rlebherz wrote: Alf,
Interesting article. I think the Cloud services and cloud infrastructure lines are a bit blurred, but I agree with most of what you are saying.
Dont underestimate the SLA's role in accountability. For companies that have dynamic requirements and no down time can be afforded, make sure you have very tight SLAs. For example, OpSource provides a 100% SLA in the cloud and 100%SLA around production application environments. Now 100% is ideally perfect, it comes down to accountability, yo...
Everyone wants to lower their capital expenditures and increase operational efficiency - it's a sign of the times. The economy of the past 12 - 18 months has forced all organizations to do more with less and become more efficient. While everyone can identify with the request to do more with less, th...
What do the following companies all have in common: Amazon, Microsoft, Google, EMC, VMware, IBM, Sun, Dell, Akamai, SalesForce.com, NetSuite, and Activision. Answer: Cloud Computing. Merrill Lynch analysts reckon that by 2011 the volume of cloud computing market opportunity will amount to $160BN, including $95N in business and productivity apps (e-mail, office, CRM, etc.) and $65BN in online advertising.
Merrill Lynch recently issued a research note: “The Cloud Wars: $100+ billion at stake” (07 May 2008). The analysts write that by 2011 the volume of cloud computing market opportunity would amount to $160bn, including $95bn in business and productivity apps (email, office, CRM, etc.) and $65bn in online advertising.
The authors identify 10 companies + 2 “unconventional plays” with exposure to Cloud Computing growth. I tried to sketch their market position in a diagram (my own interpretation):
Top 10 (+2) Cloud companies
It is interesting that Merrill Lynch researchers added Activision to their top cloud company list. They are absolutely correct, though. If you manage to operate a 10 million WoW gamer user base in a distributed network, you definitely deserve to be in the champions league.
I will pick up other interesting aspects of the note in later blog posts. Comments, ideas?
[This post appeared originally here and is republished in full by kind permission of the author, who retains copyright.]
About Markus Klems Markus Klems is a research assistant at Germany-based FZI Research Center for Information Technology. His main areas of interests are cloud computing, grids, distributed programming and agile Web development - the technological point of view as well as business models. He blogs at http://markusklems.wordpress.com/.
Merrill Lynch's estimate most likely does not include the rising number of smaller providers entering the SaaS marketplace. For instance, www.HostedDatabase.com, is a product from a small company but offers very simple-to-use template applications. This company along with others aim to compete at the lower end of the spectrum, off the radar of larger players like Salesforce.
#1
Richard Davies commented on 7 Jul 2008
Whilst Amazon, Google, etc. get a lot of the press, there is a good ecosystem of smaller vendors offering cloud computing products - e.g. in the web hosting market these include [http://www.mediatemple.net MediaTemple], [http://www.mosso.com Mosso], [http://www.gogrid.com GoGrid] in the US and [http://www.elastichosts.com ElasticHosts], [http://www.flexiscale.com FlexiScale] in the UK.
Dean J. Garrett wrote: Merrill Lynch's estimate most likely does not include the rising number of smaller providers entering the SaaS marketplace. For instance, www.HostedDatabase.com, is a product from a small company but offers very simple-to-use template applications. This company along with others aim to compete at the lower end of the spectrum, off the radar of larger players like Salesforce.
Richard Davies wrote: Whilst Amazon, Google, etc. get a lot of the press, there is a good ecosystem of smaller vendors offering cloud computing products - e.g. in the web hosting market these include [http://www.mediatemple.net MediaTemple], [http://www.mosso.com Mosso], [http://www.gogrid.com GoGrid] in the US and [http://www.elastichosts.com ElasticHosts], [http://www.flexiscale.com FlexiScale] in the UK.
As more business is conducted online and additional files are stored on remote servers rather than in local filing cabinets, keeping private information secure has become increasingly more complex and complicated. The migration of data online and career opportunities, for those with a...
This article looks at the basic interoperability requirements when communicating with the Cloud, and in particular at techniques and standards used to express and enforce wire-level contracts between communicating parties, as these parties are increasingly also contracting parties in a...
This week, the latest list of the world’s top 500 supercomputers was announced. What I find interesting about it is that at number 5 is a new Chinese design that marries Intel Xeon CPU chips with AMD/ATI graphics chips. There are thousands of clusters that contain a pair of CPUs and GP...
As part of its continual push to embrace
state-of-the-art technology, EON Reality, the world's leading interactive
3D software provider, is proud to join the ranks of top software architects
of the industry at Microsoft's The Architecture Journal (October 2009) with
their presentat...
The ability to effortlessly share cool things you discover on the Web in real time, with friends, family and business colleagues without ever leaving your browser, just became a reality with today's introduction of Qwisk by WebWean, Inc. at the Realtime CrunchUp conference here in San ...
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What do the following companies all have in common: Amazon, Microsoft, Google, EMC, VMware, IBM, Sun, Dell, Akamai, SalesForce.com, NetSuite, and Activision. Answer: Cloud Computing. Merrill Lynch analysts reckon that by 2011 the volume of cloud computing market opportunity will amount to $160BN, including $95N in business and productivity apps (e-mail, office, CRM, etc.) and $65BN in online advertising.
The ENISA (European Network and Information Security Agency) today released the 
As more business is conducted online and additional files are stored on remote servers rather than in local filing cabinets, keeping private information secure has become increasingly more complex and complicated. The migration of data online and career opportunities, for those with a...
This article looks at the basic interoperability requirements when communicating with the Cloud, and in particular at techniques and standards used to express and enforce wire-level contracts between communicating parties, as these parties are increasingly also contracting parties in a...
This week, the latest list of the world’s top 500 supercomputers was announced. What I find interesting about it is that at number 5 is a new Chinese design that marries Intel Xeon CPU chips with AMD/ATI graphics chips. There are thousands of clusters that contain a pair of CPUs and GP...
As part of its continual push to embrace
state-of-the-art technology, EON Reality, the world's leading interactive
3D software provider, is proud to join the ranks of top software architects
of the industry at Microsoft's The Architecture Journal (October 2009) with
their presentat...
The ability to effortlessly share cool things you discover on the Web in real time, with friends, family and business colleagues without ever leaving your browser, just became a reality with today's introduction of Qwisk by WebWean, Inc. at the Realtime CrunchUp conference here in San ...
