Shepherds Look towards the Clouds

My favorite dish of the weekend was Sunday when I made Cioppino for the grandkids. They are definitely beginning to be more adventurous with food. Normally they stop at eating shrimp when I make seafood. Yesterday, they ate everything and the oldest even ate two oysters on the half shell. I turn him into a food lover yet. However, Cioppino can't be the dish of the weekend because I made it for you last year. So, Saturday's dish is the winning one. This is not just a runner-up dish. This is the great English stable, Shepherds Pie. Normally, it is made with ground lamb. However, I had beef on hand and I don't like ground meats in sauces like this. The bites of cubed meat and potato just go so well together. When I make moussaka or Bolognese, I'll use ground beef or lamb. You can leave out the pearl onions to be more authentic or even replace with mushrooms. Sometimes when I am cooking, I am cycling through my refrigerator to clear space, hence the pearl onions. Anyway, make this Shepherds Pie and enjoy!

Telecom and Cloud Computing

While at VON last week I sat on a panel discussing telecom and cloud computing. Cloud Computing and software as a service (SaaS) are creating buzz in the IT world. In many ways, it is a return to when people bought computing time on large mainframes to reduce CapEx. It is the same today, except, in addition to reducing CapEx, it also addresses the need to better manage personnel cost as well. Cloud computing is now new for telecom service providers, what is new is using the Internet for the delivery of the service verses dedicated data lines.

According to Wikipedia, "Cloud computing is a paradigm of computing in which dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources are provided as a service over the Internet. Users need not have knowledge of, expertise in, or control over the technology infrastructure in the "cloud" that supports them."

This does not differ from a Centrex offering (other than no Internet connectivity) or a hosted PBX service offered by an ITSP like Broadvox. However, the buzz is not about those types of offerings. The industry is looking to ITSPs to deliver new services. Last week Communications Day announced China Telecom entered the market with a cloud-based back-up service. Perhaps, not the sexiest application but something tangible. AT&T's offering is more basic. It is called AT&T Synaptic Hosting, which delivers network, computing and storage capabilities on an as needed, pay-per-use basis. I did not see any specific applications so I gather the customer provides the application and AT&T provides the computing platform.

The players to watch in space include Google, Amazon, Microsoft and others that can provide the computing platforms and the applications. With the possible exception of Microsoft, these players will need time to understand the enterprise space so there focus will be on SMBs.

Wednesday I'll look at the new apps...