Author: Alex Williams

The Google Apps Marketplace has launched a YouTube channel to promote its third-party partners.

Less than a third of the vendors have posted videos to the YouTube channel. Google Apps is not rocket science but the idea of integrating third-party applications into Google Apps is a new concept for most customers. The YouTube channel will by no means make an app successful. But it does provide a channel to explain what the product does and how it fits with Google Apps Marketplace. And the video can be used in different channels, too, such as on a blog or Facebook.

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So far, the YouTube channel includes 16 videos. Overall, 60 vendors are now part of the Google Apps Marketplace. Some of the videos are pretty professional, done in the Common Craft vein. But surprisingly, many are pretty mediocre, telling us little about the products and how they integrate with Google Apps Marketplace. Others tell too much about how the product works, not providing a clear value statement about the integration.

Of the videos on the YouTube channel, Aviary is one of our favorites. Aviary is a service with tools to create graphics, edit images and do basic design. In smart fashion, Aviary then uses its blog to show how they used their own tools to produce the video.

Jira Studios from Atassian is a service to manage software development projects. It’s short and to the point, telling us why the service is a value to customers.

The YouTube video from Concur Breeze is entertaining but it does not explain the product at all. Only in the last few seconds do we see someone doing their expenses online using the Concur product.

On the contrary, Expensify gets right to the point. It’s just 32 seconds. It looks like a video the founder made it with a USB microphone but that’s okay. He gets to the point – fast.

Mindmeister is mind mapping tool. They show the problem that comes when fleshing out ideas then go directly into a demo of how the product work and fits with Google Apps Marketplace.

Drawloop has a complex product to explain but 2:42 is a bit too long for most people. Tell this story in less than 90 seconds and we think it could have a lot more value for the viewer.

Conclusion

The vendors that created videos for Google Apps Marketplace deserve some credit for at least taking advantage of the YouTube channel. But what is it about trying to be cute? Some of these videos are like advertisements. That can be fine and well for a blog or for an event but it seems like a lost opportunity for a YouTube channel on Google Apps Marketplace.

Discuss

The Google break from China raises some questions for the enterprise considering cloud computing. It’s one thing if the network goes down. That can be fixed. But when the government does its own blockade, that’s another story.

Google Apps customers face this very issue. Google has the thorny task of explaining to its customers of what they may expect when using Google Apps in mainland China.

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First off, it’s important to clarify that Google is not shutting itself out of the China market. Google has stopped censoring its search services: Google Search, Google News, and Google Images on its Chinese domain, www.google.cn. But Google intends to continue to do R&D in China ad it will maintain a sales presence there.

But for people working in China, there can be a bit of a mixed message. What if you are using Google Apps in Beijing? What can you expect? To keep customers updated, Google has created a Google Apps status dashboard that updates daily to show what in the Google network is working on a day-to-day basis.

Google Groups, Blogger, YouTube and Google Sites are entirely blocked. This could pose a number of issues. For example, a customer may use Google Sites for an intranet, project site or an employee profile page. You could go on with the issues this presents but basically it’s one of the downsides when using a cloud computing service in face of a repressing regime.

Google has some recommendations for those doing business in China:

“… it is important to know that there are several networking configurations and associated technologies available to help ensure ongoing access to your critical business services such as Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Docs. These network configurations, such as a Virtual Private Network (VPN) connection, secure shell (SSH) tunneling, or using a proxy server, are already in place by many businesses with worldwide operations who serve their users from various locations. Companies should consult their own technical, legal and policy personnel to find a solution that works best for them.”

But then what if the applications do work? Where is the data? Who can access it?

Google says it does not host a customer’s data in mainland China nor do Google employees in China not have access to Apps systems or customer data.

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CA completed its acquisition of 3Tera today in what seems like a successive line of announcements about CA’s push into the cloud as an infrastructure service provider.

In fact, the 3Tera announcement feels like yesterday’s news in wake of the most recent announcement that CA is acquiring Nimsoft, the California based startup. Overall, CA has been a buying spree, acquiring a total of five companies in the cloud world. In addition to 3Tera and Nimsoft, CA has also purchased Cassatt, NetQos and Oblicore.

CA realizes that the halycon days of being an IT vendor are as solid as vaporous cloud. The real future is in adapting to the enterprise and its efforts to shed IT assets and move its applications to a cloud environment.

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The 3Tera and Nimsoft acquisitions exemplify this move.

3Tera

3Tera’s AppLogic is a cloud management platform to move applications to a public or private cloud. It’s widely viewed that AppLogic gives CA the ability to provide service providers with a set of management tools. It also gives 3Tera the capability to sell to enterprise customers. Some of the challenges concern the scope of AppLogic’s virtualization capabilities. It is limited currently to the Xen platform. This could prove an issue as most companies have standardized on VMware. CA says it will broaden AppLogic’s virtualization capabilities to VMware ESX and Microsoft HyperV.

Nimsoft

Nimsoft is a cloud management platform and benchmarking service. Cloud computing sounds fine and good but how it compares to on-premise applications can be a challenge to quantify. Nimsoft provides a unified monitoring environment for Google Apps, Salesforce.com, Amazon Web Services and Rackspace. Nimsoft also provides benchmarking tools that actually test and compare the differences, giving quantified results about the actual performance.

What’s Next?

As stated on GigaOm, CA will hold its annual CA World event in May. We will learn more what is in store at that time. But we can expect to see its cloud strategy unfold a bit more, including SaaS services with upgrades at a pace that we see with SaaS providers.

The cloud management market is getting quite competitive but we have to keep in mind that customers are still a bit wary about cloud computing. And when companies are wary it means long decision making processes. And that means a longer sales cycle for the likes of companies like CA.

Discuss

IBM, Canonical and Simmtronics will offer emerigng markets a fully loaded, cloud-connected Netbook for $190. It’s a clear example of how a cloud-based approach fits with the emerging Netbook market and its importance in the global marketplace as a channel for enterprise collaboration technologies.

The Simmtronics Simmbook will initially be available in South Africa and emerging markets. In addition to African countries, the Simmbook will also be available in India, Thailand and Vietnam.

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The Simmbook will come preloaded with IBM Client for Smart Work, which includes IBM software like Lotus Symphony and access to IBM LotusLive cloud collaboration services. The Simmbook will run Ubuntu from Canonical as its operating system.

The Simmbook is one of the first Netbook to provide direct access to the cloud by offering a package of online collaboration tools. The OS is not cloud-based but LotusLive is a robust enough application suite to give customers a cloud environment that should prove useful and less expensive than the costs of a Windows-based operating system.

Simmbook launched in India at the beginning of the year. Simmtronics is an electronics company with a 20-year history developing motherboards, memory modules and graphic cards. Leadership By Numbers explains how Simmtronics competes at such a low price point:

“The Simmbook is where they have put all the pieces together, to enter the laptop market with a low-cost netbook….Managing Director, Indrajit Sabharwal of Simmtronics pointed out that “because the motherboard and memory is 25% of overall cost,” Simmtronics has a competitive pricing edge. By removing the expense of a Microsoft operating system, and relying on Ubuntu (Windows XP is an option, at an increased expense), Simmtronics has created a mobile computing device with 1 G of RAM, Intel Atom processor and a 160 HD that will be selling in the neighborhood of $250 US. “

Simmbook has another edge to it. It’s OS is open-source. The IBM software is built on open standards.

Earlier this week we discussed LotusLive and its strong growth. We got a little grief from our commenters. So, how do you view this? At this point it seems plausible that Google Apps and Lotus Live will compete to some degree in the Netbook market channel.

Part of the strategy here is to convince IT managers in emerging markets that the Netbook is a legitimate alternative to the PC, especially when it comes pre-loaded with Ubuntu and productivity applications with no custom work required.

Our biggest question concerns the availability of broadband to take advantage of cloud-based collaboration services. A Netbook is viable due its low cost and capabilities compared to a PC. Reliable broadband? That seems to be a challenge well out of the control of IBM and its partners.

Discuss

In growing technology markets, the rate of innovation increases as the technologies become more accessible. That’s what is most significant about the announcement from Dell today that it is now offering servers, loaded and ready to go.

The servers are designed with the power and optimized for customers that wish to create their own cloud-based infrastructures, be they public or private services.

For instance, this might include customers that provide high performance computing (HPC), SaaS or wish to build their own public or private cloud.

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Dell’s Mark Cathcart puts it this way:

“Perhaps significantly, one of the more important parts of this set of announcements are the turnkey cloud solutions comprised of pre-tested, pre-assembled and fully-supported hardware, software and services enabling customers easily and quickly to deploy and manage cloud infrastructures with confidence, taking much of the guesswork out of building and running efficient private and public clouds. This is a key theme of our “Efficient Enterprise” Strategy and best value solutions.”

Of interest is Microsoft’s involvement with Dell. The two will work together on the Windows Azure platform. Microsoft will continue to invest in Dell hardware for Windows Azure infrastructure.

The new push is focused on mid to medium-sized businesses. These are companies that face increasing data demands that can overcome a company’s infrastructure. According to a post on Venture Beat, IDC estimates that companies store 500 billion gigabytes of data today and that will double every 18 months.

People are communicating via their smart phones and portable devices in addition to the work done in the office. With a spike, a company can find itself with its network down.

The new servers also represent a new generation of hardware that is designed to save on power consumption and cooling, major costs associated with data centers.

According to Dell, the PowerEdge C-Series servers come in three basic models:

• PowerEdge C1100: This is a high-memory, power-efficient, cluster-optimized compute node server
• PowerEdge C2100: High performance data analytics, cloud compute platform and cloud storage server
• PowerEdge C6100: 4-node cloud and cluster optimized shared infrastructure server

The servers run on Intel’s quad-core Xeon 5500 and six-core Xeon 5600 processors.

Discuss

Microsoft is testing a microblogging service called OfficeTalk that is much like Twitter. The service is designed for the enterprise and appears it will be offered as an on-premise service.

OfficeTalk is being developed by OfficeLabs, the Microsoft lab for testing internally developed ideas.

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The service looks almost identical to Twitter. Microsoft says themselves that they are in the very early stages of development and because of this “the OfficeTalk microblogging experience itself looks very similar to other well-known services.”

Microsoft is testing the service pretty much internally but is now accepting external requests from companies that want to join the pilot program.

Microsoft has a few screen shots of the OfficeTalk user interface. People create profiles. They communicate in 140 characters or less. You read the message of the people you follow. It includes a search functionality to find people on the service.

A company feed shows the posts of all the people who are posting. Like Twitter, you can see the person’s profile, the number of mentions, posts, followers and people who the user is following. It also has a url shortening service and threaded conversations they call comments.

Microsoft is pretty late to the market with OfficeTalk. Socialtext, Socialcast, Yammer and a host of others have been offering their services for at least a year. It could be a service that integrates with Sharepoint or the Office suite.

OfficeTalk is very early in development but it’s clear that Microsoft is seeking to differentiate by offering it as an on-premise service. The reality is that Microsoft will continue to offer on-premise and cloud-based services for a long time across a good part of its product line. So why limit OfficeTalk to on-premise? We are sure that will change. A microblogging service is a natural cloud offering.

Discuss

The effort to bring Facebook into the enterprise continues with more services using Outlook as a gateway to extend a contact network and use as a foundations for a CRM environment.

SenderOK is one of the latest effiorts to give more context to email by showing a picture of the sender in an email message. Too bad it only works on Windows XP or Vista. Ugh.

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But let’s take a look at the service as we are seeing more services that use email as a foundation for a social CRM environment.

SenderOK compares itself to Microsoft’s Outlook Soclal Connector and Xobni, an email plug-in that provides a search and profile element for Outlook. But we hear a lot of criticism that Xobni is a memory hog and slows down computers.

As one reader said about Xobni in our last post concerning Outlook plug-ins:

“Interesting article, although I have my doubts about Xobni which I used for several months but had to uninstall as it had gotten to the point where it was nearly impossible to use (too slow). Harmony sounds promising; sharing documents in place of merely sending them as attachments (hence overloading the network) is becoming critical if one wants to keep only one copy and not scatter several around.”

To be fair, Xobni is the leader in this space compared to other services. They have a loyal following. It makes sense that companies like SenderOK would go after this sector of the market.

SenderOK features include a smart mapping capability to give a view of the person’s unread email across multiple accounts. It will also prioritize the email.

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Our interest stems from the SenderOK “business card” feature. Email includes an image of the person and their profile information in the header of the message. In Outlook Social Connector, the image of the sender blocks out the message. In Xobni, the image and contact information appears in a widget.

We expect these services to proliferate as more startups turn their attention to Outlook as a way to build a user base. Xobni has proven that this approach works.

Further, Google Apps now integrates with third party applications. Services such as Zoho CRM and Intuit are leveraging GMail integration to offer hybrid applications.

Perhaps 2010 will be the year email is viewed more as a foundation than a nuisance to be eliminated.

Discuss

We store music on iTunes despite its stringent DRM, preventing us from freely sharing music. But like any innovation in the marketplace, it takes time for us to determine what is acceptable and what is not. The promise of cloud computing and the ability to store limitless amounts of music may perhaps be that turning point.

But it could also mark a more stringent time than we have ever known.

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Canonical has unveiled the public beta of its Ubuntu One music store that gives a glimpse of what cloud computing may offer as an alternative to storing music on our hard drives or a proprietary service like iTunes. This is new territory. As Canonical point out, integrating a cloud service like Ubuntu One with buying music is new for digital music stores.

Ubuntu One serves as a desktop music service that stores the music in the cloud and syncs it with your computer. It allows someone to purchase music and then store it in their Ubuntu One account. Ubuntu One also serves as a service to store other kinds of information such as images or documents.

The service will go live in late April to coincide with Ubuntu’s new release. In the meantime, Canonical is looking for beta testers to give it a try. Helpful infomation is on the Popey blog:

As with everything in Ubuntu Lucid, the developers are keen to get people testing the store before Lucid is shipped at the end of April. If you’re running Ubuntu Lucid either on bare metal or inside a Virtual Machine, it would help greatly if you could take some time to test this new functionality. So far only a very limited number of beta testers have been using the store, so opening up the store to public scrutiny should generate plenty of feedback to the developers.

These are the early days of music services that allows you to purchase, store music in the cloud and sync with your computer or smartphone And it comes with definite kinks. The Ubuntu One service is free for up to 2 gigabytes of storage. If you go beyond that you start to pay. That could happen pretty quickly as people can use the service to store any kind of information they want.

Plus, there are the copyright laws that have had to be taken into consideration for the service.

Music, in some respects, defines how we view the ways we store information. Music is deeply personal. We want easy access to it. We want it always to be there. Cloud services may provide this capability but they also run the risk of acting as walled gardens that can be controlled perhaps even more easily than a service like iTunes.

Discuss

In last week’s poll, we asked what companies will be at the top of cloud in the next few years. The answers demonstrate the current state of the market and the perceptions about who we see as leaders.

We had more than 1,500 responses. Google had the most votes with 288. Amazon came in second with 202 votes and Microsoft came in third with a total of 148 votes.

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This week we want to know if all this debate about the definition of cloud computing is really getting us nowhere:

James Governor of RedMonk says the debate is like the ones we always see when we get hit with a new wave of technology. He quotes his colleague Michael Coté:

:The other day I was reading some of his notes and came across this line of beautiful simplicity.
a simple mapping:
IaaS = servers, storage
PaaS = middleware
SaaS = applications

There now, that wasn’t so hard was it? Now that is what I call a burger. The next time someone tries to take you through 30 slides explaining the cloud you can just nod sagely, and say… “ohhhh. you mean servers, middleware and apps. Yeah I get it.”

Problems arise when there is no clear view about what cloud computing actually means. That’s the issue now facing U.S. federal agencies. From next.gov:

“The federal government has pretty significant efforts going on, but one of the things we realized is that there were multiple flowers blooming and not a lot of guidance,” said Eugene Huang, government operations director for the National Broadband Task Force, a panel of FCC officials, consultants and technology experts.

So, what do you think? Do we need to do a better job in defining cloud computing?

Discuss

The disruptive forces of Enterprise 2.0 may seem to provide the new players with a certain opportunity for companies looking at new ways to streamline but also scale productivity and innovation.

But can these small companies really make any dent in the market when they face the giants that increasingly offer similar services? Sure, the new players innovate. But look at the size of the channel that a company like IBM has to market its services.

A case in point is today’s announcement by IBM about the gains with LotusLive and new additions to Lotus Foundations.

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Of course, to win, it takes high quality products, too. But IBM seems to have a contender with LotusLive. In January, IBM announced a big win with Panasonic. And today comes news that in the last two months, IBM has signed up 200 reseller partners to sell the LotusLive service.

LotusLive is available as cloud-based or on-premise, which correlates to IBM’s hybrid approach. IBM is investing heavily in the cloud but Lotus Foundations plays an important strategic role as an on-premise offering. And as of today, Lotus Foundations will be packaged with its DB-2 Express database. There are no limits on the database size nor limits on the number of databases per server.

We saw a demo of Lotus Foundations at Lotusphere in January. it is essentially an appliance that a small business can keep on-premise. The addition of the database means that a customer may use it with an internal application it uses. For example, a small retailer may use an application developed for its market sector.

The new features to Lotus Foundations comes as Microsoft plans to discontinue its Windows Essential Business Server (EBS). In a blog post, Microsoft said the service will be discontinued as of July 1. The company cited the advent of cloud computing as a factor for discontinuing the service:

Since the launch of EBS, several changes have occurred that drove our decision to streamline our server product portfolio. First, midsize businesses are rapidly turning to technologies such as management, virtualization and cloud computing as a means to cut costs, improve efficiency, and increase competitiveness.

Smaller companies competing in the enterprise collaboration space do not have the channels like those from a company like IBM. They have to be a player in the earliest stages of the market in order to gain any traction. We see some examples of this with companies integrating with Sharepoint and Google Apps Marketplace.

These smaller companies do disrupt the market but can only go so far when they face a competitor that commands a channel as deep as IBM’s.

Discuss

Marten Mickos move to become CEO of Eucalyptus Systems puts more shine on open-source cloud efforts. In particular, it drives discussion around open-source efforts such as Reservoir, Nimbus and Open Nebula.

But most of all, the attention of the market is now on Eucalyptus, the cloud fabric technology created in the labs at the University of California at Santa Barbara. It has since been adopted to create what we now know as private clouds.

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Mickos has a storied past in the world of open-source. He played a lead role at MySQL, helping grow to a company that reached $65 million in sales before being sold to Sun Microsystems for $1 billion.

Krishnan Subramananian makes a good point in his analysis of Mickos move. Mickos proved to the world how giving away its software could be a business model that works. Mickos steered MySQL into the enterprise. Its push into the enterprise made MySQL a threat to companies such as Oracle and IBM, which considered it a threat to their long-term hegemony.

For its part, Eucalyptus Systems has done very well with a simple free, plus services model. Eucalyptus gives away its software and then charges to integrate proprietary systems. The company garners additional revenue through support. Last September, Eucalyptus began offering an enterprise service in September, 2009 by offering integration with VMware and other hypervisors typically found in a data center, such as Xen and KVM.

Eucalyptus supports a number of third-party tools including RightScale. They partnered with Canonical to support Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud.

What will Mickos do with Eucalyptus? He will likely help steer the company deeper into the enterprise. And perhaps even finding a buyer for Eucalyptus, much like he did for MySQL.

Discuss

Watch this battle unfold. The virtualization wars are just getting started.

On one side we have Microsoft, which announced changes in its licensing structures this week. The change reflects an understanding that the customer wants full access to its virtualization platform and not be charged a tax for that right to access it on a PC, no matter if it is at work or in their home.

And in true fashion, Microsoft is on the attack, Citrix at its side, in a full on fight with VMware for the virtualization market.

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On the VMware side, we see a company ready to move into Microsoft’s customer base by offering more than virtualization as witnessed with its recent acquisition of Zimbra. VMWare is gearing up to tap into the Microsoft Exchange market by combining its virtualization technology with the Zimbra email platform.

Microsoft Offers Some Flexibility

Historically, Microsoft has charged for separate licenses to access Windows operating systems in a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) environment. Until now, there would be separate licensing fees for people to access their virtual desktops from secondary devices like home personal computers.

The licensing issue in all of this gets complicated pretty fast. According to Simon Bramfitt:

“Right from the start Microsoft showed that it had been listening to its customers’ feedback. As of July 1st Microsoft is rolling Virtual Enterprise Centralized Desktop (VECD) into the Windows Software Assurance (Windows SA) program. This means that anyone with Software Assurance can deploy desktops locally or in the data center at no additional cost. At the same time Microsoft is extending the remote access rights so that remote isn’t tethered to a single PC in the primary users’ home. This awareness of the fact that users want flexibility around when and where they work is the key element that has been missing from Microsoft’s virtualization strategy since day one.

If this wasn’t enough, Microsoft is introducing a new desktop virtualization license called Windows Virtual Desktop Access (Windows VDA) costing $100 per year per device and aimed at organizations who are using endpoints that do not have a Windows SA license – Contractors PCs, devices that are do not run Windows (e.g., thin-clients, smart phones and Apple Macs) and yes, PCs with OEM licenses. Hang-on, isn’t that just the same as the old non-SA VECD license? More or less, yes; it’s certainly cheaper, although at $100 per year not by much. What’s more important is that Windows VDA is now a first-class citizen in the Microsoft licensing hierarchy with all the benefits of Software Assurance (e.g., 24×7 support, upgrade/downgrade rights), and as a desktop virtualization license it gets the same extended roaming rights offered to the a full member of the SA club.”

VMWare, in smart retort, praises Microsoft for the move and bowing to “intense customer pressure.”

Raj Mallempati, director, product marketing, calls it an opening for VMWare View. You know it’s competitive when you see this kind of rhetoric:

By loosening up the restrictive desktop virtualization license policy (VECD), Microsoft has finally bowed to intensive customer pressure. This validates the acceleration in demand in the desktop virtualization industry that VMware helped start and continues to lead. Microsoft’s move here is extremely positive for the industry.

But what is Citrix part in all of this?

At the beginning of the year, VMWare offered the opportunity to exchange Citrix XenApp licenses for VMWare View. In response, Microsoft and Citrix announced a partnership this week aimed right at VMWare with some pretty attractive licensing deals.

The promotion intends to undercut VMWare by reaching into its customer base with offers to trade in as many as 500 licenses in exchange for a Microsoft integration offered with Citrix.

To kick it off, the two companies plan a 100-city tour.

But what this really represents is Microsoft providing some flexibility in its virtualization licensing agreements. That move alone will help open up the market.

And VMWare? The company has 80 percent of the virtualization market. Any move on its customer base should be expected. VMware’s vision for Zimbra is another matter. That’s a battle it is taking right back to Microsoft – square on its home turf.

Discuss

Novell is providing the first glimpse of Pulse, its new real-time collaboration service. The new service will eventually fully integrate with Google Wave. This version does not include Google Wave as part of its service. But there is an expectation that eventually the integration will serve as a federated platform that may serve as the basis for new open-source collaboration efforts.

Novell is releasing the service initially to analysts and participants at BrainShare, its user group meeting next week in Salt Lake City. Each person will get to invite one new user, Novell will provide a fuller release in the next few months. A release at the end of the year will include OpenID as a core aspect of the platform.

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The service resembles platforms that we see emerging. It has a real-time activity stream. People may create their own groups within an activity stream. Groups may also be created with external communities such as partners or customers. Pulse will be available as a SaaS or on-premise.

The service includes a co-editing feature, much like you see in Google Wave.

Novell Pulse looks like a viable alternative for the companies and government organizations that want a platform they can modify without concern about proprietary constraints. Still, it is clear that Pulse is in its infancy with a host of features needing integration.

We question how many people may use the service simultaneously. Google Wave has received criticism for its inability to handle large numbers of simultaneous users. Novell says it will see how many people the platform can handle. Of note is that the beta is so limited. It will essentially only be open to a very limited subset of the market. Perhaps it will spread through invites. We’ll see.

Its open-source roots make Pulse most compelling. The approach fits with the company’s roots. Novell sees an opportunity to federate with Google. The larger question will come down to how well the integration works with Google Wave.

Discuss

We’re seeing a few glimpses from Mix10 of what Windows Phone 7 Series will look like for the enterprise.

Perhaps most compelling is the continued emphasis on creating an experience more so than an enterprise “phone.” It appears that Microsoft has learned a lesson that is more apparent every day. People want smartphones as much for personal use as for business use.

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But Microsoft is saying little about what it does plan for the enterprise with its Windows Phone 7 Series. They say more is to come in the next few weeks but clearly the emphasis is on the consumer market, not the enterprise.

Network World did a little sniffing around Mix10 and did get a few tidbits of what we should expect:

• Windows Phone 7 is no longer enterprise-centric but the user experience is still catching the fancy of independent software vendors that want to sell it into the business market. The iPhone and Google Android are proof enough that people will find relevance for smartphones in the enterprise even if the devices are meant primarily for consumers.
• A developer community is ready and waiting to make applications for Windows Phone 7. Developers can create applications within a development environment they understand. Network World notes:
  “Visual Studio programmers can drag and drop controls onto a Windows Phone surface, bring in existing Silverlight libraries or Azure cloud projects, and wire them up to data sources, behaviors and services, just like they do when writing software for a Windows PC.”
• Microsoft is expected to offer a secure area within its Marketplace to accomodate enterprise applications. The intention wold be to provide a place where enterprise customers could download company specific software or the framework for their own marketplace. This would provide IT administrators with ways to administer applications within the enterprise.
• It’s uncertain what security features will become part of Windows Phone 7. Microsoft has historically provided Microsoft Exchange Active Sync which enables Windows Mobile devices the ability to sync with Microsoft Exchange. Actice Sync has offered a number of security features such as remote data wipe and encrypted connections. Will this rich security framework be kept intact? With such a consumer focus, it’s uncertain what will come of it.
• Windows Phone 7 includes an Office Hub, allowing people to create and edit Microsoft Office documents. Microsoft has put a lot of effort into making Sharepoint a mobile site. Windows Phone 7 will integrate with Microsoft Exchange. It appears users may set up tiles within Windows Phone 7 to edit and share Sharepoint documents.

It appears that Microsoft may not necessarily have to focus on the enterprise. Its rich user experience may be enough to get people interested. Core enterprise features will only help give Windows Phone 7 a chance to compete more effectively.

Discuss

What is the effect of the Oracle acquisition of Sun Microsystems on cloud computing? Well, there have been quite a few if you look at where Sun’s best and brightest have moved on to in the past few months.

Tim Bray is the latest Sun star to move on. You may know Bray as the co-founder of XML. Eve Maler is also a co-founder of XML. She had worked with Bray for many years until her departure from Sun last Spring to join PayPal. Eve as many of you many know, is one of the leaders in developing identity standards and initiatives.

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Perhaps the clearest example is evident at Rackspace where five developers from Sun were recently hired to work on Drizzle, a heavy duty system for high scaling applications in the cloud:

When it’s ready, Drizzle will be a modular system that’s aware of the infrastructure around it. It does, and will run well in hardware rich multi-core environments with design focused on maximum concurrency and performance. No attempt will be made to support 32-bit systems, obscure data types, language encodings or collations. The full power of C++ will be leveraged, and the system internals will be simple and easy to maintain. The system and its protocol are designed to be both scalable and high performance.

According to Rackspace, the service will “keep the good and remove the bad,” from MySQL. And here is where we see the power of open-source. We interviewed Bray today. He pointed out that open-source is developed outside the walls of the company.

So, in the midst of corporate upheaval, developers can move onto new places and not face any interruption in their work. That’s exactly what we see with the Drizzle team:

It feels like Oracle has lost a huge opportunity in the open-source community. The lucky ones are the companies that are picking up these talented people with faith that the open-source way represents the future of cloud computing.

Discuss

MindTouch has developed a top 20 list of the most powerful voices in open-source, compiled using Twitter and other sources. It’s a good example of how a research project can be transparent and in the process, help garner thought leadership for both the individual and the company.

MindTouch Vice President of Sales Mark Fidelman wrote a blog post yesterday, discussing the project and how they came to their findings.

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Our interest is in much the process as the results. This is the kind of approach that has a number of uses. It answers questions for the organization. It creates a center of intelligence for the open source community. And it serves as a useful resource for sales and marketing. It also helps show that real research can be done using a few simple tools.

Most of the people on the list will be of no surprise to veterans of the open-source world. Notables include Tim O’Reilly, Chris Messina and Jonathan Schwartz.

The results show the degree of amplification compared to the average active user. This is where you have to consider the “nuance” factor by defining what it means to be classified in such a manner. Fidelman explained the process in this way:

“We first set out to determine reach by examining the number of followers and buzz an individual has on sites like Twitter and Google. We then needed to determine how much impact an individual had with their followers and subscribers. We asked questions like: How often were they retweeted? How much buzz is created around their blog posts, tweets, and other messages? How often is the individual referenced in the blogosphere? Were they cited by influential people?”

To create the list, Fidelman used Twitalyzer, KloutTwittercounter, ReTweetRank and Twitter.

They also used Google, Google Blog Search, and Google Trends.

That’s a take on the process but what about the larger meaning for MindTouch. Fidelman had this to say in response to our questions:

Question:How does this project fit into your approach for building a company?
Answer:“We actually view it as building an industry. The Open source industry has a lot of innovative, influential leaders but until now decision makers haven’t had a guide to know where to tune in.

Question:How is the process of doing the research useful?
Answer:It helps mindtouch and the industry learn where to find the open source broadcasters. If the industry needs to get the word out, these individuals should be targeted first.

Question: Can you provide 3 tips for people in the enterprise looking to develop information that positions the company as a thought leader?
Answer: It’s about building a community around your personal brand. Matt Asay excels at this. He provides useful, relevant content that’s actionable. If I were to characterize it Into three dimensions:

1. Actively participate in the open source dialogue on Twitter, Google Buzz and niche open source networks.

2. Build a community around your personal brand by reaching out and networking with other bloggers, industry analysts and consumers of open source software and hardware.

3 Develop and create useful content on a personal blog or third party blog. The more actionable and useful the better. This is a big area to cover and I’m probably not doing it justice in two sentences. He adds…Perhaps a guest post on this topic will help? 🙂

Out of the information, Fidelman looked at the larger group and created a Twitter list. MindTouch, also did a little inclusive marketing by adding a badge that people can put on their site if they are on the list.

Thought leadership provides a host of important dimensions. Enterprise companies that approach the market with intelligence are usually the smartest of the group. Luckily, the tools have never been easier to use in helping filter out the information that matters most.

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Panda Security is reporting a second incident of malware on Vodafone’s HTC Magic, a Google Android smart phone. it provide a clear example for how smartphones are prime targets to become botnets once connected to a user’s personal computer.

The incidents provide real-world examples of how companies can inadvertently spread malware. It also raises questions about the quality assurance testing done by manufacturers and the carriers.

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After the first discovery earlier this month, Vodafone said it was an isolated incident. But two days later the company announced the HTC Magic would be discontinued. Vodafone also deleted questions about the issue from its forums.

A Panda employee discovered the “Mariposa,” virus after connecting it via USB her PC. Her Panda Cloud Anti-Virus software detected the malicious code, revealing that the smart phone was infected and spreading the virus to the PC.

Mariposa is a program that turns infected machines into botnets. it has infected more than 13 million computers, stealing credit card and bank log-in information.

In the second incident, an IT security expert who had bought the phone learned about the virus discovery. He decided to test his phone, using AVG anti-virus protection. Sure enough, his device also showed it had malware on it.

According to Panda Security:

This guy had also purchased an HTC Magic direct from Vodafone’s official website the same week as my co-worker. He hadn’t connected the phone to his PC yet, but as soon as he saw the news hurried back home, plugged it in via USB and scanned its memory card with both MalwareBytes and AVG Free. Lo and behold, Mariposa emerged again, exactly in the same way as in our original finding.

The HTC Magic has historically been sold in Europe.

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At times it feels like the concept of cloud computing is as ephemeral as a towering cumulus cloud on a summer day. It passes by, changes shape and looks different to every person who views it. But like those clouds in the sky, there’s a lot of complexity out there, especially as it concerns how data is managed in a multi-tenant environment.

The issue keeps coming up. First off, there are no existing standards for moving data in the cloud. Third party vendors like CloudSwitch are providing ways to “drag and drop,” data from on-premise to a cloud environments. But there is just no standardized way to move information between cloud networks.

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But there are some ways to manage the complexity. Informatica’s David Linthicum wrote a blog post yesterday on the topic. We agree with Linthicum to some extent but his declarations don’t entirely reflect the current reality.

Linthicum outlines some of the inherent issues that come with data integration in the cloud. The biggest issue comes down to the cloud computing providers. They do not provide syncing back to the customer’s on-premise environment. Linthicum points out that Salesforce.com is the exception to the rule in this regard.

So, according to Linthicum, what should the customer consider?

• Backup: This is the first and foremost issue for Linthicum. You need to have an on-premise backup in case of cloud computing outages,cloud service providers going out of business or to prevent the headaches that can happen when the new owner of your cloud computing provider decides that it’s really not interested in that business at all.
• Data Movement: It’s the data integration that drives processes between systems that may be in the cloud or on-premise. How do you manage all this information that may be dispersed over geographically distant platforms? It’s a different world than dealing with systems that exist in one data center.

We agree to a point but there are lots of various options to these issues. First off, it’s often a matter of what cloud computing platform you choose. The large service providers offer the safest bet. They are vested in the future of cloud computing and are developing ecosystems that consist of third-party partners. A number of these partners specialize in cloud-based application deployments.

And cloud-based security is making advances that make data loss as rare as if the data is on-premise.

Linthicum does offer some sound advice that may seem more like common sense but it is worth noting:

“First, consider the overall requirements of the business. Sounds obvious, but many who deploy cloud computing systems do not have a complete understanding of the overall business requirements.

Second, focus on the holistic architecture, on-premise and cloud-delivered, including how they will and should exchange data to support the core business.

Finally, select the right data integration technology for the job, and do so only after taking everything into account. You’ll find that there are both on-premise and on-demand options, and in many instances you may have to mix and match solutions.”

There are a lot of options out there. We do not necessarily agree that the hybrid approach is the best way to go. There is no one formula. Standardizing on the cloud has its advantages.

But, still, the over riding issue is really how data passes between systems. Without standards for managing data transfer, the issues Linthicum points out will never go away.

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Google Apps is offering migration for Microsoft Exchange. The service is free with Google Apps Premiere or Google Apps Education.

Last July, Google Apps began offering migration from IBM’s Lotus Notes. Most enterprises are standardized on either Microsoft Exchange or Lotus Notes, which means that Google now pretty much can migrate any organization to the cloud. Google also offers connection to Blackberry Enterprise Server.Google Apps is providing migration for Microsoft Exchange 2003 and 2007.

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Microsoft has very limited capability to offer a cloud-based email environment. Most of the offerings it provides are locally installed, single-hosting services. Concerns will wane about cloud security. The ability to offer a cloud-based email environment for easy access will be the norm, not the exception. But even though Google has a jump, Microsoft will have its own offering. In the meantime, Google has an opportunity to make another leap into the enterprise.

This does represent a tipping point for many companies shedding IT assets. The question about email often comes up when companies consider moving to the cloud. It’s an important part of the migration. In recent weeks, we have seen how email is becoming a foundation for the evolution of a web oriented, social enterprise. Google Apps Marketplace offers the capability to offer third party applications that integrate with Google Apps. Email is a critical part of the equation in this Google ecosystem. It provides a backbone for companies to connect its employees with Google Apps and the associated third-parties.

The process to migrate looks relatively simple. Through Google Apps, a customer enters their Microsoft Exchange user name and what it calls “two-legged OAuth,” consisting of a consumer user key and a consumer “secret”. They then upload a .CSV file consisting of the email adresses, calendar and contact information. It is optional what to migrate. For example, an IT administrator may upload email addresses and contact data but not the calendar. Email service does not get interrupted during the migration.

This is a compelling offering for companies moving to the cloud. But it’s only part of the equation. Google still needs to prove it is robust enough for the enterprise to migrate to Google Apps. In the meantime, Microsoft needs to act fast and provide a cloud offering that at least gives its own community the option to move Microsoft Exchange to the cloud.

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The IBM Cloud is a prototype of the ecosystem we expect to see emerge in the world of cloud services. It has the flavor of other platform environments, with the primary goal of integrating IBM with third-party applications to serve developers and end customers.

It is the partners that tie into the larger ecosystems, often existing on multiple platforms. The healthy platforms will resemble coral reefs in which the partners are important to the cloud ecosystem as the platform itself.

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But what is the importance of these third-party applications and what do they say about the future of IBM Cloud?

RightScale

RightScale http://rightscale.com is becoming a power in its own right. The San Diego-based company provides a sought after need. The capability to port applications to the cloud. RightScale is playing across the market. It has served as an important partner for Amazon Web Services in helping companies deploy cloud-based applications in the cloud. As part of an IBM ecosystem, the company will be one of those go to services that helps manage the cloud’s inherent complexities.

Kaavo

Kaavo is another cloud management application that leverages its position as a service that according to the web site, provides “middleware on demand.”That’s a fascinating example of how entire infrastructures are moving off premise and into cloud environments. For instance, Kaavo makes the claim that it can bring online one or multiple server systems, configure middleware and deploy applications The result being that people may use the IBM platform to set up and tear down test and and development environments within minutes. Again, we see how IBM is seeking to provide services that serve the needs of the developer or IT manager looking for more efficient and powerful ways t leverage its assets in a private cloud environment or in a public cloud.

Silanis

Silanis fits in the e-signature market. In January, the company announced services that integrate with IBM’s LotusLive. The service allows companies to work with customers in an extranet environment where contracts may be reviewed, modified and electronically signed. The service would seem to fit with IBM’s efforts to create a transaction environment within IBM Cloud.

Aviarc

IBM is partnering with several application developers, including Aviarc, a custom software application developer for on-premise, private cloud, appliances or the multi-tenant environment of IBM Cloud.

These are just samplings of the ecosystem that IBM is developing. You can tell that IBM is following its strategy to serve hybrid environments and establish its platform as a place where developers may build, test, sell and distribute applications.

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