To state the obvious, cloud computing is going to be big in 2010 according to Gartner and just about every other analyst firm on the planet.

The cloud computing trend so obvious that Stephen O'Grady from Red Monk says that they "consider that a given", and he moves right into more detailed predictions. He points out that cloud API proliferation will be a serious problem in 2010: "It’s not that open APIs are bad, individually: far from it. You’d rather have one than not. But how are customers to manage them as they multiply?" Nat Torkington at O'Reilly points out that this is a big opportunity for companies that can provide migration services between cloud providers. I've talked before about the importance of solutions that make it easy for companies to move between various cloud platforms; for example, Ubuntu and Red Hat are both starting down this path.

James Governor at Red Monk sees hybrid cloud and on premise models for the enterprise as a trend for 2010: "Hybrid is now just the reality of how we get things done. Just as open source began as a fringe activity, but captured the mainstream, so SaaS and Cloud are increasingly just an economic and technical reality. Cloud doesn’t replace on premise, it augments it. That said, the Big Cloud Backlash will be in full effect in 2010, after all the hype in 2009."

Open source will have a big impact on cloud solutions in 2010. The 451 Group sees cloud computing, open data and the threat of platform lock-in as a "new battleground for FOSS in 2010 ... In fact we have argued that we see open source as complementary to cloud computing and that open source has a role to play in reducing that lock-in." Stephen O'Grady says, "Open source, building from its mainstream acceptance, will emerge as the most credible alternative to proprietary cloud and mobile platforms." I expect to see even more open source solutions for the cloud in 2010 ranging from infrastructure to migration tools to cloud platforms.

What are your predictions for open source and cloud computing in 2010?

Dawn: What do you like about working on open source projects at Intel?

Daniel: The level of impact one has. Mentioning Intel here opens doors and raises eyebrows. Of course this raises the bar, but it is always an interesting challenge to find out how Intel and the open source ecosystem can work together.

Also, I like the way Intel participates in open source with regard to having its hardware work with Linux while engaging the community in it.

Dawn: You are planning a Moblin Day Roadshow in December. Can you tell us more about it?

Daniel: Oh, sure. Moblin is the fine tuned open source stack for Intel Atom processor-based computers, and we found that awareness in the Latin American region is low with ISVs, OEMs, and the community at large.

With that motivation, and building up from a similar event held in Brazil in February 2009, we will be holding the roadshow the 10th of December in the "Buenos Aires Auditorium" at Buenos Aires, Argentina. It will cover topics from Moblin-based technologies to the Atom Development Program, as well as having guest speakers on board from major OSVs. Wishfully thinking, the event will allow us to measure impact towards having a yearly edition. You can register for the Moblin Day Roadshow if you would like to attend.

Dawn: What are some of the things that make open source work in the Latin American region unique when compared to other geographic areas?

Daniel: Well, for one open source in this region has a more political / philosophical component that in other regions. This has to be taken into account when one approaches the community so that our efforts are perceived as what they truly are, which is contributing to have a strong and healthy ecosystem.

Having said this, there are a large number of developers and small companies which have not yet reached their full potential in developing a business around their open source products or their contributions to open source projects. By having a presence in the region, and particularly a software development center in Córdoba, Argentina, we can take on the challenge of addressing those companies and work together.

Dawn: What do you do for fun when you aren't at work?

Daniel: Try to get away from computers? Seriously, Córdoba City is near a mountain region and is always an open opportunity to get in touch with nature there. And lately I'm working on making my 1-year old nephew believe he has a cool uncle. :-)

In this video from the Intel booth at OSCON, Paul Cooper, Moblin Apps and UI Engineering Manager at Intel, talks about the user experience on Moblin. The netbook as a mobile device with a smaller screen size, keyboard and trackpad provided particular challenges that had be considered when designing the user experience for Moblin.

You can read an interview with Paul for more details about the improvements they have made to the Moblin user experience, and we have many more open source videos on the multimedia page.

The 451 Group

'Cloud computing' describes a service model that combines a general organizing principle for IT delivery, infrastructure components, an architectural approach and an economic model – basically, a confluence of grid computing, virtualization, utility computing, hosting and software as a service (SaaS).

Or, put more simply, the cloud is IT, presented as a service to the user, delivered by virtualized resources that are independent of location.

IDC's Frank Gens

Cloud Services = Consumer and Business products, services and solutions that are delivered and consumed in real-time over the Internet

Cloud Computing = an emerging IT development, deployment and delivery model, enabling real-time delivery of products, services and solutions over the Internet (i.e., enabling cloud services)

Forrester's James Staten

Forrester defines cloud computing as a standardized IT capability (services, software, or infrastructure) delivered via Internet technologies in a pay-per-use, self-service way.

Burton Group

Cloud computing is the set of disciplines, technologies, and business models used to render IT capabilities as on-demand services. "On-demand" permits agile deployment of services within an enterprise; it also permits delivery of services as utilities in an open market subject to competition.

I only mentioned a couple of definitions, but you can read at least a dozen more from Jim Kaskade's post.

How do you define cloud computing? Which of these definitions do you agree with and which do you think aren't quite right?

You can watch more of our videos by visiting the open source multimedia page.

Dawn: What do you like about working in Intel's Open Source Technology Center?

Don: Being an open source bigot I find it refreshing to work in a department that is committed to open source, even though we are a small light in the darkness of closed source.

Dawn: How did your background in Unix / Linux kernel internals lead to working on virtualization?

Don: Hard to say that my background in Linux/Unix internals necessarily led to working on virtualization. I was hired into the virtualization group and, hopefully, had the right skills at the right time. I'm enjoying my job here given that virtualization is new and different, even if it shares a lot of the same principles that apply to kernel internals.

Dawn: Can you tell us more about what you are doing to enable Intel virtualization features for open source projects?

Don: A lot of my time is spent enabling open source vendors to support virtualization, and Intel virtualization features, in their products. Witness the recent release of Red Hat's Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4 which has support for direct device assignment utilizing Intel's Virtualization Technology for directed I/O and Intel's support of the PCI SIG standard Single Root I/O Virtualization.

Dawn: What do you do for fun when you aren't working on kernels or virtualization?

Don: I've been running way too much recently (it must be fun, otherwise why would I do it :) and, during the summer, I like to get out on my recumbent bicycle and re-trace some of the old Red Zinger Bicycle Classic routes (how those riders were able to do 7 loops of the Morgul Bismark is still a mystery to me :-)

• Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Hypervisor: A high performance hypervisor using KVM technology designed for Linux and Microsoft Windows virtual servers and desktops with a strong foundation for cloud deployments and other dynamic environments.
• Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Manager for Servers: A platform for managing large scale virtualized Linux and Microsoft Windows servers providing the ability to efficiently control a virtualized infrastructure.

Paul Cormier, executive vice president and president, Products and Technologies at Red Hat says that "Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization provides ISVs, IHVs and customers with the opportunity to seamlessly move applications and hardware platforms from bare metal computing to virtualized computing to cloud computing while maintaining certifications. We believe that Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, especially the management components, will allow customers to use virtualization pervasively across their entire computing infrastructure."

This announcement helps Red Hat solidify their virtualization and cloud computing strategy with this expanded virtualization offering for customers to use both within their internal IT environment and for cloud computing solutions. Offerings that provide customers with tools to manage solutions across internal and cloud environments will become increasingly important over time as companies continue to gradually move more functionality into the cloud.

Dawn: What do you like about working in Intel's Open Source Technology Center?

Eddie: Intel's Open Source Technology Center is a great place where I learned, grew up and contributed. The team here in China is young, open and skillful, and we all are in a very good atmosphere to help each other and work as a team. Each individual contribution is small, but we are proud of the whole team effort. That is the sole reason we received an Intel Achievement Award in 2006.

Dawn: How are you involved in performance tuning work for open source virtualization projects?

Eddie: I started my virtualization life in early 2004, and started working on open source virtualization projects, i.e. Xen, at the end of year. Performance is critical to the success of open source virtualization projects, but it was not that good at that time. I started the work with help from the team, accumulated all the expertise necessary and was able to improve it dramatically both in Xen and KVM.

Dawn: Can you tell us more about your efforts with SR-IOV Networking in the Xen project?

Eddie: SR-IOV, as part of Intel Virtualization Technology for Connectivity, is a significant product to improve I/O virtualization performance. It takes the advantage of Intel Virtualization Technology for directed I/O, i.e. VT-d, to reduce the intervention of hypervisor in I/O sharing. As a team, we implemented the SR-IOV support for open source virtualization and tuned the performance to achieve close to native performance.

Dawn: What do you do for fun when you aren't working at Intel?

Eddie: I like to spend time with my kid, playing chess or having fun together.

Canonical announced the availability of Ubuntu 9.10 Server Edition, which includes Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (UEC) powered by software from Eucalyptus Systems. What makes this particularly interesting is that the technology is based on the Amazon EC2 APIs allowing companies to easily deploy their solution in a private cloud within their internal IT infrastructure or externally on Amazon EC2.

Steve George, Canonical's director of support and services, recently told Computerworld's Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols that "People who have been exploring cloud computing have really only be able to use public clouds. UEC allows companies to build a cloud internally first, and then think about how to make use of public clouds like EC2."

They also made a special effort to create an image that works both on KVM (Ubuntu's preferred virtual environment) and Xen (the virtualization solution used on Amazon EC2). In an interview with CNET's Stephen Shankland, Mark Shuttleworth, Canonical Founder and CEO, said: "It's possible to build one machine image which works in both places. We went to a lot of trouble to make a version for 9.10 that works on EC2."

It is nice to see Ubuntu providing a flexible cloud computing solution for their customers. Companies need this kind of flexibility to easily move between internal, private cloud solutions and cloud solutions using heavy duty, scalable architectures like Amazon EC2 based on their changing business needs.

You can learn more about Canonical's cloud computing strategy in this video from the Intel Developer Forum.

Here are a few highlights from the report:

• Open source software meets the definition of "commercial computer software" and can be used within the government.
• Executive agencies are required to conduct market research before making software purchases, and the research should include any open source software that meets the needs of the mission.
• Positive aspects of open source software should be considered (peer reviewed code, unrestricted ability to modify the code, reduced vendor lock-in, etc.)
• Software fixes and enhancement should be released to the public when possible, but it is not a requirement to release changes back to the public except in specific licensing situations.

Open Source analyst Jay Lyman at The 451 Group said that "this is a model for government and enterprise end users to use for determining where open source software best fits into their organizations." He went on to talk about how "the memo and reaction to it represent something larger in adoption of open source software, not only by the U.S. DoD and among other governments around the globe, but also including enterprises and even SMB users: the official embrace of open source."

The memo was written by David M. Wennergren, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Information Management and Technology / Deputy Chief Information Officer US Department of Defense, and he will be keynoting the upcoming GOSCON event in Washington, D. C. on November 5th if you want to learn more about this announcement or discuss other uses of open source in government.

You may have already watched some of the videos that were recorded in the Intel booth at OSCON, but if not, you can still catch up on the earlier videos:

• Ken Drachnik from Canonical on Landscape for Ubuntu Systems Management
• Sven Dummer from Wind River on Developing Open Source Mobile Applications
• Joseph Hill from Novell talking about Mono
• Glynn Foster from Sun Discussing OpenSolaris
• Dr. John Busch from Schooner Information Technology
• David Stewart Talking about Moblin
• Robert Kasten on OpenSolaris Collaboration

You can watch more of our open source videos on the multimedia page.

Prior to their acquisition by Intel, Paul was the Business Development Manager at OpenedHand. In 2003 Paul and former colleague Scott Thompson founded OpenAdvantage at the University of Central England (now Birmingham City University). OpenAdvantage was the first and only independently-funded vendor-neutral Open Source solutions centre in the UK which helped over 250 local business take advantage of Open Source solutions. Previously he has worked as a web developer, programmer, database administrator, systems administrator, IT gofer, administration assistant, bouncer, box maker, sports coach, bicycle mechanic, musician, and paper boy.

Paul lives in Birmingham with his wife Jude, daughter Ileana, son Timon and 3 demanding cats.

Dawn: What do you like about working in Intel's Open Source Technology Center (OTC)?

Paul: My approach to things has always been to find a bunch of smart people taking on interesting challenges and somehow find a way to tag along. And that's what OTC is; a (big) bunch of very smart people tackling a lot of very interesting challenges. Plus me tagging along trying not to look too stupid and make some small contribution :-)

Dawn: What are some examples of how your team has improved the user experience for Moblin?

Paul: We do a lot of things, and I'm bound to get in trouble by forgetting someone's very important work :-) But broadly our work is focused around three things: the UX shell, the Media player, and the Browser.

The UX shell consists of the zones, the toolbar, and the various panels: myzone, status, people, internet, media, applications, zone switcher, and system panels: bluetooth, power, volume, and network.

The whole UX is built on top of our UI library, Clutter, which allows us to draw upon the expressive power of Intel Graphics Technology in a netbook (and in the future other devices). In addition to the base elements in Clutter we've created a set of UI elements, called NBTK, that allow us to build our specific UI for netbooks.

There are many improvements across the board from 2.0 to the upcoming 2.1. If I were to highlight a few:

• UI now scales to any screen size above the standard netbook resolution of 1024x600/576 - this means your netbook plays nicely with external monitors and can also be used on the growing number of Atom based nettop devices.
• Streamlined the zones experience for faster applications startup and zone switching
• New bluetooth panel for pairing and managing BT devices
• Support for 3G connections
• Many improvements in the browser: windowless plugin support and other plugin improvements, expanded right click menu, keyboard shortcuts, find in page, many small visual design tweaks, and many, many bug fixes.
• Media player: In 2.0 we tried to abstract over audio, video, and images and treated the same in terms of interactions and the playlist interaction. In 2.1 we tried to keep the same approach of the media player while streamlining a custom view for each media type to make it more specific.
• We have an online catalog of applications at the Moblin Garage and a client app called Moblin App Installer, which allows you to view and search the catalog and install or uninstall applications.

Dawn: Can you tell us a little more about your work with GNOME Mobile?

Paul: Really, I don't do a great deal - I do my best to represent the project at conferences and within Intel. But, like any open source project, the work happens in the trenches with engineers from various mobile and embedded companies working on the various GNOME components as well as their own GNOME Mobile based systems (for example: Intel with Moblin, Nokia with Maemo, Vernier with the Labquest, etc).

Dawn: What do you do for fun when you aren't working on Moblin?

Paul: Well apart from hanging out with my wife and kids, which is always fun, I volunteer my spare time at my local University coaching American Football. I'm the Offensive Coordinator of the University of Birmingham Lions, and we are the defending National Champions. Our first game of this season is on November 6th, so with that and the upcoming 2.1 release I'm going to be pretty busy over the next few weeks!

Avoiding Vendor Lock-In

Both Red Hat and Novell see avoiding vendor lock-in as a key issue for adoption of cloud computing; however, while their approaches to the issue are similar, there are some slight differences. Red Hat talks more about the need for open standards while Novell focuses on vendor interoperability.

Red Hat:

"while the benefits of clouds are well understood by most CIOs and IT managers, the barriers to widespread cloud adoption are also becoming clear. One of the most important barriers relates to cloud standards or, the other side of the same coin, the need to avoid any sort of vendor lock-in. Clearly, until cloud standards are established and accepted by cloud service providers, customers are likely to limit their usage of cloud computing, reducing its potential value."

Novell:

"The compute cloud will democratize computing by utilizing open interfaces and avoiding platform lock-in. This is harmonious with our brand promise of “Making IT Work as One”. It is also characteristic of Novell as a company who is passionate about Open Source, yet willing to work on interoperability with vendors who are committed to proprietary platforms."

Virtualization

Virtualization and cloud computing tend to go hand in hand, so it was no surprise that both Red Hat and Novell talked about virtualization as an important part of their cloud computing strategies. Red Hat highlighted a customer solution from NTT Communications with Red Hat Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) virtualization technology and talked about their partnership with Microsoft for virtualization certifications. Novell's virtualization focus leans toward Xen and virtual appliances.

Growth of Cloud Computing

Both Red Hat and Novell agree that adoption of cloud computing is growing rapidly, and they see this as a key technology trend. Most companies and analysts see cloud computing as a growth area, so it should not be a surprise that Red Hat and Novell are benefiting from cloud computing.

Novell's post has some interesting comparisons to past technology trends that have revolutionized the industry.

"Cloud computing is next. It will be equally transformational. The web provided clicking for “information” and cloud computing will provide clicking for “information resources”. Over time this will revolutionize every part of IT. ... The potential of cloud computing is great, but it won’t happen overnight—just as the other paradigm changes did not happen overnight. There will be many participants in this all playing different roles. For example there will be companies that provide cloud computing, and others -like Novell—that provide infrastructure software that are used by cloud providers or enterprises. Many layers of the compute stack will change to support the move to the cloud. Novell will not invest in all of them—no one vendor can have that impact. However, in the cloud infrastructure Novell will play a key role."

Red Hat focuses on innovation and progress in cloud computing:

"the last few months have seen great progress from Red Hat in the cloud computing space. Standards-based open source technology is a natural fit for the cloud. As with other areas of technology focus, Red Hat seeks to drive innovation as rapidly as possible to enable customers and partners to realize the efficiencies of cloud computing quickly."

Cloud computing is one of the more revolutionary trends that we've seen recently in the technology industry. According to Gartner, this isn't just hype: "Looking at real benefit, rather than the hyped expectations, we see a number of potentially transformational technologies that will hit the mainstream in less than five years, including Web 2.0, cloud computing, Internet TV, virtual worlds and service-oriented architecture (SOA)." Red Hat, Novell and many other software vendors will benefit from this growth in cloud computing.

If you want to learn more about how Solaris and OpenSolaris will use some of the new features in the next generation Xeon processor, currently codenamed Nehalem-EX, you will also want to read The Solaris OS and Intel Nehalem-EX (PDF) white paper published jointly by Sun and Intel in September.

You may have already watched some of the videos that were recorded in the Intel booth at OSCON, but if not, you can still catch up on the earlier videos:

• Ken Drachnik from Canonical on Landscape for Ubuntu Systems Management
• Sven Dummer from Wind River on Developing Open Source Mobile Applications
• Joseph Hill from Novell talking about Mono
• Glynn Foster from Sun Discussing OpenSolaris
• Dr. John Busch from Schooner Information Technology
• David Stewart Talking about Moblin

You can watch more of our open source videos on the multimedia page.

Dawn: What do you like about working in Intel's Open Source Technology Center?

Peter: The two primary things I like about the Intel Open Source Technology Center is the caliber of people -- by now there are maybe four other companies in the world that have an equivalent collection of Open Source talent -- and the ability to work with the hardware architects. I have a long background of working with hardware people, and I really enjoy it, even though it can occasionally be frustrating. In general, I think if something isn't occasionally frustrating, it probably isn't worth doing.

The final thing I enjoy about the Intel Open Source Technology Center is that management is incredibly supportive of all my Open Source projects, not just the "big banner" project of Linux kernel x86 architecture maintenance.

Dawn: How has your work on Linux changed since you joined Intel?

Peter: The main thing, obviously, is being able to work with the hardware architects; both being able to get insight into what is coming down the pipe years ahead of public release and being able to influence the hardware roadmap. I have worked for hardware companies in the past, but none anywhere near as influential as Intel, so at those places we had limited room for invention.

Dawn: You have been working on Linux since the very early days. What are a couple of examples of your work?

Peter: What I'm best known for is probably the Syslinux boot loader, and that is almost certainly the one single project I have spent most total time on over the years. I also enjoyed working on the original autofs, which I handed over to Ian Kent a long time ago. However, what I really think is my biggest contribution to Linux is the aggregate work I have done on the kernel over the years.

Dawn: Can you tell us more about your hobbies of hacking programmable logic, scuba diving, and fuzzy bunnies?

Peter: I started hacking programmable logic back in the early 2000's, since I wanted to get a better understanding of how life looks from a hardware designer's perspective. I found it quite addictive, and ended up designing a replica of a 1978 Swedish microcomputer, the Luxor ABC80, using an Altera FPGA board; I also designed a 16-bit microcontroller core at one point. This even briefly turned professional at Orion Multisystems, where I ended up co-designing a southbridge-NIC combo chip.

I got into scuba diving at my honeymoon in Kauai, Hawaii in 2000. My wife loves sea turtles, and after going snorkeling a few times we decided to try actual diving. A few years later we ended up doing a dive trip on the Coral Sea in Australia in conjunction with linux.conf.au; since then we try to go diving as often as we can. It is a marvelous feeling and a lot of fun.

Back when my wife and I were first dating, this adorable little white bunny rabbit named Scamper hopped into our lives, and really never left even though she passed away last year. We now have a pair of rabbits named Dash and Eclipse, who can best be described as the fuzzy versions of Pinky and the Brain. Rabbits are really wonderful creatures, in part because they are so very genuine... you always know where you stand with a rabbit.