Latest News from Reuven Cohen

Elastic Regionalized Performance Testing

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 08:00:00 EDT

I'm happy to announce that we (Enomaly) have teamed up with the leader in cloud testing SOASTA to validate that cloud service providers can deliver the demanding SLAs increasingly required by their customers using Enomaly’s Elastic Computing Platform (ECP). ECP’s carrier-class architecture supports very large cloud platforms, spanning multiple datacenters in disparate geographies. SOASTA's CloudTest® methodology helps ensure that customers achieve high performance from their cloud infrastructure anywhere in the world.

So what does this mean? In addition to the ECP platform, the hardware used by the individual service provider and the applications they host can have a significant impact on performance. SOASTA is providing its CloudTest service to Enomaly service providers so they, in turn, can build a high level of confidence in their customers’ website performance. This is particularly important as companies are increasingly responding to unexpected peaks that come from the impact of social networking, external events and promotions. Companies must accurately test dynamic applications at web-scale, often running in complex infrastructures. SOASTA's cloud test provides the proof that your application can and will scale.

Another important factor is the concept of regionalized ECP based clouds. From Sweden to Japan SOASTA's CloudTest service combined with Enomaly's global customer base of cloud service providers will allow for the first time a real world environment for geographic specific performance testing. Before the emergence of regionalized cloud infrastructure this kind of Elastic Regional Performance Testing was not even a possibly. Wondering how your web infrastructure will perform in Japan using resources in Japan? Well wonder no more.

You can read the press release here.

Data is the New Oil

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 EST

I'm sitting in my hotel room in Santa Clara at the Cloud Connect event. A conference focused on the future of business computing -- so what better a setting to discover that Facebook has passed Google as most-viewed site in US in past week. An amazing feat to say the least, but why? How did this come to be? How did in a little over six years an upstart manage to surpass Google?

To understand you really need to think what the PC era has done to information. In effect the PC revolution started what the Internet has super charged - Information Creation. Think about it, more information is now being creating in the time it takes me to write this post than was probably created between the time humans first figured out how to write up until the birth of the Internet.

But for the most part the majority of the information humankind has created has not been accessible. Most of this raw data or knowledge has been sitting in various silo's -- be it a library, a single desktop, a server, database or even data center. But recently something changed, the most successful companies of the last decade have discover how to tap into this raw data. These companies are better at analyzing, mining and using this mountain of data sitting "out there" -- turning a useless raw resource into something much more useful, Information.

Before you say anything, Yes I know I'm not the first to say this. In a 2006 post Michael Palmer wrote "Data is the new oil!" declaring "Data is just like crude. It’s valuable, but if unrefined it cannot really be used. It has to be changed into gas, plastic, chemicals, etc to create a valuable entity that drives profitable activity; so must data be broken down, analyzed for it to have value."

In the most simplistic terms Palmers post serves as a kind of Data manifesto directly outlining the reason why companies like Facebook, Twitter and Google will rule the next generation of computing. Not because they have more money, but instead because they have tapped into something much larger. They have figured out that those who can most effectively turn data into information will win.

Facebook & Twitter in a sense created the largest social analytics engine on the planet. They essentially know what we're thinking before we do. Using this raw data they can effectively predict trends and more importantly capitalize on these trends with the greatest of ease.

A recent article in the Economist puts the idea of data as power into perspective. "When the Sloan Digital Sky Survey started work in 2000, its telescope in New Mexico collected more data in its first few weeks than had been amassed in the entire history of astronomy. Now, a decade later, its archive contains a whopping 140 terabytes of information. A successor, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, due to come on stream in Chile in 2016, will acquire that quantity of data every five days."

The article goes on to point the use case "All these examples tell the same story: that the world contains an unimaginably vast amount of digital information which is getting ever vaster ever more rapidly. This makes it possible to do many things that previously could not be done: spot business trends, prevent diseases, combat crime and so on. Managed well, the data can be used to unlock new sources of economic value, provide fresh insights into science and hold governments to account."

Now just imagine anyone with a credit card given access to near limitless cloud computing resources. Yes, Data is the new Oil.

Ubiquitous Computing - Merging Banks & Mobile Providers

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 EST

I've been fairly swamped this week with meetings so I really haven't had much time to think about writing any blog posts, but some recent news has inspired me. Before I get into my post, I also wanted to let everyone know that I'll be in Santa Clara next week attending & speaking at the Cloud Connect Conference. So if you want to meet up, ping me.

As part of Cloud Connect I'll be on the Ubiquitous Computing panel with Alistair Croll Co-Founder, Bitcurrent. The topic actually relates quite well to some of the latest news coming out of China this week.

For those of you unfamiliar with the concept, the general idea of Ubiquitous Computing is a shift in computing where a small, inexpensive, robust network of processing devices, is distributed at all scales throughout everyday life and generally used in common-place objects and purposes. More simply, computers are in everything and everywhere. From carton of milk to bus passes. For me, this ideal is an obvious first step towards a pervasive use of technology within the more mundane aspects of everyday people's lives. One where you have access to all the information you'll never need when you need it.

Over the last few years many have argued that this ubiquitous transition is either currently underway or a trend that is still years away. From where I sit I believe that this trend is now fully underway and you need not look any further than some of the moves happening in the Banking and Mobile industries as proof.

As further proof of this transition this week China Mobile Ltd., the world’s largest phone company by market value (with over 508 million customers) has agreed to buy 20 percent of Shanghai Pudong Development Bank Co. for ($5.8 billion) in China to expand its electronic-payment business. According to a Businessweek article, China Mobile and Pudong Bank will form a strategic alliance to offer wireless finance services including mobile bank cards and payment services.

At first glance you might say why is a phone company buying a major stake in a bank and more importantly why should I care? First of all, if you've ever traveled to Asia, than you'll instantly know why. In the West we tend to use credit cards and debt cards for most transactions -- and I'm told some actually still use paper money too. But in Asia, mobile phones are quickly becoming the preferred method for buying everything from Subway access to dinner. Through the use of RFID or other means the mobile phone seems to be the way most prefer to pay for things both big and small.

China Mobile isn't alone in seeing the opportunity in merging the more traditional banking aspects with the fast growing mobile market. Last year In South Korea, SK Telecom agreed to buy a stake in Hana Financial Group Inc.’s credit-card unit, while Globe Telecom Inc. agreed to buy 40 percent of BPI-Globe BanKO Savings Bank in 2008. There have been similar deals in Japan and other areas as well. At the heart of this transformation is the concept of ubiquitous network access to computing resources through a pervasive network of mobile devices. It will be interesting to see if others will follow the lead of China Mobile and embrace this new always connected world of computing gadgets.

Ubiquitous Computing - Merging Banks & Mobile Providers

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 EST

Enomaly ECP 3.1.0 Service Provider Edition Released

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 16:30:00 EST

Just a quick note to let everyone know about the latest ECP 3.1 release. Among the various improvements is the addition of sparse disk support. In a nutshell sparse disk support allows you to over-commit your storage environment offering more storage than you actually have available. The advantage of sparse files is that storage is only allocated when actually needed: disk space is saved, and large files can be created even if there is insufficient free space on the file system. For example you can give a customer a 2tb storage quota, but let's say your customer only uses 3mb of actual data, than only 3mb of files are written to the disk. This means you can offer (and potentially charge for) storage you don't physically have available. It also means that sparse root images can be provisioned significantly faster, because, well you probably already guested it, less physical storage is required even for VM's that appear to have larger boot/root volumes. Yet another way we help cloud service providers make money.

Here is the release overview.

Enomaly is proud to announce the latest release of ECP Service Provider Edition. This version brings the following improvements and changes:

VMCreator (CLI and GUI) has been updated to allow selection of Sparse or Raw disk images. This allows a choice between higher performance Raw images vs. smaller on-disk and faster provision time Sparse images.
Increased performance and stability of disk I/O back end.
Reduced timeouts on SSL front end.
Many improvements to REST API calls.
Security enhancement to GUI VMCreator. ISO Images will now need to be uploaded to server, before provisioning.
Additional real/virtual disk usage tracking in Admin UI graphs to accommodate sparse images.
Various security improvements to ECP application repo and core.
Billing delegates can now be created to allow non-admin users to access metering information.

If you're an exisiting ECP customer, just run the typical YUM update.

VMware's New Cloud Mission - The Bottom up

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 14:00:00 EST

Ok, I admit it. At first I didn't have a clue what the point of VMware's new "Get it off the Board Agenda" site had to do with promoting cloud adoption. In a nutshell VMware has created a new viral marketing campaign geared toward the idea of keeping executives out of the decision process for buying cloud related services. But why? Doesn't this seem somewhat counter productive, or does it?

First I suppose you need to get into the head of who's buying cloud products and services today. For service providers and telco's this probably means an SVP of some sort has been given the job of defining a revenue generating cloud strategy and service offering, so I'm not sure if this person would be the target for the campaign.

It's probably more likely geared toward the end customers, the customers of my customers if you will. The Google's, Amazons, Salesforce and Microsoft's style clouds and how they're being adopted. The random developer or business unit with a problem to solve. The classic "New York Times" cloud story comes to mind. The story goes something like this, Derek Gottfrid, random NYT programmer had to solve a very hard problem with no time or money. So without prior permission he goes to Amazon Web Services where he leverages the power of EC2 and the free open source Hadoop project. With in a few hours he is able build a cloud application to utilize hundreds of machines concurrently and process a 150 years worth of data in less than 36 hours at next to no cost. Yup, it's called bottom up adoption.

So what is VMware promoting you ask? Bottom up user innovation and frictionless IT procurement policies. Instead of putting up road blocks to innovation VMware is saying empower your employees by giving them self service tools that allow them to do things never possible before. Personally, I think the board room angle may be a little off, but generally I think they are on the right track.

Hosts Unlimited Launching Elastic Cloud Services with Enomaly ECP Solution

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 13:19:17 EST

Hosts Unlimited announced today that it will begin offering Cloud Computing services to its customers using the Enomaly Elastic Computing Platform (ECP), Service Provider Edition by the end of this month. This marks the launch of a new business service for Hosts Unlimited, an elastic compute organisation setup to provide elastic, “pay-as-you-go” services together with virtual server provisioning and flexible, secure on-line backup services.

Do You Know Where Your Data Is In The Cloud?

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 05:45:00 EST

Forrester Research has published a great Interactive Data Protection Heat Map outling regulations governing privacy and data protection by country. The privacy heat map does a great job of visually defining the degree of legal strictness across a range of nations.

Note: This interactive map provides information on national data protection laws that have either been enacted or are currently under consideration around the world. It does not address sectoral laws, local laws, criminal/civil code provisions, or constitutional provisions that may address data protection. It is intended for information only and is not an authoritative statement or summary of the actual laws in these countries, and it may not reflect all recent changes and legislative updates.

The Redundant Array Of Independent Datacenters

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 05:15:00 EST

Ever read about a new technology or product that instantly makes you think -- Wow, just wow! Well that just happened while reading a very interesting announcement from our friends over at Cisco. The announcement describes a unique approach to connecting multiple disperse cloud data centers / infrastructures. (Some refer to this as the InterCloud) Cisco is calling the technique Redundant Arrays of Independent Data centers. The approach uses Overlay Transport Virtualization (OTV) to extend Layer 2 Ethernet LANs by encapsulating the traffic.

The Incredible India Cloud

Sun, 21 Feb 2010 16:33:00 EST

To most who watch the cloud computing space telling you that there is an incredible amount of interest in Cloud Computing is rather obvious. Often times you'll hear me talking about the opportunities from the pacific rim nations or the other various emerging economies around the globe. So the fact that interest in cloud computing is exploding in India shouldn't come as a surprise, or should it?

India is an interesting place for technology, it's a country that has a population just slightly smaller than that of China making it the second-most populous country with approximately 1.17 billion people (estimate for July, 2009 according to wikipedia). Statically the country consists of more than one-sixth of the world's population and has more than two thousand ethnic groups. Or to put it another way, India occupies 2.4% of the world's land area and supports over 17.5% of the world's population. So like other high growth markets, India's rapid economic rise is based mostly on their massive population base and diversity.

Which brings us to Cloud Computing in India. One of the side effects of the CloudCamp series of events is within it's ability to provide the pulse of the emergent cloud computing opportunties from around the globe with India currently leading the charge with a series of events happening this week in India.

Currently underway, the CloudCamp India Tour features five CloudCamp events over the next eight days from a variety of the largest cities in India, illustrating the the growth of the movement in one of the largest technology communities in the world.

To give a little background, in recent posts on both ReadWriteWeb and the Janakiram blog outline the challenges and opportunity perfectly. Janakiram MSV (yes, that's his name) who works with Alcatel Lucent as Deputy General Manager, Bell Labs-India makes some great points about why India is poised for significant growth in his post about the battle ahead in the cloud computing market. Saying:

"Indian Subcontinent is a very unique and a potent geography for platform vendors. The reason for that is the presence of an end to end IT ecosystem.

1) India hasn’t hit the saturation levels yet. Unlike Americas and EMEA, India and APAC have ample scope for IT adoption. This market has a huge, untapped potential at every level – Let that be enterprise, Public Sector or ITES.
2) India is a playground and a test bed to pilot strategic adoption techniques. No other geography will give the platform vendor access to the whole ecosystem. Want to engage with ISVs and excite them to develop on your platform? Well, India is the place to go. Do you need a mature developer community to pilot a SDK adoption plan? Want to setup a Center of Excellence to showcase the capabilities of your platform? Go, talk to Infosys or Wipro!

3) The Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) story is just warming up. Some of the inherent problems that India has been grappling with can now turn into a great opportunity for Cloud vendors. Think of how you can empower the clusters of small businesses through the Cloud and you have a winning story there. Convince the academic institutes to subscribe to Cloud Services that provide student / teacher / parent collaboration on subscription. Read CK Prahlad’s ‘The Fortune At The Bottom Of The Pyramid’ to realize the potential that the Indian SME and the consumer has."

For those of you in India please make sure to attend an upcoming CloudCamp and be part of the incredible Indian Cloud opportunity.

CloudCamp Tour, India

February 20, 2010 in Delhi, India
February 23, 2010 in Chennai, India
February 25, 2010 in Hyderabad, India
February 27, 2010 in Pune, India
February 28, 2010 in Bangalore, India

Cloud Business Models Evolving Quickly

Sat, 20 Feb 2010 02:00:00 EST

There's been a lot of talk about what 2010 represents from a cloud adoption point of view. Some say it's the year of the prototype, others the year cloud computing becomes the standard way people consume web based products and service. For me it represents the year companies innovate on the various cloud business models or to put it another way, it's the year we make money. As we, [Enomaly] deploy more and more cloud service providers around the globe it's interesting to see the differences among the various regions and classes of services providers and how they adapt our product for their particular market. When we built the latest iteration of the Enomaly ECP Service Provider edition, we decided to make the product as flexible as possible for a variety of different business / revenue and deployment models. This was a risky move, because it now means that we have the extra added responsibility of assisting our customers with not only deploying their cloud services, but also defining any number of various pricing schemes.

Upcoming CloudCamp's Q2 2010

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 12:43:00 EST

CloudCamp continues it's global march around the world. I wanted to take a brief moment to thank our regional organizers as well as our sponsors (which number in the hundreds). If you haven't attended a CloudCamp yet, now is your chance and if there isn't one happening close by, than why not go ahead and help organize one for your region.

Why Cloud Computing Is More Secure

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 14:00:00 EST

In the midst of the 1990's economic bubble, Alan Greenspan once famously referred to all the excitement in the market as Irrational exuberance. Similarly in today's cloud computing market a lot of the discussions seem to be driven by a new set of irrational expectations. The expectation by some that cloud computing will solve all man's problems and by others the expectation that cloud computing is inherently flawed. Flawed by an ended less list of problems most notably that of security. Like most things in life, the reality is probably somewhere in the middle. So I thought I'd take a closer look at the unrestrained pessimism and sometimes irrationality found in the cloud security discussions.

To understand security, you must first understand the psychology of how [cloud] security itself is marketed and bought. It's marketing based on fear, uncertainty and most certainly doubt (FUD). Fear that your data will be unwittingly exposed, uncertainty of who you can trust and doubt that there is any truly secure remote environments. At first glance these are all logical, rational concerns, hosting your data in someone else's environment means that you are giving away partial control and oversight to some third party. This is a fact. So in the most basic sense if you want to micro-manage your data, you'll never have a more secure environment than your own data center. Complete with bio-metric entry, gun toting guards and trust worthy employees. But I think we all know that "your own" data center also suffers from it's own issues. Is that guard with the gun actually trust worthy? (Among others)

Recently it occurred to me that the problem with cloud security is a cogitative one. In a typical enterprise development environment security is mostly an after thought, if a thought at all. The general consensus is it's behind our firewall, or our security team will look at it later, or it's just not my job. For all practical purposes most programmers just don't think about security. What's interesting about cloud computing is all the FUD that's been spread has had an interesting consequence, programmers are actually now thinking about security before they start to develop & deploy their cloud applications and cloud providers are going out of their way to provide increased security (Amazon's VPC for example). This is a major shift, pro-active security planning is something that as far I can tell has never really happened before. Security is typically viewed as a sunk cost (sunk costs are retrospective past costs which have already been incurred and cannot be recovered). But the new reality is that cloud computing is in a lot of ways more secure simply because people are actually spending time looking at the potential problems beforehand. Some call it foresight, I call it completely and totally rational.

Global Governmental Cloud Computing

Sun, 14 Feb 2010 22:15:00 EST

I've just had arguably one of the highlights of my career this week when I had the honor of representing both my country and company keynoting the Westminster eForum in London. My trip was sponsored by the High Commission of Canada in the UK as well as Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada. Yup @ruv, Goodwill Ambassador for Cloud Computing, strange I know.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Westminster Forum Projects in the UK, it is the predominant governmental public discussion Forum in Great Britain. It enjoys substantial support and involvement from key stakeholders within UK Parliament, government, regulatory bodies, industry, consumer's organisations and other interested groups. The forums organize senior level seminars on public policy in these sectors. Each Westminster Forum Projects forum is structured to facilitate the formulation of 'best' public policy by providing policy makers and implementers, and those with an interest in the issues, with a sense of the way different stakeholder perspectives interrelate. Usually this is through impartially-framed, inclusive discussion conducted either in public or under the Chatham House Rule. Forum events are frequently the platform for major policy statements from senior Ministers and regulators, opposition spokesmen and leading opinion formers in industry and interest groups. Events regularly receive prominent coverage in the national media and trade press.

During both my keynote and the ensuing Q&A session it became quite clear that the future of Cloud Computing is clearly found within the rise of regionalized cloud providers both from an economic standpoint as well as from a policy, compliance and regulatory one. A reoccurring theme had to do with the impact of geopolitical data governance and privacy as relating to remote cloud based environments. It is also clear that the UK government is fully committed to embracing all aspects of cloud computing with the recent launch of data.gov.uk as a great example. But major issues still remain.

One issue is that of the so called digital divide, something I liken more towards a "information divide" where the urban populations have much greater access to information via better Internet connections than the more rural populations. Like many established economies, the UK suffers from a legacy communications infrastructure which makes modernizing IP networks problematic at best. In direct contrast other areas of the world like South Korea where a significant portion of the population has fibre to their homes are at a distinct advantage when it comes to equipping their populations with latest and greatest cloud based infrastructure, and more importantly applications.

Another one of the points I raised during my keynote is "Information is Power" and faster you can collect, organize, analyze and utilize it -- the more competitive you will be as both an individual and collectively as a country. In my usual fashion I was blunt, the fact is currently many Western Countries are losing this new data centric arms race to places like China. To remain competitive in the 21st century the West will need to embrace this new data/cloud centric world with policies and laws that make working in the places like the UK and beyond less restrictive -- again assuming a certain level of oversight.

Another point I raised was around information technology as the great democratizer . What I mean is we can't always agree on the politics of the various governments around the globe (i.e. The Socialized Capitalism of China), but what we can agree on is that access to information, even information this heavily restricted provides a level of empowerment never seen before and at the end of the day, information wants to be free.

Amazon EC2's Greatest Threat is Cloud Regionalization

Sat, 13 Feb 2010 13:30:00 EST

Earlier today I tweeted that I believed that the biggest threat to Amazon EC2 isn't found in any one single IaaS Cloud provider, but instead it's collectively the hundreds of regional cloud providers in the midst of launching public services. The tweet started a bit of a storm with those who believe that the economies of scale that exist within large IaaS providers will ultimately spell doom for the smaller regional players who will never be able to to compete directly with the IBM's, Google's, Microsoft's and Amazon's of the world.

The People's Republic of Cloud Computing

Sun, 07 Feb 2010 10:00:00 EST

I just got back from an action-packed week of meetings in Shanghai, China. Shanghai is one of the more exciting cities I've visited recently as they prepare for the World Expo in May as well as the upcoming Chinese New Year festivities. As a city Shanghai is a bustling modern metropolis. A city that in a little over thirty years has gone from a small village to mega city of more then 30 million people. In talking with the people I met in Shanghai I quickly came to realize that like myself, most people in Shanghai were not originally from there, most had recently moved there from other areas of China for "economic opportunities" the city now offers. Looking around the city you'll notice a level of wealth on par or better than most western cities. In a nutshell the reason I found myself in Shanghai was for the very reason the Chinese are now pouring into the the city, the opportunity to capitalize on the new Chinese dream.

Enomaly announces Participation in Intel® Cloud Builder Program

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 17:24:28 EST

Enomaly, a global leader in Cloud Computing joins Intel® Cloud Builder Program to deliver a reference architecture based on Intel® Xeon® Processor based platforms.

Enomaly & Intel Participate in New Cloud Builder Program

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 16:42:00 EST

It's been a little quiet on the blog front lately because of my crazy travel schedule. I'm currently in Shanghai on business and have had limited access to the my favorite social media tools while I've been in the Peoples Republic. Today I have some exciting news, something that's been a long time in the making. As many of you know over the last few years we've been working very closely with the team at Intel on various cloud and virtualization related efforts. In terms of a technology partner, they have been ideal both in going the extra mile technically allowing us access to their world class technical team around the globe (in places including China, India, Korea, Japan, Taiwan U.S) as well as market access to both their customers and partners. Intel was among the first to full understand the opportunity in enabling a truly secure virtualized cloud computing environments for service providers and Telco's. I'm happy to announce that Enomaly has joined the Intel® Cloud Builder Program to enable ease and scale of cloud deployments.

The purpose of the Intel® Cloud Builder Program enables easier deployment of cloud solutions. The program provides a starting point to setup, deploy and manage a cloud infrastructure. The primary goal is to simplify the effort to deploy cloud-based solutions for service providers, hosters and enterprise customers looking to use cloud architectures. The program provides tools and best practices for cloud service providers to create a cloud environment based on a defined software and hardware stack.

Our participation in the Intel Cloud Builder Program aligns closely with our other efforts to enable Service Providers to deliver enterprise-class cloud computing services to their customers. Our work with the Intel Cloud Builder Program will help to accelerate our efforts to deliver a massively-scalable, highly-available, high-security cloud platform to our customers.

A proven cloud computing technology platform, Enomaly's Service Provider Edition and High Assurance Edition provide a strong platform with which service providers can deliver revenue generating cloud services to their customers. Simple and easy to use by end-users, Enomaly provides a feature rich, customizable platform that will enable its Service Provider customers to gain competitive advantage in this fast moving market.

According to Billy Cox, director Cloud Computing Strategy, Intel Corporation; "Enomaly is one of the important industry influencers, Intel and Enomaly are working together with the goal to reduce the implementation time for our customers. Enomaly's participation in Intel® Cloud Builder Program can help enterprises and service providers move to cloud computing more easily."

I'm looking forward to continuing to work closely with Billy, Jake and the rest of the Intel team. Thanks again for believing in us.

About Enomaly

Enomaly is a global leader in the fast-growing Cloud Computing space. Enomaly empowers service providers (carriers, hosting companies, and others) to deliver revenue- generating infrastructure on demand (Infrastructure as a Service, or IaaS) services to their customers. Enomaly's Elastic Computing Platform, first released in 2004, was the world's first IaaS platform, and is used today in over 1000 working installations.

For more information, please visit www.enomaly.com

For more information on Intel® Cloud Builder program, please visit here.

All names referred to are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

Calculating Cloud Service Provider ROI

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 09:30:00 EST

Bit of a buzz this morning around the new Cisco IaaS ROI and Configuration Guidance Tool which was launched last week. My comment on twitter was that it was overly complex. Although some interpreted my remark as a slight against Cisco (You know who you are) it was actually a broader remark about the complexities of determining a service providers rate of return (ROI) when deploying your own revenue generating cloud services. In a nutshell that's the problem facing many data center and hosting providers looking to offer utility style IaaS products & services to their customers. To put it lightly, currently it's an overly complicated endeavor. To be competitive today means competing against Amazon Web Services. They've in a very real sense set the bar and the bar has been set extremely low. Not only does Amazon continue to produce new products and services at an amazing speed and consistency, they also continue to innovate on their cost model with latest improvements including Spot pricing and reserve instances. This means that AWS can offer their IaaS sometimes at less then a cent or two an hour while [mostly likely] continuing to turn a profit. Combined with these economic pressures are the competitive pressures to differentiate your service offering from that of your competitors. For example bundling additional software and services on top.

Enomaly Named in List of Coolest Cloud Platforms by CRN

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 05:00:00 EST

Enomaly got a little love today from Channelweb. The magazine named Enomaly in a list of the 20 Coolest Cloud Platform Vendors. The list includes a who's who of the Cloud Space including Amazon EC2, Appistry, AT&T, GoGrid, Google, Microsoft, RackSpace, Salesforce.com, Terremark, VMware and others.

ChannelWeb had this to say about the emerging Cloud Space, "Without the platform, there really wouldn't be much in the cloud, now would there? To some, cloud computing platforms have been affectionately called Platform-as-a-Service, or PaaS (not to be confused with that Easter Egg coloring kit of the same name). Cloud computing platforms facilitate and ease the deployment of applications into the cloud, limiting the cost and complexity by cutting the need to buy and manage hardware and software. As cloud computing continues to gather steam and more VARs and their clients are looking to design, develop, test, deploy and host apps in the cloud, a robust, flexible platform has become a must-have. With that in mind, we present the 20 coolest cloud computing platform vendors. See the complete list here.

Thank you!

CloudCamp Haiti Recap and Audio / Video Posted

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 EST

We had a great turnout for CloudCamp Haiti earlier today with great presentations from Dennis Quan of IBM, Sam Ramji of Sonoasystems (Formerly of Microsoft) Simon Wardley of Canonical and Judith Hurwitz, Author of Cloud Computing for Dummies as well great questions from our call in style radio show.

I'd also like to thank all our corporate supporters including our logo sponsors, Cloud-Cast, Cloud Connect, CloudRight, CloudSoft, Curtin University of Technology, Enomaly, Enstratus, OpenQRM, OpsCode, RightScale, Soasta.

To recap, all toll we raised close to $5,000. It's unbelievable to see how the cloud community came together for this important relief effort. I would also like to thank John Willis who took my simple twitter post, "I wish I could do more for Haiti", and ran with it. As well I'd like to thank Dave Nielsen who's tireless efforts were completely amazing. Just to think we went from an idea last Thursday to a complete and well attended CloudCampHaiti in less then a week is astounding. I am honoured and humbled. Thank you from the bottom of my heart!

Just a reminder you can still donate here. or here, or here.

So without further ado here are the links to Video (MOV 400mb) and Audio (MP3) portions of CloudCamp Haiti. The clips run about 4 hours in length. (Audio/Video provided by @cfetter founder of Intillium.com)

CloudCamp Haiti Recap and Audio / Video Posted

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 EST

CloudCamp Haiti Recap and Audio / Video Posted

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 EST

CloudCamp Haiti Recap and Audio / Video Posted

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 EST

CloudCamp Haiti Recap and Audio / Video Posted

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 EST

CloudCamp Haiti Recap and Audio / Video Posted

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 EST

CloudCamp Haiti Recap and Audio / Video Posted

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 EST

My TV Debut on BNN

Mon, 18 Jan 2010 19:23:00 EST

My TV Debut on Business News Network (BNN) Headline : January 18, 2010 : Cloud Computing - Companies in the Sector "Cloud computing" is a term that's popping up everywhere. It has its enthusiasts, but some say the recent Google hacking incident could raise questions about the security of cloud computing. So what is cloud computing and why does it matter? BNN speaks to Reuven Cohen, founder and chief technology officer, Enomaly Inc., Mike McDerment, CEO, Freshbooks.com and Sebastian Ruest, vice president research, IDC Canada. See Video here > Part 1. Part 2.

Is Amazon Oversubscribing the Cloud?

Mon, 18 Jan 2010 16:00:00 EST

There's been a bit of a debate raging over whether or not Amazon EC2 has been oversubscribed and is suffering from performance problems because it. The discussion started when Alan Williamson wrote a blog post on Tuesday that said he was experiencing growing performance problems while running a large EC2 deployment for one of his customers. The post accused Amazon of oversubscribing their environment which in turn meant he needed to buy larger instances to maintain the same level of performance in turn increasing his client’s costs.

Enomaly ECP 3.0.4 Service Provider Edition Released

Mon, 18 Jan 2010 14:39:00 EST

Enomaly is proud to announce the latest release of ECP Service Provider Edition. This version brings the following improvements and new features:

Cloning: Any powered-off machine can now be cloned, giving end-users the ability to scale out multiple copies of a pre-configured VM. This feature is important for many scenarios, including VM snapshot backups and VDI cloud solutions.

VM Tagging: Any number of tags can be added to a VM which will automatically create VM groups beyond the usual Running, Powered Off, Paused groups. This will allow users to easily organize VMs by function, by type, or in other ways important to them.

HA improvements: We've updated the HA engine to allow for new features, such as cloning and to increase the reliability of failure detection conditions on higher latency networks.

KVM updates: We've integrated additional 3rd party patches into the installer process to increase the functionality of the KVM hypervisor environment.

GoogleHack Proves People are Easier to Hack then Networks

Fri, 15 Jan 2010 19:45:00 EST

By now most of you have probably heard about the GoogleHack in China. Yesterday Google's Chief Legal Officer David Drummond wrote in a blog post that indicated the accounts of dozens of Gmail users in the U.S., Europe and China who are advocates of human rights in China were routinely accessed by third parties. Drummond said that these accounts were compromised through phishing scams or malware, not through holes in Google's computing infrastructure. And as expected there are headlines saying that this proves that "The Cloud" isn't secure and CAN'T BE TRUSTED. I'm here to tell you it is the opposite. The GoogleHack proves the Cloud is More Secure then Traditional Desktop Software, not less.

Enomaly Launches Cloud Computing Partner Program

Fri, 15 Jan 2010 15:32:00 EST

Enomaly, a global leader in Cloud Computing, today announced the launch of the Enomaly Partner Program to enhance the delivery of comprehensive cloud computing solutions to service providers (carriers, hosting companies, and others). The Enomaly partner program encompasses strategic partnerships with leading hardware technology vendors, cloud computing and storage technology companies as well as a global network of systems integrators and service providers who can provide local support and services to the numerous Enomaly customers in Asia, Europe as well as North America.

CloudCamp Haiti Fundraiser Jan 20, 2010

Fri, 15 Jan 2010 09:45:00 EST

CloudCamp Haiti is a virtual unconference held as a public webinar. CloudCamp-in-the-Cloud builds upon the popular CloudCamp format by providing a free and open place for the introduction and advancement of cloud computing. For this event, we are raising funds to donate to the aid effort in Haiti. Using an online meeting format attendees can exchange ideas, knowledge and information in a creative and supporting environment, advancing the current state of cloud computing and related technologies.

PR: Enomaly Launches Cloud Computing Partner Program

Fri, 15 Jan 2010 08:31:00 EST

Toronto, Ontario – January 15, 2010 – Enomaly, a global leader in Cloud Computing, today announced the launch of the Enomaly Partner Program to enhance the delivery of comprehensive cloud computing solutions to service providers (carriers, hosting companies, and others). The Enomaly partner program encompasses strategic partnerships with leading hardware technology vendors, cloud computing and storage technology companies as well as a global network of systems integrators and service providers who can provide local support and services to the numerous Enomaly customers in Asia, Europe as well as North America.

“The Enomaly Partner Program is a major initiative to attract and support the remarkable number of international technology companies that are recognizing the value of cloud computing and Enomaly’s leadership role in it,” said Justin Groen, vice president of Sales at Enomaly. “As Hosting Companies, Telcos and other service providers deploy our technology in their environments in Asia, Europe, the U.S. and Canada, our partner program will enable technology partners, sales channels and support services to complement Enomaly’s offering and deliver a total solution in all geographic markets.”

A proven cloud computing technology platform, Enomaly’s Service Provider Edition and High Assurance Edition provide a strong platform with which service providers can deliver cloud services to their customers. Simple and easy to use by end-users, Enomaly provides a feature rich, customizable platform that will enable its Service Provider customers to gain competitive advantage in this fast moving market.

Enomaly is a global leader in the fast-growing Cloud Computing space . Enomaly empowers service providers (carriers, hosting companies, and others) to deliver revenue- generating infrastructure on demand (Infrastructure as a Service, or IaaS) services to their customers. Enomaly's Elastic Computing Platform, first released in 2004, was the world's first IaaS platform, and is used today in over 1000 live installations.

Redux: Cloud Computing For a Cause

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 15:00:00 EST

Yesterday I had a great conversation with Romanus Berg of Ashoka, the world's largest network of social entrepreneurs and a long time customer of Enomaly. In the conversation we discussed some of the opportunities that cloud computing may offer as a social empowerment tool in emerging economies. In case you've never head of Ashoka, founded by Bill Drayton it was one of the first groups to popularize the concept of Social Entrepreneurship. The core foundation of social entrepreneurship is found within businesses that recognizes a social problem and uses entrepreneurial principles to organize, create, and manage a venture to make social change. Whereas a business entrepreneur typically measures performance in profit and return, a social entrepreneur assesses success in terms of the impact s/he has on society.

Interest in Cloud Computing Up 3,233% Since 2007

Mon, 11 Jan 2010 13:45:00 EST

Lately it seems that no matter where I go someone is telling me they've heard about cloud computing, from Newspapers to TV, it seems to be everywhere. I'm not talking about techies or the clouderati. I'm talking about your mother, your sister or brother, I'm talking about regular people you meet at dinner parties -- the everyday Joe.

If you are a frequent reader of my blog, you'll know I enjoy looking at trends. A particularly good analytics tool is found at Google's Insights for Search Tool. The site analyzes a portion of worldwide Google web searches from all Google domains to compute how many searches have been done for the terms you've entered, relative to the total number of searches done on Google over time. The site also allows the underlying characteristics of the data sets to be compared, for example against a broader industry. In our case, I compared Cloud Computing and a few other related terms against the broader "Computers & Electronics" industry to how much interest there was for cloud computing. (See Graph Below or original link)

A Few of the more interesting points.
1. The overall interest in Computers & Electronics is down about 46%
2. Interest in Cloud Computing peaked in November up an astounding 3,233% from 0 in October 2007
3. Interest in SaaS and Virtualization also remains very strong.

Pork Bellies, Bandwidth and Cloud Computing

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 15:06:00 EST

In May 1999 Enron announced to the world that it was creating a new market for trading Bandwidth. A wired article from 2001 noted that it seemed to many that the then energy giant had found a new pot of virtual gold. Enron and a broader group of their experienced traders believed it was only a matter of time before bandwidth (as well as other virtual resources) would be bought and sold in much the same way that commodities markets trade everything from petroleum to pork bellies. Now, more then 10 years later this transition has yet to occur. In this post I will examine why the idea of trading bandwidth never took off and see if today might be the ideal time to try again.

Is Cloud Computing Actually Environmentally Friendly?

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 11:00:00 EST

As we end 2009 and prepare for the next decade there seems to be a nagging question, a question that I have to say, I frequently answer without any concrete proof. A question that seems to be becoming more important then ever. The question is simple yet profound in its implications as a global citizen, is cloud computing actually environmentally friendly?

First, I will admit, I am among the group of cloud advocates who routinely claim that cloud computing is green, I say this without any proof or evidence to support my statement. I make this claim as part of my broader pitch to use Cloud Computing, I say this as a sales and marketing guy, but not as an advocate. As an advocate I'd like to have some empirical data to support my position. Believe me, I've searched, and I've searched -- although there are piles of forecasts about the potential market for cloud computing, said to be in the billions, little exists to support the green / eco-friendly argument.

On the face of it, a major incentive to move to cloud computing is that it appears to be more environmentally friendly compared to traditional data center operational / deployment models. The general consensus says that reducing the number of hardware components and replacing them with remote cloud computing systems reduces energy costs for running hardware and cooling as well as reduces your carbon foot print while higher DC consolidation / optimization will conserve energy. But a major problem still remains, where is the proof?

The problem is there is no uniform way to measure this supposed efficiency. None of the major cloud companies are providing utilization data, so it is not possible to know just how efficient cloud computing actually is -- other then it sounds & feels more green.

The problem is measuring the hypothetical. What is the hypothetical footprint of a startup that may have chosen to built their own data center versus using someone elses? Things like transportation, development, construction, management, etc are very difficult to measure and arguably still create vast amounts of CO2, yet are generally not taken into consideration. Also the power sources can have dramatically different CO2 footprints, say a coal source Vs wind or Nuclear.

Then there is the question of consumption, we now have the ability to run our applications on thousands of servers, but previously this wasn't even possible. To say it another way, we can potentially use several years worth of energy in literary a few hours, where previously this wasn't even an option. So in direct contrast, hypothetically we're using more resources, not less. On the flip side, if we bought those thousand servers and had them running (under utilized) the power usage would be significantly higher. But then again, buying those servers would have been out reach for most, so it's not a fair comparison. There we are -- back, at where we started. You may use 80% less energy per unit, but have 1000% more capacity which at the end of the day means you're using more, not less energy.

I'm not alone in this thinking, more broadly, the the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) considers the label "Environmentally Friendly" to be too vague to be meaningful because there is no single international standard for this concept. Although there are a few emerging Data Center Energy Efficiency Initiatives, notably by the EPA in the United States through their Energy Star program. The EPA programs are working to identify ways in which energy efficiency can be measured, documented, and implemented in data centers and the equipment they house, especially servers. This may be the foundation for potential cloud "eco-friendliness", but until cloud computing providers step up and provide the data, it does little to resolve the question.

Let me be clear, it's not that I'm saying Cloud Computing isn't green, I'm sure that if you were to compare a traditional data center deployment to a near exact replication in the cloud you'd find the cloud to be more efficent, but the problem is there currently is no way to justify this statement without some kind of data to support it.

If you know of some hard data, please free to pass it along.

Why the Cloud Needs Virtualization

Sat, 02 Jan 2010 07:02:00 EST

Lots of discussion lately about the need for virtualization in a cloud computing context. On one side you have people saying it's not necessary and adds extra complexity, on the other you have people (vendors) saying that virtualization is inherently a cloud infrastructure. Some even go as far as saying that virtualization and cloud computing are one in the same. I'm here to tell you that neither is true. My position is Virtualization Doesn't Make the Cloud, it makes the cloud better. Sure, you could manage raw servers Google style, but why? For me, it comes down two main aspects of scale, scaling up, and scaling out.

First let's look at scaling out, or to scale horizontally which basically means to add more nodes to a distributed system, such as adding a new servers or storage (which is easier). These could be in the form of physical or virtual servers. An example might be scaling out from one web server system to many dedicated slaves machines. Google has made an art form of scaling out. They have data centers around the globe geared toward this one core task - just in time hardware provisioning, but for most this is a very difficult and costly endeavour. Virtualization makes this sort of instant replication & provisioning of many virtual machines much easier.

Next is scaling up or the ability to scale vertically which means adding resources to a single server in a distributed system. Typically this involves the addition of CPUs or memory to a single virtual server in the form of Virtual CPU and RAM. Unlike a physical server, in a virtual environment you can change your virtual hardware characteristics, a physical server is what it is. You run at it's maximum potential limiting it's ability to easily scale up. If you need more scale you need more hardware or have to manually add more components to the physical server (RAM, CPU, storage, etc), which means downtime while the servers are upgraded. In virtual environment this isn't a limitation and can often be done on the fly.

Vertical scaling of existing systems also enables you to better leverage Virtualization technology because it provides more resources for the hosted Operating system and Applications that can share these resources in a multi-tenant environment. Virtualization also allows for more automated programmatic control of the system resources in correlation to the demands placed on the infrastructure or application being hosted. This is because in a virtual infrastructure you are not managing any actual physical components but instead virtual representations of them.

So it is very true that virtualization isn't a requirement of a cloud infrastructure, it just makes it a heck of lot easier to manage and scale out or up or both.

2010 New Year’s Resolutions of a Cloud Visionary

Wed, 30 Dec 2009 13:30:00 EST

As we end 2009 and head into 2010 I thought I'd take a moment to publicly state some of my goals and resolutions for the upcoming year. You'll notice that most of these goals are business focused, but alas, lately I've been very business focused with Enomaly and my various other schemes. 5. Keep Giving Back. For anyone who knows me, knows that I am a doer. From CloudCamps, to Cloud Interop, from Advisory boards to mentorships. I will continue to give back whenever and where-ever I can. If there is an itch, I will do my best to scratch it.

Examining Economies of Scope

Sat, 26 Dec 2009 02:00:00 EST

There has been a lot of discussion lately around the benefits of so called "economies of scale" found in the cloud. This scale has been described as a main driver for those choosing to use remote cloud computing services and infrastructure rather then using your own. The discussion usually points to the "fact" that these companies have greater economic scale that smaller companies can't match. A scale that dictates that only the largest companies can afford the capital expense required to the build out the massive global data center footprints required to adequately compete as multi-faceted cloud providers. I'm here today to propose another reason why these companies may have a unique advantage, and it's not only scale, but it's also scope, more specifically, Economies of scope.

According to Wikipedia, "Economies of scope are conceptually similar to economies of scale. Whereas economies of scale primarily refer to efficiencies associated with supply-side changes, such as increasing or decreasing the scale of production, of a single product type, economies of scope refer to efficiencies primarily associated with demand-side changes, such as increasing or decreasing the scope of marketing and distribution, of different types of products. "

So my hypothesis is that beyond just the money these companies bring to bear, they also bring the power of a large and well developed sales & marketing channel. In effect they can bundle a variety of applications and services to a well established network of customers and partners. Regardless if your product is better, if your brand, marketing and sales channels are strong enough you can sell anything. (Microsoft owns the Desktop, Google Owns the Net, both have key advantages) If one of your product lines falls out of fashion the company will, most likely, be able to continue operating because of diversification. It's been one of Google's key advantages, they can try out a million product directions, because they have the customer visibility and money (thanks for search world ads) to do so in the hope that one of these random products will revolutionize both their business and hopefully the world.

This may also be why often a product sold to Oracle, IBM, Google or Microsoft is more successful then one left independent. Of course there are aways exceptions to these rules. These very market leaders themselves at one point were all new entrants in the market and had to endure to overcome the incumbent players. But as a generally rule of thumb it certainly seems to give the incumbent a huge advantage. So the key to success may just be to be to outlast your competitors and continually try new things.

Just a random thought.

Introducing the Private Partner Cloud

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 21:45:00 EST

I'm currently in Seoul South Korea for a variety of meetings with SK government and technology industry folks. Yesterday I had a very interesting meeting with the largest South Korean mobile provider. During the meeting they described a great potential use case for telecom focused IaaS cloud offerings. Basically what they've done is created an on demand compute infrastructure specifically for their network of mobile application developers. The service is offered free of charge to their partners and provides all the tools necessary for the development, testing and deployment of mobile applications specifically tailored to their particular mobile network environment. This may be one of the best use cases for semi-private cloud I've heard of.

In a sense they're subsidizing the infrastructure costs for mobile application developers they work with. They are basically covering the costs associated with the more routine aspects of mobile app development while also empowering a new and broader group of potential partners by providing a quick and easy way to develop applications for their environment. Another advantage is in gaining a greater pool of potential network specific applications & developers. Very smart.

For me this use of a private partner cloud represents a great example of the opportunities for offering free cloud based IaaS services specifically for your partners, suppliers and best customers. The free to partners model for cloud computing may be the next logical step for cloud computing. Large technology companies like Microsoft, Intel, IBM, Oracle and others may start using these partner clouds as part of their channel and developer programs. If you develop for our platform, we'll give you everything you need to do so, free of charge. This could include everything from compute to storage, development to deployment.

Cloud Computing with a Chance of Convergence for 2010 Predictions

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 10:15:00 EST

I'm off to Seoul, South Korea next week, but before I leave I wanted to give you a little holiday gift, yes, the gift of my prognostication. Before I do, as anyone who routinely reads my blog will understand, all I pretty much do is attempt predict the future. As an entrepreneur that has always been a key part of my successes & failures. (That and I also seem to be an eternal optimist) Generally my view of the future is not shaped by selecting any particular point in time but instead done from what I see from my ever changing vantage point in the present.

Spot On, Amazon Commoditizes the Cloud

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 16:30:00 EST

The consensus found in the more traditional areas of commerce is the longer your products are sitting in your warehouses the less money you're making off them. (This is also known as carrying costs) Over the years retail focused companies such as Walmart and Amazon have strived to keep these carrying costs to a minimum by implementing various just-in-time (JIT) inventory strategies. (A technique that was first used by Henry Ford at the Ford Motor Company in the early 20th century).

Open Cloud Computing & Co-operative Community Clouds

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 09:45:00 EST

First in regards to Open Cloud Services, basically the concept goes like this; as we move away from the traditional client/server based models of the past to more web centric / service oriented opportunities of the future, we will see open source shift from application centric (source code) toward free open services and information. Cloud providers will essentially give away access in return for greater adopt of their platforms / services, increased customer acquisition and to accelerated creation of data and information. Basically the same reasons companies open source their applications today, just applied in a cloud context.

Wave on Ulitzer: Confessions of a Google Wave Fanboy

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 18:00:00 EST

Like many who were given early Google wave sandbox accounts, I didn't see the purpose at first. The rather buggy javascript laden interface was actually kind of slow and at times cumbersome and worst of all crashed my browser all the time. This was for the most practical of reasons, I didn't know anyone else using the platform and it was an alpha that was changing on practically an hourly basis.

Cloud Computing and The Israel Defense Forces

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 17:45:00 EST

Stepping off the airplane last Tuesday at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion Airport I knew I was in for a memorable business trip. As I left the airplane I was greeted by a young female Israeli government official who seemed to recognize me by sight. This was to be my first indication of what was to become a very interesting few days in Israel.

Before I go into the details of my trip, I first need to give you some background which lead to my bizarre series of events. Although I was born in Haifa, a city in North Israel, I had left the country in 1982 at the age of 4, moving with my parents to Canada. Over the nearly 30 or so years since I left I have been lucky enough to travel all over world with generally little in the way of problems. Regardless of where I travel I've always use my Canadian passport, generally the Canadian passport provides me with a warm welcome regardless of the country I'm visiting. As an individual I've always identified myself both professionally and personally as a Canadian. When I speak, I like many other Canadians I throw in the casual "eh" at the end of sentences, and Americans routinely make fun of my "outs" and "abouts". I'm told they sound funny. So for all practical purposes, I am Canadian.

But because of where I was born, in the back of my mind I knew I was technically an Israeli citizen but never gave it much thought. Being born in Israel to a Swiss mother and Canadian father gave me a unique gift. This unusual "gift" is that of having three citizenships. Two of which, Israel and Switzerland require military service. Since leaving Israel at the age of 4 I have never had the opportunity to go back, not so much as a conscience decision as much as I never really had any reason to visit -- albeit for business or otherwise. But unlike Israel I have been to Switzerland many times over years and even have an active Swiss passport (which I rarely use). During my many trips to Switzerland, I have never been asked about military duty, so I falsely assumed the same would be true in Israel. Making what transpired all the more surprising.

Back to my arrival in Israel, at first I thought "Wow, Avner and the folks from the Israeli Association of Grid Technologies (IGT) who had invited to speak at their annual summit really go all out. I hadn't even gone through passport control and I'm already being greeted with a warm welcome". Well it turns out the welcome wasn't as warm as I thought. Next thing I know I'm being escorted to a secret label-less backroom at the airport. At this point I was told to wait. So for about two hours I waited as occasionally attractive young Israeli women with large machine guns would come in saying something to me in Hebrew, which I don't speak. After awhile they realized I didn't speak Hebrew and said "What kind of Israeli doesn't speak Hebrew" To which I responded, "A Canadian" They then ask me a series of questions. (Who my parents were, where I was born etc. Which they already knew)

The next part caught me by surprise, remember this is supposed to be a short (72hour) trip to Israel. A young woman tells me that as an Israeli citizen I have two conditions before I can leave: First I can't leave leave the country without permission from the dept of Interior and must get an Israeli passport. When I asked how long she tells me several weeks. Then the best part, secondly I must report for my Israeli military service in a place called Tiberias not far from Jordan and Syria on western shore of the Sea of Galilee as soon as possible. When I said again that I was just visiting, the official indicated that I was now officially in the Israeli defense forces (IDF).

I was now on my own in a country where I didn't speak the language and certainly didn't identify myself with. I was on my own effectively drafted into one of the most well funded and active defense forces on the planet. To give you some background on the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), in 2008 Israel spent $16.2 billion on its armed forces, making it the country with the biggest ratio of defense spending to GDP as a percentage of the budget of all developed countries.($2,300 per person). Also all male citizens are required to serve three years in the IDF with exceptions made only on religious, physical or psychological grounds. Arguably the IDF is one of the most politically charged defense forces on the globe, not exactly how I envisioned spending my next three years.

It wasn't that I was afraid of being in the army, so much as the thought of potentially being away from my family in what most certainly felt like a strange foreign land. With an 11 month old baby at home and my wife and I expecting another I focused on how to get out of this most awkward predicament I suddenly found myself in. So now instead of focusing my attention on the business meetings and presentations I was supposed to have over the next few days I would have to focus on what felt like getting back my freedom. Luckly my new Israeli friends and business partners stepped up to help me out.

Some of the biggest help came from an Israeli business partner (who asked not to be named). When I eventually emerged that evening from the holding area in the Airport, he was there waiting for me and sprung into action. Within minutes he had called senior contacts within the Israeli Government, contacts that would eventually include the Deputy Prime Minster of Israel as well as various other high ranking officials. He then detailed a strategy that would have me visit both the Dept of the Interior as well as the biggest Army base in the country.

While my business partner was calling everyone he knew, the second day of my trip I attendeed the conference as much as I could. After all I was in Tel Aviv for the World Cloud Computing Summit and a CloudCamp Tel Aviv which ended up being both successes having great turn outs. Needless to say there is a tremendous amount of interest in cloud computing in Israel with several hosting companies announcing they would be offering cloud related products and services. But alas, this aspect of my trip was greatly overshadowed by my worries of being conscripted into the military as well as not being able to leave the country. Anyone who follows my twitter account could easily see I was somewhat stressed over the situation. But thanks to the huge outpouring of support from the Israeli's I met, my situation would soon be resolved with the greatest of efficiency. Literally dozens of people made phone calls and provided me with advice. It seemed that if you had a friend in the IDF, they would call on my behalf with at one point one senior military commander noting that that I must of been a very special person because he had received no less then 10 calls about me in the previous 24 hours.

All in all it took roughly 48 hours to get my situation fully resolved. First with the issuing of an Israel passport (which was given to me 45 minutes after it was requested, a new record I'm told) as well as a visit to the largest military base in the country called Camp Rabin named for Yitzhak Rabin. The base was one of the first IDF bases and has served as the IDF headquarters since Israel's founding in 1948. Think of it like the Pentagon in the U.S.

One of things that struck me at Camp Rabin (other then it reminded me of a good unconference name) was the age of the average enlistee, somewhere between 18-21 years old, unsurprisingly all of which were heavily armed. It felt like a summer camp with guns.

After a few hours of back and forth between the IDF HQ and my outpost in Tiberias I was given my release papers. The papers were in Hebrew, but luckily my local partner who seemed to have became both my chauffeur and translator was there to help. He told me that I had been discharged from the IDF for the reason of "Old Age" and that it also said that I was free to leave the country.

Yes, one crazy business trip.

Enomaly Offers Turnkey Cloud Platform for Service Providers

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 12:00:00 EST

Create your own revenue-generating cloud computing service (IaaS) in your own Data Center(s). Gain key competitive advantage and service differentiation in the Cloud Hosting market through Enomaly’s turn key hosting platform. Enomaly delivers an end-to-end solution for carriers and hosting providers who want to offer an Infrastructure-on-Demand (IaaS) service. Enomaly provides the comprehensive capabilities needed to deliver a low cost, flexible and powerful cloud service offering. Our comprehensive deployment, management & operations functionality ensures that the service is delivered in a low cost, simple, and easy way, and offers unique, highly-differentiated customer benefits.

Cloud Computing Risk Assessment Report

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 20:15:00 EST

I've been traveling so there is a bit of a back log of news. In case you missed this, The European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA), working for the EU Institutions and Member States has released a Cloud Computing Risk Assessment report. ENISA is the EU’s response to Information security issues of the European Union. As such, it is the 'pacemaker' for Information Security in Europe. ENISA supported by a group of subject matter expert comprising representatives from Industries, Academia and Governmental Organizations, has conducted, in the context of the Emerging and Future Risk Framework project, an risks assessment on cloud computing business model and technologies. The result is an in-depth and independent analysis that outlines some of the information security benefits and key security risks of cloud computing. The report provide also a set of practical recommendations.

Did Western Union Invent Cloud Computing?

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 09:30:00 EST

Interesting post by Nick Carr in which he points to the supposed first published evidence of the concept of Cloud Computing. The proof comes in the document, dated March 30, 1965 which outlines a Western Union executive's ambitious plan to create "a nationwide information utility, which will enable subscribers to obtain, economically, efficiently, immediately, the required information flow to facilitate the conduct of business and other affairs." In a nutshell Western Union invented cloud computing.