Links for January 26th

A little something extra…

Will there be a public cloud from Oracle? That was the question IDG’s Chris Kanaracus asked me IM today. As I wore out my keyboard thinking out load to him, the only answer I could get to was, “that’s a good question.”

Selling into the (currently being built-up) desire for private clouds makes perfect sense for any company. If private cloud means the Fortune Spendsalots are each going to implement their own clouds, you can see the dollars rushing around there. As I often note, that cynical take on private clouds makes me overly-leery of the concept.

But do companies like Oracle, IBM, Microsoft, etc. want to be in the lower-levels of cloud computing where the prices are in pennies? From their actions, it’d seem like the answer is now: it’s better to be the the upper levels of cloud computing, Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) where you can instead charge many dollars per hour of usage instead of spare change.

That is, if you’re going to be in the cloud business, you’ll want to dominate market-share and take advantage of existing investments (like Amazon and Rackspace) or have some value added software that you actually sell on-top of penny infrastructure. You could, of course, gun for both.

One of my fellow Enterprise Irregulars, Bob Warfield, pointed out that there’s also the point of control: perhaps if you give the lower levels over to the penny infrastructure players, you’re giving over more control than you think. Indeed, that desire to control metal-to-glass has driven much strategy (for better or worse) in the IT vendor world.

The up-shot is that I still don’t know if we’ll see a public cloud from Oracle, or if it’s be good or bad for them. Maybe we’ll get a hint – or more! – tomorrow. PaaS and SaaS, sure: that seems to make sense for the elder vendors. But we’ll have to see for IaaS. Someone’s gotta do it though, or the whole cloud thing is just blue skying.

The Links

• goodiware.com :: products :: GoodReader
  Matt Ray says this is a good iPhone PDF reader. Supposed dropbox integration makes it look rad.
• What we'll pay for on the Web
• The Government's Use of Fourth-Parties to Launder Data about 'The People' by Joshua Simmons
  The real ethical/icky question is why this is legal for anyone, government or not to do. "Your information is for sale, and the government is buying it at alarming rates. The CIA, FBI, Justice Department, Defense Department, and other government agencies are at this very moment turning to a group of companies to provide them information that these companies can gather without the restrictions that bind government intelligence agencies. The information is gathered from sources that few would believe the government could gain unfettered access to, but which, under current Fourth Amendment doctrine and statutory protections, are completely accessible."
• Why I Think the Times Charging for Online Access is a Bad Idea, and How I Think They Could and Should Make Money
  This is what we mean when we talk about "analytics": "What brands are people asking about, that end up at the Times? Are they trending up or down? How about relative to their competitors? What are the demographics (determined by profiles) – and related shifts – of the Times audience? What is the sentiment of the articles they’re reading, and what can we extrapolate about the zeitgeist locally, regionally and nationally from that? What percentage of the audience comes from the Fortune 500? When are they most actively reading? Where, geographically, are they reading from? What kind of device are they using to read?"
• Linux Gains Ground, Windows Stumbles
• Twitter / Alex Chriss: . @monkchips @cote luvin' …
  "@monkchips @cote luvin' Redmonk! Your developer program expertise is unmatched. Here's to a great 2010 for us both!" Thanks!
• Turning a new page…
  "Craig Cmehil transitions to the Standards Management and Strategy team, reporting to Claus von Riegen. While Craig will continue to cover TechEd programs such as Demo Jam and Hacker Night, he will put a strong focus on community initiatives such as open source and collaborative business process modeling in order to better utilize and address community momentum in support of SAP’s evolving product strategy."
• Deploying E-Business Suite on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Oracle E-Business Suite Technology)
  "Using Amazon EC2 for hosting E-Business Suite instances may be suitable for non-production instances such as demonstration instances, test environments, and development environments."
• Microsoft re-org hints at Windows and Mobile merge
• IBM launches Ubuntu-based VDI solution
• Adobe processor price switch riles developers
• Austin startup Virtual Bridges raises $4 million, plans to double its staff
• 'Microsoft-free' virtual desktop start-up gets $4M funding
• IBM mainframe woes continue with big Q4 drop
• Microsoft and Intuit forge small-business Web apps partnership
• Apache hones Java RIA effort
• HP unveils extensive security services portfolio
  "'It's everything from consulting to products to do it in-house to managed services and outsourcing,' says Chris Whitener, chief strategist for HP Secure Advantage. He added that third-party products included in the portfolio, combined with HP's key management and logging systems, are pre-tested to assure compatibility and integration."
• IBM Lotus reveals Vulcan strategy for social collaboration tools
• Monday’s Musings: The Hidden Value In SaaS Deployments
  "Gains In SaaS Adoption Driven By Speed And Cost Savings…"

Disclosure: see the RedMonk client list for clients mentioned.