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Summary: You cant fault Oracle for consistency in its cloud messaging, going back five years and more. But does CEO Larry Ellison still have his heart in it?

With this weeks announcement of Oracle Cloud, the vendor has finally reached the halfway stage in the journey that former company president Charles Phillips outlined to me at Oracle OpenWorld five years ago. Oracle was helping its customers take stair-steps to on-demand, Phillips told me then. Five years later, Oracle has finally managed to climb halfway up the ladder. Lets hope the rest of the ascent will be faster.

Unfortunately, today Oracle remains stuck at the middle rung with its stubborn insistence on dedicating individual database instances and sometimes entire application stacks to individual customers. These dilutions of the multi-tenant ideal serve the database vendors self-interest, because it gets to sell more licenses, but in cloud terms its half-baked. Interestingly, the arguments in favor of this approach have not advanced since Phillips conversation with me back in 2007. He even used the same word, co-mingling, that Ellison used this week to imply that full-stack multi-tenancy is somehow less safe than confining customers to separate databases or servers.

In one of my frequent displays of inadvertent clairvoyance, this is a line of argument I already dealt with last week, but since its been trotted out again, Ill reiterate what I said then:

Do you worry about your data co-mingling with others when the packets pass through the networks routers? You know that the headers on the packets make sure that your data wont accidentally go to someone elses endpoint. Cloud vendors use exactly the same logical separation to keep your data from co-mingling with anyone elses. The fact that it may be stored on the same disk or go through the same processor chip is as irrelevant as worrying about sending your physical mail through the same postal system as your competitors.

Recommending single tenancy as a way of keeping your data safe from co-mingling in a cloud environment is akin to recommending abstinence as a means of avoiding teenage pregnancies. Its somewhat old-fashioned given the better targeted methods of protection available today; but worse than that its doomed to failure because it ignores the realities of how the world works. In a cloud environment (even Oracle Cloud), co-mingling is the norm and your data is going to run through the same cables, routers and management servers as everyone elses even if it resides on separate databases. Your employees logins are going to be co-mingling with those of partners, customers and suppliers that they collaborate with as part of their day-to-day projects. Youre going to need a more sophisticated form of security than merely cloistering your data in a dedicated instance.

But at least Oracle has been consistent in its messaging, not merely five years back but all the way back to 1999, when it launched its Business OnLine application hosting operation (later renamed Oracle OnDemand). My report of the New York launch is no longer online, but according to my archive copy, Ellison then predicted, The software business is on its way to becoming a service business If you dont understand this [as a software vendor], youre going to be in a lot of trouble.

Given that background and my conversation with Phillips five years ago, Im more inclined than some of my analyst colleagues to give credence to Ellisons claim this week that Oracle Cloud is the result of a seven-year development project. Back in 1999, Jonathan Lee, the founding CEO of Corio, one of the earliest ASPs or application service providers, was warning that vendors like Oracle would have to fundamentally rearchitect their products to survive the shift online. Project Fusion had many objectives, of course, and presenting it as primarily focused on a cloud future is a substantial reslanting of history. But one of its benefits was the implementation of a service-oriented application platform that is capable of operating in a cloud environment far more efficiently that what went before. Indeed, looking at the architecture slide of Oracle Cloud presented this week, the main difference I can see from slides of the Business OnLine and Oracle OnDemand architectures ten years back is that the applications have become services a prerequisite for the transformation Lee had been calling for.

The problem for Oracle Cloud is that the majority of the vendors customers still want to host their applications on-premise and therefore the Fusion applications can never be tuned to operate efficiently as massively scalable multi-tenant instances. As pureply cloud providers gain the upper hand, that will put the product set at a massive competitive disadvantage. But thats for the future. For now, in view of the far higher license revenues that Oracle can achieve so long as its customers are confined to single-tenant instances, there is no way Oracles president and CFO Safra Catz would allow Ellison to talk up multi-tenancy even if he wanted to. So instead hell continue to trot out the co-mingling claptrap and all the other received wisdoms that enterprise IT buyers continue to lap up because neither do they want the disruption that a full embrace of cloud would cause their own empires.

As a majority owner of NetSuite and a significant minor investor in Salesforce.com, Ellison has hedged his personal bets on cloud in any case. If Oracle can remain plump on the ingrained buying habits of dyed-in-the-wool CIOs by continuing to sell them on-premise implementations and single-tenancy cloud, hes merely discharging his fiduciary duty as Oracles CEO in encouraging them to do so. Why should he care? Perhaps in his heart, though, hes irritated at the shortcomings of Oracles middle-rung cloud and thats why his claims of Oracle superiority are starting to lose their edge.

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Does Larry believe in Oracle's middle-rung cloud?

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Cloud computing has emerged as a key focus area for all the information technology companies across the globe, and Hewlett-Packard Company (HPQ) is no exception. The company has recently announced a new cloud computing solution in a bid to revamp its business.

The new cloud-based service enables clients to deploy private, public and managed clouds in a traditional information technology atmosphere, helps address the business needs of several existing and prospective clients and is compatible with all the latest technologies used by various companies.

The new offering from the technology major is expected to help the airline industry to develop an integrated platform for airline reservations and travel. Moreover, the Cloud bursting capabilities help external clients to access the blocks of external cloud capacity through the HP Cloud System, Amazon Web Services and Savvis. It is also expected to help in arranging new tools to manage technology across various cloud environments. The new offering includes a printing system that enables driverless printing from mobile devices.

The demand for a reliable cloud solution has increased in recent times with enterprises thinking seriously about the cloud option. The development and use of public clouds is not an easy process. This is where HP steps in as a service provider and offers its public cloud that small telecom providers can resell.

The recent acquisition of Autonomy was a step in this direction as its private cloud is expected to be fully utilized by HP. The Autonomy private cloud surpassed more than 50 petabytes of Web content, video, email and multimedia data and is spread across 6,500 servers at 14 global data centers. The Autonomy cloud also facilitates automatic data recognition architecture.

Although Hewlett Packard continues to march ahead with its cloud strategy, the ensuing courtroom battle with long-time partner Oracle Corp. (ORCL) is likely to weigh on investor sentiment. Though lawsuits encircling patent infringements and violation of contract terms are common in the tech sector, we think that the legal battle between these two giants will be a major issue.

With arguments going both for and against the company, the result of the trial is highly uncertain. In the meantime, its server business will continue to take a beating.

Hewlett-Packards second quarter 2012 earnings per share exceeded the Zacks Consensus Estimate, but both earnings and revenues declined on a year-over-year basis. Results were negatively impacted by exchange rate fluctuations, greater mix of low-margin products and competitive pricing in its hardware business. Its recently-announced restructuring initiative is encouraging however and should improve margins going forward.

However, HP continues to see challenges in its printer business. Also, margins in the services business are likely to remain weak this year and the macroeconomic trends as well as the competitive pressure remain headwinds.

Currently, HP has a Zacks Rank #3, implying a short-term Hold rating.

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New Cloud Offering from HP

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Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUdd3swqwQY

07-06-2012 12:23 Ian Ferguson, Director of Server Systems and Ecosystem at ARM, speaks at Computex Taipei about cloud computing and how the ARM Ecosystem adds value to building the cloud infrastructure.

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Cloud Computing

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SAN MATEO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

ScaleXtreme, a leading provider of cloud and server management products, announced full support for Windows Azure Virtual Machines to launch, monitor, manage and patch Windows Server and Linux machines in Windows Azure. Windows Azure customers can sign up for free or paid accounts and instantly start managing their Windows Azure-based servers with ScaleXtreme.

ScaleXtreme worked with Microsoft early on to ensure immediate interoperability for our customers, said ScaleXtreme CEO Nand Mulchandani. Microsofts entry into the IaaS business is going to have a big impact on the technology industry and will be an enormous windfall for public cloud users. Were pleased to help customers begin benefiting immediately from Microsofts new Windows Azure virtual machine functionality.

ScaleXtreme provides a single view, unifying the management of an organizations server environment spanning private and public cloud machines, different public cloud providers running on any virtualization platform, and even physical servers. It works with Windows Server and a variety of Linux-based operating systems and helps users rapidly scale server deployments using templates. ScaleXtreme recently announced a number of additional features, including the industrys only cloud cost-management tools, which enable IT professionals to gain visibility into cloud provider costs, establish role-based budgets and prevent the launch of unauthorized cloud machines.

We are excited to have ScaleXtreme work with Windows Azure, says Mark Miller, director, Windows Azure Marketing, at Microsoft. ScaleXtremes products can give customers flexibility to manage both on-premise Windows Server infrastructure and public cloud Windows Azure systems through a single interface.

ScaleXtremes products also come equipped with cloud-based patch management automation, which provides customers the ability to schedule, deploy and automate patches for multiple machines, as well as the on-the-go iPhone application that gives system administrators a unified view of their cloud instances through a single, simple interface.

Sign up for ScaleXtreme now: http://www.scalextreme.com/partners/windows-azure

About ScaleXtreme

ScaleXtreme provides powerful, cloud-based server automation products for the modern distributed data center. Built from the ground up to be simple, scalable and social, IT gets a single unified automation platform to build and control physical, virtual and public cloud servers. For more information, visit http://www.scalextreme.com.

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ScaleXtreme Announces Support for Linux/Windows Server on Windows Azure Public Cloud IaaS

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NEW YORK, June 7, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --Dimension Data, the global specialist IT solutions and services provider, today announced it will offer Microsoft SharePoint 2010, Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 and Microsoft Lync 2010 cloud services hosted in its managed private cloud environment. Part of its Cloud Services portfolio, and based upon Dimension Data's Managed Cloud Platform (MCP), enterprises will realize the benefits of Microsoft Corp.'s business productivity capabilities while reducing the cost and risk of managing the underlying infrastructure and applications. Dimension Data's approach provides a customizable and secure managed private cloud solution that maintains data sovereignty and control. Initially available in South Africa in calendar Q3 2012, Dimension Data intends to offer the service in an additional 10 countries and expand availability based on client demand.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20120402/NE80686LOGO )

"Dimension Data has more than 10 years of experience deploying on-premise Exchange, SharePoint and Lync solutions for clients globally, and has migrated more than one million end users to public cloud business productivity solutions," said Steve Nola, CEO of Dimension Data's Cloud Business Unit. "Our strong expertise in tailoring Microsoft solutions to our clients' needs provides the assurance that their operations are in good hands."

The economics and efficiency benefits of moving messaging, collaboration and unified communication technologies to the cloud are appealing to many enterprises; however, existing public cloud environments can fail to satisfy key business requirements. Dimension Data's new offering is part of its Cloud Services strategy announced earlier in the year. Based upon Microsoft productivity solutions, it provides a private, single-tenant cloud environment hosted in Dimension Data's data centers throughout the world, or on the client's premises. The managed offering provides enterprises with the level of customization, flexibility and control needed to address unique business requirements.

"By offering our clients managed productivity solutions in a private cloud environment, Dimension Data is helping remove the barriers that have previously inhibited some organizations from placing key business services in the cloud," said Peter Menadue, general manager of Microsoft solutions at Dimension Data. "By basing this offering on our Managed Cloud Platform, Dimension Data is enabling enterprises around the globe to take a key step in their journey to the cloud with the security, compliance and customization assurances they require."

"Enterprises and government organizations will benefit from Dimension Data-hosted productivity solutions," said Mark Hill, vice president, enterprise partner group, Microsoft Corp. "As one of our most innovative alliances, Dimension Data has the depth of experience to offer customers flexible cloud solutions based on Microsoft technologies that best meet their organizational needs."

Maximizing existing investments in technology is a key consideration for enterprises as they transition to the cloud. Organizations with Microsoft's Enterprise Agreements can take advantage of License Mobility through the Software Assurance option to repurpose their SharePoint 2010, Exchange Server 2010 and Lync 2010 licenses. Dimension Data will take advantage of this licensing option so that their clients can move to the cloud on their own schedule, without waiting for existing agreements to expire or purchasing duplicate licenses.

Dimension Data's cloud services platform, built on Windows Server and Microsoft System Center, is fully managed and allows for organizations to maintain the control they need to perform routine tasks through a self-service portal for client administration. Long-standing vendor relationships and multi-vendor management capabilities position Dimension Data to support and manage complex systems integration obstacles that arise.

Dimension Data Managed Cloud Platform (MCP)

Dimension Data's Cloud Services are delivered on the company's Managed Cloud Platform (MCP), a fully-managed cloud delivery platform. Hosted within a Dimension Data or client data center, the MCP is comprised of cloud infrastructure (servers, storage, networking, virtualization and operating system software) and Dimension Data CloudControl, a cloud management system that provides operational control and automation of cloud resource provisioning, orchestration, administration, and billing. The MCP can be accessed via a web-based user interface or REST-based application interface (API), enabling integration of the platform with third-party cloud or enterprise system management software. Private MCPs can be deployed in client data centers across more than 100 countries. Dimension Data's public cloud services can be accessed globally via Dimension Data Public MCPs in San Jose, CA and Ashburn, VA, United States; Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Sydney, Australia and Johannesburg, South Africa. For more information on the services, please visit: http://www.dimensiondata.com/cloud.

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Dimension Data To Offer Private Cloud Productivity Solutions

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