Latest News from Dustin Amrhein

Forget Defining Cloud Computing

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 19:45:00 EST

Defining cloud computing has proven to be nearly impossible. Ask ten different people and you'll get ten different answers. Countless discussion groups, blogs, articles, etc. have attempted to give their own take on cloud computing, and all to no avail. The industry just can't agree on a common definition. With that in mind, perhaps it's time to move past trying to define the cloud and look into the common characteristics of such solutions. Many of us have heard or read about some of these cloud characteristics, so I thought I would offer up my top five cloud computing solution characteristics here.

Important Considerations to Build Cloud Computing Apps

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 15:30:00 EST

In many cases we as the industry talk about the cloud computing being a new and optimized approach to delivering IT services. From the point of view of application developers, cloud computing offers dynamic platforms that equip them with the capability to deliver their application in an on-demand fashion. Applications running on a cloud platform scale up and down to meet the needs of its users. So, in the face of this new delivery model for applications, should application architects and developers expect this to have an impact on application architecture and design?

IBM's Smarter Cloud

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 10:45:00 EST

A recent announcement from IBM signaled the open beta program of its newest cloud offering: IBM Smart Business Development & Test on the IBM Cloud. One of the newest offerings in the suite of cloud products from IBM, the IBM Cloud provides a public cloud where users can launch and run selected IBM software.

Don't Fumble the Hand-off

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:30:00 EST

Imagine for a moment that you’re a software developer who has been charged with adding a new feature to into your company’s billing system application that allows bills to be automatically sent to customers via email. You spend weeks, possibly months, working on the new function, and then at some point you move to the unit testing phase. You set up an environment, configure the product with the new feature, and then you run tests to verify that emails with valid billing information are indeed being sent as expected. Once you’re satisfied with the unit testing, it’s time to hand it over to the testing team so they can put it through the paces.

A Framework for REST in Java

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 23:45:00 EDT

Not long ago I worked on a team charged with building up a Java-based REST infrastructure. Our goals were to first support what was then an emerging specification for Java-based RESTful services called JAX-RS. Beyond that, we had thoughts of building an entire framework, both server and client, around RESTful services written in Java.

Cloud Computing Isn't a Substitute For Due Diligence

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 09:30:00 EDT

Well, everyone knew it wouldn’t be long before cloud computing got thrown under the proverbial bus after the latest Sidekick failure. Observers point at this specific failure, as they have with Gmail, Amazon, and other cloud provider outages in the past, as a broader problem. Some like to use these service outages as an opportunity to initiate a full-fledged attack on the idea of cloud computing. However, can we really just blame cloud computing and move on? Of course not!

WebSphere CloudBurst in Test Organizations

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 07:15:00 EDT

The WebSphere CloudBurst Appliance can bring speed and agility to test organizations by drastically increasing the pace and ease with which users interact with WebSphere Application Server environments. I recently got a chance to catch up with IBM's Robbie Minshall. Robbie is a WebSphere Test Architect, and he is responsible for a team of testers that harness a lab of over 2,000 physical machines to put our WebSphere Application Server product through some pretty rigorous testing. Toward the beginning of 2009 Robbie’s team started to leverage the WebSphere CloudBurst Appliance in order to create the WebSphere Application Server environments needed for their testing.

Five Reasons to Choose a Private Cloud

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 19:45:00 EDT

As enterprise interest in cloud computing offerings and concepts continues to increase, the number of solutions in both the public and private cloud spaces increases as well. Theres been much debate over public versus private cloud, even to the point of debating whether there can be such a thing as a private cloud. Im not here to debate the latter (in my opinion the location of the service has nothing to do with whether or not it is a cloud), but rather I want to take a look into why consumers would choose private clouds over their public counterparts.

An Application-Centric View of Cloud Computing

Sun, 06 Sep 2009 22:45:00 EDT

A recent survey from F5 indicates that the cloud computing movement is making significant headway despite what some may see as mere fluff and hype. The survey comprised of employees from large enterprises (2500+ employees), indicated that 82% of respondents are in some stage of public cloud use/trial and that 83% were in some stage of private cloud use/trial. Apparently, at least for the respondents in this survey, cloud computing has officially arrived.

Business Scenarios for the Cloud

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 20:45:00 EDT

The Open Group recently announced the formation of the Cloud Work Group. According to the Open Group, this new group “exists to create a common understanding among buyers and suppliers of how enterprises of all sizes and scales of operation can include Cloud Computing technology in a safe and secure way in their architectures to realize its significant cost, scalability and agility benefits.”

The Federal Cloud Journey

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 13:00:00 EDT

If cloud computing talk from the government seemed like lip service at first, it has certainly moved beyond that now. According to an InformationWeek article, the federal government’s General Services Administration (GSA) issued a Request For Quotation (RFQ) for cloud storage, web hosting, and virtual machine services

New IBM Software for Amazon EC2

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 09:30:00 EDT

IBM expanded its software offerings on the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) by delivering a WebSphere eXtreme Scale 7.0 Development AMI (Amazon Machine Image). The Development AMI can be used for development and test of commercially available applications without any IBM charges. It means, users do not pay for the WebSphere eXtreme Scale software, but only for the Amazon EC2 usage charges. In other words, the AMI can be used for as little as ten cents per hour.

Confronting The Culture of Cloud Computing

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 17:15:00 EDT

Over the past two weeks I’ve been talking to IT architects and engineers from companies of all sizes and across many industries about cloud computing. It seems that many are moving past the talk and hype of cloud computing and looking into implementation details. Many of the companies I’ve talked with are either already leveraging cloud computing (both public and private), or they are currently researching or prototyping some sort of cloud computing solution.

Cloud Computing Intersects IT Innovation

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 04:00:00 EDT

Recently, I attended SOAWorld 2009 in New York City, and I had the pleasure of listening to many distinguished speakers talk about extremely interesting topics. One of my favorite talks was given by a fellow IBMer, Kareem Yusuf. During the course of Kareem's keynote, he discussed SOA, cloud computing, and areas of innovation in the IT industry.

IBM & Cloud Computing: Self-Service Clouds with Fine-Grained Control

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 13:30:00 EDT

A common feature of cloud computing solutions is that they enable self-service access to the services they provide. This enables users to directly procure services from the cloud, and it eliminates the need for more time-consuming, labor-intensive, human-driven procurement processes familiar to many in IT.

SOA in the Cloud: The Cloud of Services

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 15:15:00 EDT

This is a blog about the importance of cloud solutions that are organized as services. As more and more cloud computing offerings hit the market, I think it is becoming increasingly important that users understand what to look for in such solutions. It is one thing to provide something called a cloud solution, but it is quite another to do so in a way that delivers the most value, flexibility, and agility to its users. However with so many different cloud solutions and vendors out there, what should users really be looking for?

Customizing Your Private Cloud

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 23:00:00 EDT

The WebSphere CloudBurst Appliance provides several customization capabilities that allow users to produce highly customized private WebSphere clouds. From custom software, to custom middleware topologies, to custom applications, users can produce a private WebSphere clouds that is a perfect fit for their needs.

IBM & Cloud Computing: How WebSphere CloudBurst Delivers Consumability

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 08:00:00 EDT

The new IBM WebSphere CloudBurst Appliance is a one-stop shop for creating, deploying, and managing WebSphere virtual systems in a private cloud. It has quite a lot of very cool features that make this a possibility, and I could go on and on about those features.

Bringing Cloud Computing to SOA

Sun, 07 Jun 2009 10:30:00 EDT

There’s no shortage of opinions on how cloud computing and SOA are related. Just plug the phrase into your favorite search engine and you’ll have a day’s worth of reading. What you are likely to find are articles discussing how SOA led to cloud computing, how a good SOA is a prerequisite to leverage cloud computing, or how to leverage cloud computing in your SOA.

Should Developers Care About Cloud Computing?

Fri, 15 May 2009 22:00:00 EDT

It seems like just about every cloud computing discussion with a development audience results in the same question being asked: “Why does this matter to me?” As cloud computing first appears to be primarily an operational-centric paradigm, it is easy to understand the reason this is asked. This question can be answered in a variety of ways. Some may say that cloud computing doesn’t affect the developer in any way, while others will say developers need to totally revamp their skill set to cope with the new landscape proffered by cloud computing. The truth, as always, is somewhere in the middle.

What's in a Cloud Appliance?

Mon, 11 May 2009 06:35:00 EDT

This blog offers an overview of the capabilities of the WebSphere CloudBurst Appliance. It touches on the three main components of the cloud lifecycle as supported by this offering.

IBM Announces New Cloud Offerings

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 17:00:00 EDT

IBM announced new offerings today that will help WebSphere users to leverage both public and private clouds. Two new offerings, the WebSphere Application Server Hypervisor Edition and the WebSphere CloudBurst Appliance, help users construct private WebSphere cloud environments. In addition, more WebSphere offerings are being made available in the form of Amazon Machine Images. This allows users to utilize IBM WebSphere enterprise class software in the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2).

Open Standards For The Cloud

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 15:30:00 EDT

I recently read the Open Cloud Standards incubator charter proposed by the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF), and I think this is a great effort to propel the cloud computing effort forward (read the charter here). In the interest of disclosure, I’m not just saying this because I happen to be employed by one of the supporters of the movement. It’s time to acknowledge that open standards are not an inhibitor to innovation, but instead they facilitate the kind of technological adoption that makes innovation both possible and profitable.

Cloud Computing Service Elasticity

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 21:15:00 EDT

This is a blog post about the importance of service elasticity in cloud computing.

Five Ways Cloud Computing Strengthens IT

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 15:00:00 EDT

This is a blog that proposes five distinct ways in which cloud computing solutions can strenghten the efforts of development and test teams within an enterprise.

Cloud Computing as a Competitive Advantage

Mon, 13 Apr 2009 20:00:00 EDT

When talking of cloud computing and the value it means for an adopter, we often hear of the cost-cutting benefits. Given the current economic climate, this is a fairly convincing and accurate pitch for the cloud. However, this is far from the only benefit of the cloud. Cloud computing solutions are poised to disrupt the current IT landscape, and in doing so, values that enable competitive advantage will be realized. Two such benefits that come to mind are increased innovation opportunity and enhanced business agility.