Software Licensing & Master Service Agreements : Chicago Software Licensing Lawyer & Attorney : Sam Conforti Law Firm : Master Service Agreements, Negotiations, Outsourcing : Cook County, Illinois

Chris Kanaracus reports in his September 19^th article in Computerworld entitled Ellison ‘announces one big, honkin’ cloud’ that Oracle’s CEO, Larry Ellison, is ready to take on the likes of IBM and Hewlett Packard in the private cloud computing marketplace with one monster of a system.    As I have stated in the past, hardware is not my field of expertise. Usually the time when the people in the room start talking about stringing servers together and processing cores is the time the paramedics are called as I curl up in a ball on the floor gasping for air. However, this new system, entitled Exalogic Elastic Cloud, is too good to pass up and not bring to my reader’s attention. There is a tie-in to software applications of course. I will try to hit the salient points, but I highly recommend Kanaracus’ article to fill in the certain gaps that I will create.

Exalogic will comprise:

·         30 servers

·         360 processor cores

·         Interconnected via Infiniband

·         Supporting both Solaris and Linux, and

·         The ability to string more Exalogic machines together for even more power

Ellison boasted that a single set-up can handle 1 million HTTP requests per second and two systems running together can handle all of Facebook’s HTTP requests.

In his article Kanaracus contrasts the two types of cloud computing. There is the Salesforce model which concentrates on just a couple of applications, allowing for some add-ons to these core apps. Then there is the Amazon model which runs apps “on top of an virtualized pool of infrastructure that can shift resources in response to demand.” Kanaracus quotes Larry Ellison as accepting the Amazon model when he states his belief that cloud computing “is a platform. ... on which you run standards-based software. … It’s a comprehensive development and execution environment that can run all your applications." Exalogic is meant to run behind the firewall in contrast to a public cloud.

Oracle views the Exalogic system as a means to consolidate applications and fits into Oracle’s approach of selling integrated systems consisting of hardware with the software, especially after its acquisition of Sun Microsystems.

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I highly recommend Larry Barrett’s August 20^th article in CIO Update entitled Intel’s McAfee Buy Latest Sign of Sea Change in IT. In the second half of his article Barrett discusses how Intel’s acquisition of McAfee opens the door for Intel to become a key player in the mobile device and network security markets. I will discuss some of his key points later in this posting.  However, what I found most interesting is his discussion in the first half of his article where he describes quite adroitly and with relative ease his perception of the “Sea Change” in the IT industry. Barrett lays out the salient points in rapid fire succession based on his perception that the arrival of wireless networks, smartphones, and the “consumers’ unquenchable thirst for mobile devices” has sparked an acquisition frenzy amongst the big IT players who have plenty of cash on reserve. For example, Google has gone from the prime search engine vendor to mobile devices, operating systems, Cloud Computing, and SaaS. He mentions Cisco Systems, IBM, and HP purchasing unified communications, network security, and business intelligence companies, all of these companies apparently outside of the acquirer’s original area of expertise.

And now Intel’s Security on a Chip:

This acquisition takes Intel in a totally different direction from its core business. Gartner security analyst, Peter Firstbrook, doesn’t believe you can build security on a chip:

"Security is dependent on the OS and the apps in the stack. You can't anticipate that in the chip."

However others are not so skeptical. They see the potential that exists for Intel to enter a whole array of markets from network security, to smartphones, to PC tablets, to the myriad of hardware and software these markets create. Intel CEO, Paul Otellini, stated that the purchase of McAfee and bringing security to the chip was

“not just the opportunity to co-sell but also the opportunity to deeply integrate into the architecture of our products."

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