Latest News from Alan Williamson

Amazon Takes MySQL to the Cloud; or Has It?

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 10:30:00 EDT

Amazon have released a slew of new features and products for their cloud. But as usual, the devil is in the detail. I go into some of the issues and discover that this may not be for everyone

Engadget Claims "Biggest Disasters in the History of Cloud Computing"

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 05:47:00 EDT

Engadget trips up in its own importance and falls into the trap that many bloggers/journalists are finding: not everything that runs in a browser is cloud computing. One server fault does not mark the end of cloud computing. Perspective

Amazon Makes Sharing Data Easier with Shared EBS

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 11:00:00 EDT

Amazon releases the ability to share EBS snapshots so others can utilize and consume your data, irrespective of format. But EBS is more than just persisted data. It is a whole mechanism to allow for quickly taking snapshots of your data partition and then mounting that partition elsewhere. Take for example, having your database running on an EBS partition. You can snapshot that partition and mount that new clone on another machine. Quick and easy. Amazon were quick to exploit this feature and offer publicly blessed pre-configured datasets. For example, ever fancied having the WikiPedia dataset available to your application? Or maybe you would prefer to have all the US Addresses mapping information?

Amazon SimpleDB + SQS: Simple Java POJO Access

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 06:30:00 EDT

Amazon SimpleDB - SQS web services are within easy reach of any Java developer with these 2 non-dependent class files. No fuss, no nonsense, just code that works.

A Simple Java Class for Amazon SimpleSQS

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 08:30:00 EDT

A very simple POJO Java class for accessing all of the features of Amazon's SQS web service. Full API support. No dependencies. Just use it.

New Buzzwords for Business

Sun, 30 Aug 2009 11:30:00 EDT

Business Computing and buzzwords, go together like cheese and wine. Geek'n'Poke takes aim and finds the bullspot once again with their latest cloud related

Once Again, Amazon Moves the Cloud World Forward

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 13:30:00 EDT

Amazon Virtual Private Cloud is announced in limited beta. Lots of interesting features and once again, they have moved the cloud world forward

Scaling Java From the Enterprise To the Cloud

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 23:15:00 EDT

Simple scalability - that's the Terracotta value proposition. In this Quick Q&A with SYS-CON's Cloud Computing Journal editor-in-chief Alan Williamson, Geert Bevin - Evangelist at Terracotta Inc - explains that how Terracotta helps enable Java in the Cloud...and clarifies the difference between the commercial and OSS editions of Terracotta.

A Simple Java class for Amazon SimpleDB

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 12:09:00 EDT

A very simple POJO Java class for accessing all of the features of Amazon's SimpleDB web service. Support for all new methods including select, and batchputattributes. No dependencies. Just use it

Rackspace wobbles but cloud remains

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 05:23:00 EDT

Hosting and Cloud provider Rackspace suffers an outage causing many people not able to reach their network

Google App Engine suffers 6hr outage

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 04:07:00 EDT

With Google App Engine going offline it is important to realize that even the big boys have problems. However, can your business tolerate such down times? Can you really bet your business on the cloud? Or is it too early

SOA & Cloud Bootcamp: Comparing Cloud Computing Providers

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 09:45:00 EDT

If your business relies on the speedy resolution of an issue from your cloud provider, then test them before you try. Send them that email out-of-hours to see how quickly and how useful the reply actually is. Try and reach someone on the phone. Look around the forums to see how many questions are left unanswered.

SOA & Cloud Bootcamp: Who Ya Gonna Call? Cloudbusters!

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 10:00:00 EDT

As the theme tune to the classic 1984 Ghostbusters movie goes, "If there's something strange, in your neighborhood, Who ya gonna call?", I am left wondering what we'll all be singing (shouting?) when something goes wrong in our cloud world. When you've got your whole business in the cloud and there is an outage, just what happens to your bottom line? What happens to your customers? What do you do?

Server Sales Drop 25% - Cloud Computing making an impact?

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 02:58:00 EDT

Global server sales have dropped 25% across the board. This is the worse drop-off for over 12 years. What is to blame

How many servers does it take to make a cloud?

Thu, 28 May 2009 03:35:00 EDT

We love this new virtual world of ondemand computing, but have you wondered just how many servers Amazon, Google, Microsoft or any of the cloud providers really have at their disposal

Prague Cloud Computing Expo - core dump

Wed, 27 May 2009 05:05:00 EDT

Cloud Expo Europe was last week at Prague, and a thoroughly enjoyable and entertaining cloud conference was had. Met lots of great people and spoke at length regarding peoples concerns about moving to the cloud

Cloud Boot Camp heads to Prague May 19th

Tue, 12 May 2009 07:21:00 EDT

Preparing to take our Cloud Boot Camp Road Show to

Profiling Netbeans within Amazon EC2

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 22:30:00 EDT

It was only a matter of time before we started seeing real how-to's pop up on how we can start profiling our Java applications running deep within the cloud. When my long term friend and colleague, Kirk Pepperdine, started talking about taking his world class Java performance tuning skills out of the server room and into the clouds I was excited. He's just getting started, with this handy start-up for getting your live clouded Java applications directly profiled using Netbeans.

Closing Time

Sun, 12 Apr 2009 08:51:00 EDT

Another couple of conferences close their doors as we move forward into 2009

Cloud Boot Camp Post Notes

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 11:47:00 EDT

Cloud boot camp was a resounding success at Cloud Computing Expo in New York

Sing-a-long to Cloud Computing

Fri, 27 Mar 2009 04:38:00 EDT

Come on now, lets all sing-a-long to the cloud computing song, a parody of Joni Mitchell

New York's Cloud Boot Camp Final Schedule

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 09:34:00 EDT

The final schedule for next weeks Cloud Computing Expo boot camp has been finalised. Looking forward to next week

Clouds make your life easier, honest!

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 05:24:00 EDT

Geek and Poke blog has a wonderful cartoon depicting the complexities of the world of clouds

CloudBerry Explorer - a very polished S3 utility

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 07:01:00 EDT

If you are looking for a familiar interface for moving files up and down to Amazon S3 then you'll be hard pushed to find something as slick for the price

Beware of the Cloud Tax

Sun, 22 Mar 2009 12:14:00 EDT

If you haven't seen the cloud tax yet, then don't worry, it happens to everyone, and creeps up on you without warning

Cloud Computing Expo Early bird discount

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 07:39:00 EDT

Today is the last day to register for a sweet, early bird, deal on the upcoming Cloud Computing Expo in a couple of weeks in New York. We've got some wonderful keynotes delivered at the highest levels from Amazon, IBM and Sun

Part 1 of my java.sun.com interview

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 05:16:00 EDT

I was recently interviewed for java.sun.com on the wonders of cloud computing and

Developing in the cloud without falling

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 06:06:00 EDT

Developing applications for the cloud is not as trivial as you may think, but nor is it as a hard as some make out. Be mindful of what can and can't done. Looking at 3 major areas, which will be covered in detail at our upcoming cloud boot

Windows Azure suffers first major outage

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 14:20:00 EDT

Microsoft flight into the clouds took a nose dive for 22 hours this week as it suffered an outage

Who do you trust with your cloud credituals?

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 09:28:00 EDT

Who can you really trust with your cloud keys? Many services ask for your Amazon details so they may deliver you a value added service. But how do you know they won't be naughty! In short you can't

Get 4 free months of Amazon EC2 24x7 hosting

Thu, 12 Mar 2009 09:25:00 EDT

Amazon have released their Reserved Instances, which effectively gives you big discounts for instances that are running for long periods of time

Clouds Do Blow Away - Live With It

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 11:45:00 EDT

If you were to believe the hype from the media and certain so called industry experts, you would be forgiven for thinking that cloud computing is the second coming. The answer to all our scaling and usage problems. Everything to everyone. The notion that the "cloud" is always on, or up, is a myth that is being propogated, irresponsibly, around the corridors of tech. As they say, what goes up must come down and software is no different.

"Clouds" Is a Place on the Earth

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 15:00:00 EDT

As the popular Belinda Carlisle song, Heaven is a place on earth, goes, while we talk about all this virtualised computing power and clouds, somewhere there is a real physical CPU doing real work somewhere on earth. In some data center your cloud application is taking up physical space, using real power, creating an impact somewhere, and flashing an LED in some network panel. We often get ahead of ourselves and talk about the unlimited cloud computing available to us, but in reality everything has limits, and cloud computing is no different.

Time for VMWare to Change Its Pricing Model

Sat, 26 Jul 2008 10:15:00 EDT

The once darling of the software industry, VMWare, is currently struggling to recover to anything close to what it was. With stock once riding high at $124 per share, it is now struggling to break the $40 barrier. VMWare rode the initial wave of the virtualization revolution, producing high quality software to allow you to run and maintain multiple operating systems on one host. They were largely uncompeted for a number of years, but now that the computing world has decided that virtualization is indeed here to stay and will shape our landscape, a number of competitors have appeared, including solutions from Microsoft.

Elastic Bamboo 2.2 utilising Amazon EC2 for faster builds

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 03:50:00 EDT

Atlassian has just released their new version of their continuous build integration suite, called Elastic Bamboo. This is a way for you to automatically and scale out your build and testing requirements by using Amazon's EC2 platform

Further consolidation in the VM space as Oracle signs letter of intent

Mon, 09 Mar 2009 05:39:00 EDT

Oracle is sniffing around Virtual Iron for a possible purchase to round out its own virtual

Scotland's first CloudCamp kicks off at the end of March

Sun, 08 Mar 2009 05:22:00 EDT

The very successful evening format of the CloudCamp series, is coming to Scotland - Edinburgh, to be precise, on the 25th of

Exclusive Q&A with Cloud Computing CEO Michael Crandell

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 06:36:00 EST

"We are in an ideal position to accelerate our business to continue our leadership in this rapidly advancing cloud market," says RightScale CEO Michael Crandell, in this Exclusive Q&A with the editor-in-chief of SYS-CON's Cloud Computing Journal, Alan Williamson. "We decided the timing was right to create a war chest that would take us to profitability," Crandell added. Earlier this month RightScale snagged $13M in a Series B round of venture funding.

Bye Bye Command Line; Amazon Releases Its AWS Web Console

Fri, 09 Jan 2009 11:00:00 EST

Finally, after years of providing just a command line interface to their web services, Amazon has released a web based management console. Has it been worth the wait? In a nutshell, yes. We knew this day was coming, and 8th of January was that day. Built using Yahoo's YUI framework, using JSP at the backend, Amazon's engineers have delivered a very rich, functional and darn right stunning looking console. It begs you to want to use it.

Amazon releases their AWS Web Console

Fri, 09 Jan 2009 04:46:00 EST

Amazon, finally after years of providing just a command line interface to their web services, released a web based management console. Has it been worth the wait? Read the review of their first web based offering

Goodbye Macworld, Apple Bites the Hand That Feeds It

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 18:33:00 EST

Do not dis the very people that will build and create the community for your product to survive. Can you imagine a Java landscape without its yearly flagship conference JavaOne? Unthinkable, but you can be rest assured that it will be a wonderful benchmark to which to measure Sun's commitment. If Sun ever stops JavaOne, no matter how expensive it becomes, then Java is dead.

Amazon SimpleDB renamed to Amazon Registry

Sun, 07 Dec 2008 07:22:00 EST

Okay, so this is wishful thinking on my part, Amazon taking the initiative and renaming their very powerful SimpleDB product Amazon Registry. Let me present my case for why they should

Cloud Computing Podcast: featuring me!

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 07:27:00 EST

I was honored to be part of the very popular Cloud Computing Podcast by David Linthicum. It has just gone live for your audible enjoyment

Deploy OpenBD to the cloud via Elastic Server

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 11:51:00 EST

With ElasticServer you can now build your own custom server image with OpenBD installed, choosing your own J2EE and database server. Deploy straight to Amazon EC2. Can't get easier

Cloud Computing Bootcamp Announces Special Guest Appearance

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 21:00:00 EST

The biggest problem we have is trying to figure out what to leave out, because we simply have too much to present. Attendees are going to get a real hands-on feel for how they can utilize the world of on-demand computing. It won't be a sit-back-and-listen day, it's a true hands-on, sleeves-rolled up full day. We will be going through all aspects of cloud management, giving you a flavor of many of the different tools and techniques out there so you can decide which one fits in with your way of working, instead of feeling there is only one route to cloud nirvana.

Is Aptana Really a Cloud?

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 22:00:00 EST

The line between what is considered a cloud and what is paramount to hosting is a blurry line at the best of times. What qualifies a companies offering as a cloud based product offering? That is a question that is continually debated in the cloud circles and no one has really yet to offer a real concrete reason. Setting aside all the marketing buzzwords that will get thrown in "scalability" / "on-demand" / "deploy", a cloud offering has to deliver on its hype.

Is the Aptana Cloud really a cloud?

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 05:27:00 EST

What makes a true cloud offering? What must a company offer before it can make the cloud claim? I examine the 3 criteria that for me defines a true cloud offering

Amazon ex-employee looks to cloud telephony applications

Sat, 08 Nov 2008 11:49:00 EST

Twilio a new startup from Amazon's ex Product Manager Jeff Lawson will soon be coming out of private beta to offer cloud like telephony services

Clouds do blow away - live with it

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 17:37:00 EDT

Cloud providers, like their name sakes, do blow away leaving clear blue skies. Cloud providers aren't selling miracle cures - yet people are buying as if they were. Who is at fault when things do go wrong

Microsoft's Azure Bullet Points

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 12:00:00 EDT

Microsoft have done far more than simply follow others. They have created a complete new platform that leverages much of what the likes of Amazon, Google, Sales Force, Open Social API, all are doing in their own spaces but bringing them together. While sign-ups are being accepted to test this new platform, details on pricing are not available, so we have no real way to compare how more expensive or cheaper it is going to say switch storing our data in Microsoft's Azure platform compared to say Amazon's S3 or Nirvanix. But this announcement will definitely appease the .NET developers and have them all breath a sign of relief that their favourite big brother hasn't let them down and forced them to learn python to utilize Google's App Engine.