...and I am not talking about the trees that line the memories of my childhood.  This time, I am talking about an open-source software infrastructure for implementing "cloud computing" on clusters developed by some wicked-smart university students and their professor over at UCSB.  

EUCALYPTUS stands for Elastic Utility Computing Architecture Linking Your Programs To Useful Systems – and its HOT.   You gotta love the humor and creativity in the name.  But even better than the name is what it does.  EUCALYPTUS enables all sorts of people - developers and students alike - to experiment with cloud computing from the inside.  It even and allows you to look down from the application level to the hardware.   And while most students are sunning themselves on the beach during the summer, this gang just released version1.1.

To learn more, check out this talk from Velocity last week – where academia spoke with corporate america.  And to the gang at UCSB, don't forget to stop and smell the "Eucalyptus"...you deserve it.