Although cloud computing is not a staple on television, there are some smart shows currently airing that could feature realistic cloud-based storylines. Showrunners seem to be taking more care in getting the technical details right and there more than a couple of shows that feature technical stories on a regular basis.

Possibly the most obvious is Eureka, which is in its fourth season on Syfy. The show's setting is a fictional Oregon town called Eureka. Virtually everyone who lives there is a scientific genius working to advance technology in some unusual way. It's a decidedly light-hearted look at both the dangers and benefits of rapid scientific progress. It wouldn't be a stretch to think that Global Dynamics, the massive company at the heart of Eureka, uses virtualization technologies extensively.

Covert Affairs is a new show on USA Network that makes good use of technology. It's set in the world of the CIA and follows the adventures of young agent as she learns the ropes of international espionage. I imagine there's more that's virtual at the CIA besides their servers.

On Chuck, the titular character is the ultimate virtual computer. He has the contents of a multimedia CIA database known as the Intersect in his brain. The NBC show doesn't focus entirely on technology, but one of the primary settings is a tech store called Buy More.

The main reality where the cloud and television intersect is seen in services such as Netflix and Hulu. They are essentially clouds themselves, offering end users a wider choice in viewing with few or no advertisements. You can tote your laptop to a friend's house and watch a movie or TV show. Bored while waiting at the doctor's office - fire up a TV show on your phone.

It's clear that as lay people begin to understand more about the technology that drives such services, there will be more acceptance. Who knows, maybe there is a future for BlueLock TV!

At a recent event here in Indianapolis, also known as "Sili-corn Valley" to some, a friendly attendee named Kay submitted this question: "How can cloud computing be an advantage to a startup business?"

Let's start with the basics. What is cloud computing? According to the NIST Cloud Computing Project, cloud computing is "a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of resources (e.g. networks, servers, storage, applications and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction." Yes, there are lots of definitions of cloud computing out there, but this one is very suitable and widely accepted.

Now, what constitutes a startup? Startup companies can come in all forms, including those that are simply life-style companies, but the phrase "startup company" is often associated with high growth, technology oriented companies. Investors are generally most attracted to those new companies distinguished by their risk/reward profile and scalability. That is, they have lower bootstrapping costs, higher risk, and higher potential return on investment. Successful startups are typically more scalable than an established business, in the sense that they can potentially grow rapidly with limited investment of capital, labor or land. - via Wikipedia.

Now, let's talk about that last line about successful startups. Successful startups need to be scalable, with the ability to grow rapidly with limited investment in capital, labor or land. We are beginning to get the heart of our friend Kay's questions. Cloud computing sets startups up for those core abilities to control their investments (and keep them "limited").

The major benefits of cloud computing are:

• Limit upfront capital costs - shifting infrastructure costs from capex to opex
• Better ability to match revenue with expenses - you pay for the resources you use, which for most companies equates to how much traffic and revenue they are bringing in the door
• Ability to scale on demand - scale resources up and down as needed, this allows for rapid growth
• Get to market quicker - the cloud enables companies to get up and running more quickly due to rapid provisioning and infrastructure experts doing what they do best
• Spend precious labor costs on people who will better your core business and applications rather than people who must run the infrastructure (we do that for you)
• No need to spend time and money housing, powering and cooling the infrastructure (this just reinforces the startup comment about the ability to grow rapidly with limited investment in capital or land, we've already discussed people)

Check out how DECA Financial Services (a startup) slashed 91% of their first-year infrastructure costs with the BlueLock Cloud.

For more info, check out BlueLock's Advantages of Cloud Computing Blog.

DECA Financial recently chose BlueLock to provide its cloud hosting services, and in the end, slashed 91% of its first-year infrastructure costs.
Founded in 2009, DECA Financial Services is an accounts receivable management (ARM) agency experienced in collecting debt of any type. After experiencing tremendous capital expenditures on technology infrastructure and personnel at a prior employer, the DECA founders searched for a cloud hosting provider that offered ease-of-use and scalability to host their technology platform. Being a very technology-driven agency, DECA needed a robust infrastructure platform to run all of its processes, while not having to deal with the IT resources, people and costs associated with owning the infrastructure hardware.

“Had we built our own infrastructure, we would have spent at least $600,000 on hardware and another $100,000 for one employee to manage the infrastructure – ultimately costing over $700,000 in the first year alone,” said James Hefty, Director of Operations Support, DECA Financial Services. “With BlueLock, our projected first year spend is around $60,000, compared to the original $700,000. Now we have a much higher quality IT environment than we would have if we hosted it ourselves - at a fraction of the price.”

To learn more about the BlueLock & DECA solution, read the case study.

Or, check out the recent news article on Computerworld about the BlueLock & DECA partnership entitled, "IT budgets pointing to the Cloud, expansion."

Over the weekend the OpenStack project proudly announced its existence and its intended goal: to create an infrastructure cloud platform that can reach the scale of a million machines. NASA has evidently dedicated a team of employees to support these efforts likely to replace their existing Eucalyptus cloud fabric controller used within their Nebula infrastructure cloud.

NASA had already been working on Nova, a next-generation cloud fabric controller, for the better part of this year. Nova had even been released as open source project for public adoption. Meanwhile Rackspace, simultaneously prepping their "Ozone" cloud infrastructure software for public release, approached NASA to see if the two could meld their codebases together. As a result OpenStack was born and now Nova seems to have gone defunct... even Nova's old home at http://novacc.org/ redirects to the Nebula cloud computing platform page.

The announcement of OpenStack has generated quite a bit of buzz. Several out in the grand Interwebs are wondering what this collective brain weight will bring. The goals are quite lofty: allow an open, inter-operable fabric for deployment and provisioning of infrastructure as a service. And while there are many cloud projects ready to pledge support, I wonder if consumer adoption is just as rampant. Will service providers spring up, ready to host an OpenStack cloud? Bear in mind while the hypervisor management may be open source and (presumably) free for use, the capital expense of a data center is most decidedly not.

My biggest wonder is how these two (or three) separate projects, up to now independently architected, will be able to merge and work together as a cohesive whole. Nebula and Ozone appear to be comprised of C, Python and C++ - each of which are definitely complimentary languages to each other - but the codebases may leverage very disparate frameworks. Will code have to be largely re-designed and re-written? Will the separate pieces just end up sandwiched together? Or are the software engineering efforts so vast that it doesn't even matter?

One thing is becoming very apparent - everyone and their mom is racing to push their cloud solution out into public light. Even Oracle just released their Cloud Resource Model API - although it seems that is barely making a din above the OpenStack conversation. Everyone established infrastructure and/or software company seems to be throwing their hat in the ring and handing out orchestration solutions. One big problem exists however: are they going to start handing out blade chassis, too?

Yeah, I don't think so, either.

I could be rolling in free hypervisors but it always comes down to one thing: who is managing the SAN? Or figuring out the resulting layer 2 network craziness? Or keeping the cores stoked? Or keeping the backup generator filled with diesel?

At the Purdue Innovation Summit last week Ruth Nickolich submitted a great question to the BlueLock team: What are the advantages of cloud computing?

This is a question that has been asked, and answered many times and in many ways. From the BlueLock perspective, the major advantages of cloud computing are as follows:

• The real advantage of Cloud Computing, especially when using an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) offering which provides managed services as part of the solution, is that you're saving on more than just communications, power, cooling and facilities.  You're moving hardware and (potentially) software costs to the service provider as well as the most expensive part, the staff-related costs.  - via Bob Roudebush
• While security is a major concern when it comes to cloud computing, looking at a move to the cloud not only draws attention to the security measures in the cloud, but also the security measures you are taking in house. How do they measure up? A lot of BlueLock clients get better security from the cloud than in-house. - via Alicia Gaba
• Cloud Computing allows you to shift capital-intensive infrastructure costs to operating expenses, which can save your organization thousands of dollars in the long run. Check out how DECA Financial cut 91% of their infrastructure costs in the first year alone
• Better matching of revenue to expenses
• Rapid provisioning and speed to market
• Competitive advantage - they are able to spend IT time on their application and core business drivers rather than the day-to-day worries of managing the infrastructure

Still looking for more? Check out BlueLock's "Advantages of Cloud Computing" Blog.

Gartner recently released six "rights" and one "responsibility" for cloud service users/clients to help enable better business relationships between vendor and client. This list, although short, is actually quite exhaustive in terms of outlining some major topics a client should cover BEFORE entering a cloud hosting agreement.

Gartner's list of Cloud Computing Rights & Responsibilities:

The right to retain ownership, use and control one’s own data - Service consumers should retain ownership of, and the rights to use, their own data.

The right to service-level agreements that address liabilities, remediation and business outcomes - All computing services - including cloud services - suffer slowdowns and failures. However, cloud services providers seldom commit to recovery times, specify the forms of remediation or spell out the procedures they will follow.

The right to notification and choice about changes that affect the service consumers’ business processes - Every service provider will need to take down its systems, interrupt its services or make other changes in order to increase capacity and otherwise ensure that its infrastructure will serve consumers adequately in the long term. Protecting the consumer’s business processes entails providing advanced notification of major upgrades or system changes, and granting the consumer some control over when it makes the switch.

The right to understand the technical limitations or requirements of the service up front - Most service providers do not fully explain their own systems, technical requirements and limitations so that after consumers have committed to a cloud service, they run the risk of not being able to adjust to major changes, at least not without a big investment.

The right to understand the legal requirements of jurisdictions in which the provider operates - If the cloud provider stores or transports the consumer’s data in or through a foreign country, the service consumer becomes subject to laws and regulations it may not know anything about.

The right to know what security processes the provider follows - With cloud computing, security breaches can happen at multiple levels of technology and use. Service consumers must understand the processes a provider uses, so that security at one level (such as the server) does not subvert security at another level (such as the network).

The responsibility to understand and adhere to software license requirements - Providers and consumers must come to an understanding about how the proper use of software licenses will be assured.

This list brings light to what BlueLock is already doing right to better our relationships with our own clients. Based on the Gartner list provided, we are certainly in the right place.

Server hardware manufacturers and software makers have always touted scalability as a feature.  For cloud hosting providers such as BlueLock, this feature moves to another level: elasticity.  Elasticity is loosely interepreted as implying the capability for services to ramp down as needed as well.  Since most administrator mindsets and tools are geared for provisioning and scaling up, organizations are sometimes concerned that there might be pitfalls they encounter when suddenly being given the ability to scale down at will or as necessary.

Within the BlueLock Infrastructure As A Service (IaaS) Cloud, compute clusters are carefully divided into building blocks called “cores” and these cores are assigned to customers – never assigning more “cores” to a computer cluster than are actually available.  This is the primary issue in the debate between dedicated versus shared cloud computing models – just throwing everyone in the compute pool without regard to expected performance isn’t a good idea.  It’s important to ensure that the capacity available to application(s) is both dedicated and somewhat dynamic.  At BlueLock, once one or more of these “cores” is assigned to a client they are combined together into a resource pool. 

This model of cores and dedicated resource pools, along with the abstraction of physical hardware from the resources assigned to a virtual machine, allows clients to provision (and pay for) only what they need.  As their needs change, additional cores can be added (or removed) to grow (or shrink) resource pools and add (or subtract) to their application’s overall computing capacity.  Since this happens at the virtualization layer, it’s entirely transparent to the underlying operating system and application.  It requires much less prior planning and architecting than building dynamically scalable applications and deploying them on a PaaS cloud.

Recently the swell folks at The Register commented on AWS' latest cluster computing initiative centered around High Performance Computing. In a nutshell this differs from other EC2 instances by providing dedicated servers with two 2.93 GHz, quad-core Xeon X5570s and 23 GB of memory attached to a 10Gb switching layer. Previously you didn't have dedicated hardware... you floated in a pool of resources, hoping that today would be a good day. While the resulting performance gains from dedicated hardware may be significant over the floating-in-the-sea approach, in the end you are just getting a higher performance infrastructure and not a high performance infrastructure.

The annoncements and analysis made me chuckle a bit. For BlueLock to drop another slew of 144 GB blades into a chassis is standard operating procedure. Does that make us HPC as well? For us private clouds and dedicated hardware has always been the order of the day. I find it very telling that the decisions BlueLock made years ago are just now emerging as popular trends for Infrastructure as a Service today.

When evaluating managed IT hosting or cloud hosting providers, it's always good to look at performance not just in terms of "small," "medium" or "large." It's not even how much compute or memory you throw at the problem. Network and filesystem I/O (especially for cloud computing) is a huge factor in overall cluster performance, and one really needs to be at peace with your physical hardware to truly take advantage of your virtual solutions.

Potential cloud computing prospects make the assertion thata all cloud service providers promise availability that is “high.”  Their contention often is that an internal IT department could potentially provide the same level of high availability.  And to some extent, they're correct. 

So what can an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) company like BlueLock promise relative to what a company would be able to achieve if it had invested in its own on-premises data center for a departmental application, for example?  Accountability.

The entire premise underlying the value of cloud hosting is that by sharing a pool of physical resources, IaaS clouds can aggregate all of that compute capacity to deliver better scalability and availability than any one company could provide (even a large F500 company) on their own.  In addition, BlueLock specializes in managed IaaS cloud offerings which add a layer of people on top of that compute capacity and are able to manage those hosted resources as well as (and many times better) than that company could on its own.  Whether or not one takes stock in either of these assertions, the difference between hosting this in an outsourced data center versus one on-premise is the accountability aspect.  With an outsourced solution, companies can have SLAs in place with guaranteed commitments and financial penalties if those commitments aren’t met.  Typically an individual business unit wouldn’t have this “stick” to use with an internal IT department.

Last week marked a very special edition of This Week in Cloud Computing, a web TV show that recaps the week's biggest news in the cloud industry. 

In this 19th edition of This Week In Cloud Computing, BlueLock's very own, Pat O'Day and Eric Thompson from mSpot discuss industry trends and best practices, including: 

• Points of failure and infrastructure resiliency
• Management between public and private clouds
• Cloud washing vs marketing the cloud

Let us know what you think:

With only one more day to enter and a week left to vote - make sure to submit your use case for a chance to win an iPad in the BlueLock vCloud Express Cloud Monkeys Use Case Contest.  Also, if you aren't a user of BlueLock vCloud Express, your votes matter!  Check out the recent entries and vote for your favorites.

We've got some really interesting cloud computing use cases already and these guys need your votes to win!

Typical data center architectures are based around not just the functions that servers perform, but the capabilities of the hardware in performing it.  In a cloud computing scenario, supported by full-scale virtualization, the capabilities of the hardware change from constants to variables.  Sometimes this makes it more difficult for architects to transition larger-scale deployments, even of specific functions like applications hosting, from physical data centers to the cloud. 

To some extent, Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud computing (specifically virtualization as the enabling technology for cloud computing) does homogenize the capabilities of the underlying hardware being used.  This is mostly a benefit because it provides economies of scale and allows IaaS providers to maintain higher availability for servers hosted in a cloud.  It does make things like sizing or designing the deployment of applications a bit tougher because typically we deploy the different aspects of a multi-tier application on different types of platforms – i.e., small, scale-out environments for web servers and large, scale-up environments for back-end database servers.

One approach that can be taken is to build “clouds within clouds” each with different characteristics.  A second approach would be to carve things like compute capacity or storage capacity up  into “building blocks” so that when it’s time to deploy an application, an administrator can combine one or more of these “building blocks” to ensure that a specific part of the application is getting the performance it requires. 

BlueLock takes both approaches.  Within our IaaS cloud hosting offering, we have different tiers with different performance and availability characteristics – BlueLock vCloud Express, Virtual Cloud Professional and Virtual Cloud Enterprise.  On the one end, BlueLock vCloud Express is great for things like dev and test.  On the other end, Virtual Cloud Enterprise is a fully-managed IaaS cloud built for performance and availability and perfect for mission-critical or regulated applications.  We try to work closely with prospects to understand their needs and then match those up with the appropriate service.

Last night's episode of This Week in Cloud Computing features BlueLock's CTO and Co-Founder Pat O'Day. In the episode the subject of application & virtual machine portability comes up several times and Pat discusses one aspect of VM deployment: allowing several virtual machines to be deployed together as a singular, orchestrated virtual application solution. In VMware parlance this kind of logical grouping is considered a vApp, or virtual application solution.

The distinction between vApps and VMs can get a bit foggy and unclear at times. Things become a bit clearer when you take a look at the Open Virtualization Format (OVF) specification, which outlines the metadata that describes a vApp. In a nutshell: vApps are ultimately not definied by the virtual machines that run within them, but instead is a way of telling your infrastructure how VMs can play nicely with each other. Should the exist within an isolated network? How should IP addresses be allocated? Do you start the database server before the application server? Where did that other sock go? The OVF format lets your cloud infrastructure know all the facts necessary during deployments, shutdowns and re-starts.

This can be especially handy for disaster recovery. Imagine a meteor strikes your primary cloud hosting facility. Even though your operations staff now has super-powers, your data center is toast. Luckily you had the presence of mind to keep your vApps in an off-site data center that automagically activates when the primary data center goes offline. Thanks to the vApp's metadata, the disaster recovery site knows how to start an entire n-tier web application in an orderly fashion so that dependent services don't start out-of-order.

This kind of virtual application meta-data is being continuously extended to include service levels and quality of service data so that vApps can be deployed or even migrate to the most ideal resource pool either based on cost, performance or a mix between the two. This specification is evolving, and so are the use cases and technology stack that supports it. As the cloud ecosystem matures we will continue to see innovative ways to focus on not just the virtual machine, but the entire virtual solution.

As the evolution of software continues to evolve towards the Software as a Service (SaaS) model, I regularly get asked questions during my conversations with software executives that further tells me that companies want and need help in this time of evolution. 

Some examples of those regularly asked questions are:

• How are people licensing the software in the SaaS model?
• How are companies structuring their pricing in the SaaS world?
• Should I charge for new enhancements or is that included in the service?
• How do I ensure my client’s data is protected in a hosted environment?
• How can I get better performance in the cloud?

While some companies have this figured out well (at least for today), others continue to struggle and constantly feel like they are reinventing the wheel.  To this end, an organization and newsletter called SoftLetter started a quarterly conference called SaaS University. 
SaaS University is a multi-day conference that focuses on helping top executives (C, E, and VP level) of software companies to be educated around an array of topics concerning SaaS. 

The event focuses on topics such as:  

• What is SaaS?
• What does Cloud mean & what options are best for me?
• Pricing
• Fund Raising
• Development Methodologies
• Hosting Options
• Licensing Options
• Trends, and more. 

Various industry experts lead congruent sessions allowing attendees to focus on the subjects that mean the most to them.  My experience is that SaaS University has found some of the most quality experts to lead the discussions and sessions.  The feedback I received from other attendees supports those sentiments as well.

Thought leaders are asked to speak about industry subject matter and various offerings to support a SaaS company.  They use this stage to speak consultatively on various industry trends and decision factors.

The goal of the event is that top executives can walk away knowing that there are real answers to their questions and that they do not have to re-invent the wheel to be a successful SaaS company.  The networking of software executives and industry leaders jointly make the multi-day educational process a great way to learn fresh and new ideas, as well as the basics of being successful as a SaaS company. 

The next SaaS University Event is July 20-22nd in Washington DC.  Use the code BLUELOCK100 for $100 off. Register & learn more today.

Cloud Computing Services Expert Chooses Advanced Heat Containment System from Airflow Management Authority

Worcester, MA June 28, 2010 -- Wright Line today announced that it has integrated its patented Heat Containment System (HCS) into BlueLock’s world-class, SAS 70 certified data center. BlueLock is an experienced provider of cloud hosting and managed IT services headquartered in Indianapolis.

“As a result of business growth and increased processing densities, excess heat was being produced in our data center,” said Mike Durham, BlueLock’s Director of Quality. “With Wright Line’s HCS, our ability to contain the hot air exhausted at the rack level, and then return it directly back into the CRAC, provides a predictable and efficient operating environment.”

Wright Line’s HCS was developed in direct response to customers growing concerns about the need to significantly reduce operating and capital costs while conserving energy and eliminating the waste most data centers currently experience.

The system captures, manages and directs the heat exhaust from IT equipment to the top rear of the rack enclosure were it is ducted to the data center’s precision air conditioning units through a ceiling plenum or hot air return.

The HCS can be seamlessly integrated into Wright Line’s own Paramount and Vantage Enclosure platforms, as well as most third-party server enclosures, including APC®, Rittal, Knurr and Chatsworth Products, Inc at the factory or in the field.

Every year during the months of June and July the Midwest gets hit with tremendous storms in the late afternoon to early evening.  If you have never experienced this type of weather pattern, it is quite alarming.  It can be sunny and ninety degrees while sitting at work or spending time at the pool with the kids when dark storm clouds roll in and strong winds blow across the hot blacktop.  If there were tumbleweed lying around, many suburban neighborhoods would look like an old western shootout.

Within moments, raindrops and hail the size of marbles are pelting down on anything and everyone in sight.  Lightning streams across the sky and the tornado horn sounds; Welcome to the Midwest.  Whether you experience this type of weather or any other extreme storms, you need to ask yourself, what kind of back-up generator do I need to keep my data center up and running?

Just last week, I was talking with a new client who is in the process of moving part of his infrastructure into the cloud. He had recently experienced a four hour power outage at his office, leaving their on-site systems inoperable.  When most businesses operate without a disaster recovery plan due to financial constrains, I always ask the question - what is your threshold for pain?  It may sound a bit dramatic, or maybe it’s the ex-military in me, but in the end, the question is valid.  Most companies can work though a few hours of power loss, but when the clock keeps ticking and trucks aren’t rolling or vendors can’t pay for days or weeks, the pain threshold is diminished and tensions rise.

Cloud hosting has become well accepted in every size business.  What most CEO’s/Owners may not realize is that they don’t need to put all their proverbial chips in the pot, they can do a hybrid approach to maximize their existing infrastructure or simply utilize the cloud as a pure disaster recovery solution without spending large amounts of their budget on collocation equipment.  I have never understood why companies buy equipment for disaster recovery and let their hard earned money depreciate, let a true cloud company flip the bill for the equipment and as the business owner or CEO, reinvest your CAPEX back into your business. 

Next time you hear the tornado horn sound, think about a company like BlueLock that is rated for an F5 and ask yourself, "Are We Still In Kansas?"

For more information on BlueLock, an Indianapolis based company, visit our website or call me directly at 888-402-1980 ex. 127

The vCloud API is an emerging but already very useful standard for managing virtual infrastructure within a hosted environment. The API itself isn't VMware-centric (although VMware is obviously a huge fan), but instead it was submitted to the Distributed Management Task Force for adoption as an industry standard. The plan is that a single, consistent, platform-independent API could allow a myriad of cloud technologies to effective talk to each other without much fuss or massive message transformation.

The API implementation itself is REST-based, meaning that transactions are stateless and submitted with XML over HTTP. The benefits of using a REST API isn't that it is cutting-edge tech, but instead that it leverages well-established methods for communicating over the Internet. Since REST keeps communication between components simple, poking holes in firewalls and hand-crafting messages can be done very easily.

Let's walk through an example to see just how easy this can be, using only the command line utility curl. Assuming you have a BlueLock vCloud Express account (and, let's face it, all the cool people have vCloud Express accounts) you can simply type:

 curl -u 'your_username:your_password' -v -d "" https://express.bluelock.com/api/v0.8/login 

And voila! The command line parameters you passed along simply tell curl to send your username and password as parameters to a HTTP POST at a given URL.

With the above command you are not only logged in to your vCloud Express account, you also get some advice on what URLs you can try out next:

< Content-Type: application/vnd.vmware.vcloud.orgsList+xml
< set-cookie: vcloud-token=1234567890abcdef; Domain=.bluelock.com; Path=/
< Via: 1.1 express.bluelock.com
< Transfer-Encoding: chunked
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<OrgList xmlns="http://www.vmware.com/vcloud/v0.8" 
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" 
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.vmware.com/vcloud/v0.8
    https://express3.bluelock.com/api/v0.8/schemas/vcloud/organizationList.xsd">
    <Org type="application/vnd.vmware.vcloud.org+xml" 
        name="your_username" 
        href="https://express3.bluelock.com/api/v0.8/org/31415"/>
</OrgList>

Let's follow one of those links and see what we get. We can use curl to perform an HTTP GET on the link referred to as part of the Org element:

curl https://express3.bluelock.com/api/v0.8/org/824

<error message="Session Key is not found" 
    majorerrorcode="403" 
    minorerrorcode="Bad Request">
</error>

We encountered an error... basically vCloud Express doesn't know who you are. That's where the "stateless" aspect of REST comes into play... subsequent vCloud API calls don't remember who you are.

In the earlier login call we received an HTTP Cookie as part of the response. That "cookie" is a value that reminds the vCloud API of who we are and that we are actually legit, logged-in users. With every subsequent request we send we must also send along the cookie, as in:

curl --cookie "vcloud-token=1234567890abcdef" https://express3.bluelock.com/api/v0.8/org/31415

And now we receive back the response:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Org href="https://express3.bluelock.com/api/v0.8/org/31415" 
    name="your_username" 
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.vmware.com/vcloud/v0.8 
    https://express3.bluelock.com/api/v0.8/schemas/vcloud/organization.xsd"
    xmlns="http://www.vmware.com/vcloud/v0.8" 
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
    <Link rel="down" 
        href="https://express3.bluelock.com/api/v0.8/catalog/0" 
        type="application/vnd.vmware.vcloud.catalog+xml"  
        name="System Catalog"/>
    <Link rel="down" 
        href="https://express3.bluelock.com/api/v0.8/catalog/51413" 
        type="application/vnd.vmware.vcloud.catalog+xml"  
        name="your_username Private Catalog"/>
    <Link rel="down" 
        href="https://express3.bluelock.com/api/v0.8/tasksList/123" 
        type="application/vnd.vmware.vcloud.tasksList+xml"/>
    <Link rel="down" 
        href="https://express3.bluelock.com/api/v0.8/vdc/456" 
        type="application/vnd.vmware.vcloud.vdc+xml"  
        name="testvdc"/>
    <Description></Description>
    <FullName></FullName>
</Org>

More links for us to follow! Awesome!

The full vCloud API specification is available on VMware's site, and the 0.8 version of this API is available on BlueLock vCloud Express. REST easy!

With great power comes great responsibility. At least, that's what I learned from Spiderman comic books. 

And what better way to illustrate this point than to look at it through the lens of an IT consultant? Cloud computing is a powerful weapon in the toolbox available to any organization. But some of the features that make cloud technology a value-building business tool are the same features that enable hackers, spammers, and other villains of the web to exploit innocent people (newbies and experienced users alike). 

Welcome to the dark side of The Cloud – where virtualization is used to power hacking, malicious malware attacks, and sinister spamming campaigns. Lern more about this underworld of the web in this Whiteboard Wednesday video:



What do you think? How can we work together to make the web a more secure place?

A recent post entitled "Five Reasons for the Cloud Computing Boom," by John Soat on Plug Into the Cloud, an InformationWeek's Cloud Computing Destination, surfaces further evidence that the cloud and all its glory, is here to stay.

He writes the cloud is "a bonafide IT phenomenon that points to the future of organizational computing."

Gartner, a leading research firm, recently released a cloud computing report that estimates cloud services revenue worldwide will reach $68.3 billion this year, a 16.6% increase from last year’s revenue of $58.6 billion. And the industry will experience strong growth through 2014, when Gartner predicts worldwide cloud services revenue will climb to $148.8 billion.

Soat goes on to outline the five factors he believes have led to the success and buzz around this "IT phenomenon."

1. The recession which has brought on IT cutbacks and the need for innovation ways to cut costs.

2. CFO's ability to forego capex investments in technology.

3. CIO's have embraced the tactical benefits of the cloud.

4. The general acceptance of outsourcing as an IT strategy.

5. Nicholas Carr's writing which outlined the cloud computing arguments and provides one basic message: IT should be looked on as a low-cost commodity.

Comments on Soat's blog post also point out that the distributed nature of the workforce in the recent past has also promoted the cloud.

I believe we are currently seeing the beginning of an all out adoption towards cloud, which comes on the coattails of the widespread virtualization adoption. As businesses small and large begin to strategically think about their cloud options we will see more and more adopt private cloud, public cloud, or a hybrid cloud approach. At BlueLock, we are seeing a lot of traction with new (startup) companies jumping straight into the cloud and larger companies dipping their toes further and further in.

As a systems administrator working the BlueLock Support Desk, I handle requests from a variety of clients. As a result, I have an opportunity to get to know our clientele better than other staff. It's a vital role and offers more challenges than standard help desk work. In a typical day, I will handle firewall change requests, virtual machine performance issues, IP address assignment, research, hard drive expansion and other tasks. No two days are the same and the level of activity varies from hour to hour.

Our primary goal is always to provide excellent customer service. One of my goals to that end is to be as pleasant and reassuring as possible. Though I may not be able to find a quick solution for a given issue, I have resources readily available to advance the process. Keeping the lines of communication open between involved parties is a special challenge. If a request is overly complex, I may need to involve the Engineering Team and administrative staff. The support desk acts as a coordinator for these tasks, ensuring progress toward an acceptable solution.

Virtualization and the Cloud are still a part of the wild frontier and I strive to help ease the transition for new adopters. Whether I'm explaining how VMware stores files or detailing the backup process, I consider the comfort level of my audience. I answer many questions over the phone, but others may require exchanging documentation. Our flexibility helps build goodwill and confidence in our offerings.

To help our clients achieve the true benefits of Cloud computing we have to bring something special to the table every day. These roles that I've detailed all go toward creating a special relationship. When a client signs on the dotted line with BlueLock we become a part of their organization start building that relationship immediately. By fostering that common connection we are making a serious commitment to success for all involved.