CO M M E N TA R Y
CLOUD NINE
These days an awful lot of airplay is given over to cloud
computing (and likewise to its siblings or offspring
– opinions vary here as to the nature of the relationship
- Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service
(PaaS)).
In recent weeks a number of developments at different points
of the cloud computing arc have highlighted the growth
in IT industry sentiment for on-demand Internet-hosted
computing capabilities.
Designed to act as regional gateways to the AT&T network
September saw Amazon Web Services (AWS) launch a public
‘cloud’ AT&T’s super IDCs will support large-scale computing
beta version of its cloud computing service, Amazon Elastic
and applications on demand via virtualized servers, and
Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), running Microsoft Windows
deliver services across AT&T's IDC hosting infrastructure.
Server and Microsoft SQL Server. At the same time, Amazon.
com subsidiary AWS announced that on-demand Amazon
Given the stated ambition of a number of brand-name telcos to
EC2 processing power and applications were generally
move up the value chain, and become value-added enterprise
available, having exited their beta period, and now came
IT service providers, more operators are likely to emulate
backed up with a Service Level Agreement (SLA).
AT&T. In principle this will bring them into conflict with the
likes of Google. But it needn’t.
The following month Rackspace, a US enterprise claiming
to be the world's leading specialist hosting services
A recent analysis from Gartner recommends that telecom
provider, unveiled its cloud hosting strategy. This included
carriers could, generally speaking, partner with Google
agreements to acquire Xen-based virtual machine hosting
rather than compete with it. On the cloud computing front
company Slicehost and cloud storage solutions provider
Gartner offers the following sage advice: ‘Google is looking
Jungle Disk.
to engage enterprises by getting them hooked on using
Google's applications and cloud computing infrastructure.
The same month, during a keynote speech at the Microsoft
Making it easy for users to download Google applications
Professional Developers Conference 2008 (PDC2008), Ray
and giving them free space on Google's cloud infrastructure
Ozzie, Microsoft Corp’s chief software architect, announced
will give Google great marketing insight to help it develop a
Windows Azure, the cloud-based service foundation
presence within the small-and-midsize business (SMB) market
underlying its Azure Services Platform, and highlighted
initially, with eventual migration to larger enterprises where
the platform’s role in delivering a software plus services
enterprises will come to Google for all their back-office SaaS
approach to computing. The Azure Services Platform is
needs. The impact on carriers looking to generate revenue
a move by software colossus Microsoft to engage with
from the SaaS business model within the SMB market will
developers building the next generation of applications that
require carriers to clearly differentiate their applications from
will span from the cloud to the enterprise data centre and
Google or partner with it.’
deliver new services across the PC, Web and phone. “Today
marks a turning point for Microsoft and the development
Either way, though, there may be very respectable revenues
community,” said Ozzie at the PDC2008 shindig, adding
here.
“…it gives our customers the power of choice to deploy
applications in cloud-based Internet services, or through on-
Research house IDC reckons that, over the next five years,
premises servers, or to combine them in any way that makes
spending on IT cloud services could grow almost threefold,
the most sense for the needs of their business.”
reaching US$42 billion by 2012 and accounting for 9% of
revenues in five key market segments. More importantly,
More recently there has been renewed speculation that
IDC estimates spending on cloud computing will accelerate
Yahoo! might move beyond cloud computing research and,
throughout the forecast period, capturing 25% of IT spending
imitating its much larger search engine rival Google, become
growth in 2012, and nearly a third of growth the following year.
a cloud service provider.
More gung-ho is ‘The Cloud Wars: $100+ billion at stake’
Telcos too are dipping their toes into the cloud computing
a reported Merrill Lynch research note from May. This
waters. In August, for example, AT&T introduced what it
apparently projects that by 2011 the size of the cloud
dubbed Synaptic Hosting as part of the operator’s US$1
computing market opportunity could reach US$160 billion,
billion planned global network investment in 2008. This
made up of US$95 billion in business and productivity
utility computing service combines technology acquired
applications and US$65 billion in online advertising.
from USinternetworking (USi) with five ‘super’ Internet Data
Centres (IDCs) in the USA, Europe and Asia. At the time AT&T
But whichever way you slice it, there could be a golden rather
had a total of 38 IDCs in its global IP network.
than a silver lining to this cloud.
CW LITE
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