OK, I admit it: I’m looking forward to VMworld like a kid looks forward to camp. But for exactly the opposite reason: VMworld marks the end of summer and the beginning of the fall tradeshow season. Summer, despite its all-American goodness, is an odd time for our industry—no less busy due to fall preparations, but devoid of the big moves, vision and ideas that make it exciting. That’s saved for the fall, when everyone is back from the beach and ready to listen.

So, if you’re ready to listen, you’re likely to hear the following themes emerging at VMworld 2010:

From cap ex to op ex

VMware practically owns the franchise on the cap ex value proposition, having proven that the hypervisor hath no equal when it comes to reeling in server spending. VMware CEO Paul Maritz has signaled a heavier emphasis on the op ex side of the equation. Why? I suspect two reasons:

• Virtualization is a cap ex boon and an op ex bust—as compute capacity is made available by the hypervisor, it’s quickly filled in with new machines. The result? An explosion in the number of machines that need to be managed—and an explosion in operating expense.
• The often-forgotten fact that cap ex represents less than 30 percent of overall IT spending. The larger share of cost savings—higher on the mind of the CIO—is operating expense.

Consequently, op ex is emerging as the new cap ex and will get considerable attention this year.Renewed emphasis on business value Continue reading…

Okay, this is somehow cloud related, but mostly I’m writing about this because Age of Empires was one of the games I spent endless hours playing in college.

Microsoft announced the return of Age of Empires, one of the biggest PC franchises in the world, having sold more than 20 million copies worldwide and essentially defined real-time strategy (RTS) games for the PC, says Dave Luehmann, general manager of Microsoft Games Studios. “This next version will really change the rulebook of how those games are played”.

Age of Empires Online, now in a closed beta release, will be familiar to franchise fans, who can go here and sign up for a chance to join the beta. However, at the game’s core is a new, socially connected experience. The game now invites players to create a living, growing online world that’s shared with friends around the world through Games for Windows LIVE, an online gaming network related to Xbox LIVE. Anyone with a LIVE account can see their friends online and send and receive voice messages, text messages, and game invites. In Age of Empires Online, players can use the service to invite friends for a cooperative quest or a friendly challenge in the local arena, trade goods and weapons, and visit each other’s capital cities. Continue reading…

You can try Windows Azure and SQL Azure for a month for free, with the Windows Azure One Month Pass USA. Through this unique offer, US developers can get a one month pass to try out Windows Azure and SQL Azure - without having to submit a credit card.

Limited to US developers, the first 500 to sign up each month will get a full months pass good for the one calendar month. In addition, youll get free phone, chat and email support through the Front Runner for Windows Azure program.

There are a ton of great resources provided on the Windows Azure One Month Pass USA offer page, as well as the full details for this offer, so be sure to check it out and request your subscription today.

For the Ubuntu faithful, the recent announcement that Canonical could be expanding their business relationship with IBM in regards to the Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud platform is welcome news. Though details are vague at this point, the early buzz is that a strengthened joint venture between the two companies might possibly be forthcoming at this week’s Open Source Convention in Portland, Oregon. As of late April of this year, UEC counts 12,000 active deployments and growing. This is good news as it demonstrates that business is starting to take Ubuntu seriously as an alternative to the established heavyweights in the industry. Continue reading…

With Cluster Compute Instances, you can now run many types of large-scale network-intensive jobs without losing the core advantages of EC2: a pay-as-you-go pricing model and the ability to scale up and down to meet your needs.

Each Cluster Compute Instance consists of a pair of quad-core Intel ‘Nehalem’ X5570 processors with a total of 33.5 ECU (EC2 Compute Units), 23 GB of RAM, and 1690 GB of local instance storage, all for $1.60 per hour.

Continue reading…

The Patterns & Practices team have just released the first part of the Windows Azure Architecture guide.

This book is the first volume in a planned series about the Windows® Azure™ platform and focuses on a migration scenario. It introduces a fictitious company named Adatum which step-by-step modifies its expense tracking and reimbursement system, aExpense, so that it can be deployed to Windows Azure. Each chapter explores different considerations: authentication and authorization, data access, session management, deployment, development life cycle and cost analysis.

You can view the guide here.

Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) is a web service that makes it easier to set up, operate, and scale a relational database in the cloud. It provides cost-efficient, resizable capacity for an industry-standard relational database and manages common database administration tasks.

Amazon RDS gives you access to the full capabilities of a familiar MySQL database. This means the code, applications, and tools you already use today with your existing MySQL databases work seamlessly with Amazon RDS. Amazon RDS automatically patches the database software and backs up your database, storing the backups for a user-defined retention period.

Starting today, there is a new tab in the AWS Management Console for the Amazon Relational Database Service.

You can now easily create, manage, and scale DB Instances: Continue reading…

CloudFront delivers your static and streaming content using a global network of edge locations. Amazon CloudFront delivers your static and streaming content using a global network of edge locations. Requests for your objects are automatically routed to the nearest edge location, so content is delivered with the best possible performance. You can now enable logging for an Amazon CloudFront Streaming distribution Once enabled for a particular distribution, CloudFront logs all accesses to a designated Amazon S3 bucket. The information in the log files will let you know which of your streaming media files are the most popular and will also let you see which CloudFront Edge Location was used to stream the information.

Each log entry contains the following information: Continue reading…

In case you missed it, Microsoft released SQL Azure FAQ, providing an architectural overview of SQL Azure Database, and describing how you can use SQL Azure to augment your existing on-premises data infrastructure or as your complete database solution. Some of the questions answered in the document:

• How do I connect to SQL Azure?
• I am unable to connect to SQL Azure. How can I troubleshoot this problem?
• Where can I find sample connection strings for SQL Azure?
• Are there any hands-on labs or demos available for moving data between on-premise SQL Server and SQL Azure?
• How do I configure SQL Azure Firewall settings?
• How can I grant my Web Role access to SQL Azure?

(more after the jump)
Continue reading…

Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) is now available in our EU (Ireland) region.

Customers with existing IT infrastructure in the EU can now deploy Amazon VPC in the same region in order to provide the best possible experience for their users. They can also deploy an Amazon VPC in the EU to ensure that their data remains in the EU.

Get the latest VPC Getting Started Guide here.

Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC) is a secure and seamless bridge between a company’s existing IT infrastructure and the AWS cloud. AmazonVPC enables enterprises to connect their existing infrastructure to a set of isolated AWS compute resources via a Virtual Private Network (VPN) connection, and to extend their existing management capabilities such as security services, firewalls, and intrusion detection systems to include theirAWS resources. Amazon VPC integrates today with Amazon EC2, and will integrate with other AWS services in the future. As with all Amazon Web Services, there are no long-term contracts, minimum spend or up-front investments required.