Cloud Management Tools Bring Sanity to Cloud Operations

A cottage industry of Cloud management tools has emerged to solve many of the issues companies face as they move to the cloud, like multi-cloud deployments, costs, governance, and security (see my earlier post).   I had the chance to sit in on a live demo of enStratus last week to see how they attack the issues mentioned above.  The enStratus cloud management solution provides a suite of tools for managing a cloud infrastructure, gaining control of costs and providing governance without sacrificing the agility the cloud can provide.

CloudPassage Cloud Security Product Review

Updated:I came across a white paper published by CloudPassage, most likely in the attempt to drive interest in their cloud security product.  It worked, since it resulted in my doing a little digging into their product.  They did bring up a security threat I hadn’t thought of and it was just enticing enough to get me to investigate their offering a little further.  Their paper was focused on Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) environments like Amazon Web Services (AWS) (reviewed here), or Rackspace (reviewed here).  The CloudPassage paper focused on the security threats within the context of the products that they offer in order to mitigate these threats.

I will review some of the key points made by CloudPassage here, and then I’ll review their solution offering.   Hang on though -- this article assumes you understand cloud IaaS, and some general Linux and security topics.

Quick Review and Comparison of Rackspace

Rackspace, a cloud infrastructure as a service (IaaS) vendor, has been ramping up their advertising and recently announced that they were giving away their cloud management software for free for use in private clouds.  Given all the activity and buzz in the media about Rackspace and OpenStack, I thought I’d give Rackspace a test run.  I used the same approach that I used in my Amazon AWS review and setup an application on their cloud for a semi real-world trial.  Given that I’ve used AWS, I’ll try to do some quick comparisons as well. 

Is Zoho's CRM App Growing Up?

Zoho “software as a service” (SaaS) company has always impressed me.  I use their Invoicing application and reviewed it last year.  According to InfoWorld’s Chris Kanaracus, Zoho is gunning for SalesForce.com with their latest upgrade to their CRM application.  Zoho is claiming they are making inroads into the CRM SaaS market that SalesForce.com is known for.   I like the fresh approach they take to their applications, making them more inviting, easier to understand than their stodgy old school counterparts. Looking at the flashy new capabilities, mobile access, and continious improvement without the hassle of upgrades, I can't help but think they are the next big force in small business solutions via SaaS.

I think that in 2012, we will continue to see more fireworks in the SaaS and infrastructure as a service” (IaaS) cloud industry.  

- Chris Claborne
 

Using Amazon’s AWS

In my last article, “Exploring Amazon’s Cloud IaaS & PaaS”, I introduced Amazon Web Services (AWS), and I used AWS to describe the terms “Infrastructure as a Service” (IaaS), and “Platform as a Service” (PaaS).  In order to better understand the value of AWS, I deployed a real world application.  In this article, I’ll step through how I deployed and scaled my example application on AWS and comment on where I found the greatest value to be.  If you haven’t read my first AWS article, “Exploring Amazon’s Cloud IaaS & PaaS”, I suggest you read it as an introduction to AWS.