Enterprise 2.0 Software Patents

In a sign that Social Computing in the Enterprise is now going mainstream, Alexander Wolfe reviews 13 recent Enterprise 2.0 patent applications.

CA Acquires Cloud Consulting Firm

CA continues its acquisition strategy with the purchase of Silicon Valley based 4Base; one of the more established Cloud Consulting firms in the industry

Is the Cloud Ready For Open Source?

Ashlee Vance comments on how RackSpace OpenStack might finally open the gates for Open Source Cloud Computing solutions.

Will China Become The Leader In The Semantic Web

Do current events point to a future where China will be the de facto Semantic Web Leader?

Vinnie Mirchandani’s new book; The New Polymath, is full of profiles and case studies that illustrate how the New Polymath’s within many industries are creating disruptive innovation to leapfrog their competition and introduce innovation to their respective industries and customers.

The  book’s chapters on Technology and Cloud Computing profile  innovations of technology vendors. In particular, Mirchandani uses many examples from the Cloud Computing industry. Calling Cloud Computing the convergence of Marc Benioff’s “Democratization of Technology” with Marc Manos’ “Industrialization of Technology” Mirchandani cites diverse case studies from Japan Post Network to Salesforce.com in the New Polymath to prove his point.

One profile focuses on how Netsuite uses its shared cloud infrastructure to quickly adjust its business based on market conditions and to benchmark against its competitors. Netsuite hopes to use its collected customer metrics to create Business Process Outsourcing Partnerships that will allow its customers to monitor business process metrics that up to now have been extremely difficult to gather.

In yet another example of the innovation inherent within the cloud, Mirchandani cites Cloud Computing poster child Appirio. Appirio has not owned any servers since its inception and runs all of its operations from lead generation to payroll in the cloud. Unlike its competitors Appirrio only used 2% of its revenue on internal IT versus the industry average of 7%. This type of advantage allowed Appirio to utilize more of its venture funding and initial revenue’s for R&D and customers activities thus allowing the company to grow from 5 to 200 employees without an IT department.

Like the Cloud Computing vendors; who are Polymath’s for bringing disparate technologies together for customers, Mirchandani deftly brings together disparate examples in an engaging book that provides readers a guidepost in how to also become a Polymath.

GigaOm’s Structure 2010 conference kicks off this week in San Francisco. Structure 2010 is spread over 2 full days and includes an impressive list of speakers and sessions in addition to a launchpad.

OnDemandBeat Readers can receive a $300 discount off the conference fee with discount code

http://structure2010.eventbrite.com/?discount=PRESS300

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.

China Is World’s Fastest Growing Software Market
Gartner Report that outlines how China will remain the worlds fastest growing Enterprise Software Market through 2013. Areas of high growth will include On Demand ERP and data integration soltions

Is SAP a leader in Web 2.0?
SAP’s Timo Elliott details how SAP is leading other vendors in terms of adoption, rollout and usage of Web 2.0 tools and technology

US Air Force will further validate Cloud Computing
How the IBM/Air Force Cyber Security Cloud will help remove lingering thoughts about Cloud security.

Virtualization and Cloud Jobs on the Rise
Great article from Steve Jin that reviews what Virtualization and Cloud Jobs are hot at at the moment and the projected demand for Cloud related jobs in the future.

Google has announced a sewerbreaking new broadband project called TiSP (Toilet Internet Service Provider). TISP offers free high speed broadband to almost anyone in North America who has a modern plumbing system. (Septic Tank equipped homes are not included in the Beta roll out)

Like other services provided by Google, TiSP is a self-installed, ad-supported online service that will be free to any consumer with a WiFi-capable PC and a toilet connected to a local municipal sewage system. TISP requires 8 easy steps for setup in most homes and Google has already announced plans for an Enterprise Grade Version of TiSP.

TiSP is available in 3 versions;  a basic version “Trickle” that provides 8mbps speed free of charge; a surprisingly robust “The #2″ that includes 16mbps for $9.95 per month and a top of the line “Royal Flush” Service at 32mbps for 24.95 per month.

Expect the other major ISP’s to follow Google into the sewers with similar pricing and service arrangements (wait…..Cox, AT&T, Time Warner et al, have always flushed their customers down the drain with their broadband service offerings) soon.

The Cloud Slam’10 conference runs from March 23 – March 25 2010.

In its second year, Cloud Slam is a virtual conference that focuses on Cloud Computing. A few of the conference tracks for this year include the Legal  Aspects of Cloud Computing, Cloud Implementation Experiences, Security in the Cloud and Cloud Business Models.

New in 2010, the conference also includes a virtual exhibition hall and a networking lounge for attendees.

IBM Cloud Computing CTO; Dr Kristof Kloeckner, will keynote the conference and will be joined by speakers from Oracle, SAP, Intel, Redhat , Adobe and Novell among others.

OnDemand Beat readers can receive 20% off either the VIP or regular conference registration fee by using discount code ONDEMANDBEAT.

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.