The government has its eyes on the Cloud...

The federal government is making the admininstration's strongest statement yet in support of Web-based computing as it is adopting a "cloud-first" policy.

Clearly the government realizes the fast pace at which technology changes, and with its complex system and usually slow decision-making process, it may make an IT acquisition only to find out one month later that the technology has gone obsolete. As federal officials push agencies to move their data and applications to the web, the number of physical data centers the government uses will be significantly reduced.

The article included comments from a couple key officials in the change process, and it sounded like the decision to move to the Cloud has received quite positive feedback and support.

The federal government will outline more details at an open meeting on Dec. 9.

Listening to Diane Greene (Founding CEO of VMWare) at HBS Cyberposium

Yesterday, I visited the Cyberposium at Harvard Business School and was just amazed by the list of great speakers from CEO of HTC and Pandora and President of AOL Consumer Applications to general and product managers of FourSquare and Google Admobs. I was equally amazed by the variety of panel discussions such as Location Wars, Future of Touch, The New Living Room, Innovations in Enterprise Cloud Computing and Mobile and Future Gaming.

One of really good speakers happened to be Diane Greene, the Founding Chief Executive Officer of VMware. She talked about the cloud and where it was heading in this day and age. Some of the her points are mentioned below-

• Open Source Stack for the cloud
• Disruption in the storage of information (infrastrucutre layer)
• Cloud datacenters make dumb routers possible (network layer)
• Cloud datacenter run an open source stack model (OS & Hypervisors)
• Shrinked wrapped software on the cloud possible(App layer)

She also mentioned that they are 3 ways for business to enter the cloud -

• Storage
• Application Development Platform
• Multitenant SaaS

The barriers for entering into the cloud are -

• Trust and Privacy issues
• Control (who will control the cloud?)
• Value of Innovation
• Migration
• Vested Interests

In summary, she mentioned the following -

• Large $ are being taken out of IT
• Microsoft, Intel, IBM, Oracle have huge $ reserves to move into the cloud and become leaders
• Tomorrow's large business will start in the cloud
• Tech power will shift to the to the massive datacenters with broad services suite

Apple Looks to a New Computing Era

Looking through the daily technology articles on the 'The New York Times' I came across this very interesting article by Nick Bilton titled 'Apple Looks to a New Computing Era'.

Recently, Steve Jobs presented the new MacBook Air and mentioned that these new 'Macbook Air' line will be the next generation in laptops. What he essentially means is that future Mac laptops or desktops will no longer have DVD or CD drives! They will be replaced by the iCloud where users will store all their videos, music, photos and important documents.

Apple has a lot at stake, by being one of the first to move into this space. Also Steve Jobs is very aware that there are many players eagerly waiting to get into this potential high-revenue space and no better than Google (which has essentially grown up in the cloud and created integrated services).

Last week it was reported by Peter Oppenheimer, Apple's CFO, that they are ready to open a 500,000 sq-foot data center in North Carolina, worth $1bn, any day now which will act as the data storage for the iCloud. But Apple is being cautious about this launch, due its previous disaster of launching 'MobileMe'. Once this data center is launched, don't be suprised to find any number of cloud-based applications on your ipod, iphones and ipads!

What is most interesting is that we are at the brink of a major technology change which will once again change the landscape for technology and businesses. Personal storage will no longer be on our laptops but on data centres located in far off locations and maybe in different countries and continents. This does bring upto the issue of security but then nowdays how secure is the information we post on facebook or other social websites?

Hey! You! Get On To My Cloud!

Microsoft, Apple, and Google. It's becoming harder and harder to find an area where they are not on top of each other's every move. While each one has its respective strength, i.e. Microsoft's desktop and business platform, Apple's consumer/entertainment aesthetics, and Google's information management, we haven't seen much in the way of viable direct competition in each other's core businesses, Bing included. Ok, Android is showing some legs. While speculation has run rampant about the world of opportunity at Google's virtual fingertips, Google's foray into music could have truly revolutionary implications in the music industry and beyond.

Apple launched iTunes and the iPod in 2001. In time of music industry turmoil, the iTunes platform grew into a socially and economical stable platform. When the maintsream medium for music went from physical CDs to digital storage devices, it's safe to say Apple was leading the charge. In the last decade, not only has an increasingly large percentage of consumers begun to purchase their music online, a generation of consumers decided to transfer their CDs digital audio files. As this generation (and beyond) have come to access their music via digital audio players, they have been given a choice... Play music they own through an access point on a device where their music is already stored, or pay for a license to stream music they don't own online. Therein lies a limit. What Google has sought for business productivity software, they now seek to do for consumer audio - put it in the cloud. In doing so, it is going directly after Apple.

As shown in the article linked below, Google is seeking to store consumer's music online and provide anytime, anywhere access for a nominal fee. If successful, Google can detach music from proprietary locked devices, capture a world of valuable consumption patterns and connections, all the while collecting a nominal fee. Although they face hurdles in industry sales/licensing, user interface and design, and ever-splintering device support, Google almost certainly makes up for them in the department of engaged consumers and customer insight. Call it rampant speculation if you insist, but Google is betting that they not only have the power to redefine the industry once again, but that they also have the will and a way.

http://fmqb.com/article.asp?id=1953078

Microsoft Has No Plans To Make Another Smartphone, Exec Says

From Steve Ballmer’s speech on November 4, 2009, I found Microsoft is very clear about the trend of cloud computing and how television, mobiles, and personal computer would be integrated to this trend. While Microsoft is the first company among these three to touch into the mobile market, its early vision seems doesn’t help it even to stay in this market. A recent article published in WSJ Blog by Jeanette Borzo claims that Microsoft Has No Plans to make another Smartphone, according to Microsoft executives.

Microsoft is going to stick to core businesses and has no plans to develop a new Smartphone device, such as its ill-starred Kin handsets, the chief financial officer of Microsoft’s mobile-communication business said Thursday. While Apple is enjoying its huge success of the latest iPhone 4 and Google’s Android operating system continues to win popularity with consumers, Microsoft seems still didn’t show how it will deal with mobile market and how to save the windows mobile system. It is the similar case for its Bing and Live services. Even though both of these attempts show Microsoft’s resolution to compete with Google on cloud services, their strategy is much less clear than Google or even Apple. Microsoft claims to stick to its core business, but maybe that's not enough for it to compete with Google.