Guest post by Canonical’s Ubuntu 9.10 Server Edition will include private cloud capabilities, thanks to support for the open source Eucalyptus project, InfoWorld reports. Available for free download on Oct. 29, Ubuntu 9.10 Server Edition will introduce Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud, an open source cloud computing environment based on the same APIs as Amazon EC2. Users will be able to set up 10 to 15 private servers, leveraging the same capabilities they would use with Amazon, thereby allowing them to take their applications off the Amazon cloud and put them instead into a private cloud, or vice versa
It will be interesting to see how application developers jump on this. *ponders business possibilities*
Please don’t go that way, Ubuntu. Cloud Computing is a TREND and it’s a BAD and INSECURE trend. It is also a privacy and security threat.
I agree. “Cloud” computing has far more negatives in my mind than it has positives.
Ummm . . . I think one of the points of this is that you can create your own PRIVATE cloud with your own servers.
From the summary: “thereby allowing them to take their applications off the Amazon cloud and put them instead into a private cloud“
Exactly. There is absolutely no harm in Ubuntu doing this.
And for those preaching “the cloud is a fad” need to think back in history when instant messaging was a also a fad that would “never catch on in the business world”. It will evolve over time, but it is here to stay, especially as it gets harder to differentiate between local networks and the Internet.
Also consider that more and more people these days are perfectly fine with putting their personal information online. Consider technology like social networking and SAAS apps (Google Apps for instance). Again, the cloud is not going away.
I’m not preaching the cloud is a fad, as it has already been used for years. Instant messaging at work though will normally get a person fired, so it still has not caught on in the business world.
Except of course when it’s the corporate instant messaging system.
True, if they have one. A very rare thing to be sure.
Tech support centers use them more and more commonly with tiered support. The first responders message the more technical folks for answers while they are on the phone with customers.
Yeah. When first tier puts me on hold and then comes back with a completely nonsensical answer to my problem, I always wonder what bizarre chain of typographical errors might have resulted in it. Can these companies not afford phones and extension numbers?
It is a lot easier to juggle multiple IM windows than multiple phone calls.
(accuracy is another matter…)
Well… that explains the “It’s a boy!” answer I got to my query regarding a defective wireless card the other day.
Just kidding…
That makes sense.
No, not a rare thing. If it’s secured, and it’s logged, a lot of places use it.
Companies generally don’t use free services most likely, but Microsoft has had corporate IM solutions for years, first in Exchange 2000 and now in Live Communications Server. There’s OpenFire which is XMPP-based, SSL secured, and logs everything said.
Are you kidding? You can’t compare Cloud Computing with messaging technologies. That’s a whole different story, goals, and so on. CC takes your data into the cloud so you loose a touch with it – completely. Your data is no longer yours – it physicaly belongs to company X, Y or Z. And what about backups?
Urhh, whatever. Just go and read through the whole thing, not only the positives of CC. There’s always the second side of the coin.
Cloud Computing (taken from Wikipedia) is “a computing capability that provides an abstraction between the computing resource and its underlying technical architecture (e.g., servers, storage, networks), enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.”
Cloud computing is what people have already been doing for years, just without the web-based stuff. It is a client server model by definition, where the client uses resources stored on a server, whether it is an application or files. This used to be the norm back with the mainframe and dumb terminal days, and continues with all kinds of application servers designed to do just that. They have been in use for years. There is certainly nothing new about the idea, nor is it revolutionary. It is just the latest IT buzz word to throw around at the water cooler.
The business model around “the cloud” also makes it somewhat different than the pre-cloud days. Usually, like with all of Amazon’s services for example, you have “unlimited” usage and storage capability, but you only pay for what you use. This is similar to how Compuserve and some of the old BBS systems worked (pay by the hour).
Same kinds of services, different business model.
Whoa, buzzword police.
There’s no such thing as a private cloud. While the term is pretty ambiguous, minimally, storing something in “the cloud” refers to storing it with some third party, passing off the burden of storage to someone else. If the term is diluted to the point that one can also create their own “private” cloud, it then refers to nothing more than storing something remotely. We already have a word for that: a server.