CohesiveFT Elastic Server

Cloud Computing Webinar June 30th

2009-06-26T07:19:00.008-05:00

On Tuesday June 30th, Simone Brunozzi of Amazon Web Services, Michael Crandell and Edward Goldberg of RightScale, and our own Patrick Kerpan will be presenting the live webinar How to Create Secure Test and Dev Environments on the Cloud. Unlike other vapor-ware presentations that seem to be the norm in the extremely crowded cloud computing space. This webinar will cover products and practices that are being used by our customers now and are available today. Tired of hand waving and and promises of future release dates? It's time to get real. If you are interested we can show you enterprise-ready solutions that are in use today.

Invitation to Attend
Join Amazon Web Services, CohesiveFT and RightScale to go beyond talking about the cloud and learn step-by-step what you need to do to get on the cloud today. We'll show you how you can operate your entire application testing infrastructure in the cloud to save time and money – enabling you to test more extensively and quickly hand off projects from development to operations.

Attend this webinar to discover how you can:

Create an agile approach to rapid prototyping in the cloud
Create a test and development environment to easily test your applications – configured exactly as they will run live
Deploy your first project on the cloud – quickly
Build a secure VPN environment to and from the cloud

We'll start the webinar with an overview of the cloud and then will walk you through a demo to show how fast and easy it is to create a secure test and development environment on the cloud. We'll also share examples of companies that are successfully using the cloud today.

Be there.

**Update**
If you missed the live webinar, you can download a version from RightScale's webinar archive.

The Difference Between Like and Love

2009-06-18T12:17:00.000-05:00

We see it all the time on ElasticServer.com. Take a look at our QuickTip Videos to learn how the Elastic Server Factory can make you react to custom virtual or cloud servers the same way you would to your favorite sports team or celebutant.

Cheers.

VPN-Cubed IPsec to EC2 Announced

2009-06-03T11:00:00.007-05:00

WARNING CAPITAL LETTERS AHEAD!

CohesiveFT has always been about YOU our customer. All of our products and services have been built with one word in mind YOU. It's YOUR software stack, YOUR data center, YOUR cloud computing project, who are we to tell you how to run your business? Our most recent product release, VPN-Cubed IPsec to EC2 Edition, was brought to market with your interests in mind. We found that while many enterprises were extremely comfortable installing our VPN-Cubed Manager Virtual Appliances in their data centers, some were reluctant to install new software or didn't have the virtual infrastructure to support our VMs. To address this we have developed a new way for the enterprise to extend security and control to the cloud, VPN-Cubed IPsec to EC2 (Press Release).

VPN-Cubed IPsec to EC2 gives all the benefits of our VPN-Cubed cloud security and control but without the need for anything to be installed onsite, no software installations are needed. All that's required for setting up an IPsec connection with a VPN-Cubed overlay network inside of EC2 is just minimal firewall/router configuration. Start leveraging the cloud today with as little impact on YOUR home infrastructure as possible.

VPN-Cubed IPsec to EC2 Edition is a version of the VPN-Cubed overlay network packaged to work between a data center using IPsec “extranet” connectivity and Amazon EC2. Your IPsec device connects to an IPsec gateway at Amazon running as a virtual appliance which routes to your VPN-Cubed subnet in EC2. Once your controlled and encrypted communication tunnel between YOUR data centers and Amazon's EC2 is established, our VPN-Cubed overlay network provides 5 key capabilities Amazon does not currently allow you to control:

static addressing for your EC2 devices,
topology control by using VPN-Cubed managers as virtual switches, virtual bridges or virtual routers,
use of popular enterprise protocols like UDP Multicast for service discovery,
encrypted communications between all your devices in EC2,
and lastly encrypted communications to EC2 using your existing extranet infrastructure.

Does My IPsec Device Work with VPN-Cubed?
While VPN-Cubed IPsec to EC2 does require interaction with us (it's not that bad, we're pretty cool people), we do offer a self service test. If you want determine if your IPsec device can connect with our VPN-Cubed gateways in Amazon's EC2, you can launch our VPN-Cubed IPsec to EC2 Test Gateway zero cost AMI. Just visit the Paid AMI page and purchase (offered at no additional fees beyond EC2 costs for compute usage and data transfer fees + a $0.30 monthly charge to cover Amazon's Monthly Transaction Fee). Follow our Configuration Instructions

Sign up for an Amazon EC2 account on their registration page
Follow Amazon's getting started instructions to install the needed tools, in particular the Prerequisites, Setting up an Account and Setting up the Tools pages
Purchase the VPN-Cubed IPsec to EC2 Test Gateway AMI. You will be charged to your Amazon account.
Once you have the ec2 commands working use the EC2 API Tools command line to build your security groups. We provide detailed "cut/paste" instructions in the Configuration PDF. Unfortunately ElasticFox and AWS Console can't handle some of the port settings.
Launch the AMI using, ElasticFox, AWS Management Console or the EC2 Command Line Tools (CMD Line Paid AMI Launch How To ) referencing the AMI ID ami-efc22486.
Launch the AMI and use the VPN-Cubed IPsec to EC2 Test Gateway UI to test connectivity between the VPN-Cubed overlay network in EC2 and your IPsec device (Explained in the Configuration PDF above)

When you like what you see, contact us for the real thing!

IPsec-é it to me baby!

Now THIS is loosely coupled automation infrastructure!

2009-05-19T02:43:00.001-05:00

The Elastic Server team recently announced the ability to use the ES Factory to assemble and deploy images to Eucalyptus Clouds and has been working with some trial users on our test platform. Last week it was released to our production site.

2pm: Released to production

2:07pm Inbound "contact me" email from our website:

Name: "new euca guy"
Email: "new euca guy"@gmail.com
Subject: Eucalyptus Deployment Request
Message: I wanted to enable my cloud with your service.

2:30pm One of our team points this person to the page in ES where you enter your Eucalyptus Credentials to connect to a Eucalyptus cloud.

4pm Response from this new ES and Eucalyptus user
"Congrats!
My first build from ES to a private cloud worked and worked well."

Ok. So do that Opsware, Bladelogic, or Tivoli Provisioning Manager! This is one of the manifestations of virtualized infra and cloud computing that I think is still being missed; automation infrastructure is available to everyone, not just the Fortune 500.

Remember the McKinsey Cloud paper flurry of a few weeks ago? The trade press missed the point. Their headline was "McKinsey has concerns about the cloud". Actually if you look at the slides the real headline was "McKinsey doesn't believe that the largest global enterprises in the world can move their data center operations wholesale to Amazon EC2 (duh!), but other than that probably OK for everyone else!" (They actually said "clouds are very cost effective for SMEs".)

Well great - because that is most of us! Many large organizations work on a quite fragmented basis where the business units have autonomy and control. Really more a collective of SMEs than one enterprise. Let's grab them too.

Solutions like those provided by CohesiveFT and RightScale bring a level of automation infrastructure that your average IT department has never had the time or money to take advantage of. As we approach a 2.5 times an order of magnitude increase in the number of servers that we collectively assemble, deploy and manage (on our way to 250,000,000 VMs folks), loosely coupled automation infrastructure is going to absolutely change the game of enterprise IT.

Securing your Elastic Server

2009-05-14T10:59:00.006-05:00

A server by any other name is still a server. At the end of the day a virtual server is just a server, and an Elastic Server is no different: we just fill it with more goodness. And like a bare-metal server, it needs to be secured against the bad guys.

How much you'll want to secure your Elastic Server depends on your requirements, opinions and philosophies for security. Some people might be comfortable with running SSH openly, including allowing root access, other people will lock everything down so tightly you'd need direct access to break in.

The purpose of this document is to give some pointers to will help you tighten up the default Elastic Server. It's not definitive; there are many other steps you will need to take before you get the ultimate, secure server. If you want that level of security we suggest you talk with an independent security specialist, or the NSA. These are just some of the steps we've used in the past.

Users
Elastic Servers ship with 2 users - cftuser and cftdev. The cftuser password is sent to you when your build has completed. The other user, cftdev, is used by CohesiveFT internally when helping customers work out issues.

In order to secure your machine we suggest that you:
* Create a new user for login purposes
* Delete the cftdev user
* Delete the cftuser user

To accomplish these steps, log on to your Elastic Server as cftuser, then:

$ sudo adduser bill
Adding user `bill' ...
Adding new group `bill' (1005) ...
Adding new user `bill' (1005) with group `bill' ...
Creating home directory `/home/bill' ...
Copying files from `/etc/skel' ...
Enter new UNIX password:
...

$ sudo visudo (edit line that includes cftuser and cftdev and add your new user account in this example 'bill')

$ sudo deluser cftdev
Removing user `cftdev`
Warning: group `cftdev` has no more members.
Done.

Before going any further, check the you can log on as your new user - there should be no problem, but if you mistyped the password (twice!) then you could lock yourself out. If all is good then make whatever additions to sudo to allow the new user access and then, when satisfied, delete the cftuser user.

A further enhancement is to change the root user password. The root password is already a random set of characters, but if it helps with the feeling of security then please change the password.

Elastic Server Manager
The Elastic Server Manager is a tool which you can use to administer your Elastic Server. The majority of its functionality is supplied via a set of web services.

There are several things you can do to secure ESM, depending upon personal preferences.

* Change passwords
* Block ports (only allow 9090 internal)
* Disable everything
* etc.

Recently we made a change to Elastic Server Manager so that the default password for all 3 of the shipped users (admin, manager, observer) is the same as the cftuser password. This gives the creator of the VM more control than before and it's more secure out-of-the-box. However we still strongly recommend that you consider modifying passwords. To do this, log on to ESM and click on the "User Management" link on the left side of the screen. From there you can add, edit and delete users.

The web services are set, by default, to be accessible (they're secured in other ways, but that's for another blog post). However you may not want other people to access them. The change is very simple (although you'll need to be logged in via ssh in order to do it):
$ sudo vi /etc/shorewall/rules
Find the line which reads:
ACCEPT net $FW tcp 9090
Change it to read:
ACCEPT $FW $FW tcp 9090
And then restart shorewall:
$ sudo shorewall restart

(Note: the steps below are for Debian-based systems; other systems use similar package names.)
To disable and delete Elastic Server Manager and the web services, log on and type:
$ sudo apt-get remove --purge axis2c cft-rubymin2
This will stop the Elastic Server Manager and remove it and the web services. It will also remove all rubber-bands that are used by the Elastic Server Manager and you will be left with a server where you have to manage the components by hand.

Shorewall
A full discussion of Shorewall is beyond this post, but in brief Shorewall is the firewall that is installed by default on all Elastic Servers. We open up a few ports by default to allow limited access by the default components. You'll be able to see these ports in the /etc/shorewall/rules file. In particular:
* Ports 2999 and 4433 are used by the Elastic Server Manager -- 2999 is the
default port and 4433 is the SSL version.
* 9090 -- this is the port used by the web services
* 22 -- this is the port used by SSH.

Any other ports are added by components selected at the time of manufacture. For example, if you add the MySQL database to your VM then you'll see port 3306 in the rules file.

We recommend making changes to this file only if you know and understand what you're doing.

Conclusion
There are many things that can be done to tighten up any virtual machine's security. A lot of it depends on knowledge (what do I have on my machine? what's it going to be doing? is it needed?), some on personal preferences (never allow root to SSH into a machine, never have any extra components/packages/libraries on a server). We've pointed out a few areas above that may be of some concern to some of our users. Let us know if there are any other areas that you feel should be tightened up. Who knows, maybe some of the suggestions will make it into the core Elastic Server.

Eucalyptus Deployment Now Even Easier!

2009-05-13T15:40:00.002-05:00

With our latest update to the Elastic Server Factory comes the ability for our Personal Edition users to deploy Elastic Servers to their private Eucalyptus Cloud completely from the Factory UI. No more emailing us your creds, simply download your X.509 certificate from your Eucalyptus Cloud Interface and upload it to the Factory from our Cloud Manager. That's all there is to it, start seeding your Eucalyptus Cloud in minutes with the Elastic Server Factory.

1. Login to Elastic Server and navigate to the Cloud Manager Page under the Account tab
2. Click the 'Add Amazon / Eucalyptus Credentials' button
3. Download your Eucalyptus X.509 Certificate from within your Eucalyptus Cloud Interface
4. Upload the Certificate to the Elastic Server Factory
5. Name your credentials
6. Build a server and select your cloud as the deployment option from the server configuration screen

Done.

Seed YOUR Eucalyptus Cloud with Elastic Server

2009-04-23T11:00:00.000-05:00

With the recent release of Ubuntu 9.04 Server Edition comes the technology preview of the Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (UEC) powered by Eucalyptus. Ubuntu releases are always good, but we are just a little more excited about this one. UEC gives you the Eucalyptus cloud infrastructure right out of the box! Just think how easily you will be able to build and launch your own personal Eucalyptus cloud environment with Ubuntu 9.04 Server Edition. Call it what you will; private cloud, internal cloud, on-premise cloud, fog... regardless it's all right at your finger tips.

Got Eucalyptus, Now what?
Elastic Server will get your shiny new Eucalyptus cloud seeded in minutes. Don't worry about becoming an expert in Eucalyptus compatible machine images, leave that to us. Because Eucalyptus is interface-compatible with Amazon's EC2 (the gold standard for cloud computing, see API docs), deploying custom Elastic Servers to your Eucalyptus cloud is as easy as building and deploying to EC2. Just enter your credentials and your endpoint and we handle the rest.

Add YOUR Eucalyptus credentials to the Elastic Server factory and get building! This deployment option will be made available to all Personal and Professional Edition users shortly. In the mean time, Contact us and we'll get you up and running in minutes.

Ubuntu and Eucalyptus a good choice for a private cloud infrastructure?
Yes. Eucalyptus is an open-source software infrastructure built from open source components. Open-source means lots of innovation and Eucalyptus is well-guided by Rich Wolski and the guys at UCSB.

And now it has commercial support. Not only does the Ubuntu (see Canonical) release of this technology preview make it easy to create a Eucalyptus cloud, but it brings some much appreciated commercial support for the Eucalyptus open-source project. With commercial support and an open code base, Eucalyptus adoption is increasing. This will help keep the project going past the end of its current National Science Foundation funding. Commercial support, easy cloud creation, easy cloud guest image creation, and compatibility with Amazon's EC2 interface all point to a perfect start to your private or hybrid cloud solution.

Do you need help building, populating and managing your private Eucalyptus cloud? If so - give us a shout. Between CohesiveFT, Canonical, and the Eucalyptus team - we can give you the best cloudy day of your life.

Koala.

Fedora Elastic Servers Have Arrived

2009-04-17T10:55:00.000-05:00

Our goal is to continually expand our component libraries, cloud and virtual deployment targets, and available operating systems. Today Fedora Core 10 joins our other Linux distros in the Elastic Server factory. Choice in today's IT environment is often lost when dealing with certain vendors. It's YOUR software stack, who are we to tell you what works in your DC or cloud? All we are concerned with is making it easier for you to create reliable and secure virtual and cloud servers with speed and quality, you make all of the decisions.

Building a Fedora Elastic Server
To start, bundles (remember software components) available for inclusion in Fedora Elastic Servers will be limited. As we continue to expand our build options to other operating systems and other packaging management utilities we are refining our own meta package management system. We will continue to expand the community and CohesiveFT component libraries available to our stylish Fedora users. Update messaging will be displayed in the top banner section of the Elastic Server factory pages show below.

We are still syncing the assembly portals but in the mean time all foundation technology you need to move your Fedora project forward is available now as Fedora-ready bundles via the Bundle Explorer. Using the Bundle Explorer search tool you can filter your results by OS. Just select Fedora Core 10 from the drop down menu, click 'search,' and select your components from the resulting list.

For more information on how to build an Elastic Server using the Bundle Explorer, check out our Bundle Explorer QuickTip walkthrough video.

I Want More!
Remember in the early stages of Fedora availability, the list of available bundles is limited. We are still completing some work on the new wing of the factory, so as new bundles come online we will add them to the Bundle Explorer and to certain Elastic Server Sites. You can always use the "BYO" (Build Your Own) Upload Feature to add Fedora specific components to the Elastic Server factory. Use the RPM package type option and make sure to mark your package and bundle as Fedora specific. Check out our "BYO" Quick Tip video for a quick walkthrough.

Final Thoughts.
Cambridge was the Red Hat project that went on to form Fedora Core and it was the release name for Fedora Core 1. With Fedora 10, Red Hat went full-circle giving it the nostalgic codename Cambridge. While FC 10 is available on the Elastic Server factory today, we will be working to bring you the upcoming release of FC 11 codenamed Leonidas (see THIS IS FEDORA!).

Stetson.

Elastic Server Factory Update Hightlights 4/2/09

2009-04-03T09:20:00.002-05:00

We are constantly updating the Elastic Server Factory and while some of these releases fly under the radar we wanted to highlight some really cool new additions. These features and functions are aimed at making your Elastic Server life even easier. This post will be the first in a series where we will outline and exhibit new features that are not part of major releases.

On to the good stuff!
This release along with some minor housekeeping comes with three new features:

You can now make your own components (BYO) from Rubygems. Just upload a .gem file and we'll take care of the rest.

It's now easy to substitute a version of a bundle right from the server configuration page, making server rebuilds and remastering easy.

You can now mark packages as specific to particular OS'es, and search for them in the bundle explorer.

The above too small for you? Check out a larger pop-up version here.

Boomtown.

Now that the dust has settled...my definition of cloud computing

2009-03-20T13:38:00.003-05:00

The dust has certainly settled over the last couple weeks in the battles over how to define cloud computing. This might be resolution, exhaustion, or a truce. In the event there are embers in the underbrush I thought it would be fun to kick them up.

I have already posted about things like the definition of "on" vs. "off" and how those are not even necessarily universally agreed upon. So it is a bit mystifying why there has been such a push for a demonstrable, inarguable definition.

I am not pushing the following as "the definition", rather my definition which enables me to keep moving ahead with my work.

First, the Wikipedia definition is looking pretty good. I don't agree with it, but I don't hate it. So at a certain level I am willing to declare industry victory and lets move on. But...what if I don't have time to explain several screens full of information to someone?

In earlier posts I described two types of clouds: x86 container clouds (EC2, ElasticHosts) and language module clouds (AppEngine, Azure). That was only for simplicity sake, because I certainly hope for IBM Cell Processor container clouds, Symbolics LISP Machine container clouds and others someday.

So I have generalized a bit more to not draw such hard distinction between AppEngine and EC2 in casual, short conversation. Instead I lump them together as being able to consume a customer defined and created workload.

As a result Pat's Cloud Definition is:

Customer defined workload
Dynamically delivered to a 3rd party provider
Workload causes use of dynamic resources (cpu, network, storage, vendor value adds)
API
Credit Card (simple, low impedance access model from a financial perspective)
Short windows of usage (and subsequent billing) are available

The key thing I believe missing from the Wikipedia definition is the API. If one of the brave souls patrolling the boundaries of the Wikipedia definition would please consider adding that to the "Key Characteristics" section I would be quite happy.

This was the definition I used on a Canonical-led webinar last week with RightScale and FlexiScale, and upon reflection I am quite happy with it.

Now, whilst talking about language let us begin the battle anew.

COMMODITY

This is the new battleground in the "what is it" aftermath. There are a lot of these type sentences in the newsgroups: "How or why would any enterprise use a commodity to build its business on?", " Do you really expect competitive companies to use the same commodity cloud as everyone else for their primary offerings?".

A couple points and then please talk among your selves.

Commodity does not necessarily mean cheap (platinum, gold, oil are all commodities).

IT allows business differentiation to express itself, and in many cases can be one of the business differentiators. However, that differentiation is in the embodiment of an innovation, not the building blocks of the embodiment.

Enterprises today buy the same electricity, same air conditioners, same types of buildings, same servers, same switches, same cables, same infrastructure software. (As well as hire the same species, mostly humans, from the same schools, and have them work in the same cities.) It is the innovative expression of all these somewhat fungible elements towards a profitable or charitable endeavor that make organizations winners and leaders.

Commodity DOES mean "close enough to quantitatively fungible to have market norms", but actually doesn't fully cover the qualitative aspects.

The quantitative fungibility is where users of the commodity will win, meaning more businesses will be able to express their unique innovation, not fewer. And the qualitative differences are where the commodity providers can win, by creating innovative embodiments that cloud customers want to consume.

Cheers - pk

Where in the World is CohesiveFT...

2009-03-17T09:00:00.003-05:00

Email, Twitter, phone calls... they all work just fine, but what do you do when you want to get F2F with a CFT team member and you're not in Palo Alto, Chicago, or London? Check out our travel schedule, find us, and buy the beer! Below is a list of where we'll be and what we'll be doing for the rest of the month. Check out our What's New Page for a regularly updated list of events we will be attending, presenting, and/or sponsoring.

Sun CommunityOne East
March 18th-19th, 2009
Marriott Marquis Hotel, New York, NY

CommunityOne is a conference sponsored by Sun Microsystems that focuses on open source innovation and implementation. It brings together developers, technologists and students for technical education and exchange. In 2009, CommunityOne will focus on the free and open platforms, tools and services that can be found powering the Internet, running enterprises, and enabling high-performance computing.

CFT's Patrick Kerpan speaking during the Cloud Lightning Talks immediately following the Opening Keynote. Contact us to lock in some time to meet!

CloudCamp NE England
Tuesday, March 24th, 2009
Beehive Research Facility, Newcastle University

Following on from the great success of the first two London CloudCamps, and various other CloudCamps around the globe, this is the turn of the North East of England to host it’s first CloudCamp. CloudCamp is an unconference where early adopters of Cloud Computing technologies exchange ideas. With the rapid change occurring in the industry, we need a place we can meet to share our experiences, challenges and solutions.

CFT's Chris Purrington will be attending and presenting ‘Taking Control in the Clouds’ during the Lightning Talks. Contact us if you want to buy Chris a beer.

CloudCamp Scotland
Tuesday, March 25th, 2009
Concourse at Appleton Tower, Edinburgh

Completing the tour of the North, CloudCamp will be traveling to Scotland. CloudCamp is an unconference where early adopters of Cloud Computing technologies exchange ideas. With the rapid change occurring in the industry, we need a place we can meet to share our experiences, challenges and solutions.

CFT's Chris Purrington will be attending and presenting ‘The approach to security and how we extend an existing enterprise into the cloud’ during the Lightning Talks. Contact us if you want to chat with Chris about rugby :-).

SYS-CON Cloud Computing Expo East
March 30th - April 1st, 2009
The Roosevelt Hotel, New York, NY

SYS-CON's International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo, held each year in California, New York and Prague is the leading event covering the fast-emerging Cloud Computing market for Enterprise IT professionals.

CFT's Patrick Kerpan will be speaking at both the Cloud Computing Expo and Cloud BootCamp. Contact us to reserve some of Pat's time!

CloudCamp NYE @ Cloud Computing Expo
Wednesday, April 1st, 2009
Sun Microsystems’ Main NYC Office

CloudCamp NYE will be tacked on the back end of SYS-CON's Cloud Computing Expo East. All joking aside, the unconference should draw some very informed parties that will be attending the parent event. CloudCamp is an unconference where early adopters and industry leaders of Cloud Computing technologies exchange ideas. With the rapid change occurring in the industry, we need a place we can meet to share our experiences, challenges and solutions.

CFT's Patrick Kerpan will be attending.

Meet up.

VPN-Cubed™ for EC2 - AMIs Available Now!

2009-03-04T11:59:00.001-06:00

Right this second both our VPN-Cubed for EC2 Free Edition (no additional charges beyond Amazon's) and Pay Edition AMIs are sitting over at Amazon Web Services just waiting for you to create your own secure and encrypted overlay network. VPN-Cubed for EC2 emerges from Beta today and we couldn't be more proud. Our Beta Participants helped us fine tune our AMIs so you can get the most out of our cloud network security solution to take control of your EC2 deployments.

A bit of Technical Stuff
VPN-Cubed for EC2 is a version of our complete VPN-Cubed offering specially packaged for use in Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). A VPN-Cubed topology is built from a set of VPN-Cubed Managers that share SSL keys and certiﬁcates, working together to provide a redundant, geographically distributed network for your cloud-based servers. You can have any number of topologies running under a given AWS account. When VPN-Cubed Managers belong to the same topology, they are referred to as "peers." The process of establishing communications between any pair of VPN-Cubed Managers that are to be peers is referred to as "peering." VPN-Cubed for EC2's Paid Version allows the use of four (4) VPN-Cubed Managers covering many common use-cases. If a more complex overlay network is needed multiple topologies can be connected together using our complete VPN-Cubed packaged service. Contact sales (at) cohesiveft.com, or check out our complete list of VPN-Cubed use-cases.

We are offering two (2) versions of VPN-Cubed for EC2 as Paid AMIs.

VPN-Cubed for EC2 Free Edition
This version is offered at no additional fees beyond EC2 costs for compute usage and data transfer fees + a $0.30 monthly charge to cover Amazon's Monthly Transaction Fee. It allows you to peer two (2) managers inside Amazon's EC2. This version gives you a quick and easy way to test some of the network topology, addressing, and encryption controls offered by VPN-Cubed inside the cloud.

VPN-Cubed for EC2 Pay Edition
This version of the AMI will allow itself to peer with three other VPN-Cubed for EC2 AMI for a total of four (4) managers belonging to the same topology. It is offered at a a $0.05 premium on hourly usage per AMI + a $0.30 monthly charge to covers Amazon's Monthly Transaction Fee. The Pay Edition give you more manager peering, more managers, and more control over your EC2 deployments.

Check out our VPN-Cubed for EC2 page for launch instructions.

Cube your EC2.

You can have a secure overlay network - in less than 1 hour!

2009-02-19T11:15:00.016-06:00

Really you can! And we would like you to give it a try.
We are looking for a handful of Beta testers for a custom version of VPN-Cubed packaged for EC2.

Why should you signup?
Getting the overlay network up is pretty easy, you get to see an overlay network in action at EC2, and beta testers who successfully complete the beta will get a DRAMATIC price discount when we go live!

***Email us at vpncubed_beta(at)cohesiveft.com or @reply elasticserver on twitter to contact us.***

Here are the steps you go through:

We provide you access to the EC2 USA and EC2 EU AMIs. You can bring up a total of 4 VPN-Cubed managers in this configuration. Use all 4 in the US or EU, or split them between the two locations. Our Beta instructions assume you split between the two EC2 regions.
You use the EC2 API Tools command line to build your security groups. We provide detailed "cut/paste" instructions. Unfortunately ElasticFox and AWS Console can't handle some of the port settings.
You launch the AMIs.
You use the VPN-Cubed web-based UI to link the 4 managers together
You plug some of your other EC2 servers into the overlay network.

Here are some screenshots from the Beta documentation:

Requirements for the Beta

Overview of VPN-Cubed for EC2

Set up EC2 security groups, launch AMIs, use the web-based
UI for setting up the VPN-Cubed Managers

Generate the credentials to be used in the "cube"

Connect the managers together for fail over, routing,
and common addressing

The 4 VPN-Cubed Managers should then know about each other

Connect some EC2 servers to the overlay network in EC2 US
and EC2 EU, communicate securely through the overlay network.

Easy-peasy!
Check out the VPN-Cubed page for more information and reason why you can't live without our secure overlay network.

Lock it up.

Joining Forces with I.D. Rank Security

2009-02-18T10:00:00.024-06:00

The partnership is pretty simple: I.D. Rank Security are the network security experts and we are the cloud computing and virtualization experts. With our powers combined we are Captain Planet... sorry, wrong combination of powers. Our partnership will help refine answers to the question of security and control in the and across cloud and virtual infrastructures.

I.D. Rank Security has numerous product solutions for seamless data encryption, detection, and prevention applications that focus on two critical and pervasive security issues: Secure and Private Communications and Data Leak Prevention. I.D. Rank Security is a trusted vendor to governments and enterprises alike. Our partnership with such a seasoned security savvy firm will help us continue to offer our users the most robust onboarding solutions for virtual and cloud computing infrastructures.

Wait there's more...
In addition to collaboration on cloud computing and virtual security, we plan on making I.D. Rank Security's solution catalog available for consumption via the Elastic Server factory. Check back for updates!

Face-2-Face Opportunity
CFT COO Dwight Koop and I.D. Rank CEO Peter Rung will be attending and presenting at numerous security events like FOSE 09 and SOFIC 09. As always don't hesitate to invite any member of CohesiveFT out for a beer! Contact us to schedule time to chat.

Build on.

Cloud vs. Grid, the conversation continues

2009-02-12T08:16:00.007-06:00

I will add to the noise - much of which plays out on the Google cloud forums, but here is the distinction we use internally at CohesiveFT.

Products that were "GRID" products before "cloud things" were products like Gigaspaces, Globus, the UD of UnivaUD, Data Synapse, Condor and more.

Common uses for these products were for problems that could be chunked up and units of work handed off to worker nodes by some sort of distributor node. In the early days they replaced in-house built, cpu-scavenging techniques created by internal IT, most notably in global capital markets.

There was not, for the most part, in place, any software in enterprises that made it easy to roll these products out, and allocate resources to them. As such this sector of vendors have had a REALLY hard slog.

Here WAS the sales cycle:

Dear Mr. Customer,

Thank you for agreeing to do a trial evaluation of Grid Product Foo.
Here are the steps we will be going through:

1) Allocate us 50 hardware servers in your facility
2) Have your sys admins learn how to install our software and any of its dependencies for the OS's you allow in your facility
3) Have your operations staff learn how to start, stop, status, manage our software.
4) Run our "canonical" Hello World program just to see the basics of our solution's capabilities.
5) Start thinking about what the "hello world" analogies of your company are that might be valuable.

Thanks,

Fred Salesguy, Grid Foo Inc.

Those vendors were collectively the Grid market. I am a pragmatist - and I look at it from the market's view.

Now after the Amazon Cloud (I think we agree Amazon is a cloud, we just don't agree what a cloud is) and facilities like is, here IS the sales cycle:

Dear Mr. Customer,

Thank you for agreeing to do a trial evaluation of Grid Product Foo.
Here are the steps we will be going through:

1) You staff will need to make sure you can use a web browser or a VNC desktop to this IP_Address of our Grid Foo User Interface.
2) There you will be able to evaluate the "Hello World" program of Grid Foo and begin thinking about analogies in your business needs.

Please contact me when you are ready to start your evaluation.

Thanks,

Fred Salesguy, Grid Foo Inc.

ps. We will need 10-12 minutes notice before you want to begin your trial, because we do need to startup all of the necessary infrastructure.

OK - so there was an entire set of products that fall into the realm of dynamic distribution of workloads, usually in the form of a computer language module, usually Java, and they were called Grid.

Now we have a thing called Amazon Cloud (and a few others like it) and the thing called Cloud absolutely transforms the business model and sales cycle of the things called GRID. Gigaspaces, a partner of ours, have shown we can bring the customer time-to-evaluation down to minutes from an infrastructure point of view. This is transformative.

I would start there in my understanding and classification endeavors.

Personal Edition: Friends and Family Features

2009-02-09T10:00:00.003-06:00

The Personal Edition makes it easier for you to get your technology friends and family involved in your Elasticizing. And yes it is as fun as it sounds. If you like the hassle-free server creation capabilities of the Community Edition you'll love the increased freedom of the Personal Edition. We have added a complete set of sharing and collaboration features that make it easy for multiple users to work together using the Elastic Server Factory.

Great ideas get even better when you share them
Do you have a software project that you want to share with the world? What better way than creating an Elastic Server Site custom built to serve your users. Speeding adoption is about removing hurdles so people can focus on using the software instead of installing it. Alan Williamson (co-founder of aw2.0 Ltd., Java Champion, and cool dude) was one of the first to build an Elastic Server Site for his software project Open BlueDragon, check out his blog post about the experience.

With a custom Elastic Server Site you can make your project available on multiple OSs, multiple clouds, and multiple virtualization formats. The guys over at Razuna DAM also created their Elastic Server Site quickly and easily and are loving the flexibility it offers them and their users.

"The Elastic Server Sites feature allowed us to expand our application in a very easy and affordable way to all major virtualization and cloud environments," said Nitai Aventaggiato, the CEO of SixSigns and the lead developer of Razuna. "The Elastic Server Factory delivers and let's us deploy once to many platforms."

A quick personal walkthrough is all it takes, so sign in, upgrade, give us a shout, and we can help you get your Elastic Server Site up in running in no time.

When two eyes aren't enough
Whether you are working on uploading your software component to the Elastic Server Factory, assembled a fantastic server that you want your buddies to check out, or want to share editing rights of your newly created Elastic Server Site, the Personal Edition is the way to go. Sharing is easy and the Personal Edition lets you collaborate with up to 3 other users. It's always helpful to have another set of eyes looking over your ES content before releasing it to the public. Check out our Quick Tip video on Sharing to learn more about the collaborative features of the Elastic Server Factory.

One more thing... Production Elastic Servers
Elastic Servers assembled and deployed under the Community Edition are for development and testing only. What do you do if you want to move an Elastic Server into production? Upgrade your account to the Personal Edition. The upgrade gives you the rights to use 5 VMs in production (all internal component licenses remain your responsibility to the respective vendors). Production Elastic Servers assembled, deployed and ready to manage in minutes.

Happy Building!

Cloud Interop Caution

2009-02-07T09:12:00.003-06:00

Some of this is a bit of a repeat from several years ago but the example works in this instance as well. Let's start with the parable of "On, Off".

The reasons why I found myself owning a computerized voice changer are irrelevant to the following point, but suffice it to say that for a sophomoric prank not too long ago I found myself a proud owner of a computerized voice changer for my Verizon Kyocera phone. I put in the batteries, turned it on, and proudly called my wife upstairs. Chuckling I spoke to her only to have her interrupt and say – “it sounds like you”. Darn. I flipped it on and off a couple times, back to on, and spoke some more – but it still sounded like me. I took the batteries out, rubbed them, rubbed the contact points, battery back in, turned it on, spoke – still me. Because my wife is a good person, many years used to me, she sat there on her phone, waiting for me to get over the disappointment. Wondering why it wasn’t working I stood there flicking it on-and-off, on-and-off. All of a sudden – my wife yelled – there – you sounded like a robot. I looked at the device – and it was off. “Ahhh…”, I thought., “cheap, imported electronic junk device.” They put the contacts in up side down, they mislabeled the battery compartment – and “off” really means “on.”

After this success – for some reason – I decided to THEN read the instructions. And at this moment I realized how hard metaphor is to deal with. Because staring me in the face was the fact that even concrete, binary concepts like “ON and “OFF” are culturally and experientially based. The instructions told me “in order to operate, turn your voice ‘off’”. So – it was not mixed up terminals, it was not bad labeling, it was the fact that from the point of view of the device maker – the product concept was about turning my voice on and off – not the device.

So, if we can’t assume shared definition of “off” and “on” clearly across different cultures and experiences – how do we have enough common shared metaphor and language to begin cloud interop standards? The answer is – in dribs and drabs, gradients, and shades of grey.

I am not saying we should just stand pat, and I applaud David Berlind and Stephen O' Grady for running the recent cloud interop event. And some of the first simple actions like "work on a taxonomy" are, I think, the place to start.

But this is not merely a technical situation we need to quickly muscle through - there is a lot of our inner mammal at work here - and we need to be steadfast in simple forward steps and patient with how many of those steps there will be.

Central London being 'Powered By Cloud' today

2009-02-03T07:41:00.007-06:00

PoweredByCloud 2009, a conference launched by BroadGroup, is giving industry leaders the opportunity to debate the coming changes, position their organizations to take advantage of them, and network with clients and providers in the fast-moving Cloud Computing space.

Our own master presenter, Alexis Richardson, is there giving his tuppence. Alexis chaired the "Making Money from Cloud Computing" and sat on the "Finance, Investors & Cloud Computing" panels (see programme). If you didn't have a chance to attend, you can check out his slides from the presentation (pdf).

If you are interested in contacting Alexis he will be roaming the PbC conference for the rest of the day. He will also be speaking with Simone Brunozzi, AWS Technology Evangelist in Europe, at the first 2009 Amazon Web Services Meetup in London, tomorrow Feb 4th (registration required). The meetup will be held at Skillz Matter in London starting at 6:30. After the formal stuff, the meeting will then adjourn to the Crown Clerkenwall Green. Go, listen, learn, and buy Alexis a pint!

UPDATE: ElasticHosts CEO Richard Davies Presentation
Richard Davies, CEO of ElasticHosts (the guys responsible for the really cool UK-based KVM Cloud), is speaking at the Powered by Cloud closing session right now. His presentation "How cloud will change your Company" details some of the real world benefits ElasticHosts' users are realizing today. Check out his slide deck here.

Elastic is our favorite word.

2009-01-22T11:30:00.001-06:00

We packed even more wonderfully springy elastic capabilities into the Elastic Server platform with our new ElasticHosts partnership. Today we are proud to announce Elastic Servers can now be deployed to the ElasticHosts' UK-based cloud computing infrastructure. The new ElasticHosts deployment option is available on our Server Configuration page.

ElasticHosts is the second European cloud infrastructure provider and the world's first public cloud based upon KVM, the native Linux virtualization platform. The company provides flexible server capacity in the UK for scalable web hosting and on-demand burst computing such as batch processing, dev/test, disaster recovery and cloud bursting. ElasticHosts offers competitive pricing for both subscription and burst use, fast direct links to the UK/EU internet, data storage within EU jurisdiction and outstanding performance for any PC operating system with fully flexible sizing.

Get that Elastic Server up in the ElasticHosts Cloud!
To deploy your custom-assembled virtual server to the ElasticHosts cloud start the same way you would for any other Elastic Server build, choose your desired software components. You can do this easily by visiting from one of our popular Elastic Server Sites (e.g. Rails, Django, LAMP, etc.) or select from our Bundle Explorer and add them to your software component bundle cart (MySQL 5, Apache 2 and PHP 5).

When your custom stack is assembled just the way you want it, select the "ElasticHosts" radio button from the "Ready to Build" screen (seen here). Give your server an appropriately pliant name, choose whether to share your server and use a static password, and click the "Build Now" button. In a few minutes, you'll receive an email with a download link to your rubbery new server ready to be sent to ElasticHosts. Just forward your Build Confirmation Email to support@elastichosts.com and your Elastic Server will be uploaded your ElasticHosts account. Check out our Quick Tip video for more information. Don't have an ElasticHosts account? Signup is easy and they offer a free trial.

"Installing and configuring software components and operating systems on virtual servers from scratch in this multi-sourced world is extremely time consuming and expensive," said Richard Davies, Founder and CEO of ElasticHosts. "CohesiveFT's Elastic Server automates this process allowing our users to concentrate on the benefits of our highly scalable, flexible, and cost effective KVM-based UK cloud. The combination of ElasticHosts and Elastic Server is a fast track to realizing returns from cloud computing - ElasticHosts customers can immediately deploy well over five thousand custom-built server images"

Do you have more than a few servers to create? Contact our sales team to learn about our Enterprise-class offering for clusters of servers. You may also be interested in our cloud security offering, VPN-Cubed.

Don't take our word for it, see how stretchy an Elastic Server can be by deploying yours to the ElasticHosts cloud today!

Razuna Readies Itself for Mass Customization

2009-01-16T08:09:00.008-06:00

Razuna, one of the most popular open source Digital Asset Management Systems, is now available on its own Elastic Server Site! Customize your Razuna Elastic Server with additional software components, choose your favorite operating system, then decide if you want to deploy you Elastic Server to your virtual infrastructure (VMwawre, Xen, VirtualIron, KVM, or Parallels) or the cloud (Amazon EC2 US or Europe).

Did we mention that this was user generated content? Nitai Aventaggiato an Elastic Server Personal Edition user, the CEO of SixSigns and the lead developer of Razuna, contacted marketing-at-cohesiveft.com looking to make his open source project available on Elastic Server. We worked with Nitai to upload the Razuna package, add in some supporting components, and design and publish the Elastic Server Site.

Interested in doing the same for your software component or project? All you need is an Elastic Server Personal Account and you will have all the tools necessary to provide your users with a quick and easy deployment solution - The Elastic Server Factory.

Note: Razuna is a Digital Asset Management System. Digital Assets take up space, most notably disk space. So remember, when you're building your Razuna Elastic Server to make sure your Elastic Server's Hard Drive is large enough to satisfy your media asset storage needs.

About Razuna
Razuna is a enterprise digital asset management/media asset management with an integrated web content management that delivers and makes management of your digital assets a simple task! By using Razuna you get the benefit of it being free and open source and supported by a professional company.

With Razuna, your information can be collected, consolidated, verified, filtered, mined and always be available and secure. Razuna does all this while requiring less hardware and fewer administrators, for the lowest overall cost of ownership. A powerful solution like Razuna will achieve significant efficiency gains as well as consistency throughout the organization.

Since Razuna is based on open standards (J2EE/CFML/SQL/XML) you can rest assured that Razuna can scale with your business. For international organizations that hold already thousands of assets, Razuna can take up on your existing assets with powerful import and export tools.

Build your Razuna Elastic Server Today!

More Amazon AWS Management Options

2009-01-09T10:49:00.007-06:00

It seems like there is a little of that holiday spirit hovering around into this new year. It was nice to get the official notice this morning about the BETA launch of the new Amazon AWS Management Console.

That's two presents I received this week. They must have been stuffed way back under the branches of the XMAS tree unnoticed.

First, the Elastic Server team pushed out KVM support for our automated factory. This is key to helping private clouds using Red Hat and Fedora infrastructure in the upcoming year, as well as a key milestone to turbo charged Intel support (VT-d) as the new Linux kernel makes its way into the main distros.

And second, the AWS team getting the management console in our hands. Now - I do like my FireFox plugin and will probably use it for some things until I retrain my fingers. And when I am in Elastic Server I use our EC2 manager, but it has a much narrower scope.

What I really like about the new console is I am unbound from Firefox. I am a MacBook-based life form at most times and I do like Safari as well. So more browser options is a big plus. (Have I mentioned I don't like the command line?) And - as people in the office have shown me today - it looks and works pretty darn good on the iPhone as well.

Take the new UI for a spin or for a more in depth review, and also check out what Alan Williamson has to say.

So hats off and happy New Year to the AWS team for giving Elastic Server users and CohesiveFT customers more options in how they choose to manage their infrastructure in the Clouds!

3...2...1...Happy KVM!

2009-01-07T10:00:00.000-06:00

What's new in 2009? Well, the addition of KVM (Kernel Virtual Machine) format as a deployment option on the Elastic Server Platform of course! We had a Cohesive New Year's Eve party and decided the best way to ring in 2009 was with additional options for our users. KVM is available now on all Elastic Server Account Editions.

KVM is a virtualization solution that is part of the mainline Linux kernel (V2.6.20). It supports the virtualization of Linux guest operating systems and even Windows® with hardware that is virtualization-aware.

Building your KVM Elastic Server
Build your custom KVM Elastic Server the same way your would build any Elastic Server. Select the components you fancy from one of our popular Elastic Server Sites (e.g. Rails, Django, LAMP, etc.) or select from our Bundle Explorer and add them to your software component bundle cart (MySQL 5, Apache 2 and PHP 5).

Once your components are 'stacked' the way you want them, simply click "Build" making sure the "KVM" radio button from the "Ready to Build" screen is selected. Your custom KVM Elastic Server is built on-demand and ready for you to download in minutes. It couldn't be easier!

Do you have more than a few servers to create? Contact our sales team to learn about our Enterprise-class offering for clusters of servers. Concerned about security and integration within a cloud, across clouds, or between your private infrastructure and a cloud - you may also be interested in our cloud security offering, VPN-Cubed for "wrapping up" your KVM-based Elastic Servers.

European Templates for your Convenience

2009-01-06T14:42:00.001-06:00

Amazon's recently announced the availability of EC2 Europe Region and we followed immediately announcing the integration of EC2-Europe as a deployment option of the Elastic Server Factory. This is big news for European AWS fans looking for a complement to S3-Europe and those not comfortable using compute capacity in the States.

Amazon has reworked their Public AMI Directory to include a separate category for EC2-Europe Specific AMIs. We have added some Public AMIs to the directory built for and stored in Europe for use in the new EC2 Region. Look for additions regularly as we are always trying to keep the Public AMI list fresh.

Elastic Server Now Serving Virtual Iron

2008-12-17T08:00:00.037-06:00

Elastic Servers are now fortified with the recommended daily allowance of iron - Virtual Iron, that is! Today, we are happy to unveil a new virtualization format within our Elastic Server factory: Virtual Iron is immediately available as a download option.

Virtual Iron is a provider of enterprise-class server virtualization and virtual infrastructure management software. The company offers easy-to-use and cost-effective server virtualization software for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). We have tasted Virtual Iron and can confirm that it is also delicious.

Virtual Iron is experiencing significant growth, with a 130% increase in revenues in the 3rd quarter of 2008 compared to the same period in 2007. That's impressive growth by any standard. We are big fans of growth which is why we encourage all of our Elastic Servers to grow up big and strong. If Virtual Iron is your deployment format of choice, come check out Elastic Server.

Get Started with Elastic Server
To deploy your custom-assembled virtual server to the Virtual Iron format, simply select the components you want and wrap them into your tidy stack. You can do this easily by visiting some of our most popular portals (e.g. Rails, Django, LAMP, etc.) or by adding one of our popular packages to your cart (MySQL 5, Apache 2 and PHP 5).

Once your stack is configured just the way you want it, select the "Virtual Iron" radio button from the "Ready to Build" screen pictured below. Give your server a descriptive name, choose whether to share your server and use a static password, and click the "Build Now" button. Voila. In a few short minutes, you'll receive an email with a link to your shiny new server. It's that easy.

Chris Barclay, director of product management at Virtual Iron, says "CohesiveFT has created a compelling platform that reduces the complexity of creating production-ready virtual servers comprised of multi-sourced components. Now, with the addition of Virtual Iron within Elastic Server, our customers can easily take advantage of existing Elastic Servers or create their own custom servers. CohesiveFT's create once, run anywhere platform simplifies deployments and gives customers choice of virtualization vendor. This is yet another way that Virtual Iron customers can do more with less." Read more about our partnership on the Virtual Iron blog.

Do you have more than a few servers to create? Contact our sales team to learn about our Enterprise-class offering for clusters of servers. You may also be interested in our cloud security offering, VPN-Cubed.

This holiday season, CohesiveFT advises you to assemble your virtual servers with care and get plenty of Virtual Iron.

Vive La Difference: Amazon EC2 Expands to Europe

2008-12-10T14:06:00.004-06:00

In certain circles it is de rigeur to view the US market as more competitive than the European market. The cloud is no exception with the US market leading adoption of the cloud and seeing a proliferation of cloud providers such as Amazon AWS, GoGrid, Mosso, Engineyard, Joyent, Heroku and many more. (Incidentally a fun thing to do is click on all those links right now, and compare them. Plus ca change?)

Proliferation is nothing without competition. And competition is really the heart of the cloud value proposition. Competition means "cheaper". Why bother investing in yet another data center, staffing it, making it reliable, carbon-neutral, and so on, when you can rent resources ‘on demand’ from one that already fits the bill? Yeah ok ... but this argument does not carry much weight when there are only a few clouds to choose from, and hence little competition to drive innovation forward and prices down.

This is also the reason why people are already talking about interoperability and cloud standards. People like Simon Wardley in his already notorious “don’t get bitten in the aaS” call to action (aka "rant") at CloudCamp, and analysts such as Redmonk, have been calling for interoperability as the foundation for a competitive services market. By decoupling service from product (another cloud theme) we the users can force competition based on service quality and not API lock in. In other words: we want differentiation on value.

The excellent Cloud Summit in Tel Aviv last week saw an inaugural gathering of newly formed Cloud Interoperability Forum where a number of "cloud customers", e.g. MDs at major banks, called for more competition on ease of migration and price, so that clouds can be adopted for more systems and sooner. More value - faster.

In this context, it is easy to see why people are so excited about Amazon EC2 launching in Europe. At CohesiveFT we have been delighted to work to connect to the first European cloud entrants such as Flexiscale (with more to come). But customers want more and they want differentiation. Already many customers are using S3 to outsource simple storage needs in the European region. The differentiator is to couple this with Amazon EC2 and EBS in one go. With an integrated approach the customer will get more value faster.

At CohesiveFT have been operating in Europe for two years and if one message has come through consistently it is: I want flexibility but I also want control - give me local resource that is consistent with local commercial constraints. Amazon EC2, and our support for this in Elastic Server, means more customers can have this today. With Elastic Server customers retain control - you can take your application and port it to any of the clouds we support and then move it between them safely.

Because of this pent up demand, Amazon are taking the European opportunity really seriously. It’s not just about EC2, S3 and EBS. Anyone who has been at any more or less any important (EU/UK) web conference this year cannot have missed Martin Buhr and Simone Brunozzi. These guys are the public face of the European Amazon team and have been outstanding in gathering and focussing developers, customers and community. Very often they have been backed up by Jeff Barr, who seems able to be everywhere at once, and the significant presence of Werner Vogels who is not just Amazon’s CTO but also a big driver of AWS.

So who do we think is going to use the cloud in Europe? Well there are still some tricky regulatory and privacy questions that everyone is still figuring out. But even with these concerns there is a big market from banks, telcos and big corporates to offload for example testing and QA to the cloud. "Testing" is a problem. It shows up a classic provisioning gotcha that we see in any big customer - “I cannot bring my service to market without testing it to destruction but I cannot get the machines set up fast enough”. Well, people of Europe, that’s about to change. The era of the machine-hugger is at an end!

It’s not just corporations. Amazon’s recent deal with CapGem sets the scene for what could be a stream of SIs looking to take advantage of shorter time to market using the cloud, around specific value propositions such as collaboration solutions. There are a lot of SIs in Europe - it’s the flip side of localised market fragmentation. Here I am excited about the prospects for our VPN-Cubed product for bridging from enterprise servers to one or more clouds securely, and without moving all your data because sometimes you can’t.

And returning to the theme, this is the week of LeWeb in Paris. (Being asinine, and not French I like to call this "The LeWeb"). It's the ultimate BOF. From around the world, software vendors and web start-ups have gathered to show their latest and greatest to a crowd of big buyers. This is community in action. At CohesiveFT we love community and open source - because they use the cloud too.

So. People like the cloud. Now more people can use the cloud. And - more clouds means more competition and at CohesiveFT we think this is what Europe wants. Vive la difference! Enjoyez-vous!