Amazon EC2 suffers significant outage on April 21
Amazon’s challenges with getting all services back online following an outage in its US-East  region  is already becoming a hot topic for debate in the Cloud Computing Industry.

Key differences between Social Business and Social Media
Social Media Club readers have posted compelling feedback on Chris Heuer’s framework that outlines the differences between Social Business and Social Media.

New Enterprise 2.0 survey needs participants
Jacob Morgan is looking for reader participation in an interesting Enterprise 2.o Survey.

Dell makes 1 Billion investment in Data Centers
Dell continues its transformation into a full services IT firm with 1 Billion investment in data centers. This investment in comes on the heels of recent major acquistions by Dell.

Elastic Beanstalk runs with Amazon EC2, S3, Elastic Load Balancing, Auto-Scaling and Simple Notification Service on the Amazon Linux AMI.Elastic Beanstalk allows a developer to upload an application to Elastic Beanstalk using the AWS Management Console, API’s or the AWS toolkit for Eclipse and automatically deploys and provisions the necessary services required to run the application.

Developers upload their applications via a standard war file and after deployment the application can be accessed via an auto generated or custom url.

Management features that are standard in Beanstalk once an application is deployed include CloudWatch monitoring metrics, email notifications, runtime deployment of applications and the ability to restart Amazon EC2 application servers with one command.

After deployment, developers can adjust default application settings such as database options, storage services and load balancing with Elastic Beanstalk. One of the key features that will appeal to developers is the ability to pass environment variables through the Elastic Beanstalk console.

The beta iteration of Beanstalk is ready for Java Developers running Apache Tomcat and has initially been launched only in the AWS United States East Region. Once out of beta Amazon expects to release Beanstalk to multiple regions and for additional development stacks such as PHP.

The release of Beanstalk might affect the fortunes of PAAS providers like Rightscale, Elastra and Cloudkick (Although Cloudkick  was recently acquired by Rackspace) who have created Cloud Management solutions specifically for Amazon AWS. Pricing for Elastic Beanstalk service is free and users only pay for the managed resources such as EC2 and S3 that their deployed application use on AWS.

Microsoft announced a number of new capabilities and services for Windows Azure at its PDC10 conference.

New capabilities and services include:

• Support for Virtual Machine (VM) roles. VM roles will allow users to move their legacy applications to Windows Azure eliminating the need to change code to work within Windows Azure

• Remote Desktop Functionality will finally be offered on Windows Azure. The capability to log into a running Cloud Instance has been standard on most competing PAAS offerings for some time.

• Windows Azure Connect allows users to configure IP based virtual networks between Windows Azure and on premise systems.

• “Extra Small” and “Small” Windows Azure Instances priced from .05 cents per hour per server. With the recent roll-out of competing free usage tiers from Amazon and free ITiS solutions from start-ups like Cloud Share, Microsoft might want to think about offering free usage tiers as well for this market segment.

• Windows Azure Marketplace is billed as an online market for developers and partners to buy and sell, services, training, applications and code components.

Amazon rolls out new functionality for it various Cloud services at a fever pace and the slew of new features for Windows Azure should help Microsoft keep pace in the PAAS space; especially amongst its core Enterprise and Developer users.

One of the more eagerly adopted cloud services thus far in 2010 has been CloudShare Pro. CloudShare Pro is a “light” version of CloudShare’s Enterprise level product and is aimed at individuals and small teams who want to quickly set up training, sales or testing environments in the cloud and share copies with other colleagues.

Free during its beta period; CloudShare Pro allows user to create up to six Linux or Windows VM’s, each with its own internal IP and outbound access to the internet. CloudShare Pro also allows users to create snapshots of their environments (the beta version only saves the latest snapshot) and supports drag and drop file sharing from a desktop environment.

At the time of this article CloudShare Pro offers Windows 7, Windows XP Professional, Windows Server 2008 and 2003 and CentOS 5 templates. These templates include the appropriate software licensing  for installed applications such as Microsoft Office, SQL Server 2008  and Oracle 11g database.

One of the more innovative features of CloudShare Pro is the ability to share user created environments with other teams members or associates. Users have up to 10 invites that can be sent out at any one time to allow others to share created environments.

Once an invited user collaborates on an existing environment, the new user can then either use the environment as is or can click a link to become an environment author and create his/her own CloudShare Pro account and custom environments. This viral effect is unique amongst cloud providers and is partly responsible for the reported 1000 users who signed on and created new environments in the first 2 weeks of CloudShare Pro’s launch.

In its current beta state, CloudShare Pro has a few limitations that hopefully will be addressed prior to GA. One of the most glaring is the small amount of RAM and hard disk space allocated for the images. Windows XP server 2008 for example only has a 12 MB hard disk partition and 2gb of ram. This would preclude the use of Cloudshare Pro to lighter usage such as for demo systems or for sales teams vs the enterprise level environments that can be setup via CloudShare’s Enterprise product. In addition, although internal IP’s and networking are allowed, Cloudshare environments are not accessible externally (Which prevents users from using CloudShare Pro for setting up websites or mail servers etc)

But for the users who need a lightweight cloud solution, CloudShare Pro very nicely fills a void that has developed in the Cloud Industry. Most Cloud vendors to date have marketed their offerings towards IT departments for medium to heavy use applications and as a result their solutions have a learning curve that has limited adoption to the more tech savvy user. With CloudShare Pro, almost anyone who can utilize a web browser should be able to quickly setup Cloud based environments

The rollout and fast adoption of CloudShare Pro is being watched closely in the industry and it would be safe to assume that the incumbents (Amazon, Rackspace, GoGrid etc) will offer similar services in this space soon.

The initial lack of capabilities in the provider interfaces created the market for cloud consoles. The initial crop of cloud consoles, however, has grown beyond simply providing a better interface into the cloud. This market has evolved into cloud brokers that act as the trust layer between the customer and their cloud infrastructures. The evolution from cloud console to cloud broker occurred in less than a year. In 2008, the only way to access Amazon Web Services was a command-line tool or writing your own code. As a result, a number of people built their own custom web interfaces for accessing AWS and a number of third-party tools like enStratus appeared in the market to simplify the job.

As the market changed, the role of a pure console became obsolete. Amazon added a graphical console for AWS. Today, all cloud providers have some form of basic web interface into their services. Though most third-parties still provide better front-ends with more features than the provider consoles, the third-parties have become something much more significant: cloud management tools and cloud brokers.

A cloud management tool adds functionality beyond the simple management of raw cloud assets. RightScale, for example, provides robust auto-scaling beyond what AWS auto-scaling allows. enStratus, on the other hand, provides key management that enables complete encryption of data at rest and in transit in the public cloud without the cloud provider being able to gain access to your keys.

Cloud brokers offer yet another layer of functionality on top of cloud management tools. A cloud broker provides a single interface through which you can manage multiple clouds and share resources across clouds. A cloud broker provides the following capabilities:

• It provides a single interface for interacting with multiple clouds
• It operates outside of the clouds it controls and monitors those clouds
• It detects cloud failures and reacts in some appropriate way to those failures
• It can move infrastructure elements from one cloud (public or private) to another

A cloud broker is a critical piece of your public cloud infrastructure. Minimally, a cloud broker provides a solid business continuity strategy. Without a cloud broker, your infrastructure is at risk against failures in your cloud provider.

The ultimate failure is, of course, the cloud provider going out of business. Outside the cloud, you are somewhat isolated from vendors going out of business. For example, if your non-cloud infrastructure is built entirely on Windows, your Windows desktops and servers will still start up if Microsoft were to declare bankruptcy. If, on the other hand, your infrastructure is running entirely in Azure and you have no cloud broker, you go out of business along with Microsoft. If you are a public company, the argument that “Microsoft will never go out of business” is not sufficient for SOX compliance. Even if it were (or if you are a private company), you should keep in mind that no one ever thought Enron would go out of business or that GM would declare bankruptcy.

A cloud broker can spread your operations across multiple cloud infrastructures and enable real-time disaster recovery into a secondary cloud. If Amazon were to suddenly disappear for some arbitrary reason, enStratus can enable you to bring that infrastructure back up in Rackspace; for example, with little (or even no) data loss.

In the future, cloud brokers should evolve into brokers in the truest sense of the word “broker”. The Holy Grail in the cloud broker world is the ability to automatically decide the least expensive cloud components for efficiently operating your systems and move those components around different public clouds based on pricing and quality of service. Though we’re still a long way from that vision, cloud brokers are creating the building blocks that will make the vision possible.

George Reese is the CTO of enStratus™, the provider of the leading cloud management platform for enterprise applications. George is also the author of the #1 selling cloud computing book “Cloud Applications Architecture“. To learn more about enStratus visit www.enstratus.com

Want to learn more about Setting Up Web Servers on Amazon EC2? Subscribe to OnDemand Beat today and be sure to check out the OnDemand Beat Amazon EC2 Resource Page.

Detailed tutorial on setting up and deploying a web server on Amazon EC2.

Amazon Web Services today announced the public beta of its newest addition to its web services portfolio; Amazon Elastic MapReduce.

Elastic MapReduce is a web service that allows researchers, analysts and businesses to process and analyze data using a hosted Apache Hadoop “data processing engine” that runs on Amazon S3 and Amazon EC2.

Much like the Mathematica and Mathworks EC2 computational solutions, Amazon Elastic MapReduce is a metered service that is designed to be used for applications like data mining, machine learning, financial analysis or scientific research. Amazon’s entry into the market will provide a bit of competition (to say the least) to Cloudera for users interested in running Hadoop in the Enterprise.

Elastic MapReduce will initially only be available in the USA and users can choose standard Amazon EC2 Instances or High CPU EC2 Instances to run their applications. Pricing for Elastic MapReduce ranges from 10 cents per hour for a small standard EC2 instance to 80 cents per hour for an extra large High CPU instance. Elastic MapReduce supports Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, and Perl.

Elastic MapReduce will be appealing to users that need to scale up quickly as the High CPU plans allow users to run up to hundreds of instances running Hadoop and instances can be run concurrently. Amazon EC2 and S3 have to date been very stable and the fact that EC2 and S3 are integrated with Elastic MapReduce and that instances can be managed via the AWS Console or command line are key selling points.

Cloud Slam’09 is a virtual cloud computing conference taking place over 5 days from 20 – 24 April 2009.

The conference has a number of tutorials, workshops and panels broken down into 5 tracks. (Cloud Technology, Cloud Implementation Experiences, Cloud Privacy and Compliance, Cloud Business Models and Cloud Computing Research)

Aimed at C level executives, developers and cloud end users, Cloud Slam’09 has a number of high profile speakers scheduled to take part including Simon Crosby, Dr.Werner Vogels, Russ Daniels and Stephen Herrod.

OnDemand Beat readers can receive 5% off the conference registration fee by using discount code ONDEMANDBEAT50

Has SalesForce.Com’s Marc Benioff become the Billy Graham of SaaS
Saleforce.com just turned 10 years old and all of Marc Benioff’s Cloud Computing evangelization has become the gospel in the tech industry.

Is Google missing the boat in Enterprise Social Networking
Juan Carlos Perez examines why Google lags behind other vendors in adding Enterprise Social Networking tools to its Google Apps Suite.

Customer vs Vendor Software Value Models
Scott Selhorst compares and contrasts the key differentiators in computing software value models band ROI between vendors and customers.

EC2 for Poets
Dave Winer has published an “everyman’s” version of How to set up a server on Amazon EC2 in 30  minutes or less.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and IBM have announced a partnership that provides users with the ability to use Amazon EC2 to build and run a range of IBM platform technologies. The IBM environments that will be available initially includes IBM WebSphere Portal Server, IBM DB2, WebSphere sMash, IBM Lotus Web Content Management, and IBM WebSphere Portal Server.

IBM customers and partners have a number of options for utilizing Amazon EC2 including:

• Utilizing IBM’s “Development” AMI’s
• Use a “Production” Amazon EC2 running IBM service
• BYOL – Bring Your Own Licenses to Amazon EC2

IBM is providing the Development AMI’s at no additional charge and AWS will charge a pay as you go hourly pricing scheme for the Production Amazon EC2 running IBM service.

Although IBM was beat to the punch by Oracle, RedHat, and Sun in partnering with AWS;  its initial offerings are very impressive and show how quickly Cloud Services are becoming the de facto standard in the software industry.