I had forgotten about Xoconomy's Cloud Forum. Did anyone attend? Email me with links to blog posts, etc, if you did, or if you are in the Bay Area, let's grab a coffee. - James Urquhart
I've followed this debate with increased interest the last few days. Bob does an excellent job of summizing even as he presents his opinion. I still haven't firmly decided where I stand, but I still lean towards Chris and Bob's position. Thoughts? - James Urquhart
I love it when Simon really puts his thoughts down on virtual paper with such clarity. His demand for open source standards (vs. just standards) is controversial, but I find myself shifting more in his direction every day. It's becoming a service world. - James Urquhart
"While I agree that is the ideal vision in many cases, I reserve judgment about whether that is the ultimate definition of cloud computing. Its not that I don't share the excitement about that level of dynamic computing, its just that I am not sure that it applies to all cloud-based applications, nor do I believe you can ignore the problems that I raise during this "transition phase".
Good discussion. You have made me think a bit, which I always appreciate." - James Urquhart
"So, Roland, you are essentially saying that Amazon is not a true cloud? Last time I checked, Amazon could only scale a server instance as much as a single physical box, after which you would be required to spin up an additional instance. Oh, and Amazon doesn't supply any built in monitoring or automation, so you have to patch that together yourself.
Same seems true of FlexScale, Mosso and others called clouds. Do these not fit the definition of a true cloud?" - James Urquhart
I don't normally call out my own posts, but I added a brief update to the bottom of this one that is interesting for those that read through the post once already. Project Caroline from Sun *may* have an answer to this dilemma. - James Urquhart
I missed this significant org change at Sun. Project Caroline, as I once posted, is either another Sun "just a bit outside" project, or its real and significant savior. Congrats to the team, and I (and my stock) certainly hope its the latter. - James Urquhart
Andrew Bliss, one of the really interesting PaaS bloggers out there, has just discovered the Cloud Portal, which I linked to a few days ago. His concerns didn't occur to me. I wonder if John Willis gave explicit permission to use his stuff... - James Urquhart
I think as important as the business models for cloud computing are, the technical architectures being explored will actually revolutionize computing for the masses. Case in point, this Yahoo exercise using Hadoop to process 1 Tb of records in 209 secs. - James Urquhart
Wow. Its starting to get crowded in the stratusphere. This is workflow-based orchestration, not policy-based automation, but it looks interesting. - James Urquhart
ECM: Want to know why I think content management is important? Here is but one example. Normally I hate things that restrict action or privacy, but I know enough to see situations like this where accountability protects the public interest. - James Urquhart
Apparently John Willis and Cote hooked up behind my back! (OK, Cote doesn't even know me, and John has probably written me off since I left Cassatt, but still...) Good (though long) discussion of last weeks conferences and the cloud market in general. - James Urquhart
Simon highlights the need for monitoring and assurance services for the cloud, using CloudStatus as a recent example of a solution for this space. I agree we need these services, but I would argue the enterprise should own and host their own. - James Urquhart
OK, I had to link to this ho-hum announcement as the data center is in Dingwall, Scotland...near where my late grandmother lived for as long as I can remember. Driving around there, you wouldn't know it was a high tech mecca. I love that it may be! - James Urquhart
Kent Langley on Private Clouds. I hope this is the term that is becoming the mainstream description for clouds behind the firewall. Kent echos many of the same points I have been blogging about for the last year or more. - James Urquhart
"I'm not sure I agree that capacity planning is easy for a blogger or news provider to do. Ask John Williams about the sudden interest in his post about "captchas". Mosso seemed to handle the surge, but I wonder if he lost a few people getting to peak capacity.
Even a SaaS offering could come up with a feature that unexpectedly draws the attention of a large audience web site. In any case, however, the more that is known up front, the more responsibility it is for the target site to prepare and/or warn its cloud provider." - James Urquhart
An excellent article by Rich Miller at Data Center Knowledge about the decline of the term "web hosting", and its slow replacement by a diverse set of technologies and services. Especially enlightening was the observation that users' are changing focus. - James Urquhart
