Deleverage This, My Friend
I know a bank that have already separeted their prop and flow trades. Another indicator that regulations in USA is really loose.
Microsoft is partnering with rival Intuit with the shared goal of getting more developers to write cloud-hosted applications targeted at small businesses.
The pair announced they’re releasing a beta of a new software development kit (SDK) for Azure, and that Intuit will be recommending to its partners and customers Microsoft’s Windows Azure cloud operating system as a “preferred platform” for hosted small-business applications. The SDK is a set of tools, code samples and services aimed at enabling Azure-hosted apps to federate them with Intuit’s Partner Platform (IPP) and sell them in Intuit’s App Center marketplace. The final Version 1 of the SDK is slated for February 2010.
Remember that Intuit bought Mint.com.
http://about.intuit.com/about_intuit/press_room/press_release/articles/2009/I...
This week, Gladinet Cloud Desktop reached version 1.4.2 (build 232). Windows Azure Blob Storage has been officially added to the list of supported Cloud Storage Providers (S3, AT&T, Google …). This means you can map a network drive to the Windows Azure Blob Storage and start using it from Windows Explorer (See this link for detailed How-To information).
As always, every time we add a new storage provider integration, we would compare it to the existing ones, such as Amazon S3. Since Gladinet Cloud Desktop can map both as virtual folders in a network drive, a quick drag-and-drop upload/download experiment should be easy.
Sometime ago, I did a simple comparison between EMC Atmos onLine and Amazon S3. I also did a simple comparison between AT&T Synaptic Storage and Amazon S3. The performance data are pretty much in line with one and other, with the bottleneck on the server end (in the Cloud). I would expect Azure Storage to be in line as well. Let’s begin …
The test is simple, I have a 27M zip file that I first drag and drop into a folder under Amazon S3 and watch the upload progress in the Gladinet Task Manager, timing it from begin to end. Then I repeat the same thing with Windows Azure Blob Storage.
Amazon S3: 176 seconds
Windows Azure Blob Storage: 175 seconds
(Upload Speed: 154 KBytes/sec)
It is very interesting to see the results are so close when knowing the two cloud storage providers are completely different. The servers hosting the data are completely different and the IP routes are different. There must be some kind of server side tool to throttle the speed of a single connection to a certain number. Maybe an expert of the cloud server end can explain this.
A speed test shows my upload speed to a random server in US is 3.97Mbit/s ( ~ 490KBytes/sec). So this means my upload pipe is much wider than 154 KBytes/sec, meaning my computer and the internet connection are not bottlenecks.
I am happy to see the result because the more cloud service providers are available, such as Amazon S3, Windows Azure Storage and the AT&T Synaptic Storage, the more choices the consumers like myself has. Go Cloud!
Grab a copy of the Gladinet Cloud Desktop here and try it yourself.
Roger Magoulas on Big Data
by Joshua-Michéle Ross | @jmichele | comments: 1
Subscribe to this video podcast via iTunes.From Google to Walmart, managing vast information flows is becoming central to how you run an effective business. Beyond the technical developments that are allowing for new possibilities in managing Big Data there are also new roles emerging within companies large and small; data scientists, visualization specialists etc.
In this second of two videos Roger discusses some exemplars in the emerging field of Big Data. From the Radar community: are there any unlikely companies (read: outside of tech) that are doing a great job in managing Big Data or using analytics to drive their business? We would love to hear about them.
Part one of the video is available here.
Roger will be moderating a panel this Tuesday, January 19 at Stanford titled, “Data Exhaust Alchemy - Turning the Web's Waste into Solid Gold”
Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard have teamed up on a three-year $250 million partnership to bring about the “next generation computing platform” called HP private cloud. They will be working towards a combined cost effective IT solution encompassing varying levels of hardware, software, and professional services for business applications. The idea seems to be to bundle up a complete virtualization and systems management offering that would work in mega data centers and cloud providing centers. The joint stack would leverage existing products from both companies while plans are also underway for new ones.
Microsoft which has already jumped head long into cloud with its public cloud services Azure, is now looking to take on private cloud with HP by its side. Private cloud is a proprietary network that implements cloud strategies behind a firewall and therefore protects data from outside networks. By adding Azure into the mix, the duo say they will be giving clients the flexibility to indulge in varying levels of private and public clouds.
While public clouds that make scalable applications available over the Internet have been getting a lot of hype lately, private clouds are yet to take off in a big way. That is all going to change pretty soon according to Gartner. The market Research firm predicts that enterprises will spend more money on private cloud computing than public cloud providers through 2012. Security concerns and fear of losing control of business critical data still stand in the way of unbridled cloud adoption for some corporate firms in spite of perceived cost savings. With Private cloud, companies will be able to embrace everything advantageous about cloud like server virtualization for example while still having a handle on security and making effective use of their existing datacenter resources .
In reality though, it is not an absolute choice in one direction or the other. It would be more practical for companies to seek hybrid models by going public for secondary applications and investing in private cloud for applications requiring tighter security, legal obligations or specific fine tuning which go beyond the “cookie cutter” type services usually associated with EC2 like public cloud. Gartner also predicts the sprouting of targeted niche cloud services for different industries requiring specific computing environments. In this kind of a scenario, an integrated public-private setup like what we are talking about with this HP-Microsoft deal can fill a very relevant void in the immediate market. A hybrid multi dimensional solution with an integrated cohesive platform that lets us switch back and forth between private and outside networks not only in the product development phase but with respect to service models sounds ideal. It remains to be seen how well it all pans out though. Technical details from the implementation point of view have not been revealed yet by both companies.
