Distributed Computing

The classification of cloud providers continues to expand. Gartner and InfoWorld (amongst others) have created diagrams trying to explain the different categories of Cloud providers and services. My view below encompasses both their views as well as tries to rationalize the categories in a slightly different way than those papers. Read Full Story

On June 14th, you can compete in an online scavenger hunt which boasts some pretty cool prizes -- among them, 1 terabyte of Google storage, an HP netbook or fly free on Virgin America for a year with complimentary wifi-- for the top point getters. Sponsored by Google Apps and the almost-too-hip U.S. airline Virgin America, the contest will provide a series of online puzzles and questions for 'scavengers' to solve. Contestants can compete on board a Virgin America flight or on terra firma. All that's needed is a Google Apps account . According to the Day on the Cloud site, test questions will ... Read Full Story

Utility computing (also known as on demand computing) is the packaging of computing resources, such as computation and storage, as a metered service similar to a physical public utility (such as electricity, water, natural gas, or telephone network). This system has the advantage of a low or no initial cost to acquire the hardware as computational resources are essentially rented.   As utility computing is gaining more wide adoption and traction there is lot of discussion around utility grids and computing clouds.   There is no formally accepted definition of cloud computing and grid computing.   Lots of time people use the two terms ... Read Full Story

F5 Networks Helps Joyent Deliver Highly Scalable, On-Demand Cloud Computing Platform SEATTLE, Dec 01, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV), the global leader in Application Delivery Networking, today announced that Joyent, a leading cloud computing vendor, has successfully deployed the F5(R) BIG-IP(R) Local Traffic Manager(TM) solution in its Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) server virtualization architecture. "Advanced Application Delivery Controllers can provide significant advantages for both providers and subscribers of cloud services," said Joe Skorupa, Research Vice President at Gartner. "These devices can provide major efficiencies of 20 to 50 percent within the cloud provider data center by offloading network-related functions from ... Read Full Story

Sorry for the delay, folks, but the holidays called... I promised to go over the options that one has when considering how to evolve from typical statically managed server environments to a utility computing model. I've thought a lot about this, and I see essentially two options: Deployment directly into a third party capacity utility Adoption of utility computing technologies in your own data center As a quick refresher to the other two parts of this series, I want to note that this is not an easy decision, by any means. Each approach has advantages for some classes of applications/services, and disadvantages to others. ... Read Full Story