Reuven Cohen

I'm happy to announce that the U.S. Federal Government earlier today launched the new Data.Gov website. The primary goal of Data.Gov is to improve access to Federal data and expand creative use of those data beyond the walls of government by encouraging innovative ideas (e.g., web applications). Data.gov strives to make government more transparent and is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government. The openness derived from Data.gov will strengthen the Nation's democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government. As a priority Open Government Initiative for President Obama's administration, Data.gov increases the ability of the public to easily find, download, and use datasets that are generated and held by the Federal Government. Data.gov provides descriptions of the Federal datasets (metadata), information about how to acce... (more)

Elastic Regionalized Performance Testing

SOASTA Session at Cloud Expo I'm happy to announce that we (Enomaly) have teamed up with the leader in cloud testing SOASTA to validate that cloud service providers can deliver the demanding SLAs increasingly required by their customers using Enomaly’s Elastic Computing Platform (ECP). ECP’s carrier-class architecture supports very large cloud platforms, spanning multiple datacenters in disparate geographies. SOASTA's CloudTest® methodology helps ensure that customers achieve high performance from their cloud infrastructure anywhere in the world. So what does this mean? In addit... (more)

White House Leading Cloud Computing Charge

Very interesting developments today from the U.S. federal government on cloud computing. Bob Marcus at the OMG has sent me an overview of a White House Cross-Cutting Programs Document released earlier. The document outlines the administration's 2010 budget requests. According to the document White House officials want agencies to launch pilot projects that identify common services and solutions and that focus on using cloud computing. I think the most important aspect of this announcement is that "cloud computing" is now being mandated from the highest levels of the U.S. governme... (more)

Virtualization Is Not Cloud Computing

Reuven Cohen's "Elastic Vapor" Blog Recently I've been frequently asked; "Is virtualization...cloud computing?" So this next bit may sound a little odd coming from someone who has built a cloud computing platform on the basis of server virtualization. Although virtualization is an ideal building block for a cloud environment, saying that "virtualization" is the only basis for cloud computing is wrong. Notably Google uses little to no virtualization technology and is seen as the poster child for the cloud computing movement. They recognized that cloud computing is about the move ... (more)

IBM Experiments with Group Authorship for Cloud Interoperability

I'm happy to announce that IBM has created a new Cloud Computing Working Group focused on creating interoperable cloud usage scenarios. IBM described this new effort as "an experiment in group authorship" In a recent email from Dirk Nicol at IBM, Nicol outlined the following to the Open Cloud Manifesto Supporters; We have a growing community forming around the principles of the manifesto and have over 200 supporters. Several of you have asked about next steps. Ideas that have been raised include a white paper on customer usage scenarios, coordination on event/trade show participati... (more)