Carpathia Hosting just announced it has teamed up with Citrix® Systems, Inc. to launch the second generation of its enterprise cloud offering, Carpathia InstantOn™. The announcement looks exciting for at least a couple reasons. First, Carpathia is communicating a focus on Citrix XenServer™ rather than VMware or other hypervisors. Of course Carpathia will remain hypervisor agnostic to some degree, allowing customers freedom of choice. Still, this is a big win for Citrix. The second big news is the launch of the second generation InstantOn cloud computing solution from Carpathia.

Background

Earlier posts have discussed some of the strategies that can be followed by infrastructure as a service (IaaS) providers. At a high level, IaaS strategies are typically based on some mix of low price (offering lowest prices per unit of value), high differentiation (offering unique capabilities), and focus (selling to a more narrow group of customers).

When I heard Mark Hurd (HP CEO) and Steve Ballmer (Microsoft CEO) were to speak on a teleconference last week announcing a major partnership between the two companies – involving cloud computing no less – I jumped right on the call. After all, Microsoft is doing some exciting work with its Windows Azure platform. And, conversely, HP has been lacking major strategic announcements in the cloud realm. So I figured an alignment between these two industry giants had the potential to be very significant.

Background

The previous post discussed some of the strategies that can be followed by infrastructure as a service (IaaS) providers. At a high level, IaaS strategies are typically based on some mix of low price (offering lowest prices per unit of value), high differentiation (offering unique capabilities), and focus (selling to a more narrow group of customers). But what is the “right” strategy? Well, there is no single right or best strategy for all IaaS providers. Instead, the question must be answered individually by each IaaS provider. To arrive at a profitable answer, each provider must also first understand customer needs, segmentation of customers, their own unique capabilities, strengths and weaknesses of competitors, and many others.

The infrastructure as a service (IaaS) market is continuing its rapid growth phase, gaining more competitors every month. Some of the companies are fresh new startups, while others – like hosting businesses and communications service providers – existed before the term cloud computing gained widespread popularity in the last few years. Datacenter infrastructure vendors and even booksellers (OK, maybe just Amazon) are also getting into the act. However, all of these varied companies still have one thing in common.

(Updated 11/24/09) - added section with more advanced topics.

Lots of people are still looking for ways to learn the basics about cloud computing. Below are some links to videos that may help:

• Cloud Computing Explained (from GoGrid, 5:22)
• Cloud Computing Plain and Simple with some humor (from rPath, 4:52)
  

Change is good, right? At least that is what people tend to say when making a change of their own choosing. For example: “I’m really looking forward to joining the new company – new responsibilities, new boss...” Or, “Yep, I’ll miss the old neighborhood. But the new house and school district will be great for the kids.”

As most readers know by now, the National Institute of Standards (NIST) has offered a solid and improving definition here. It includes the related cloud service models (IaaS, PaaS and SaaS) and deployment models (Private, Community, Public, Hybrid).

While the idea of a virtual private cloud is not new, there is yet to emerge a single consistent definition. In fact, some would say that cloud computing at large suffers from this same problem.

The National Institute of Standards (NIST) has been taking a leading, independent role in defining cloud computing. Version 15 (v15), authored by Peter Mell and Tim Grance and dated 8-19-200, is posted here: NIST Cloud Computing Definition (v15). If you have not had a chance to read any previous version of the NIST definition, start with this v15 definition.