Friday, December 16, 2011

Intel's #DigitalNibbles Livecast - Pilot Episode

I'm happy to announce the new Intel #DigitalNibbles livecast with @techallyson & myself is launching Jan 4th. 

In this our pilot episode Allyson and I talk with Raejeanne Skillern from Intel about the company's perspective on the cloud and where cloud computing will take us. John Kenevey from Facebook also stops by to talk about the Open Compute Project and transforming the data center.

Listen to our pilot episode.



Thursday, December 15, 2011

Virtustream Acquires Enomaly, Inc


Toronto, Ontario, Canada—December 15, 2011— We are happy  to announce today that Enomaly Inc.,  has entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by  Virtustream, Inc., a leading global cloud solutions provider. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, and the deal is expected to close in Q1 of 2012.

Virtustream owns and operates its own data centers in the U.S. and U.K., and has offices in Washington, D.C., New York, San Francisco, Atlanta, London and Dublin. Virtusteam clients include some of the worlds largest and most successful firms including Domino Foods and Yum Brands.

“Cloud computing is evolving quickly and we believe Virtustream to be among the fasting growing and best positioned for the massive opportunity within the enterprise cloud space. Virtustream is ideally positioned to capitalize on the needs of complex enterprises migrating to the cloud.” said Reuven Cohen, Founder of Enomaly. “We are ecstatic to be joining the Virtustream team.”
Enomaly is credited with pioneering the first cloud brokerage, SpotCloud, which provides a marketplace for buyers and sellers to exchange available compute and storage capacities.  Virtustream will make two key enhancements to SpotCloud.  First, the company will delay the production launch of SpotCloud 1.0, which is currently in beta release with thousands of registered users, so as to enhance its robustness and security. Secondly, Virtustream will significantly enhance SpotCloud’s workload exchange with the xStream Infrastructure Unit (IU). The IU, invented and patented by Virtustream, is a cloud atomic element - an extensible container of compute, memory, bandwidth and IOPS, smaller than a virtual machine, which enables highly efficient cloud management for customers and industry leading service level guarantees.  

Along with these upgrades, Virtustream will continue to support released versions of Enomaly’s software products.  Furthermore, the company will also integrate specific components of SpotCloud into its future product suite, which will include a trusted exchange for clients looking for business-class cloud federation using the xStream cloud ecosystem. Virtustream’s xStream cloud platform is available today and includes off-premise virtual private cloud services, off-premise public cloud services and on-premise private cloud enablement software.

Another key driver of the acquisition is the acceleration of Virtustream’s expansion into the Asia Pacific region.  Earlier in the year, Virtustream announced a strategic partnership with XYBASE to drive cloud computing adoption in Southeast Asia, including Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand. With the acquisition of Enomaly, the company will quickly expand its distribution into China.

“Enomaly has gained its most significant market traction in AsiaPac, specifically China” said Rodney Rogers, Chairman and CEO of Virtustream. “This acquisition allows us to leverage their customer base in this region and to expand upon it by bringing these customers a much broader capability set with the xStream Cloud Platform.”



About Enomaly
Enomaly (www.enomaly.com) has been a pioneer and leader in the cloud computing space.  Enomaly's SpotCloud platform is the world's first many-to-many cloud platform, interconnecting hundreds of suppliers and thousands of cloud infrastructure users in a global marketplace of cloud computing capacity.  Enomaly's Elastic Computing Platform and its High Assurance Edition empower service providers, governments, and enterprise end-user organizations to deliver highly scalable "infrastructure as a service" (or IaaS) services to their customers and stakeholders.  Enomaly is based in Toronto, Canada, with additional operations in Vancouver and in major APAC markets.  Needham & Company, LLC acted as financial agent to Enomaly in this transaction. Enomaly is also creator of CloudCamp, an informal global series of cloud computing events that provide a common ground for the introduction and advancement of cloud computing.



About Virtustream
Virtustream (www.virtustream.com) is an innovative cloud provisioning firm committed to delivering next-generation infrastructure services to enterprise class customers. We leverage our secure high performance platform, xStream, to deliver highly available and elastic compute resources at true consumption-based pricing. We lead our Cloud Platform Services with Cloud Advisory Services, providing expertise in the areas of cloud adoption, migration and architecture strategies and infrastructure-related integration services. We provide ongoing support for our Cloud Platform Services through two groups: our Cloud Cover team provides a managed service, from core infrastructure through enterprise applications and the Cloud Staging and Networks group that provides colocation, security and network services. Virtustream owns and operates its own data centers in the U.S. and U.K., and has offices in Washington, D.C., New York, San Francisco, Atlanta, London, Dublin and the Channel Islands. Keep tabs on us with Twitter: www.twitter.com/rjrogers87 and www.twitter.com/Virtustream.

###
Media Contacts:
Lisa Desmond Mercedes Carrasco
Virtustream, Inc.                                                               Schwartz MSL
(615) 368.7325                                           (781) 684.0770
[email protected] [email protected]

Reuven Cohen
Enomaly Inc.
(416) 710-5831

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Reuven Cohen Added as TechStars Cloud Mentor

I'm happy to announce that I've agreed to pitch in as a TechStars Mentor for their new Cloud accelerator program.

For those of you unfamiliar with TechStars, it's the #1 startup accelerator in the world. Not to mention one of the most selective – although thousands of companies apply each year, they only take about ten companies per program. This gives them a selection rate lower than most Ivy League schools, so you have to be among the best of the best to be in TechStar.

TechStars Cloud is a vertically-focused accelerator that funds companies focused exclusively on cloud computing and cloud infrastructure. For me, the more exciting aspect of the TechStars Cloud program is that it's specifically targeting cloud infrastructure startups exclusively. Yes, something I have a bit of experience with.

What do you get? How's $100k cash sound? Oh did I mention it's provided by top venture capital firms including Avalon, DFJ Mercury, Foundry Group, IA Ventures, Right Side Capital, Silicon Valley Bank, SoftBank Capital, DFJ Mercury, RRE, as well as TechStars Alumni and several individuals.

Oh, and thats not all. They're some pretty sweet perks too.

So, do you have a great idea for company, but don't have the funds to get it off the ground? Go ahead and apply for the upcoming Cloud accelerator program (deadline for applications is Oct 21)

Who knows, you might have me as your mentor.  Tell'em @ruv sent ya :)

Friday, September 16, 2011

Talking about The China Cloud




Reuven Cohen is the founder of Enomaly, a cloud services provider. He is also one of the original CloudCamp founders. He travels more than most people I know. And a lot of that travel is to China and the Asia Pacific region. He is one of the first cloud people to start doing business in China and the Asia Pacific region.

 Original link
http://ruv.net/a/zi

Thursday, April 28, 2011

Announcing SpotCloud for OpenStack

SpotCloud, the world's best place to buy & sell cloud computing capacity, is happy to announce support for the OpenStack platform.

The open source SpotCloud OpenStack Connector is available for immediate use as a  free Apache-licensed download (http://dl.enomaly.com/spotcloudopenstack). The SpotCloud OpenStack Connector provides an easy and effective way for service providers deploying OpenStack based clouds to sell cloud computing capacity through the global SpotCloud market.

This release represents another step in opening up the SpotCloud market with support for the widest range of cloud services. The SpotCloud market is open to all buyers of cloud computing services through www.spotcloud.com, offering the world’s best pricing and availability for cloud services from service providers on four continents, now including service providers using OpenStack as their cloud platform.

Key facts about the SpotCloud OpenStack Connector:
  • The SpotCloud OpenStack Connector easily connects any existing or new OpenStack deployment to SpotCloud
  • Through SpotCloud, service providers can choose to sell excess cloud capacity anonymously, and can also offer their fully branded cloud services for sale
  • Service providers have full control over how much of their cloud capacity is made available to SpotCloud buyers, what configurations are offered through SpotCloud, and at what price
  • SpotCloud provides detailed reporting of all transaction activity and provides payment settlement services in over 80 currencies
  • The SpotCloud OpenStack Connector is free open source software, supported and released under the Apache license

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

SpotCloud Update - Non-Opaque Provider Branding Options

This is a quick note to let you know that we’ve added an exciting new “Non Opaque” feature for SpotCloud providers. This new branding option for hardware profiles allows you to selectively choose which profiles are made visible under your own company name and logo while allowing other profiles to remain opaque (hidden) to our more then 1200+ registered SpotCloud buyers. 

By promoting your brand, you’ll benefit by attracting buyers who are willing to pay extra for the trust your brand implies.

To enable this feature please login to the SpotCloud dashboard as a provider, then go to the “settings” tab and upload your logo,  your company name and website.

Next go to the “Pricing” tab and edit the profiles you would like to make your brand visible with by selecting the “branding” check box in each profile. Once approved your company, logo and link to your website will be visible to all SpotCloud buyers. You can login as a buyer to see this in action with our example "Enomaly Inc" provider.

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Real-time SpotCloud Market Data API Released

One of the most requested additions to the SpotCloud API is the ability to get realtime market data. I'm happy to announce that we've added this to the latest SpotCloud Provider API update V1.2.

These new API calls allow you to adjust your pricing to be based on market conditions or simply see what the most popular locations or instance type are at any given moment giving our providers an extra level of insight into the SpotCloud market.

You can grab the latest API docs from the following locations.

Request


GET /api/v1/provider/market.{json|xml}

Response Fields

  • average_package_size - The average appliance storage size.
  • popular_cpu - A list of popular CPU counts used when creating instances.
  • popular_memory - A list of popular memory sizes used when creating instances.
  • popular_location - A list of popular geographic locations used to deploy instances.
  • average_memory_cost - The current average cost per GB of memory.
  • average_cpu_cost - The current average cost per CPU.

Friday, March 11, 2011

SpotCloud Update (New App Directory)

We’re happy to announce that we’ve launched a new Appliance Directory for SpotCloud. The integrated appliance directory allows you to more easily deploy from a directory of pre-built SpotCloud appliances to any of our providers from around the globe. To get started, login to the SpotCloud management dashboard as a buyer, select a providers and you’ll see a list of appliances in the drop down.

We are actively adding new appliances to the directory, so check back frequently. Some of the appliances we have available currently included:

Webmin
The SpotCloud Webmin appliance is our generic Ubuntu 10.10 with a Webmin management console added to it. This allows you to visually configure all aspects of your server, including installing packages and managing users.

BOINC SpotCloud (Distributed Grid Computing Platform)
The BOINC appliance allows you to create clients anywhere in the world for handling distributed processing jobs. To operate the appliance, create a new instance with it. You can then ssh into the instance for configuration. The configuration script only asks for one item, and that is the IP address your BOINC management server that issues jobs.

OpenVPN
Built using the SpotCloud Ubuntu OS, the SpotCloud Open VPN appliance allows peers to authenticate each other using a pre-shared secret key, certificates, or username/password. Essentially, using Open VPN on SpotCloud allows for on-the-fly, anonymous internet access using on-demand, regional spot instances.

Ubuntu 10.10
Ubuntu JeOS (pronounced "Juice") is an efficient variant of the Ubuntu Server operating system, configured specifically for use as virtual appliances. This is a specialized installation of Ubuntu Server Edition with a tuned kernel that only contains the base elements needed to run within a distributed SpotCloud environment.

AflexiCDN
Built on Ubuntu JeOS & Aflexi's CDN automation control panel is the first CDN software especially catered for cloud computing. The Aflexi software allows you to quickly and easily build your own global content delivery network using SpotCloud resources from around the globe.

Varnish Cache
This is a fully functional SpotCloud appliance built on Ubuntu JeOS and Varnish Cache. It includes a one time command line configuration example accessible via SSH console on any SpotCloud provider. Once configured, the appliance automatically locks itself down preventing further access.

Get Listed in our Directory
We’re looking for more reference SpotCloud appliances, If you have an application well suited for SpotCloud please get in touch with us.

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

The Amortization of Cloud Futures and Derivatives

Really interesting tweet from @jayfry3 earlier today. In it he noted a reference by @joeweinman that said Netflix treats reserved AWS instances as CapEx and depreciates it's cost over 3 yrs. This immediately got me thinking -- Wow, now that's an interesting concept.

Before I go any further I warn you I am not a tax expert, and if you are, please feel free to correct anything I say from this point forward. This is a random thought, more than a proof.

First of all, I don't think what they were referring to is actually depreciation since depreciation strictly refers to tangible assets. Instead I think what they're talking about is a very similar concept of amortization which is basically the same but for intangible assets.

A quick recap in tax law, according to Wikipedia "amortization refers to the cost recovery system for intangible property. Although the theory behind cost recovery deductions of amortization is to deduct from basis in a systematic manner over an asset's estimated useful economic life so as to reflect its consumption, expiration, obsolescence or other decline in value as a result of use or the passage of time, many times a perfect match of income and deductions does not occur for policy reasons."

With the launch of SpotCloud which essentially is a Spot Market for computing capacity, the concept of being able to reserve computing capacity in the form of a futures contract or derivative has been a popular topic of conversation during my various presentations and pitches lately. Previously I saw the opportunity for "cloud futures" from the point of view of the provider the capacity. Basically allowing the provider a greater level of insight into future capacity consumption, inventory and capacity planning. The missing part of the equation has been on the buy side, other then potentially locking in a future price, (as a hedge) the rationale for buying future computing capacity was fairly limited. With the introduction of amortization to the equation the concept dramatically shifts from not only a capacity planning exercise but also to a tax and accounting strategy for major buyers of computing capacity.

So much like traditional depreciation, amortizing future computing capacity bought as a "reservation" or derivative allows the compute asset to be deferred rather than treated as a current expense with the difference of the spot price of the compute asset as recorded on the Spot market at that the time of consumption defining a gain or loss. Taking this concept even further, if the 'depreciable' or amortized compute asset is not actually used, but instead re-sold on a computing Spot market such as SpotCloud, the business can again recognize a gain or loss based on net basis of the asset. (The net basis is cost less amortization) Yup, crazy, and it would seem -- totally do-able.

Are we on the verge of a cloud futures market? Maybe sooner than you think.

Sunday, March 6, 2011

The Rise of The Cloud Aggregator

Recently there has been a lot of renewed talk of "Cloud Aggregators" a term that has been thrown around quite bit of the the last few years. But what is a cloud aggregator really? How does one define this segement? How do you qualify a company or service as a cloud aggregator? It's time for my turn to attempt to define this some-what vague term.

First, more generally what is a aggregator? One of the best descriptions I could find is described as "a system or service that combines data or items with similar characteristics (geographic area, target market, size, etc.) into larger entities. Value is derived from cost savings, or the ability to reach a larger market and charge higher prices from bundling multiple goods or services."

I'm not sure I agree with the higher prices part, but I do think the key point is the value in assembling "a system or service" that brings together a group of formally distinct components or web services. For example Google at its heart is an aggregator, all those websites found on the Internet would and do exist regardless of Google, but easy access to all of them through a simple, power and effient interface had previously not existed (at least not in a way that was relevant). Then there are marketplace aggregators such as Ebay, in this case without the ebay platform each of these vendors could not exist beyond potentially a physical storefront. Ebay provided both the aggregation, facilitation (which makes tasks for others easy) and fulfillment (completing the transaction).

So using Google and Ebay as two ends of the aggregator spectrum. You have Google the market disrupter versus ebay the market maker. Each important, but important for very different reasons. Both share common traits in that they provide easy access to something that was previously not very easily accessible. Yet each derive their true value in completely different ways. Google brought order to chaos through the use of advanced algorithms and massive computational power and ebay created a structured marketplace that had never existed in an area that needed it.

 Now back to cloud aggregators. Here's my definition.

Cloud Aggregator  - a platform or service that combines multiple clouds with similar characteristics (geographic area, cost, technology size, etc.) into a single point of access, format, and structure. Value is derived from cost savings and greater efficiency found from the ability to easily leverage multiple services providers.

Thursday, March 3, 2011

Living on the Edge

There's somethin' wrong with the cloud today, I think I know what it is. We're seeing things in a different way, but should we be judging a cloud provider by the color of their -- logo?

It's seems that for many, the only basis of comparing cloud providers is based upon superficial aspects. I know of the company, recognize the logo, or read a random review. But the reality is we're moving away from the traditional vendor driven marketing fluff of a single provider world to a multi-cloud, federated ecosystem of capacity providers, where brand recognition is less important than performance and price. I'm talking about living on the edge, the edge of the network.

One of the more interesting recent announcements was Amazon's Japan availability zone, in describing their launch AWS spoke of latency for users within Tokyo being less than 10ms. Hitting directly at the heart of the opportunity. Yet on the flip side, they also mentioned that the Japanese zone was ideal for other nearby geographies, to which I say they're missing the point. Using Japanese resources in South Korea makes little sense given the rapid advancement and availability of cloud capacity in South Korea. The opportunity going forward isn't to address generalized areas of the world, but to address the specifics, not just on a country basis but on a city or even a neighbourhood basis. A single provider will never be able to get this level of granularity regardless of how much money they have. Economies of scale will always be limited by total market size, the more granular the market the less economies of scale work in favor the large provider. The only way to address this growing movement toward edge based, latency dependent application deployment is to federate many providers with many customers across many diverse geographies.

I admit that this is easier said than done, ask anyone who's attempted to use more than one provider in a federated, intercloud connection global cloud of clouds type of deployment and tell me what you think about your sit-u-a-tion. They'll tell you it's complication, and aggravation.

I know a few of you will point back to the inevitable economies of scale that an AWS or Google bring forth. Yes, they probably spent many millions building their Japanese cloud infrastructure. But did they have to? Economies of scale are important factors mostly for true for commoditized IT aspects such as bandwidth. But for areas such as ultra-localization computing, this is not practical for even the largest web companies. Sure there are many factors that cause a cloud providers average cost per compute unit to fall as the scale of output is increased, purchasing power is probably the most relevant. Essentially the biggest Internet companies can buy the most servers at a massive volume thus getting the lowest cost per unit of compute time and therefore achieving the best margins at the lowest cost. But even this equation has a practical limit when it comes to geography.

When it comes to ultra-localization the boundaries of the so-called provider economies of scale, commoditiziation and volume quickly breakdown. Now it becomes a question of federation and aggregation. Many providers connected through a normalized or structured market interface rather then one provider attempting to address all markets. I'm not just talking about what we're doing with SpotCloud, but what I believe to be the move toward a market centric economy of federated cloud ecosystems, a move I think is inevitable. Ultra-local capacity or edge based computing, or whatever you chose to call it in a nutshell is the opportunity moving forward.

The choice will quickly become one of choosing a single provider (one to many) or an aggregator (many to many). I believe the choice will quickly become obvious to anyone who has a geographic component to their applications. The opportunity is living on the edge.

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

SpotCloud Beta Update (March)

To say we’ve had a spectacular launch would be putting it lightly. Since our Valentines Day SpotCloud Launch, we’ve been inundated with interest in the marketplace. Buyers, sellers, investors and media have flocked to us in the thousands from around the world.

As of today we have dozens of active providers online from Hafnarfjörður (that’s in Iceland) to Boston to Brisbane to Hong Kong. There are also in the hundreds of providers who have signed up and are in various stages of preparation and set-up of their SpotCloud environments. We are actively on-boarding new providers as fast as we can. If you haven’t done so yet, go ahead and get started as a provider

We’re also seeing a lot of interest from the buyer side as well with a ratio of 5:1 buyers to sellers.  It’s been great to observe an increasing rate of buyers converting from the initial “tire-kicking” phase to becoming more active users.  The market is now open and free to browse. So go ahead and sign up as a buyer.

Some Various SpotCloud Market Updates

Instance Renewals
We just pushed an update to the SpotCloud marketplace that fixes a few bugs, but, most importantly, adds the ability for SpotCloud buyers to renew their instances at the current spot market price. Previously, at the end of the maximum duration, a buyer’s appliance would be automatically terminated (deleted). Now, if a SpotCloud seller enables this feature, a buyer will have the option to keep their instance at the end of the duration and pay the current spot price going forward. More importantly, they can keep their IP address and data. An email is automatically sent to the Buyer when their instance is close to being terminated to provide the option of having it renewed. 

As a seller, to enable this feature, you must login to the SpotCloud management interface as a seller at https://spotcloud.appspot.com/provider/pricing and select the check box on each hardware profile labeled "Instance renew allowed"

As a buyer, you’ll see the new option in your instance information or via an email sent to you before termination. We hope to include this in our API in an upcoming release.

New SpotCloud Apppliances
We’ve published several new sample spotcloud Appliance including a OpenVPN appliance and Aflexi CDN appliance. In the next few weeks we will be releasing a built-in App Directory in the SpotCloud market, to enable much easier deployment of SpotCloud Appliances. 

Get Featured in our upcoming App Directory
If you have an application that would make a great sample SpotCloud appliance, we’d love to include it in our upcoming App Directory, so please get in touch.

Create your own appliance using the SpotCloud CLI & appliance bundling tool
You can now easily convert an existing VM to the SpotCloud Appliance format using our SpotCloud CLI and Appliance Bundling Tool. This tool also provides an easy command line API access to the SpotCloud marketplace enabling a true hybrid cloud computing experience.

Selected Media Coverage

Economist Magazine - Cloud computing: A market for computing power
“LIKE oil or pork bellies, computing capacity is now a tradeable commodity. February 14th saw the launch of SpotCloud, the world’s first spot market for cloud computing. It works much like other spot markets”.

Eweek Review - SpotCloud Explores the Cloud's Utility Computing Future
“One of the most popular images used to illustrate the concept of cloud computing is the electrical grid. The “cloud” can be tricky to pin down, but everyone is familiar with plugging into a standardized socket and drawing the juice necessary to run many electrical devices from a network of large power plants.”

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

SpotCloud Beta Update (Jan 25th)

Another strong week of development on the SpotCloud.com platform. Unfortunately, some of the coolest new additions relate to our administration and management system so we can’t show them to you. However, we plan to do a major 1.2 release next week with lots of other new eye candy for you.

We’ve also been busy signing up and on-boarding new providers from all over the world and hope to have all continents covered by our February public launch. A few notable additions to the SpotCloud market this week include, Brazil, Iceland, and Italy. I’d like to point out that we could use additional capacity from Asia, so if you have capacity or know of someone who does, please send them along.

Setting ECP SpotCloud Permissions
We’ve encountered a minor work-flow oversight that relates to the installation of ECP SpotCloud Edition. When installing ECP, users seem to skip the last step which is to set the correct permissions for their SpotCloud user. To help, we’ve updated our Setup_broker.py script which will complete the setup as well as configure the correct permissions.

Pricing Your Capacity
One of the most asked questions lately is “How do I price my capacity on the market?”
We've created a SpotCloud Pricing Guide for capacity providers. You can grab it here. In an upcoming release we will also include a market overview for sellers.

Documentation Error (Storage requirement)
I’d like to outline an error in the original SpotCloud Setup Guide whereby we outline a “2TB” per-host requirement. This is not correct. The actual number is 500GB per Host. In reality, you’ll be okay even if you only provide one server.

Press
Some more press: “Can a New IaaS Cloud Really Compete?” http://ruv.net/a/if

Friday, January 21, 2011

How to Make Money on SpotCloud (Provider Pricing Guide)

One of the first questions SpotCloud providers ask me after they've setup their infrastructure and made their capacity available on SpotCloud is how to effectively price their capacity. There really is no easy answer, there are a lot of factors that dictate SpotCloud capacity pricing.

For example competition from a particular geography can lead to a higher or lower price. (Basic supply and demand) What I have noticed is that providers from specific regional hot spots such as Brazil, Russia and Asia tend to be able to price higher than places like San Francisco which tend to be more capacity saturated. Another question is what should the price be based on. My answer is typically it should be a combination of your fixed costs and a markup. It's also better to base it on the element that is the hardest (costliest) to share and delegate which in our case is typically RAM or potentially bandwidth. Also before you can hope to define a price you need to be able to understand what your own costs are on a monthly basis, utilization is also a key component.

To help with the SpotCloud pricing process, we've created a simple SpotCloud Provider Pricing Guide in the form of an Excel spreadsheet on Google Docs or Download the Excel Spreadsheet directly. (Feedback is greatly appreciated)

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

SpotCloud Beta Update

We continue to see significant participation on the SpotCloud sell-side with providers from around the globe signing up for the service (Here’s a nice overview from GigaOM). We are currently adding providers to the market as we get ready to open the platform to buyers in the next few weeks. We have a select group of buyers who are currently helping us test the system and plan to include a broader group in early February.

We want to highlight that we are continually improving the workflow to help simplify on-boarding of both buyers and sellers. One area in particular that we want to bring to your attention relates to entering your hardware pricing information after you’ve registered as a provider. For those of you who have submitted API registration, you will receive an email once approved. At this point it is important to log into the platform and enter your hardware prices so that your capacity can be made available on the SpotCloud market. If you don’t set a price, your capacity will not be visible to buyers. Going forward we plan to improve the workflow to make this requirement more obvious.

To help you select the optimal price we plan to add a market overview for sellers so that it will be easy to assess how other providers are pricing their capacity. Furthermore, a number of sellers have indicated they’d also like to be buyers. These features and more have been added to our roadmap.

Over the coming days we will be rolling out new features frequently including improved interface elements and reporting. So, log in frequently to see the changes!

New SpotCloud API’s
We’re also happy to inform you that we’ve published the first drafts of our Buy and Sell side API’s. These API’s are great if you're looking to define a broader automated workflow (such as time of day or utilization based costing) you may want to download a copy of our API docs.

For Sellers
For Buyers

If you’d like access to a SpotCloud API sandbox, please get in touch.

Sample Spot Cloud Appliance
A few of our beta users have asked us for a sample SpotCloud appliance to test their third party platforms. We’ve created a small appliance & guide to help you!

SpotCloud Appliance Creation Guide (For Buyers)
http://ruv.net/a/scbuyerguide


This guide will help buyers through the process of creating a virtual machine image (an "appliance") that will work well with SpotCloud.

Sample SpotCloud Appliance (XVM2) 345MB
http://dl.enomaly.com/varnish - user: root - pass: spotcloud

This is a fully functional SpotCloud appliance built on Ubuntu JeOS & Varnish Cache. It includes a one time command line configuration example accessible via SSH console on any SpotCloud provider. Once configured, the appliance automatically locks itself down preventing further access. It's fully functional and serves as a great SpotCloud example appliance.

What Does it do?

Varnish is the key software that speeds up your web site. It is Open Source, built on industry standards and requires very few resources. Once configured this appliance will automatically replicate your website to any SpotCloud instance in the world. Just point your dns to the ip address. (Anycast + Geotargeting recommended) Essentially it's an instant global CDN.

Getting Started as a Provider
If you haven’t already done so, we’re giving you two options for participating as a Capacity Provider in the SpotCloud Beta.

1. Using the free Enomaly ECP SpotCloud Edition
You can use the Free Enomaly ECP SpotCloud Edition to provide capacity to the market.

2. Using your own cloud platform
It’s easy to integrate your own cloud with SpotCloud (some service providers have completed the process in a few hours). We’ve written a guide to assist service providers (capacity sellers) who would like to integrate their internally-developed or third party cloud infrastructure software platforms or services with the SpotCloud market.

Register to get the download at www.spotcloud.com and get access today!

#DigitalNibbles Podcast Sponsored by Intel

If you would like to be a guest on the show, please get in touch.

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