Talking to RightScale about “myCloud” and their work with Zynga

June 9, 2011

Earlier this week at CloudExpo, I talked to both Peder Ulander of Cloud.com and Rich Wolski of Eucalyptus about their involvement with RightScale‘s myCloud solution.  Yesterday I thought I would go straight to the source so I got a hold of RightScale’s VP of business development, Josh Fraser.

Besides the myCloud announcement, Josh also told me about their work with Zynga.  Zynga, as detailed in a recent InformationWeek article, has a hybrid cloud model.  Zynga uses the Amazon public cloud to test new games and then if the game is a hit and when its demand has leveled off, they pull it back into their Z-cloud private cloud.  RightScale manages across the two clouds.

Some of the ground Josh covers

  • What is RightScale
  • [0:26] Their myCloud announcement, widening their focus beyond public clouds to include private and hybrid.  Who they’re partnering with, what myCloud is composed of and their free version.
  • [2:38] Working with Zynga, managing across both Zynga’s private Z-cloud and the public cloud they use at Amazon.
  • [4:09] Working with Amdocs who is running enterprise grade workloads in a private cloud managed by RightScale.

Extra-credit reading

Pau for now…

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Posted by Barton George

Cloud Expo: Cloud.com, what’s it all about?

June 6, 2011

Tonight at the opening reception for Cloud Expo, I ran into Peder Ulander, CMO of Cloud.com.  We found a quiet spot off the show floor and I got him to tell all about Cloud.com, where they’ve been and where they’re going.

Some of the ground Peder covers

  • What is cloud.com, where does it play in the cloud ecosystem and what does it help customers do?
  • [01:22] Who are some of Cloud.com’s customers (hint: Nokia, Zynga, Korean Telecom…) and in what industries are they in?
  • [03:25] Where did the idea for cloud.com come from and what experience did the founders leverage in creating it?

Pau for now…

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Posted by Barton George

A walk thru Facebook’s HQ on Open Compute day

April 12, 2011

Last Thursday a group of us from Dell attended and participated in the unveiling of Facebook’s Open Compute project.

Much the way open source software shares the code behind the software, the Open Compute project has been created to provide the specifications behind the servers and the data center.    By releasing these specs, Facebook is looking to promote the sharing of data center and server technology best practices across the industry.

Pre-Event

The unassuming entrance to Facebook's Palo Alto headquarters.

The Facebook wall.

Facebook headquarters at 8am. (nice monitors! 🙂

Words of wisdom on the wall.

The Event

Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerburg kicks off the Open Compute event.

The panel moderated by Om Malik that closed the event. Left to right: Om, Graham Weston of Rackspace, Frank Frankovsky of Facebook, Michael Locatis of the DOE, Alan Leinwand of Zynga, Forrest Norrod of Dell (with the mic) and Jason Waxman of Intel.

Post-event show & tell: Drew Schulke of Dell's DCS team being interviewed for the nightly news and showing off a Dell DCS server that incorporates elements of Open Compute.

Extra credit reading

  • GigaOM: Bringing Facebook’s Open Compute Project Down to Earth
  • The Register:  Facebook’s open hardware: Does it compute?

Pau for now…

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Posted by Barton George

An overview of the worldwide gaming market

June 11, 2010

Dell’s Data Center Solutions (DCS) group has both custom offerings and, as we announced a couple of months ago, a new line of systems and solutions targeted at a wider audience.

One the the key markets we are looking at for our new line is gaming.  To get up to speed on the market I took a look at the report that the PC gaming alliance put together for its members.  It was a very cool read.  Here a few things I learned:

Some fun facts to know and tell:

  • Last year the global PC game software market was just over $13B while the global console software market was nearly $20B.
  • The revenue from PC games  is expected to pass the revenue from console software in 2012.
  • Last year China was the leading country for PC game revenue, 99+% which came from non-retail sources e.g. subscriptions and digital distribution.
  • Worldwide piracy is decreasing as PC games move from package software to a service based business where users pay per usage.
  • On a revenue basis the majority or leading PC game companies come from China or South Korea.
  • Biggest growth last year came from the free-to-play (F2P) games where delivery of these games on social networks like Zynga’s Farmville on Facebook took off.

Stay tuned…

Dell has publicly been a big player in the PC gaming market through our line of Alienware systems (in fact we had an announcement yesterday).  Where we have been a lot quieter however is talking about how our Data Center Solutions (DCS) group fits in.   Next week at E3 we will be making an announcement to explain just what we’ve been up to.  So stay tuned next week and see how DCS “plays” in gaming 🙂

Pau for now….

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Posted by Barton George

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