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Amazon flexes its EC2 muscle with elastic IP addresses
By Thomas Claburn
Amazon's "pay-by-the-drink muck," to use terms for the company's pay-as-you-go cloud computing platform favored by CEO Jeff Bezos, is now even more palatable for developers. Recently, Amazon Web Services has introduced Elastic IP addresses and multiple availability Zones, two new features for developers using Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) that make the AWS platform even more useful for tying dynamic computing infrastructure to Web sites.
"We give you an IP address which is mapped to your account," says Adam Selipsky, VP of product management and developer relations for Amazon Web Services.
An EC2 instance might be a virtual Web server deployed in conjunction with Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Amazon SimpleDB and Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS) for storage, computing and query processing.
An Elastic IP address can be easily remapped to point to different server instances, as might be desirable when testing a new build of a Web application. Thus, Amazon is enabling a significantly more fault tolerant way to manage servers that would be available to developers running their own physical servers in a data center.
Amazon Web Services is also offering Availability Zones, which allow for EC2 instances to be run in multiple locations.
Using Availability Zones, the same Web application, for example, could be made available in the U.S. and in Europe and a failure in the EC2 instance serving one location would not affect the other instance.
Despite such hiccups, Amazon Web Services appears to be growing. While Selipsky declined to provide comprehensive figures about the service, he did say that S3 had grown to 14 billion objects stored in January, up from 10 billion stored in October 2007. Amazon also recently said that for the first time, the bandwidth required for EC2 and S3 for the fourth quarter of 2007 exceeded the bandwidth required for all of Amazon's Web sites worldwide during that period.
Yahoo and CRL to deliver supercomputing power
Yahoo and Computational Research Laboratories (CRL), a wholly owned subsidiary of Tata Sons, has announced an agreement to jointly support cloud computing research. This agreement allows CRL to provide researchers with one of the world’s top five supercomputers, having substantially more processors than any other. This effort is intended to leverage CRL’s expertise in high performance computing and Yahoo’s technical leadership in Apache Hadoop, an open source distributed computing project of the Apache Software Foundation.
Called the EKA, the supercomputer is ranked as the fourth fastest in the world having 14,400 processors, 28 terabytes of memory, 140 terabytes of disks, a peak performance of 180 trillion calculations per second (180 teraflops) and sustained computation capacity of 120 teraflops for the LINPACK benchmark.
“The Tata group has always contributed to scientific research in India, and the EKA will strengthen this cause further in the field of cloud computin,” says S. Ramadorai, chairman of CRL.
“We are excited to partner with Yahoo to advance cloud computing research in India as it opens up a new arena of exciting opportunities,” said Dr. Gautam Shroff, member of the steering committee of CRL.
This announcement comes on the eve of the first ever Hadoop Summit, sponsored by Yahoo and the Computing Community Consortium (CCC). The Summit brings together leaders from the Hadoop developer and user communities to discuss current and future projects.
Datacraft to scout for first indian acquisition
By Jamsheed Gandhi
Mumbai-based Datacraft India is looking to acquire companies in the country to grow inorganically. The company will look at acquiring local companies and has allocated USD 40 million for the same. Present in the country since 1994 as Datacraft ICIM, a joint venture between Datacraft Asia and Fujitsu-ICIM, which in 2000, was converted as a fully owned subsidiary of Datacraft Asia. A firm believer in growing organically, this is the first time that the company is looking at acquisitions to fuel growth.
“While globally we have been acquiring companies, we have never looked at companies in India. We will be looking at those companies that are in line with our business of being an independent IT services and solutions provider and will look for complementing our skills in the solutions that we support. We have just recently identified investment bankers who will be able to help us with this acquisition,” said Sunil Mangalore, CEO, Datacraft India.
The company specializes in customized business solutions, which helps clients plan, build, support and manage their IT infrastructure.
Synage creates project tracking tool
By Jamsheed Gandhi
Mumbai-based Synage Software is tapping into the fast moving Software as a Service market with its flagship product DeskAway. The company had been recently invited to showcase this at Proto.in, a technology event where startups showcase their products and technology to a group of investors and entrepreneurs.
“We have targeted small and medium enterprises, entrepreneurs, companies with little or no IT support, as our users. The idea is to bring project tracking and management within their reach without it being expensive or complex. As our product is based on the SaaS model, we are charging per user Rs 400 per month,” says Sahil Parikh, President, Synage Software.
Currently 75 percent of its user base is overseas and the company is looking at online marketing efforts to grow its acceptance here. Built entirely using open source LAMP tools, the solution also includes Web 2.0 functionality. The company has set a target to have over a 1000 paying customers by 2009.
Apple's logo makes you more creative than IBM's
By Thomas Claburn
Apple's logo can make people think more creatively than IBM logo, according to researchers at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business and Canada's University of Waterloo.
Professors Gavan Fitzsimons and Tanya Chartrand of Duke, and Grainne Fitzsimons of Waterloo, in an article scheduled for publication in the April issue of the Journal of Consumer Research, claim that a mere 30 millisecond exposure to famous brand logos can influence view behavior.
Their findings are sure to stir up controversy because they suggest that subliminal advertising, until recently regarded as a hoax, may actually have something to it.
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