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According to Romak Stanek big server vendors like HP, Sun, Dell and Microsoft will be the big losers as services evolve to the clouds. I agree with this thinking expect for the inclusion of Microsoft. The Microsoft folks are busy transitioning their software and licensing model to cloud-based services. And many customers living in infrastructure clouds will still want to utilize a windows operating system.
I was reading the description for a cloud educational session sponsored by a local development company when I came across this copy:
IT Leaders: You’d prefer to focus on critical data and security issues without the hassle of servers, software licenses, installation, and maintenance; and ultimately you want to be able to scale your infrastructure dynamically as the need arises. The cloud can give you that freedom.
I have to believe this organization was referring to Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) clouds like Google Apps, Microsoft Azure and Salesforce Sites vs. Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) clouds like Amazon EC2 or Rackspace Cloud servers. Because IaaS clouds require a certain level of software installation and system management knowledge. This begs the question: Will IT leaders eventually favor PaaS cloud solutions over IaaS because of perceived management efficiencies? I don’t think so and here’s why:
1. PaaS is the ultimate form of vendor lock-in. If I create a Google application I won’t be able to port it over to Salesforce or Microsoft. I will never be able to walk away from my cloud provider once I’m fully invested.
2. PaaS can’t run 99.999% of the existing software on the planet. My investments in legacy applications and custom code are negated by PaaS clouds. Why would my company rebuild perfectly reliable IT solutions just so that they can work the way a particular PaaS cloud provider wants them to work?
3. My IT resources and expertise will cease to be a competitive advantage if everything runs in a PaaS cloud. And I will only be able to utilize the capabilities that my PaaS platform vendor offers me.
4. PaaS cloud security will never be as transparent as IaaS cloud security. One minute Google is showing your secret documents to the whole world and the next minute they aren’t. All my data is one username and password away from being compromised.
You might get the impression that I don’t like PaaS cloud architectures. Nothing of the sort. I think the PaaS model makes an awful lot of sense for SaaS-based startups and social applications. I don’t think it makes sense for most enterprise IT applications. Tell me why I’m wrong. 
I came across an interesting write up in The Data Center Journal regarding the future of virtualization. I agree with the author that hypervisors are pretty much a commodity today. Microsoft proved that point by including support for VMWare in their virtualization management applications.
Several big announcements rained down from the Internet clouds over the past few days. Amazon announced support for Microsoft Windows in their EC2 cloud. They will support both the Windows OS (AD, IIS, .NET, etc) and SQL Server. Additionally they are providing a 99.95% uptime SLA for their services. This is a respectable goal for a cloud hosting service.
Microsoft, not to be outdone, announced their own cloud computing offering called Azure. We all knew that Microsoft was working on a cloud hosting service over the past year. It’s nice to finally hear some of the details. Microsoft’s service is initially geared towards developers but it’s not hard to see that small businesses are the next likely target. Microsoft provides additional support in the cloud for technologies like Microsoft Dynamics, Sharepoint, and Live.
Someone recently asked me the question: “Are clouds going to compete with dedicated hosting services?” My response was both yes and no. Cloud hosting from Amazon and Microsoft will definitely compete with unmanaged dedicated hosters like The Planet and SoftLayer. Cloud hosting is nothing more than virtualized Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS). I also think cloud hosting will directly compete with smaller datacenter colocation deals. Think about it. If you are a company looking to colo half-a-dozen servers at a datacenter you could save significant capex and infrastructure headaches by using virtual servers in a cloud. Plus you could take advantage of the global business continuity features of a large cloud.
I don’t believe clouds will compete with managed hosting providers — yet. The simple reason is that cloud hosters don’t provide server management. They are purely infrastructure plays with some cool APIs. I’m sure some smart group of people is thinking about building a managed services business on top of a cloud platform. You just need the technical talent, marketing, and luck.
Now Microsoft is going to release a Windows Cloud OS according to this article. Is this a response to AppEngine or EC2? I guess we will have to wait to find out. I’m not prepared to buy into the hype based on the Microsoft lectures I heard at various conferences this year.
I’m declaring this week VMWare Week because I’m out of the office in VMWare technical training for the next four days. And in the spirit of this week here is VMWare’s shot across the Microsoft Hyper-V bow. The good people at VMWare definitely have a fight on their hands. Yes it’s not all about price — it’s just mostly about price…
I was the presenter on a corporate customer webinar today where I talked about the benefits of server virtualization. I extolled VMWare as the gold-standard of virtualization. How did VMWare repay me? Well, they decided to fire CEO and co-founder Diane Greene.
Oops, bad timing I guess. I really should have spent some time surfing the tech blogs last night. I still think VMWare technology is gold but it may be a little more tarnished today.
Some analysts still feel that VMWare will retain their market share over the next few years despite growing competition — especially from Microsoft.
Others feel that the Microsoft wrecking ball is moving towards VMWare headquarters.
VMWare technology is good but it is overpriced today. Businesses will benefit greatly from the increased competition between VMWare, Microsoft, and Citrix/Sun/XenX in the next few years.
