Convey Computer Corp. used the SC08 supercomputing show in Austin, TX to launch the Convey HC-1, which it claims is the world’s first hybrid-core computer, combining the low cost and simple programming model of a commodity system with the performance of customised hardware architecture.

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Storage giant EMC has announced its first cloud infrastructure offering, EMC Atmos, a multi-petabyte information management solution designed for rich, unstructured data and to deliver cloud-based services and applications, including Web 2.0 and video. EMC Atmos allows administrators to define policies that determine how information is distributed and handled on a global basis.

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Analyst firm IDC is all over cloud computing these days, at the IDC eXchange.

The CloudPundit blog is written by Gartner’s Lydia Leong and covers “the business of Internet infrastructure, cloud computing, and virtual worlds.”

By Jake Sorofman, rPath

Agile techniques, dynamic programming languages, mashups, and frameworks are all part of the same trend of driving time and cost out of the application development process. The problem is that the speed and agility we’ve achieved in the domain of “apps” hasn’t crossed over into the domain of “ops,” which is where application value is realised.

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This past week has seen Microsoft making the headlines with its plans to enter the cloud computing space, as well as for Windows 7, the planned replacement for its desktop Vista operating system. Both are likely to have significant impacts on its business and customers, and both are at least partly defensive moves in different ways. Less of a headline but just as interesting for financial IT shops was the preview it presented of Project Velocity, its entry into the distributed caching world.

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Microsoft used its Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles this week to announce Windows Azure, a cloud-based service foundation underlying its Azure Services Platform, designed to allow developers build applications that will span cloud and enterprise data centre deployment, and deliver them to PCs, the web and mobile devices. Dell stands to gain as Azure takes off, since it’s supplying infrastructure to run Microsoft’s cloud data centres.

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Jayshree is the very new CEO at Arista Networks, and her blog is here.

This week, it’s all about Sun Microsystems. It reported some gloomy financials, had a private investment fund take a big stake and suggest the company is now a software play, and lost a co-founder (the same person for the second time). Oh, it introduced some new products too, including its first storage blade (which is, errr, hardware).

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By Jake Sorofman, rPath

Think of any historical IT transformation and you’ll likely recall the pain associated with change. For large organisations, change isn’t easy and it certainly doesn’t occur overnight. It requires a finessed combination of planning, validating, selling and a fair amount of political cajoling to get people signed up for the change. It also requires an incremental, stepwise progression that yields benefits along the way — without this, stakeholders become fatigued, enthusiasm wanes and projects lose steam. When merchandised effectively, these incremental wins become the kindling that stokes the fire, building the enthusiasm, conviction and confidence required for transformation.

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Enigmatec Corporation Founder and CTO Duncan Johnston-Watt is leaving the company at year end to establish and lead Cloudsoft Corporation, which will commercialise intellectual property acquired from Enigmatec to host Cloud-based electronic marketplaces. Engimatec will take a stake in Cloudsoft, and Johnston-Watt will continue as a non-executive director of Enigmatec. Cloudsoft will be headquartered in Edinburgh, Scotland, where Enigmatec is establishing a Centre of Excellence.

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Virtual appliance specialist rPath has announced a Cloud Computing Adoption Model, which defines a pragmatic, five-level approach for the graduated adoption of cloud computing with measurable benefits. The five levels of cloud computing adoption include:

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The market is truly in the crapper. Not even CNBC’s Erin Burnett can make the cascading crash we saw this week look good. For IT vendors selling into financial services, the next few months are going to be very tough. Case in point: InfiniBand player Voltaire came out this week revising down 3Q estimates due to “multi million dollar” orders from two financial customers not coming through as planned. But there is opportunity in every crisis …

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Merrill Lynch is adopting IBM’s iDataPlex servers to build an internal cloud within its data centres to reduce power consumption, and related costs. As the investment bank is integrated into Bank of America, cost savings are a top priority. Specifically, the servers will help Merrill Lynch build and evaluate new risk-analysis programs.

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GigaSpaces Technologies’ eXtreme Application Platform (XAP) is now available on GoGrid’s cloud computing service for Windows and Linux. The two companies’ joint offering enables Java, J2EE, .Net and C++ applications to run on a cloud computing infrastructure with an hourly pay-per-use pricing model.

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FTI chatted with William Fellows, Principal Analyst at The 451 Group, who is one of the leading thought leaders on cloud computing, and author of Partly Cloudy - Blue-Sky Thinking About Cloud Computing. Download that report for free here.

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This week, the M word has popped up in a few places. The company moved to make its Hyper-V virtualisation hypervisor available as a standalone product, and for free. It’s also bundled into its Windows Server 2008 operating system. Remember what happened when it took the joint bundling/free approach with Internet Explorer? Basically, it meant curtains for Netscape, the then leading browser. The folks at VMware - including CEO (and former Microsoft exec) Paul Maritz - should be worried!

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As one might expect, CloudAve is a blog all about cloud computing

GigaSpaces Technologies has released version 6.6 of its eXtreme Application Platform (XAP) 6.6, delivering a scale-out application server designed to scale predictably and on-demand, allowing firms to be better prepared for peak loads and spikes in demand for their applications and services. The company is also introducing new subscription and pay-per-use pricing models that will make XAP an affordable and flexible option and leverage economies of scale made possible by cloud computing.

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Chris Keene is the CEO of WaveMaker Software, and he blogs here on Web 2.0, Ajax and SaaS. Many may remember Chris as CEO of Persistence Software, which signed up several Wall Street firms as customers before being acquired by Progress Software.