Parallels stakes out tricky spot in the cloud
Parallels, known widely for its Parallels Desktop software that lets Mac users run Windows in a virtual machine, faces a problem that currently plagues many cloud companies: an identity crisis.
Parallels, known widely for its Parallels Desktop software that lets Mac users run Windows in a virtual machine, faces a problem that currently plagues many cloud companies: an identity crisis.
Microsoft will ship this little operating system called Windows 7 tomorrow, as you may have heard. We here at CIO.com have been writing about Windows 7 for more than a year. Microsoft has trickled out the details for months and IT veterans have sweated all of them, because history teaches us that OS upgrades go about as smoothly as a Kanye West appearance at an awards show.
For all the hype about cloud computing in the enterprise—hype that Gartner believes is now nearing its peak—IT professionals continue to tell cloud-related vendors that the cloud will not be practical until several serious concerns are addressed. VMware, with its vSphere 4 announcement today, is laying the foundation for what it hopes will be a central role for VMware technology in enterprises making use of both public and private cloud computing systems.
At MIT's Emerging Tech conference last week, I listened to frighteningly smart people debate the future of this old-is-new technology concept that we call "the cloud." Microsoft showed up too, to share its vision for cloud computing. Memo to Microsoft: From what I've heard, you don’t know cloud.
VMware CTO Stephen Herrod gave the VMworld audience a peek at VMware's near-term technology and product plans Wednesday, and while VMware continues to expand its management offerings on the server side, it's also got big plans for the desktop, with a new set of technologies dubbed VMware View, slated to arrive in 2009.
The number of virtual machines you have in your organization doesn't equal maturity, says Andrea Eubanks, senior director, enterprise and technical marketing for VMware. The goal is not necessarily 1000 virtual machines, it's a mature stable growth path for virtualization in your company, she says. Still, making the leap from the initial stages of virtualization to a more standardized virtual environment takes scale and planning.
Kicking off the highly anticipated VMworld show, still-new CEO Paul Maritz outlined broad plans for VMware's role from the cloud to the client, and had a few laughs at his own expense.
You can almost hear the sighs of relief all the way from deep underground Switzerland and France, where scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) fired up their large hadron collider and successfully sent the first proton beam around what is certainly the world's most amazing tunnel.
Dell, still fighting a tough battle to regain its luster, got caught in a cloud controversy this week. Poor cloud computing: This technology has real appeal for enterprise IT, but now that the tech community has decided that it's the tech term of the year, cloud computing is getting more overexposed than Mylie Cyrus.
I grimaced when I read that Microsoft has kicked off a marketing campaign where they show a consumer a PC running a new OS, called "Windows Mojave," then reveal that it's really Vista, and show the consumer's happy surprise on camera. See, Vista isn't so bad after all! But it's true. As numerous bloggers have pointed out, Microsoft's effort looks like those old Folgers coffee commercials where restaurant coffee gets secretly switched.
Intel just came to the same conclusion about Vista that so many of you enterprise IT leaders have made. From Steve Lohr at the New York Times came the delicious tidbit this week: Intel will pass on upgrading most of its employees' PCs to Microsoft Vista. They're going to stick with Windows XP, having found no compelling reason to upgrade to Vista on a large scale.
If you've already checked out CIO's newest survey on open source use in the enterprise, you know that among enterprise applications that IT leaders are using now, three types of open source applications top the list: ERP, collaboration and CRM.
If you watched HBO's Sex and the City series, you know "Big." Big was Carrie's important and rich boyfriend, such a big-time New York player in fact, that he didn't need a name. The women on the show all just called him "Big." Enterprise IT has always had its share of bigs: HP, IBM, Sun, Novell, Oracle, Cisco and of course, Microsoft, come to mind. While I was working on an editorial project listing top virtualization vendors, an interesting question kept coming up: Is it a plus or a minus to be a big, when you're selling virtualization technologies?
Throw Vista away. That's what many have now argued that Microsoft should do. Give it a dignified resting place, as a stepping-stone OS, and come up with a replacement that's more sensible for enterprise IT. There is historical precedent in the consumer OS space for such a move; look at Windows ME and how it became a footnote in Microsoft history.
Cloud computing looks to be a "classic disruptive technology," says Forrester Research in an interesting new report published this week. For enterprise IT shops, cloud computing still poses some real risks, including an almost complete lack of service-level agreements and customer references, plus some genuine security and compliance concerns, according to Forrester. But even so, IT shops are tapping into cloud services for targeted projects: "There's a high likelihood that developers inside your company are experimenting with it right now," writes senior analyst James Staten in the report,"Is Cloud Computing Ready for the Enterprise?"