Amazon's database service enters public testing

SimpleDB, one of Amazon.com's suite of online services that people can use to build Web sites or other computing operations, is out of private beta testing.

The service lets programmers store database records at Amazon and extract specific data from them. Along with the shift to public beta testing, Amazon cut the price for storing data from $1.50 to 25 cents per gigabyte per month.

SimpleDB, introduced nearly a year ago, is a newer arrival into the Amazon Web Services suite. Other services let customers process data, store raw data, distribute content, and store messages sent among different computers.

The company also announced basic level of use is free for at least six months--the first time the company has done so with one of its Web services. After various thresholds are met in data transfer and computer processing, customers must pay according to usage.

"We've made the business decision to go with SimpleDB even simpler than it was before. You can now get started for free. For at least the next six months, you can consume up to 500MB of storage, and you can use up to 25 machine-hours each month. You can transfer 1GB of data in, and another 1GB out," said AWS evangelist Jeff Barr in a blog posting Monday.

Among those using SimpleDB are Pluribo, Issuu, and MyMiniLife.com, Amazon said.

To make SimpleDB easier to use, Amazon said it plans to release a new interface similar to the SQL (Structured Query Language) widely used in databases today. It also plans a mechanism to let people more easily upload multiple items.

Resource - CNET

Microsoft on the cloud: Sharepoint and Exchange go Online

Back in July, Microsoft revealed pricing models and partner compensation details for Microsoft Online Services, and it boasted that a growing number of companies were finding the beta program solid enough to sign on for when the products were released. Yesterday, Microsoft finally announced the availability of two of the services in the United States: Exchange Online and SharePoint Online. Redmond hopes that businesses see these subscription services as a complementary option to the non-cloud versions of Microsoft's solution for portals and collaboration (Sharepoint) and its solution for e-mail and calendaring (Exchange).

Stephen Elop, president of the Microsoft Business Division, spoke of the launch as if Microsoft had had a major breakthrough: "Customers are embracing Microsoft’s software and services strategy en masse because of the choice and flexibility it gives them. Today, we bring business-class communications and collaboration technologies to the cloud, and we are committed to delivering more capabilities in the months ahead. No one has done what we are doing at this scale, and I’m certain that our customers will continue to take on these solutions as our offerings grow." In reality, Microsoft has bided its time and watched as the market pointed to the cloud, and now the company is offering businesses something that they'll find it hard not to take a closer look at: cloud versions of products their business already relies on.

Microsoft also claimed again that a growing number of companies of all shapes and sizes are embracing Microsoft Online Services, including Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, and Office Communications Online. According to a press release, "In just the past year, Microsoft has sold more than a half million seats. "Since July 2008, more than 1,500 companies have enrolled in the Microsoft Partner Program for Microsoft Online Services, with 100 more joining every week."

These numbers aren't by any means shocking, at least when compared to software solutions Microsoft provides. Still, "the cloud" is a software delivery medium that many companies don't want to yet, and given that, half a million seats is quite good. Subscriptions mean businesses can offer their employees the latest version for a fraction of the normal upgrade cost, assuming that the work being done with these services doesn't require much heavy lifting (not all features in the software are present in the service). These cloud services, which are hosted on Microsoft's own computers, aren't replacements for their software counterparts, but they do appear to be filling a gap that was previously too expensive to fill.

Exchange Hosted Services is $1.75 per user per month; Sharepoint Online is $7.25 and Exchange Online goes for $10. Suites, which refer to combinations of cloud services, start at $15 per user per month. That price equates to $180 a year, and as we've said before, that is quite steep when compared to Google Apps, offered for $50 a year. Microsoft's argument is that you get what you pay for, and the software giant argues that its offering is much more advanced and robust than Google's. Microsoft also has the advantage of offering familiarity for the many businesses that already use its products.

Microsoft must be seeing its Software + Services strategy doing very well, as the company also announced plans for an expansion of Microsoft Online Services in the next year. A Microsoft Online Services solution "that will provide IT management and security capabilities for businesses, enabling IT managers to secure and manage desktops using a Web-based subscription service" is on the way, along with the previously announced Office Communications Online. That's the business side of things, while the consumer pipeline has Microsoft Equipt and Office Web.

Resource - Ars Technica

Sun's Cloud Computing Wheels in Motion

So, I had a conversation with a “cloud evangelist” at Sun Microsystems yesterday (more on that next week), during which I noted his reference to Network.com in the past tense. Naturally, I asked him about this, and he pointed me to network.com. Here is what I found:

We're Making Changes

Network.com is in transition as we add some exciting new options. We're not ready to show off what we're working on just yet, but we'd like to hear from you, and we'd like to keep in touch.

That’s right, the service is no longer available (except for existing customers). Oh, and did I mention the cloud imagery in the background? Hmm …

The man on the other end of the call, Sun’s Russ Castronovo, was tight-lipped about what the future incarnation of Network.com might look like, but he did acknowledge that rarely are such images used without a reason. And while I was a bit taken aback by the decommissioning of the once ballyhooed service, I wasn’t surprised. More than a year ago, a Sun executive told me the company was demoing internally storage, infrastructure and applications as services.

As for what the reborn, cloud computing-style Network.com will look like, we’ll all have to wait a while for details. Research projects like Project Caroline and Project Hydrazine might give some clues, and I think it would be foolish to count out altogether the grid aspect that defined the original offering. One thing that is for sure: cloud computing is no afterthought at Sun. The company’s cloud division reports directly to CEO Jonathan Schwartz, and includes among its leaders Lew Tucker, who returns to Sun’s ranks after, among other things, spearheading Salesforce.com’s App Exchange service.

Network.com might never have lived up to its hype, but part of that was due to Sun’s taking the lead in cloud computing before there even was such a thing ($1/CPU/hour, Web portal, credit card payment, etc.). As it retools the service for today’s cloud-crazy atmosphere, Sun has plenty of existing cloud offerings from which to learn, and, this time, the world should be ready for whatever Sun ultimately unveils. God knows Sun has the technologies and the Internet chops to pull off something special.

Resource - ON-DEMAND ENTERPRISE

Intel-backed start-up tries to connect enterprise IT to the "cloud"

A start-up called Enomaly has developed virtualization management software that it claims will integrate enterprise data centers with commercial cloud computing offerings to form a single "virtual private cloud" that manages and governs both internal and external resources from a single console.

Founded in 2004 as a consulting company, Enomaly dropped its consulting business in early October to focus solely on its software efforts, which began in 2005 with an open source management tool that runs on top of the Xen hypervisor.

The vendor's primary offering now is the Enomaly Elastic Computing Platform (ECP), which co-founder and chief technologist Reuven Cohen says can manage multiple hypervisors and provide better integration with Internet-based services such as Amazon's EC2, which offers on-demand computing capacity. Enomaly also makes it easier to move workloads on virtual machines from one data center to another, even if separated by wide distances, Cohen says.

"The economic collapse is leading companies to look at alternatives to buying large amounts of infrastructure," Cohen says.

Intel helped bankroll the company's product development and is jointly building a next-generation content distribution engine with Enomaly, a custom system that Intel will market to its own customers, says Jake Smith, a technologist with Intel's server product group. (Compare server products.)

With ECP, Enomaly says, enterprises manage their own virtual servers and remotely accessed computing capacity with "an intuitive, browser-based dashboard [that] makes it easy for IT personnel to efficiently plan deployments, automate [virtual machine] scaling and load-balancing; and, analyze, configure and optimize cloud capacity."

Enomaly supports the Xen hypervisor, will support VMware within a few weeks and Microsoft's Hyper-V in 2009, Cohen says. Hypervisors lack migration capabilities that make it easy to move applications to services like Amazon EC2, and thus can be augmented with Enomaly's software to become more flexible, Cohen argues.

"They don't look at networking beyond their own infrastructure," Cohen says of the industry's major hypervisor vendors. "They assume you're going to stick within the context of their particular platform. In reality, there is a heterogeneous environment."

Because Enomaly is vendor-agnostic, the software provides the ability to bring into the cloud whatever virtual machine is best suited to run a particular application, an attribute Intel needs for its content distribution engine, Smith of Intel says.
Smith views Enomaly as a "cloud compute infrastructure built for cloud operators or those who want to operate their environment in the cloud from day one."

But he says VMware is better positioned than Enomaly to help enterprises bridge the gap between data centers and externally accessed cloud services.

"Just because you can do it technically doesn't mean you have production customers who have done that with you to date," Smith says. "Technically, Intel can build an 81-core chip but it doesn't mean we have it commercially available in production."

Enomaly says ECP provides the following benefits:

• Ability to combine many servers into a "single, seamless, sharable cloud."
• Automatically scale during times of high demand by accessing both "local and remote clouds."
• Partition public computing utilities such as Amazon EC2 into a quarantined private cloud.
• Ability to make data center resources rapidly available to any application, and ensure instant recovery and live maintenance of applications.

The open source download is available at Enomaly's Web site, and the company sells support and add-ons. About a half-dozen paying customers are using prototype installations of the technology, Cohen says, while many more use the open source software for free.

There are about 1,000 users in a beta program, including Microsoft, Oracle, GE, VeriSign and the U.S. Department of Energy, according to a 451 Group analyst report on Enomaly. Prototype projects include Intel's content delivery network and projects at France Telecom and Rackspace. 

Cohen got his start in 1998 when he founded video streaming company Graphic Substance, and says he helped create the Napster interface. Most of his video streaming customers were in the World Trade Center, and thus his business ended after Sept. 11. Cohen then became involved in open source and content management, spending a few years as a freelance consultant before co-founding Enomaly.

Resource - NETWORK WORLD

Cloud Computing Survey: IT Leaders See Big Promise, Have Big Security Questions

Tue, October 21, 2008 — CIO — Cloud computing has become too popular a term for its own good. As Oracle chief Larry Ellison pointed out recently, so many tech marketers are using the term "cloud computing" in so many contexts that it can almost mean anything—and thus often means nothing. Still, a new CIO survey of IT and business leaders shows that Ellison's dismissal of cloud as a disruptive force in the technology industry is premature. Among our survey respondents, 58 percent say cloud computing will cause a radical shift in IT and 47 percent say they're already using it or actively researching it.

Just 18 percent of our survey respondents call cloud computing a "passing fad."

CIO surveyed 173 IT and business leaders in August, 2008 to get first-hand feedback on what enterprises really think about cloud computing, and how, when and why they plan to deploy it in their enterprises. (Among our respondents, 54 percent are the head of IT at their company or business unit; 74 percent work at companies headquartered in the United States.)

For the purposes of the survey, we used a broad definition of cloud computing from market research firm Gartner: "a style of computing where massively scalable IT-related capabilities are provided 'as a service' using Internet technologies to multiple external customers". Cloud computing offerings are often described in terms such as "on-demand services", "cloud services", "Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)", etc."

If you want a plain-English primer on cloud computing and what Google, Amazon and other vendors mean when they say "cloud," see CIO's jargon-busting blog on this topic.

One sentiment came through loud and clear in our survey: IT wants the flexibility and cost savings that cloud computing promises—the same kind of flexibility you've won from virtualization, which is a key enabling technology for the cloud. But you will not rush with regards to implementing use of the cloud. 54 percent of our respondents say that cloud computing is an evolving concept that will take years to mature. That's right in line with what CIOs told us earlier this year in our look at early cloud adopters, Cloud Computing: Tales from the Front.

Unsurprisingly, the number one factor stopping IT leaders from tapping into the cloud right away is security worries. A whopping 59 percent of our survey respondents say vendors have not adequately addressed security concerns related to on-demand offerings.

Read on for the details on what you and your peers say about cloud computing and how you are using it or planning to do so.

Cloud Computing: No Passing Fad

As Gartner analyst David Cearley recently commented to attendees at Gartner's Symposium ITxpo, "You can't swing a dead cat without hitting somebody that's talking about cloud computing these days." The hype level has been extreme, and IT pros know it. Many of you say current offerings are still not quite baked or appealing enough to roll out in production environments.

The Cloud: Your View

Cloud computing will cause a radical shift in information technology driving the next wave of innovation.	58%
Cloud computing is an evolving concept that will take years to mature.	54%
Current on-demand offerings are not appropriate for my business.	36%
Cloud computing is a passing fad.	18%

SOURCE: CIO Research

But you have not written off cloud computing. More than half of you believe cloud computing will radically change the way enterprise IT looks in a few years.

And research firm IDC (a sister company to CXO Media) believes the current U.S. economic woes will only drive more enterprises to consider and adopt cloud offerings. IDC predicts that spending on IT cloud services will hit $42 billion by 2012. "The cloud model offers a much cheaper way for businesses to acquire and use IT—in an economic downturn, the appeal of that cost advantage will be greatly magnified," noted Frank Gens, senior VP and chief analyst at IDC.

Still, some of you refuse to even think of cloud computing as a technology, per se. "We view it as another sourcing option," wrote one respondent to our survey.

Is Cloud Computing On Your Organization's Tech Roadmap?

Yes, currently using or implementing	30%
No, not on our technology roadmap	29%
Yes, on the radar or actively researching	17%
Yes, plan to use within one year	10%
Yes, plan to use within one to three years	5%
Not sure	5%
Yes, plan to use within three to five years	2%

SOURCE: CIO Research

When You'll Jump Into the Cloud

A big question about cloud computing: When will IT departments stop talking about it and start actually using it? According to our survey results, IT's comfort with using cloud options in the near term is split. Almost half of you (47 percent) say you're either currently using or implementing or actively researching cloud options.

But a notable 29 percent say you have not placed cloud computing on your technology roadmap yet.

And breaking down these responses by those people who say they head IT in their company reveals more skepticism among IT chiefs than IT staffers: 38 percent of respondents calling themselves IT heads say cloud computing is not on their technology roadmap.

Consider this survey respondent's verbatim comment as to why cloud is not on his roadmap: "We're waiting for reality to strike, vendor solutions/pricing to mature and the hype to be replaced by honest to goodness experience." The lack of case studies and customer references is a real stumbling block now, according to our survey respondents.

What You Hope to Gain From the Cloud

What's even more precious to IT than cost savings? Agility. The big win with virtualization, to date, has been the ability to deliver to the business on IT requests in a lightning fast way, as compared to the old one-app-one-server days. Virtualization has helped many IT departments change from "no" people to "yes" people.

Primary Reasons You're Using or Plan to Use Cloud

Scalability on demand/flexibility to the business	50%
Reduced hardware infrastructure costs	38%
Reduced IT staffing/administration costs	35%
Access to skills/capabilities we have no interest in developing in-house	28%
Not using or planning to use cloud computing offerings	19%
Capacity - data center	16%
Capacity - storage	11%
Frequent software updates	10%
Other	5%

*Respondents selected up to three criteria
SOURCE: CIO Research

Similarly, you already see the ability to deliver more flexibility to the business via cloud offerings: In fact, you named this as your top desire from cloud computing, followed by reduced hardware and staffing costs.

Cloud computing "allows the IT organization to focus on differentiating IT capabilities and not on infrastructure," one respondent to our survey wrote, explaining why he thinks the cloud will change his IT department—and his company. "It also allows the business to pursue an opportunity that has unclear ROI without significant capital expenditures on infrastructure."

What You're Already Doing in the Cloud

Cloud computing offerings that fall under what most people think of as software on demand or SaaS, in the style of Salesforce.com, have been around for years now.

How Is Your Organization Currently Using Cloud Offerings

Running applications using a software as a service (SaaS) model	51%
Do not currently use any cloud computing offerings	37%
Storage	24%
Access to extra computing power on demand	19%
Other	8%

SOURCE: CIO Research

Thus some IT departments are not only comfortable with the cloud but also banking on it for operational savings and flexibility. Not surprisingly, SaaS offerings are the top way you're already using the cloud, followed by storage on demand. Only 19 percent of respondents say they're tapping into extra computing power on demand right now, though that's perhaps the most exciting flavor of cloud computing for the future.

Clearly, the size of your enterprise is a factor with regards to your comfort with cloud offerings. As Forrester Research analyst James Staten notes, for example, it's simpler today for startups or smaller companies to use Amazon's EC2 and S3 cloud services, as opposed to large enterprises. Staten believes large enterprises may inch their way into the cloud for the ability to do quick and cheap experimentation. Also, end users could use cloud services to bypass IT for some needs or projects, Staten predicts.

Applications That Call Out for Cloud Options

What specific applications are leading you to use or actively research cloud offerings? Collaboration apps rank as early winners, according to our survey results. A significant portion of you are also trying to figure out the server and storage on demand equations now. And a surprising 54 percent of respondents mentioned ERP as on the radar or in use—notable since ERP apps often represent the most mission-critical and expensive applications to the business.

"Like every other technology, it (cloud computing) has its place," wrote one respondent to our survey. "Mobile access, non-mission-critical capabilities, and general support functions (provisioning, e-mail, etc.) are easy targets."

Describe Your Plans/Usage of the Following Cloud Offerings

	On the radar/actively researching	Currently using or implementing	Planning to use next year	Planning to use one to three years	Planning to use three to five years	No plans to use
Application platforms & development software (web servers, design tools)	27%	34%	4%	3%	2%	30%
Collaboration tools (wikis, web conferencing)	17%	50%	8%	4%	4%	17%
Enterprise application software (CRM, ERP, Supply Chain, BI)	19%	35%	4%	5%	3%	34%
Personal productivity software (word processing, e-mail, spreadsheet)	22%	23%	4%	4%	4%	43%
Utilities/management software (anti-virus, spam filters, desktop management)	21%	33%	5%	7%	2%	32%
Networks	16%	27%	4%	5%	2%	45%
Servers	18%	32%	4%	5%	2%	39%
Storage	22%	31%	6%	4%	7%	30%

SOURCE: CIO Research

What's Stopping You: Security and Control Concerns

A whopping 45 percent of you cite security as the top concern surrounding cloud computing at your enterprise. And you've been through blockbuster tech waves like the ERP revolution, so it's not surprising that you're already worrying about integration issues with existing systems and cloud computing.

Greatest Concerns Surrounding Cloud Adoption at Your Company

Security	45%
Integration with existing systems	26%
Loss of control over data	26%
Availability concerns	25%
Performance issues	24%
IT governance issues	19%
Regulatory/compliance concerns	19%
Dissatisfaction with vendor offerings/pricing	12%
Ability to bring systems back in-house	11%
Lack of customization opportunities	11%
Measuring ROI	11%
Not sure	7%
Other	6%

*Respondents selected up to three criteria.
SOURCE: CIO Research

As we've recently reported, cloud computing will rely on virtualization to quite an extent. The economics demand it for cloud vendors to succeed. Yet such basic issues as moving virtual machines between physical servers with processors from differing vendors (AMD and Intel) have yet to be resolved by the industry. And when you start talking about making customer data easily portable between different cloud service providers, even industry vets give wishy-washy answers right now. Microsoft has its own vision for solving the problem, a vision heavily dependent on client OS power. VMware has another vision. Bottom line: It's early and the integration questions are real.

As has been the case with SaaS offerings from the start, availability and performance worries still register, with almost a quarter of you citing them in our survey.

Show Me the Security

"I believe cloud computing places too many variables out of our control," wrote one respondent in the verbatim comments to our security questions. That opinion is not uncommon among IT vets, according to our research.

How will IT leaders get their heads around the security issues with cloud computing? After all, many IT leaders just got comfortable with virtual servers: now they're being asked to work off virtual servers in cloud providers' physical locations—where their precious data will be further from reach, and co-located with many other customers' data.

Is Cloud Security Strong Enough Yet?

Vendors have not adequately addressed security concerns around on-demand offerings.

59%

SOURCE: CIO Research

Consider this, the CEO of a cloud infrastructure company recently told me: Each day, IT departments hand reams of paper to an Iron Mountain representative and trust that he will shred and destroy it or otherwise deal with it according to instructions. Do you see the rep do it? No, you trust the vendor. Cloud vendors, he said, must get to that kind of trust with IT, before cloud computing can take off in a mainstream way.

Based on our survey results, vendors have a long road ahead before they earn that kind of trust.

Understanding the Cloud and Trusting It Are Very Different

Despite the amount of marketing hype in the marketplace right now, your core understanding of cloud computing is not the problem, according to our survey results. A full 78 percent of you call yourselves very or somewhat knowledgeable about the cloud.

How Knowledgeable Are You About Cloud Computing?

Somewhat knowledgeable	51%
Very knowledgeable	27%
Not very knowledgeable	13%
Not at all knowledgeable	7%
Not sure	2%

SOURCE: CIO Research

It's just early in the game and your security and integration concerns are real.

SURVEY METHODOLOGY NOTE: The margin of error on a sample size of 173 is plus or minus 7.5%. Percents on questions where a respondent could only select one answer may not sum to 100 due to rounding. Not all respondents answered all questions.

Resource -CIO

IDC: Cloud Services a $42B Market by 2012

FRAMINGHAM, Mass., Oct. 20 -- Cloud computing is reshaping the IT marketplace, creating new opportunities for suppliers and catalyzing changes in traditional IT offerings. Over the next five years, IDC expects spending on IT cloud services to grow almost threefold, reaching $42 billion by 2012 and accounting for 9 percent of revenues in five key market segments. More importantly, spending on cloud computing will accelerate throughout the forecast period, capturing 25 percent of IT spending growth in 2012 and nearly a third of growth the following year.

"A recent IDC survey of IT executives, CIOs, and their line of business (LOB) colleagues shows that cloud services are 'crossing the chasm' and entering a period of widespread adoption," said Frank Gens, senior vice president and chief analyst at IDC. "Moreover, IDC expects the cloud adoption trend to be amplified by the current financial crisis. The cloud model offers a much cheaper way for businesses to acquire and use IT -- in an economic downturn, the appeal of that cost advantage will be greatly magnified. This advantage is especially important for small and medium businesses, a sector that will be key target in any plan for recovery."

To determine how big the cloud computing opportunity might be, and what it will take to capture that opportunity, a broad group of IDC analysts collaborated on the development of a formal point of view on just what cloud computing is.

When people talk about cloud computing, they are usually referring to the online delivery and consumption models for business and consumer services. In most cases, however, the "computing" lies behind a more recognizable service, like banking or shopping or online storage. Accordingly, IDC believes it is important to distinguish between cloud services and the cloud computing environment that enables these services.

• Cloud services are the consumer and business products, services, and solutions that are delivered and consumed in real time over the Internet. (IDC identifies eight key attributes that more clearly define the new generation of commercial cloud services.)
  
  
• Cloud computing is an emerging IT development, deployment, and delivery model, enabling real-time delivery of products, services, and solutions over the Internet.

The attributes of cloud services make the consumption of goods and services easier and cheaper -- and often better -- than through traditional delivery modes. These attributes also lower costs, simplify and accelerate access, enable fine-tuned provisioning, greatly increase the number and variety of available services, and improve the potential to integrate these services.

As the foundation for cloud services, cloud computing consists of a growing list of technologies and IT offerings that enable cloud services, including infrastructure systems (servers, storage, networks), application software, system and application management software, IP networks, and pricing agreements.

The shift toward cloud computing is being driven by three market forces: the search for growth (and revenues) in important new segments, including emerging markets like Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC) as well as the small and medium business (SMB) sector; the shortcomings of traditional approaches in capturing the growth in these increasingly important markets; and competitive pressures from new players with little to lose and everything to gain from pushing the new model.

IDC believes there are two principal opportunities for IT suppliers from the growth of cloud services. One area of opportunity for the IT supplier is to consider delivering its own IT products or services to customers via the cloud model. This means considering whether to get into the software-as-a-service (SaaS) business, the storage cloud business, the server cloud business, etc. The other area of opportunity for IT suppliers to consider is how its current and future offerings can support its customers' development, deployment, and delivery of a wide variety of business and consumer cloud services. In other words, providing the tools for others to get into the cloud services business.

To succeed, cloud services providers need to address a mixture of traditional and cloud concerns. According to survey respondents, the two most important things a cloud services provider can offer are competitive pricing and performance level assurances. These are followed by the ability to demonstrate an understanding of the customer's industry and the ability to move cloud services back on-premises if necessary.

More information about IDC's cloud services research can be found online at www.idc.com/research/cloudcomputing. Current postings include IDC's definitions of cloud services and cloud computing, results of the cloud computing survey, and the IT cloud services forecast.

About IDC

IDC is the premier global provider of market intelligence, advisory services, and events for the information technology, telecommunications, and consumer technology markets. IDC helps IT professionals, business executives, and the investment community make fact-based decisions on technology purchases and business strategy. More than 1,000 IDC analysts provide global, regional, and local expertise on technology and industry opportunities and trends in over 110 countries. For more than 44 years, IDC has provided strategic insights to help our clients achieve their key business objectives. IDC is a subsidiary of IDG, the world's leading technology media, research, and events company. You can learn more about IDC by visiting www.idc.com.

Resource - ON-DEMAND ENTERPRISE

Big Day for Amazon EC2: Production, SLA, Windows, and 4 New Capabilities

My colleagues and I have spent the week building up anticipation for this post on Twitter. After you read this post I am sure that you will agree that the wait was worthwhile.

The hallways at Amazon have been buzzing with excitement of late. After working for years to build and to run our line of highly scalable infrastructure web services we are happy to see that developers large and small are putting them to good use.

Here's what's happening today:

• Amazon EC2 is now in full production. The beta label is gone.
• There's now an SLA (Service Level Agreement) for EC2.
• Microsoft Windows is now available in beta form on EC2.
• Microsoft SQL Server is now available in beta form on EC2.
• We plan to release an interactive AWS management console.
• We plan to release new load balancing, automatic scaling, and cloud monitoring services.

Let's take a look at each of these items in turn.

Production - After a two year beta period, Amazon EC2 is now ready for production. During the beta we heard and responded to an incredible amount of customer feedback, adding support for powerful features such as Availability Zones, Elastic Block Storage, Elastic IP Addresses, multiple instance types, support for the OpenSolaris and Windows operating systems, and (as of today) a Service Level Agreement. Regular EC2 accounts are allowed to run up to 20 simultaneous instances. Requests for hundreds and even thousands of additional instances are granted all the time and can be made here.

SLA - The new EC2 Service Level Agreement works at the Region level. Each EC2 Region (there's only one right now but there will be more in the future) is divided into a number of Availability Zones. The SLA specifies that each Region will be available at least 99.95% of the time. Per the SLA, a Region is unavailable if more than one of its Availability Zones does not have external connectivity.

Windows Support - Beta level support for Microsoft Windows is now available on EC2, in the form of 32 and 64 bit AMIs, with pricing starting at $0.125 per hour. Microsoft SQL Server is also available in 64 bit form. All of the powerful EC2 features listed above can be used with the new Windows instances and we'll be adding support for DevPay in the near future.

Once launched, the Windows instances can be accessed using the Windows Remote Desktop or the rdesktop client. I've spent some time using Windows on EC2 and it works really well. I used the EC2 command line tools to launch a 32 bit instance, opened up an additional port in the security group, and then logged in to it using Remote Desktop.

We'll be running Windows on EC2 at next week's PDC in Los Angeles, so be sure to stop by and to say hello if you are there. Rumor has it that we'll be giving out a really cool badge to the people who stop by our booth.

RightScale founder Thorsten von Eiken has written up a helpful post which outlines the differences between Windows and Linux with respect to launching, accessing, bundling, and using the Elastic Block Store. He also describes current and planned support for Windows in their products.

We've updated ElasticFox with a number of new features, including direct access to EBS and Elastic IP addresses from the main tab, one-click AMI bundling on Windows, better key and security group management, and the ability to directly launch Remote Desktop sessions. There's also a brand-new (and very helpful) ElasticFox Getting Started Guide.

We are looking forward to seeing how our customers will put Windows to work. We expect to see ASP.Net sites, media transcoding, HPC (High Performance Computing), and more. I've talked to a number of developers who will deploy hybrid web sites using a mix of Linux and Windows servers. This really underscores the open and flexible nature of EC2.

We are also planning to offer some new capabilities in 2009 to make managing cloud-based applications even easier. As usual, we'll start with a private beta and you can express your interest here.

Management Console - The management console will simplify the process of configuring and operating your applications in the AWS cloud. You'll be able to get a global picture of your cloud computing environment using a point-and-click web interface.

Load Balancing - The load balancing service will allow you to balance incoming requests and traffic across multiple EC2 instances.

Automatic Scaling - The auto-scaling service will allow you to grow and shrink your usage of EC2 capacity on demand based on application requirements.

Cloud Monitoring - The cloud monitoring service will provide real time, multi-dimensional monitoring of host resources across any number of EC2 instances, with the ability to aggregate operational metrics across instances, Availability Zones, and time slots.

Amazon CTO Werner Vogels has done a very nice job of explaining why services of this type are needed to build highly reliable and highly scalable applications. His blog is a must read for those interested in cloud computing. Werner has spent so much time talking about AWS of late that I've asked him to be an honorary member of my team of AWS evangelists!

I think it is important to note that load balancing, automatic scaling, and cloud monitoring will each be true web services, with complete APIs for provisioning, control, and status checking. We'll be working with a number of management tool vendors and developers to make sure that their products will support these new services on a timely basis.

So, there you go. What do you think?

Resource - Amazon Web Service Blog

Top 10 strategic technologies for 2009

Analyst house Gartner has tipped its top 10 strategic technologies and trends for next year, with virtualization, cloud computing and social networking all making the grade.

The analysts believe all 10 technology trends have the potential to have a significant impact on businesses over the next three years. David Cearley, vice president and distinguished analyst, said companies should look at them as "opportunities"--and evaluate where each can add value to their business' services and offerings.

The 10 technologies/trends are:

1. Virtualization
Not just server virtualization but storage and client devices too. For instance, Gartner says virtualization can significantly decrease the cost of holding information by eliminating duplicate copies of data on real storage devices.

2. Cloud computing
The analyst says smaller companies especially can benefit from cloud computing because of built-in elasticity and scalability which can help them grow quickly while also reducing barriers to entry. Gartner also believes there are opportunities here for larger organizations, especially as certain IT functions become less customised.

3. Servers--beyond blades
Servers are evolving in a way that will simplify the provisioning of capacity, according to the analyst, so organizations will be able to track an individual resource type--such as memory or processing power--and replace that as needed, rather than having to pay for all resources every time an upgrade is needed.

4. Web-oriented architectures
Web-centric technologies and standards will continue to affect enterprise computing models, says Gartner--leading to greater use of service-oriented environments in the business over the next five years.

5. Enterprise mash-ups
Quirky Web mash-ups are inspiring businesses to investigate how mash-ups can be added to enterprise systems to help deliver and manage applications. The analyst says application architects and IT leaders should therefore look to further explore enterprise mash-ups.

6. Specialized systems
Heterogeneous server systems are an emerging trend in high performance computing--to cope with the most demanding workloads--where previously a dedicated appliance may have been used. Gartner says it eventually expects this specialized system approach to filter down to the general-purpose computing market as well.

7. Social software and social networking
The analyst says organizations should consider adding a social dimension to a conventional Web site or application--and, to avoid being left behind, should adopt a social platform sooner rather than later or risk seeming "mute" while rivals get talking to communities and customers.

8. Unified communications
Expect massive consolidation in the comms industry as apps shift to common off-the-shelf server and operating systems, says Gartner. This means formerly distinct markets and vendors will converge--so organizations must plan to take account of comms functions being replaced or converged and adjust their own admin teams accordingly.

9. Business intelligence
BI was the top tech in Gartner's 2008 CIO survey and the analyst continues to back its potential for boosting and transforming business performance. It says such tools are particularly valuable in a difficult business environment like the current global credit crunch.

10. Green IT
Companies should think about shifting to more efficient products and processes as environmental scrutiny increases, and cut energy use. Green regulation is on the rise and this especially has the potential to seriously limit how businesses build data centers so organizations should have alternative plans for capacity growth.

Resource - ZDNet Asia