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Monday, 4 August 2014

The Internet of Things

Synthetic and comprehensive definition of The Internet of Things: #‎IoT‬ paradigm = sensors + network + actuators + local and cloud intelligence + creative UI (Read the full article: #IoTH: The Internet of Things and Humans) The most interesting aspect is the concept of “intelligence”. In the near future, the AI (Artificial Intelligence) will be pervasive, not only applied to a restricted group of highly specialized applications. The current devices, despite the name "smart" (SamartTV, Smartphones, SmartWatch etc.), are quite stupid. They are only capable of handling complex input and...
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Saturday, 14 June 2014

The Economics of the Cloud

Great books and articles are created to last. Recently, I had the opportunity to reread this article created about 4 years ago but sill full of insights. http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/presskits/cloud/docs/the-economics-of-the-cloud.pdf I really like the original incipit: “When cars emerged in the early 20th century, they were initially called horseless carriages. Understandably, people were skeptical at first, and they viewed the invention through the lens of the paradigm that had been dominant for centuries: the horse and carriage.” This is the key to unfold the power of Cloud, free...
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Friday, 13 June 2014

OpenStack from a Microsoft perspective

Big tech events are always an invaluable source of information.  My favorites are TechEd, Build, OpenStack summit, BlackHat, Def Con, Velocity, etc… It is not realistic to attend in person all events around the world but online you can easily google for videos, slides, source code and any kind of information. In the last TechEd 2014 conference, sessions available here, something grabbed my attention:  Microsoft CloudOS vs OpenStack. I could not resist, so I started to watch….. The presentation starts with an interesting overview of the current cloud platform ecosystem. The slide below...
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Thursday, 8 May 2014

Cloud Architecture Revolution

The introduction of cloud technologies is not a simple evolution of existing ones, but a real revolution.  Like all revolutions, it changes the points of views and redefines all the meanings. Nothing is as before.  This post wants to analyze some key words and concepts, usually used in traditional architectures, redefining them according the standpoint of the cloud.  Understanding the meaning of new words is crucial to grasp the essence of a pure cloud architecture. <<There is no greater impediment to the advancement of knowledge than the ambiguity of words.>> THOMAS...
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Friday, 18 April 2014

OpenStack Compendium - The Architecture

In this post we continue our journey in OpenStack with a presentation of the high-level architecture. OpenStack is not based on a single huge open source project but it has been architected and designed using a modular approach where each component is developed independently by a dedicated project. This is the big picture of the OpenStack architecture including every module and the relation with the other components: Because OpenStack is highly configurable, it is possible to create a tailored solution using only a subset of modules in order to cover the specific needs. For this reason,...
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Sunday, 13 April 2014

OpenStack Compendium

I'm a great fan of Amazon Web Services, perfect for creating pure cloud architectures without compromises, and I follow with great interest the evolution of Microsoft Azure. Anyway, both are proprietary platforms, but what about open platforms? The open approach has always been a revolutionary concept in the computer history, it decided the success of the platforms and technologies: the success of DEC with PDP was also due to the publishing of detailed specs about inner workings and interfaces; the IBM and the era of  PC-compatible computers based on an open architetture and non-proprietary...
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