1. AMD pushed out press to let the world know it is saying “yes to cloud”. Whoopee ! To quote:

“Advanced Micro Devices CEO Dirk Meyer sees cloud computing as the next great investment for the enterprises and says AMD’s processors are going to be a big part of this type of future data center”.

Given the rapid progression of the public/private cloud and virtualisation markets, I’m sure the chip vendors must be salivating at the potential extra dollars to be made.

2. Ubuntu announced version 9.10 of their Linux Distro  which is codenamed Karmic Koala and also announced that it will have built in support for Cloud in their server edition.  Their aim is for Ubuntu to provide a standard set of AMI’s (Amazon Machine Images) to enable simplified deployment on EC2.  So far so what, but the developers also aim to integrate support for Eucalyptus, which we have discussed previously. This would enable organisations to use Ubuntu to make their own private clouds within their own data center. A real differentiator and a great way to create a value point differentiation against the likes of RedHat and SUSE.

3. Cobol and the Cloud….two things you probably would not expect to hear in the same sentence. However MicroFocus has identified a market in which customers can outsource their Cobol applications and MicroFocus can host them on the cloud. Micro Focus is supporting Amazon EC2 to increase the options customers have to reach the cloud and begin capitalizing on the cost savings associated with cloud computing.

Interesting times indeed…