Rackspace, NASA Open Up Cloud Computing With OpenStack Project

Rackspace on Monday launched an open source cloud computing project the company hopes will make proprietary cloud computing a thing of the past.

The San Antonio-based hosting and cloud king teamed up with NASA to launch a bold open-source cloud computing initiative dubbed OpenStack. Through OpenStack, an open source cloud operating system, Rackspace hopes to inch closer to cloud technology standards and cloud interoperability, said Mark Collier, Rackspace vice president of business and corporate development. With OpenStack, Rackspace hopes to facilitate "broad adoption of a standard cloud platform."

With OpenStack, Rackspace is donating the cloud computing code that powers its Cloud Files and Cloud Servers public cloud offerings. The project will also tie in the technology that powers NASA's Nebula Cloud Platform. The pair will collaborate on developing and leveraging the efforts of open-source software developers.

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Google Apps Gets Education Certification Partner Program

Google has launched a program to certify resellers on Google Apps Education Edition. In return, Google is offering their partners better marketing support, more training opportunities, and business visibility in the Google Apps marketplace, the search giant says. It’s all part of Google’s continued push into the education space. Here’s the skinny.

Part of the announcement involves new customer deployments. Two examples: The states of Colorado and Iowa are now offering Google Apps to their public schools, a key set of wins in the education space after Microsoft BPOS claimed the University of Arizona. And for schools wanting a self-service approach to learning the ropes, Google is promoting the Google Apps Education Training Center, which they say is designed to walk the novice through their offering.

But for Google Apps resellers, the main event, so to speak, is the Google Apps for Education Certified Partner program. To qualify as a certified partner, you need to employ at least three people who have achieved “Qualified Trainer” status by passing the online examinations and demonstrating a history of providing training and support to large clients.

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Microsoft shares (officially) its future BPOS plans

At this week’s Worldwide Partner Conference, Microsoft officials shared with attendees their “official” roadmap for updating the company’s hosted Business Productivity Online (BPOS) suite. Company officials shared which features and capabilities that the company rolled out already as part of the on-premises server complements of the BPOS products will be added to the Microsoft-hosted versions of those offerings.

I’ve run a few slides on this blog over the past couple of months, dating back to November 2009, that included much of this same information. But it wasn’t until this week that Microsoft officials acknowledged these details.

I’ve heard that customers of the Dedicated (i.e., non-shared/non-multitenant) versions of Microsoft’s BPOS and its point-product parts — Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Communications Online and Live Meeting — already have some of the 2010 feature updates. But those using the “Standard” (multitenant) versions do not.

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http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsoft-shares-officially-its-future-bpos-plans/6857

Microsoft Looks To The Cloud

Microsoft’s Vision For Partners In The Cloud

Fred Studer, general manager of Microsoft's Information Worker group, says partners that go all-in with Microsoft in the cloud won't regret the decision.

Cloud Computing Services Market To Near $150 Billion In 2014

Global cloud computing services revenue is expected to hit $148.8 billion come 2014, representing a monster market opportunity for solution providers, according to recent Gartner research.

That massive boom in the cloud computing services market comes as cloud services are expected to hit $68.3 billion this year, a dramatic 16.6 percent rise compared to 2009 cloud services revenue, which was $58.6 billion.

"We are seeing an acceleration of adoption of cloud computing and cloud services among enterprises and an explosion of supply-side activity as technology providers maneuver to exploit the growing commercial opportunity," Ben Pring, research vice president at Gartner, said in a statement. "The scale of application deployments is growing; multi-thousand-seat deals are increasingly common. IT managers are thinking strategically about cloud service deployments; more-progressive enterprises are thinking through what their IT operations will look like in a world of increasing cloud service leverage. This was highly unusual a year ago."

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Users Will Dump PC, Head For Cloud: Pew Research Center

Cloud computing will eclipse the traditional desktop by the end of this decade as a majority of people will use the Internet for applications and accessing information, according to a new study by the Pew Research Center.

By 2010, the majority of computer users will be using Internet-based applications and devices such as smartphones instead of general purpose PCs as their primary means of accessing IT, according to 71 percent of the respondents to a survey by the Washington, D.C.-based non-profit research center.

Only 27 percent of respondents believed the opposite, that the majority of users will still access applications using general purpose PC, according to the report.

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