I've taken a couple of days off to watch the outcome of the Cloud Expo, CloudCamp, and especially, the CCIF meetings. After three days, this posting is my response to everything I learned, and what I think next steps are. I'd like to have an open dialogue about it: but let's get moving.  read more »

A recent discussion on CloudForum pertains to the nature of what interoperable cloud computing platform might be. It’s been a real debate in the community for long time about what and inter operable cloud API actually looks like.  read more »

Here's an interesting problem. Through the dot com era (and slightly before), the hosting market was driven to ravenous acquisitions of companies based on the value of their customers. Companies were able to make acquisitions on the basis of their customer contracts - a fairly simple equation.

Cloud Computing is built on utility platforms. It doesn't actually have a lock-in on contracts. Your customer base is stuck with you only as long as nothing else better comes along, or the pain of moving outweighs other factors.  read more »

So, for a while now, we at WorkHabit have been wanting to integrate two of our favorite tools: Google Docs, and Drupal.

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While Twitter has been the source of many articles speculating to it's monetization potential, no known articles exist that analyze the feasibility and potential market size of Twitter given leading ideas. This article examines five possible revenue models that we consider "best bets" for Twitter. From these models and observations, we consider the possibility of whether a full time, dedicated-to-twitter-based agency can exist, and what possible market they would serve.  read more »

Is it possible that the nature of user's attention has changed, and continues to change in reaction to a change in communication brought about by social networks? I'm trying to dive into more in-depth, research backed positions about some of the key issues that have been bothering me. I'm using my background to find empirical information, rather than rely on anecdotal evidence. Most of the articles I read in other blogs on this subject rely on anecdotal evidence: increases in spam, increased search eliminating the need to know (when you can look up)  read more »

Here is a fact: developers tend to overvalue their innovations.

Contrarily, consumers tend to undervalue innovation. This disconnect is fundamental, and explains so many behaviors in Silicon Valley, I'm surprised by the lack of awareness or at least attention paid to these points by venture and early capital investors. It's out there, but it's advice you'll usually only get after you drive a few companies into the ground, and that can be tough advice to learn.  read more »

Ruven made a really great post about cloud interoperability today:  read more »

When users control the conversation, there is an interesting tendency for the elevation of users as experts based on contribution. If there is one thing I've learned about the Drupal community over the years, and in my years working around and in Open Source communities for years before that, it's this: contribution and presence are the basis of community capital; or, in short: contribution is social capital.  read more »

Here's a question that's given me a lot of trouble. I have Joyent, a company that is largely based on Open Solaris, claiming to be a Cloud Provider.

Here's the problem: Joyent does not provide an API. Or if they do, I can't find it.

Joyent has a list up that talks about what they think makes up a cloud provider:  read more »

1. Virtualization Layer Network Stability