For the last 65 years, the Educational Testing Service (ETS) has been helping to perform large scale educational assessments like the SAT and GRE. ETS now does over 50 million assessments a year globally, all supported by a backend IT infrastructure.
It's an infrastructure that is now, in part, headed to the cloud in an effort to improve operational efficiency and scale.
"The whole foundation for us to scale what we do is based on complex algorithms and the ability to do that at massive scale in a fairly short period of time," Daniel Wakeman, VP and CIO, Educational Testing Service, told InternetNews.com. "Because of that, we need a lot of computing horsepower and also, the dichotomy is, we do it in bursts as our business is very cyclical."
The SAT college entrance examination, for example, occurs five times a year. When testing isn't occurring, all of ETS's computer infrastructure sits idle, as they currently don't have an easy way to re-purpose it. There is also a need for large amounts of compute power to enable research projects into different types of cognitive testing. That's why ETS began to consider the cloud as a way to lower their fixed costs in order to deal with the seasonality of their computing needs.
"Our situation today is that we have a big server farm of 900 servers running at 6 percent utilization," Wakeman said. "We have been virtualizing a bit and now we're looking at cloud."

Challenges

Moving to an on-demand cloud infrastructure is not a simple one-step process for ETS.
ETS has multiple challenges in moving to the cloud, including classifying all of their various applications and figuring out what can be moved and when. All that, in turn, needs to be balanced against release cycles and testing events.
Another key challenge involves managing both old and new environments, since the company can't move everything to the cloud. What ETS is aiming to do is to be able to encapsulate their workloads into images that can then be moved when and where needed.
"We also need to be able to understand how much the cloud deployment will cost," Wakeman said. "On one hand there is Amazon, where you pull out your credit card and setup a cloud. On the other hand, many of the other cloud service providers have their grand powerpoints and plans, but they couldn't tell us how they were going to charge us."
ETS has chosen to go with cloud and data center vendor CSC, as they gave them a variable pricing model. ETS had been using CSC for the past 10 years for outsourcing of its core data center infrastructure. As to why ETS didn't choose to simply use Amazon, Wakeman noted that there was a bit too much of a do-it-yourself approach with Amazon. Instead, ETS opted for a fully managed cloud that could work with their existing data center deployment.
"Unless you're going to write your applications from scratch to work over a WAN, they're not going to perform well," Wakeman said. "That's what we found out initially when we tried out a few applications on Amazon, and they had real issues of latency back to our datacenter, even though we have large pipes and so does Amazon."

Costs

CSC is using VCE vBlocks for cloud infrastructure. VCE is a joint venture of Cisco, EMC and VMware and vBlock is the core unit of hardware that delivers an integrated hardware and software approach for cloud.
What ETS now has is a hybrid cloud that leverages the traditional data center assets with CSC's on-premise vBlocks for on-demand cloud computing.
The way ETS pays for their cloud deployment is also a hybrid approach. They pay for a certain amount of reserve capacity, then there is also the ability to buy additional capacity on demand at set prices. Attached to those on-demand compute cycles are service level agreements around how fast those compute cycles can be brought online. The on-demand compute units also get cheaper if ETS is able to provide more advance notice to CSC.
From a total cost of ownership perspective, figuring out if the cloud makes sense is a multi-tiered equation. Not all of ETS's applications can move easily and many require an investment of skills and resources to re-write for the cloud. Wakeman noted that ETS is still not clear how much rework will need to be done and how much that will cost.
"For the things that we can move easily, there is a quick payback," Wakeman said. "There is some payback since the cost to run a server at six percent utilization versus a virtual server on demand, provides savings that are real and tangible."

Nowadays when it comes to IP squabbles, the IT industry can't help but be a little jaded -- even when tech titans take to the courtroom. However, the copyright case between Oracle and Google has cloud computing innovators fearing the fallout.
At issue are Oracle's copyrights surrounding Java application programming interfaces (APIs), 37 of which the company accuses Google of misappropriating for the Android operating system. On Monday, a jury in California concluded that Google violated Oracle's copyrights in a partial verdict that was anything but cut-and-dried.
The split-decision left one crucial question unanswered. Did Google's use of the Java APIs constitute fair use?

Free-Wheeling Cloud APIs

Barring uses that compromise the integrity of their platforms or run afoul of law enforcement, IT companies generally like to take a hands-off approach to their APIs in order to grow their platforms, spark market adoption, and build healthy, revenue-generating ecosystems around their technologies. In the cloud provider market, Amazon stands as a prime example.
Amazon's APIs are widely used by startups and established cloud services alike. They have helped foster innovation that, in part, is currently driving a massive amount of IT investments in cloud infrastructures and supporting software. That's why Amazon raised eyebrows in March when it officially sanctioned Eucalyptus's use of its AWS APIs for private and hybrid cloud deployments.
As viewed by industry watchers, the move is indicative of Amazon's strategy for bringing more enterprise customers into the AWS fold by eliminating legal and technical uncertainty. It's also an attempt to fend off competing -- and relatively unrestricted -- cloud technologies like the open source OpenStack platform.
Lingering in the air is the possibility that one day Amazon won't like how another firm is using its APIs and take legal action. It's a scenario that can have devastating effects on the IT industry, experts warn.

Will Clouds Go Dark?

In the Electronic Frontier Foundation's (EFF) reaction to the Oracle v. Google case, staff attorney Julie Samuels states that in the EFF's view, Google made fair use of the Java APIs. She also spells out the fundamental issue that exists at the intersection of copyrights and APIs.
She writes, "Here's the problem: Treating APIs as copyrightable would have a profound negative impact on interoperability, and, therefore, innovation. APIs are ubiquitous and fundamental to all kinds of program development. It is safe to say that all software developers use APIs to make their software work with other software."
The effects of enforcing copyrights on APIs can be devastating to the burgeoning cloud market, according to George Reese, Chief Technology Officer for enStratus Networks, a cloud management specialist. He told Wired Enterprise that copy-protected APIs "would put any company that has implemented the Amazon APIs at risk unless they have some kind of agreement with Amazon on those APIs."
At the very least, following Oracle's lead on APIs could erect costly barriers to entry for cloud companies.
In his examination of the verdict for Wired Enterprise, Robert McMillan wrote that the "case could give Amazon legal grounds to seek licensing deals from OpenStack users such as Hewlett-Packard and Rackspace." OpenStack mimics Amazon's APIs, as does Citrix's CloudStack and middleware from Jclouds and Fog.
Despite this case, Samuels says that the courts already have clear guidelines when it comes to copyrights and APIs.
"Setting aside the practical consequences, there’s a perfectly good legal reason not to treat APIs as copyrightable material: they are purely functional. The law is already clear that copyright cannot cover programming languages, which are merely mediums for creation (instead, copyright may potentially cover what one creatively writes in that language)."

HP reached a big milestone in its Converged Cloud initiative by kicking off a public beta for its HP Cloud Services suite.
The IT giant is entering the public cloud services market with an infrastructure based on OpenStack, an open source cloud platform developed by NASA and Rackspace. In just under two short years, the project has attracted an impressive army of supporters, many of which are making both financial and technological contributions.

OpenStack Momentum Builds

IBM and Red Hat are among the latest to enter the OpenStack fold as the platform evolves beyond a group of loosely-linked contributors to an organized open source foundation. It has captured industry mind share as an open source alternative to cloud software based on proprietary technologies like Amazon's AWS. In turn, a dynamic developer community has surfaced and the platform is currently fueling a growing OpenStack software and services market.
Indeed, HP emphasizes those factors as major selling points for its Cloud Services offerings. "Designed with OpenStack technology, the open-sourced-based architecture ensures no vendor lock-in, improves developer productivity, features a full stack of easy-to-use tools for faster time to code, provides access to a rich partner ecosystem, and is backed by personalized customer support," says HP in a company statement.
Staying true to the timetable set by last month's Converged Cloud announcement, HP Thursday flipped the switch on HP Cloud Compute, HP Cloud Object Storage and HP Cloud Content Delivery Network. The aim, according to the company, is to get businesses of all stripes -- from web app startups to enterprises -- up and running quickly on an infrastructure that scales to their needs.
"Whether you are an independent developer, ISV or the CIO of a major organization, the priority is to design your applications for today's cloud economy," said Zorawar Singh, senior vice president and general manager of HP Cloud Services, in a statement.
Costs are tallied using a pay-as-you-go model, as is typical with cloud services. For example, HP Cloud Object Storage costs $0.12 per GB per month up to 50 TB and drops to $0.10 per GB per month for the next 950 TB. HP is by slashing prices by 50 percent during the public beta period.

Early HP Cloud Partners

The HP Cloud Services public beta launches with the support of nearly 40 companies, a group that the company hopes will one day develop into a bustling HP Cloud Services Marketplace. The app store approach to cloud services and partner solutions calls for access and billing via a single, unified account.
For now, the HP Cloud Services partner ecosystem is made up of a mix of cloud providers, including management, security, storage and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) specialists. For instance, CloudSoft, RightScale and Smartscale Systems have joined HP on the cloud management front. Security options include Dome9 and SecludIT. ActiveState, CloudBees, and Gigaspaces are among the PaaS options.

The cloud makes it easy to build out pools of compute resources. But how do you scale out applications in the same way? That's the goal of VMware's latest vFabric 5.1 release.
The vFabric application development platform first debuted back in 2010 and has been evolving ever since. The vFabric 5.1 release now includes the vFabric Application Director, integration with in-memory database and traditional SQL database technology as well as full support for the open source Apache Tomcat application server.
"The vFabric Application Director is a tool that allows you to leverage the construct of a virtual machine to automate the deployment of application architecture," David McJannet, VMware's director of Cloud and Application Services, told InternetNews.com. "Application Director lets you create a blueprint so that every new web application you create for an environment for deployment can be replicated and automated."
The vFabric Application Director approach fits into VMware's overall Software Defined Data Center vision that CTO Steve Herrod articulated at Interop last week. It's a vision where software is the platform that defines how things work in a data center, instead of relying solely on hardware. While vFabric can automate application deployments, on its own it doesn't handle the infrastructure piece of the puzzle.
"Application Director is simply an exercise in creating common blueprints for application deployment," McJannet, said. "It presupposes that you already have a pool of infrastructure already setup, secured and available. Application Director is about leveraging infrastructure that is already in place."
So from a VMware portfolio perspective, an enterprise would use vCloud Director to first setup the pools of virtual server infrastructure. Application Director then sits on top of that to automate the application deployment piece.

Databases

A critical part of any modern application is the database layer, which is another area that VMware's vFabric 5.1 release is going after. The new vFabric release now includes support for the open source PostgreSQL database. VMware first began supporting PostgreSQL in August of 2011 and is now expanding the offering. The initial PostgreSQL support came with VMware's data connector for automating database lifecycles. Now VMware is including PostgreSQL as a standalone database inside of vFabric Suite 5.1.
VMware is also providing a new in-memory database as part of the vFabric 5.1 Suite. SQLfire is based on VMware's Gemfire distributed database technology. What SQLfire provides that Gemfire did not is a standard SQL interface, making it easier for developers to leverage with existing applications.
"This is a distributed in-memory database where you create a grid of nodes inside your data center or across data centers," McJannet explained. "So you can scale your applications horizontally by just adding more capacity at the data tier as an application comes under load."

What’s the best solution for most companies, a public cloud or a private cloud? In the view of Christian Verstraete, HP Chief Technologist for Cloud Strategy, the best answer for most firms is a combination of the two, a hybrid cloud.
In a wide-ranging interview conducted over Skype, Verstraete – who clearly enjoys talking about tech – spoke about many cloud-related topics (see video below).
Known as an expert on cloud security, he gave advice to firms concerned about the safety of their data in the cloud. He also put himself in the shoes of an IT manager shopping for a cloud computing solution, and provided some guidance for this process. Lastly – and most refreshingly for a vendor – he spoke about the importance of avoiding vendor lock-in. Keep your options open, he advised.

Members of the developer community, particularly coders that are working on new cloud services, are breathing a huge sigh of relief after a federal judge delivered a ruling in the Oracle v. Google court case.
"Innovation for the win," wrote Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) staff attorney Julie Samuels after Judge William Alsup ruled in Google's favor during the closely watched case over the company's use of Java APIs in its Android mobile operating system. Alsup, who revealed during the trial that he was an experienced programmer, invalidated Oracle's argument that Google violated its Java application programming interface (API) copyrights.
In his 41-page opinion, Judge Alsup determined:
"This order does not hold that Java API packages are free for all to use without license. It does not hold that the structure, sequence and organization of all computer programs may be stolen.  Rather, it holds on the specific facts of this case, the particular elements replicated by Google were free for all to use under the Copyright Act.  Therefore, Oracle’s claim based on Google’s copying of the 37 API packages, including their structure, sequence and organization is DISMISSED."
Addressing the companies' disagreement over Google's use of an identical command structure, Judge Alsup wrote, "Under the rules of Java, they must be identical to declare a method specifying the same functionality — even when the implementation is different." Therefore, he writes, "When there is only one way to express an idea or function, then everyone is free to do so and no one can monopolize that expression."
Alsup concluded that as a matter of law, copyright does not extend to APIs. "This command structure is a system or method of operation under Section 102(b) of the Copyright Act and, therefore, cannot be copyrighted.  Duplication of the command structure is necessary for interoperability," concludes Alsup.
Oracle is appealing the decision. For now, the ruling should give cloud companies peace of mind, if not outright delight.
Clouds Float Free
Ostensibly waged over smartphone technology, the Oracle v. Google legal battle had industry-wide reach. Siding with Oracle, experts claim, would have resulted in a profound -- many claim a negative -- impact on virtually the entire IT industry, and the growing cloud computing market in particular.
EFF's Julie Samuels responded to the ruling on the group's blog. "The court clearly understood that ruling otherwise would have impermissibly – and dangerously – allowed Oracle to tie up 'a utilitarian and functional set of symbols,' which provides the basis for so much of the innovation and collaboration we all rely on today," she wrote.
APIs, which essentially govern how software interoperates with other software, are the glue that holds cloud software services together. They are responsible for much of the "innovation and collaboration" that cloud services bring to the market today.
Free and largely unfettered use of cloud APIs has contributed to a vibrant cloud services ecosystems like Amazon's AWS platform and an explosion in infrastructure and software spending. Claiming copyright on APIs could have undermined that progress or at least threaten to make cloud computing a costly proposition for startups and entrepreneurs, assert experts like George Reese, Chief Technology Officer for cloud management specialist enStratus Networks.
In his ruling, Judge Alsup averted a cloud crisis. It helped that he was well versed in both coding practices and copyright law, according to Julie Samuels. "It's a pleasure to see a judge so fundamentally understand the technology at issue," writes Samuels.
This familiarity and insight undoubtedly helped him navigate the thorny issues surrounding the case and arrive at the appropriate, innovation-friendly conclusion, opines Samuels. She adds that "Oracle’s attempts to shoehorn its upatented APIs into copyright law were met with the proper rejection."

In 2009, Larry Ellison the CEO of Oracle, made fun of the word 'cloud' as being a mere hype term in computing. Last night at a webcast event in San Francisco, Ellison turned full circle, formally announcing the full general availability of the Oracle Cloud.
The Oracle Cloud is an effort that Ellison's company has been working on for at least seven years under the guise of its Fusion application suite. At Oracle's OpenWorld event in 2011, the company first took the wraps off the Oracle Cloud with a preview of the platform. Oracle's cloud includes versions of all its software products including database, CRM and collaboration tools.
Oracle is also taking specific aim at rival Salesforce.com with a Social Relationship Management offering that is different than traditional CRM (Customer Relationship Management). Ellison explained that the goal is to enable users of the platform to work with people before they are customers and to build relationships so that they will become customers.
Ellison onstage demonstrated the platform, which is fully integrated with social media management capabilities for Twitter and Facebook. Going a step further, the system can be used to analyze and understand what customers are saying in order to drive them to acquire more products.

Open Platform

During his presentation, Ellison stressed that the Oracle Cloud is all based on the same standards that enterprises are using today. Those standards include SQL, Java and HTML5, which enable a degree of openness and portability. Ellison blasted rival Salesforce.com last year for their lack of openness, calling them a 'roach motel' from which you can check in but never leave.
The emphasis on HTML5 is also particularly important. Ellison said that Human Capital Management (HCM) rival Workday has based their solution on Flash. The problem with Flash is that it doesn't run on Apple iOS devices.
Overall, Ellison isn't worried about competition in the HCM space when it comes to the cloud.
"I think we'll start winning more than Salesforce," Ellison said. "Oracle fusion HCM beats Workday and I have no slide [in his slide show] for wins over SAP, cause they've got nothing, there is no competition against SAP. We can't beat them if they don't show up."
The fact that all Oracle applications have been built for the cloud with the Fusion effort is another large plus, according to Ellison. Ellison noted that SAP today still doesn't have many of its core applications available in the cloud and likely won't until the year 2020.
"20/20 is a great news program, but it's a terrible year to get to the cloud," Ellison said.

Citrix is seeking to build faster, sturdier bridges between mobile wireless companies and cloud services. The company announced today that it is acquiring Santa Clara, Calif.-based Bytemobile for an undisclosed amount to make it happen.
Bytemobile is the maker of the Unison Platform and the T-Series Adaptive Traffic Management System, which are deployed in the core of mobile networks. They provide telecom operators with networking analysis and management capabilities, including video and web optimization, traffic management, content caching and packet inspection.
According to Citrix, Bytemobile's technology handles over 20 petabytes of data traffic across customer networks each day and affects more than 2 billion subscribers. The company's market reach and product portfolio opens new doors for Citrix as more mobile devices access the Internet and connect to the cloud.
Cisco's Visual Networking Index forecast for Global Mobile Data Traffic shows that mobile traffic will outpace all other types of Internet traffic during the next few years. Mobile traffic will grow to 130 exabytes a year by 2016, according to the networking giant's projections.
In February, Doug Webster, senior director of SP Marketing at Cisco, told InternetNews.com's Sean Michael Kerner, "We're projecting overall growth of mobile traffic for the forecast period of 2011 to 2016 to increase 18 fold." Driving that demand are a ever-faster and more powerful mobile devices, including tablets like the latest Apple iPad, which now ships with 4G networking support.
According to Webster, "Two years ago we didn't have tablets as a category and now tablets are the fastest growing devices of all the devices we track." He added, "Traffic from tablets will increase 62 fold during the forecast period."
Clearly, Citrix sees a big market opportunity in helping mobile network operators manage that explosive growth.
In a statement announcing the purchase, Klaus Oestermann, group vice president and general manager of cloud networking for Citrix, said, "The cloud and mobile revolutions are rapidly converging, and mobile operators are at the heart of this convergence. With the integration of Bytemobile technology, products and intellectual capital, Citrix will be uniquely positioned to be a leader in the global mobile data and video infrastructure market in the LTE era."
The deal follows a cloud networking partnership that the companies embarked on earlier this year. They collaborated on the Bytemobile T1100 Traffic Director, which leverages Citrix NetScaler technology to boost application delivery over mobile networks.
In joining forces, Citrix wants to help mobile network operators reduce costs and keep customers happy before widespread cloud computing really starts taking its toll on their networks.
Oestermann adds, "The benefits to network operators and their subscribers include faster, more efficient, more reliable, and more manageable networks; higher performance resulting in better service and a better user experience; and scalability to process growing volumes of data traffic at a much lower cost."
Citrix and Bytemobile expect the deal to close during the third quarter of 2012. Once that milestone is met, plans call for Bytemobile to become part of the Citrix Cloud Networking group.