EnjoyTech

The Dealmaker Media has published a list of their favorite Cloud, SaaS, and Tech bloggers . Once again I am happy to report that I made the cut. I am also glad to see my fellow bloggers Krishnan and Zoli on this list who are the driving force behind Cloudave . I was on a similar list of top cloud, virtualization, and SaaS bloggers that they had published in the past. Under The Radar is one of the best conferences that I go to. This is the best place for disruptive start-ups to pitch an get noticed. They make a great attempt to connect entrepreneurs with investors and blogger like me. I have blogged about the disruptive early stage cloud computing start-ups as well as the disruptive start-ups in the categories of NoSQL and virtualization . Most of these start-ups have either had a good exit or have been doing well. The best example so far is Heroku's $212M exit . I met the Heroku founders at Under The Radar a couple of years back. I am looking forward to soaking up even more in...

This is my second post on my impressions from the Under The Radar conference . Check out the first post on NoSQL . Virtualization is not cloud computing. However virtualization has significant potential when it is used to achieve cloud-like characteristics such as elasticity, economies of scale, accessibility, simplicity to deploy etc. I have always believed that the next wave of cloud computing is going to be all about solving “special” problems on the cloud – I call it a vertical cloud. These vertical problems could be in any domain, technology stack, or industry. Raw computing has come long way. It is about the right time we do something more interesting with the raw cloud computing. Delphix is attempting to solve a specific problem - database virtualization. I met the CEO Kaycee Lai and the VP of sales Jedidiah Yueh at Under The Radar reception the night before. They have great background in understanding the cost and flexibility issues around de-duplication from their days at EMC...

A recent cloud computing report from McKinsey stirred quite a controversy. TechCrunch called the report partly cloudy . Google responded to the report with the great details on why cloud is relevant . I appreciate the efforts that McKinsey put into this report. However I believe that they took a very narrow approach in their scope and analysis. An interaction designer, Chris Horn , from MAYA Design sent me a paper, The Wrong Cloud , which argues that the cloud computing is essentially an old wine in a new bottle and the big companies are fueling the hype. "Today’s “cloud computing” claims to be the next big thing, but in fact it’s the end of the line. Those corporate dirigibles painted to look like clouds are tied to a mooring mast at the very top of the old centralized-computing mountain that we conquered long ago." I appreciate that there are people out there who question the validity and relevance of cloud computing. This puts an extra onus on the shoulders of the cloud ...

The organizers of the Under The Radar Conference has listed me as "best bloggers and journalists who’ve distilled this foggy space down to a well-defined, understandable sector" in the category of the top cloud, virtualization, and SaaS blogs . Some of the other names include Nick Carr, Geva Perry, and MR Rangaswami. I have also been invited to the conference. I am looking forward to the event and the energy that all the early stage start-ups bring in!

Recently Google published the Power Usage Efficiency (PUE) numbers of their data centers. PUE is defined as a ratio of the total power consumed by a data center to the power consumed by the IT equipments of the facility. Google's data centers' PUE ranges from 1.1 to 1.3 which is quite impressive. Though it is unclear why all the data centers have slightly different PUE. Are they designed differently or are they all not tuned to improve for the energy efficiency? In any case I am glad to see that Google is committed to the Green Grid initiative and is making the measurement data and method publicly available. This should encourage other organizations to improve the energy performance of their data centers. The energy efficiency of a data center can be classified into three main categories: 1. Efficiency of the facility: The PUE is designed to measure this kind of efficiency that is based on how a facility that hosts a data center is designed such as its physical location, la...