networking-info

From the Wireless Business & Technology Cloud Computing News Desk : "Ballmer highlighted software-plus-service, associating it with a 'platform in the cloud and delivering applications across PCs, phones, TVs, and other devices, at work and in the home' (Microsoft’s Mesh widgetry) and promised 'more about our cloud platform initiatives and the next versions of our Live and Online technologies' at the company’s Professional Developers Conference (PDC) at the end of October."

Interesting tidbits from Maureen O'Gara in Apple, Google, Yahoo & Cloud Computing : Industry gadfly John Dvorak is advancing a theory culled from the blogosphere that Microsoft wants Yahoo for some all-important patent or another that would give it an edge in cloud computing, SaaS and portable search advertising. Appirio, the two-year-old start-up with products and professional services using software-as-a-service (SaaS) and platform -as-a-service (PaaS) from Google and salesforce.com that are supposed to jumpstart enterprises on the on-demand path, has gotten a $5.6 million B round from Sequoia Capital, the VC behind Google, Yahoo, LinkIn and PayPal. Appirio’s widgetry is also supposed to connect the Amazon, Google and salesforce clouds. It got a $1.1 million A round from salesforce.com and angels. Apple’s first flirtation with the Cloud has turned stormy. The Wall Street Journal’s great and powerful technology critic Walt Mossberg, a known Apple devotee, has panned its $99-a...

Correlative Analytics (A.K.A. " The Google Way of Science ") postulates that extremely large databases of information, starting in the petabyte level, may be sufficient to skip the theory part of the scientific method. This line of thought promises that "googling" can now be used to make predicted observation on the nature of all sorts of things. Although I'm not a scientist, I thought that a Google "Mindshare" Analysis on cloud computing would be interesting. First, I googled "cloud computing" and came up with a little over 1 million documents. I then "and-ed" that term with others I've routinely seen within the cloud computing space. The results were then used to come up with each terms "Cloud Computing Google Mindshare". I'm sure that this snapshot doesn't say much, but as a baseline for a future Google Mindshare analysis, it could be valuable. How do you think this could help in understanding the cloud comp...

Irving Wladasky-Berger, chairman emeritus of IBM's Academy of Technology, recently wrote and article on cloud computing titled "What is Cloud Computing, Anyway?" . The following is my interpretation of a few of the excellent points he made: Well designed cloud computing applications completely hide the underlying software and hardware Cloud computing is part of the evolution of the Internet Cloud applications scale up to support billions of users, a scale far bigger than what has been done to date Cloud computing represents the "industrialization" of IT infrastructures and datacenters Enterprises need to embrace cloud-like methodologies now !! The entire article is well worth your time to read first hand

In his blog article " The Rise of The Dark Cloud " Reuven Cohen wonders about a growing interest in covert computing. Although he briefly mentions malevolent uses of the net, the focus seems to be on a more active stance by corporations and governments to protect the Internet by covertly pooling resources in the form of a dark cloud or cloud alliance. The members would have a benevolent mission with an ability to counter or block network threats in a private, anonymous and quarantined fashion. While this may sounds like a Internet United Nations Better Business Bureau, the underlying questions point right at the important of cloud computing for national security. As the world embraces cloud computing for its ubiquity, efficiency and cost savings, the world economic engine will become evermore dependent on cloud security and the active management of public-private cloud interfaces. No wonder the US DoD is jumping on the bandwagon so quickly.

This month's issue of Military Information Technology magazine has the Army's Chief Information Officer, Lieutenant General Jeffrey A. Sorenson, on the cover. The enclosed special report, titled LANDWARNET Transformation, has a major article on net-centric operations by Bill Gerety, Dataline CEO and Major General US Army Reserve (and co-authored by yours truly). " Net-centricity: Adjusting the Focus " ( MS Word version ) discusses requirements for a successfully force transition to net-centricity and how cloud computing concepts can be used to support the effort. In view of DISA's foray into cloud computing, it makes interesting reading. To quote from the article: "In meeting these significant challenges, DISA has actively leveraged the fact that these requirements have parallels in the general information technology industry. This fact has led to the rapid adoption and implementation of many commercial solutions. Service oriented architecture (SOA), hardware...

How do you predict demand from your distributors? Would you try demand simulation, predictive analytics, or a complex mathematical model? Try experimental economics. Wired points us to a story (found via Techdirt ) of Kay-Yut Chen who is an experimental economist at HP solving the complex demand forecast problems . One of Chen's recent projects involved finding a way for H.P. to more accurately predict demand from its nine distributors, who collectively sell as much as $3 billion worth of H.P.'s products. The problem? Its distributors' forecasts for demand were frequently off by as much as 100 percent, wreaking havoc on H.P.'s production planning. Chen's solution to the planning problem, which H.P. intends to test soon with one distributor, was to develop an incentive system that rewarded distributors for sticking to their forecasts by turning those forecasts into purchase commitments. In the lab, the overlap between distributors' forecasts and their actual ...

During last week's SOA-R session, Steven Armentrout referenced "The Big Switch" by Nicholas Carr as a very enlightened view of our changing world. On July 17th, Information Week's Richard Martin also referenced it: "'One of the thorniest issues' raised by the rise of cloud computing, writes Nicholas Carr , author of The Big Switch, a recent book about the shift of most common computing tasks and applications to the Internet, 'involves the variations in national laws governing the storage and use of personal and other information.'" Richard also noted an earlier Wall Street Journal report: "Meanwhile, U.S. intelligence agencies are hesitantly harnessing the power of the cloud to better promote national security. 'Intellipedia lets 37,000 officials at the CIA, FBI, NSA, and other U.S. intelligence agencies share information and even rate one another for accuracy in password-protected wikis, some 'top secret,' reports Gordon Cro...

Less than 2% of the CIOs in an Infoworld survey said that cloud computing was a priority. The surveyed indicated that server virtualization and server consolidation are their No. 1 and No. 2 priorities. Following these two are cost cutting, application integration, and datacenter consolidation. At the bottom of the list of IT priorities are grid computing, open source software, content management, and cloud computing (called on-demand/utility computing in the survey). Since cloud computing is all about virtualization and server consolidation these kind of numbers really concern me? Last week during the SOA-R education session , Bob Lozano of Appistry actually talked about how enterprises are integrating public and private clouds today in order to meet virtualization, consolidation and cost cutting goals. His full presentation is available in the SOA-R Interactive Networking Group wiki . Elastra is also addressing this enerprise need. They are working on a version of Cloud Server for...

This week, Dataline is participating in Operation Golden Phoenix . Operation Golden Phoenix is a four-day multi-agency collaborative training event designed to assist federal, state and local agencies with large and complex incident response scenarios. The exercise implements FEMA's concept of an all-hazards approach to emergency management fostering every level of government to partner to achieve common goals. It's designed to integrate emergency management planning into mainstream policy-making and operational systems. The lead agency for Golden Phoenix '08 is U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Many national and international participants and observers from over 100 federal agencies will attend. These include DHS, DOD (U.S. Navy), DEA, FBI, DOJ, DOE, Marine Corps Reserve, California National Guard, NGOs and industry partners. During the exercise, a backpack-sized, Dataline solar powered mobile communications kit ( http://www.dataline.com/products.htm ) will be used to pr...

In part 1 , I discussed my views on the top 10 mistakes that vendors make while designing a SaaS platform as described in the post at GigaOM. This post, the part 2, has my strategic recommendations to SaaS vendors on some of the important topics that are typically excluded from the overall platform strategy. Don't simply reduce TCO, increase ROI: According to an enterprise customer survey carried out by McKinsey and SandHill this year, the buying centers for SaaS are expected to shift towards the business with less and less IT involvement. A SaaS vendor should design a platform that not only responds to the changing and evolving business needs of a customer but can also adapt to changing macro-economic climate to server customer better. Similarly a vendor should carve out a Go To Market strategy targeting the businesses to demonstrate increased ROI and not necessarily just reduced TCO even if they are used selling a highly technical component to IT. The Long Tail : SaaS appr...

In an interview with Computerworld , published in the New York Times , John Garing expanded on his goals for the DISA cloud computing initiative. Garing said that, "... he and his staff have met with their counterparts at businesses such as Google Inc. , Amazon.com Inc. , United Parcel Service of America Inc. and travel-reservation systems operator Sabre Holdings Corp. to talk about how the companies use technology. A pending trip to FedEx Corp. is scheduled for next week". Garing said that he wants to learn all he can from the companies, and that it's important to do so "because most of us are the prisoners of our own experience." From the meetings that have been held thus far, Garing is convinced that cloud-based IT services will be the future of military data processing. Cloud computing is "going to be the way it has to be," he said. "We have to get to this standard environment that is provisionable and scalable."

According to the Financial Post, a Merrill Lynch Note estimates that cloud computing could be a $160B market by 2011. The companies that they see in the marketplace are shown below in a Markus Klems diagram

On July 16th, SOA-R held it's first of six educational sessions on cloud computing for national security missions. Presenters during this first event were: Steven L Armentrout, PhD President & CEO Parabon "Grids, Clouds and Computation: Getting to Ground Truth under Mostly Cloudy Conditions" Bob Lozano Co-Founder & Chief Strategist Appistry "Private Clouds: Cloud Computing for Intelligence, Defense and the Enterprise" Todd Wiseman Manager, Federal Enterprise Google "Implications of cloud computing" Greg Boss Cloud Infrastructure Architect IBM "What is Cloud Computing?" Presentations will be made available at the SOA-R Interactive Networking Group wiki . (Registration required for access)

Cloud computing is fraught with security risks , according to analyst firm Gartner. Smart customers will ask tough questions, and consider getting a security assessment from a neutral third party before committing to a cloud vendor, Gartner says in a June report titled “ Assessing the Security Risks of Cloud Computing .” The seven key risks are: Privileged user access Regulatory compliance Data location Data segregation Recovery Investigative support; and Long-term viability

Last week, the Google Cloud Computing Group debated the definition of net-centric. The key thought was that net-centric was nothing more than internet-centric or basically "online" and therefore it really meant nothing. I kind of disagreed with that view and thought that I should repeat my thoughts here: "In a true sense you're right about the definition of net-centric. Truth, however, is in the eyes of your target audience. In the DoD, Homeland Security and Intelligence Community world, net-centric warfare and net-centric operations are not simply about the act of being on-line. It's about applying the information you can glean from being on-line and applying that information to a specific situation. The Net-Centric Environment is a framework for full human and technical connectivity and interoperability that allows all DOD users and mission partners to share the information they need, when they need it, in a form they can understand and act on with confidence, ...

"The world's first journal devoted to the delivery of massively scalable IT resources as a service using Internet technologies has been launched by SYS-CON Media. The all-new " Cloud Computing Journal " is the latest in a series of leading-edge additions to its 25-plus stable of online and print publications such as Virtualization Journal , Web 2.0 Journal , AJAX & RIA Journal , Open Web Developer's Journal , and iPhone Developer's Journal ."

The presentations for the first session of the SOA-R Educational Series sesion have just been announced: Steven L Armentrout, PhD President & CEO Parabon Grids, Clouds and Computation: Getting to Ground Truth under Mostly Cloudy Conditions For the past decade - under the banners of distributed computing, cluster computing, grid computing and, now, cloud computing - network-centric computing architectures have evolved steadily toward the inevitable: computation delivered as an on-demand service. The economic, temporal and analytical benefits of this utility-style model are, indeed, compelling and now that secure implementations are available, Federal adoption has accelerated, albeit not as swiftly as the hype around it. This presentation will dispel many popular misconceptions about grids, clouds and computation. You will walk away with a greater understanding of the industry, as well as a checklist of considerations designed to help you effectively leverage "computation on ...

In SAN vs cloud storage - a gray or silver lining? , Joseph Hunkins review last December's observations of cloud storage by Chris Mellor of Techworld: "Google does not use a storage area network (SAN). It has no world-wide network-attached storage (NAS) infrastructure. Instead it uses thousands of Linux servers with cheap disks - direct-attached storage (DAS) - and organises their contents inside its own Google File System (GFS).Cloud computing storage is the antithesis of traditional SAN and NAS storage. The good news is that relatively few organisations will have the size needed to build out cloud computing infrastructures. The bad news for SAN and NAS storage vendors is that they could be so incredibly massive as to trigger a significant migration of their customers to using storage-as-a-service on the massive clouds provided by Google, Amazon and others." Of particular interest to me were his quotes on storage cost. "Where SAN costs will run in the neighborhood...

In December of 2005, Prof. Paul A. Strassmann of George Mason University , provided an excellent outline for cloud computing success in a netcentric environment: Network-Centric Requirements (2010) • Downtime ( 1 Gigabyte/sec); • Access ( 8 sigma). Network-Centric Principles (Google) 1. Build & operate protected information network; 2. Offer universal connectivity for: – Collection, processing and storing of information; – Provide secured communications. 3. Maintain shared data models; 4. Require continued upgrading & innovation. Network Centric Architecture Strategy: Occupy Internet Labor and capital in network Infrastructure is universal Network controls in network Pay for Use Data assembled in context These still ring true today.

The upstart radio show Takeaway's producers worked with the d.school at Stanford to apply design thinking approach to their show that competes with NPR's Morning Edition. It is quite an interesting story about how a legacy media industry can discard a traditional approach and embrace design thinking to rapidly iterate on the design of a radio show. "A three-day crash course taught the producers the basic steps of d.school innovation: observe, brainstorm, prototype, and implement; repeat as necessary." "The program's central idea is a daily question that audiences are asked to riff upon, either by calling in or by emailing. Their responses are then woven into the rest of the show's programming." Not spelled out in so many words in the story but this is a good example of user-centered and participatory design with a crowdsourcing twist to it. "But recognizing shortcomings and criticism and iterating quickly is one of the design process's cor...

In "Cloudy Times", Markus Klems is having a good discussion on how cloud computing stakeholders classify the various infrastructure options. I then thought that it would be good for me to repeat my input here as well. When asked this question, I first describe three layers: Layer 1 - Hardware virtualization - This is the "bare metal" layer of storage and CPU virtualization Layer 2 - Application virtualization - This is when you use web services or APIs to provide a specific function or capability. Layer 3 - Process virtualization - This is when you string web services and APIs together to deliver value (function or capability) to an end user Different infrastructure terms can then be used to describe how these layers are put together: Layer 1 is grid computing, utility computing or IaaS. The specific descriptive term is a function of the business model used to deliver the capability Layer 1 delivered with layer 2 is PaaS. A developer uses the platform services or AP...

The Implemetation of Network-Centric Warfare "Warfare is about human behavior in a context of organized violence directed toward political ends. So, network-centric warfare (NCW) is about human behavior within a networked environment. 'The network' is a noun, the information technology, and can only be the enabler. 'To network' is the verb, the human behavior, the action, and the main focus. So, implementation of NCW must look beyond the acquisition of the technical enablers to individual and organizational behavior, e.g., organizational structure, processes, tactics, and the way choices are made. In other words, all elements of the enterprise are in play." A. K. Cebrowski Director, Office of Force Transformation Office of the Secretary of Defense

DISA and HP are clearly on the path towards cloud computing . At it's core, net-centric operations requires the effective delivery of information to forward forces and the translation of that information into a competitive warfighting advantage. DISA's mission of supporting global net-centric solutions is well served by their recently launched cloud computing initiative. Although RACE is focused on delivering infrastructure resources, it still is a critical first step towards the realization of a cloud computing infrastructure. DISA, as the primary net-centric enabler, should next look toward providing the needed application layer. To this end, it should also look to industry for innovations in the emerging cloud computing arena. Best practices from industry leaders like Google , IBM, CISCO, and others can offer insight into supporting technologies, such as Web 2.0, IPv6, Everything-over-IP, converged routing, etc ., as well as, provide insight to how to truely provide informat...

Byte and Switch reported today that the Department of Defense (DoD) has confirmed that HP will help the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) deploy a major cloud computing infrastructure. Grid Today reported that HP today announced that it will be supplying the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) with scalable technology to enable its Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) to deploy a cloud computing infrastructure. According to Grid Today, HP will provide DISA a broad array of HP products, software and services to implement and support the cloud infrastructure. HP software featured in the solution includes HP Operations Orchestration, HP Server Automation, HP Service Manager, HP Operations Manager, HP Systems Insight Manager and HP ProLiant Essentials. HP will also provide ProLiant server blades, implementation services and on-site operations management.

Scheduled speakers and topics for the first SOA-R Cloud Computing Education event are: Steve Armentrout, Parabon, President & CEO Grid to Cloud Computing Greg Boss, IBM, Lead Cloud Solution Architect What is Cloud Computing? Bob Lozano, Appistry, Founder & Chief Strategist Private Clouds: Cloud Computing for Intelligence, Defense and the Enterprise Todd Wiseman, Google, Manager, Google Federal Enterprise Implications of cloud computing Registration is still available at www.dataline.com/soar.htm

From "The various level of cloud computing" by Ross Cooney Applications in the cloud: Software as a Service (SaaS). Examples include gmail, yahoo mail, Hotmail, the various search engines, wikipedia, encyclopedia britannica, etc. Platforms in the cloud: Developers write their application to a open specification and then upload their code into the cloud where the app is run on the cloud infrastructure with automatic scale-up as application usage grows. Examples include Mosso, Google App Engine, and Force.com Infrastructure in the cloud: Developers and system administrators obtain general compute, storage, queueing, and other resources and run their applications with the fewest limitations. This is the most powerful type of cloud in that virtually any application and any configuration that is fit for the internet can be mapped to this type of service. an example of this is Amazon Web Services

InfoWorld Special Report on Cloud Computing InformationWeek Guide to Cloud Computing InfoWorld Cloud Computing Strategy Guide Cloud Computing Product Guide A Brief History of Cloud Computing Business Week CEO Guide to Cloud Computing

According to Information Week , Microsoft plans to make three important business software offerings -- Exchange, Office Communications, and SharePoint -- available in SaaS versions for business this year, but it's still very much a soft sell: Microsoft senior VP Chris Capossela told InformationWeek that cloud computing isn't going to be cheaper than on-premise software and infrastructure, because "You're going to pay forever. ... It's a subscription, for goodness' sake." UPDATE Microsoft says "Focus on SaaS" Microsoft CEO Ballmer said he believed "the cloud," applications and other computing services offered by vendors, will grow at a faster pace than hosting opportunities for solution providers. And he said Microsoft can't afford to delay its cloud computing efforts while competitors push ahead. The CEO also said Microsoft has plans to re-engineer its server products as it introduces more cloud computing services, but he didn'...

In a ComputerworldUK article , incoming Intel CIO Diane Bryant says that she will network with fellow information chiefs, examine cloud computing and advocate using the chip giant’s internal operations as a test-bed for product development.

I cannot overemphasize how critical it is to get the SaaS platform design right upfront. GigaOM has a post that describes the top 10 mistakes that vendors make while designing a SaaS platform . I would argue that many of these mistakes are not specific to a SaaS platform but any platform. I agree with most of the mistakes and recommendations, however I have quite the opposite thoughts about the rest. I also took an opportunity to think about some of the design and architectural must have characteristics of a SaaS platform that I will describe in the part 2 of this post. 1) Failing to design for rollback "...you can only make one tweak to your current process, make it so that you can always roll back any code changes..." This is a universal truth for any design decision for a platform irrespective of the delivery model, SaaS or on-premise. eBay makes it a good case study to understand the code change management process called "trains" that can track down code in a...

As the national security community considers cloud computing as an IT infrastructure option, it is surely looking at the value of the cloud in an information sharing world. Implementation of the recently signed Presidential Memoradum on Controlled Unclassified Information is an imporant challenge that may be met by the deployment of a government cloud. “(1) This memorandum (a) adopts, defines, and institutes "Controlled Unclassified Information" (CUI) as the single, categorical designation henceforth throughout the executive branch for all information within the scope of that definition, which includes most information heretofore referred to as "Sensitive But Unclassified" (SBU) in the Information Sharing Environment (ISE), and (b) establishes a corresponding new CUI Framework for designating, marking, safeguarding, and disseminating information designated as CUI. The memorandum's purpose is to standardize practices and thereby improve the sharing of information...

Late last week I asked the following question on linkedIn "Are Cloud Computing concepts applicable in secure national security and law enforcement arenas (i.e. Defense, Homeland Security, Intelligence, Justice)? If so, how? If not, why? " The responses were very interesting: Software Architect - I think they are certainly applicable. Speaking specifically of Amazon's Web Services, security is one of the main pillars of the platform and all of their services provide the ability to lock down access. ..... Auditing security on well-known cloud computing platforms is actually much simpler than in-house computing as knowledge of the systems in use is much more broad and transparent. Sr. Advisory Architect - They already are, and have been for quite some time IT Business Consultant manager - I can image that many business strategists or security architects who are new to the concept will balk at the idea of allowing information to live in a cloud they don't control and will...

From The Information Factories by George Gilder of Wired Magazine "The facility in The Dalles is only the latest and most advanced of about two dozen Google data centers, which stretch from Silicon Valley to Dublin. All told, it's a staggering collection of hardware, whose constituent servers number 450,000, according to the lowest estimate. The extended Googleplex comprises an estimated 200 petabytes of hard disk storage – enough to copy the Net's entire sprawling cornucopia dozens of times – and four petabytes of RAM. To handle the current load of 100 million queries a day, its collective input-output bandwidth must be in the neighborhood of 3 petabits per second."