cloud computing company

Recent Contributions

Emerging opportunity for investors and entrepreneurs, offered by the platform-as-a-service trend.

Keywords: PaaS, Force.com, Emergence, VC
Authors: Matt Holleran, Emergence Capital.
Matt joined Emergence from salesforce.com where he was the Vice President of Appexchange Partners. His team led the Appexchange partner ecosystem at salesforce.com from inception. Matt has 12 years of experience in business applications serving SMB to Fortune 50 customers with functional expertise in marketing, product management, sales, channels and business development.

Prior to salesforce.com, Matt was the CEO of Apexon (acquired by STG), VP Marketing and Business Development of Datasweep (acquired by Rockwell Automation (ROK)), and served in several product, marketing and direct sales roles at Clarify (CLFY). He personally discovered the impact of information technology on productivity when he held line manufacturing positions at Cummins Engine Company (CMI). He started his career as a Financial Analyst in Morgan Stanley's private equity division. Matt graduated cum laude with a B.A. in Engineering Sciences and Economics from Dartmouth College and has an M.B.A from Harvard.
Abstract:
The cloud has emerged as a disruptive force, something venture capitalists live for. SaaS pioneers, like Salesforce.com and NetSuite, broke through to customers with their innovative and flexible solutions that offered rapid ROI. Today, the platform-as-a-service trend adds fuel to the fire, as new companies are able to get to market quickly, leveraging one of the many powerful platforms, including Amazon EC2, Google App Engine and Salesforce.com's Force.com. These platforms eliminate the need to build out an expensive data center and, what's more, each offers a built-in audience of potential customers around the world. Emergence was the first to fund a company built purely on one of these platforms, and invested $2 million in Maxplore to accelerate their growth.

This presentation will review the emerging opportunity for investors and entrepreneurs, offered by the platform-as-a-service trend.

Scalable storage in the cloud

Keywords: Scalable storage in the cloud, SSD
Authors: Boris Zuckerman, Vice President of Engineering, Ibrix, Inc.
Abstract:
The main reason why anyone should use cloud computing paradigm is scalability.
People want to move large scale grid computations that they used to run on traditional clusters into centrally managed environment, pay for use and be done with it.
Note: these are the same applications that they are already running! Nobody wants to re-write them.
What is the biggest problem of large scale computing? It’s sharing of data. Networks scale easy, cores can be added, but storage traditionally was the bottleneck. You can place huge expensive EMC, HDS, IBM system in the middle of you enterprise and connected it with very expensive FC cables and adapters to you computers, but still it’s very limited. Ibrix has an answer for this. Ibrix allows creating very large scale shared file systems out of inexpensive components.
Ibrix file system is absolutely normal, fast Linux and Windows file system. It can be extended on demand by adding storage segments and the servers controlling them. Even more – you do not need designated servers! You can use you local computer storage as the part of common file system.
Just imagine: when you rent your cloud space you can choose the parameters of the shared file system. You want very fast? Sure! We have SSD based 200Gb segments, grouped 4 per your computing unit. How many do you need? SSDs are too expensive?
Sure! Here is a little cheaper HDS or EMC base segments with designated servers.
Are you planning to live in the cloud for a long time and you need affordable large scale storage? Great! Here are large segments based on DELL or HP boxes. How many do you need?

Many Ibrix customers implemented this model!

High Performance Compute Cloud

Keywords: Amazon Web Services, Bioinformatics, Data Analytics, Cloud computing
Authors: Jinesh Varia, Technology Evangelist, Amazon Web Services.
Abstract:
Jinesh Varia will discuss some of the real-world high performance computing usecases that are currently operational in the cloud. We will discuss different types of clusters currently running in the cloud. He will discuss the state of the Cloud, the most recent and upcoming developments around Amazon Web Services and Cloud computing in general. We will learn how enterprise customers are currently using the services to solve real business problems that range from Bioinformatics to Data Analytics, From Web Hosting to Processing pipelines. Jinesh also discuss see how researchers and professors can take advantage of the cloud in their projects/classes.

Will Standardizing the Cloud Make it Secure or Stifle Innovation and Openness?

Keywords: Rackspace Cloud, Security
Authors: Jonathan Bryce, Rackspace Mosso Co-Founder.
Abstract:
Cloud computing has dramatically lowered the barriers to entry for new web entrepreneurs wanting to start innovative businesses. However, the lack of interoperability, consistency and security concerns across services keeps many businesses from adopting. There have been several calls for standards to help make services from different cloud providers interoperable and ultimately more useful and secure to enterprises.

Uncertainty abounds, with questions such as "Are standards really needed?" "Who should be involved?" “Can the cloud ever be secure?” and "What are potential consequences of working in the cloud?"

This talk will explore the pros and cons of standards, address myths surrounding security in the cloud, while also providing insight from customer feedback and what new cloud technology trends Mosso sees coming this year.

About Mosso, The Rackspace Cloud

Mosso, The Rackspace Cloud, provides on-demand scalable website, application and storage hosting. Through its suite of cloud solutions, Cloud Sites™, Cloud Files™ and Cloud Servers™, Mosso enables astute developers and IT managers to minimize the hassles, upfront investments and high costs associated with dedicated hardware while offering the ability to easily scale hosting resources

The Resin J2EE Application Server - what works for SalesForce can work for you.

Keywords: SaaS, J2EE Application Server, Cloud storage, Load Management
Authors: Fred Zappert, Caucho Technologies.
Abstract:
The Resin J2EE application server powers SalesForce.com. Both the open source version of Resin and ResinPro are ideally suited to complete the platform needed to host Java and PHP applications in the Amazon Web Services Cloud.

The latest version of Resin adds improved clustering capabilities that can take fuller advantage of the AWS environment in terms of load management and load balancing.

Resin is also adding a distributed cache (a simple Map) that is highly persistent and redundant. In the AWS environment, the cache can rely on either S3 or EBS storage. This is usable now, and lays the foundation for being able to perform joins.

Resin also provide an integrated web-server with dynamic page caching, eliminating the need for a separate Apache instance.

The full complement of the administration and monitoring tools provided with Resin continue to be available.

In many of the discussions on Cloud Computing, the capabilities and suitability of application servers are overlooked. With Resin, users can provide a rich SaaS offering on a cloud that they control.

Sector: An Open Source Cloud for Data Intensive Computing

Keywords: data intensive computing, programming models for clouds, wide area clouds, storage clouds, compute clouds
Authors: Robert Grossman and Yunhong Gu, University of Illinois at Chicago & Open Data Group.
Abstract:
In this talk, we describe an open source cloud application
called Sector that is designed for data intensive computing. Sector
includes both a compute cloud and a storage cloud. Sector's compute
cloud supports MapReduce, as well as generalizations that allow
user-defined-functions (UDFs) to be invoked easily on all the data
managed by the Sector storage cloud.

In this talk, we give an overview of clouds designed for data
intensive computing, including i) Google's GFS, MapReduce and
BigTable; ii) Hadoop and iii) Sector. We describe some benchmarks for
clouds designed for data intensive computing and include performance
measurements comparing Sector and Hadoop. We also describe some
interoperability issues and emerging standards for these types of
clouds.

Finally, we include several case studies describing some deployments of Sector.

CloudNine - a cloud hosting platform.

Keywords: cloud hosting platform, CloudNine
Authors: Aaron D. Hollobaugh, Hosting.com.
Abstract:
Hosting.com created CloudNine, a cloud hosting platform, in 2008. CloudNine grew out of increasing client demand for high availability, redundancy, failover and a market acceptance of virtual server environments. The solution was built with the typical hosting consumer in mind, and to that end Hosting.com conducted significant research through the Beta program for its solution (still available), consulting with clients, working with leading manufacturers, and most recently completing a Cloud Industry Trends Report. Our discussion for CloudSlam 2009 will focus on this research, its findings and ultimately its impact on the hosting industry and consumers of hosted solutions.

Specifically, our Trends Report, which surveyed over 600 individuals will introduce new data into the cloud marketplace when it is released on 2/20/2009. Of the 600+ respondents, 42% were C-Level employees and 69% worked for companies with fewer than 100 employees and 11% for companies with greater than 1,000 employees. This sample provided very interesting insight into the expectations small, medium and large companies have of cloud computing, their intended uses, reasons for adopting, and expected timeframes for implementing cloud-based solutions. Surprisingly, Hosting.com’s data reveals that there is little difference between how enterprise companies and small businesses will utilize cloud computing – and also what business drivers will lead them to adopt the technology and how soon and at what pace (if not already) they plan to implement the technologies.

Much of the data currently in the market place, reveals that small businesses will be less likely to adopt cloud solutions due to a lack of knowledge and understanding of cloud computing. Hosting.com’s data and interactions with prospects and clients shows that small and medium sized businesses are more likely to deploy cloud computing environments due to the reduced costs, scalability, improved service level agreements/guarantees, flexibility, and overall performance typically associated with cloud-based solutions.

Due to these demands from businesses of all sizes, Hosting.com will disclose how cloud computing will continue to transform and alter the hosting industry. Most hosting companies started using shared platforms and moved to virtual private servers to dedicated and colocated solutions, and now due to the improved security and reliability of virtualized solutions will once again move back into a shared hosting environment. In addition to large cloud solutions, Hosting.com will also explain the trends, values and benefits among many companies that are architecting private-cloud like solutions to reduce costs for failover, redundancy, scaling, etc.

These changes and new solutions are a dramatic shift that has begun and will continue to evolve rapidly over the next 18-24 months. Hosting companies and hosting consumers that do not move to create or utilize standards-based cloud computing solutions will miss out on the business values that accompany these solutions. Hosting.com will pull from its existing knowledge of clients, survey respondents, beta users, and a White Paper to be completed in late March in conjunction with IT Business Edge to demystify cloud computing for SMBs and show how the solution is providing real value to consumers today.

Cloud infrastructure Providers

Keywords: Cloud infrastructure Providers
Authors: Antonio Piraino, Tier1 Research.
Abstract:
There is a great deal of discussion about the impact of Cloud infrastructure Providers on the traditional enterprise sector. Those enterprise users have the choice of building internal Clouds or outsourcing to Cloud infrastructure and platform providers. In this presentation we’ll clarify how Microsoft's Azure Services Platform, Google AppEngine, Amazon Web Services, and even IBM’s Cloud services affect traditional enterprise operating models. From there, we’ll take a look at managed hosting providers that are not sitting idly by, and are themselves taking the bull by the horns by developing new Cloud infrastructure solutions for both their current and new customer segments. The virtualization of their datacenters, the increased operational expertise, and the investment in new platforms is discussed and measured to show who the winners in this segment will be. I’ll also share a recent questionnaire posed to all of these operators showing what their biggest challenges are, and the perception from their customers toward their expectations and uses of Cloud Services in the datacenter world.

Selling the cloud

Keywords:sales, marketing, strategy, selling
Authors: Daniel Smith, Nasstar plc.
Amongst all the talk of what we can do with the cloud and why we should adopt it and the great benefits it can bring and even why people should buy cloud services there is very little guidance of how to sell the services.

We are experiencing the biggest upheaval of business and technology adoption with in many of our life times. While we all can see the future we need to make sales now to make our businesses a reality and just because we have the greatest product, people will not simply buy it, marketing people will happily spend our budget but in this new market getting some basics right will ensure success. Understanding your sales strategy and your sales process will enable this success. But there are some challenges. Are you going to sell direct, how are you going to target a sales team, how do you reach the potential customers and make them buy. Maybe the channel your best route to market but can you deliver what they need to guarantee your success. Can you sell your service on line or do you need to educate the market?
These are just some of the questions that you need to address before you make potentially costly mistakes.
conversations with organizations such as Citrix, Microsoft and Nasstar plc

The Pareto Illusion - Why we end up paying too much for cloud services and what can we do about it?

Keywords:virtualization, security, compliance
Authors: Moshe Kaplan and Ayal Baron, RockeTier.
Cloud computing is a whole new game: we are no longer talking about equity and CapEx, but regarding OpEx.
So why are you still paying so much every month for your cloud services? How can it be reduced? What are the industry state of art methodologies to gain more out of your cloud service provider? How to do more with same, and how to gain a better ROI for your project? and last but not least, how to help saving our world.
In this presentation we'll discuss how can you make your software more efficient, and how to focus on core components of the system and achieving 80% boost in 20% effort.

Buy on DVD

Buy all recordings on:

DVD at http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002H07SEC

CD Audio Tracks in MP3 format at http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002GFA8YA
Cloud Computing Conference