Cloud Computingサービスの比較： EC2, Mosso, GoGrid

Amazon EC2、Mosso（Rackspace）、GoGridの３つのCloud Computingサービスを比較した記事。 実際に登録をし、使ってみた上で比較しており、それぞれの違いがよく見える、参考になる記事です。

 

Comparing the Cloud: EC2, Mosso, and GoGrid

The idea of providing IT capabilities as services using the Internet is relatively new and has recently peaked a lot of interest. There have been several articles on Infoq which provided "An Introduction to Virtualization" and security but there hasn't been a comparison of the different "cloud" providers. This article will cover three "cloud" companies that provide server centered solutions. It will provide an overview of how to get started with each one. Each will also be compared in terms of features, pricing and availability.

Overview

What is cloud computing

Often times when learning about a new technology it's easy to jump in feet first without having a basic understanding of the fundamentals, only later finding yourself going back to the basics. To avoid having that happen a simple definition of cloud computing proves useful. Wikipedia defines it as:

"A style of computing where IT-related capabilities are provided "as a service" using Internet technologies to multiple external customers. It allows users to consume services without knowledge of, expertise with, nor control over the technology infrastructure that supports them.

Resources being accessed are typically owned and operated by a third-party provider on a consolidated basis in datacenter locations. Consumers of cloud computing services purchase computing capacity on-demand and are not generally concerned with the underlying technologies used to achieve the increase in server capability. There are however increasing options for developers that allow for platform services in the cloud where developers do care about the underlying technology."

Generally this holds true but some providers do provide low-level control while others aim to make it as simple as possible.

Why you'd use it

There may be a vast array of reasons as to why an individual or business might use cloud computing. Some reasons include:

• Cost – connectivity costs are falling and hardware is becoming more efficient at scaling
• Overhead – not having to purchase and maintain physical hardware as well as the space to store it reduces overhead costs
• Reliability – allows for scaling up/down easily to provide reliable services to customers

Those are just a few possible reasons why cloud computing may be a viable option, but one thing is certain, making a decision as to which cloud service to use is not an easy task.

Getting Started

Amazon EC2

The Amazon website provides the following description to explain its service:

"Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) is a web service that provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud. It is designed to make web-scale computing easier for developers.

Amazon EC2's simple web service interface allows you to obtain and configure capacity with minimal friction. It provides you with complete control of your computing resources and lets you run on Amazon's proven computing environment. Amazon EC2 reduces the time required to obtain and boot new server instances to minutes, allowing you to quickly scale capacity, both up and down, as your computing requirements change. Amazon EC2 changes the economics of computing by allowing you to pay only for capacity that you actually use. Amazon EC2 provides developers the tools to build failure resilient applications and isolate themselves from common failure scenarios."

Before getting started with Amazon EC2, Amazon recommends that should be somewhat comfortable in a Linux environment, be somewhat familiar with Web Services, have an SSH client and Java 5 (or newer) installed. Following the instructions outlined below a link will be provided to Amazon's documentation providing explicit step-by-step instructions.

In order to dig in you must first setup three Amazon accounts. One each at Amazon Web Services (AWS), Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and Amazon EC2. Once you have an AWS account creating the AS3 and AEC2 accounts are just a few clicks away.

Once the accounts are created you need to setup the command line tools. Amazon EC2 provides command line tools as well as an API for managing your cloud. The tools are bundled as a zip (download) which are almost ready to use once extracted, first a few environment variables will need to be configured (EC2_HOME, EC2_PRIVATE_KEY and EC2_CERT).

With the configuration and setup out of the way the next thing to do is launch an Amazon Machine Image (AMI). The command line utilities provide methods for creating your own images as well as listing those made public by Amazon. Once an image is selected you'll need to generate and SSH keypair which allows you to login to the instance. If you use PuTTY you'll need to convert the private key to PuTTY's format, instructions can be found here.

Next you simply use the "ec2-run-instances" command-line tool to start the image selected previously. Momentarily it will be in a "running" state, which can be checked by using the "ec2-describe-instances" command. Before access is available the appropriate ports need to be authorized to be opened. To allow SSH and HTTP you'd use the "ec2-authorize" tool to allow access to port 22 and 80, respectively.

Now to verify things worked properly just access the site URL (given as output when the "ec2-run-instances" command was executed", something like ec2-67-202-51-223.compute-1.amazonaws.com) using a web browser. With the basic setup and configuration out of the way you can begin deploying content and working with your new cloud.

For detailed instructions the Amazon EC2 Technical Documentation site provides plenty of information. Next we'll take a look at setting up and configuring GoGrid.

GoGrid

GoGrid touts their service as being the only one which provides true Control in the Cloud TM. They offer a multi-server control panel allowing you to deploy and manage load-balanced cloud servers in minutes. Getting started is a bit simpler and less time consuming than Amazon EC2. Just browse to the GoGrid site and create an account. Within a couple minutes you'll have a confirmation email and you're ready to go.

Once you login to your account you'll be greeted with a simple interface. Clicking the "Add" button provides a few options (shown below):

To create a web server just click the appropriate button. A new window is displayed which requires a few input parameters.

It allows for a name, "simple", and a description, "a simple web server". It also requires an IP address which are displayed on the left side of the screen and automatically appear as you start typing. These IP addresses are provided by GoGrid and tied to real physical machines. At this point you also choose the amount of RAM (512MB, 1GB, or 2GB), OS (CentOS, Red Hat, Windows 2003 Server) and the Image (Apache, LAMP, IIS).

Once the server is configured it'll be accessible almost instantly. Opening a browser to the IP address chosen displays a verification message.

The networking is handled by GoGrid but they do allow additional IP addresses to be added and DNS information can be configured, if for example you own a domain name you could point it to your GoGrid server.

Adding load balancers and databases is just as simple as create a web server, just a few clicks and some simple configuration and within a minute it'll be up and running. Adding additional servers can be done be through the web interface (as shown above) or by using the GoGrid API, which is a REST style web service API which provides all of the web interface functionality accessible with either Java, PHP, Python and Ruby.

Next we'll take a look at Mosso, a cloud service backed by Rackspace.

Mosso

Mosso takes a slightly different approach from the other providers by deciding to merge the idea of cloud computing with the traditional managed/shared server environment that many web hosts provide. Mosso doesn't provide root access to their severs but instead provide servers with operating systems and software pre-installed, much like a standard web host. This allows Mosso to easily monitor and scale the service as needed which frees the end user from having to worry about operating systems, devices, load balancing, etc.

To get started you first create an account at the Mosso website, and wait a few moments for a confirmation email. Once logged in, the control panel is displayed.

One of the driving goals behind Mosso was to make it simple to use, and much like GoGrid it just takes a few clicks to get rolling. By clicking on the "Websites & Email" button you can easily setup a website to point at an existing domain or to a new domain for registration.

The configuration page provides some basic options including number of databases and web server technology.

Again the wizard is straightforward and with just a few clicks you'll be provided with a summary of the expected charges so you know exactly what to expect. Once the initial configuration is done, FTP access is available to begin uploading content to the site. While using the service you get the feeling that it's just a standard web host. There are areas in the control panel that let you add SSL certificates, user accounts, email settings, change underlying technology (i.e. Linux/Apache to Ruby on Rails), view site statistics and more.

With an introduction to Amazon EC2, GoGrid and Mosso out of the way the next section will provide a comparison of all three services.

Comparison

Features

	Amazon EC2	GoGrid	Mosso
Windows Support	Yes (see Qemu)	Yes	Yes
Linux Support	Yes	Yes	Yes
Open Solaris Support	Yes	No	No
Graphical User Interface	No	Yes	Yes
Command Line	Yes	No	No
API	Yes	Yes	No
Root Access	Yes	Yes	No
SSH	Yes	Yes	No
FTP	Yes	Yes	Yes
Hardware Configurable	Yes	Yes	No

Amazon is currently the only one offering custom images to be deployed to their servers. There is information on Amazon's website for deploying Open Solaris based images and there are few sites which explain how to deploy Windows Server 2003. GoGrid does expect to provide the ability to create an image of any server in the future which theoretically would allow for additional operating system support.

All three providers allow for FTP access. Mosso does not provide full root access. Mosso is also the only one of the three compared here that does not provide any hardware configuration capabilities, although that is intentional and by design.

Pricing

Amazon EC2

There are three areas that have pricing associated with them including instance type (Standard vs High-CPU), Data Transfer and Elastic IP addresses.

A standard instance ranges from $0.10 per instance-hour to $0.80, and the High-CPU instances range from $0.20 - $0.80 per instance-hour. The Data Transfer rates vary based on where the data goes out to and comes in from (i.e. Internet, Availability Zone, Regional, etc) with pricing between $0.00 to $0.17 per GB transferred.

Lastly the Elastic IP addresses vary from free to $0.10 per Elastic IP address remap. It really depends on how the IP addresses are used throughout the month.

GoGrid

The rates for GoGrid are spread across Server RAM Hour, Outbound Data Transfer and Inbound Data Transfer. The pricing plan is much simpler with a set price of $0.19 per Server RAM Hour, $0.50 per GB of outbound data transferred, and all inbound data transfer is free.

Mosso

Mosso provides a standard flat rate of $100 per month which they expect will cover "most developers". This includes:

• Online software to create sites, databases, and email accounts -- as many as you need the moment you need them.
• 50 GB of high-performance SAN storage space
• 500 GB of monthly bandwidth
• 10,000 compute cycles per month (Learn More)
• 24 x 7x 365 phone and live chat support included

For bigger applications, with around 100,000 visitors per month or more, Mosso provides incremental pricing as your needs scale. Additional disk space is $0.50 per GB, bandwidth is $0.25 per GB and additional compute cycles cost an extra $0.01 per compute cycle.

Availability

Amongst the three services covered in this article only Mosso is available in "production" mode. Both Amazon EC2 and GoGrid are still labeled as being in "beta" although they are both being quickly adopted and maturing.

Summary

With the recent buzz over cloud computing there seems to be an ever growing sea of cloud service providers appearing. Making the decision to use one of these services is no trivial task since each one has its own unique features, pricing, flexibility and control. This article aimed to provide an introduction on getting started with Amazon EC2, GoGrid and Mosso as well as a side-by-side comparison of some of their features, pricing and availability. For additional information have a look at some of the following links:

• Amazon EC2
• Getting Started with Amazon EC2
• GoGrid Blog
• GoGrid Wiki
• Mosso
• Mosso FAQ

Amazon DevPay が段階的な価格体系を提供

AmazonのCloud Computing事業がサポートしているSaaSビジネスベンダに対して、新しい、価格体系の提供方法を発表。  段階的な価格体系を導入できるようにする事で、SaaSベンダーは顧客に対してよりきめ細かい価格を提示できるようになる。  DevPayソリューションにより、SaaSベンダーが従来苦労していた価格提示、代金回収などの手間のかかる作業を自動化することが出来、大きな魅力となった。

 

 

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Amazon DevPay Introduces Tiered Usage-Based Pricing

Amazon DevPay now has a new and very powerful feature: tiered pricing for all usage-based components of a product's price.

Using this new feature, you have more flexibility when you create the pricing plan for your product. Specifically, you can now create multiple levels, or tiers. You can create any number of tiers within your pricing plan. Pricing for each tier is based on the usage incurred by each of your customers.

Let's take a look at some of the models that you can create:

 First, you can create a free usage level to make it easy for customers to give your product a try. You would set the sign-up fee and the monthly fee to zero, and then create a set of tiers. If you have a storage-based product, you could allow them to use Amazon S3 to store up to 2 GB / month for free, with a charge of $1 for each GB / month beyond that. As the business owner you would be responsible for the entire cost of S3, so you'd wan to make sure that you are providing sufficient value to ensure that your users grow from the free tier to the paid tier.

Second, you can create a model which is similar to the typical cell phone pricing plan. In this case you would charge a sign-up fee and a monthly fee, and would then include a certain amount of free usage as part of the first tier, with additional (and more costly) tiers after that. Again, with a storage-based product, you could charge $5 to get started, $5 per month for usage, and then allow up to 10 GB / month at no additional charge.

It is important to note that Amazon DevPay handles all of the nitty-gritty details associated with creating, changing, and billing your customers. You don't have to deal with partial month subscriptions, boundary conditions, or the complexities involved in changes to the prices for each tier or even to the number of tiers. You can read all about this in the documentation.

A number of our customers are already using DevPay in creative ways:

• DreamFactory is using DevPay to provide access to the DreamFactory Suite. We've also got a success story for them.
• Zmanda uses DevPay as part of the Amanda backup tool, again we've got a success story for them.
• Wowza Media Server Pro looks pretty cool -- media processing charged by the hour and the gigabyte, implemented using Amazon EC2 and S3.
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux is available on EC2 using DevPay.
• SmugMug's SmugVault? You guessed it, also built using DevPay, running on EC2 and S3.

If you are using DevPay in an interesting way, please feel free to let us know via email to evangelists@amazon.com or by leaving a comment.

Microsoft OfficeのSaaSバージョン？

Microsoftが仮想化環境で動くSaaS形のOfficeリリースを計画している事を示唆する求人がある、と言う記事。

Googleの展開しているGoogle DocsやZohoのようなサーバ型のオフィスツールに対抗する戦略が具体化する、と言う話は過去から議論されている。 

 

Microsoft is working on a virtualized version of Office

As virtualization.info readers know pretty well, Microsoft is working to drastically change the way Office is deployed on millions of desktops worldwide:

• since January the company supports the virtualization and streaming of its productivity suite through Application Virtualization (formerly SoftGrid)
• the company is secretly working on a new license agreement that will allow business partners to offer Office through 3rd party application virtualization and streaming solutions

but all of this may be just the first step before Microsoft redesigns the architecture of Office to be fully virtualization-aware.

A job offering published in May on the official website of the company seems to hint at such scenario:

Want to revolutionize the way the next generation of Office products makes it into users' hands? Are you excited by the potential for flash-based devices and internet-based services to change the software distribution paradigm? The Office team is looking for experienced developers to help us leverage emerging technologies like virtualization and application streaming to redefine how our customers obtain and use Office products. Some of the problems we will solve include device integration, portability for settings and data, and creating new "Mobile" Office client products, as well as the infrastructure to support them. Each of these problems has the capacity to significantly impact Microsoft's bottom line…

Maybe Microsoft plans to compete with Google in the productivity space with a (long awaited) SaaS version of Office that can be seamlessly streamed from the web on any Windows-powered device on the Net.

IBM がCloud Computing事業向けのデータセンターを開設

IBMがNorth Calorina州に大規模なデータセンターを開設した、と発表。 ＄３６０Mの予算で60,000平方フィートの広さを持つ。  IBMのCloud Computing事業を推進するための施設との事。  あわせて、東京に＄４０Mの費用をかけて、同様の目的のデータセンターを開設する、と発表。  Googleと協業している、とのニュースも。  Cloud Computing事業を支えるデータセンターの発表が目立つ。 

 

IBM plans large cloud data center in North Carolina

Big week for cloud computing news just gets bigger

July 31, 2008 (Computerworld) IBM today said it is spending $360 million on a new cloud data center facility in North Carolina, the latest in a series of moves by this company to develop technology and infrastructure to support that platform.

IBM's announcement follows one earlier this week by Hewlett-Packard Co., Intel Corp., and Yahoo Inc., to jointly provide compute resources to universities to help advance cloud computing research.

All these announcements say one thing: These vendors see big potential and profit in this platform, but perhaps some cause for concern as well. Cloud computing is focused on service delivery, not on the underlying technology that these companies sell. It's a platform that could bring many new service providers into this market -- a business model along the lines of what Amazon is doing with its Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2).

IBM says it is renovating an existing building in Research Triangle Park to build 60,000 square feet of raised-floor data center space, and will complete the work early next year. The $360 million cost, according to IBM, includes construction, technology and personnel expenses. IBM now has nine centers worldwide devoted to cloud computing, and the North Carolina facility will be the largest.

The company employs about 11,000 in existing IBM facilities in that area already, but did not disclose how many would be working specifically in the North Carolina facility.

IBM today also today said that it was opening a cloud computing center in Tokyo, costing about $40 million. And the company is working with Google on some of the technology issues around cloud computing.

Jay Subramonia, the director of high performance on demand solutions at IBM, said its facilities are used for research but also as test beds by customers to experiment with this platform, and see what they can do to make internal operations more cloud-like -- meaning virtualized, automated and dynamic.

Subramonia said the "entry point" for enterprises on working with the cloud model has been in deploying collaboration tools and Web 2.0 systems, as well as using them for software development test environments.

Charles King, an analyst at Pund-IT, Inc., a research firm in Hayward, Calif., said that in contrast to the research initiative announced this week by HP, Yahoo and Intel, IBM is demonstrating an early lead on commercial cloud development by by building out test beds.

Cloud systems being built by some of the larger firms, such as Google and Yahoo, are relying on x86-based systems. But IBM says it will include a range systems, from its mainframe on down, in its data center. King believes that IBM will "use all the tool in their garage" to make the case that x86 environments won't meet every need.

AT&TがCloud Computing事業に参入

AT&TがCloud Computing事業に参入。  キャリア系の事業の参入による、いよいよ市場が混み始めてきている。

AT&TはOlympic Committeeをクライアントに持ち、Olympicイベント情報を提供するサービスをこのCloud Computing事業の最初の客として発表している。 

 

AT&T's Cloud: Synaptic Hosting

AT&T Inc. (T) today announced the launch of AT&T Synaptic Hosting, a utility computing service with managed networking, security and storage for businesses. The platform uses technology acquired from USinternetworking (USi) and will run in five "super IDCs" located in Piscataway, N.J.; San Diego; Annapolis, Md.; Singapore and Amsterdam.
Additional data centers will be added to deliver "enterprise-class" cloud capabilities to companies in the U.S. and abroad.

The service launched with a high-profile customer: the official Web site of the U.S. Olympic Committee (USOC). Teamusa.org features stories on U.S. Olympians and Paralympians and Olympic and Paralympic hopefuls, athlete blogs and social networking tools.

"Fans of the 2008 Olympic Games expect to go online searching for a variety of content about the Olympic Games and athletes," said Damani Short, chief information officer at the USOC. "We anticipate rapidly increasing traffic up to and during the Beijing Olympic Games, tapering off in the months following the events. AT&T Synaptic Hosting is ideal for handling the fluctuating online demand associated with the Olympic Games."

There's been lots of reaction around the blogosphere at sites including GigaOm, Network World and Elastic Vapor.

Some are dismissive of AT&T's entry, but AT&T has a lot of large customers with serious bandwidth needs, and they'll be a player here. There's been discussion lately about whether World of Warcraft is an enormous cloud. Well, guess who hosts World of Warcraft? Yep, it's AT&T's game hosting division.

Symantec社、nSuite社を買収、Symantec の Endpoint Virtualization戦略

Symantec社がnSuite社を買収する事を発表し、Altiris社、Appstream社の買収に引き続き３社目の統合を行い、自社のEndpoint Virtualizationコンセプトをほぼ完了した。  このEndpoint VirtualizationはSymantec社のデスクトップ仮想化戦略であり、Microsoft社のEquiptプログラムに相当するもの。 

 

Symantec Moves Into Endpoint Virtualization

The security giant aims to be a player in the latest hot growth area, thin client computing.

Symantec today announced that it is buying nSuite, a privately-held virtual workspace management company, in a move some analysts see as a bid to ensure its future. The acquisition, scheduled to close later this month is for an undisclosed amount in cash.

As Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) moves into the antivirus and security market with its recently announced Equipt software as a service (SaaS) (define) offering, Symantec (NASDAQ: SYMC) has shifted gears toward a new endpoint strategy.

The purchase of nSuite is the third in a series of purchases around endpoint virtualization. It follows the acquisition of Altiris and Appstream earlier this year.

All three will form the nexus of Symantec's newly established Endpoint Virtualization group, whose charter is "to look at virtualization technologies that can run on the laptop or anything that looks like a Windows desktop," Brad Rowland, Symantec's director of enterprise marketing, endpoint virtualization, told InternetNews.com.

The new emphasis on endpoint virtualization at Symantec "almost looks like a Plan B," Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group, told InternetNews.com.

Symantec's move into endpoint virtualization "gives them increasing breadth so, if the antivirus stuff goes south, they'll have a space in virtualization, which appears to be the next big thing" Enderle said.

Microsoft is treading hard and heavy on Symantec's heels with the Equipt program, which consists of applications and security in software as a service (SaaS) mode. Equipt, available only in Circuit City stores, includes antivirus and antispyware software in Windows Live OneCare; Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007 applications; and Microsoft Office Live workspace, which gives users a dedicated online workspace to share documents.

The nSuite connection broker and presentation virtualization technologies will let users access data and applications stored on servers at any time, from any device. This is the thin client model that's been around for years and is experiencing a resurgence as virtualization takes hold, observers say.

Symantec's goal is to enable anytime, anywhere computing through virtualization. "As a user I don't have to know or care where the applications are coming from, I just want to compute," Rowland said.

Yes, we need change

"Applications should follow users, instead of being tied to the desktops or user devices," Rowland said. "Where I'm connecting, how secure I am, what function I'm trying to perform -- these should all be governed by policies," he added.

CIOs "should be able to take any computing building blocks and use them without having to use a vendor-specific toolset for the most critical pieces, which are application delivery and information management," Rowland said. Eventually, underlying technologies such as hypervisors will become commoditized and different vendors' hypervisors will coexist, Rowland added.

Symantec's vision of anywhere, anytime computing is shared by Google, (NASDAQ: GOOG) with Google Apps; Microsoft, with Equipt; VMware (NYSE: VMW); Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ), which unveiled three new thin clients in February; and IBM (NYSE: IBM), which "got rid of its PC division in anticipation of this," Enderle said. "There's likely to be a huge position in this direction and Symantec's positioning itself to take advantage of it," he added.

After the deal closes, Symantec will continue to sell the nSuite products in their current form. It will announce product updates at ManageFusion, a hands-on lab and training event held in various cities worldwide.

ManageFusion 2008 will be held in October. The event was co-founded by Altiris, now part of Symantec.

While nSuite focused on healthcare, and Symantec will continue selling to that space, it will also target other selected vertical markets. "We'll deliver the applications based on the user," Rowland said.

Will Symantec succeed with its move into the thin-client market? Quite likely, Enderle thinks. "You have a bunch of major players in this space, and Symantec's moving in validates the market," Enderle said.

FW: GoGrid社のCloud Computing戦略の紹介

GoGrid社のユニークなCloud Computing戦略の紹介。  他社で一般的なAPIの提供に加えて、グラフィックなインタフェースでシステム構築を出来る点が強み。 

 

GoGrid wants to be the new face for cloud computing

Cloud Computing is currently going through some difficult times trying to get traction and widespread adoption in the market. In many cases, the technology is going through similar battles once faced by server virtualization in the early parts of 2000. Some forget, server virtualization too was once thought of as nothing more than "hype," having little value, and being an immature technology that was more for fun than anything else. And as a result, it received very little media attention and perhaps even less adoption.

Both large and small companies are now going after the cloud computing space (sometimes called grid or utility computing). However, the types of services being offered can be wildly different. This adds to the confusion and adoption problem around the technology. But companies like Amazon, Google, AppNexus, and GoGrid are still getting into the business.

GoGrid is one of those cloud infrastructure services being offered by ServePath, and it allows startups, SMBs, and enterprises to rapidly create, deploy, load balance, and scale Windows and Linux cloud servers in minutes. And GoGrid has been getting a lot more interesting over the last few months.

The company prides itself on being first to market with a unique Web-based GUI, Windows and Linux cloud servers, free f5 hardware load balancing, and free 24x7 support, among other breakthrough features. And now, GoGrid is proud to offer what it describes as yet another industry first: a public API that gives users what it calls true "Control in the Cloud."

GoGrid's API allows GoGrid users to programmatically control their GoGrid environments. For example, they can auto-scale their GoGrid instance. And while the existing GUI enables users to easily and quickly create complex network infrastructures, the addition of the GoGrid API provides some additional highlights:

• Resellers can skin their own GoGrid portals
• Customers can retrieve real-time billing and usage information
• Users can script and chain various GoGrid commands for automation (e.g., "get" available unused IP addresses, "add" a server with unassigned IP, and "power" a server when it is ready.)
• Users can instantly query GoGrid environments to retrieve variables about all objects
• 3rd-party developers can hook GoGrid functions into other computing environments or management tools

John Keagy, CEO and co-founder of GoGrid, said, "GoGrid is all about offering 'Control in the Cloud.' The addition of the API further proves that we are living up to this by being the first cloud computing vendor to offer this full control via a choice of a Web control panel or an API."

What about you? Are you adopting the notion of cloud computing? Which company's technology have you implemented or looked at?