Grid & Cloud Computing

Industry officials promoted the benefits but also noted the challenges posed by cloud computing at the Cloud Computing Conference & Expo conference last Friday afternoon, citing economics as a plus for the concept and security as a concern.

During his keynote speech at the Society for Information Management's SIMposium 08 conference in the US, author Nicholas Carr drew an analogy between cloud computing and the transition that manufacturers made from generating their own power to relying on utilities in the early 20th century.

Looming on the horizon are the nimbus, cirrus, stratus and cumulus that threaten to deliver us cloud computing imminently. Promising an end to most of the challenges and frustrations of IT systems as we know them, the concept of cloud computing is thundering through the business community to become one of the most talked about and revered subjects of the day.

With support for three of the major pillars of application development and deployment -- Oracle 11g, Microsoft SQL, and open source MySQL -- under its belt, Amazon.com appears to be anticipating a major move by the enterprise into the cloud.

When the computer industry buys into a buzzword, it's like getting a pop song stuck in your head. It's all you hear. Worse, the same half-dozen questions about the hyped trend are incessantly paraded out, with responses that succeed mainly in revealing how poorly understood the buzzword actually is.

Microsoft Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie Monday touted Windows Azure, Microsoft's cloud-computing platform that allows developers to build and host their services on Microsoft infrastructure.

Facing uncertain economic times, enterprises may be more likely to turn to cloud computing services -- such as SaaS (software as a service), Amazon-style utility computing, and managed service providers -- for the lower up-front costs, the faster time to market, and the ability to add capabilities quickly without investing in new hardware.

The current economic crisis in the U.S. may have a silver lining for IT companies that invest in cloud computing, as it will contribute to significant growth in that sector over the next five years, according to research firm IDC.

Chuck Rozwat, Oracle's head of product development, largely deflected questions about hotly anticipated technologies such as Fusion Applications during a Q&A session with reporters at the OpenWorld conference in San Francisco on Tuesday, but did reveal more details of the vendor's plans around cloud computing.

Microsoft has been busy this year, rolling out Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 in a push to expand its presence in the corporate data center. To be successful, the company must overcome an economic environment that appears increasingly difficult as well as tough competition from rivals Oracle and VMware, among others

IBM opened up cloud computing centers in four countries on Wednesday to let enterprises, universities and governments test Web-based services and applications.

"Cloud" has a special place in my hit parade of despised neo-techno-vernacular. Unlike Web 2.0, my all-time favorite, at least "cloud" is somewhat self-descriptive: Formless, vaporous, and a semi-reliable indicator of climatic conditions. If you point at a round, puffy cloud and declare that it looks like a pitchfork, and someone with you nods and says, "Cool, I can see that," the forecast is mostly patronizing with zero vision and periodic sucking up. You're in trustworthy company if that person says, "Are you blind?" If someone in a meeting refers to a cloud, or worse still, the cloud, don't nod just to keep the conversation going. Consider it your duty to ask them to define the term.

Cloud computing will soon become an area of hot debate in Washington, D.C., with policy makers debating issues such as the privacy and security of data in the cloud, a panel of tech experts said Friday.

Oracle is now offering its 11g database, Fusion Middleware and Enterprise Manager products through Amazon Web Services' Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), the vendor announced Monday at the start of its OpenWorld conference in San Francisco.

Companies may be expecting too much from cloud computing, but other technologies such as video conferencing are starting to live up to their promises, according to a study released Monday.

The news that US telecommunications provider AT&T has joined the rapidly growing ranks of cloud computing providers reinforces the argument that the latest IT outsourcing model is well on its way to becoming a classic disruptive technology.

3Tera is expanding platform support for its AppLogic grid software for Web applications, enabling it to run on Windows, a company official said at the TechCrunch50 2008 conference in San Francisco on Monday.

Dell cannot register "cloud computing" as a trademark because the term is a generic one describing services offered by many companies, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has said in an initial ruling.