Trevor Doerksen's Blog

OK, I have a budget, a computing task, a storage task, and even some smart people around me. I don't want to run these tasks on a server in my basement, at the university, or on my existing providers. My existing provider offers quick and virtualized services, but not quick enough - or enough. I want more storage - ran out. To get more from my current U.S.-based provider, I need to provision a new server, take it offline for part of a day, and buy all sorts of new services. I just want more storage than my laptop has.

At the same time, I would like to move more media processing from local computers to computers elsewhere. I know if I was a university researcher I could get access to the grid. I would need a computer science degree to figure it out, but there are a few folks like that around too.

However, I call around, I search around, I talk to people I know. The solutions offered are not as varied as you might think. There are lots of companies, but mostly the same managed service solutions. I want to use Amazon. Let's hire a summer

It seems I'm not alone. David Vellante writes that he is Desperately Seeking Cloud Computing. If David and I don't find anybody that builds consulting and managed services around cloud computing we may need to start a support group together, Entrepreneurs Seeking Evaporation Into Cloud. We won't solve any problems, but at least we won't be alone. Course we could end up creating a huge consulting business.

However, for now, I'm reaching out, not to entrepreneurs with the same problem or that want to start a consulting business, but to any technologist that can help me get an application onto EC2 and storage onto S3. And then do the same for Google App Engine and one other cloud/grid type service. The only requirement is a report and demo on how they did it. It needs to be completed in 4 weeks. If you are up to the challenge let me know, I want to figure out before David does so I can phone him and sell him exactly what he needs.