The virtualization firm Pano Logic is one-upping Google and its Chromebook and Chromebox cloud PC devices with its own fully (read: no local OS or PC required) browser-based desktop computing platform.

John Kish, President and CEO of Pano Logic, outlined the deal with the new Pano System for Cloud and Pano Zero Client, a solid-state device that has no processor, no storage, no memory and no operating system: “For those organizations that don’t require a full Windows environment, the transition is seamless with immediate benefits. The end user sees the Chrome browser interface. The IT manager sees a simple management console. The CTO sees staff spending less time managing the desktop. The CIO sees a path to the cloud. And the CFO sees savings adding up.” Read the rest of this entry →

Google doubled down on the consumer cloud on Wednesday at Google I/O, where it unveiled the expected Nexus 7 tablet and the unexpected Nexus Q, which connects the new Google tablet and other Android smartphones to your TV. Read the rest of this entry →

There is a bit of a real-world land grab going on, but perhaps more alarming than precious real-world real estate sought by service providers is the virtual land grab that is best summed up by Google wanting exclusive rights to .blog and Amazon wanting .book.

As Ryan Singel writes this month at Wired.com’s Threat Post, in “.WTF? — 20 New Top-Level Domain Names That Should Exist, But Never Will”, exactly… .WTF is going on here? Read the rest of this entry →

With development fast and furious around cloud ecosystems and certain application programming interfaces (APIs), worry about lock-in has mounted. Now, the Google-backed startup CliQr has launched CloudCenter, which it says allows cloud applications to be moved easily between providers.

Tenry Fu, co-founder and CTO of CliQr Technologies, said CloudCenter, a cloud app management platform-as-a-service (PaaS), “abstracts away application dependencies from cloud-specific APIs and images, delivering true and fluid portability between clouds without any additional migration effort.”

“We recognized early on that cloud computing could never be fully exploited as long as getting to the cloud continued to be a infrastructure-centric, professional services-heavy process,” Fu said in the company’s press release on Tuesday. “We designed CloudCenter to be an extremely approachable platform that looks at the task of cloud computing from an application’s perspective, simplifying on-boarding without modification and image management, optimizing performance and providing end-to-end cloud security for any business application on any one or combination of private, public or hybrid clouds.” Read the rest of this entry →

Dubbing its launch “another important step in the future of productivity in the post-PC era,” Box today introduced its OneCloud service for Android, the world’s leading mobile platform.

Box touted OneCloud’s 50 integrations on Apple’s iOS, with Platform VP Chris Yeh writing in a blog post: “Our app partners have their integrations exposed to over 120,000 businesses running Box, with the opportunity for new revenue and new users.”

“We launched first on iOS and received an overwhelming response from the community to quickly follow-up with Android support. We heard you loud and clear…,” Yeh said. “Today, we’re extremely excited to expand Box OneCloud to Android.”

Read the rest of this entry →

Here’s a question. What if your computing needs outgrow the horsepower and features of your current stable of PCs and servers? Simple. You go buy better ones. Maybe try a different brand. And if you hate the new ones? No problem. Simply try another option. Or go back to the original. You always have a choice with hardware.

That, however, was yesterday. Today, companies of all sizes are getting themselves out of the hardware business and instead are buying their computing as a service, in the cloud. Trouble is, the freedom of choice and portability that you’ve enjoyed when purchasing computer hardware has been largely absent when you’re buying cloud services.

To see what I mean, consider movie rentals: a business revolutionized by cloud computing. Remember just a few years ago when you had to drive to Blockbuster and hope the movie you wanted wasn’t already checked out? Now, the cloud has enabled a growing list of services like Netflix, which allow us to stream any movie onto any device with the click of a button. Today’s cloud gives movie buffs unlimited choice and freedom.  But is it giving businesses that same kind of choice and freedom?

Listen to what Adrian Cockcroft, Netflix’s Director of Architecture, is saying about his cloud provider, Amazon Web Services. He loves it.  And yet, he too wants choice.  “Please try to build AWS clones that scale!” he asks.

Read the rest of this entry →

For most people the personal cloud means two things: It’s your data up there, plus apps and services that work with your data and connect you to other people and their data. For me there’s a third dimension. I’m the developer of a service that helps people connect with other people by way of their calendars in the cloud. I started a couple of years ago, when Azure first launched, and I’ve been evolving the elmcity calendar syndication service ever since.

The service currently supports hubs for about 50 cities and towns. In theory it can support thousands. Will it get there? That depends only on my ability to build the right service, show the benefits of the loosely coupled syndication model I’m evangelizing, and convince key stakeholders in cities and towns to adopt it. It depends not at all on my ability to deploy and manage servers, operating systems, or networks, for which I am deeply grateful.

That’s because I’ve been there and done that. For my first web project, which I documented in a monthly column for BYTE starting in 1995, I wore all those hats. At first it was fun, and I guess for some folks it still is fun, but for me the novelty wore off long ago. The infrastructure is just a means to an end. I want to focus on the destination, not the vehicle.

It’s true that, in one sense, today’s infrastructure feels less personal. My first server, a DEC Alpha machine called BYTEWEB, sat under my desk where I could hear how busy it was. Now my servers are virtual machines with names like RD00155D31705A, sitting in data centers I will probably never visit.

In another way, though, the modern arrangement is more personal. I have an idea. Its expression requires me to write and deploy software. Writing the code was always hard, still is, and maybe always will be. I think that’s the nature of writing, whether you’re writing code or prose.

Deploying the code was always hard too, but it never should have been, and now it isn’t. If I can think it, and write it, I can put it where you can use it — without having to sweat the infrastructure details. In his now-classic talk Inventing on Principle, Bret Victor argues that creators need a direct connection to what they create. If you’re a developer of web apps and services, cloud infrastructure helps you forge that direct connection. Read the rest of this entry →

It’s clear that the technology industry is moving from the PC era to the cloud era in several significant ways.  While cloud represents a new way for IT to deliver — and end users to consume — IT applications and services, this transition also represents a significant change in how applications, services and systems are defined.  The move to cloud computing is the most important technology disruption since the transition from mainframe to client-server, or even since Al Gore invented the internet. While industry veterans like Oracle’s commander in chief declared it a fad, this is a decade-long trend that is here to stay, and one that will define the next generation of IT.

The movement itself has been in play for the last decade, however there continues to be a lot of (mis)information in the marketplace about the cloud. So much so that it is difficult for organizations to figure out what is real and what is not to help them develop a successful cloud strategy, or simply learn about technologies  that have been specifically designed and purpose-built to meet  this dramatic shift in technology. While it’s important to know what the cloud is, it’s just as important to separate the wheat from the chaff, and for IT to understand what cloud is not.

To this end, I encourage you not to add yet another definition of the cloud to your glossary, but to truly understand the top 5 things the cloud is not. Read the rest of this entry →

Does the rest of the cloud computing world really need to clone Amazon Web Services in order to succeed? Rackspace prez Lew Moorman says some customers want companies like his to clone all of Amazon’s Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) — and that’s a bad idea that isn’t going to work out, he warns.

“Companies that try to clone all of Amazon are going to be ‘always behind, but not quite the same,’ he said Wednesday, speaking at the GigaOM Structure conference in San Francisco,” Wired Enterprise reports.

Moorman’s argument: “The more that Amazon’s customers use its own features, they contend, the harder it will be to move to another cloud provider, which may not support the same APIs. So, much in the same way that Linus Torvalds and others cloned Unix, some companies — Eucalyptus most notably — are trying to clone Amazon’s APIs.

According to Moorman, they’re more likely to emulate OpenOffice, a less-successful open source project that clones Microsoft’s Office suite of programs.

Read Robert McMillan’s full Wired Enterprise post, then have your say: Will building around Amazon — and even Amazon clones — cause problems later, or is Rackspace just bitter?

A whopping 50 percent of folks now say they have “complete confidence” in the cloud — up from 13 percent just a year ago, according to a new North Bridge Venture Partners survey.

Wow, right? There’s more, of course, by way of Forbes:

Cloud computing just isn’t as scary as it once was to companies and their CIOs. A new survey of 785 companies finds a meager 3% considering it to be too risky — down from 11% last year. Only 12% say the cloud platform is too immature, and that’s down from 26% a year ago…

But as Forbes contributor Joe McKendrick notes that, according to the survey — sponsored by 39 companies including Amazon Web Services, Rackspace, Eucalyptus, and Glasshouse — this still leaves half of folks not so sure about the cloud.

The bottom line, however, writes McKendrick: “…Cloud is now just considered the normal way to implement software solutions.” While survey respondents noted the regular concerns — security (55 percent), compliance (38 percent) and vendor lock-in (32 percent), the standout was that price/expense was down on this. At the same time, however, confidence that the cloud is cheaper in the long haul on total cost of ownership (TCO) is slipping slightly.

One big takeaway noted in the survey: Big data (See also on Cloudline: The Cloud and ‘Trickle-Down’: Big Data for All?):

With an increase in trust of the cloud, big data is emerging as a major focus for vendors and end-users alike. In fact, 80% of respondents identify big data as the most likely sector to be disrupted by cloud computing. Vendors also identify analytics and big data as the first and second-most important cloud service to provide, respectively.

And of course, the running trend in cloud computing is the the thrill is gone, or going, from the cloud itself. This survey seems to back that this is happening for reals:

Overall, as mentioned above, cloud is simply becoming the way we do things. Eighty-four percent of all net new software will be SaaS-based. Companies have stepped up spending on Software as a Service-delivered applications at a rate six times that of software purchase overall. In addition, a majority of respondents agree that most mission-critical software categories are being or will soon be disrupted: CRM, e-commerce, business intelligence, mobile, office productivity tools, application development, and even ERP systems are bound for online delivery.

Have your say: Is it time to drop the fear and get on with the future: cloud computing as the standard? Or is it way too early for that?