This Week in the Cloud: Open-Source, Cost Efficiency and Skype
A few notable updates came out of the cloud this week, including a couple of from the open-source community.
Firstly, Cloudability announced that it’s making OpenStack compatible with the Google Compute Engine. The San Francisco startup is currently working on implementing the Compute Engine APIs in the open cloud OS project.
OpenStack can already run on Amazon Web Service, the kingpin of IaaS. Cloudability CTO Rand Bias considers GCE to be a solid second and pegs his company’s latest OpenStack contribution as a “game changer” for this exact reason, but he does admit that Google’s platform is “flying under the radar now.”
Over in the Linux ecosystem, Canonical silently rolled out an update to JuJu. The automation tool now works in every OpenStack environment that runs on the company’s popular Ubuntu Linux distribution, which is a big plus for HP Cloud Services users.
OpenStack has come a long way in two years. What once was a joint side project of Rackspace and NASA is now a force to be reckoned with, thanks to its own foundation, and positioning itself in a key role for driving datacenter trends, such as software-defined networking.
Speaking of trends, a new study found out that cloud service providers who invest more in upgrading their hardware realize significant cost savings when compared to their less up-to-date peers. A European research team conduced a one year survey on AWS and found that running modern servers can reduce in cost reductions of up to 30 percent.
Finally, there’s been a major update in the personal cloud. Microsoft rolled out a new version of Skype this week, tweaked and optimized for Windows 8. The VoIP software features an improved UI and added functionality, including the ability to send short video messages to contacts who are flagged as being away.
Since you’re here …
… We’d like to tell you about our mission and how you can help us fulfill it. SiliconANGLE Media Inc.’s business model is based on the intrinsic value of the content, not advertising. Unlike many online publications, we don’t have a paywall or run banner advertising, because we want to keep our journalism open, without influence or the need to chase traffic.The journalism, reporting and commentary on SiliconANGLE — along with live, unscripted video from our Silicon Valley studio and globe-trotting video teams at theCUBE — take a lot of hard work, time and money. Keeping the quality high requires the support of sponsors who are aligned with our vision of ad-free journalism content.
If you like the reporting, video interviews and other ad-free content here, please take a moment to check out a sample of the video content supported by our sponsors, tweet your support, and keep coming back to SiliconANGLE.
