InformationWeek Daily - Thursday, Nov. 6, 2008

The Community Cloud Could it be worthwhile for businesses to tie their virtualized data centers with one another to create a pooled set of resources that acts like some sort of community cloud? The logistics need working out, but it could be a new way to get more capacity without massive build-out while avoiding painful subscription fees. During a panel discussion at the Data Center Executive Summit in Atlanta today, that's just what transportation company Con-way VP and CIO Jackie Barretta recommended. "I love the idea of cloud computing, but the thing that bothers me is that we have so much already invested in our own infrastructure," she said. "I love the idea of plugging our data centers into other companies and creating a virtual cloud." She's even brought the idea up with IBM and Hewlett-Packard, but they're not biting. What would one do with this "virtual cloud?" Right now, Con-way is spending "millions" on disaster recovery capability with SunGard and has only one data center in operation. A recent acquisition, however, has a small data center that Con-way is considering using for failover. Barretta sees clear possibilities of coming together with like-minded companies to create a pooled set of resources specifically set aside for uses like these. Now, there are plenty of major holes in this plan. For one, cloud computing will likely gain acceptance based at least partially on service level agreements and getting rid of management headaches, so these types of co-ops would likely have to put together some sort of management infrastructure. They'd have to create some sort of formal or informal board of directors representing each company's interest and then work out collective processes and some sort of personnel structure to manage what will likely be quite a heterogeneous multi-data center environment. Not even to mention the difficulty in figuring out how each company will pay for its own power usage and how to divvy up other operational and capital costs. Oh, and security could be a nightmare. Still, it's an idea that demands a bit of thought. It's a scenario that seems well-suited to strong partner relationships or noncompetitive companies in the same industry to get more data center capacity relatively CapEx free while maintaining some reasonable expectation of control. Companies have set up virtualized infrastructures that cross multiple data centers, so they should be able to do it across multiple enterprises as well. Feel free to add to this conversation and post your thoughts in the comment section. Nick Hoover nhoover@techweb.com www.informationweek.com
"To change and to change for the better are two different things." -- German proverb
Obama Election Ushering In First Internet Presidency Pioneering use of Web 2.0 and social-networking technologies by the president-elect's campaign has seemingly transformed politics, and could influence government as well. Obama Tech Policy Plans Eyed By Computer Industry Securing Your Business In One Hour A Week Businesses face security threats from every direction, but IT managers in small and midsize businesses have less than an hour each week to manage security. McAfee's midmarket senior VP discusses meeting this resource challenge and the five areas that spawn 80% of security problems. InformationWeek Reports: The State Of Virtualization Everyone's doing it; eventually, you will, too. This 360-degree report takes a look at what gets virtualized and when.  DOWNLOAD NOW Sun Partnership To Promote OpenSparc In Europe Europractice and Sun will jointly encourage OpenSparc CMT as a reference design among 650 universities and research institutions across 38 European countries. MetroPCS Reports Increased Revenue, Subscribers The regional carrier's third-quarter report said it now has more than 5 million subscribers and nearly $700 million in revenue. Obama Tech Policy Plans Eyed By Computer Industry IT leaders point to Obama's extensive use of technology for campaigning and the fact that he was the first presidential candidate to unveil a wide-reaching and in-depth technology agenda. Economic Meltdown Hits Virtualization Provider Egenera Egenera says it will conserve financial resources by using its hardware vendor partners to market its virtualization products and services. Researcher Finds iPhone 3G Flaw The vulnerability, found in the audio portion of Apple's video format, can cause iPhones and iPods to crash. FCC Approves Sprint-Clearwire Merger, Nationwide WiMax Coming Conditions include commitments by Sprint Nextel to phase out its federal high-cost universal service support and improve emergency 911 calls. Google Drops Yahoo Ad Deal The ad deal would have placed Google in charge of search advertising on Yahoo in the United States and Canada, combining the world's first- and second-largest search engines. Android-Powered G1 Gets Antivirus Software SMobile Systems is selling software that will scan the device and memory cards for viruses, spyware, and other malware. After Historic Win, Obama Looks To Future "During this time of transition, I will keep the president-elect fully informed on important decisions," President Bush said Wednesday morning. FCC OKs White Spaces, Spells Out Safeguards While the move was promoted by Google, Microsoft, and Motorola and hailed by consumer groups, opponents warn that problems still lurk with the technology. Microsoft BizSpark: Free Software For Startups Redmond hopes the program will seed Silicon Valley with lots of future customers. Apple, IBM Dispute Reveals New iPhone Chips Mark Papermaster appears to be heading up a team that will design processors for Apple gadgets. All Our Latest News See InformationWeek's daily breaking news on your mobile device, visit mobile.informationweek.com and sign up for daily SMS notifications.	Sun Partnership To Promote OpenSparc In Europe MetroPCS Reports Increased Revenue, Subscribers Obama Tech Policy Plans Eyed By Computer Industry Economic Meltdown Hits Virtualization Provider Egenera Researcher Finds iPhone 3G Flaw Virtualization At The Desktop? Examine how more than 250 companies plan to adopt server virtualization technology in this recent InformationWeek Research report, Server Virtualization. The BI Explosion Examine the business intelligence strategies of 500 companies, including deployment drivers and challenges, spending plans, and vendor selection, in this recent InformationWeek Research report. Android Gets Tethering App Being able to tether a 3G phone to a laptop is a delight when you need connectivity. Now, a developer has released a tethering app for the Android-powered G1. The only problem is that it's not an official app, and it's a pain to set up. SSDs Are All About Latency Nearly every storage manufacturer has been articulating a solid state disk (SSD) strategy in the past two quarters. EMC, HP, IBM, HDS, NetApp, and Compellent are all set to add the capability to their offering. Some are doing so today, while others are still in the strategy mapping process. Green Data Storage With MAID Data centers use staggering amounts of energy, so it's not surprising nonstandard ways of cutting power consumption are quickly gaining the attention of data center managers. One of these is MAID (Massive Array of Idle Disks) storage technology that employs a large group of disk drives in which only those drives in active use are spinning at any given time. Obama Presidency Could Be Tough On Tech Companies If you're an investor, now might be a good time to short stocks in the big tech companies. The Obama administration could make things rough on them. Is There A Non-Persistent Middle Ground For Offline Browsing? Redmonk analyst Stephen O'Grady and I have been batting the challenges of persistence in Web browsers back and forth over the last week. Obviously exasperated with something, he tweeted (via Twitter) how he'd like to see a browser have the ability to recall recently visited Web pages from a local cache of some sort. I immediately replied, thinking what he was really looking for was off-line persistence of a Web application and, after Twitter failed us in the ability to carry the dialog, we took to the blogs (him, me) to continue the conversation. Pittsburgh Medical Center CIO On Smartphones As Notebook Replacements The latest outtake from my InformationWeek cover story, "Is The Smartphone Your Next Computer?" offers up an extended version of my interview with University of Pittsburgh Medical Center CIO Dan Drawbaugh, who discusses how handhelds are increasingly being woven in the day to day operations of the health-care powerhouse. Read on for Dan's interesting and valuable perspective. Red Hat Puts On Fedora #10 Hot on the heels of Ubuntu 8.10, Red Hat has a new version of Fedora preparing to go out the door later this month. After the remarkable level of polish on "Intrepid", Red Hat's "Cambridge" has a tough act to follow, even if the two distros aren't meant to cover the same territory -- or even compete with each other. Microsoft Is Stealing Apple's Mojo As early reviews of Windows 7 come in, it appears that Microsoft is getting a start at putting Vista behind it, the way the Coca-Cola Company did with New Coke. That's good news for Windows users -- and bad news for Apple, which has leveraged Microsoft's weakness to drive market gains. Google Axes Yahoo Deal Google wimps out and has decided that it is no longer interested in teaming up with Yahoo in an advertising deal that was first announced back in June. Here is, in their own words, what Google and Yahoo each have to say about the matter. G1 Android Phone Fully Jailbroken Just last week some coders figured out how to unlock the HTC G1 from T-Mobile's network. Now, some innovative tinkerers at the XDA Developers Forum have figured out how to gain full access to the G1's code and jailbreak it entirely. Full instructions for freedom inside. Microsoft Offers Free Software, Cloud Platform To Startups Microsoft today introduces a new program that gives startups no-cost access to its software, technical support, and marketing machine for three years. The initiative, called Microsoft BizSpark, makes it much easier for entrepreneurs to build new businesses using Microsoft software and services. It comes at a time when cash-strapped startups may be looking for help. Real-World SOA: Definition, Implementation and Use of SOA with CentraSite Web services are having a dramatic impact on improving enterprise architecture and application development practices. This paper highlights three sample case studies illustrating how Fujitsu's CentraSite delivers SOA solutions. Forrester Consulting: Unified Communications Delivers Global Benefits This Forrester Consulting study shows how Unified Communications (UC) makes it simpler to contact others over any device in any location, enhancing business agility, cutting costs, and boosting employee productivity. Forrester finds that UC is already delivering major savings for organizations around the world in retail banking, manufacturing and education. Download the full report for free. Software as a Service Research Report No longer a niche software delivery model, software as a service (SaaS) can help small and midsize companies get access to enteprise-class software functionality without having to commit enterprise-level capital resources. Download the full report for free. The Internet & The Developing World The evolution of the Internet has been full of surprises - surprises that have sometimes resulted in radical changes in the commercial landscape, such as the arrival of Amazon, eBay, Google, YouTube, and Skype. Could one of the next big surprises turn out to be linked to developing countries? Read the full report for free from InternetEvolution.com Featured Jobs: Shure Incorporated seeking Project Manager in Niles, IL INVIA Medical Imaging Solutions seeking Software Engineer in Ann Arbor, MI Hebrew Rehabilitation Center seeking Senior Network Analyst in Boston, MA Lowes seeking DC Systems Technician I in Lebanon, OR FedSources seeking Director of Web Products in McLean, VA For more great jobs, career-related news, features and services, please visit our Career Center. Try InformationWeek's RSS Feed Discover all InformationWeek's sites and newsletters Recommend This Newsletter To A Friend Do you have friends or colleagues who might enjoy this newsletter? Please forward it to them and point out the subscription page. Not a current InformationWeek magazine subscriber? Apply now for your FREE subscription to InformationWeek. 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