Friday Apr 10, 2009
Google container data center tour
Ever wonder how Google is able to achieve efficiencies in its data centers? Then have a look at this video.
Its style reminded me a little of the documentaries from the 50s and 60s. Just thinking about it, I'm not sure how I'd go about doing a documentary like this myself. Look at the emphasis placed on the efficient utilisation of power and cooling in the design.
Sunday Mar 08, 2009
Salesforce.com: What is cloud computing?
This is a great video from Salesforce.com explaining Cloud Computing.
Sunday Feb 15, 2009
Above the Clouds: A Berkeley View of Cloud Computing
The RAD (Reliable Adaptive Distributed) Lab at Berkely have released a white paper on cloud computing. There is also a blog Above the Clouds which has a YouTube Discussion of the paper and an Executive Summary on this very interesting phenonem.
They believe, as do I, that Cloud Computing will transform the IT community. If you are working in the IT Industry its important to understand this paradigm shift that is occurring.
The paper highlights the Top 10 Obstacles to and Opportunities for Growth of Cloud Computing. Table follows:
| Obstacle | Opportunity | |
| 1 | Availability of Service | Use Multiple Cloud Providers; Use Elasticity to Prevent DDOS |
| 2 | Data Lock-In | Standardize APIs; Compatible SW to enable Surge Computing |
| 3 | Data Confidentiality and Auditability | Deploy Encryption, VLANs, Firewalls; Geographical Data Storage |
| 4 | Data Transfer Bottlenecks | FedExing Disks; Data Backup/Archival; Higher BW Switches |
| 5 | Performance Unpredictability | Improved VM Support; Flash Memory; Gang Schedule VMs |
| 6 | Scalable Storage | Invent Scalable Store |
| 7 | Bugs in Large Distributed Systems | Invent Debugger that relies on Distributed VMs |
| 8 | Scaling Quickly | Invent Auto-Scaler that relies on ML; Snapshots for Conservation |
| 9 | Reputation Fate Sharing | Offer reputation-guarding services like those for email |
| 10 | Software Licensing | Pay-for-use licenses; Bulk use sales |
Saturday Feb 14, 2009
WebSphere Portal on Amazon
IBM have released a no charge development virtual server as an Amazon Machine Image, which includes WebSphere Portal and Lotus Web Content Management onto Amazon EC2. A number of people pinged me about this. Thanks guys!
Reading the IBM press release - "IBM to Deliver Software via Clod Computing With Amazon Web Services", I can see that it is running on SuSe Linux. Now whats also very interesting is that these are "no charge" for development and test purposes. Its not just a trial for thirty or ninety days but free. You must pay for the Amazon EC2 usage charges.
Info is available on Developerworks on how to get started.
Whats very interesting is that IBM has allowed existing PVU (Processor Value Units) licenses to run on Amazon EC2 - details here for IBM PVUs required for Amazon EC2.
One of my greatest concerns previously with using WebSphere Portal in a SaaS environment was the PVU based pricing. Now check this out from the press release -
"The IBM software images for full production running in Amazon EC2 will be launched in beta in the coming months, with pricing to be announced. All developers and customers will have the operational capability to run development and production instances of IBM software for an hourly price per instance."
Must update our Business Portal Server offering to leverage this both from a hosting perspective of the site itself, as well as an offering to clients. If you want to leverage this arrangement between IBM and Amazon we are raring to help you. We've got an ecosystem of experience professionals, not just IBM Certified WebSphere Portal guys that can deliver value quickly to you.
Just contact us in Aus or through the form on this page.
Tags linux saas novell ami aws websphere+portal amazon ibm ec2 | Comments 1
Wednesday Jan 07, 2009
Is SOA really dead?
A blog post titled "SOA is Dead; Long Live Services" was directed to me by a couple of persons. It highlights, what I first started to describe a couple of years ago as "Journalist led technology"; sometimes I do believe that it is Analyst led as well. That is, that the potential promise of the technology genres and acronyms, in this case SOA, take over. Without necesarrily having the real world experiences to back it up, to cut through the hype.
We most not forget that SOA means Service Oriented Architecture. It is an architectural style, that is a different style, then what has been used in the past in the client/server world of old. "to SOA or not to SOA" which I wrote about a couple of years ago, is always an interesting question.
"What are the alternates to a SOA style architecture?" still holds true in my opinion, that if you are not using a monolithic 80s/90s style client/server model, then there will be a business tier that exposes services at some granularity to be consumed by a presentation tier or another business tier service. Its the pace layering that becomes the issue (my thoughts here on timeless software).
To me Anne has highlighted the true issue that has been missed which is the important stuff: architecture and services.
