Author: Mike Kirkwood

If you’re a software-as-a-service company you are probably thinking about how cloud computing can save you money and time. The same thing is true for departments in the enterprise that wants to spin up a new service for customers.

We had a chance to sit down with BlueLock, one of the leaders in cloud-based infrastructure providers. Their solutions range from quick provisioning using an online form, to becoming your infrastructure team for mission-critical applications. BlueLock represents a part of the trend in virtualization that not only extends physical servers, but allows companies to leverage infrastructure investments to meet the needs of application developers.

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One of the benefits of cloud computing is the ability to optimize the experience of experts and save money in hosting applications. However, one of the areas that is terminally difficult in the enterprise is configuration management in between the layers of OS, storage, security and network. This is getting more and more focus from the biggest providers in IT – Cisco, Microsoft, EMC, NetApp – but where the rubber hits the road, IT leaders are doing a majority of the work tuning configurations to find the right mix of infrastructure to meet their needs.

Custom is King

Fully outsourced configuration management of the infrastructure is one of the areas that BlueLock offers. One benefit of this service is the opportunity for an enterprise to configure a cloud to be both production ready, and also have a mirror environment for testing and development. Not all applications are created equally and it is a key part of the job to optimize across layers.

This area seems ripe for change and the future is unknown in the sense that today it is unclear which traditional infrastructure tools will evolve into the holy grail of “one click” deploy-and-customize solutions. So, if you want a solution that is cloud hosted today and configurable, it’s worth giving BlueLock a look.

This week at VMware Partner Exchange announced the BlueLock CloudSuite. One key feature in the mix is a tailored selection of infrastructure environments.

Instead of just cloning infrastructure, BlueLock focuses on tailoring it around the successful patterns we’ve seen in the enterprise. Additionally, its offerings are based on VMware virtualization technology.

The mix of cloud computing with customization seem like an ideal marriage for IT managers looking to build towards the cloud.

Is customization a key capability that you look for in a cloud hosting provider for your applications?

Photo credits: thebestofmyself & Phillip Pessar

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Last week, we were at the mHealth initiative conference in Washington D.C. The keynotes were all about the impact mobile health applications are having in shaping the future of the health care system. Nothing demonstrates that more than the iPhone. In the 18 months since it was released, it has been perhaps the biggest thing to happen to health care electronic records, which has seen billions of dollars worth of investment in past decades.

Mobile and wireless health applications directly impact the individual’s health and have the promise of ensuring that when a patient leaves a doctor visit, they don’t become “lost” in the system. It allows consumers to be engaged with health and wellness in their daily lives and connect back to their health care provider.

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For citizens in the United States, this movement could offer a future where there is allocated wireless spectrum that brings a wealth of health information into our homes and to our personal devices. This could be in the form of streaming health record transactions and content targeted to us where we consume our daily media and social interactions.

Dr. Mohit Kaushal, health care director for the National Broadband Taskforce, gave a summary of the issues surrounding health care and mobile health in a keynote today. We had a chance to catch up with him afterwords and dig in deeper to a few the key considerations of health IT as part of FCC investment.

Barriers

First, he described a few barriers that have existed in the past.

• Connectivity between systems is a major issue and challenge in health care.
• Adoption of electronic health has been slowed by reimbursement incentives and regulatory issues.
• Data utilization is growing to become a part of the mobile spectrum and also is being driven by intensive applications such as video and imaging.

Key Challenges

Next, Dr. Kaushel shared a few of the hurdles to overcome with a national broadband policy to support health applications.

• The US needs to invest in infrastructure to meet the growing needs of a mobile-enabled population.
• Spectrum must be allocated (or reallocated) to meet the needs and the right areas of growth
• Regulations need to be designed to maximize incentives for innovation in care delivery.
• There must be reimbursement incentives and viable business models for companies to succeed in delivering profitable services. In the health care system, we know that fee for service doesn’t work nearly as well as an outcome based approach for delivery of health, rather than more procedures.

The question is how we can take this learning and apply it to spectrum or infrastructure that is allocated to consumer facing health care solutions. Should the U.S. include mobile health care in its considerations for the next phase of allocation of spectrum?

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If you’re releasing products integrated into the VMware ecosystem, you’re likely enjoying enjoying the Las Vegas Strip this week. VMware Partner Exchange 2010 kicked off at the Mandalay Bay hotel today, and it is the place to learn about the current state of affairs and how to quantify tangible benefits of virtualization for partners and customers.

We’ve found that the virtualization layer is becoming a key place to launch enterprise products. All of this momentum is being translated in how to more effectively sell virtualization into the enterprise – and VMware isn’t holding back in building the relationships to sell into the channel.

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So, we ask, is the virtual layer the new platform for delivering value to the enterprise? If so, what tangible benefits are being offered today?

First an analysis of the momentum. According to this release from VMware , despite the down economy there has been 60% increase in participants this week from counties all around the world. What happens when we crunch the language in that release? We find that “partners”, “exchange”, “customers”, “network”, “cloud”, and “desktop” are the most important subjects.

Using those ideas, let’s condense that statement into our own words: Virtualization partners are exchanging information on how to win customers by leveraging the network and cloud to reach the desktop.

At the partner exchange, there are early previews of next-generation products and programs as well as in-depth technical training. The conference agenda is packed with sessions including practical training and a host of supported discussions from over 50 sponsors, including HP, IBM, Intel, Cisco, Netapp and EMC.

Looking through the sessions, several things stand out. First, networking and storage are merging together. Second, security is catching up – quickly – to support and define how virtualization and cloud applications are deployed and managed for business-critical applications. VMware is being baked into partner go-to-market strategies and product releases. There is more partner surface area and more angles for sales. All of this bodes well for virtualization.

Are VMware partners building an ecosystem that makes you want to move faster with your deployment of business-critical applications? What is missing?

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In this short analysis, we take a snapshot of a handful of key American technology leaders and what they stand to gain from virtualization. We believe that this trend is becoming a building block for dynamic infrastructure deployments for the enterprise and wanted to check in with some of our favorite technology brands to see what they are doing to grow the space.

Instead of looking at the virtualization software vendors themselves, we’ll look at what drives the current virtualization momentum of companies like Intel, Cisco, and IBM that are already entrenched in the data center .

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Investors in VMware

Several companies have vested interest in the outcome of virtualization through their direct investment in VMware and involvement with the VMware board of directors. We’ll cover them first.

Intel seems to be gaining a lot on all sides of the virtualization trend. The Intel architecture is being relied on by Macs that run Windows and Windows hosts that run Hyper-V. It’s also dominant in the virtualization options being deployed en mass including VMware, XENServer and KVM, which is shipped with many Linux distributions today. The processor is finally free to flex its muscle, and it is clear that its fluent in many languages and customs. Intel is investing in core technology to increase the ability for virtualization to be deployed in high reliability settings.

Cisco Systems is positioned as a dominant networking provider in the core of many data centers and in telcos around the world. Optimizing networks and network management around deployment of virtual hosts is a clear benefit to Cisco.

Who Else?

Cisco may be in a position to drive even more power into the network with the ability to further streamline the connections between data, processing, applications and network. In a world where a company can spin up new hosts at a whim, it is clear that network management and configuration is key to success. Cisco maintains a virtualization blog to share its progress in bringing this technology to networks.

EMC is clearly tied to the history of server virtualization with the purchase and subsequent spinout of VMware. Optimizing the data storage fabric to be ready to acknowledge and server virtualized data centers is critical for the management and concurrency of data across systems. Promoting virtualization is intrinsically tied to data resources and an ability to connect the two together seamlessly.

EMC has a set of products designed to help organizations manage and configure their virtual environments. Cisco, EMC and VMware have put together an enterprise cloud destination that shares information on the momentum of virtualization and cloud infrastructure, called PrivateCloud.

Industry Leaders Who Benefit From Virtualization

IBM with its massive investments in application servers, blade computing, open systems and Linux seems to be an obvious choice to benefit from this trend. IBM seems serious about helping enterprises focus their efforts on efficient and cost-effective data centers, and is positioned to benefit from its position in key technology trends that ride along side this movement. IBM shares information and white papers on their capabilities to lead the enterprise charge towards virtualization.

HP is benefiting from its dominant position in delivering hosts into the enterprise and its cozy relationship with both Microsoft and increasing relationships with Linux distributions. HP has recently announced its ambition to win network business from Cisco and is in a position to deliver turnkey systems for deploying applications. HP is leveraging its Proliant line of servers as a way to offer companies VMware enabled architecture that will save time and money. This can a huge win for companies who rely on HP today and want to jump into virtualization with a partner at their side.

‘Mac Hardware: Best Place to Run Windows’

Apple has been dipping its toe into the virtualziation game too by supporting VMware Fusion and Parallels in order to run both Mac OSX and Windows on Apple hardware. One of our favorite trends in computing is hearing users use the phrase, “Mac hardware: Best place to run Windows”. On a sidenote, Apple is also doing some interesting work in another area of computer core optimization with its release of Grand Central Dispatch in Snow Leopard. It’s designed to create high-performing systems for processing graphics and other computing functions by joining the massive power of the GPU to the CPU and optimizing the computing power of the OS based on the number of cores enabled in the hardware.

Microsoft is involved in both sides of the virtualization trend; on their site they ask, “How far will you take virtual?” One big opportunity for Microsoft has been booking more instances of Windows Server running on the same machine, whether under VMware or under Microsoft Hyper-V. More licenses sold equals more profit and happy customers. However, considering Microsoft’s strategic position as the dominant layer sitting on top of the hardware, the company is also working hard with both software and server virtualization to prove that it has a strong case to be a strong contender to VMware and other solutions in the market. Virtualization is making Microsoft stronger as a competitor and rippling across Microsoft’s approach to the enterprise.

In a surprisingly short time, all of these key technology leaders have embraced their offerings for a virtualized world. Through products, alliances and technology we will see even more support from them in the future.

In future posts, we’ll take a look at how these companies use the technology in their own operations. Also, we’ll be looking at other companies that will benefit from virtualization, including small innovators and dominant global brands such as Hitachi, Sony and Samsung.

Tell us what you think. Which companies are going to be the big winners in the virtualized computing world? Are there pieces that be overlooked by these giants?

Photo credit: miguelvieira

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These days, having computer skills is an important part of a person’s resume. Likewise, it is important for a country’s ability to navigate through economic opportunities of our world. In recent years, countries like India have changed their position in the world based on their population’s ability to deliver computer skills and support to the rest of the world.

At the same time that these skills are becoming increasingly needed, prices are dropping dramatically for computing hardware. The netbook enjoyed a huge year in 2009. New form factors of computing devices also gained that attention of the masses, and 2010 started with a bang with the $499 iPad tablet computing device. The technology world is continuing to innovate computing systems that continue to get smaller and more portable. This video from a researcher in Japan shows a entirely new form factor of computer coming to market, in the shape of a pen with a projector and camera at the tips.

So we’re asking this question: For the world to live in harmony do we all need to own one (or more) personal computers?

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Does the Cloud Redefine What a Computer Is?

A computer is a machine that manipulates data according to a set of instructions. The definition was designed for a time when the components were all co-located within a single piece of hardware. But now there’s a more important question: Does a computer have to be “a machine”?

With the concept of virtualization and cloud computing, the definition is being stretched in both directions. Virtualization is a concept where one machine can be “multiple computers”. With cloud computing, it is possible for multiple machines and networks that aren’t not co-located to operate as one computer.

Maybe that’s the reason that the cloud is such an important concept in technology today – that it blurs the lines intentionally between the data, the instructions and the data manipulation. Conveniently, as a concept, clouds come in many shapes and forms, just like the current crop of computing systems being built and innovated upon.

What About 6 Billion Nodes Instead of 6 Billion PCs?

In 2010 there are several powerful trends taking hold of computing that are changing the paradigm of computing forever. One is the reality that there will be more mobile computing devices that computers, as mobile phone shipments today are much larger than PC shipments. And mobile phones, especially smartphones, are becoming more capable because they’re tied together with pervasive communication technology like SMS or MMS, and are powering applications like Facebook and Twitter that are becoming more powerful with location-aware services.

Delivering Computers in the Cloud

Nivio, a startup from India, is an example of the cloud evolving into a personal computing platform. Instead of delivering each person a physical device as the center of our computing experience, Nivio provides combination of storage, applications and “view anywhere” operating systems frame a cloud-powered vision of a universe. Nivio is assuming that it’s customers don’t each have a local machine with personal storage. Instead, these users will have network storage and applications and will access their computing power with the device they have on hand at the moment.

Take, for instance, the One Laptop Per Child project. It has struggled to keep its hardware as cheap as it once hoped. But one way they’ve kept costs down is by embedding cloud tools to keep the overall profile of the machine down and creating a future of cloud-based services for the population.

How many children are there in the world? How many nodes is that?

Where is your company positioned in this continuum of cloud computing?

Image credit: juhansonin

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One of the promises of the cloud is the power to join computing resources to solve the scientific mysteries of our time. On the backdrop of biomedical research, the challenges to join minds and computers together are also immense. Not only is the subject material complicated, it also is sensitive from both a time and privacy point of view. It is critical to get it right as people’s lives are at stake, and any new discovery requires comprehensive peer review and an unerring trail of evidence.

With these considerations in mind, the National Cancer Institute has been making significant progress with the caBIG (Cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid) project. It is focused on setting standards for sharing computing resources and data in the effort to cure cancer.

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The caBIG charter is enormous and visionary: “The National Cancer Institute is launching a 21st century information initiative that will transform the way we do cancer research. We are creating a network that will freely connect the entire cancer community. In doing so, we are leveraging valuable resources and saving precious time toward new discoveries.”

Imaging

A number of peer-reviewed articles on the use of imaging using the caBIG have been released. A paper titled “e-Science, caGrid, and Translational Biomedical Research” offers insight into the mindset of biomedical researchers.

“Translational research projects target a wide variety of diseases, test many different kinds of biomedical hypotheses, and employ a large assortment of experimental methodologies. Diverse data, complex execution environments, and demanding security and reliability requirements make the implementation of these projects extremely challenging and require novel e-Science technologies.”

To make its shared research work across the industry requires unique approaches in computing architecture. An architecture diagram gives a peek into the system that has been designed to meet the challenge.

Tools, Federation, and Semantics

One of the most impressive things about the caBIG project is the focus on metadata vocabularies and semantics. This organization is one of the first to move beyond shared computing resources to a shared conceptual workspace. Not only is this one of the hardest things left to do in computing, it also may yield the greatest results in building a set of common understanding for the work going on across the world in biomedical research.

caBIG resources include open-source tools provided by partners