Platform-as-a-service is just not dead — Red Hat exec Krishnan Subramanian says it has evolved to a stronger state. Recently a brand new meme has started one of the cloud chatterati: the death of PaaS, or PaaS morphing into functionality for IaaS or PaaS. This discussion peaked when an analyst from 451 Research wrote a report titled “Is PaaS becoming only a feature of IaaS?” (subscription required). An example of ways others have picked up the theme appeared Jan. 14 in Network World. In today’s fast-evolving technology world, it’s natural for pundits to jot down premature obituaries, but it also includes important to peer deeper and understand the cause of their confusion. One explanation is that PaaS has gone beyond hype and reached a brand new level of maturity. Last year, many enterprises adopted PaaS for his or her production workloads, but 2013 was also the year when the demarcation between two flavors of PaaS became clear. Another reason is the method adopted by cloud... Read More »

The Web-to-TV media device have been updated as Google continues its push into the lounge. Google Barge: 10 Informative Images (click image for larger view) Google on Tuesday released an update to its Chromecast streaming media device that adds support for 10 new apps. The over-the-air update would be distributed automatically to Chromecast devices connected to a wireless network. It provides the facility to stream music, news, sports, and other content from mobile and web apps like BeyondPod, PostTV, Red Bull.TV, Revision 3, Songza, VEVO, and Viki to a Chromecast-connected television. The revised software also offers access to the Avia, Plex, and RealPlayer Cloud apps. Introduced in July, Chromecast seems to be quite popular, presumably as a result of its affordable $35 price. It sold out in retail stores shortly after its launch. That month, citing “overwhelming demand,” Google halted a promotional deal that provided three months of Netflix free with a Chromecast purchase. Presently, the internet-to-TV device is the end seller in Amazon.com’s electronics... Read More »

Nebula CEO Chris Kemp says IT must develop private clouds for the subsequent generation of applications. Otherwise, it risks irrelevancy. I write this post after spending per week on the OpenStack summit in Hong Kong. My company, Nebula, has not yet launched in Asia, so I took the chance to take part within the sessions and check with the developers, leaders, and users within the OpenStack community. It was the suitable chance to mirror on where we’re today, and the way forward for the project that I helped start just over three years ago. My conclusion? OpenStack has captured the hearts of developers, but not the minds of enterprise IT. As the CTO of NASA and CIO at Ames Research Center, I had the chance to deeply immerse myself in a corporation where thousands of old applications ran on tens of thousands of servers across thousands of networks in hundreds of datacenters. While NASA may need a bigger and more complex IT footprint than many... Read More »

Connected storage may mean the top to backup and recovery as enterprise systems follow the pattern consumers established with Box and DropBox. 8 Great Cloud Storage Services (Click image for larger view and for slideshow.) Everything is connecting. Cheap, portable computing combined with the sprawling reach of the web is breathing new life into even the foremost mundane artifacts. Examine Nest, which transformed the thermostat right into a home automation hub by linking sensors throughout the home to weather stations on the net. The file system is usually undergoing its most radical transformation in decades. Unencumbered by strict security policies or legacy systems, consumers are leading the transformation. Millions of individuals already rely upon products like Box and Dropbox to store, share, and synchronize data across a profusion of private devices. However the potential improvements in productivity are too meaningful for the enterprise to disregard. The transformation in personal file systems foretells an era when all storage in a datacenter becomes connected The file system,... Read More »