Amazon AWS

Big Week In The Clouds

Most weeks are pretty cloudy for me these days. However, this one was chock-filled with exciting stuff. In case you missed any, here goes…

Rackspace Cloud API

Rackspace has three cloud offerings, ( Cloud Files, Cloud Sites, and Cloud Servers). Cloud Sites is their PaaS offering that use to be called Mosso. Cloud Files is, of course, their cloud storage offering. The big question for Rackspaces’s IaaS has been no-API (i.e, Cloud Servers). Some people believe that you really can’t be called an IaaS unless you have an API to manage the infrastructure. This week Rackspace answered this question.

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Azure Pricing

This week Microsoft announced the long awaited pricing for their new PaaS offering called Azure. Microsoft announced that their bare bones windows services, running on Azure, will be $0.12 per hour. The big debate this week has been focused on comparing the Azure pricing with Amazon’s EC2 Windows pricing at $0.125 per hour. The answer is, you really can’t compare. First off, Azure is a PaaS that doesn’t offer OS level access and Amazon is an IaaS that gives you Administrator (root) level access.  Secondly, Azure applications can only run as .Net or Win32 based applications.  Azure runs similar to the way Google’s PaaS works. You can install your application code into their Paas; however, you can’t install an already packaged application. For example, you can’t install something like Drupal on Azure, at least not easily.  One last point is that, Amazon EC2 Windows instances run as Windows 2003 Servers only.  In the end the primary choice will most likely not be price, and more likely will be based on the target application.

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GSA To Build A Store Front To The Clouds

The General Services Administration is plaining to launch an online application, (i.e., storefront), to enable agencies to purchase cloud computing applications like Amazon Web Services. The Federal CIO, Vivek Kundra, announced this on Wednesday.

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BMC Offers A Deployment Solution For Amazon Web Services

BMC Software announced this week that they are leveraging Amazon Web Services to manage hybrid cloud environments by managing deployments to Amazon’s EC2.  BMC has had a solid story for behind-the-firewall-management ever since their acquisitions of BladeLogic and Remedy.  By combing service management solutions with strong provisioning in a cloud environment could make this move exciting.

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Day 2 dawns at Enterprise Cloud Summit

We’re exploring new frontiers at the Enterprise Cloud Summit, as cloud deckhands try to haul up the sails and ship owners look for value. Overall the mood is good; people are receptive, especially since the order of the day for cloud evangelists is “saving money” and they have examples to prove it.

Probably the biggest news of the day was from Amazon, which announced a new set of AWS  services that address performance and monitoring. It’s worth noting that that’s something many cloud management services (e.g., RightScale) are also offering.

Amazon CTO Werner Vogels also point-blank ducked a question on how Amazon makes decisions on how to bring new AWS products to market. This is obviously of interest to cottage industries springing up around AWS.

Other highlights have included a snappy “Dark Side” talk by Forrester Analyst James Staten, providing welcome relief after other sugar-coated morning sessions.

Then, a panel featuring an honest-to-goodness risk analyst and an insurance wonk outlined the meaning of their pet neologism, “intellectual malpractice,” that is, losing/misusing the citizenry’s personal identity materials. Their opinion is that adding cloud providers into the insurance mix may add hitherto unknown risks, since victims may be able to sue anybody involved in the chain.

Technology has outpaced the law, and it’s a breakout world for litigators, argued Bob Parisi, from the risk advisory firm The Marsh Group. That may prove to be a roadbloack for enterprise adopters, he said. Drew Bartkiewicz from The Hartford was unequivocal, however. “Cloud insurance exists,” he said. It’s just going to cost you an unspecified amount of money.