"Ultimately, if it looks like middleware and acts like middleware, it probably is middleware – whatever the vendors may assert. PaaS, in other words, is the new “write once, run anywhere.”"

"For some people, private PaaS is an oxymoron: ‘how can it be a service if my organization hosts the infrastructure’? Admittedly, to date, most of the discussion about PaaS has been purely in terms of describing a public cloud service. But the “as a service” aspect of PaaS really depends on the service consumer’s point of view. From a development team’s viewpoint, when its interface is a set of platform services, the team couldn’t care less whether its infrastructure team or an external provider such as Microsoft supplies the infrastructure."

"The true cloud is the collection of processors that exist virtually everywhere you turn, including mobile devices and sensors. That's where the definition of Cloud must go. In many ways it's returning Cloud to one of its progenitors, ubiquitous computing. By that point there won't be a Public, Private or Personal Cloud, there'll be "just" Cloud (or maybe some other term). Where your application is hosted will still remain important, but not because of any artificial reasons due to words such as 'private' or 'public'."

RT @zeekayinfo3: "Some Basics of #Cloud Computing in 10 Minutes" @redhat @nethawk @ghaff

"OK, maybe there are more bells and whistles, but treating cloud like a technology solution purchase is the wrong approach. Take a holistic approach to how IT can and should participate in the business of doing whatever your company does, then build the operational model to support that. Seek alignment in your organization and in your technology choices so you’re prepared for a Cloud Operating model and Fluid IT. Welcome to the modern IT world."

"A thorough piece on CNET by Gordon Haff looks at the interconnectivity of cloud computing, mobility and Big Data, and sees these three forces as instrumental in shaping the future of IT. "Through the lens of next-generation IT, think of cloud computing as being about trends in computer architectures, how applications are loaded onto those systems and made to do useful work, how servers communicate with each other and with the outside world, and how administrators manage and provide access," Haff writes."

"Are Big Data, mobility, and the cloud converging to reshape the IT environment at a fundamental level? Red Hat's "cloud evangelist" says that they are. True, his job is to say things like that. But in fact, these IT trends are hard to miss: They dominate the tech press week after week. They form the backdrop for all the buzz about individual tech firms."

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/ydmbkKdmGs8" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Not sure what to think of this but it's a perspective that seems worth reading.

RT @TheTechScribe: OpenStack Foundation funding vendors announced <- Nineteen tech players pledge up to $14.2 mi ...

"For data centers, the challenge associated with the use of SAS 70 and SSAE 16 is that both standards are focused on internal controls over financial reporting (ICFR) concerns. ICFR is crucial for corporations that must comply with Sarbanes-Oxley requirements. In most cases, however, ICFR is of limited concern for the services data centers provide for customers. With limited reporting options, data centers were somewhat stuck between a rock and a hard place."

"While everyone wants to predict outcomes on project and API futures, the fact is that it’s too early in most cases to project accurately. "

Agree with some. Disagree with some.

Nice list.

"With Eucalyptus staging a revival, cloudstack breaking away and OnApp locking in service provider customers, the window for OpenStack to become the Linux of IaaS is beginning to close. "

"The focus needs to be on the architecture and the right-fitting enabling technology, including both private and public cloud technology, and not gratuitous opinions. There should be no limits on the technology solution patterns you can apply. If that means private, public, or a mix of both, that's fine as long as you do your requirements homework and can validate that you have chosen the right solution."

@jeffsussna @krishnan @jamesurquhart @botchagalupe @adron "A sufficiently advanced DevOps is indistinguishable from PaaS."

"While saving money is a common reason cited for moving IT to the cloud, it is really not the overriding driver at all for most companies, according to new research."

"Then there is orchestration, where the complex parts for all the individual instruments are all played individually, but they are further connected to a whole orchestra of other instruments to create a more complete experience. Orchestration can handle greater volume and scale, it is more informed about the musical piece as a whole, rather than just each individual part."

"But Haff and CIO Lee Congdon said true open projects have a number of characteristics that users should look for. For example, open clouds are fundamentally based on an open source code developed and supported by a viable independent community that is not run by a single vendor. Open clouds are unencumbered by patents and intellectual property restrictions, which means they have extensible and open application program interfaces (APIs) that are shared within the community, gives users the ability to move across various cloud environments easily."

Limitations of VMware in handling physical environments by @aebarrett

"In my experience with many enterprises actively moving to the cloud, most every large organization sees Amazon Web Services (AWS) as an aspiration, but not a preference. They tell me that they want to be like AWS, but typically only use AWS for edge cases and new developments – and typically non-mission critical applications, rather than mainstream production. At least for now. (I cannot comment on attitudes to Eucalyptus – I do not know any enterprise that is considering it.)"

"Mark Lucovsky was the other man in the room when Steve Ballmer threw his chair and called Eric Schmidt a “fucking pussy.”" << Long article on Cloud Foundry.

Positive take, with a bit of lukewarm on the side.

"More recently, I wrote about what I now consider to be the fifth pillar, which is open application programming interfaces (APIs). Of course, when we talk about ‘open’ anything — open source, open standards, open clouds, open APIs — there tends to be debate about what is really open, how we should define open and who should or should not be able to carry the phrase. My focus on open APIs and on APIs in general generated some good discussion, as well as some pushback (Jim comment on LI, regarding the value of APIs compared to open source software, which APIs are open, and how open is open enough?"

"From a landscape perspective, this cements the perception that it’s Amazon and Eucalyptus versus OpenStack and everyone who’s not Amazon, with the notable exceptions of Joyent, Microsoft and VMware, each of whom owns and sells their own cloud stack."

"The dust-up over the term "NoOps" escalated this week, with high-profile IT executives from Netflix and Etsy issuing dueling blog posts about the evolution of IT organizations."

Oracle's pricing problem with the cloud

RT @ScotFinnie: E-discovery in the cloud? Not so easy << great piece! << (me) nice depth

Includes comments from me.

"However, I think a corporate decision to use EC2 is usually a top down management decision based on trendy buzzwords." << How shall I put this? Oh right, nonsense.

Self-sensing & responding to cyber attack research from MIT CSAIL w DARPA funding

"Despite my previous assessment that NoOps is a misnomer, the term seems to be gaining steam in the developer community."

"When designing customer-facing software for a cloud environment, it is all about managing down expected overall latency of response. AWS is built around a model of sharing resources; hardware, network, storage, etc. Co-tenancy can introduce variance in throughput at any level of the stack. You’ve got to either be willing to abandon any specific subtask, or manage your resources within AWS to avoid co-tenancy where you must."

"Rather than look for a single driver, let’s look at where the entire constellation of drivers is taking us as an industry and as a society. Do that, and you find not technology, but a cultural revolution as the real change agent – and it is built on mobile, social, and cloud computing."

"“Open Cloud” is described as a set of solutions for those looking to deploy clouds that provide “… better economics, greater flexibility, and less lock-in, while maintaining control and governance” than so-called Enterprise Clouds that are based on what Randy tags are more proprietary foundations. The case is made where enterprises will really want to build two clouds: one to run legacy apps and one to run purpose-built cloud-ready applications.  I’d say that enterprises that have a strategy are likely looking forward to using clouds of both models…and probably a few more, such as SaaS and PaaS."

"Many people think that an open cloud means an open source cloud.  It’s true that open source is an important mechanism for creating an open cloud.  But, an open cloud is about much more than code or even community—it’s about giving you control."

Nice visualization too. "The phrase Backend as a Service came about because when I talked to mobile developers about how they wanted to setup and operate backends for their mobile apps to host data, run business logic, etc., they didn’t directly want to use Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) offerings like Amazon EC2, RackSpace Cloud and Windows Azure – that was too hard, and most of them didn’t want to deal with Linux prompts or virtual machine setup. At the same time, they didn’t want to get stuck with building a backend platform stack from scratch with Platform as a Service (PaaS) offerings from Heroku, CloudFoundry and OpenShift."

"Yes, the thing we’re learning about enterprise architecture is that there’s a cultural shift that takes place in an organization, when it commits to doing business in a new way, and that cultural shift starts with abandoning a culture of heroes and accepting a culture of discipline."

"In this Intel Conversations in the Cloud audio podcast with Allyson Klein: Gordon Haff from Red Hat chats about cloud topics including: management of cloud workloads, challenges in solution delivery in a hybrid model, a broader adoption of open source in cloud, and his company’s work with the Open Data Center Alliance."

Seems to be coming back to the Greg P "there will be 5 computers" meme which isn't really how things have been playing out.

Agree some. Disagree some.

"For those of us in a cloud-related field, the same question -- "Is it safe?" -- is only slightly less cringe worthy. Here again, at least part of the torture stems from the lack of clarity about the question itself. When asked if public cloud storage is safe, (or  cost effective, scalable, high-performance) the only correct answer has to be, "Compared to what?""

"The key message here is not to assume that just because it’s Cloud it’s always going to be cheaper than an on-premise equivalent. If you own IT applications and infrastructure that still have some life in them, your switching costs may be far from trivial."

"IDC analyst Mary Johnston Turner, praised the idea, telling Gigaom that application portability is critical. “A lot of what goes on now with cloud is really silo’d — an app here, an app there. We all talk about the hybrid cloud, but without application portability it won’t happen because it’s really hard to actually move workloads around,” she told Barb Darow."

"In an effort to make cloud service more portable, a group of tech giants that includes IBM, Cisco, EMC, CA, SAP, and Red Hat today unveiled the first draft of open interoperability specification called TOSCA (Topology and Orchestration Specification for Cloud Applications). Capgemini, Citrix, NetApp, PwC, Software AG, Virtunomic, and WSO2, among others, are also contributors."

"There had better be a damned good reason for wanting to bring the development of a complex business system in-house, and the threat of vendor lock-in isn’t it." << Don't fully agree with all the points but I appreciate the argument.

"There is this big shift from proprietary to open," said English."However, if you're looking at private cloud solutions that are based on technology that locks you into a specific storage vendor or a specific network vendor, it is creating a situation where the trend ticks back a little bit," he added.Implementing a cloud solution means buying into the specific protocols, standards and tools of the cloud vendor, making future migration difficult and expensive. ""

The platform is geared for agencies with information systems processing data at the Federal Information Security Management Act's moderate and low system classification levels. CSC enhances security with the company’s own holistic defense-in-depth security framework. The framework comprises physical and logical security, virtual machines, access control and data integrity capabilities required to support mission-critical applications, CSC officials said.

"Hybrid Cloud was so 2011! In this new world of choices, business will expect hybrid IT: a combination of on-site and off-site; cloud and legacy; private and public; physical and virtual; social and secure; enterprise and consumer; desktop and server; mobile and static. Business will also expect IT to make them work together, whether IT owns the service or not. IT must act as a trusted advisor, as a service broker, and as quality assurance for this brave new world of complex Hybrid IT.
Andi Mann
VP of Strategic Solutions, CA Technologies"

Good list. Would quibble here and there but don't really disagree with any of the basic assertions.

The 2011 cloudwashing winners.

“Increases in IT spending in 2012 for large enterprises will be concentrated in cloud, mobile and Big Data solutions. As enterprises realize the power of a cloud infrastructure combined with Big Data solutions that can use this infrastructure, new analytical solutions will be possible and will be pursued. Mobile solutions will continue to have an impact on large enterprise IT, and spending will increase as more new solutions are deployed."