penlau software

At the recent Structure 2010 “Year of the Cloud” conference, Amazon.com CTO Werner Vogels railed against “the false cloud”–the idea that cloud computing can be done internally, within an enterprise. The “true cloud” in this worldview can only be realized using the facilities and resources of network-accessible service provider. Anything else? False. A misappropriation of the cloud name and concept–a pretender that cannot deliver the benefits of cloud computing. Oddly, another big theme of the conference was the idea that cloud is not defined[....]

VMware says that, like its rival Parallels, it has virtualization software that can help ease the transition from Windows XP toWindows 7. While its approach is less comprehensive than Parallels $50 product, VMware’s approach is free, using a combination of VMware Converter and VMware Player, both of which are available from the company’s Web site. VMware’s approach uses Converter to package up and transfer a physical XP desktop into a virtual machine and then allows that XP desktop to run virtually inside the new Windows 7 machine. VMware’s products have been[....]

Virtualization is a major component of cloud computing, but the primary focus has been on virtualized server instances running on cloud providers such as Amazon EC2. There is little argument that applications running in the cloud offer many attractive advantages, but ultimately users need to be able to access their data from any device and the data itself must maintain the highest levels of synchronization and integrity. One of the big challenges is the fact that users are comfortable with fat applications (generally meaning, not browser-based) for a large number of tasks. And while Google[....]

commentary Once upon a time Red Hat was content to be the enterprise Linux leader and VMware was happy to be the dominant virtual infrastructure vendor. No more. (Credit:Matt Asay and Library of Congress via Flickr) As the two companies have sought growth, they’ve increasingly stepped on each other’s toes, with recent VMware marketing taking strong swipes at its erstwhile partner, Red Hat, highlighting Pizza Hut as a high-profile customer defection from Red Hat to VMware. Can’t the two companies just get along? Probably not. Back in 2006, Red Hat and VMware announced an[....]

Parallels, the company best known for a product that lets Apple users run Windows side by side with Mac OS X, thinks it has found another good use for its virtualization technology. The company has quietly been working on a product that uses virtualization to ease the sometimes painful upgrade process going from Windows XP toWindows 7, CNET has learned. The new product, which will work for both those upgrading an existing machine to Windows 7 or those buying a new PC, uses virtualization to ensure that older programs can smoothly run on the new operating system. The product is expected to[....]

commentary Open-source cloud vendor Eucalyptus is rumored to be raising venture money at a $100 million valuation. Meanwhile, an Under The Radar conference dubbed “Commercializing the Cloud” is set for mid-April at which a host of new start-ups will talk about how they’re set to shake the clouds free of billions of dollars in sales. Will money fall from the sky? (Credit:IBM) It can’t come soon enough. For all the talk about cloud computing, the business of cloud computing is still in its infancy. When will it grow up? There’s no shortage of exceptionally[....]

IBM is expected to announce Tuesday its plans to go online with its commercial cloud service for software development and testing, allowing enterprise and government clients to access to IBM cloud services. Testing services are an excellent use-case for cloud services, and a number of start-ups including Sauce Labs and SOASTA have offerings that allow customers to test their applications without having to build a massive test infrastructure. According to IBM Research, the average enterprise IT department devotes up to 50 percent of its entire technology infrastructure to development and[....]

One of the dynamics of the server virtualization marketplace that doesn’t get the attention it probably should is the question of where the hypervisor “lives” and gets delivered to buyers. Services, such as load balancing and replication, that leverage a virtualized foundation to construct what goes by names like Dynamic IT may be ultimately more important than the foundation’s components. However, the choice of hypervisor matters today if only because it serves as a sort of control point for the profitable components above. Hypervisors get delivered in three[....]

In various markets, open source has relentlessly driven prices down while boosting performance and customer value, as detailed by The 451 Group. Even as traditional vendors have struggled with a tight economy, open-source vendors have thrived. In the process, has open source conditioned customers to expect more for less? Perhaps as little as $0.00? The Linux market offers some clues. Open source for sale…but at what price? IDC reported in 2009 that nonpaid Linux adoption had claimed a significant share of the Linux market, now as much as 50 percent, and counts as Red Hat’s[....]