Clouding your thoughts

Cloud computing has received a number of boosts quite recently, and I thought I’d just run them down for you.

IBM made absolutely sure you knew their latest announcement was from them by calling it IBM Smart Business Development and Test on IBM Cloud (I usually put the acronym for a new product in brackets just after I give its full name, but this time I’ll just leave to you to work it out). This gives customers a free public cloud beta for software development. Get in early, because the beta will be open and free until general availability (sometime early in 2010).

IBM also announced the IBM Rational Software Delivery Services for Cloud Computing. This includes a set of ready-to-use application life-cycle management tools for developing and testing in the IBM Cloud.

Microsoft also has its head in the clouds and has announced Azure, as a way to bridge the gap between desktop and cloud-based computing. I guess the allure of Azure is that applications that were developed using a common Windows programming model can now be run as a cloud service.

Also clouding the distinction between what's a desktop application and what isn't, we've got the new Chrome OS. It just assumes that all applications are JavaScript-based Web applications that you use from a Web browser. So, effectively, every application is running in the cloud. And once a connection to the Internet is established, Chrome OS automatically synchronizes data using cloud storage.

Now I've read people commenting on how the Chrome OS will hit low-end Windows machines, but my guess is that it will actually hit Linux netbooks. Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of Linux and all things Open Source, but the real reason for running Linux on a netbook is because Vista is too memory hungry. OK, I know XP and Windows 7 are much better than Vista (or should I say, much much better!), but the idea of running Chrome OS on a netbook takes away the need to run Linux, and would appeal more to those people keen to experiment. Just a thought.

Going back to IBM, who have developed the world’s largest private smart analytics cloud-computing platform – aka codename Blue Insight – which combines the resources of more than 100 separate systems to create one large, centralized repository of business analytics. According to IBM, “cloud computing represents a paradigm shift in the consumption and delivery of IT services”. Blue Insight has allowed IBM to eliminate multiple Business Intelligence systems that were performing more-or-less the same ETL (Extract-Transform-Load) processes for different user groups.

Gartner Research are big fans of cloud computing, telling us that: “The use of cloud computing in general has been spreading rapidly over the past few years, as companies look for ways to increase operating efficiency and data security. The cloud industry, which is in its infancy, will generate $3.4 billion in sales this year.”

Merrill Lynch reckons that by 2011 the cloud computing market will reach $160 billion, including $95 billion in business and productivity applications. With that kind of money around, it’s no wonder that IBM and Microsoft are keen to get some of it.

And finally on this topic, IBM has announced a program designed to help educators and students pursue cloud-computing initiatives and better take advantage of collaboration technology in their studies. They’re calling it the IBM Cloud Academy. IBM provides the cloud-based infrastructure for the program, with some simple collaboration tools.

This is where I do the “every cloud has a silver lining” joke – or not!.