eWeek - December 7, 2009

The recession drove much of the tech news this year, but cloud computing, virtualization and storage were bright spots in dark times

By Wayne Rash

The recession cast a long shadow on the tech land- scape in 2009, but there were some bright spots. eWEEK Senior Writer Chris Preimesberger said virtualization technology is growing because of the demands for efficiency and for computing in the cloud.

Senior Editor Jeff Burt agrees. “The recession has ramped up interest in virtualization faster than people have expected,” he said. “The adoption rate has bloomed.” Burt added that there’s renewed interest in desktop virtualization: “People are more anxious to take a look at it. The drive for efficiency is important. That’s where you have the interest in converged data center solutions.”

Preimesberger added that storage came out smelling especially rosy as cloud storage exploded: “The prices have come down, and the competition has gone up. People are buying all kinds of storage.”

But Preimesberger noted that while companies are finding new and efficient ways to store their critical data, they aren’t necessarily poised to recover data in the event of a disaster. “The data recovery business is very different [from storage],” he said. “Symantec did a study, and 49 percent of SMBs and SOHOs have no data backup and recovery plan.”

Cloud computing was one area
that shone this year. “The growth
of cloud-based storage was huge,”
said Preimesberger, who covers
cloud computing, virtualization and
storage for eWEEK. Preimesberger
noted that cloud storage compa-
nies—including Mozy, Carbonite,

Google and Amazon— “are all doing really, really well.”

Growing interest in the cloud meant that companies already operating there— including Google— gained significance. The cloud also sparked renewed interest in the once-simple browser, which began to take on aspects of an operating system in the cloud.

As you’d expect, the leader in operating systems wasn’t about to let such a trend pass by unchallenged: Microsoft made a big and unexpected move this year, launching the Bing search engine.

“The launch of Bing is incredibly important because it signals Microsoft’s strong intention to garner serious market share in search,” said eWEEK Senior Writer Clint Boulton.

Google, meanwhile, has moved to converge search and operating systems, especially for mobile devices.

“With the Chrome OS, [Google is]
trying to create a lightweight Web
application operating environment
that will run on netbooks,” said
Boulton.

In addition, Google has taken aim at Microsoft and others in the mobile marketplace with the Android operating system. “The explosion of

Android is a big deal,” Boulton added.

Not all was clear in the cloud this year, however.

Several high-profile problems highlighted the risks inherent in cloud computing.

Users of Google Apps, for example, experienced many outages this year, and the cloud-based storage for T-Mobile Sidekick users disappeared when a server failed at the cloud-based storage facility of a Microsoft subsidiary. While most of the data was eventually recovered, the loss caused concern for those who were planning to move all of their storage to the cloud.

Tough economic times

The recession this year hit everyone hard—even Microsoft, which experienced a declining revenue trend for the first time in its existence, said Nicholas Kolakowski, eWEEK Microsoft reporter and staff writer.