Cloud Computing Announcements

There have been so many cloud computing announcements this week, I don’t even want to attempt individual entries.  So, here are a list of a few.

Sun - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/31/sun_utility_computing_spin_out/ where Sun’ Chief Sustainability office now runs the cloud computing service

Exclusive Sun Microsystems' utility computing operation is being turned into a separate cloud business unit lead by Sun's chief sustainability officer Dave Douglas.

The Reg has learned Douglas will run Network.com, which provides hosted applications, servers and storage charged on a per-use basis, and will report directly to Sun chief executive Jonathan Schwartz. Network.com had been run inside Sun's software business, under executive vice president Rich Green.

IBM - http://gigaom.com/2008/07/31/even-ibms-got-computing-clouds/

Even IBM’s Got Computing Clouds
Om Malik, Thursday, July 31, 2008 at 9:00 PM PT Comments (1)

It looks like after Amazon, a mere book retailer, showed them the way, all the technology powerhouses have fallen in love with cloud computing. Hewlett-Packard, Intel and Yahoo earlier this week said they’ve teamed up with three universities to create a cloud computing testbed, and Michael Dell talked about his company’s cloud computing plans with me in a recent interview as well.

HP, Intel & Yahoo - http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10001390-92.html

HP, Intel, Yahoo join forces on cloud computing research

Posted by Caroline McCarthy 2 comments

This post was updated at 10 a.m. PDT to include further comments from the companies.

Hewlett-Packard, Intel, and Yahoo announced Tuesday that they've teamed up to create a "test bed" project for research in cloud computing, the umbrella term for outsourcing hardware and software capabilities rather than handling them locally.

With the rather dry name of The HP, Intel, and Yahoo Cloud Computing Test Bed, the open-source project will consist of data centers around the globe "to promote open collaboration among industry, academia, and governments by removing the financial and logistical barriers to research in data-intensive, Internet-scale computing." They've partnered with the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore, Germany's Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as well as the National Science Foundation.

Ebay - http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2008/07/is_ebay_getting.html

Is eBay Getting Into Cloud Computing?


Posted by J. Nicholas Hoover, Jul 29, 2008 06:39 PM

Another of the Web giants, eBay (NSDQ: EBAY), may be joining the growing and nebulous (pun intended) field of cloud computing, if a new job listing is any indication.

The company's looking for a director of cloud computing engineering, who will be in charge of leading eBay's "Cloud Computing initiative," according to the listing. The question is whether this job is really about managing eBay's internal cloud -- the company's in the midst of a three-year "grid computing" effort -- or doing something entirely new.

Microsoft - http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080729-microsoft-bets-on-cloud-computing-as-amazon-suffers-outage.html

At Microsoft's Financial Analyst Meeting a few days ago, Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie alluded to the company's cloud computing plans. Microsoft will offer a hosted solution for software vendors and value-added resellers to move applications to the cloud. As well as providing the basic tools to deploy these services, Ozzie said that Microsoft would deliver "a programming model leveragable on-premise and in the cloud."

The goal is to produce a set of tools to allow developers to create programs that work just as well on a single server as they do on a datacenter of servers.