I’m starting to see some interesting products that help people build and manage a private cloud.  Very cool and very needed if IT is going to keep pace with business demand for new applications without losing control of existing assets, or compromising on compliance.

But, when people are looking at solutions for managing a private cloud their sights need to be set a little further than just quick workload provisioning and offering management.

It’s the right place to start but it’s not the full story.  If I’m an application architect and I want to start to build up my new app in the cloud I want my cloud manager to have some understanding of my app, right?  How it gets installed, how it gets configured maybe even who gets access to it.  So I’d like to propose three different ways that application architects will get their application deployed into a private cloud.

1.  Manually install the software – Go provision a workload into the cloud, log in – copy the rmp or exe and install it.  Simple, low effort and a total pain in the ass if you have to do it lots of times!

2. Use a virtual appliance - Simply grab your app from an appliance store deploy it and do a little configuration. Done.  This works well if your application is in an appliance format.  You have two choices if it’s not: go and build an appliance using an appliance building tool or create a VM, install your apps, put it in a template and call it an appliance.  This model works well if you are working with infrastructure applications.  It only makes sense to have your favorite app server or database or LAMP stack in a template. (But also think about how your going to configure that at deployment time)

3. Auto install the application at run time – Maybe it does not make sense to create a whole appliance for an application that you are going only run in one place.  There might also be a collection of applications that different architects do not want to have running in their deployed workloads.  So this is where having a good software deployment and configuration management solution integrated into your cloud offering can make a difference.  It gives you the flexibility to not have to have one template or appliance for each variation of application you will need to deploy; but it also allows you automatically have the right software installed in a repeatable manner.

So when your looking at building a private cloud, and I know you all are, think about how software deployment fits into the solution.  You don’t need it out of the gate, but as your cloud begins to grow you certainly will.

The TM Forum has so far done little to raise its profile outside of its tight-knit community of major networked service and technology vendors, but its creation of the ECLC, and the appointment of such as senior figure from the user community to lead it, is evidence that it plans to take a leading role in creating a structured market for cloud services.

The ECLC’s aim is to create standard service and interface definitions that will encourage the growth of a market in which private and public cloud services can seamlessly interact with each other.

“The best markets are always based on establishing good understanding between suppliers and consumers, where service providers properly understand what there customers needs are, and how they want to consume them,” said Kelley.

By working with the members of the TM Forum as part of the ECLC, “Deutsche Bank [can] participate in removing the risks associated with cloud services through industry standards,” he said

Ultimately, Kelley expects the ECLC initiative to help produce “an efficient global computing market similar to the energy market that we have today.” That vision may still be a little way in the future, but it is clear that banking technologist such as Kelley hope that the future will be a cloudy one.

O2 is widely seen as the UK’s most successful mobile data operator, having pioneered innovative all-you-can-eat deals for data services and bandwidth. These deals, and its expensive acquisition of exclusive early rights to market Apple’s iPhone in the UK, have been rewarded with a leading market share of mobile data users. Now though, O2 has clearly decided that market share is no longer a priority, and has decided to raise user revenues by encouraging high-end customers to adopt higher quality metered services.

Other wireless operators will be monitoring customer responses to O2′s move closely. With mobile applications such as satnav consuming ever more data capacity, all wireless operators are under pressure to maximize the return from their expensive and finite radio spectrum. Most would like to follow O2’s lead and phase out all-you-can-eat deals, but may hesitate to do so if O2’s decision drives customers away.

A storage industry breakthrough was unveiled today after four storage vendors came together to collaborate on a common mission: to promote active archives and simplify online access to all archived data.

I’m proud to join executives from QStar, Compellent, FileTek and my own organization, Spectra Logic, in announcing the formation of the Active Archive Alliance.

Fundamental, fast moving changes in data storage and access are occurring in the archive market. As organizations increasingly store more data in archives, the challenge of retrieving that data when needed has intensified.  That’s where active archive solutions come in.  Active archive solutions resolve this predicament by turning offline archive and backups into visible, accessible extensions of online storage systems. Active archives also offload archive appropriate data from primary storage, while keeping it online and accessible.

So what can you expect to see from the Active Archive Alliance and its founding members?

• Active Archive best practices and guidelines for end user education
• Additional alliance partners added including: vendors, VARs and end users
• Contributing analysts and alliance partner blog posts
• Alliance activity on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn
• White papers, webinars, videos and educational materials will populate ActiveArchive.com

The Active Archive Alliance is a vendor neutral organization open to leading providers of technologies including file systems, active archive applications, cloud storage, and high-density tape and disk storage.

To contact the Active Archive Alliance go to www.activearchive.com/contact

Although studies suggest that familiar threats such as viruses and the teenage hacker are less potent than they used to be, in most other respects the IT security challenge is still expanding faster than many chief information officers (CISOs), or their allies in the information security industry, will publicly care to admit.

The fact is that as IT penetrates ever more deeply into the fabric of our personal and business lives, not only is the range of systems and data vulnerable to attack expanding, but the scale of the potential consequences of such attacks is increasing more quickly still.

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Where did it all go wrong? Some the reasons for today’s IT security crisis are already widely recognised. Too many organisations still pay too little regard to creating or enforcing information security policies, or to the staff education and training needed to make them work. Too many others fail to stay abreast of changing threat patterns and the shifting technological responses need to combat them. And, even at organisations that do prioritise and fully fund IT security, there are still always times when business fluidity is deemed more vital than systems security.

However, another reason for the continuing crisis in information security is much less widely recognised: the widening incompatibility between traditional, centralised IT security models, and the growing appetite for practically borderless interaction between the data and systems of organisations, their partners and their customers.

The Jericho Forum, an association of CISOs from global companies, was the first organisation to recognise this issue, and has done much to raise awareness of the need for “perimeter-less” information security among fellow information security professionals and security vendors. More recently, organisations such as PwC, have followed Jericho Forum’s lead, and called for the wider use of data-centric technologies like encryption, and federated ID management.

But, groups like Jericho Forum and PwC are facing an uphill battle. However much IT users and suppliers may agree with the theory of perimeter-less, data-centric security, in practice both communities are unlikely to greet the need for change with any great enthusiasm. Vendors, after all, have years of investment in perimeter-base security tools to protect, and users, particularly in these challenging economic times, will be reluctant to spend scarce resources on a new security infrastructure when there are plenty of other more productive projects they could invest in.

Projects, for instance, such as the creation of more seamless and flexible IT service infrastructure based on virtualisation and cloud computing technologies.

In fact, although virtualisation and cloud computing are still commonly regarded as trends that are only likely to add to the challenges faced information security professionals, the opposite may yet to prove to be the case.

Unlike today’s digital business environment, which obliges companies to share data and systems across a mish-mash of public and private services that rarely support common security technologies, or conform to a coherent set of information security policies, the next generation of cloud-based services may be very different.

Following on from the awareness raising efforts of groups such as the Jericho Forum, new bodies such as the Cloud Security Alliance have appeared that are working to create common codes of conduct and technology standards for creating secure cloud services. The CSA is still in its infancy, and like all industry associations and standards bodies, its capacity for creating useful working standards is always likely to lag behind the requirements of the industry that it is trying to serve.

Nevertheless, the fact the nascent cloud services industry has already produced an organisation dedicated to creating common security standards is a cause for celebration, because it means that the next generation of cloud-based IT systems may actually have security designed in from the outset. In the ongoing information security arms race, this may be a development that finally makes a real difference.

It is no surprise then that when IP EXPO 2010 opens its doors at Earls Court in London on October 20^th, 48% of the record number of UK IT professionals that have pre-registered for the event say that learning more about cloud is their primary reason for attending. They will not be disappointed.

Between them, Capellas and Lategan will provide IP EXPO delegates with some vital insights into the future of enterprise IT, and in particular into probably the most compelling issue facing today’s IT professionals: should they build or should they buy their next generation of leading IT services? More than that, the presence of two such prominent industry figures at IP EXPO confirms the events growing stature as the UK’s premier enterprise IT strategy event.

Of course, there are other many reasons why IP EXPO 2010 is set to be the most important UK enterprise IT strategy exhibition and conference of the year. Not least of these is the events ability and willingness to stay abreast of the strategic issues of the day. Four years ago, for instance, IP EXPO 2006 focused on converged networks and the surging adoption of IP telephony. IP EXPO 2007 was one of the first UK industry events to highlight the emerging power of virtualisation and, last year IP EXPO 2009 provided delegates with similarly a early taste of what to expect from the gathering storm that is now called cloud computing.

Altogether, IP EXPO’s schedule of more than 210 seminars in 11 theatres promises to deliver this year’s most comprehensive programme of quality-controlled and educational IT events. It is an unmissable event for the UK’s Chief Technology Officers (CTOs), IT architects, and all that work with them.

Scalent’s V/OE (virtual operating environment) is a set of standards-based interfaces for automating and remotely managing the provisioning and reconfiguring of data centre resources from a single web-based console. It will now become a core component of AIM, Dell’s advanced infrastructure manager data centre management suite.

The acquisition, likely to be finalised in Dell’s second quarter, is one of series of moves that Dell has made to catch-up with the unified data centre strategies of Cisco, Hewlett-Packard and IBM. In February, Dell acquired Kace Networks, a developer of systems management appliance technology, and it is also currently working with Seagate and Microsoft to produce a cloud storage appliance.

All of these are steps in the right direction for Dell, and cast it in a more ‘politically correct’ open systems light when measured against the proprietary strategies of Cisco, but it still has a lot to do to correct the perception that is lagging competitors in the race to be the next generation, unified infrastructure of choice.

According to Frost & Sullivan, VoIP access and SIP trunking service revenues turned in what the researcher described as “down-turn defying” performance last year, with revenues up 22% at $717.3 million, and customer numbers up 401%.

The sudden surge in IP-based trunking is driven by businesses need to both reduce costs by minimising driving complexity out of their currently multi-protocol voice networks, and by intensifying the centralisation of all application management. For the first time, it seems, corporate users are getting serious about treating voice services as just another kind of digital applications sitting on their increasingly virtualised data center infrastructure.

The trend sounds like bad news for the last remaining corporate “voice networking shops”, and for any vendors still relying on TDM maintenance revenues. However, neither is it entirely good news for IP-based softswitch vendors, as Frost & Sullivan predict a period of intense competition in the PBX replacement market which is likely to generate as many losers as winners.

Frost and Sullivan offered no information on whether the same trends are yet visible in Europe, but with major corporations adopting an increasingly global approach to application management it seems likely that the PBX’s days in may be numbered on this side of the Atlantic as well.

Customers and partners got their first official look at Atmos Online at last year’s EMC World, when it was seen by some observers as the spearhead of an EMC strategy to make cloud storage relevant to high-end corporate users. This strategy, which would appear to compete with the companies ambition to become, in alliance with Cisco, the private cloud infrastructure provider of choice, is now on the back burner – at least for now.

Some competitors, notably Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and possibly even Amazon, may see EMC’s decision to push forward with a full blooded cloud service offering as an invitation to accelerate alternative strategies of their own. However, EMC is abandoning the market altogether.

A number of companies, including AT&T, which has based its Synaptics cloud-storage service on Atmos technology, will continue to develop services based on EMC’s cloud APIs. This will at least keep EMC’s cloud technology alive in the marketing, and growing technology platform footprint, if not actually service market share. If, as may yet happen, corporate users suddenly develop a taste for public over private cloud storage, EMC has the option to revive its Atmos plans.