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Moving to the virtual layer (and taking advantage of the cloud)

With infrastructure services like Amazon EC2, Rackspace, and VMware making it easy to take advantage of the flexibility, portability, and reduced costs of cloud computing, it seems obvious to jump on the cloud bandwagon for new IT projects.

But, developers are generally left on their own to deal with the pain of deploying their apps to the cloud: configuring application servers, libraries, disk partitions, networking, clustering, service connections, and virtual private networks. After they get their app installed they also need to install management agents that run on top of the application layer.

If you really want to take advantage of the cloud and optimize return on investment, you'll want the on-boarding process to be easy and fast and you won't install that agent. Agent-based solutions are inherently inflexible. Deploying agent-based solutions in a cloud-based environment, which is, by definition, highly flexible, is often like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. In agent-based solutions, hard-coded agents are installed on every machine to monitor the application. If a change to the application configuration occurs--such as the IT department adds a node or upgrades a component--the agents must be updated as well.

Each agent and management server must be configured separately with management and monitoring solutions generally not portable. When every change to an environment requires installation of multiple agents on each server and configuration of multiple management servers, it becomes a tall order to move an application from a traditional infrastructure to the cloud, or from one cloud infrastructure to another: private to public, public to hybrid, or hybrid to private.

How do you get around this so you can actually capitalize on the benefits of cloud computing? Go virtual. Move application management, including easy on-boarding, from above the application stack into the underlying virtual layer, along with the rest of the cloud infrastructure.

I was recently briefed by webappVM CEO Isaac Roth on how the company is pioneering this new approach. He said the virtual path allows you to actually realize all of the flexibility, portability, and reduced costs that come with the promise of cloud computing. … Read more

Intel hires antitrust expert as new top lawyer

At the same time that Intel settled Advanced Micro Devices' antitrust lawsuit for $1.25 billion, the chipmaker settled another legal matter as well by hiring A. Douglas Melamed as its new top lawyer.

Melamed, who most recently worked as a partner at the law firm of WilmerHale, is expected to assume his new role this month, said a source familiar with the situation. Melamed has been based in Washington, D.C.

He has extensive antitrust experience, which could come in handy given Intel's remaining legal issues with the European Commission, the New York attorney general, and the Federal … Read more

What Intel just bought for $1.25 billion: Less risk

Even for a company as powerful as Intel, with $13 billion in cash on the books, $1.25 billion is a lot of money. So why drop that huge quantity of money in the lap of its biggest rival, Advanced Micro Devices?

The payment is, of course, to settle the antitrust suit AMD brought against Intel five years ago. AMD's stock surged 22 percent Thursday after the chipmakers announced the agreement, but Intel's share price dropped 1 percent, indicating which company the investors thought got the better deal.

AMD does indeed come away with some serious perks--not just … Read more

EU: Microsoft to test browser 'ballot screen'

European Union regulators said Wednesday that Microsoft can go ahead and start using its latest proposed "ballot screen," which will let new users of Windows choose which browser--or browsers--they wish to use.

The decision to let Microsoft "market test" the latest version would seem to mark the wrapping up of the latest antitrust skirmish with Brussels.

More than a decade after Microsoft first started including a browser with Windows, regulators said earlier this year that they had reached the preliminary view that such an inclusion violated European antitrust law.

In response, Microsoft initially said it would … Read more

Is cloud computing the Hotel California of tech?

In the cloud, no one cares about your software license. That is one of the most liberating--and frustrating--things about cloud computing.

Depending on your perspective, it either opens up computing or closes it off. Customers don't seem to care one way or another, happily shoveling data into cloud services like Google, Facebook, and others without (yet) wondering what will happen when they want to leave.

Cloud computing may just be the Hotel California of technology.

I say this because even for companies, like Google, that articulate open-data policies, the cloud is still largely a one-way road into … Read more

Can start-ups keep up with Amazon in the cloud?

A huge amount of digital ink has been spilled trying to define "the cloud" and "cloud computing" and now Amazon Web Services has once again upped the ante with its latest Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) services.

The VPC, outlined here by fellow CNET blogger James Urquhart, provides a way for companies to create a logically separated set of Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances and a secure VPN connection to their own networks. Effectively, it takes a chunk of Amazon's services and makes it private. Still on the Internet and still on shared hardware, but private. … Read more

Lightning zaps Amazon cloud

Amazon.com is blaming the latest outage to hit its Elastic Compute Cloud service on a lightning strike at one of its data centers.

In a statement on the Amazon Web Services "health dashboard," the online retailer and cloud-computing provider addressed concerns from some U.S. customers whose EC2 service had been disrupted around 6:20 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time on Wednesday.

"A lightning storm caused damage to a single Power Distribution Unit (PDU) in a single Availability Zone. While most instances were unaffected, a set of racks does not currently have power, so the instances … Read more

EU software liability law could divide open source

The world of open-source development could be divided, if the European Commission succeeds in passing a law extending consumer protection rules to software, according to experts.

The Commission proposes that software companies be held liable in the European Union for the security and efficacy of their products.

David Mitchell, senior vice president of IT Research at Ovum, thinks that this may lead to a situation boosting current open-source vendors' business models but making it more difficult for independent developers to thrive.

The proposal is likely to make vendors force customers into support and maintenance agreements upon each purchase, in order … Read more

AMD lawyer cites critical 'incidents' in Intel rivalry

The Intel-Advanced Micro Devices rivalry spans decades. But in a phone interview last week, the top lawyer at AMD discussed critical moments when the competition with Intel got particularly nasty.

Tom McCoy, AMD's senior vice president of legal affairs, cited two critical junctures in the Intel-AMD rivalry when Intel turned up the heat and, he claims, violated the law.

McCoy said the first major assault from Intel came in 1999, when AMD launched the Athlon architecture. "When we go back and we look at all the anecdotal incidents of Intel violating the law, they always center on when … Read more

AMD says Intel-only deal struck at Apple in 2005

An Advanced Micro Devices executive claims that Intel and Apple cut a deal in 2005 that made Intel an exclusive supplier of processors to Apple, preventing AMD from gaining Apple business.

The claim, made in a phone interview with Tom McCoy, AMD's senior vice president of legal affairs, earlier this week, holds that Intel has had a longstanding deal to be Apple's sole supplier of microprocessors. To date, Apple has not used an AMD central processing unit (CPU) in any of its products. Currently, only Intel CPUs populate Apple's laptop, desktop, and server lineups.

This assertion by AMD comes in the wake of the EU decision last week to fine Intel $1.45 billion for violating antitrust legislation. Last week's EU decision centered on whether Intel used illegal tactics to deny processor business to AMD at PC makers.

McCoy said that a deal was struck when Apple moved from the PowerPC (IBM-Motorola) chip architecture to the x86 (Intel-AMD) architecture. The transition was announced by Steve Jobs at the Worldwide Developers Conference in 2005.

"They made a deal when they were porting over from PowerPC to x86 as to how much Intel was willing to pay for that port. My guess is that Intel asked for and won exclusivity in return for the help that they gave Apple to port," McCoy said.

McCoy continued: "That deal will not be exclusive forever and when that exclusivity is over, I'm sure they (Apple) will choose on the merits. We'll have a chance to compete for Apple's business when Apple is ready," he said. Intel denies this allegation.

Though McCoy did not make any direct charge of illegal activity regarding such a deal, the assertion is not that far removed from charges made in the July 2005 AMD complaint against Intel. AMD, in that filing, cited Dell, among other examples of exclusive Intel deals with PC makers. "In its history, Dell has not purchased a single AMD x86 microprocessor despite acknowledging Intel shortcomings and customer clamor for AMD solutions, principally in the server sector...Dell has been and remains Intel-exclusive. According to industry reports, Intel has bought Dell's exclusivity with outright payments and favorable discriminatory pricing and service." (Note: Dell, in 2005, offered no AMD-based products, though it does today.)

Whether the deal is exclusive doesn't in itself constitute a legal argument, according to Joshua D. Wright of the George Mason University School of Law, who has written about the EU decision in a blog, "Truth on the Market." "Under Section 2 of the Sherman Act, a plaintiff must show that the exclusive dealing arrangement harmed competition in the form of higher prices, lower output, or reduced innovation," Wright said, responding to an e-mail query. … Read more