NSF's guidance on Cloud Computing will inform research dollars in the near future

The National Science Foundation released their report on cloud computing. It can be found here. The intent of this report is to provide information that guides funding programs. The NSF used NIST’s guidance on cloud computing to inform their research and decision making. This report will be instrumental in informing Federal decision makers and cloud investment. It is important to pay attention to such documents as they can help businesses align with Federal government priorities.

The NSF has identified the following areas as research areas worthy of financial support from the federal government:

1. Computer Systems
2. Computer Networks
3. Security and Privacy
4. Algorithms and data management
5. Applications and software engineering
6. Computer science education

The report concludes with the following:

“As recognized by both NIST and the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act, cloud computing is an area vital to the economic growth and competitiveness of the nation. The CISE community has responded vigorously to the challenge, as evidenced by the wide range of research efforts underway that are supported by numerous programs throughout the CISE Directorate.”

The NSF’s Computer Information Science and Engineering (CISE) directorate will continue its research into cloud computing (and hopefully will continue to advance cloud computing knowledge and research).

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The iOS vs Android battle rages on - and Apple is losing talking points

This latest news about the two major mobile operating systems does not look good for Apple.  A new report, created by the mobile analysis company Crittercism, provides a very good (and surprising) analysis of mobile operating system stability In short, Apple’s most recent release, 5.0.1, has almost 34% of all iOS crashes, and 28.6% of total crashes recorded. While this is just one study, this is awful news for Apple if it proves repeatable. Android is often decried as the less stable OS (critics usually point to its fragmentation) but if less crash-prone than iOS, Android could get a big boost in market and mind-share.

This is an issue that Apple will have to partner with developers to tacke. While the App Store is the largest market, many apps may have been created a year or two ago and not updated recently (nor updated by the user). If you’re interested in the study, Forbes.com has a great in-depth exploration (as well some great graphics) here.

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CumuLogic is ready to provide PaaS services for your enterprise

CumuLogic is a cloud computing company founded by Sun Microsystems’ alumni. The company has developed a Java Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) software that makes it easier and faster to develop and deploy Java applications (apps) in the cloud. By automating the management of the runtime environments for developing and deploying Java apps in the cloud, including automated scaling, CumuLogic’s Java PaaS can reduce the current time these steps take from upwards of multiple weeks to under a day. Cloud computing is not just about Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS). The cloud is about the applications, and getting them to your customers in a timely and effective way.

CumuLogic’s Java PaaS is now in beta with general availability coming soon. Their offering provides a no-lock in PaaS solution for Java apps that works on either public or private clouds. An enterprise can easily move apps between their own private cloud and a public cloud if needed. CumuLogic PaaS supports Amazon EC2, Eucalyptus, Citrix/Cloud.com CloudStack, OpenStack, and VMware private clouds. The architecture is flexible, cloud agnostic, hypervisor agnostic, offers mix-and-match infrastructure components, and has IT integration points. The beta product supports the following open source web servers, app servers, and databases: Ngnix, Apache, Tomcat, JBoss, Jetty, GlassFish, MongoDB and MySQL. The product also supports connections to an Oracle database. CumuLogic PaaS architecture is designed for high availability and failover. Fault tolerance is built in at every tier of the platform to meet the needs of mission critical applications.

Unlike today’s PaaS platforms like Google App Engine or application server-based approaches such as IBM WebSphere or Oracle/BEA WebLogic, Cumulogic recognizes that enterprise applications often exist in a tightly integrated ecosystem of highly varied and version dependent infrastructure components such as databases, web servers, libraries, and the like. Infrastructure component choices and their versions are often dependent on the goals of the executing application. The same is true for different application deployment scenarios where the choice of components is dictated by the specific service goals to be achieved.

CumuLogic is the first and only PaaS offering for application service development and deployment that supports full choice of an application’s infrastructure components regardless of whether they are open source, purchased from ISVs, or built in-house and proprietary. Existing PaaS platforms give limited choice of infrastructure components while application server vendors require significant component knowledge, integration, and testing to guarantee and maintain application functionality and integrity. CumuLogic PaaS provides freedom of choice for a wide selection of infrastructure components automating the otherwise costly integration of those components into a fully functioning application environment. CumuLogic PaaS also allows those applications to function on a CumuLogic platform(s) hosted on one or multiple internal sites and/or external service providers. Additionally, CumuLogic’s PaaS addresses enterprise security and compliance issues. Applications that require isolation can be managed separately to execute in isolation if required. Other applications without this requirement can share infrastructure components.

With the above features, the benefits of CumuLogic are dramatic:

• Enhanced developer productivity,
• A twenty to thirty percent cost savings in application lifecycle management, and
• Increased overall business agility.

Check out CumuLogic’s Java PaaS at www.cumulogic.com for your cloud computing application needs.

Useful Links

• Data sheet
• White paper
• Demos
• Beta registration

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Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Kyle Lagunas of Software Advice .

Recent activity – including the acquisitions of SuccessFactors by SAP and Rypple by Salesforce – is pumping new energy into web-based  HR software in the HCM market. Things are clearly heating up in this sector, and investors have taken note. In the last two weeks, VC funds have been flowing into the human resources software market, with large investments in SmartRecruiters and iCIMS. As such, 2012 shows much promise for the continued expansion of HR solutions into the Cloud, as well as further integration of social media functionality into HR applications.

The increasingly diverse needs of organizations big and small demand myriad options in human resources and talent management software solutions. As they continue to fight for the biggest piece of the pie, I believe more large software companies will make strategic acquisitions. I’ve taken an in-depth look at what SAP and Salesforce stand to gain from their HR acquisitions, how it will impact this dynamic software market, and where other contenders in this space might make moves of their own.

The Opportunity for SAP in HR: It’s All About the Data

Over the years, SuccessFactors added analytics and reporting capabilities to their product, in part through the acquisition of Inform Business Impact (previously InfoHRM) in early 2010. “The ability to create some telling analytics will set one vendor ahead, because that’s what it’s going to take to give HR a seat at the table,” says independent HR technology consultant Tiffani Murray. With SAP’s vast resources and experience delivering hard data in the ERP space, there’s a great opportunity here to further develop an HR analytics tool the market craves. If SAP is successful, we might expect to see more acquisitions at the intersection of HR and analytics in 2012.

Why HR Makes Sense for Salesforce’s Social Enterprise

Social tools have seen the most widespread adoption in these two markets, as CRM and HR have historically been the first business sectors to adopt new communications tools. With the evangelist support of Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff and John Wookey (previously of Oracle and SAP) heading their HCM unit, Salesforce is in a strong position to help HR departments extend social media functionality across their various applications. “This new blood drives innovation, which energizes the market,” says Murray. “It will drive the market in a new direction.”

Three HR Software Areas to Watch in 2012

As vendors great and small continue developing Cloud-based solutions, I believe there are three HR applications that offer the greatest opportunity for strategic growth through acquisition in 2012: talent management software, applicant tracking and recruiting software, and analytics and reporting applications. And in these areas, there are a few vendors who are ahead of the pack.

1. Because business leaders increasingly see the value in a system for developing their workforce, Talent Management Software continues to experience rapid growth in the Cloud. This sector has also seen some movement, as large vendors acquire best-of-breeds, particularly in learning management and performance management. Many analysts are have their eyes on Taleo – a leading talent management suite, and serious competitor in this space. I expect they’ll begin flexing some muscles in the marketplace, taking advantage of the opportunity to position themselves as SuccessFactors’s biggest competition.

2. Many of the core functions of Applicant Tracking and Recruiting Software thrive in the social media arena, and it makes sense that you’ll see more social capabilities evolving in this area first. Bullhorn – a leader in recruiting software – is also breaking into social with their new product, Bullhorn Reach. Currently in its infancy, I see a lot of potential in this product.

3. Your ability to identify and track trends in your retention rates, boosts in productivity, and benchmark performance will set your HR department apart from your competitors. And though HR has never had a problem with gathering data, HR software is recently making great strides in delivering technology that allows them to use that data. Analytics and Reporting Tools like eThority’s Workforce Analytics 5.0 (acquired by Equifax and integrated into their TALX business unit last October) will continue to drive innovation in HR software.

As legacy vendors continue their age-old ERP battle, and as innovative companies like Salesforce continue to dazzle, the moves made by these (rather different) business management providers have certainly set the stage for an exciting 2012. Customers and analysts alike would be wise to pay attention to continued movement in the market in the coming months.

For further reading, check out the full analysis and forecast on my HR blog at: http://blog.softwareadvice.com/articles/hr/the-hr-software-round-up-setting-the-stage-for-2012-1011912/. Have your own thoughts? Join the discussion, and leave a comment.

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VMware helps the NMCI run smoothly

The Navy Marine Corps Intranet is the largest individual network in the world. The only larger network is the Internet. This huge network sprawl requires a great deal of strategy, concern and planning. Over 700,000 users rely on the intranet to receive IT services. This is a huge network, and the NMCI cannot afford to take risks lightly, nor can they afford to be behind the eight-ball.

NMCI uses VMware Infrastructure for a few different reasons. The first is to virtualize Microsoft Exchange Servers. They host over 350k users on VMware servers. NMCI can run five virtualized exchange servers on every single physical server. This enables higher usage of server capabilities. As well, it adds value, and enables instant provisioning of new servers when necessary.

The largest individual network uses VMware - could it help your enterprise?

The second use NMCI has for VMware Infrastructure is server consolidation. Following OMB’s directive to consolidate servers, the NMCI is finding VMware Infrastructure key to these efforts. They have  consolidated 2,000 servers into roughly 300 physical hosts, a ratio of 9:1 (expected to rise to 12:1).

NMCI has extended the lives of their older servers, all the while consolidating their needs. This is huge for them, as their budgets diminish and user needs increase. E-mail is not something that they can waste a large amount of server space on, when there are so many mission critical applications out there.

Find the VMware case study here.

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Team up with Carahsoft and Virtual Instruments to prepare for the FDCCI

Last week I attended a Carahsoft webinar with Virtual Instruments’ Doug Norton and our very own Bob Gourley. The topic was the Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative, and what Virtual Instruments can do to help prepare your agency for consolidation.

The key capability that Virtual Instruments brings to the table is the ability to identify and create real metrics for your data center and across the SAN. VI uses fibre channel technologies to copy network data in stream and then perform their analytic magic on that data – this allows your network to continue to operate with zero latency introduced by their action.

Consolidation is a huge target for any CIO, let alone those to whom it is mandated. Virtual Instruments helps prepare the network for consolidation by identifying weak points, underutilized assets. One huge hold up for cloud adoption is visibility, which is exactly what VI can offer your agency or firm.

Virtual Instruments has created a six-step plan that directs the consolidation process and optimizes the results.

Step 1: Mitigate Risk and Improve SAN Utilization

Step 2: Speed Resolution Time & Root Cause Analysis

Step 3: Head Off Application Performance Problems

Step 4: De-Risk and Tune Mission Critical Applications

Step 5: Optimize Storage Tiering

Step 6: Increase Use of Virtual Servers

If you’d like to watch the archived webinar, find it on Carahsoft’s website, here.

Find Virtual Instruments and Doug Norton here.

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Protecting and connecting

Here are a few recent links of note on cybersecurity and disruptive technology:

• The Cyber Power Index by Booze Allen Hamilton. The G20 are ranked by their potency in cyber, determined by their legal and regulatory framework, economic and social context, technology infrastructure, and industry application. The United States is ranked second with the United Kingdom surprisingly first and China in 13th place. This tool is interactive and, if you disagree with Booze Allen Hamilton’s assessment, you can change the weighting of the determining factors.

• Federal Researchers Push the Limits of Cloud Computing. The results of the 2 year Magellan project, where the DOE”s national labs compared their traditional High-Powered Computing to cloud models, were released last month. Can the national labs use cloud computing to measure the expansion of the universe? Maybe, but not quite yet. We also did some further analysis on Lessons Learned from Magellan.

• Nearly a Third of Americans Now Own an E-Reader or a Tablet. Almost 20% own each. Increasingly mobile is becoming the norm, which means that mobile applications, services, and security need to keep pace and are some of the most pressing topics in information technology.

• Military’s New Plan to Weed Out Counterfeits: Plant DNA. Counterfeit goods are a tremendous concern in military logistics, but serial numbers can be rubbed out and even holograms can be mimicked. Applied DNA Sciences Inc. has just won a contract with the Defense Logistics Agency to try a novel solution –  coating electronics with plant DNA markers. Matching the plant DNA would be almost impossible for counterfeiters.

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Two years ago, the Department of Energy‘s Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research launched the Magellan project, a research and development effort aimed at harnessing cloud computing for the most demanding information processing of the national labs. A distributed testbed infrastructure was deployed at the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility and the National Energy Research ScienticComputingCenter, then benchmarked for some of the most challenging applications such as a particle physics experiment at the Large Hadron Collider or measuring the expansion of the universe. They also tested Hadoop, MapReduce, and the Hadoop ecosystem on massive scientific problems in the cloud. Their final results, published in December, show both the potential and current limitations of cloud computing for cutting-edge science. The primary appeal of cloud computing for the national labs was flexibility and agility. Through virtualization, researchers could create whatever custom computing environment they need, bring their own software stack, and try out new environments. Resources are also more flexible in the cloud, and researchers enjoyed being able to rapidly scale to a problem and tap into economies of scale for massive data sets and workflows. Another benefit of the cloud for science was that it simplified collaboration, allowing researchers to share software and experiments with their peers. Hadoop and MapReduce showed promise for high-throughput data and very large workloads. Often, the High-Performance Computingsolutions in place at the national labs have scheduling policies that aren’t compatible with this type of analysis. Problems with applying deep science to the cloud, however, currently outweigh the benefits for most applications, so the national labs will not be switching over from HPC just yet. Adapting to the cloud, porting applications, and building up infrastructure took considerable time and skill, raising costs. For most applications, which deal with truly massive workloads, have idiosyncratic needs, and are input/output intensive, traditional HPC currently performs better. Cloud worked best for applications that required minimal communication. The research team also had concerns about meeting the specific security and monitoring requirements of the national labs. Price was perhaps the biggest obstacle to implementing a cloud model, as using a commercial cloud would cost between 3 and 7 times as much as the current computing centers, which already pool resources to cut costs. Even switching over to private clouds would exceed a lab’s budget. Cloud computing for deep research isn’t doomed, however, as almost 40% of scientists would still want a cloud model even if performance suffered. There is also a lot of room for growth in this area, and even during the 2 years of the study, researchers marked dramatic improvements to the open source software powering the cloud such as Hadoop. To move forward, researchers sought improvements to MapReduce to better fit scientific data and workflow as well as ways to bring some of the benefits of the cloud to the traditional HPC platforms the national labs have spent decades perfecting.

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Virtual Instruments offers novel approaches to preparing for FDCCI

The Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative (FDCCI) is an important initiative in the federal space that seeks to enhance how the government delivers IT services in agencies and in some cases to citizens.  Consolidating data centers offers opportunities for CIOs and CTOs to change IT strategy and implementations. The FDCCI should lead to improved federal capabilities while lessening the financial brunt on the taxpayers.

Join Carahsoft, Doug Norton, Director of Virtual Instruments Federal and Bob Gourley editor of CTOvision.com and founder and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Crucial Point LLC, for this webcast which will discuss:

• How vendor-agnostic, real-time data from your current environment can be used to plan and model a consolidated infrastructure to safely deliver upon OMB’s required FDCCI
• The next logical extension to a private cloud environment

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Rackspace is a growing cloud computing capability provider that differentiates themselves by what they call “Fanatical Support.”  We try not to dwell too long on the marketing slogans of firms but have first-hand experience with Rackspace and can tell you their support is really really different. It must be the culture, but every support experience has left me convinced they are a great company to do business with.

We host several sites at Rackspace, including CTOvision.com  We also host data in Rackspace’s clouds and use their Cloud Files as part of a content delivery system. Additionally we use Rackspace cloud servers for standing up testing and prototyping environments and have also stood up Hadoop analytical clusters in the Rackspace cloud.

We have a coming post on quickly standing up an Apache Hadoop Cluster (CDH3-based) on cloud servers and to prepare you for that step by step tutorial we want to make sure you had a familiarity with Rackspace’s capabilities. To that end, this post will walk you through how to establish your own Cloud Server on Rackspace.

First, a word about cost. If you start small you can give yourself enough power to test the Rackspace cloud for about $11.00 per month. If your day job is as an enterprise techie or leader we recommend doing this with RedHat enterprise (which is probably in use in your organization) and there is a slight licensing fee for that too, so plan on another $20.00 per month there).  Your rates are decided based on how many servers you stand up and how powerful you make the servers. Keep in mind that when you are done building servers you should smartly scale them back. If you are only using a small bit of compute power you should only pay the minimum (that is the beauty of cloud computing).

The standup of a server for this tutorial will only cost you a few bucks, but once you stand up the Hadoop Cluster we tell you about in later posts you can easily run into expensive tasks, depending on the size of the data sets you crunch.

Rackspace cloud servers provide hosting via “virtual private instances.” These give you the ability to deploy, utilize and pay for as little or as many resources as you need. You can have one up and running in about 5 minutes (you can time yourself as you work through the tips below).

Now lets get into it, follow along and you can stand up your Rackspace server in no time at all:

Step one: Create your login:

• Navigate to: http://www.rackspace.com/cloud/cloud_hosting_products/servers/
• There is plenty of info on that page so take a minute to review how powerful your system will be once you stand it up. Then click on “Order Now. “
• That takes you to: https://cart.rackspace.com/cloud/?cp_id=cloud_servers
• Select the first option for cloud servers.
• Now you will enter your payment info and create a username and password.  Then place your order.

Step two: Stand up your server:

• You will now have access to Rackspace’s Cloud Server Control Panel. Login there with the credentials you created in the previous step.
• Click the button that says “Add Server”  (how is that for intuitive?).
• You will now see an easy to read list of servers you can select from. There are three tabs at the top, one for Linux, one for Windows, and one for your Server Images.  For now, stick with Linux. Select a Server (your choice).  If you select enterprise Red Hat Linux you will pay a support license fee.  We do that for our images because we want that level of quality support. But if you are just testing things out and building prototypes select another, like Ubuntu.

• You now have an option to give your server a name. Pick something unique and easy to understand, like BobsUbuntu or BobsRedHat (you can change the name you pick later).
• Also select your initial server size. This is the great part about this. You can start small and scale up anytime you please. So start with the smallest option.
• You will now be given a password.  This is your ROOT password so treat it with respect.  You must have this, but must protect it.
• You will now see a window that shows the server is being built. In about a minute the server will be up and you can remotely log into it and operate on it like any other server you own.
• As soon as your server is built you will get an e-mail with the public IP address of your server and the root password.

• Upon successful connect you will get a console command window and can operate on your box as if it is any of your other servers.
•  How you connect is a matter of personal choice. I use the old fashioned terminal window and SSH. You can bring one up on most any modern computer. You will use the info you received from Rackspace to connect.
• The command you enter in your terminal window will looks somethting like:

• Type yes then when prompted enter your password. Now you are in!
• The first command we recommend you enter is one to change your root password. The one created by Rackspace was sent via a clear e-mail and could have been intercepted by bad programs or government agents. So while logged in over SSH type the command psswd and enter.  Now enter a new password, twice.  Save this new password in a safe location.
• It is also important to update the software packages on your server. If you built yours with RedHat type this command in and hit enter:

We hope this quickstart guide was of use. We recommend establishing servers like this with Rackspace so you can continue to track this emerging cloud computing capability. We also recommend working through this example so you will be ready to stand up your own Hadoop Cluster.  We will be spelling out how to do that in a coming article.

And to review the Amazon Web Services (AWS) EC2 version of this guide see:
Quickstart Guide: Stand up your cloud-based servers with Amazon Web Services EC2