Cloud Services Cloud Computing at Your Service

The Cloud Services team is proud to present a new version of Cloud Studio. Main feature that distinguishes this release is the introduction of profiles and here is a short story of why we decided to invent them:

We assume users have a set of images which are regularly utilized. When starting an instance off an image, certain parameters need to be set (instance type, availability zone and more). Making this information into one entity significantly simplifies the process of launching instances, hence the profiles - easily managed collections of parameters needed to start an instance.

Currently we support two types of profiles: generic EC2 profiles and OSGi profiles.

EC2 profiles allow users to create and keep the settings (launch parameters) enabling the execution of basic EC2 instances with just one click:

OSGi profiles allow users to define selection of bundles and Java properties that will be provisioned to OSGi runtime during EC2 instance launch:

Windows, Mac and Linux versions of Cloud Studio 1.0b4 are available for immediate download.

In addition we prepared several screencasts demonstrating newly introduced features (we added audio comments to them):

* Using generic profiles with EC2.

Cloud Services focuses on creating innovative solutions by enabling technologies we believe in to work in the cloud environments. Today we would like to present OSGi - the dynamic module system for Java™.

The article by Peter Kriens, Director of Technology for OSGi Alliance, is addressing many questions a newcomer might have on the benefits of developing with OSGi:

OSGi technology provides solutions to problems that many people simply see as intrinsic aspects of software development in Java and would not call them problems.

We are happy to announce our new release of Cloud Studio with full support of Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS).

Screenshot of EBS Volumes view:

Now Studio is available for Windows, Mac and Linux.

Click here to open "Running Amazon Elastic Block Store in Cloud Studio" screencast in a new window. Download the Studio itself from our download page. We are also open to supporting you in incorporating EBS into your projects.

Since Elastic Block Store feature is not widely known to general public yet, we would like to quote Amazon’s own description of it:

“This new feature provides reliable, persistent storage volumes, for use with Amazon EC2 instances. These (EBS) volumes exist independently from any Amazon EC2 instances, and will behave like raw, unformatted hard drives or block devices, which may then be formatted and configured based on the needs of your application. The volumes will be significantly more durable than the local disks within an Amazon EC2 instance. Additionally, our persistent storage feature will enable you to automatically create snapshots of your volumes and back them up to Amazon S3 for even greater reliability.

OSGi is a Java-based service platform that can be remotely managed. The core part of the specifications is a framework that defines an application life cycle management model, a service registry, an Execution environment and Modules. Based on this framework, a large number of OSGi Layers, APIs, and Services have been defined. OSGi Specification is maintained by OSGi Alliance.

Server side OSGi applications now can also be easily deployed on computing clouds implemented by Amazon (EC2). With several mouse clicks your exported bundles can be uploaded to remote storage (S3) and added to profile (Launch Configuration). Now virtual servers (EC2 instances) containing OSGi framework provisioned with selected bundles can easily be started.

Screenshot of the Profile Editor:

Click here to open OSGi on EC2 video presentation in a new window.

If someone is interested in trying out OSGi Cloud - contact us at studio@service-cloud.com

Yesterday we have attended Boston’s Xconomy Forum covering various Cloud Computing topics. Listening to what large players have to say about their initiatives in the filed was educational, but the entrepreneurs and the attendees really made us appreciate the magnitude of the interest Cloud Computing is quickly gaining. We are excited to be among the early adopters and looking forward to helping others either to enter or to migrate to Cloud Computing model.

Cloud Studio is undoubtedly not the only project we are working on. In case you are just looking to get into Cloud Computing, or already have ideas and need help with their implementation – do not hesitate to talk to us. Our versatile experience in the field and interest in nontrivial problems are to your service.

We plan to enhance the Cloud Studio with more functions as they come up, as well as improve upon what we have already done. Cloud Services would like to hear users’ feedback and build it into the process of advancement. We hope to hear your ideas at studio@service-cloud.com

We are proud to announce our second beta-release of Cloud Studio. As mentioned before, its main new feature is a S3 Browser. It allows users to navigate through S3 buckets, upload files and download objects.

In addition, starting from this release we will always deliver Mac version of the standalone application. It is now available from our download page.

Once again we would like to thank you for your interest in our software. We are doing our best constantly improving it.

Please keep us up to date about any problems you may experience with Cloud Studio. We are looking forward to hearing from either via the chat (see button on the right) or e-mail: studio@service-cloud.com

Within next few days we will make another release of Cloud Studio. The major new feature to be added is a S3 Browser. By using it, you will be able to browse through your S3 buckets, upload files, download objects and check object properties.

The Cloud Services team has seen a lot of downloads and received some great reviews since the release of the Cloud Studio a little over a week ago. We would like to express our gratitude to everyone using, planning to use our application, or interested to find out more about us, our development and future plans. Thanks for being with us and stay tuned, there is more to come shortly.