Informatica Cloud Overview: Data Integration as a Service

Here’s an introduction to Informatica Cloud from Ron Lunasin, Director of Product Management.

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Cloud in a Box – Thanks SNL

Following the tweet stream from Oracle OpenWorld today as Marc Benioff pushes the “no cloud in a box” message and warns of false clouds, I couldn’t seem to get this song out of my head. Thank’s for the laugh SNL! Now who’s going to create the Iron Man Oracle parody for Dreamforce?

Phil Wainewright on Multitenancy

Recently I wrote a post called, “If it’s not multitenant, it’s not really SaaS.” Well, today Phil Wainewright has once again jumped into the fray (not surprisingly after a Salesforce event in London). His post is called “Cloud computing, so much more than multi-tenancy.” His main point:

“Cloud computing is far more than just multi-tenancy. The technology is core and it’s essential, but it’s not the whole story.”

Fair enough. The post is a bit of a soapbox rant against SaaS/Cloud marketing and the need to sell value not features, but he does goes on to outline some of the types of questions to ask your cloud application and platform vendors when it comes to multitenancy.

It’s definitely worth reading…and commenting on.

Cloud Futures: Marc Benioff CEO of Salesforce.com at Google Atmosphere

To get a sense of what’s in store at Dreamforce 2009, here’s Marc Benioff presenting at Google’s Atmosphere. (BTW, how many times do you think he’s presented the Safe Harbor slide?)

“Grab the Cloud brass ring and run with it!”
“It’s a marriage, it’s not a one night stand!”

 

Cloud Purchasing Hit List

I checked the CloudWorld Conference today in San Francisco. (It’s actually three events rolled into one:  Cloud + Open Source + Next Generation Data Centers.)  A couple of take-aways from a fantastic panel moderated by Jeff Kaplan from ThinkStrategies:

1. We need to get beyond the hype. “For some vendors, no matter what the question is the answer is cloud computing.”
2. The hybrid model is real. “Enterprise data centers aren’t going away.”

Because there is so much confusion (and hype) surrounding the topic of  software, platform, and infrastructure as a service (SaaS, PaaS, IaaS), I found the session from the head of engineering and operations at Genius.com to be particularly useful. Here is her Cloud Purchasing Hit List:

What to look for:

1. Ease of Use
2. No/Limited IT Involvement
3. Track Record of Quality
4. Self-Service Provisioning
5. Interoperability
6. Single Instance, Mulltitenant Architecture (“You aren’t a true cloud vendor if you’re just a hosted enterprise application.”)

What to watch out for:

1. Complex/Costly Set-Up and Customization
2. Extended Time to Value
3. Security (check out this excellent ZDNet post on cloud security)
4. Availability
5. Scalability, Performance
6. Single Tenant Architecture (“Very difficult for vendors to manage; costs get passed on to the customer.”)

There was also a great deal of emphasis put on the importance of vendor viability when considering a SaaS / Cloud vendor in this economy. Even so, the point that was most heavily emphasized was what Salesforce.com refers to as their “multitenant kernel.”  The benefits of multitenancy have been proven over the years for both software vendors and customers (self-provisioning, costs, upgrades, frequent releases, etc.), but many ISVs continue to try to market and sell around the fact they they’re delivering a single tenant solution – or in some cases an on-premise applicance!

The bottom line of the session: do your due diligence and be sure that you’re investing in real SaaS/PaaS/IaaS…dare I say “on-demand” solutions. The conference continues on Thursday with some pretty meaty topics. More details here.