Thirdpipe has been espousing for about a year now that the landscape of computing was changing. Most of which was enabled by what broadband services we have in place. Sometimes it feels like being the lone tree falling and asking the question — did anyone hear us fall? Well evidently that is the case –

This week marks several important events:

• Google announced their broad Web-as-a-platform developer toolset.

• Microsoft showcased part of their Windows 7 user interface and set the date for their PDC which indicates their new OS, Windows 7, is approaching Beta.

• In addition, I and a number of the folks I work with are seeing what appears to be a rather massive move to the Mac platform, which hasn’t seen this kind of growth since the 80s.

• Finally, Linux is beginning to get some actual traction, showing up on a number of low cost “Netbook” offerings and MID (Mobile Internet Devices); it is starting to look like even this platform may have some legs.

I have not seen this level of competition before and Microsoft has never appeared more exposed. In my lifetime I have never seen a major vendor allow the kind of attack-marketing Apple is using without challenge. And, coupled with initial problems with Windows Vista, Microsoft suddenly looks like they are in a fight for the desktop the likes of which they – and we – have never seen.

The market and its users are making a shift. Right now CPU power is the number #1 criteria. However that is rapidly being supplanted by mobility currently at number #2 on the ;user preference list. Laptops displaced desktops in sales several years ago. Now UMPC’s are coming on strong with tools like the eePC. That mobility is favoring OS’s with a small footprint and whose technical ecology can transcend across multiple platforms. Only two systems can do that — Linux and Google Desktop.

Regardless of the snaz factor for Windows 7 it will represent the evolutionary pinnacle of an waning genera of computing.

Linky.

Not to slam our current crop of tech and business reporters, but it’s refreshing to see an interview with a tech CEO done to the point with relevance. Done at the D6 conference, Om Malik Questioned Mr Bezos on how Amazon web services got stated and where it’s going. Om also brought Wall Street’s complete ignorance of the significance of the cloud computing wave into focus.

• How and when Amazon began its cloud computing effort.
• Why Amazon has become an innovator with Amazon Web Services and how it relates to their core business of being an online retailer.
• Whether or not Wall Street recognizes Amazon’s cloud efforts.
• What’s next for Amazon Web Services.
• Whether or not Amazon has plans for a VC fund or for cloud computing startups. (GigaOm)

Entire new businesses and communities have been built around user generated media. While the devoted amateur could always find a way, the declining cost of good production tools along with the ease of web distribution brought UGM to the masses. The blog you are reading now was enabled by a collection of free and easy to use open source products. As of today, the lines have completely blurred between producer and consumer as so many of us are both.

Applications may be the next wave. Imagine anyone who has learned how to use a few simple tools being able to create the next Digg or Facebook. Unlimited free to cheap utility computing becoming available in the cloud, combined with easy to use tools will supercharge the most devoted non-coder, and inspire many more casual users to create apps for themselves and share them. While the tools that powerful are not here yet, they are progressing in that direction. An open source project called Open Mashups may be on the cusp of that next wave.   If you’d like to automate some of the ways you use the web, or have a glimpse of what the near future holds, Open Mashups is a free download.

If you’ve been following trends, the next big thing is utility computing in the cloud. It appears HP is interested in improving their cloud position, at least in the enterprise services market. We predict infrastructure on demand from HP is on the horizon, with more cloud based services to come.

 HP said the deal, which has been unanimously approved by the HP and EDS boards of directors, will close in the second half of the year. HP expects that the addition of EDS will more than double HP’s services revenue of $16.6 billion in fiscal 2007. At the end of 2007, HP and EDS had a collective services revenue of more than $38 billion and 210,000 employees, doing business in more than 80 countries, HP said. (Cnet)

Typically, such a major deal means two things: either that the buyer has some issues with his current business or he wants to make a big bet on the future. In case of HP CEO Mark Hurd, it might be a bit of both. There is only so much market share they can carve out when it comes to printers and computers. More importantly, HP seems to be realizing that the future is about on-demand infrastructure. EDS brings to the table about 100 data centers around the planet.

Not everyone agrees with HP’s decision to buy EDS and get big fast. Forrester analyst Paul Roehrig is in that camp. Vinnie “Deal Architect” Mirchandani is someone I immensely respect and he brings up a very valid point when he writes:

But EDS is not Accenture or PwC (which IBM acquired) or TCS or Infosys. Its major strength is still in infrastructure outsourcing (though it has been growing its application and BPO capabilities nicely). HP’s outsourcing is similarly more skewed towards infrastructure. So, it is a scale play. But the timing is risky because infrastructure outsourcing is being challenged by data center consolidations, a secular decline in processing, storage and network charges and emergence of utility and cloud computing models. (GigaOm)

In a joint public statement  the search giant and big iron giant announced they are teaming up to offer a broad range of hosted apps and services. The partnership should extend Google’s reach into the enterpriser market and IBM’s reach into the small/ medium business / consumer markets.

Over the next year, IBM and Google plan to roll out a worldwide network of servers from which consumers and businesses will tap everything from online soccer schedules to advanced engineering applications. The IBM-Google cloud, fresh off testing at several major universities, runs on Linux-based machines using Xen virtualization and Apache Hadoop, an open source implementation of the Google File System.

Google already has launched numerous cloud-based services for consumers, such as e-mail and storage. With the exception of security requirements, “there’s not that much difference between the enterprise cloud and the consumer cloud,” Google CEO Eric Schmidt said earlier this month during an appearance in Los Angeles with IBM chief Sam Palmisano. “The cloud has higher value in business. That’s the secret to our collaboration.” (Yahoo News)

Cloud Computing is one of our favorite subjects here at the Third Pipe. If you were to ask any of our contributors to define it, you’ll get a different answer. To me it’s the web itself, but a more timely definition would be anything that extends beyond the delivery of static content. The new wave of web based apps has taken that definitintion to an extremes and is creating a new wave of extremely powerful tools to the individual that were once only available to large institutions. the next wave will empower the individual with even greater capabilities.

Rob Boothby of Joyent interviewed more than a dozen technology wonks, including Steve Gillmor, Matt Mullenweg, Tim O’Reilly, Kevin Marks, Rafe Needleman, Stowe Boyd, Brian Solis and myself, at the Web 2.0 Expo, to answer the question, “What is Cloud Computing ?” (Dan Farber’s Cnet Blog)

The speculation about a Sun / Amazon partnership is no more. Sun has announced that it will make Open Solaris available on Amazon’s EC2 cloud computing service.

• Sun’s OpenSolaris OS will be available on the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) customers for free. It is in beta for now.
• Sun will provide premium technical support for MySQL database running on Linux and Amazon EC2.

These developments are meant to address the needs and complaints of the developer community. OpenSolaris, which comes with tools such as ZFS and Dynamic Tracing (D-Trace), will be offered for free, in contrast to some Linux offerings that cost money. For instance, if you sign up for EC2 and pick RedHat, it costs $19. ZFS allows instant rollback and continual check-summing capabilities, something developers have found lacking in the EC2 platform. This OpenSolaris on Amazon EC2 beta is currently available by invitation only. Some software vendors, including GigaSpaces, Rightscale, Thoughtworks and Zmanda, are already offering their solutions via Amazon Machine.(GigaOm)

If well executed, it could be huge for Sun by focusing more development on Solaris. Amazon wins either way as existing code for Solaris will now more easily take up residence in the cloud.

To be fair Sun’s Scott McNealy has been talking up the cloud computing concept since the early days of the internet. Unfortunately, Sun never really did much to convert the lofty idea into a service for the masses like Amazon has. Recently Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz hinted that a deal between Sun and Amazon having to do with cloud computing services is on the horizon. Perhaps by teaming with Amazon, Sun can finally realize McNealy’s dream.

When I asked him about Sun — and cloud computing especially — in light of the recent trend in which startups now have more of an affinity with Amazon Web Services than Sun, Schwartz replied with a question: “Do you think it would make sense for us to partner with Amazon to offer free info on the cloud?” I guess, I said. “Then you’ll be paying attention to the announcement we make tomorrow with what we’ll be doing with Amazon.”

He pointed out that Amazon has done a great job of evangelizing the whole notion of cloud computing, and of bringing infrastructure as a service to startups. “Amazon knocked the ball out of the park,” he said. For Sun, the opportunities are with mid-size and large corporations — like banks, pharma and financial companies — that need to build their own clouds because they cannot use Amazon type on-demand computing due to certain legal and regulatory limitations. (GigaOm)

A nex report by Xiti indicates that Firefox browser has gained market share in most areas of the globe except for the US which had a small drop in March. Biggest gains are int eh New Europe countries like Poland. The most stalwart use being in Australia.

According to Xiti, Internet Explorer has lost 2.5 percentage points during the past six months. Opera and Safari have also seen slight gains during that time period to 3.3 and 2.3 percent, respectively. Xiti does not provide statistics for iPhone browser marketshare and the report does not specify whether or not iPhone browsing is counted as part of the Safari statistics.

Xiti’s global statistics indicate that Oceania—comprised of Australia and New Zealand—has the highest Firefox market share of any continent, with 31.2 percent. The continent with the lowest marketshare is Asia, at 17.2 percent. In many parts of Asia, Firefox has trouble competing with Maxthon, a browser created in China that uses Internet Explorer’s rendering engine.

With Safari, Opera, and Firefox continuing to expand; IE’s dominance is slowly shrinking.

Xiti report here.
HT: Ars Technica

We’re seeign more and more signs that Yahoo really does have a clue about computing in the cloud. On thursday, CTO Ari Balogh annouce they are opening more API’s.

“We are taking open to a whole other place,” Balogh said. “We are rewiring Yahoo from the inside out with a developer platform that will open up the assets of Yahoo in a way never done before, making the consumer experience social throughout and provide hooks to developers.” He noted that Yahoo has 10 billion latent connections across its properties, such as mail, messenger and fantasy sports. (Cnet)

This is the right way for Yahoo to grow, and maybe introduce a little more competiton in the search marketplace. By enabling developers to make use of Yahoo paltforms, Yahoo trafiic wil grow exponentially. Everyone wins, except maybe Microsoft.