Posted by Crystal Nichols on Tue, Mar 31, 2009 @ 01:47
Recently, the rift in the major IT companies over the 'Cloud Computing Manifesto' has shown the lack of definitions in this arena. I would like to take a minute to break this down.
To summarize; IBM, AT&T Corp., Cisco Systems Inc, EMC Corp, Novell Inc, Red Hat Inc, Sun Microsystems Inc and VMware Inc all agreed to the manifesto. Google, Amazon, Salesforce.com, and Microsoft were all absent from the agreement. IBM released its statements on how the other players were late in arriving or not invited while Google and Microsoft accused IBM of trying to own the global computing infrastructure.
Without discussing the ultimate business goals of each company (because at the end of the day they all would love to control the global computing infrastructure) we can see how these groups would not come to an agreement over Cloud Computing.
The 'Manifesto group' all are involved in the hardware, security, and other infrastructure needs to businesses and users. This group views Cloud Computing as 'Infrastructure as a Service."
The 'Software group' are all involved in software and solutions and view Cloud Computing as 'Software as a Service.'
Infrastructure as a Service, IaaS, believes that necessary resources (processing power, disk space, networking, facilities, uptime, etc) are what businesses need. Businesses do not need to purchase the hardware. The businesses can rent the platform and then can put any solution they want on it and only pay for what they use. The IaaS companies argue that there is no such thing as a service that fits all business needs and businesses should be able to use any service they want.
Software as a Service, SaaS, believes that services on demand are what businesses need. Businesses just need the solutions and they need them to be reliable. The SaaS companies argue that hardware is irrelevant and no one needs to know what is 'behind the curtain' (or in this case 'supporting the software.')
Both points of view are correct and incorrect. In many ways it reflects the decades long fight inside of companies between developers and infrastructure. Which is more important - the machines that make the software work or the software that makes the people work? In the end, it's the people working which is important and hardware and software are equally important.
So, while the breakup over the 'Cloud Computing Manifesto' is interesting from a "he said/she said" point of view; in the end it does not mean much from the users point of view.
Posted by Anand Chouthai on Sun, Mar 22, 2009 @ 08:48
I just came across Win4VDI for Linux and Solaris. This product seems very interesting.
Has anyone deployed it? Can you share your experiences?
Win4VDI for Linux and Solaris
Win4VDI provides the ability to consolidate and deliver multiple Windows Desktops from either Solaris or Linux server infrastructure.
Win4VDI allows organizations to standardize the application environment to users regardless of desktop hardware and operating system - Windows, UNIX, or Linux can be used on the client, but a common application profile can be created and served from Linux server configurations such as blade servers, rack arrays or large multi-way machines.
Win4VDI is very popular in the retail, education and health services industries due to its ease in supporting legacy Windows applications for industries that are looking to preserve their application investment while migrating to lower cost operating system infrastructure. Win4VDI requires no Microsoft server infrastructure.
For more information about Unitiv, please go to www.Unitiv.com