Want a really cool job?

Do you want to come and work with a really cool startup in the UK?

If London works as a location for you, and you don't need a work permit to work here, then you may want to go visit;

http://www.stoneburn.com/recruitment.html

Not a Cloud in the Sky

One of the key risks with Cloud Computing is that of Data Centre outage. If you have a problem with you DC's then evey one knows about it.

That said, on-prem solutions have outages and I would suggest that most, if not all, on-prem solutions are less reliable and have more/longer outages than cloud DC's. So, is this risk real? It is for the DC owners (PR, SLA penalties etc.) but for most businesses the reliability on their systems will increase.

On the subject of outages, Google had a high profile one recently. We were impacted for a couple of hours and could not email or access our documents. That said we are still in business, dodn't lose any customers or business and depending on your view were inconvenienced / given a welcome break to grab a coffee and chew-the-fat!

Microsoft jumped on Goolge as soon as the outage was reported. I wonder how stupid they feel given their 22 hour DC outage at the back-end of last week with their new Cloud DC? Just as an FYI - in the 10 years that Google has been running its DC's the cumulative outages do not add up to 22 hours or anywhere near that!

App Engine vs Force.com

Why did SalesForce decide to create a proprietary language for developing on Force.com?

I have spoken to a bunch of folks who want to move their apps into the Cloud, looked at Force.com and are waiting for Java on App Engine instead, because;

• migration of existing apps (Java) will be much simpler
• Google Gadgets can run on Force.com but SalesForce gadgets won't run on App Engine
• Apps on App Engine will integrate into Google Apps and the security framework to give a seamless User Experience
• App Engine apps can interact with SalesForce if required
• The App Engine 'platform' can be deployed anywhere (you don't have to use Googles App Engine) so if you want to move your App Engine apps to EC2 instead you can (can't do this with Force.com)

SalesForce seem to have gone down the vendor lock-in route rather than the Open/Standards route. This may have given them short-term success, but I suspect that longer term it could restrict the potential of their platform.

App Engine, CupCake & Other Cool Stuff

Android CupCake is due pretty soon, along with a bunch of new handsets; there is talk of Android taking over from iPhone by next year (according to some analysts). Will be interesting to see if some of the (significant) issues in Android 1.x have been fixed, especially the Geo stuff.

App Engine is expected to have Java support this year :-) This should not be to far away now. Can't wait to get my hands on this.

It is rumoured that a new touch-screen Mac is due this year. Not sure how true this one is.

It is also rumoured that Google are planning a Big developer event in the UK this year! They have Google I/O 09 in the US soon (expect major announcements from them there), but no sign yet that the Americans have remembered that there is life beyond the USA! - Still we live in hope!

Amazon EC2 & Virtual Images

I have been looking into Amazon EC2; how cool (and cheap) is that platform :-)

I am wondering though if I deploy a VM image inside an EC2 virtual server how will it behave? Will it work properly, how will it perform and what will it cost? I haven't tried this yet but the people I have spoken to think that it could hammer the CPU (the VM Player will eat CPU cycle the whole time it is running) and that would push the cost up.

I am thinking of deploying a VGSA in EC2 alongside MOSS and a few other systems to create a Search Dev environment.

I think I will give it a try to see what happens. I will post my findings here once I have done it.

(If you have already done this, please get in touch, thanks J)

CloudCamp - March '09 London

Went to CloudCamp yesterday. 600 software engineers in one room, aaarrrgh! Some of them were foolish enough to think they were capable of public speaking! To be fair one or two of the speakers were very good and entertaining, the guy hosting the event was excellent, the majority however were painful to watch and listen to.

There was one speaker, forget his name, who at least seemed to appreciate that the Cloud is not about technology, it is not about virtualization, SaaS, PaaS or IaaS .... His take was that it is all about Cost! IMO he is half right, it is about cost, but it is also about Politics. And when it comes to Cost vs Politics, Politics wins every time.

Most techies struggle to understand business economics, even fewer manage to grasp the politics. If you are going to be successful in the Cloud you need that very rare breed of individual who understands both technology and the commercials. More than that in the current climate they need to be very creative both technically and commercially. It's not the best technology that wins, or the best ideas ... it's the best people.