Cloud to power research number-crunching

The cloud will pave the way for more educational institutions to get compute muscle needed for research efforts, a leading local researcher has predicted.


Francis Lee, vice chairman of research at Nanyang Technological University's (NTU) school of computer engineering, said research efforts require an insatiable amount of compute resources, but are typically hampered by limited funding with which to build larger data centers.

Cloud momentum gathering in S'pore

HP released Wednesday research indicating 50 percent of Singapore technology decision-makers have implemented or are planning to embark on cloud computing initiatives within the next 12 months. In a poll of 100 technology executives, six out of 10 cited reduced operating cost as the most appealing benefit of cloud computing.
The biggest adoption barriers were lack of familiarity with cloud computing technology, upfront cost of implementation and incompatibility with existing systems.
Only 8 percent said they would rely solely on a public cloud; most said they would deploy a private cloud or take a hybrid approach, citing security as the main reason to keep a private setup.

Speaking Wednesday at a media presentation hosted by Hewlett-Packard, Lee noted more institutions are banding together to help reach the economies of scale provided by the likes of large cloud infrastructure providers.

HP Labs' director Christopher Whitney pointed out that providers such as Amazon with its EC2 service, possess the scale to offer customers prices as low as 10 cents per hour. In contrast, NTU's own smaller grid would only be able to offer a comparable service at US$2 to US$3, he said, describing the difference in scale.
A larger grid infrastructure provided as a service would offer institutions the compute power at a lower price, Whitney added.
According to NTU's Lee, the prohibitive cost of a cloud project stems from not only hardware required to power an internal cloud, but VMware licenses as well.
NTU, he noted, is currently running a testbed on open source Xen virtualization. VMware, however, is preferred to power the school's public cloud for its students, because VMware's virtualization management tools provide "more flexibility", he added.
"We can tinker around with Xen, but virtualization management is the differentiator," said Lee.
Lee added that older distributed computing setups such as on-campus grids or even the SETI@Home project are insufficient for research efforts because they lack the flexibility required by multiple users and more complex computations.
Projects such as SETI@Home, he explained, are "only suitable for workloads", where a single task can be "chopped up" into chunks of distributed tasks. Such parallel processes are unsuitable for research efforts supporting different users and cannot handle different projects at once, he said.
Citing the Open Cirrus initiative, a joint effort to build a cloud-computing research testbed, Lee said such collaborations are becoming the backbone of research efforts.

Good vibes for Microsoft 'point-and-click cloud computing'

Microsoft's free Web Platform Installer generating genuine interest and kudos

People who write code for a living have a love/hate relationship with Microsoft. Over the years the press has played up the hate (and the hype), but today I thought I would turn to one Microsoft software project which is generating genuine interest and kudos from some developers.

The product is Microsoft's free Web Platform Installer, now on version 2.0, which lets developers quickly install Microsoft's Internet Information Services and a boatload of free Web applications on top of IIS, including WordPress, Moodle, SugarCRM, and Acquia for Drupal. The fact that this Microsoft product is playing nice with open source software is remarkable in itself, but what has gotten developers particularly interested is the cloud potential. Blogger and developer Jorge Escobar yesterday said:

"I was blown away with the concept behind this application. Basically Windows has introduced point-and-click cloud computing for the masses and it's doing it in a way that resembles the iPhone application directory but for web applications.

I hate to say it but it's brilliant."

Not everyone who has seen the Web Platform Installer is so impressed, however. Last week, developer, author and podcaster Kevin Yank acknowledged that Web PI makes it "easy to set up IIS as a development environment for PHP which has been really painful in the past," but said he believed it is not getting much traction in the marketplace, where WAMP or LAMP installations are often preferred. He also said open-source developers are suspicious of anything Microsoft does, which would slow adoption.

But it's the cloud connection and the potential hooks to Azure -- Microsoft's soon-to-be-launched cloud computing platform -- that also come into play. More than a few developers commenting on a Hacker News thread that they were looking forward to Web PI applications being tied into Azure instances, even though someone identifying himself as working on the Azure platform made pains to note that the two products are "really quite distinct".

Nevertheless, the idea that Microsoft is simplifying and opening up its cloud-related offerings, and removing development obstacles and other potential barriers to entry (such as billing-related headaches) is enough to draw a lot of interest and maybe even turn the page on some of the bad feelings resulting from its bruising battles with the open-source community. In the months to come, the big question on many people's minds will be how Azure measures up in production environments, and how it works with both Microsoft and non-Microsoft applications.

Sources and research: news.ycombinator.com, SitePoint podcast #36, Microsoft.com, jungleg.com, sriramkrishnan.com, hanselman.com, kevinyank.com

Ian's bio and disclosures are located here. Follow Ian on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ilamont. Industry Standard updates and asides are available at twitter.com/the_standard and in our newsletters. You can also join our Industry Standard Facebook page and LinkedIn group.

Up in the clouds?

Gadgets: Microsoft Windows 7 * * * * By Steven van Hemert

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Microsoft's success in engineering a stable and desirable Windows 7 may be pie in the sky. By Steven van Hemert

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When your software runs over 90% of computers on the planet, any new release is bound to be a big deal.

In 2007 Windows Vista was in the news for all the wrong reasons. Reviled as a flawed operating system for its resource-heavy processes and overall instability, consumers ignored Vista in favour of the lighter and more stable Windows XP. As a result of Vista's unpopularity, a majority of PCs still run some version of XP - an operating system that is now almost a decade old.
But with critics giving Microsoft's latest operating system, Windows 7, a cautious thumbs-up, people are taking notice. Amazon.com reported that Windows 7 is now the highest-grossing pre-order product in the online retailer's history.
The release of Microsoft's latest operating system comes at an interesting time in computer technology. While the traditional high-tech scene has wobbled during the recession with sales of PCs stagnating, the demand for netbooks - small, ultra-portable laptops with limited processing power has skyrocketed.
This has had an interesting impact on the development of Windows 7. The system has been engineered to be lighter and less resource hungry. With its improved memory management mechanics, Windows 7 will run faster and use less power on new netbooks, but will also support high-end machines with multiple processing cores. Microsoft have made Windows 7 available on Flash drives to cater for the netbook market.
Part of the demand for netbooks has been driven by a surge in cloud-based computer services that prioritise connectivity over locally stored programs.
So, in a move that may seem counter-intuitive, Windows 7 will ship with fewer features than Vista. To produce an operating system that is faster and more streamlined, Microsoft have dropped native programs from the Windows 7 suite. These programs will be available for download for free from the Microsoft Live Essentials website, so you can choose what software you want to run.
For the rest, it's Windows as everyone knows it, but with a twist. Windows 7 demands far less from users. Where Vista had a freak out every time you opened a file, Windows 7 has a far less paranoid User Access Control system, grouping security warnings in the Action Center in such a way that they don't interrupt your every click, and allowing you to choose what level of notification you desire.
Most of the improvements in Windows 7 are concerned with the visual and tactile aspects of the system and have been engineered into the user interface to make interacting with Windows far more pleasant.
But it's more than just spit and polish. Windows 7 now has a docking system that provides one-click access to programs and selected folders. With Aero Peek functionality, a user is now able to see thumbnails of all open windows in an application on mouse-over. Each application also has a short cut of actions so you can easily open a recently visited web page or frequently used file. You can also Pin files to be associated with programs you use regularly.
The way Windows handles open applications has also changed. Programs can now be layered with transparent windows, with Aero Snap functionality automatically making a window full-screen when dragged to the top edge and half-size when dragged to the sides. Grabbing a window and shaking it with the mouse will hide all open windows except the one you're working in.
In truth, much of the polish has been borrowed from Apple's OSX, with many of the cosmetic tweaks and interface upgrades mirroring functionality that Mac users have long enjoyed. But for Windows XP users, these developments are something new.
Another aspect of Windows 7 that has pundits crying its virtues is the improved hardware support. On install, Windows 7 should automatically install drivers for all your hardware. It also has greatly improved plug-and-play support for external hardware and will recognise and access a variety of electronic gadgets like cameras, phones and mp3 players.
Windows 7 also features more advanced security features like BitLocker and BitLocker to Go, an application that will encrypt your hard drive and external drives, making transporting sensitive data less of a headache.
But despite Microsoft's success with engineering a stable and desirable Windows 7, some analysts are torn as to the impact Windows 7 will have on the market place. With services rapidly moving into the cloud, this could be the last time Microsoft release an operating system in such a format. And with the recession taking chunks out of budgets, there will be some tough decisions to make that will pit Windows 7 against new players in the Linux and cloud-based market.
Time to upgrade?
If you skipped Vista and are still running XP, there is no easy upgrade path. A clean install is the only option, which will mean re-installing all your other software and applications as well. From Vista, upgrading to Windows 7 is a reasonably simple process.
Windows 7 retails for about R1500 for the Home Basic system, and about R3200 for the Ultimate suite.

Cloud, consumers give Skype enterprise boost

The cloud computing revolution and momentum consumers have driven toward technology adoption are helping consumer- or Web-based businesses such as Skype, earn "business-grade" accolades, according to a company executive.
Speaking to ZDNet Asia Thursday on the sidelines of the APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) SME Summit held here, Dan Neary, Skype's Asia-Pacific vice president and general manager, pointed out that consumer or online applications were in the past "judged as not being business grade".
"Today, what's fascinating is the Web has simply been rebranded as cloud computing," he noted. "And now suddenly it is not only business grade, it has become...secure enough that you trust [it with] your user information, confidential business aspects--you're trusting that to online applications."
Having spent most of its six years geared toward the consumer space with limited business interactions, Skype recently took steps to meet the needs of enterprise users, said Neary. It built configuration capabilities into its enterprise offering for IT managers, particularly to cater to various levels of security controls--for instance, the option to disable file sharing. Another area of enhancement was in the area of billing, providing unified credits for allocation to employees instead of having users file expense claims for their individual SkypeOut credits.
The company also supports SIP (Session Initiation Protocol), currently still in beta, which allows businesses to use their existing IP-based (Internet Protocol) phones to make Skype calls. The service, he noted, is compatible with products from Cisco Systems, Nortel and ShoreTel.
A Skype survey, which polled its users, found that 35 percent used the Internet telephony service for business-related purposes. While the company has attracted mainly small and midsize businesses (SMBs) attempting to keep overheads low, Neary noted that midsize and larger businesses tended to question Skype's compatibility with their existing telephony system or integrator. These enterprises also wanted to know what kind of customer support Skype was able to provide.
"That whole side of the equation is relatively new for us, and we're spending a lot of time in the beta period [for the SIP support] building that out," he said. "And currently, we're building up our customer service organization to better service the businesses."
User-driven IT
Another trend rolling in Skype's favor is enterprise ICT adoption driven by consumers, said Neary. There are now more tech-savvy individuals in SMEs and larger enterprises, and organizations increasingly need to move faster and save money to wrestle a competitive edge. Consumer-targeted applications are also getting more robust and geared toward enterprise use, he noted.
Dave Girouard, Google's president for enterprise, noted that there has been an increasing number of small businesses in Silicon Valley that have stopped buying corporate equipment such as PCs and phones.
A speaker at the APEC SME summit, Girouard explained that if he had to set up a company, he would pay his employees a sum of money every month so they can use their own computer and mobile phone for work. These user PCs would then be installed with the required applications, and tweaked to be compliant with corporate policies and regulations.

A Close Look at Cisco Unfied Service Delivery Architecture for Cloud Services

Cisco Unified Service Delivery provides service providers like you with the technologies to fully integrate, secure and virtualize their service delivery infrastructures in an unique way. With Unified Service Delivery and a next-generation IP network,  CISCO Unified Service Delivery combine the data-center and their IP network together to provide end-to-end delivery of services like video, collaboration or cloud services.


If you, as a service provider, adopt the traditional data center, it may not be profitable in the long run due to 46 percent compounded annual growth rate of international traffic. Cisco Unified Service Delivery incorporates famous data center products such as the Cisco Unified Computing System and the Cisco Nexus Switch, with a new data centre optimized configuration of Cisco's flagship router, the Cisco CRS-1 Carrier Routing System, and Cisco's wide range of IP NGN products.

Advantages:

• CISCO Unified Computer System combines compute, network, storage access and virtualization resources in a single  system that can reduce IT infrastructure costs and complexities.
• The Cisco Unified Service Delivery solution is optimized to enable virtualization within the data centre, between data centres and across the IP NGN.
• As per Synergy Research, CISCO Unified Delivery system produces between 5.49 and 6.99 times the four-year cumulative savings in operating expenditures on virtualized video infrastructure and between 5.3 and 5.86 times the savings in capital expenditures.
• Cisco CRS-1 platform is designed for the needs of the carrier network, the Cisco Nexus 7000 Switch is the data-center-class switching platform combining Ethernet, IP and storage capabilities across one unified network fabric.
• The implementation of compute and storage resources can be significantly improved because services are moved from legacy system onto the Unified Service Delivery (USD) platform.
• Synergy Research further reports that CDN provides better power efficiency by a factor of 2.

Perils of mobile cloud

In early October, Long Beach communications manager Kimiko Martinez discovered that her T-Mobile Sidekick phone had lost her 1,200 address-book contacts, photos dating back five years, and three years' worth of financial information.
The data was stored on Microsoft's Sidekick service. In early October, T-Mobile said it lost the data of thousands of users of its Sidekick smartphone after a computer problem at Microsoft. Microsoft said it's working to restore the data.
The glitch gave Martinez more than a few headaches. Since losing her calendar entries, she's missed three meetings. Many phone numbers are still AWOL. "I just have to start all over again," she said. There's another upshot: Martinez, 31, said she's shopping for a new smartphone--and another service provider.
Outages at Hotmail, Gmail
As the computer industry creates hardware devices, Web sites, and mobile-phone software that increasingly rely on data stored on remote servers, the potential for waylaid data is becoming a more common problem as well.
Both Microsoft's Hotmail and Google's Gmail have experienced outages this year. Last year, some users had trouble gaining access to Apple's MobileMe service, which syncs up Apple owners' e-mail, contacts, and calendars across Macs and iPhones. BlackBerry maker Research In Motion has experienced service outages as well. "I wouldn't be surprised to hear of another, similar snafu with another vendor," said Shaw Wu, a senior analyst with Kaufman Bros. who covers Apple, RIM, and other hardware vendors.
Cloud computing services for backing up smartphone data may be especially vulnerable. For one, the market is populated with green startups that could go out of business and take users' data with them, said Charles Fitzgerald, a vice-president at Decho, an EMC unit that provides PC and mobile storage services to Vodafone Group and China Telecom. "There are a lot of fly-by-night players in this space," said Fitzgerald, who spent 19 years at Microsoft and left last year.
"Not all clouds are equal"
Consumers may also have trouble retrieving data over slower wireless networks or backing up data over the air in areas with spotty connectivity. That means saving SMS messages, photos, and address book entries can be prone to delays and outages. Vendors' backup policies for wireless devices can also vary widely. "Not all clouds are created equal," said Fabrizio Capobianco, CEO of Funambol, which makes software that helps Vodafone and other carriers back up users' data.
Another problem is that mobile-phone data tends to be landlocked. Most mobile-phone cloud services also don't let users move information from one service to another. For example, data stored on Best Buy's (BBY) free mIQ storage service, launched Oct.12, can't yet be moved to another provider's service. Best Buy's technology partner, Dashwire, may add the capability in the future, said CEO Ford Davidson. "That's something that will emerge as a problem that needs to be solved; there's no answer now," he said.
To be sure, users of PC software have long contended with hard disk crashes and other technical problems that can eviscerate data. And cell phones are always vulnerable to being dropped, stolen, or lost, which can wipe out users' stored phone numbers and other information.
Mobile cloud services are growing
But the growing popularity of smartphones, which act as mini-PCs, means service disruptions put a broader array of data at risk. Industry consultant ABI Research estimates that nearly 159 million North American consumers will use mobile cloud services by 2014, up from 13 million in 2008.
Companies including T-Mobile, Nokia, Best Buy, Microsoft, Apple, Google, and Salesforce.com (CRM) all offer cloud computing services for mobile phones. ABI estimates North American revenue from such services will reach US$6.6 billion in revenue in 2014, compared with US$519 million last year.
Eventually, mobile cloud services could constitute an even bigger market than services that back up users' data from their PCs. Smartphones house much less on-board memory than full-fledged computers. And users are gravitating toward wireless services that let them share information across their phones, PCs, and even TV sets. "Mobile devices will be the way most users interact with cloud computing," said Alex Stamos, founding partner at data security consultant iSEC Partners, which counts Google as a client.
Extra backup spells higher fees
You get what you pay for, said some technology vendors. Many mobile backup services are free, or cost just a few dollars per month--not enough to subsidize extensive data backup and sophisticated encryption. "You have less transparency about how data is being secured and saved," said Stamos.
Businesses that pay higher monthly fees tend to get more peace of mind. Salesforce.com's business users pay up to US$195 a month for the Web-based customer management software, and Salesforce backs up their data on two sets of servers, plus magnetic storage tape. "We spend hundreds of millions of dollars on our data centers," said Chuck Ganapathi, senior vice-president of products for Salesforce. "Good data protection costs money." Yet even Salesforce's users have experienced temporary service disruptions.
Charging consumers more for rock-solid backup may prove difficult. "It will be harder and harder to charge consumers for mobile cloud services," said Funambol's Capobianco. Best Buy said it hopes to make money from its storage service by pitching users on mobile-phone applications and memory cards and showing them links to Best Buy's online store. The retailer also hopes subscribers will return to its stores to buy additional phones. "It's the extra things you do when you are not the incumbent [that count]," said Scott Moore, a vice-president of marketing at Best Buy Mobile.
Up to the user
Ultimately, the task of protecting mobile-phone data may fall to users. Sidekick customer Martinez now backs up all of her important information on her iPod and e-mails it to her Gmail account for safe measure. "If I have [my data] on enough virtual platforms, they are not going to all crash at the same time," she said. Or so consumers can only hope.

Apple's new data center foreshadows a cloudy future

Apple's new data center project is so big that it begs the question of whether Apple is simply planning for the growth of its current services or if it has more ambitious plans in the works.

We've heard about Google, Microsoft, and Amazon going on a data center building spree. It's one of the worst kept secrets in the technology business--even though all three attempt to be as discreet about it as possible.
Nevertheless, it makes perfect sense for them. Their cards are on the table. We know they plan to invest heavily in Web-based services over the next decade.
On the other hand, reports that Apple is about to break ground on a new data center in Maiden, North Carolina that is even bigger than the behemoths being built by Microsoft, Google, and Amazon is startling, to say the least. Let's take a look at what we know about Apple's new data center and speculate on what Apple might be planning for it.
Apple's east cost IT hub
On his Cult of the Mac blog, Leander Kahney has a good interview with Rich Miller from Data Center Knowledge about Apple's big plans in North Carolina.
Here's what we know so far:

• Location: Town of Maiden in western North Carolina, 40 miles northwest of Charlotte
• Size: 500,000 square feet on roughly 200 acres of land
• Purpose: Will serve ostensibly as Apple's east coast IT hub, with its west coast hub in Newark, CA (109,000 square feet)
• Timing: Expected to break ground with bulldozers in mid-August
• Cost: US$1 billion over 10 years
• Staff: 50 full-time employees
• Bandwidth: Dual fiber lines
• Cost of electricity: 4-5 cents per kilowatt hour from Duke Energy (vs. 7-12 cents per kilowatt hour in California)
• Alternate location: Virginia lost the bidding war with North Carolina over tax breaks and electricity costs

Miller said:

"The early site plans indicate Apple is planning about 500,000 square feet of data center space in a single building. That would place it among the largest data centers in the world. For comparison purposes, Apple's existing data center in Newark, California is a little more than 100,000 square feet. Most new standalone enterprise data centers are in the range of 100,000 to 200,000 square feet. So this would qualify as a big-ass data center."

The only other data centers that are on this scale are Microsoft's new Chicago data center, the Phoenix ONE data center, and the SuperNAP data center in Las Vegas. All three of those have a little over 400,000 square feet of space dedicated to data center use.
Miller also added, "The companies that are building the biggest data centers tend to also have the biggest cloud ambitions."
An Apple-shaped cloud?
So the natural question is what Apple plans to do with all of this data center space? The fact that the new data center is likely to be five times larger than Apple's west coast data center is the most curious part. It makes sense for Apple to have bi-coastal data center redundancy and to plan for growth in its online services (MobileMe, App Store, iTunes Music Store), but that alone will not consume enough storage and server cycles to justify a tripling or quadrupling of Apple's data center capacity.
Thus, a build-out with this kind of scale suggests that Apple has bigger plans in the works. Here are what I consider to be the four most logical possibilities:

1. Video library expansion: Apple has already started renting and selling movies and TV shows on-demand via iTunes. The online rental business is set to explode over the next five years, so Apple probably sees a ton of opportunity here. However, video is a resource hog in storage and CPU cycles so a significant upgrade in capacity would make sense if Apple is moving in this direction.
2. Online document storage: With iDisk and MobileMe, Apple has already dabbled in online storage for end users. Google is expected to blow this open any day now (and has been for years), but Apple may see an opportunity to provide Macs, iPods, and iPhones with some basic online storage capability (with the option to purchase more) to greatly simplify storage, transfers, and backups for users. This could also come into play with the long-rumored Apple tablet, which would likely have minimal local storage and might need a cloud storage option for archiving a library of songs, videos, or files.
3. Web-based software suites: Most of the Web-based applications currently available are still very rudimentary. However, there are signs that more powerful apps are coming. Adobe's online version of Photoshop is slick. The forthcoming Web version of Microsoft Office is very powerful. With advanced Javascript and AJAX, the tools are now there for more sophisticated cloud-based apps. For Apple, that could mean that it's time to take its iLife and iWork suites and turn them into Web-based applications that expand even beyond the Mac, and even beyond the PC, to smartphones.
4. Digital library build-out: One of the possibilities for Apple's rumored tablet device is that it's meant to primarily be a reading device. That means not only reading Web sites and blogs, but magazines and books as well. If that's the case, Apple may be preparing for a massive a build-out of a digital content library that it would peddle through iTunes. In some ways, this has already started with the books and magazines now being sold through the iPhone App Store thanks to new capabilities in the iPhone 3.0 software.

The most likely scenario is the video expansion. However, the digital library build-out would be the most revolutionary concept, so that night be a shiny object that Apple is chasing.

HP and Canadian arm of GS1 announce cloud-based recall service

TELECOMWORLDWIRE via COMTEX) --solutions provider HP (NYSE:HPQ) announced on Monday along with the Canadian arm of GS1 the development of a cloud-based recall service that traces and removes potentially harmful food products from the supply chain.

No financial details were disclosed.

According to the company, the GS1 Canada Product Recall service will run on the HP cloud computing platform for manufacturing. Food and consumer products organisations can use the service to reduce errors, decrease the amount of time it takes to respond to a recall and lower the costs associated with managing the recall process.

The service will offer businesses: handling, disposal and reimbursement instructions to accelerate the recall process; the ability to customise alerts and target specific retailers with relevant information; a traceable security and audit trail to ensure compliance; as well as built-in security that sends notifications to authorised users and targeted retailers.

The service, developed in conjunction with HP Labs, consists of HP software, services and infrastructure as well as the Microsoft .NET Framework.

GS1 is a non-profit organisation dedicated to improving supply chain efficiencies.

VMware Ready to Challenge Microsoft With SpringSource, Cloud Foundry

VMware has finally joined Microsoft, IBM and Oracle as one of the four horsemen in the market for platforms for building, running and managing corporate and cloud applications. With its SpringSource acquisition, VMware can now compete with specialized platform-as-a-service offerings like Microsoft’s Azure. In addition, SpringSource’s introduction of Cloud Foundry yesterday makes a crucial connection between deploying Spring-based and other Java applications in the enterprise and the cloud while giving developers an increased ability to manage their applications in a self-service mode.
Before the SpringSource acquisition, VMware faced potentially diminishing returns by putting a layer that manages virtualization on ever more of the enterprise infrastructure. That layer, which VMware pioneered and dominated, cracked open Microsoft’s control of the hardware by sliding a hypervisor underneath the operating system.

Check out our latest GigaOM Pro report, “What VMware’s SpringSource Acquisition Means for Microsoft” (subscription required).

But the other role of an operating system, and the source of Microsoft’s continuing control over the market, comes from the company’s ownership of application platforms and developer tools. With SpringSource, VMware controls the application framework used by 2 million Java developers and half of all enterprise Java projects. In a research note we wrote over at GigaOM Pro (subscription required), we discuss how both VMware and Microsoft have the pieces to pursue the industry’s shared vision.
The idea behind the shared vision is to offer a single, integrated platform as a service (PaaS) by which the applications have several new layers of intelligence where all the pieces fit together more intelligently. The integration makes it possible for developers to tell administrators what their performance, availability and security needs are in the design of the application itself. It also makes it possible for developers or administrators to push a button to deploy and manage the system on an internal or external cloud with these “set and forget” instructions.
Handicapping the race
VMware now looks to be ahead of Microsoft technically for several reasons. Microsoft’s Azure is still in Community Technology Preview and will likely stay there until late fall. In addition, Microsoft web applications, those developed in Microsoft’s ASP.NET in particular, require modification before they can work in Azure. And most importantly, Redmond’s original design goal for Azure was to use cloud scalability to ensure enterprise compatibility. To be fair, Microsoft has the largest developer community and will be able to move a great many of them to its Azure-based PaaS platform as it makes it more compatible with its enterprise products.
IBM and Oracle serve the other half of the Java community with JEE application frameworks and servers. They’re in similar positions, but JEE has been losing ground in custom and web applications to simpler substitutes like Spring. Packaged enterprise applications, however, are still JEE-centric and will likely remain that way. IBM and Oracle so far have not offered a clear path to the cloud from applications developed for their JEE servers. To move to the cloud, developers need to know how to manage applications. Even though Oracle’s Weblogic server runs on Amazon, someone needs to deploy the application to the new environment and manage the Amazon platform. IBM made some confusing announcements several weeks ago, saying the container that deploys the application, in the form of a virtual appliance, is incompatible between the enterprise and the cloud. And one side runs VMware and the other runs Xen. For IBM customers working with Amazon, however, Big Blue’s strategy is more like Oracle’s.
Recalibrating PaaS as a market
PaaS got a big readjustment with VMware’s SpringSource acquisition and Cloud Foundry introduction because the moves highlight a new view of PaaS as mainstream. Before, most PaaS offerings were tied to SaaS applications or proprietary platforms. Salesforce.com positioned Force.com as a general-purpose application platform, even though it had its own security, workflow, look and feel, programming language, pricing model, and regulatory choices. Google’s AppEngine, on the other hand, was designed so developers could exploit the benefits of building applications that run on a practically infinite number of inexpensive machines. Existing enterprise developers are trained in building applications that scale up on a much smaller number of big machines, a very different skill set from what Google’s offering required. In the future, PaaS is likely to have two mainstream approaches:

1. Corporate and ISV developers will leverage the PaaS offerings of SaaS vendors like Workday or Salesforce.com. But the attraction will be to integrate these systems with complementary or legacy systems, like recruiting for HR. Standalone applications, like Coda’s financials on Force.com, are unlikely to be common on these platforms because vendors would be tying their business and technology future to one vendor with too little benefit to show for it.
2. PaaS offerings from service providers based on VMware/SpringSource, Oracle and IBM (which surely will run on VMware in some cloud scenarios), and Microsoft’s Azure are going to look far more like seamless extensions of enterprise deployments. These will be the mainstream platforms for new, “greenfield” applications. The SpringSource acquisition and Cloud Foundry sure shine a strong spotlight on this direction.

Increasing calls for Asean to boot out Myanmar

PETALING JAYA: Political leaders and civil advocates here have called for the Association of South-East Nations (Asean) to suspend Myanmar’s membership over the military junta’s conviction of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
Umno Youth chief Khairy Jamaluddin wanted Asean to immediately suspend Myanmar’s membership.
“The verdict is widely viewed as the culmination of a sham trial designed to prevent Suu Kyi from participating in planned elections next year,” he wrote on his blog on Tuesday not long after the guilty verdict was handed down.
“Recent developments in Myanmar represent a black mark in Asean’s history. The Suu Kyi verdict is a disgusting stain on Asean’s reputation, one that must be removed quickly and decisively.
“An immediate suspension of Myanmar’s membership in the regional bloc is the only option open for Asean to save it from being found guilty by association with the Myanmar junta,” he said.
On Tuesday, a Myanmar court convicted Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace laureate, of violating the terms of her house arrest by allowing an uninvited American to stay at her home. She was sentenced to three years in jail, but this was commuted to 18 months’ house arrest.
The 64-year-old opposition leader has spent about 14 of the last 20 years in detention, mostly under house arrest.
In GEORGE TOWN, the DAP also called for Myanmar -- also known as Burma -- to be suspended from Asean until all charges and sentences against Suu Kyi were dropped.
Party international secretary Liew Chin Tong urged the Myanmar government to observe the Asean Charter relating to the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms, reports ANDREA FILMER.
“The DAP calls on the Burmese government to observe the protection of human rights spelt out by the Asean Charter and for the immediate release of Aung San Suu Kyi and other political prisoners.
“We also propose that Myanmar be suspended from Asean until the sentence is overturned and all charges against Suu Kyi are dropped,” Liew, who is also Bukit Bendera MP, said in a statement on Wednesday.
He said that the commuting of Suu Kyi’s sentence of three years’ imprisonment to one-and-a-half years under house arrest was “no consolation” as she has effectively been disqualified from the elections due in Myanmar next year.
“We have no doubt that these charges are entirely trumped-up, politically motivated and an affront to democracy, human rights and international rules of law,” he said.
In KUALA LUMPUR, the National League for Democracy Party Myanmar urged the Malaysian Government to put more pressure on Myanmar’s military junta so that Suu Kyi could be released immediately and unconditionally.
“This will make her available to contest for next year’s election ... we also want the election to be free and fair,” a member of the league here, Kyaw Myo Maung, told reporters on Tuesday, according to Bernama.