James Houghton

The deployment of infrastructure systems to support applications has been a challenge since we first developed a choice beyond the venerable mainframe. To some it’s a simple formula; take a server, toss in a little network and storage, bake for a few weeks and you’re done. If you... (more)

As enterprises move inexorably towards the Cloud, a faint murmur in the distance is growing louder and louder. What is it - the security forces objecting...the CFO wondering where their money is going now...business teams clamoring for faster response time? Good guesses, but this... (more)

The past week hosted the increasingly popular VMworld 2010 event at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. The title of the conference was "Virtual Roads, Actual Clouds", but the undercurrent of the show was all about ‘VM stall' and of course whatever vendor XYZ can do to help you ... (more)

The past few weeks we have been discussing some of the mistakes made in early cloud deployments. As a refresher, here are the issues we outlined: Not understanding the business value Assuming server virtualization is enough Not understanding service dependencies Leveraging traditi... (more)

A few days ago we facilitated a passionate discussion on the subject of Blueprints (ah, the joys of an emerging market). The gist of the conversation was focused on deciding where limited marketing resources should be applied, and during that exercise a surprising insight came to... (more)

Over the past several weeks we have been discussing some of the mistakes made in early cloud deployments. As a refresher, here are the issues we outlined: Not understanding the business value Assuming server virtualization is enough Not understanding service dependencies Leveragin... (more)

Okay, so the title is a shameless attempt to grab your attention - glad it worked! But in truth this week's blog is actually about what your applications depend on, and understanding what impact deployment in a Cloud environment may have. As we continue the discussion about the ... (more)

In a previous post we discussed the positive shift in the cloud computing discourse towards actionable steps rather than philosophical diatribes on definitions. And to support that discussion we offered the following list of things not to do: Not understanding the business value... (more)

In our last post we discussed the positive shift in the Cloud Computing discourse towards actionable steps rather than philosophical diatribes on definitions. And to support that discussion we offered the following list of things not to do: Not understanding the business value A... (more)

A shift is finally occurring in the Cloud Computing discourse. Topics like "what is it" have been supplanted by more useful questions such as "should I do it?", "how should I do it?", and "when should I do it?" In appreciation of this new phase of Cloud Computing adoption, we'd l... (more)