GoGrid Blog

Today (Wednesday) there were a flurry of announcements about Microsoft Windows suddenly being available in the Cloud, first by Amazon Web Services and then by 3tera. (Oh, and now since the writing of the first draft of this post, Steve Ballmer just revealed the “Windows Cloud.”) It made me scratch my head a bit. If you are a regular reader of this blog or are familiar with GoGrid in general, you would know by now that GoGrid has been offering Windows Server 2003 (and more recently Windows Server 2008) in the Cloud since the public launch at the beginning of 2008. So why is this suddenly “breaking news” in the industry? Probably because the Goliath in the Cloud industry, Amazon, has thrown its weight behind this.

Being the “David” though has its definite advantages. Having the ability to introduce new and different Operating Systems and features quickly (weeks as opposed to quarters or years) is a clear plus. And being able to offer a “complete” package is another. One thing that Amazon EC2 users are used to is using a command line to control their EC2 server instances. Many of those users are Linux programmers and developers - those who are well versed “in the command line.” Windows users are a very different breed. For them, the GUI is very important. Users want to see icons, click on them, use menus, etc. to “make things happen.”

When we started developing GoGrid over 3 years ago, the user experience was a huge factor in determining the feature set. We settled on using Google’s Web Toolkit (GWT) because it provided the structure to create a rich experience without compromising performance. We won awards (Linux World 2008’s Best of Show) for our implementation. The rich web portal won the hearts of many for its ease of use and the eye candy.

GoGrid users wanted to also control their infrastructure programmatically as well. We responded with a public API for full “control in the cloud.” The GoGrid API is a huge untapped resource for any developer. Add the rich experience of a graphical web interface with the programmatic power of an API; GoGrid provides the full control spectrum for all types of users. 

So, before you run off spawning a bunch of EC2 Windows servers (oh wait, you can’t yet), remember that GoGrid has already almost a year of proven experience providing Windows Server 2003/2008 to end users… we are also a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner.

Regardless, it is important for Cloud Users to have a choice. Making the proper one is the challenge however, which means that (as I have mentioned before) one has to look beyond the Cloud itself and also at the ancillary services (SLA, Support, Industry knowledge, etc.) when making the choice.

Today, GoGrid and Appistry announced a new partnership initiative. The full press release is below:

Appistry Extends Cloud Computing Reach

New Partnerships and Pricing Simplify the Delivery of Critical Applications Via Third-Party Clouds

ST. LOUIS–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Appistry, a provider of cloud application platform software, today announced a new partnership initiative and pricing that makes it easier for enterprises to deliver highly scalable and reliable applications via third-party “public clouds.” The announcement extends the reach of the company’s flagship product, Appistry Enterprise Application Fabric (EAF), which powers cloud-based applications for Global 2000 companies, high-profile government agencies and software-as-a-service (SaaS) providers.

The announcement is part of the company’s strategy to address the complex challenges enterprises face developing, deploying and managing applications in both public and private clouds. Appistry’s cloud application platform simplifies cloud computing and allows enterprises to more easily realize its full promise — elastic scalability, solid reliability and automated management.

Leading analyst firms and industry experts have said better tools are required to help enterprises successfully make the move to the cloud-based architectures popularized by firms such as Yahoo and eBay.

According to Forrester Research vice president and principal analyst Frank Gillett, “Vendors such as Appistry… offer various versions of software tools and architecture to enable firms to build cloud IT architectures without the handcrafting that Web giants resort to.” (December 2007, “There are Three IT Architectures, Not One”)

As part of a new partnership initiative, Appistry is extending the availability of its application platform to a number of leading cloud infrastructure providers. Through the program, these providers will allow customers to:

• Access pre-configured versions of its Appistry EAF Community Edition on Microsoft Windows or Linux;
• Create new Appistry-powered virtual machines on-demand, to scale-out applications with a simple mouse click;
• Purchase full Appistry EAF licenses directly through each partner via direct end-user billing, when and where available.

Initial cloud provider partners include GoGrid and SkyTap.

Using Appistry’s cloud application platform to manage the elastic scalability of the GoGrid Cloud gives our enterprise customers a distinct technology advantage,” said John Keagy, CEO of GoGrid. “Our alliance with Appistry is yet another example of the power of enterprise cloud computing.

“We’re excited to add the Appistry Enterprise Application Fabric (EAF) as a pre-configured virtual machine in our SkyTap Library,” said Scott Roza, chief executive officer of SkyTap. “Our customers are building cutting-edge applications in our cloud-based Virtual Lab environment, and adding Appistry’s cloud application platform provides them with powerful new capabilities to rapidly develop, test and deploy applications designed to be highly scalable and resilient.”

“End-users are demanding a platform which sits above the infrastructure and simplifies the development of cloud-enabled applications,” said Kevin Haar, CEO, Appistry. “By making our platform more widely available through some of the leading cloud providers, we enable customers to build, deploy and manage applications that scale in both public and private cloud environments.”

The company‘s new pricing model moves from a per-CPU, per-year subscription model to core-based subscriptions for public and private clouds. Appistry will make hourly, on-demand pricing available via direct billing as its cloud partners offer support for that capability

Appistry will host the first in a series of webinars on the importance of cloud computing for the enterprise on Tuesday, October 14, at 11:00 PST / 2:00 EST. Attendees can register at https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/119183270.

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The press release can also be viewed here.

I don’t typically write about vaporware, but in this case, I will make an exception not only to finally get to use the phrase “cloud computing is truly vaporware” but also to seriously introduce this new GoGrid feature. Contrary to the definition of “vaporware,” Cloud Storage on GoGrid will be coming soon, so I wanted highlight many of the items in this upcoming release.

First, a picture is worth a thousand words. Below are a few screenshots of what is our vision of GoGrid’s Cloud Storage. Please note that these screenshots represent current ideas and may not actually represent the first implementation or subsequent updates.

Now for the juicy details:

• Technical
  • Can be mounted as a drive (e.g., a “D:” drive, “slash mount” or shared mount) on all servers within a GoGrid Account
  • It is shared across all servers
  • You DO have to configure it in order to have it available on your GoGrid servers by using a Private IP. Instructions will be on the GoGrid Wiki.
  • Initial size is 100 GB for FREE (that’s right, the first 100 GB’s are free)
  • Your Cloud Storage will automatically scale as you add more data to it through “thin provisioning”
  • You cannot partition the Cloud Storage
  • With the first release, the GoGrid API will not be able to control Cloud Storage, however, you will be able to control your Cloud Storage via the GoGrid API in subsequent releases
• Billing
  • Each additional GB of storage is $0.15 per GB per month over your free 100 GB
  • Billing for Cloud Storage is done monthly (not hourly)
  • Billing occurs for peak usage during a month. For example, if you start with 100 GB, scale up to 110 GB at some point during that same month and then scale back down to 100 GB, you are charged for that peak. (In this example, that would be $1.50 for the 10 GB over your free 100 GBs)
  • If you are about to go over your 100 GB free allocation, you will be visually notified within the GoGrid portal (e.g., your meter will turn red). You can then simply click ADD > Cloud Storage to initiate billing per GB over your initial 100 GB.
  • In the left-hand column of the GoGrid portal, a new widget will inform you of your total storage utilization and total cost for any overages
• Security
  • Any data stored within the Cloud Storage will be automatically replicated to a Disaster Recovery (DR) infrastructure. Should a failure of the primary storage occur, a backup to within 24 hours of the incident will become automatically available. It is your responsibility, however, to back up any data added to your Cloud Storage within 24 hours or less by some other means.
  • The Cloud Storage tied to your GoGrid Account will not be accessible to other GoGrid users

Other enhancements planned for this exciting release are:

• “On-Hovers” for all objects within the GoGrid Portal UI
  • Cloud Storage will show a meter for storage space used (prior to going over 100 GB) and Total Storage Utilization (after going over the 100 GB threshold)
  • Web/App/DB Servers will show Public IP addresses, Operating System, and RAM allocation
  • Load Balancers will show the real IP addresses and real IP ports, Virtual IPs (VIPs) and Virtual IP ports as well as the load balancing configuration type and persistence type

When this upgrade is released, current GoGrid users will automatically and instantly have Cloud Storage available for use as well as the other features mentioned above. Do note that the features mentioned above are subject to change. We hope you enjoy this exciting release! Oh, and this should all be available in November 2008!

Today, GoGrid and RightScale announced a major new strategic product partnership. The full press release is below:

RightScale First to Deliver Integrated Management for Multi-Cloud Environments

Cloud Computing Momentum Builds with RightScale Support for FlexiScale, GoGrid and Rackspace

Interop New York Conference Expo (PRWEB) September 17, 2008 — RightScale, Inc., the leader in cloud computing management, today announced a major new strategic product and partnership initiative as it broadens its cloud management platform to support emerging clouds from new vendors, including FlexiScale and GoGrid, while continuing its long-standing support for Amazon’s EC2. RightScale is also working with Rackspace to assure compatibility with their cloud offerings, including Mosso and CloudFS. RightScale will be the first in the industry to offer an integrated management dashboard, where applications can be deployed once and managed across these and other clouds.

Businesses can take advantage of the nearly infinite scalability of cloud computing by using RightScale to deploy their applications on a supported cloud provider. They gain the capabilities of built-in redundancy, fault tolerance, and geographical distribution of resources - key enterprise demands for cloud providers. With RightScale, customers can leverage the leading cloud management platform to automatically deploy and manage their web applications - scaling up when traffic demands, and scaling back as appropriate - allowing them to focus on their core business objectives. RightScale’s automated system management, pre-packaged and re-usable components, leading service expertise and best practices have been proven as best-of-breed, with customers deploying hundreds of thousands of instances on Amazon’s EC2.

“Cloud computing is a disruptive force in the business world because it provides pay-as-you-go, on-demand, virtually infinite compute and storage resources that can expand or contract as needed,” said Michael Crandell, CEO of RightScale, Inc. “A number of public providers are already adopting cloud architectures - and we also see private enterprise clouds coming on the horizon. Today’s announcement of RightScale’s partnerships with FlexiScale and GoGrid is an exciting indication of how mid-market and enterprise organizations can really take advantage of multi-cloud architectures. There will be huge opportunities for application design and deployment — we are at the beginning of a tidal shift in IT infrastructure.”

FlexiScale is the only UK-based cloud computing provider and offers a unique infrastructure on demand with 99.99% SLA and many special features. For example, each customer gets their own virtual disk so that data is segregated and they can do their own low level encryption, while virtual network traffic is also segregated to deliver added security. FlexiScale uniquely offers permanent on demand storage and was the first cloud provider to support Windows. With a strong reputation for customer service, it also enables the creation of custom packages such as golden images.

Tony Lucas, CEO of XCalibre and creator of FlexiScale commented: “Without this new ability to move swiftly and easily between platforms, customers could feel locked in and much more hesitant to try and use cloud computing. RightScale’s partnership initiative is a great example of how having near interoperability between systems will enable customers to be less hesitant of moving to a new technology, which is great for everyone. It means the industry can and will grow quicker than if it was only a handful of individual companies providing distinct services that weren’t compatible with each other.”

GoGrid offers hosted cloud computing infrastructure that enables system administrators, developers and IT professionals to create, deploy, and control load balanced cloud servers and complex hosted virtual server networks. GoGrid also delivers portal controlled servers for Windows 2003 and 2008, multiple Linux operating systems and supports application environments like Ruby on Rails. GoGrid is unique in cloud computing with the availability of 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows Server 2008; and was named winner of LinuxWorld 2008 “Best of Show” in August. Together, GoGrid and RightScale will provide joint cloud solutions that are elegant and bring power, control and scalability to business customers.

Cloud computing for the enterprise has arrived with the GoGrid and RightScale partnership. Corporations now have few excuses not to, and multiple reasons to deploy and manage complex and redundant cloud infrastructures in real-time using the GoGrid, RightScale, and FlexiScale technologies.
- GoGrid CEO, John Keagy

Rackspace Hosting provides IT systems and computing-as-a-service to more than 33,000 customers worldwide. Combining RightScale’s technologies with Rackspace’s focus on Fanatical Support™will allow companies to focus on their business and not a disproportionate amount of resources on IT demands.

Deploying scalable, reliable applications from scratch in a multi-cloud world is a time consuming and expensive task. As a result, most organizations do not have the expertise or resources to deploy and manage cloud computing applications cost effectively and according to best practices. With RightScale’s platform, any organization can easily tap the enormous power of cloud computing for a virtually infinite, affordable, “pay-as-you-go” IT infrastructure. RightScale’s offerings provide rapid deployment, a dynamically scalable infrastructure to meet varying traffic and loads, and require minimal resources using automated tools and a centralized web dashboard for easy management backed by best practices and professional services.

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The full press release can be viewed here.

John Willis just produced an Interesting podcast with Michael Crandell (CEO of RightScale). In this podcast, John interviews Michael about RightScale’s recent announcement of the GoGrid/RightScale partnership as well as other partnerships and ideas.

More info on the GoGrid/RightScale partnership can be seen here.

If I could sum up the podcast, it would be how RightScale (with a partnership with GoGrid and others) are delivering the “on-ramp” to allow companies to migrate to the Cloud and provide portability to the cloud by providing a multi-hosted cloud infrastructure.

The podcast can be heard here. Highlights, according to John are:

• Services is key to the clouds
• No Windows support at this time (ed. note: Windows Server 2003/2008 in the Cloud is currently available on GoGrid)
• Infrastructure cloud partners
• Clarification on Rackspace/Mosso
• RightScale and Eucalyptus Wasup?
• Changes to the RightScale Business Model

This is yet another clear example of how all Cloud Providers and Enablers are working towards a common good and breaking down potential barriers to entry, especially for the Enterprise. As the Cloud continues to crystallize, individual providers and aggregators will become more prevalent and the on-ramp to enablement even more accessible.

Perhaps that subject was not strong enough. The Financial Sector is currently weathering a hurricane, recently suffering the largest drop since 9/11. Merrill Lynch fell into the hands of Bank of America. Lehman Brothers is in bankruptcy and looking for a buyer with Barclays buying some of their assets. The Airline industry is failing. AIG and other financial companies are looking for some sort of an economic bailout. HP is eliminating 24,600 jobs. And this was all over just a few days. If one extends the look a bit further, the perspective is just a grim: gas prices going up, the dollar losing value and housing going down. One simply cannot be surprised by any of this.

The Tech Sector is getting hammered as well, but this time, it isn’t “our fault.” The Dot Com bust managed to drag down the other sectors last time, but we learned our lesson. Long gone are unproven businesses and their associated models. Venture Capitalists and Angel Investors are taking long looks at business, not just getting in the car for a drive but doing a full check under the hood, looking at the road both ahead and behind and fully vetting the drivers and passengers. To get money as a start-up is truly an accomplishment nowadays. You have to have a proven business model, installed user base, and a clear direction of where your company and your industry will go.

I recently attended TechCrunch 50 which showcases 50 startups and allows them to present their business or service to a panel of experts. I saw about 1/2 of the companies’ presentations and I noticed that the companies where they couldn’t articulate or prove their monetization strategy, these companies got an earful of criticism from the experts. Similarly, at a meetup in San Francisco, the question asked every presenter is “How are you making or going to make money?” It’s a very simple question, but one that must be answered or the company loses credibility.

Perhaps we should apply these same simple questions to the Financial, Housing and Airline Industries? I guess the markets are already doing that.

It will take a long time before all of these markets start to recover, and corporations and businesses are currently challenged to prevent the hemorrhage of money and capital expenditures within their IT infrastructure. I recently read an article in the Wall Street Journal called “Cutting Tech’s Energy Bill” by William M. Bulkeley that discusses how large companies are looking at ways to cut electricity usage within the Enterprise. With energy costs directly and indirectly rising, it’s critical for the embattled IT manager or director to make fiscally sound and environmentally responsible decisions to keep their business moving forward will simultaneously ensuring that their technology progresses.

Bulkeley gives several examples:

• IBM has launched a “Green Data-Center Services” business line to help customer redesign their datacenters
• HP purchased a company that specializes in designing datacenters with a focus on energy-efficiency
• EMC has worked to eliminate unneeded equipment and use their cooling infrastructure more efficiently
• Hartford Financial Services Group has shut down 6 of 7 datacenters and host within a “green” IBM facility
• IBM and HP has introduced water-cooled servers and others are hard-selling blade computers that use significantly less power than traditional servers

Outsourcing one’s infrastructure is a core way to tighten your belt of your IT Budget. If you can allow for a managed hosting provider to run your IT infrastructure, you save on capital expenditures as well as human capital running it. Colocation and dedicated hosting were all the rage a few years ago and, while it may be losing its sex appeal nowadays, there are still plenty of IT traditionalists who demand it.

Towards the end of the WSJ article, Bulkeley starts to discuss virtualization as a Green technology that can help cut costs. This is where I pick up the thread and run with it. Virtualization is a key component to helping Corporations reduce their IT expenditures significantly. The ability to consolidate multiple low-end servers onto one or handful of higher-end servers is an obvious and logical cost and energy-savings option. The heavier adoption of virtualization technologies such as Xen or VMware or even Hyper-V is giving corporations or even those self-same outsourced data center and dedicated hosting providers a way to stretch their money and efficiencies even further. To over simplify, reduce the number of servers through virtualization and your datacenter space demands go down, your dependency on IT staff to manage those locations reduces and your CapEx shrinks, giving you efficiencies immediately.

This is where the Technology Sector is starting to get “Cloudy.” I’ve used this metric before to illustrate my point, simply look at the Google (Insights for Search) chart comparing “cloud computing” against “dedicated hosting” keyword searches:

Dedicated hosting will not go away. It’s a viable outsourced technology option that companies depend on. It makes fare more sense (cents?) than doing it yourself within your corporation. There are only a niche of companies that can afford to make the technology and capital investment to support large-scale IT infrastructures, and even those (as exemplified in the WSJ article) are looking to re-architect their infrastructure.

Could “Cloud Computing” be the silver bullet to help corporations survive the financial hurricane? I think so. But there are challenges ahead for both the providers of the Clouds (and even traditional dedicated hosting providers) as well as corporations.

• For Cloud Providers, education of the “Cloud” concept and overcoming the “this technology is only for early adopters” status will be critical. However this can be achieved through collaboration with other Cloud Providers and Enablers as well as standardization of protocols and APIs, for starters.
• For the Enterprise to view the Cloud as a viable alternative to traditional or even self-hosted infrastructures and datacenters, the challenge is larger. While Cloud Computing may be obvious to many  in terms of “green-ness” and cost savings through zero CapEx, IT managers of the Enterprise tend to not quickly jump on board with the latest technology. Some might say they are a bit gun-shy and would rather someone else test the waters and learn from their mistakes. This wait-and-see attitude will be the end of many. Given the current financial weather and outlook, the Enterprise should be looking at the non-traditional and emerging technologies just as hard as within traditional practices.

While I may be sticking my head in the sand by saying that this financial storm will pass soon, I also  have my head in the “clouds” by stating that dedicated/outsourced hosting and Cloud Computing are viable alternatives to “doing it yourself” that all businesses should seriously consider and get on their short term strategic plans. To jump back into the car metaphor, it’s time to dump the old 1970’s gas-guzzler and get the 2008 Hybrid!

From Monday through Wednesday (Sept 8-10), GoGrid will be an exhibitor at TechCrunch 50. The TechCrunch Expo was started last year with a simple goal: “find the best start-ups and launch them in front of our industry’s most influential VCs, corporations, fellow entrepreneurs and press.” This is an event where 50 start-ups are launched into stardom. There is also a “DemoPit” where 100 early stage startups are introduced to the public.

We have always felt that it is important to give startups an opportunity to succeed by allowing them to focus on their business and not their hosting. GoGrid is great for startups for so many reasons: usage-based billing, scalability, free support, and the on-demand nature of requisitioning and provisioning hardware in real-time. Furthering our commitment to startups, GoGrid (and ServePath) also host a not-for-profit meetup in San Francisco called StartUp SF. This event is designed to provide people who are engaged in initial stages of a startup, thinking about launching a new company or just excited to exchange ideas with like-minded professionals, with tactics and strategies to head down the road of success. We will be having the StartUp SF (v1.3) meetup at the conclusion of TechCrunch 50 from 6-9pm (just at the right time to have some food and drinks and hear some design team strategy tips from guest speaker, Scott Nazarian, from the premier design shop, frog design).

For those who want to follow the action of TechCrunch 50, uStream has provided a live feed of the event (shown below):

Streaming Video by Ustream.TV

Hope to see some of you at the TC50 event! Drop by our booth and come to StartUp SF after TC50 on Wednesday night after the event.

Recently some questions were presented related to security of the GoGrid portal, passwords and how GoGrid support handles passwords. We take these matters with utmost priority and consequently have immediately implemented some short and long terms procedures, policies and programmatic fixes to address them.

GoGrid is a secure environment

For starters, I would like to reiterate the fact that the entire GoGrid portal, including the Support chat therein, are 128-bit SSL encrypted. This has been in place since GoGrid was initially launched and a hard-stop requirement when we did launch.

Also, all GoGrid passwords are 1-way hash-encrypted within our databases and have been this way since the public launch of GoGrid.

New Procedures and Password-Recovery Development

In order to rectify this current password security concern, we have implemented the following items (effective immediately):

• GoGrid Support now has no access to clear text passwords
• Should a customer forget their password, GoGrid Support engineers are now instructed to reset and create new passwords for users, provided that the user has given proper identification that they have authority over the GoGrid account in question. These temporary, reset passwords are then delivered to the customers via a means acceptable to the customer. They are asked to change them immediately.

The second item in the list above is a simple stop-gap measure that we are implementing until the automated password recovery feature and procedure is implemented. We have listened to the suggestions we have received on this and believe that the forthcoming solution will be acceptable to end-users.

Do note that since the chats are encrypted (128-bit SSL), password delivery via that method is still considered a safe means to provide sensitive information. Sending passwords via a “plain text” or “in the clear” method (such as email) is now not an acceptable means unless no other means are available AND required specifically by the end user.

Server Password section within the GoGrid Portal

Some users may have been confused or concerned about the Passwords section actually within their GoGrid Portal. The design of this section within the portal is multi-fold:

• When new servers are created, the initial root or administrator passwords are automatically displayed here so that customers can immediately access those servers via SSH or RDC.
• This section is also used by Support to help customers troubleshoot issues they may be having with their GoGrid server. Customers can put users names and passwords here for Support to easily use and see. Also, within a multi-user GoGrid environment (where multiple people have access to the same GoGrid account), this is a convenient place for passwords to be “shared” among these users.
• Changes made to users and/or passwords within this section of the portal have NO EFFECT on the actual servers themselves. If a user changes their root password on a GoGrid server, it is NOT updated within this section of the GoGrid portal. Any updates to the password section of the portal must be done manually.
• While we don’t always recommend this, if you are concerned about your security settings, change your root or administrator passwords immediately once you log onto a GoGrid Cloud server and then delete those password listings within the GoGrid Password section. Note that if you forget that password, you may be forced to delete the server. This, however, may increased the lead time for GoGrid support to help you troubleshoot any issues.

We encourage any comments and suggestions regarding GoGrid product features, procedures and security. The procedures listed above may be subject to changes as we work to providing more security and functionality.

At LinuxWorld 2008, Linux Journal’s Associate Editor, Shawn Powers, interviewed Mario Olivarez, the GoGrid Director of Product Management about Cloud Computing and how GoGrid is taking the technology and Cloud Computing movement to the next level. Obviously the LinuxWorld 2008 judges couldn’t agree with us more as they awarded GoGrid the high recognition of Best of Show. Below you can watch the Linux Journal interview in its entirety.

We will definitely have more interviews with various GoGrid champions in the future as well as some other exciting videos floating out there “in the wild.” Stay tuned!

The High Scalability blog today posted a great list of various Cloud Computing blogs currently available. If you are looking for a single source of Cloud Computing information, I definitely recommend looking at Todd Huff’s solid list.

The post is located here.

His post is broken down into specific Categories: Meta Sources and Specific Blogs. I’m sure that these will grow over time. Currently there are 5 Meta Source listings (obvious ones there include the Google Groups on Cloud Computing) and a good group of Specific blogs. Some of the Specific Blog highlights that I think are important ones to look at are:

• Randy Bias’s Neo Tactics: State of the Art for Startups.
• Nicholas Carr’s Roughtype : Author of The Big Switch: Rewiring the World From Edison to Google.
• John Willis’ IT Management and Cloud Blog: Personal comments and podcasts.
• Reuven Cohen’s ElasticVapor Blog. The ramblings of Reuven Cohen, co-Founder & CTO Enomaly Inc.
• http://Blog.RightScale.com: Cloud Computing. Delivered.

The GoGrid blog was included in the list (Thanks Todd).

I would like to add a few more that I personally read that others may find as useful resources:

• Nati Shalom’s Blog: Discussions about middleware and distributed technologies
• ZDNet.com Virtually Speaking: about virtualization with Dan Kusnetzky & Paula Rooney
• Avastu Blog: Sustainable Global Clouds: Real-time market analysis & research on Cloud Computing
• Appistry Blogs: At the convergence of Grid Computing, Virtualization and SOA

Feel free to post some comments with any other good Cloud Computing blogs out there. For those that want to cheat, you can always do a quick “Cloud Computing” blog search on Google or Technorati.