no reference to virtualization. But virtualization, like it or not, lies at the heart of how things will get done in the cloud. I noticed this disparity in a review of an Intel presentation posted by the Cloud Computing Interoperability Forum.

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I've noted that the DMTF.org standards body is not working on a spec for a standard virtual machine runtime, one that could be shared by all vendors. Why not? Because among DMTF members, there's no political will to do so. There is, however, a desire to create a standard VM management interface.

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I had just finished moderating a Webinar, my first, on how enterprises architect their virtual environments. One of the takeaways was, beware of the impulse to migrate virtual machines. They have to go from like to like, when it comes to server chipsets. And the first headline I saw afterward declared that information obsolete.

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We're in the middle of a project where we'd proposed to measure the difference in perception of virtualization between business decision makers and technology decision makers. At the same time, we're looking at the same perceptions for advanced Web technology -- stuff like Ajax, the trend of adding collaboration and BI capabilities into apps. I've been surprised by the results.

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