Two weeks ago, Google announced a significant price increase for use of its App Engine Platform-as-a-Service. The increase itself was not a huge surprise. Google had been making noises that something like this was in the offing for a number of months. But the size of the increase shocked the Web development and cloud applications community. For most users, the cost of using the Google runtime environment effectively increased by 100% or more.

A huge online backlash ensued. For its part, Google put off the increase by a month and moderated some of the increases. But the whole incident brought many nagging doubts about the cloud to the surface. Said one poster on one of the many threads that lit up the Google Groups forums after the increase:

I like so many of us have spent a lot of time learning app engine – i have been worried like so many that using app engine is a mistake because any app you invest/build can only be run on… app engine.

Because the Google PaaS requires that developers customize code specifically to run in that environment and nowhere else, rewriting that code takes a lot of time, effort and money. With salaries for programmers hitting record highs in the Bay Area and recent CS graduates pulling in 0,000 or more to code, any big move that forced major code rewrites would ultimately wallop the bottom line. Ironically, these increases disproportionately affected numerous hobbyists and small developers running interesting applications – the creators of the next proverbial Google. Certainly corporate IT departments took notice, as well.

Vendor lock-in will make you vulnerable

Unquestionably, Google App Engine price increase revealed a key fundamental weakness of many cloud businesses.  Namely, vendor lock-in does exist in the cloud. This seems odd because one of the benefits of the cloud specifically was to obviate the advantage of vendor lock-in and make applications more portable. In that worldview, no cloud rules them all (not even Amazon) and companies operating applications in the cloud can quickly and easily port their applications to other PaaS offerings or to other IaaS providers.

With vendor lock-in comes vulnerability to price increases. In all likelihood, Google – a data-driven business if there ever was one – was rebalancing pricing to reflect its own need for profitability. But for developers and app makers, this drastic shift effectively turned their decision to go with Google App Engine into what may have been a “bet-the-company” decision without ever realizing it.  For the PaaS industry in general, the move raises significant uncertainty. If Google has to raise its prices this much, who’s next?

Start thinking defensively before you choose a platform

In a similar vein, developers who put their applications up on Heroku may not have realized that their business fate depended on the fidelity of the Amazon EC2 cloud. If a company had been planning a big sales event or promotion during the extended EC2 outage, those three days of hard downtime may have had an outsized impact.

So clearly the rules of the game have changed for anyone who wants to put an app in the cloud and run a real business. Defensive thinking is in order. Here are five key rules to avoid getting gouged by Google App Engine or eviscerated by an EC2 outage:

1. Avoid vendor lock-in at all costs. This is now a no-brainer. Make sure that your app can be easily ported to other clouds if you need to move due to service outages. If you must write apps that require serious customization, make sure you have a back-up plan and, if you can swing the cost, an alternative cloud running your code as a backup.
2.  Know thy PaaS. Spreading the risk among multiple PaaS providers makes a lot of sense – unless they are all totally dependent on one big cloud to deliver your applications and cloud business. Explore installable PaaS options that you yourself control. So ask pointed questions about where your PaaS is running and how they are managing their risks of failure of a big cloud.
3.  Ask hard questions about redundancy and system architecture. Deep under the covers of most clouds are core system architectures that may replicate single-points-of-failure. That’s because, at its core, the cloud infrastructure ecosystem is not a terribly diverse environment. Only a few hardware and software companies rule the roost. Similarly, ask your cloud provider to completely open their architecture and software kimono and let you examine everything. If they won’t, then you caveat emptor. If they will, you can judge their redundancy steps for yourself. So ask for specific architecture diagrams if you are going to be dependent on a cloud environment and its reliability. And get a network engineer or system architect buddy to review the diagrams. Think this is overkill? Ask FourSquare, Reddit and the other huge sites that have corporate backing or VC money and went down hard in the EC2 outages.
4. Pick code that’s easier and faster to modify. Not all runtime environments and frameworks are alike. Certain flavors and types of frameworks and Web scripting environments are more difficult to change in a pinch due to the core architecture of the way the scripting language works. Until recently, PHP was far harder to clean up than RoR, and Python, pre-Django, was more unwieldy.
5. The most popular code may not be the cheapest code. Think about the availability of coders. Many applications companies have a horror story about how their iOS app needed modifications and they either had to pay a high-end dev shop 0 per hour or had to wait for weeks to make the mods. At the same time, some runtime environments like Node.js can be built with Javascript code throughout the application stack. (We’re biased as we are strong backers of Node.js). That means you eliminate the need for differentiated front- and back-end coding teams, in a best case scenario. When building your cloud app, think hard about the code selection before you start filling up your GitHub repository.

By no means are these five steps comprehensive. And for the most part they are obvious. But in the cloud things move pretty quickly and sometimes slowing down to think about what your cloud application will be in six, 12 or 24 months is hard to do. So put on your crash helmet, watch your wallet, and be careful out there, people.

Alex Salkever is Director of Product Marketing at Joyent Cloud (@Joyent). He was formerly a technology editor at BusinessWeek.com.

Image courtesy of Flickr user kreg.steppe.

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• Infrastructure Q1: IaaS Comes Down to Earth; Big Data Takes Flight

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Google’s chrome OS notebook, referred to as Chromebook , is slated to enter the marketplace by the mid of June or July. The main idea behind the Chromebook is weaved throughout the principal keynote of “Nothing but the web”. One of the most frequently asked queries are- What on earth is chrome OS? Just what is the actual life utility of the Google’s Chromebook? Google chrome is an os geared towards providing the customer with an unabridged web experience which can be free from difficulties posed by the Laptops.

The main aim behind the chrome OS is always to make the web, the working platform, so that it works on any unit supporting the browser. The Chromebooks are specifically developed and optimized mainly for the internet. It is actually essentially a pc that runs Google’s Chrome os.

The most crucial school of thought is to have the client’s come across more of web centric and enriching. In some ways it is similar to Apple’s iPad wherein the hardware is at the backseat. Google is boasting that the Chromebook doesn’t require virus coverage. It states that the os is versatile and easy to work with and have the self recovery features.

Samsung and Acer would provide the Google Chromebook with an inbuilt 2 G.B ram, 16 G.B SSD storage space. It truly is built around the Atom N 750 CPUs. The WI-FI enabled chromebooks, by Acer will come somewhere around $350. On the other hand Samsung’s WI-FI enabled chromebooks would come around $430.

Doubts are been continually presented on its cheap hardware, on its overpowering cost as compared to other laptops and on its not been as a exciting as an ipad. Answering on the topic of the specifications been slightly low, Google has reasoned that the web has more space for storing than almost every other computer system. The significant feature of a Chromebook is its cloud computing. Google’s operating system is the initially commercially accessible end user cloud centric os.

Other remarkable feature features of a Chromebook are; the Chromebook starts in barely about 7 seconds. It dishes out all day long battery life. A computer owner can access his stuff anyplace. The owner can gain access to the applications, settings and even his documents while using the Chrome browser.

It is actually been believed that the learning curve of the Chrome operating-system is straightforward. Then again there is the other side of the coin. Quite a few say that “The web is what you are making out of it”. What remains to be seen is how people will reply to the Google Chromebook. Let’s see whether or not the Chromebook is the next generation of computers or just a passing gimmick.

You may recall Intel’s 710 “Lyndonville” and 720 “Ramsdale” enterprise SSDs outted by a leaked roadmap back in April, but details were as thin as high mountain air. Luckily, German site Computer Base has obtained what appears to be a full spec sheet for the aforementioned drives. Starting with the 710, this 25nm HET MLC — a more durable variant of MLC — device will come in 100GB, 200GB, and 300GB flavors, and it claims to have read and write speeds at up to 270 MB/s and 210 MB/s, respectively, along with a 3Gbps SATA connection.

Things are a bit wild with the 720: not only does it have 34nm SLC chips making up the 200GB and 400GB versions, but it also boasts some truly insane read and write speeds of up to 2200 MB/s and 1800 MB/s, respectively. Yes, 2200 MB/s and 1800 MB/s, garnished by the fast 4K IOPs as well. We had our doubts initially, but looking at the 6Gbps PCIe interface and the much higher power draw, we think there’s a good chance for this to come into reality. Well, only time will tell if these numbers will stick around for the Q3 launch this year — not that our wallets will want to know, mind you. Hit the source link for the full lowdown.

Intel’s 710 ‘Lyndonville’ and 720 ‘Ramsdale’ SSDs see full spec leak well ahead of release originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 16 Jun 2011 02:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Had some doubts that Apple was heading skyward? Those lingering concerns can now be put to rest. Apple has confirmed that it will be announcing iCloud on June 6th, what it’s calling an “upcoming cloud services offering.” That will be part of the keynote for this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference, known to the cool kids as WWDC. This is, of course, where everyone has come to expect new iPhones to come to light, but this year we’re thinking the focus will be more on software, and indeed Apple’s event notice indicates that the big highlights will be Mac OS X Lion and the next version of its mobile operating system, iOS 5. This is a decidedly non-Apple way to announce something big like iCloud, making us wonder what other surprises Steve Jobs will have for us at the event — yes, he’ll be kicking things off. As ever you can find out as it happens here, live.

Continue reading Apple to unveil iCloud, iOS 5 on Monday, June 6

Apple to unveil iCloud, iOS 5 on Monday, June 6 originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 31 May 2011 08:40:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you do get a Fire Fox alert telling you that visiting a given website may cause harm to your PC: actually it is a scam and nothing real. The real cause behind all those alerts is a real one. Let me tell you why you’re getting all those alerts. Former Fire Fox uses are familiar with this notification and now they are becoming aware of the nature of this scam. Check here Fire Fox Alert. Visiting this site may pose a security threat to your System! you will learn more about Fire Fox Alert.

This warning is normally displayed when a virus is detected on your computer. Those alerts are doing the promotion of some fake security tool. It is not even a real threat. Many people become tricked thinking that Fire Fox is telling them to use the fake security program. This threat is dangerous only to your PC. This is all what this program is about. Check here Computer Repair to know more about a great Online Computer Repair service.

This fake program will try to block you from using some webpages. Besides, your computer won’t be able to use any executables (to run them). This program is basically trying to push you into some corner. It also tries to force the user to make a purchase of the “not real” security client. Be careful when you have doubts regarding such warnings, and look around about them.

When this message pops up, it says that possible reasons for you getting this message includes: spyware infection on your computer, complaints from other users about this site and many other reasons. Then you will be told to do things like a virus and malware scan on your PC.

If you have no idea what to do next when reading such alerts, first do not believe them at all. Then do not buy any products, like virus removal tools, via such alerts. This is not really a message from Fire fox itself, instead a scam!

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