Cloud
Isle of Man cloud computing
The Guardian reports that the Isle of Man government applications have been moved onto cloud computing. Although the Isle of Man has a population of only 80,000, claimed savings are £250,000 from a previous data centre cost of around £2 million.
Cloud Provider Global Performance Ranking
CloudSleuth have a 12 month average Cloud Provider Global Performance Ranking which displays benchmark performances of 25 cloud computing providers, measured at various locations around the globe.
Oracle launches its cloud computing solution
Offering both Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) solutions, Oracle has launched its cloud computing solution. Oracle has previously been critical of cloud computing but now appears to have embraced it completely, including an Oracle social network to boot.
Infrastructure-as-a-Service
Savvis launch Database-as-a-Service
Savvis Symphony Database offers either Oracle Database 11g or Microsoft SQL Server as a service. Symphony Database is scalable and handles all Oracle and Microsoft licensing.
Getting started on Amazon Web Services
Amazon Web Services (AWS) have released a couple of getting started guides for hosting web applications on AWS using either Microsoft Windows or Linux. AWS has also announced that the AWS Management Console supports Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS) as well as now having an integrated IAM Policy Generator.
Platform-as-a-Service
Scala available on Heroku
The functional programming language, Scala, is now available on Heroku. Scala runs on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) meaning it has access to all Java’s significant code libraries. Heroku is best known as a PaaS provider for the Ruby programming language.
Google Cloud SQL
Until now Google App Engine (GAE) developers had to use GAE’s proprietary data store. Google Cloud SQL is available for GAE which gives a MySQL compatible database engine with JDBC and DB-API support for Java and Python.
Software-as-a-Service
Bitbucket now supports Git
Github is probably the market leader in hosted Git source code management services. In an attempt to muscle in on Github’s market share, Bitbucket has announced support for Git. Previously Bitbucket supported only Mercurial source code management.
Company news
Adobe acquires Nitobi and Typekit
Adobe has been acquring a couple of key players in the web application development scene. Adobe has acquired Nitobi, makers of mobile phone development framework PhoneGap and Adobe has acquired Typekit, a web-based font hosting service.
As a contract developer and manager I’ve worked in a wide range of enterprises in a variety of countries where I’ve encountered everything from great work, awful work, bizarre work, all the way down to quasi-legal work. If you think that you recognise your own organisation within my articles then you’re undoubtedly wrong, where you work isn’t that unique.
