20 Real-Life Challenges of Cloud Computing

“Cloud Musings” Named A “Top 50 Blog”

By G C Network | August 27, 2010

My appreciation and thanks goes out to Jeremy Geelan for including “Cloud Musings” on his list of the Top 50 Cloud Computing Blogs. Thanks is also in order for “HighTechDad”…

Will Oracle Buy Informatica?

By G C Network | August 25, 2010

According to 1,250 ERP Software Advice readers that will be Oracle’s next acquisition. Terradata came in a close second in this race, suggesting that Oracle will “…play it safe next time…

What’s Next For Oracle?

By G C Network | August 14, 2010

Watching Larry Ellison and Oracle over the years as it has morphed itself is a real study in market dynamics.  It’s transformation from database company through middleware provider to now…

Enterprise Architecture Enables Innovation: Melvin Greer, Lockheed Martin

By G C Network | August 11, 2010

Earlier this week, my good fried and NCOIC colleage, Melvin Greer was interviewed by Rutrell Yasin of Government Computer News. In the interview, Mel focused on the importantance of entrprise…

Are You A Cloud Architect? NJVC Needs YOU!!

By G C Network | July 31, 2010

If you are a cloud computing architect, have I got news for you!  NJVC, one of the largest IT solutions providers supporting the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), is building…

“Army Private Cloud” RFP Released

By G C Network | July 28, 2010

Last week the US Army released  a procurement solicitation for the Army Private Cloud.  This $249M solicitation calls for a 1-year base period with four, 1-year options. Department of the…

Cloud Musings Direct Launches

By G C Network | July 15, 2010

In response to request, the inaugural “Cloud Musings Direct” newsletter was launched this week.  This bi-weekly electronic newsletter will highlight important government cloud computing industry trends and events.  If you…

CloudExpo Europe 2010: Not Your Father’s Prague

By G C Network | June 30, 2010

When my good friend Jeremy Geelan invited me to speak at CloudExpo Europe in Prague, Czech Republic my imagination went into overdrive.  Being a child of the 60’s and a…

NCOIC Plenary Highlights Collaboration and Interoperability

By G C Network | June 29, 2010

Last week in Brussels, Belgium, the Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium highlighted it’s support of collaboration and interoperability through an information exchange session with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and…

GovLoop “Member of the Week”

By G C Network | June 22, 2010

Thank you to Radiah Givens-Nunez and GovLoop for the honor of being their Member of the Week for June 21-25, 2010. Created in 2008, GovLoop is an online social network…

Nikita Ivanov of GridGain offers some excellent insight into the nuts and bolts of getting the cloud to work. Definitely worth a read. To summarize:

  • Most likely you do NOT need cloud computing
  • The best way to think about cloud computing is “Data Center with API”
  • You will spend weeks and months fine tuning your cloud based application
  • You are about to deal with 100s and 1000s of remote nodes
  • You cannot rely on the fact that environment will be homogeneous
  • Debugging problem on a cloud scale requires deep understanding of distributed computing
  • IP multicast will likely not work or work with significant networking limitations.
  • Traffic inside is very cheap or free – but traffic outside is expensive and can “get you” very quickly
  • If you have to use cloud all the time, the economics change and it may be cheaper to traditionally rent in a data center
  • Up time and per-computer reliability is low – comprehensive failover support on grid middleware is a must
  • Static IPs are not guaranteed
  • Almost always plan on having multiple clouds
  • External clouds may present data sharing problems
  • Carefully think through dev/qa/prod layout and how this is all organized
  • Clunky (re)deployment of your application onto the cloud can stop your development process
  • Connections are often one-directional so comprehensive communication capabilities supporting one-directional connectivity and disjoint clouds in grid middleware is a must
  • Cloud are implemented based on hardware virtualization – make sure your grid middleware can dynamically provision such images on demand
  • Stick with open source stack
  • Linear scalability can only be achieved in a control test environment. Real world applications will exhibit non-linear scalability.
  • [His] Personal recommendation: use Amazon EC2/S3 services
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