Information Week

VMware isn't letting much moss accumulate under its feet as it continues expanding what it plans to do with its virtualization software portfolio. VMware executives have taken to expressing the expanding horizons of virtualization as a theme. They say they refer customers to "the journey," not one set of limited data center goals.

Two years ago it would have been impossible for a professional manager’s association to produce a position paper, Guiding Data Centers to Cloud Computing. The “cloud” was still being disparaged in too many quarters. Now it’s become respectable. I miss the days when the topic was more disputable and, in some quarters, disreputable.

HP's trumping of Dell's bid for 3PAR is a masterful preemptive strike. HP is certainly not that interested in 3PAR and will most likely not counter offer should Dell choose to pursue the deal. What HP is interested in is making the buy as expensive as possible for Dell in order to throw a wrench into the PC giant's further acquisitions ambitions.

As IT shops look at their gains from consolidating servers, they realize this was just a first step brought about by implementing virtualization. Once you've consolidated, you realize how many more steps are both possible and necessary if virtualization is going to lead to more payback.

For enterprises, one of the biggest challenges with cloud computing include transparency into the operational, policy and regulatory, and security controls of cloud providers. For cloud providers, one of their pressing challenges is answering all of the audit and information gathering requests from customers and prospects. CloudAudit aims to change that.

RightScale announced a little while ago that it was managing over one million servers in the cloud through its management platform. That would be a million virtual, not physical, machines, but the number is still impressive. Maybe the return on cloud computing lies in supplying front-end management as much as in infrastructure.

In addition to Mark Shuttlesworth, CEO of Cannonical; Simon Crosby, CTO of the cloud division at Citrix Systems; and Paul Maritz, CEO of VMware, lets add another distinguished South African to the annals of virtualization and cloud computing: Chris Pinkham, founder and CEO of Nimbula.

The news that Google Apps for Government achieved FISMA certification and accreditation makes it easier for Uncle Sam to sign up for Google's cloud services. But what does that milestone actually mean for federal agencies?

Hadoop, the system that takes advantage of a large cluster for sorting masses of data, looks like a rapidly evolving piece of cloud software. Cloudera, the company that includes original Hadoop author, Doug Cutting, issued a Hadoop front end and deployment system to make it easier to use recently.

In June, Red Hat moved its Deltacloud open source project into the Apache Software Foundation's incubator. In July, Rackspace made its Cloud Files code open source and will collaborate with partners in the OpenStack project. The Open Cloud Standards Incubator at the DMTF is producing another set. Isn't this just too much open source?

Google's announcement Monday that it was formally releasing a version of its application suite for government doesn't just represent a Google sales push, but in some ways also indicates that although the federal government is stepping up its cloud computing push, much work remains.

Google on Tuesday is adding two new features to Google Docs: The ability to translate documents into one of 53 languages and the ability to remove smartquotes.

There's a new kid in town when it comes to open source code in the cloud. It's Rackspace's OpenStack, based on both Rackspace's and NASA Nebula's existing cloud engines. Wasn't there already sufficient open source code in play? Why do we need this initiative on top of those already afoot? Actually, we need 3-4 such initiatives.

Last week I read a few interesting articles about storage in desktop virtualization, VDI in particular. The consensus is that this storage belongs on local disk, not the SAN. One industry expert even says you can use SSDs locally and still get away for less money. I beg to differ.

Despite the fact that most of the underlying technology of cloud computing is based on open source, much of the current wave of cloud computing platforms are closed. But a new open source initiative is hoping to fully open up cloud computing.

A UK pest control company with an international presence has standardized on Google Gmail and Google Apps as a way to tie together a diverse company in 50 countries. "This was never about cost reduction. It was about collaboration," said CIO Bryan Kinsella at the Cloud Computing World Forum in London.

Fast, inexpensive primary storage that can store all your files and host all your applications that you don’t have to have in your data center sounds like nirvana, but it may be coming sooner than you think. In some situations it is ready now.

The National Health Service in Britain isn’t universally admired for its IT efficiency. But Miles Gray, the urbane hardware solutions architect for the NHS, said at the Cloud Computing World Forum in London that if carefully implemented, the cloud can help the service gain effectiveness and save expenses.