Big Blue has lost some friends in the clouds. This weekend, IBM was in the eye of a storm dealing with companies such as Google, Amazon.com, and Microsoft. The Internet search giant, the online retailer and the software behemoth all withdrew support for IBM’s effort to launch a cloud-computing initiative.

Members of the Cloud Computing Interoperability Forum (CCIF) also pulled their support.

The core issue behind the loss of support was IBM’s manifesto. Some companies weren’t happy about being invited late in the process, while others believe there are some political efforts under way.

Not an Open Process

The CCIF’s organizer, Reuven Cohen, said because the group represents members from various industries, it could not endorse just one document.

“I don’t think anyone had any issues with the document, that was hard to argue with and I’m an advocate for an open ecosystem for cloud computing,” Cohen said. “The issue is a lot of people in the community — small and big companies and individuals — believe cloud is an approachable technology.”

The CCIF could not endorse the manifesto because some of its members didn’t agree that it was an open and fair process. “They feared that it was overly political and may have agendas,” Cohen said.

“While Google isn’t party to the manifesto, we are a strong advocate of cloud computing, given the substantial benefits for consumers and businesses,” said Google’s Jon Murchinson. “We value industry dialog that results in more and better delivery of software and services via the Internet, and appreciate IBM’s leadership and commitment in this area. We continue to be open to interoperability with all vendors and any data.”

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MySpace just announced that it will bring its Open Platform to Windows Mobile phones. The new MySpace mobile application for Windows Mobile will be built on top of Microsoft’s Silverlight platform. In addition, MySpace also announced its MySpace Silverlight SDK, which will make it easier for developers to build OpenSocial applications using Silverlight.

MySpace also announced that LG will preload the MySpace Mobile application on the next-generation of its Windows Mobile 6.1 phones.

According to Microsoft, the company will also release a kit on April 2 that will allow developers to use Visual Studio and Expression Blend to create OpenSocial-based applications.

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Microsoft will tout at the Mix09 conference in Las Vegas this week its planned Silverlight 3 rich Internet application technology along with a host of other developer-related offerings, according to the conference Web site.

Other efforts to be pondered at the conference include the planned Visual Studio 2010 IDE, the Azure Services Platform for cloud computing and Expression Web, for building Web sites.

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What we have here is one set of data points for one particular system, but I think that the results are very promising. The fact that Windows 7 comes out top in three out of four of these tests at this early stage is very promising indeed. The boot time and PCMark Vantage results are particularly good.

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