Salesforce is taking it up a notch???

Last week we saw AWS VP James Hamilton talk about how they are hosting data, transactions, and raw compute for companies at a scale like we’ve never seen before.  Then he gave us a peek at how they do it, using custom servers, routers, power substations and software in order to achieve economies of scale and deliver incredible capabilities for pennies.  On Monday, Salesforce.com announces they are going toinstall HP servers for customers to use.  So, Salesforce is going to kill it (profit wise) with big iron they are buying from HP.  Hmmm, I wonder.

- Chris Claborne

Cloud Vendor Expansion

After taking a much needed vacation I thought I would post an update to catch up on some notable events.  Although Google has been in the cloud business as a “software as a service” (SaaS) provider with their office productivity apps, and a “platform as a service” (PaaS) provider with Google App Engine, they entered the infrastructure as a service (IaaS) field in June, firing a shot over the bow of Amazon, who for the most part is way ahead of everyone in experience and number of products.  HP announced their cloud offering as did Oracle.  All of the new entrants were at limited release status when they made these announcements.

HP TouchPad Thoughts

What follows are my growing notes on the TouchPad.  It’s not really just about the touchpad but to help me understand why iPad is continuing to kick butt in the tablet market.  Some say that there is no tablet market, there’s an iPad market.  The vote is still being counted on that one but early polls show iPad with an unbeatable lead for the next few years.  This isn’t anything new but in review is in part my quest to understand the “why”.   Part of it may indeed be the emotional connection that Apple somehow makes with a very large segment of users.  The Gardian author of “Why do some people really hate Apple” and Donald Norman’s book “Emotional Design” get in touch with this idea.  Although not the key topic of this article I give my thoughts on the Gardian article at the end.