IBM and Amazon

Cloud Computing as a Strategic Asset

By G C Network | April 30, 2009

For some reason, this week seems to have more in it than most. While the steady stream of briefing request seem to be increasing, the post briefing discussions also seem…

Vivek Kundra: “Engage the American People in their Daily Digital Lives”

By G C Network | April 25, 2009

Today I attended a very impressive talk by the Federal CIO, Mr. Vivek Kundra at a Northern Virginia Technology Council Public Policy event. His open and “matter of fact” approach…

McKinsey vs. Booz Allen Hamilton !

By G C Network | April 21, 2009

A community skirmish reminiscent of the recent “manifestogate” has apparently erupted around the McKinsey & Co. report “Clearing the air on cloud computing“. Booz Allen Hamilton Principals Mike Cameron and…

Oracle Buys Sun!!

By G C Network | April 20, 2009

Swooping in from nowhere, Oracle buys Sun for $7.4B!! “This morning, the companies announced that they’d struck a deal worth $7.4 billion or $5.6 billion net of Sun’s cash and…

Aneesh Chopra Nominated For Federal CTO

By G C Network | April 20, 2009

Although Aneesh Chopra is a new name for most, he is well know in Virginia as Governor Tim Kaine’s Secretary of Technology. For the Commonwealth, he was charged with leading…

Could Cloud Computing Cost More?

By G C Network | April 16, 2009

In a recent conference, analyst William Forrest says that large companies could end up paying more than twice as much by using cloud based services. According to a Forbes.com report,…

Cisco’s Cloud Computing Strategy

By G C Network | April 10, 2009

A couple of weeks ago, Krishna Sankar provided a glimpse into Cisco’s cloud computing strategy in a presentation titled “A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Inter-Cloud” . The presentation outlined the…

NCOIC and Cloud Computing: An Update

By G C Network | April 8, 2009

As the NCOIC gets it’s arms around this new paradigm, the Cloud Computing Working Group has focused on establishing a roadmap for providing value to the industry. Using the established…

SUN-IBM Talks Breakdown

By G C Network | April 6, 2009

As reported in multiple sources today, including Reuters, Sun has apparently rejected a purchase offer by IBM. “Shares of Sun Microsystems Inc tumbled 22.5 percent after it rejected a $7…

Former DoT CIO on Cloud Computing

By G C Network | April 3, 2009

Last month, former Transportation Department CIO Dan Mintz offered his views on cloud computing to Eric Chabrow, Managing Editor of Government Information Security. According to Mr. Mintz, there is currently…

According to the Amazon Web Services (AWS) site, you can now use DB2, Informix, WebSphere sMash, WebSphere Portal Server or Lotus Web Content Management on Amazon’s EC2 cloud.

“This relationship will enable you to bring your own IBM licenses to Amazon EC2, utilize IBM’s ‘Development’ AMIs, or leverage the ‘Production’ Amazon EC2 running IBM service. All of these options will enable you to get started quickly using popular IBM platform technologies in the Amazon EC2 environment.”

To me, this move was clearly focused at besting Microsoft’s Azure platform into the cloud and represents a huge leap forward for this nascent industry. Now an enterprise can easily use these IBM products as a utility. As IBM adds more of their products into the mix, cloud transition offerings (enterprise-to-cloud or cloud-to enterprise) will follow.

This also represents a huge turning point for cloud interoperability. IBM’s enterprise footprint paired with Amazon’s established lead in infrastructure-as-a-service could create a de facto standard within the cloud computing community.

I’m not sure if this is good or bad, but it is definitely a huge event.
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