Amazon Web Services is starting to look like Germany in WW2, surrounded by its enemies

Amazon Web Services has a dominant position in the Cloud which leads people to think they are invincible and will win.  But, there are weaknesses in AWS and for those who are fierce competitors, they are taking advantage of those weaknesses.  There are some services when you push them hard, they break.  Some things don’t scale like the way you thought they would.

When you have Microsoft, Google, IBM, and a whole range of other technology companies competing against you it is hard to sustain a dominant position.

Gigaom’s Barb Darrow posts on Microsoft, Google, and IBM vs. Amazon in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant.  You ever wonder what is so magical about the Gartner Quadrants?

Microsoft ranks #2, albeit a distant #2 to AWS

Gartner cited Microsoft’s “brand, existing customer relationships, history of running global-class consumer Internet properties, deep investments in engineering and aggressive road map.” Microsoft is second when it comes to IaaS market share, “albeit a distant second” to Amazon, they wrote. Microsoft is pushing Azure not only to dyed-in-the-wool Windows and .NET shops but as a development platform for mobile apps — not traditionally a strong suit for the company.

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Google does well on debut; IBM makes strides

Other highlights: Google gets props for its new public cloud, which became broadly available in March, so Google didn’t even show up last year.  IBM Softlayer also showed huge improvement compared to Softlayer-less IBM, which was a laggard in last year’s report.

Also showing strong vision and ability to execute (but below AWS and Microsoft in both categories) were CenturyLink (now with Tier 3 aboard); CSC, which ranked second after AWS last year; and Verizon Terremark, which is building an ambitious public cloud from scratch.

Woodstone Ovens in the home

I just chatted with one of the folks at Woodstone Corp and we had a nice discussion on using the Woodstone oven.  I enjoy cooking and some other chefs who like their woodstone oven at work have one at home too.

Wood Stone is the oven of choice for hundreds of world-class chefs in their restaurants. Of course, they love them so much that they naturally want to have the same oven to play with at home! You too can cook in the same oven favored by the likes of Bobby Flay, Tom Colicchio, Wolfgang Puck, and Michael Mina with Wood Stone Home!

I work from my home office so I guess I could say I use my oven at work and home too.

Tonight’s menu is roasted chicken, pizza, and roasted broccoli.

Chile Rejects $8Bil dam project in Patagonia based on environmental impact

Al Jazeera has a post on Chile rejecting a $8bil dam project in Patagonia based on environmental impact.

President Michelle Bachelet's government has rejected a huge $8bn hydroelectric project in Chile's Patagonia region, citing its adverse impact on the environment.

The decision by the Chilean cabinet to shelve the controversial seven-year-old scheme was a victory for environmentalist groups which fought the proposal to build five dams in a pristine river basin.

"The Hidroaysen hydroelectric project is hereby rejected," said Pablo Badenier, the environment minister.

Hundreds of people on Tuesday cheered the decision in the streets of Santiago and in the region of Aysen, about 1,300km south of the Chilean capital.

Patricio Rodrigo, executive secretary of the Patagonia Defence Council, called the decision "the greatest triumph of the environmental movement in Chile".

The old way of only using the issue of addressing the power generation requirements have lost.

The project aimed at generating 2,750 megawatts of electricity, boosting Chile's installed capacity of 17,500 megawatts.

Maximo Pacheco, the energy minister, said the Hidroaysen project "suffers from important faults in its execution in not giving due consideration to aspects related to the people who live there".

Will DC market get a boost from a new chip and WS2003 end of life?

Saw this Barron’s post on how the data center market could get a boost.

The two catalysts are: 1) Intel's (ticker: INTC ) new Grantley server platform and 2) the [Microsoft ( MSFT )] Windows Server 2003 expiration. Intel, Hewlett-Packard ( HPQ ), Western Digital ( WDC ), Seagate Technology ( STX ), SanDisk ( SNDK ), F5 Networks (FFIV ) and A10 Networks ( ATEN ) could benefit.

Data-center spending last year declined for the first time since the 2009 banking crisis, falling by 1.4% to $152.8 billion. The appetite for data-center equipment through Intel's lens has been robust for cloud, high-performance computing and telecom customers, with these segments combined growing 20%-plus over the past two years. However, demand from enterprise customers has been underwhelming, declining by 1% on average. Life cycles on enterprise equipment have clearly been stretched, pointing to a large, aging installed base of information-technology (IT) equipment that could be ripe for modernization.

I am bit skeptical on whether this will impact the data center market, and will check with some other people I know.  On the other hand, most of the data center people I talk to are open source linux type of people.  The point of this Barron’s article is the large 32-bit Windows Server 2003 market that will have have reached end of life.

With industry estimates of roughly 10 million servers that are still running 32-bit applications on WS2003, the installed base is sizeable enough when combined with Grantley power/performance benefits to drive a cyclical recovery even if 35% of these legacy workloads migrated to cloud alternatives.

Doodle 4 Google 2014 winner draws a water purification system

June 9, 2014 the Doodle 4 Google 2014 winner was on the home page.  All of you google search users saw it.  For those Bing users, this is what was on the page.  What is it?  It is a water purification thing drawn by 11 year old Audrey Zhang when she learned not everyone has clean water.

"To make the world a better place, I invented a transformative water purifier. It takes in dirty and polluted water from rivers, lakes, and even oceans, then massively transforms the water into clean, safe and sanitary water, when humans and animals drink this water, they will live a healthier life."
- Audrey Zhang, 11

Here is a video for the contest.