Dmitry Sotnikov

Last week at Microsoft PDC we launched our Systems Management as a Platform offering with a few of the services going into private beta. Now you can actually see a quick demo of one of these services and read some of the media coverage. You can see the product demo if you watch t... (more)

Systems Management as a Service (is there an acronym for this yet?) is finally becoming a reality. Today at Microsoft Professional Developer Conference we have announced beta launch of Quest OnDemand our online IT management services. This is one of the projects which have been con... (more)

Here’s when and where you can find me in Berlin this week: Microsoft Online Services booth (Unified Communications area) in the TLC area (3.2) I’ll be there tomorrow (Tuesday) during the evening reception – 6:15-8:00 pm. Obviously, I will be happy to answer any questions on Exchang... (more)

Quest Connect is a big online conference put together by Quest, Microsoft, , Dell, NetApp, Vizioncore, Scriptlogic, Techrepublic, Oracle Magazine, Redmond Magazine, and The Code Project. The agenda is packed with a lot of useful material on Windows Server 2008 R2, AD, Identity Ma... (more)

Pundits talking about how Windows 7 is all about Microsoft competing against Apple, recovering with Vista consumer adoption disaster, or getting people off of XP, are missing one other – extremely important – part of the Windows 7 story. Windows 7 and its server counterpart – Win... (more)

There are two cloud-related sessions in the “community” section of Microsoft TechEd Europe 2009 and you need to vote for them here if you are attending the conference (and obviously if you want them in the agenda). Basically, both are on cloud computing: one for developers and the ... (more)

Thanks to Nicholas Carr everyone loves to talk about Cloud Computing as electricity and how we are transitioning from own power-stations to central grid. After a lot of discussions about "the cloud", it occurred to me recently that there is a far better model to make cloud idea e... (more)

In the brave new world of enterprise applications going to the web do we need an identity directory spawning the internet, and if so, will email address system become the de-facto global identity system? Global directories are obviously not new. There were efforts like X.400 and ... (more)

An important milestone just got passed by Google – one of the big enterprise identity management vendors out there – Quest Software (full disclosure: I am working for the company) – has added Google Apps as a directory to which they can provision identities and access. One might... (more)

Analysts should love hype – it lets them jump into a hot area and be the thought leaders who everyone has to consult to make any sense out of what is going on in the area. “Cloud” is probably the most hyped word in the industry these days and everyone has a definition of what it... (more)

It’s probably about time for me to provide a quick overview of what we at Quest Software are doing in the cloud computing area. There are two main “cloud” directions for us: Using the cloud for our own offerings. Enabling public and private clouds. 1. Using Clouds Using Cloud means... (more)

You’d think that after all the news of China blocking Google and other web sites Software-as-a-Service and cloud computing would be the worst software delivery model you would imagine? Customer survey on SaaS Gartner conducted in November 2008 has shown that Asia/Pacific region ... (more)

Just because you have software packaged as a virtual machine and running in Amazon EC2 does not mean you have a “cloud” offering. As easy as it sounds in most cases when a vendor claims they have their software available as a service/cloud offering – it is just that: a virtual m... (more)

That’s what Gartner’s Andrea Di Maiofound in his recent report: “Government in the Cloud: Much More Than Computing“. This might surprise initially – after all Forrester just told us that public sector was lagging in the cloud computing adoption rush. However, Andrea builds up a ... (more)

Forrester’s Frank Gillet just published results of a big survey on Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS – like Amazon’s compute cloud or internal cloud-like datacenter) acceptance across geographies and company sizes titled “Conventional Wisdom Is Wrong About Cloud IaaS“. As the ti... (more)

“APaaS: A Step to a ‘Killer App’ for Cloud Computing?” is a great report by Yefim V. Natis and Eric Knipp published by Gartner last week. Yefim and Eric, as it seems to me, managed to articulate the very essence of what makes Cloud Computing so disruptive: “Easy to learn and use ... (more)

Technet Edge posted the interview David Tesar made with me while at TechEd last month. Check it out here. Dmitry Sotnikov of Quest Software, gives us his perspective on services in the cloud and answers some of the frequently asked questions in his sessions such as: - When is t... (more)

Recording from my TEC session on IT professional view on identity management and AD-integration for Exchange Online and Windows Azure has just got posted: Enjoy! You can find other session recordings from TEC (including keynote!) here. Also, if you are based in Europe – TEC Europ... (more)

“Dataquest Insight: Cloud-Based Server Backup Services, 2Q09 Update” by Adam W. Couture is a good feature-by-feature (including pricing) comparison of a dozen of major online backup solutions for the enterprise space. Backup might initially sound like the worst cloud application y... (more)

If you are at Microsoft TechEd next week there will be a few sessions I will be giving there: Birds-of-a-Feather,”Going to the Cloud: Are We Crazy?” Dmitry Sotnikov, 4:30 p.m. Tuesday May 12, room 501A – this one is IT-oriented discussion of risks and benefits of putting your IT... (more)