Storage Cloud and Cloud Computing
Cloud is a huge topic and every vendor/ people has its own definition as each has its own goal/ interest. I give you my personal comment 
I’m not expert of storage. But in term of Cloud, storage doesn’t bring much difference than other elements, like SaaS, PaaS, Network as a Service… In my earlier speeches @ software group and lab, I was asked what Cloud is. My answer in one word is Scalability, if in two words, they’re Dynamic Scalability.
Let’s look at Apache Hadoop, which makes EC2, S3, SDB, CloudFront in Amazon. The most shining part is Hadoop enables clustering commodity servers – low end, high end, *nix or Windows, 1 CPU or 16 CPUs, Pentium I or IV, memory low… all doesn’t matter. They all can become a part of Cloud that provides storage and computing capability. Even though there is still performance bugs in current release (bring-up a Hadoop cluster of 1,500 machines takes about 1 hour, when its primary NameNode is down and restarting…), its release now is 0.18. Not only does it bring marketing hype in Cloud, but also real business to cloud service provider, such as Amazon Web Service, FlexiScale, ParaScale, RackSpace and a lot.
Does IBM have the similar product or solution? IBM focuses on high- end and enterprise! IBM may miss some. I’m engaged with one telco customer in China, who has only commodity servers, without having WebSphere, Tivoli, and DB2. They expect IBM build a solution of internet hosting service. From my point of view, Amazon Machine Image (AMI) closely fits their requirement/ environment in RackSpace’s business model.
Private Storage Cloud is a trend that I cannot deny. I think AMI- like and RackSpace- like cloud models work in Private Cloud as well, with enhancement of APIs to IBM branded products.
Back to Amazon, on top of Apache Hadoop, what else uniqueness does Amazon have? Amazon developed tons of friendly APIs that allows easy access to their Cloud architecture.
I don’t have much in- depth view on Sun’s storage. But WikiMedia 3 days ago announced to choose Sun’s Cloud Computing service to enrich its multimedia experience… http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/pr/2008-11/sunflash.20081120.1.xml . It’s a kind of signal…
EMC releases Atmos > http://www.emc.com/products/detail/software/atmos.htm that is IBM’s strong competitor.
Microsoft has too ironic image that limits its offering/ service on operating system oriented even it is eager to expand its product line of Cloud Computing by Windows Live and Hyper-V. Microsoft is too OS dependent that doesn’t encourage the choice/ adoption in cloud perspective.
