Jian Zhen

Jian Zhen's Blog The world of clouds these days is full of definitions and counter-definitions. There are many posts that try to define the concept of cloud computing; many that try to distinguish utility computing, grid computing and cloud computing; many that try to define public vs private clouds; and many that dismisses the notion of private clouds. John Foley, in his article “The Rise Of Enterprise-Class Cloud Computing“, referred to private cloud as an oxymoron, That’s an oxymoron since cloud computing, by definition, happens outside of the corporate data center, but it’s the technology that’s important here, not the semantics. But by whose definition? The industry as a whole haven’t even been able to nail down a concrete definition of cloud computing. Given that there’s no concrete definition, then by definition, private cloud is not an oxymoron. But I do ag... (more)

Five Key Challenges of Enterprise Cloud Computing

In the past month or so I have talked to a lot of people in the cloud computing and virtualization space. Many of these folks are working at/on startups that solves one of the many challenges for Enterprise cloud computing. What are these challenges? I have tried to summarize them here (in no particular order). Data Governance I’ve written extensively about the need for data governance in previous posts. In essence, enterprises have a ton of sensitive data that requires access monitoring and protection. Data (and information generated from the data) is the life blood of many ent... (more)

Cloud Computing: The Rise of Cloud Platforms and Why the OS Doesn’t Matter

Jian Zhen's "Cloud Feed" Blog Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) is one of the buzzwords that’s mentioned often in the cloud computing space. In short, PaaS is a platform for delivering applications, similar to a pre-built system with hardware, OS and application stack all built in. In the PaaS case, this system is hosted. All you have to do is “upload” the application code and it should take care of the executing and scaling of it. A quick survey of the land (by no means comprehensive, I am also including ONLY application platforms, not service-specific platforms such as DabbleDB) sh... (more)

Security and Compliance in the Age of Clouds

At RSA 2009 there were a ton of conversations spun up around the topic of security and compliance in the cloud. First, there were ~20 sessions on cloud security and compliance. I was on one of the panels that focused on cloud security and whether the cloud is secure enough for the enterprises. (Great discussions there and huge thanks to Asheem Chandna of Greylock for organizing it.) Then Cloud Security Alliance released its Guidance for Critical Areas of Focus in Cloud Computing (my initial comments.)  If you look across all of the regulations and mandates out there, like SOX, P... (more)