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Industry News Desk Cloud Computing: "Cloud Thinking" Abounds at Microsoft, Sun and Dell
Microsoft too is now seriously planning for the post-Windows era, and The Cloud features heavily
Aug. 5, 2008 03:30 PM
Hugh MacLeod's "Gaping Void" Blog
In the last couple of months I've been getting increasingly aware of "Cloud Thinking." It's seriously interesting to me. As far as I can tell, all three of the big tech companies I know best, Microsoft, Sun and Dell, seem to be betting a lot of their future on The Cloud. It was even just announced recently that Dell was applying to trademark the term, "Cloud Computing". Microsoft is now seriously planning for the post-Windows era, and you guessed it, The Cloud features heavily.
About a year ago, I was at a geek breakfast in London with Steve Clayton and some other folk, including a few people from Microsoft.
Steve and some other geeks were talking about "The Cloud". At the time Steve was making the transition from working in the UK Partner Division, to working in the "Software & Services" division of Microsoft, which is how the conversation came up.

Right then and there I drew the cartoon above. Steve saw it, and right away asked me if he could use the picture for his business card, which he now does.
That was the first time I really started paying attention to the term, "The Cloud".
I would by no means call myself an expert or an authority on the subject, but in the last couple of months I've been getting increasingly aware of "Cloud Thinking". It's seriously interesting to me.
As far as I can tell, all three of the big tech companies I know best, Microsoft, Sun and Dell, seem to be betting a lot of their future on The Cloud. It was even just announced recently that Dell was applying to trademark the term, "Cloud Computing". Heck, even my friends over at Techcrunch are looking to get a piece of the action.
Even today, I learned that Microsoft is now seriously planning for the post-Windows era, and you guessed it, The Cloud features heavily. And Businessweek just ran a big article on it:
A Sea Change in Computing
Some analysts say cloud computing represents a sea change in the way computing is done in corporations. Merrill Lynch (MER) estimates that within the next five years, the annual global market for cloud computing will surge to $95 billion. In a May 2008 report, Merrill Lynch estimated that 12% of the worldwide software market would go to the cloud in that period.
Those vendors that can adjust their product lines to meet the needs of large cloud computing providers stand to profit. Companies like IBM, Dell (DELL), and Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), for instance, are moving aggressively in this direction. On Aug. 1, IBM said it would spend $360 million to build a cloud computing data center in Research Triangle Park, N.C., bringing to nine its total of cloud computing centers worldwide. Dell is also targeting this market. The computer marker supplies products to some of the largest cloud computing providers and Web 2.0 companies, including Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, and Yahoo (YHOO). "We created a whole new business just to build custom products for those customers," Dell CEO Michael Dell says.
I was also recently really surprised and delighted about all the discussion my last post, "The Cloud's Best-Kept Secret", seemed to generate. Not just the amount of discussion, but the quality of it, from some of the smartest people I know on the planet. People like Tim O'Reilly, JP Rangaswami, Dennis Howlett, James Governor, all piping in. Rock on.
And of course, there's the "Cloud Portraits" I've been drawing recently. Clouds, clouds, clouds... Clouds everywhere. Like West Texas in the rainy season etc.
What does this all mean? Frankly, I have no idea. I have no intention of becoming a "Cloud Blogger" or whatever, I'm just start to feel a connection here. Connections are my lifeblood. One of my favorite cartoons ever exists simply because I saw a connection between ego, emotion and typography. In 2005 I was the first person to see a connection between $5K English suits and the blogosphere [which back then, I can tell you, A LOT of people thought that was a bit of a stretch]. In 2006 I saw a similar connection between a small South African wine brand and the geek community of Silicon Valley.
This year I'm feeling the same sort of connection between all of the work I've been doing in the last year. It's hard to explain- it's visceral; it's like you can just smell it, even if it remains so far invisible. It's just there. A feeling, not quite yet a fact. And a wee voice keeps telling me that The Cloud is at the center of it somehow. Wait and see.
[This post appeared originally here and is republished in full by kind permission of the author, who retains copyright.]
About Hugh MacLeodHugh MacLeod is a cartoonist and professional blogger, known for his ideas about how "Web 2.0" affects advertising and marketing. His basic mantra about blog marketing is "Blogs are a good way to make things happen indirectly," a point lost on many corporate types. After a decade of working as an advertising copywriter, Hugh started blogging at gapingvoid.com in 2001. He first started off just publishing his cartoons, but as time wore on he started blogging about his other main interest i.e. marketing. Since 2006 he has been constantly engaged as a public speaker, giving talks in both Europe and the US, talking about Web 2.0 and the ramifications it has on business.
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Jeremy Geelan commented on 5 Aug 2008
Have you looked at this little venture - screenwriting meets cloud computing! Here's the link: http://www.scripped.com.
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Ping Identity is the leader in Internet Identity Security, delivering Internet Single Sign-On (SSO), Identity-Enabled Web Services and Internet User Account Management. More than 400 enterprises, SaaS vendors and online service providers worldwide rely on Ping Identity to streamline application access, reduce administrative costs, generate additional revenue and improve security. Feb. 8, 2010 06:45 PM EST Reads: 932 |
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Cloud Expo Breaking News By Liz McMillan  SYS-CON Events announced today that Ping Identity, the leader in Internet Identity Security, will exhibit at SYS-CON's 5th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on April 19-21, 2010, at the Jacob Javits Convent... Feb. 8, 2010 06:45 PM EST Reads: 932 | By Krisandra Russo  Cloud Computing is receiving a lot of attention, and a number of companies see it as a key to increased agility and efficiency. The technology, however, is still at an early stage and many fundamental challenges need to ... Feb. 8, 2010 06:30 PM EST Reads: 1,577 | By Pat Romanski  What are some of the most important cloud platform strategies any IT executive should consider? The sooner you include these concepts into your cloud roadmap, the better. In his session at the 5th International Cloud Exp... Feb. 8, 2010 05:45 PM EST Reads: 806 | By Yeshim Deniz  SYS-CON Events today announced that Neustar, Inc. (NYSE: NSR), a leading provider of managed services that enable communication across networks, applications and enterprises, is confirmed as an exhibitor at SYS-CON's 5th... Feb. 8, 2010 04:00 PM EST Reads: 1,153 Replies: 1 | By Pat Romanski  SYS-CON Events announced today that R1Soft, a leading developer of Continuous Data Protection (CDP) Software, will exhibit at SYS-CON's 5th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on April 19-21, 2010, at the Jac... Feb. 8, 2010 03:30 PM EST Reads: 741 |
Conference News & Updates  By Carmen Gonzalez 5th International Cloud Expo will take place April 19-21, 2010, at the Jacob Javits Convention Center in New York City. The three-day event will offer a rich array of sessions led by exceptional speakers about the business and technical value of cloud computing with more than 80 sponsors and exhibitors on the 70,000 sq. ft. show floor and over 5,000 estimated delegates from well over 48 different countries. Reads: 7,577  By Fuat Kircaali This year's West Coast conference attracted 2,250 delegate, more than double a year ago. As far as the expo floor goes, out of 50 sponsors and exhibitors, 46 companies confirmed during the conference that they will participate in the 2010 Cloud Computing Expo at the same or higher level. Reads: 5,994  By Carmen Gonzalez Cloud Expo is the world's leading Cloud-focused event and is held five times a year, in New York, Silicon Valley, Europe, Japan, and Brazil. 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The World's Most Influential Blogs By Avi Rosenthal  I published a link to my post "Choosing a SOA Consultant" in Ulitzer.
Ulitzer is a "new media" site.
The site provides a portal like page for every author. You can look at my page as an example.
Each article's page includes related articles. For example "Choosing a SOA Consultant" page incl... Feb. 8, 2010 07:00 PM EST Reads: 808 | By Dana Gardner  The cloud crashes make major new stories. We've got two things occurring right now. We've got a massive move into the cloud. That was my first prediction. We have the cloud providers trying to scale up, and perhaps they’ve never scaled up to the levels that they are going to be expected to scale to ... Feb. 8, 2010 11:00 AM EST Reads: 365 | By Dustin Amrhein  Frankly I’ve grown weary of the debates over the security of cloud computing. It’s not that I don’t appreciate that there are technical hurdles in front of us, but we have reached a point that a security vulnerability in a single offering, whether that offering is in the public or private cloud, res... Feb. 8, 2010 10:30 AM EST Reads: 409 | By David Weinberger  Charlie Leadbeater has a terrific post on the threats posed by the fact that The Cloud (as in “cloud computing”) too often actually is a recentralizing of the Net by profit-seeking companies.
The easiest example cited by Charlie is Google Books, which provides a tremendous service but at the soc... Feb. 8, 2010 08:00 AM EST Reads: 410 |
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