Dustin Amrhein

Maybe I'm just a geek, but to me, in our ever growing, massively scaled enterprise computing landscape, there are few technologies that peak my interest like memory-based data grids. It is nothing short of amazing to see an increasing number of enterprises use these solutions in a myriad of ways, all to solve an old dilemma: How can one efficiently and cost-effectively scale data while preserving quality of service characteristics of the data such as performance, availability, consistency, and manageability? In my view, the use cases emerging from these solutions are among the most creative and intriguing that we see in the enterprise computing world today. At a recent conference, I was chatting with two colleagues that work with customers interested in and implementing some of our IBM data grid technologies. I took away a couple of things from that chat. The first ... (more)

Positioning for PaaS

One objective look at the current PaaS market provides all the evidence you need to conclude that we are in but the infancy of development for this technology. I want to be clear here, there are some really cool (and more importantly value-providing) offerings out there, but there is a long way to go. Specifically, I am not convinced anyone can make a case that we have solutions today that comprehensively address two concepts that will become mere table-stakes in the PaaS play space. First, there is effective abstraction and commoditization of infrastructure. Users should have t... (more)

Do Appliances Have A Role in Cloud's Evolution?

Recently, I read an interview with fellow IBMer, Bruce Otte, in which he laid out IBM's Roadmap to ‘Smart Clouds' by highlighting five key areas. I'm not going to enumerate those here, if you are interested you can check out the interview, but there is one thing that especially caught my eye: the notion of cloud appliances. Even before my day job revolved around one of our cloud appliance offerings, the idea of cloud appliances, and actually just appliances in general, intrigued me. Coming from a background that was decidedly hardware agnostic, which is not very uncommon when yo... (more)

A Look at Cloud Computing in IBM WebSphere

If you are a technology vendor, chances are that your users want to know what you are doing in the cloud. IBM is certainly no different. I get user queries all the time asking about the IBM cloud strategy or IBM cloud solutions. Specifically, perhaps owing to my role, I get many questions about what we are doing in the cloud with our application middleware products. The simple answer is quite a bit. Of course, that answer only raises more questions and usually starts some interesting discussions. This is why I am looking forward to an upcoming series of webcasts and podcasts tha... (more)

Management Solutions for the Cloud

The role of cloud management solutions in the enterprise world is becoming increasingly important. With the interest and adoption of cloud in the enterprise steadily rising, solutions that help an organization to effectively harness, orchestrate, and govern their use of the cloud are floating to the top of the needs list. Developing and delivering solutions in this arena is no small task, and one made even tougher by enterprise user expectations and requirements. Just what are some of the enterprise requirements and expectations for cloud management solutions? First things first... (more)