Hey Microsoft, Get Out of the Cloud

The personal computer revolution began as an attempt to move away from centralized control, allowing people to have a system that was powerful, yet individualized. Big companies who hogged computing were seen as evil. Soon everything became self-contained and desktop-centric. There was desktop publishing, desktop marketing, desktop mapping. Now everything is supposed to move to that mainframe in the sky—the cloud.


But the cloud stinks. Its applications have always been much slower than their desktop counterparts. Try to get to the end cell of a large cloud-based shreadsheet. You'll long for the desktop version. The whole process is exacerbated by the speed of the Internet. The Internet is also unreliable. A couple of weeks ago, I was down for two hours. A month ago, I lost my connection for 20-plus hours.

And where is Microsoft in all of this? The company seems to keep forgetting what business it's in. While Windows 7 and Office continue to be huge cash cows with no end in sight, the company is encouraging the idea of cloud computing by claiming that that is the direction it's headed in, as well. Huh?

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http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2358946,00.asp

OpSource announces OpSource Partner Ecosystem for managed hosting and cloud solutions

Enterprise cloud and managed hosting provider OpSource, Inc.has announced the OpSource Partner Ecosystem, a comprehensive new program designed to enable integrators, developers, ISVs, development platform companies and service providers to offer integrated solutions for their joint customers.  


Opsource's traditional business has been selling to enterprise customers, initially traditional software-as-a-service and ultimately to enterprise-class cloud applications in a highly virtualized environment.


"Much of our business was big direct contracts, but with the growth of the cloud business we found that about 35 percent of our customers who signed up weren't using it themselves, but were using it to implement solutions for other companies," said Treb Ryan, CEO of OpSource. "They were SIs, VARs, telecoms, cloud platform companies, who were using it to deploy and sell other solutions."

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http://www.echannelline.com/usa/story.cfm?item=25949

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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http://www.crn.com/software/225900080?cid=nl_vi

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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http://www.mspmentor.net/2010/06/29/google-apps-gets-education-certification-partner-program/comment-page-1/

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.