How VMware Plans to Control the Cloud
One area where VMware did not disappoint this week is breadth of vision. In just a handful of years, the company has gone from the defacto hypervisor provider to an all-encompassing software infrastructure vendor for virtualization and cloud computing. Even for someone watching the industry, the volume of announcements can be overwhelming.
VMware breaks down the product set into three layers: infrastructure, application platforms and end-user computing. With an eye on understanding specific products, here’s what I saw this week:
What We’re Reading About the Cloud on Sept. 1
Salesforce Integrates Jigsaw — Refining Contact Data
‘Patently Absurd’ Lawsuits Proliferate Among Web Firms
Between Oracle Corp. (Nasdaq: ORCL)’s patent suit against Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) and Paul Allen’s lawsuit against everyone, it feels as if we’ve just bounced back to 2003.
Paying the Cloud Computing Tab
As we move toward this whole notion of paying for IT as a service, one of the things that most IT organizations are overlooking is exactly how the billing process will be handled.
Many IT service providers have cobbled together their own billing applications and there is no real visibility into how billing is managed.
Software-as-a-service security applications ’employed by many’
Many companies are employing software-as-a-service security applications without being fully aware of the fact.
Writing for PC World, columnist Andreas Antonopoulos explained that several organisations are using technologies such as antispam and antivirus on their messaging systems.
He said many companies are not fully aware that these are software-as-a-service offerings but are benefiting from them nevertheless.
Mr Antonopoulos noted that this form of security outsourcing is growing by around 12 per cent on an annual basis.
VMware Rolls Out Do-It-Yourself Cloud Building
BlueLock and VMware Partner on New Cloud Services
Cloud hosting and managed IT services provider BlueLock announced its partnership with VMware last week at VMworld. The announcement coincides with the beta availability of a new cloud service, called VMware vCloud Datacenter Service.
According to BlueLock, it is one of three companies offer the vCloud Datacenter Service beta.
Evolution of the Trusted IT Adviser
Successful IT Solution Providers earn the distinction of becoming the trusted IT adviser for their clients. All solution providers strive for this status, virtually all claim it, many have truly earned it. However, if solution provider skills—and business practices—fail to evolve with our ever-changing industry, “trusted IT adviser” can become a trite label that loses meaning.
A way out of the private cloud dead end
A trend circulating among both the cloud computing upstarts and their corporate equivalents is the ability to offer a private cloud infrastructure with a clear and easy glide path to public clouds. We’ll see a few of these at VMworld this week, including one from EMC VMware itself…