Thomas Bittman

A member of the Gartner Blog Network

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Entries from September 2008

Is Google the Mainframe of Cloud Computing?

September 26th, 2008 · 5 Comments

I’m currently flying above 30,000 feet, well above a solid bank of confused clouds. Seems appropriate to think about the structure of cloud computing in the future.
Conceptually, cloud computing services can and will be provided at any layer of the IT computing stack, from raw compute services to business process services. So, conceptually, a cloud [...]

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Tags: Cloud

Virtualization 3.0

September 22nd, 2008 · 3 Comments

I had a conversation with some folks at Intel today, and they referred to research from IDC on what Virtualization 2.0 looked like. This got me thinking. There is a tendency to take a trend like virtualization and wrap every other trend inside it. That creates a semantic nightmare, in my opinion. Virtualization does not [...]

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Tags: Cloud · Future of Infrastructure · Virtualization

VMware Strategy Reaches for the Clouds

September 16th, 2008 · No Comments

At VMworld today, VMware announced two strategic shifts that are as important as they are unsurprising. One pits VMware firmly against powerhouses IBM, HP and Microsoft in the competition for infrastructure control. The other extends VMware’s virtualization story into cloud computing. Are they overreaching?
The first, “Virtual Data Center Operating System”, is what Gartner defined as [...]

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Tags: Cloud · Virtualization

Can A Cloud Computing Provider Be Too Massive?

September 15th, 2008 · 4 Comments

It’s an interesting question, and I’ve written about this in research and seem to have conversations about this topic with vendors every day. There are two variables that make this interesting – economies of scale, and continued technology innovation.
One of the benefits of being massive is the ability to leverage huge economies of scale. [...]

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Tags: Agility · Cloud

Building Private Clouds

September 15th, 2008 · 1 Comment

I’m getting an interesting question more often every week: “How do I become more cloud-like – what are cloud providers doing that I can emulate?” Several people at our Web Innovation Summit in L.A. this week have asked me the same question.
The answer is important – for more than seven years, Gartner has been talking [...]

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Tags: Agility · Cloud · Future of Infrastructure · Virtualization

My blog on virtualization, cloud computing, and the future of infrastructure

September 12th, 2008 · 2 Comments

Welcome to my blog! I plan on sharing some thoughts on trends and the state of the industry for virtualization, cloud computing and the general future of infrastructure. A little about me:

I’m a vice president and distinguished analyst with Gartner Research. I’m the lead analyst responsible for server virtualization and real-time infrastructure architectures. However, my [...]

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Tags: Industry Analyst