Links List 09.18.09

September 18th, 2009 by Valerie Barber

InformationWeek 500 was held this week, so there’s lots of news on the government side of IT. Vivek Kundra delivered the keynote address on using the cloud for new transparency and performance management initiatives.

On Tuesday, Kundra announced on the White House blog the launch of Apps.gov, the government’s much-anticipated cloud computing storefront. Solutions are divided into four areas – business apps, productivity apps, cloud IT services and social media apps. At launch, all of the cloud IT services are marked “coming soon”, but Kundra expects that to quickly change.

“We are just beginning this undertaking, and it will take time before we can realize the full potential of cloud computing. Like with Data.gov, Apps.gov is starting small – with the goal of rapidly scaling it up in size. Along the way, we will need to address various issues related to security, privacy, information management and procurement to expand our cloud computing services. Over time, as we work through these concerns and offer more services through Apps.gov, federal agencies will be able to get the capabilities they need to fulfill their missions at lower cost, faster, and ultimately, in a more sustainable manner.”

In tandem with the launch of Apps.gov, Google announced that it is creating a government private cloud so agencies can access Google services. To meet government security and policy requirements, the cloud will be in Google-owned and operated US-based facilities where data center employees have passed appropriate security checks. The cloud is planned to comply with requirements beyond FISMA. Google began the FISMA certification process in July 2009 and is close to being accredited.

“Why should the government pay for and build infrastructure that is available for free? In these tough economic times, the federal government must buy smarter.”

Vivek Kundra, speaking at NASA Ames Research Center

Will Google’s early launch of a private government cloud put them ahead of Microsoft in the race to the cloud? The government’s “stamp of approval” on cloud services not only advances the concept of the cloud, but boosts Google Apps as professional alternatives to Microsoft products.

“It says that most people don’t need the power of Word, Excel or PowerPoint, and the virtues of secure, reliable data, access from anywhere, and the ability to collaborate on single files, makes Google Apps a worthy replacement for Office.”

Ezra Gottheil, analyst at Technology Business Research Inc.

While Google’s early jump may get the attention of large companies, there will undoubtedly be stiff competition and lingering concerns about security, reliability and locked into a single provider.

A recent Yankee Group report says traditional network management approaches are not sufficient to keep up with the complexities of virtualization and cloud computing. They say benefits of these technologies can be lost if management methods focus on infrastructure management to detect problems with specific elements in the environment rather than on the end-user experience. By flipping the focus from infrastructure to end-user, IT is better aligned with the business.

“Traditional management solutions known as 1.0 management were built for a different era of IT. An era where infrastructure was static, users were located in corporate offices and virtualization did not exist. The infrastructure has evolved and the management tools must keep pace.”

“Managing virtualization in 2009 – A double-edged sword”, Yankee Group

MonitoringForge, a new online community for open source management software, launched in beta this week. The community welcomes open source developers and users to share tools, experiences and plans for future work. Organizers say they are not trying to replace other open source communities, but instead provide an environment for IT administrators to target their search for open source management projects and plugins. So far, 1700 management tools have been verified for the site, which they say will remain vendor and project agnostic. This effort is backed by GroundWork Open Source, who went from offering a commercial enterprise solution built on open source software to a completely open source product. Perhaps this business model will be viable since we believe there is truly a need, a time and a place for open source monitoring tools. But when it comes to monitoring mission-critical applications, open source is not apprpriate.

Iconoclast Bill Snyder thinks Oracle should spin off MySQL to speed up the European Commission’s investigation into Oracle’s acquisition of Sun. Given the relatively small amount of revenue MySQL generates, it seems Oracle has taken a wait-and-see-approach to the EC’s approval or veto. What a difference a year (and a half) makes. Sun bought MySQL for about a billion dollars based on revenue growth and MySQL’s increasing penetration in the enterprise space.  On a side note, Larry Ellison has posted a message to Sun customers in response to attempts from HP and IBM to siphon off Sun customers who may feel they are in limbo while the deal is being finalized. Meanwhile, Sun server sales have been crashing as the EC investigates the deal that has already been approved by US courts.

Finally, in case you missed it, the Internet turned 40 years old earlier this month. Happy birthday to the thing that brought us some of today’s “must-haves” including email, wikipedia, Facebook and Twitter. But I also wonder if this progression also spawned the ubiquitous cubicle farm?

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