Posts Tagged ‘cloud computing’
Red Hat CEO: Significant Barriers in Switching to Linux on the Desktop
Yesterday at the Open Source Business Conference, Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst shared his thoughts on why Linux on the desktop is irrelevant to Red Hat. Whitehurst says that financial reasons as well as practical reasons are barriers to the market for Linux. For one, he says, that he’s not quite sure how one would make money doing it. An interesting point, indeed. One of the biggest advantages of running a distribution of Linux such as, say Ubuntu, is the cost. If you can eliminate the “Windows tax” by building a machine, the cost of the OS is free. That cost is what drives quite a few people to the platform. There is, of course, significant value in the software as well. The freedom to choose an operating system is really what Linux is all about, but trying to sell Linux on the desktop, Whitehurst says, is not even being considered. He also notes that a lot of Linux developers prefer to have Macs as their workstations.
The other reason the CEO says that it’s pointless is the fact that the desktop is, in effect, going away. Quoting the famous Wayne Gretzky, he says that he’d “rather think about skating to where the puck is going to be than where it is now.” If the netbook market, cloud computing, and virtualization is where we’re headed, then it is certainly not worth it to Red Hat or any other Linux distribution to try to compete with Microsoft on the game that’s almost over, but rather getting a head start on the game that’s just beginning.
Tags: cloud computing, linux
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Mar 26th, 2009
Ubuntu 9.10 Server to Focus on Cloud Computing
Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of the Ubuntu foundation, announced today the plans for Ubuntu 9.10 “Karmic Koala”. The server version will focus on developments both in the Amazon EC2 cloud as well as allowing users to build their own elastic computing clouds utilizing the Eucalyptus platform.
Ubuntu started offering official AMI’s to run on EC2 just a short time ago and is planning on building out its list of images to allow users to deploy pre-installed packages of the OS and applications to run on EC2 and other clouds as well as building on the ubuntu-vmbuilder software as well. Ubuntu-vmbuilder is an application that lets users automate the creation of virtual machines for testing and development purposes as well as deployment of applications which is right on track with the elastic computing idea. Shuttleworth promises to make an easier way to interact with clouds: “Wouldn’t it be apt for Ubuntu to make the Amazon jungle as easy to navigate as, say, APT?”
The other thing they will be focusing on with the new release is integrating the Eucalyptus platform into the OS. Eucalyptus is an open source suite to build an elastic computing cloud similar to Amazon’s EC2 using your own hardware. It uses the Xen hypervisor just like EC2 and it meant to be able to interface with EC2′s web services as well as query interfaces. Plans for Ubuntu server are to allow the “cloud” resource pool to grow and shrink with the resource requirements of the cluster. In theory, all servers would run during peak hours and as resources are no longer required, the physical hosts would be suspended or shutdown all together to conserve energy.
Tags: amazon, cloud computing, ubuntu
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Feb 21st, 2009
Sun Builds Its Own Cloud
Sun announced yesterday at SugarCRM’s SugarCon that it is building its own cloud computing platform to compete with Amazon’s EC2 offerings. Sun sees adding a hosted computing platform as a great business opportunity for the suffering company during economic hard times. “There will be lots of clouds and we see Sun as being a major player in that area,” said Lew Tucker, VP and CTO for cloud computing at Sun. Sun’s Solaris OS has had the capability of operating in a paravirtualized “cloud” environment for years and from the sounds of it they have simply built a reporting and billing mechanism around their zones and will be hosting the physical machines for users.
Tags: cloud computing, sun
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Feb 4th, 2009
Microsoft Enters Cloud Computing Game
In true Microsoft style, Microsoft has finally (almost) entered the cloud computing arena with its new Windows Azure services. Azure’s offerings are similar to the Google App Engine in that they are storage and processing services rather making the costumer manage the instances at an OS level such as the Amazon EC2 cloud. Of course, this lack of responsibility and management also means a loss of control and customization. Azure will offer on-demand versions of Exchange, Microsoft CRM, Sharepoint, Microsoft Office Live services as well as the .NET and “Live” application platforms for web developers. Ballmer talked of these new services just a month ago saying it would be announced towards the end of October.
Microsoft’s new offerings come just a few weeks after Amazon announces plans to enable Windows in its EC2 cloud which allows customers the ability to manage its machines fully by running them on top of Xen and giving customers full “root” access. Since Microsoft apparently doesn’t call its pre-release products beta anymore, you can now check out a “technology preview” here.
Tags: cloud computing, microsoft
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Oct 28th, 2008
Windows on EC2
Amazon has announced support for Windows Server and MS SQL Server running in EC2 coming this fall. The announcement came the same day that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced the coming of Windows ‘Cloud’. This functionality was available before using a bit of a hack, but will be fully supported coming before the end of the year. There’s no solid word from Amazon on what the costs will be nor how the licensing will work, though they have said “of course the actual price will be higher than Linux-based instances, due to the cost of Windows licenses”. The more traditional licensing style from Microsoft would be a bit difficult given the elastic nature of EC2, but they apparently have worked out something with Microsoft even with the recent news of Windows ‘Cloud’ on its way (somehow related?). You can read the original announcement here.
Tags: amazon, cloud computing, microsoft, windows server
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Oct 6th, 2008
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