What is this event?

Now in its third year, CloudSlam® covers the latest trends in the world of cloud computing. The conference has evolved from a purely virtual format to a hybrid Cloud Computing conference spread over 5 days. Day 1 of the conference will take place at Microsoft Research Silicon Valley Campus in Mountain View California on Monday 18 April followed by 4 days of virtual cloud content.

Conference tracks for 2011 will include technology & innovation, implementation experiences, social & mobile cloud, security in the cloud and cloud for business.

How can you win Free Pass?

Simply click the button below or like the new OnDemand Beat Facebook Fan Page, for a chance to win the pass. The fifth person to like the page will win a pass to CloudSlam’11.

If you don’t win the pass you can still receive 10% off either the VIP or virtual conference fee by using discount code OnDemandBeat when registering.

What you need to know

1. The Winner will receive 1 virtual conference pass (Day 1 VIP pass not included)
2. The CloudSlam® Conference Pass Winner will be contacted via email.
3. Contest deadline is Wednesday April 13th and the winner will be announced on the OnDemand Beat Fan Page on Thursday April 14th.
4. No purchase is necessary to win.

Good Luck!

Salesforce and VMWare launched today a new Java Cloud Platform called VMforce. Utilizing the Spring Framework from VMWare’s recent SpringSource acqusition, the VMForce platform allows developers to create Java based applications on Force.Com.

Dubbed as “Cloud 2.0″ VMForce will allow the large base of Enterprise Java developers to build Cloud Based apps on Force.com. In addition to the Spring Framework,  VMForce will offer Java developers access to the SpringSource tc server, VMWare’s VCloud and VSphere Technology, the Force.com Developer platform and Force.com Chatter Services.

Soon to be available in developer preview, pricing details are yet to be announced.

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.

SAP Launches 12Sprints Beta
SAP launches its Cloud Based Collaboration tool, months (and in some cases years) behind similar tools by IBM , 37 Signals and  a host of other cloud providers

Cloud Computing Revenue Predictions
Interesting article from Linda Leung that estimates revenue from Cloud Computing operations for a few major cloud providers

The IPad and Desktop Virtualization
How the IPad could become the must have thin client for Desktop Virtualization in 2010.

Private Cloud Adoption Models
EMC Global Marketing CTO Chuck Hollis describes the 3 primary adoption models he has seen companies adopt with private clouds.

The tech industry has been abuzz the past week now that the Oracle acquisition of Sun has cleared the last hurdle from the European Union and is officially complete.

Oracle and Sun executives have begun addressing a number of questions about how Oracle will integrate Suns various hardware, system and software stacks into the Oracle ecosystem.

Two areas of integration that hold quite a bit of interest to this blog’s readers are Oracle + Sun’s Cloud and Virtualization Strategies. In the following prerecorded videos Richard Sarwal SVP of Product Development and Edward Screven; Chief Corporate Architect, give insight into Oracle’s future strategy.

The GSA RFQ focuses on Infrastructure as a Service with an emphasis on:

Cloud Storage Services
Virtual Machines
Cloud Web Hosting

The RFQ also includes a high level view of the Federal Cloud Computing Framework; found in the Draft National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Working Definition of Cloud Computing.

The RFQ and framework help Cloud Computing Service Providers understand the cloud computing vision that the Fed has adopted in addition to various interoperability, bandwidth and security standards that the Fed mandates. The Framework also outlines the Feds high level categorization of Software as a Service Applications and Platform as A Service.This helps the fledgling cloud computing industry in 3 ways.

First off, it helps put to rest some of the misgivings and fears that private industry and sceptics have held concerning the adoption of cloud computing. Once the Federal government adopts certain cloud computing standards in its own framework, it is safe to say that sceptics and holdouts in private industry will soon come around and adopt these standards as well.

Secondly, this RFQ will give the service providers who are chosen to provide cloud computing services to the GSA, real world use cases and examples that can be put to use in selling cloud services to private industry.

Finally, the detailed cloud computing requirements that the GSA outlines in the document give both established and startup cloud service providers a blueprint for services and standards that they should adopt in the future.

The scope of this initial RFQ may limit the chosen service providers to larger cloud providers who can provide the full breadth of services, but the trickle down effect of the Fed RFQ will surely help smaller Cloud Service providers at the state, local and private industry level.

IBM announced its new WebSphere CloudBurst Cloud Computing Appliance this week at the Impact 09 conference in Las Vegas

WebSphere CloudBurst is a hardware appliance based on IBM’s DataPower SOA appliance server that allows companies to run virtual images that can be used in a private cloud environment. Shipped with the new IBM WebSphere Application Server Hypervisor Edition, (WASVI) CloudBurst is optimized for use with virtualized hardware environments like VmWare.

Designed primarily to be used for private cloud deployments behind the firewall, IBM is also marketing the CloudBurst Appliance to SAAS and Cloud service providers who need an off the shelf cloud solution that offers easy and rapid deployment in a data center environment. CloudBurst ships with a number of preconfigured VmWare ESX virtual images with standardized configurations based on IBM WebSphere best practices. The virtual images are composed of WebSphere components, an IBM HTTP server and Linux.

The Virtual Images and Scripts (called patterns) are deployed and managed via a familiar drag and drop Web 2.0 console.

The patterns are designed to appeal to a wide range of users and vary from a basic single server topology suitable for a SMB client to a very large cluster of servers more attuned to a SAAS service providers needs. Users can customize the seeded patterns with custom scripts or by cloning seeded patterns via the CloudBurst console.

Custom patterns are stored on the CloudBurst Appliance and are also managed via the CloudBurst console.

The CloudBurst console also allows administrators to setup users and security and to manage and monitor the appliance and deployed cloud.

The WebSphere CloudBurst Appliance will be available in June 2009 and will be priced starting at $45,000 USD. Initially only VMware ESX Server file formats will be supported but IBM expects to support other formats in the near future.

WebSphere CloudBurst is being touted as the first appliance based cloud solution on the market and should gain traction amongst SMB customers and service providers alike. But IBM should expect competition in this space fairly quickly from the likes of Cisco-VMware, HP, Oracle-Sun and perhaps even from the Open Source arena as the barriers to entry for such solutions are relatively low assuming a compelling combination of software and hardware in a reasonably priced appliance.