Look up at the "Cloud" its getting bigger

Cloud Computingの市場をマクロで語った記事。

本記事で登場したIBM、VMWare、GoogleのCloud Computing戦略に加えて、Microsoft社のAzureが新たについて貸された形になり、大手ソフトウェアベンダーがすべてCloud Computingの戦略を打ち出したことになる。

Cloud ComputingをOSとしてみるのは解釈の違いがあるが、いづれにしても基幹ソフトウェアの新たなコンポーネントであり、それがまたUS企業を中心としたベンダー群で独占される形になっている事は確かである。

The internet or "cloud" is ever evolving and is a major part of our daily lives from personal to business. Cloud computing is the term that is gaining more and more attention that describes how businesses incorporate software as a service, Web 2.0 and other recent trends that rely on the internet to provide these services to the home and office.

It is the future that may one day have our computing needs satisfied by a monitor, cell phone and/ or connection to the internet. Everything else will be accessible via the cloud from accessing business applications and other software to storage all on a server hosted by someone else.
Cloud computing has been confused with Grid computing which is a method of combining many computers to form a cluster of networked systems that are capable of performing large tasks.

It would seem, however, that the convergence of Grid and the Cloud will someday happen to offer something even larger.

It is no wonder that so many companies especially the elitists of the data center industry are building and expanding new facilities every month. If the cloud is the next wave they are ready to ride it in.

The most recent of cloud computing announcements comes from IBM. They have opened four new cloud computing centers in emerging markets. They are in Sao Paulo, Brazil; Bangalore, India; Seoul, Korea; and Hanoi, Vietnam, where there is an increasing demand for Internet-based computing models and skills to help companies compete in highly competitive environments.

With previously opened centers in both emerging and mature markets, IBM now has 13 cloud computing centers, the world's largest network of expertise on cloud computing.

If the power and rising cost trend continues it is likely that companies will begin to look ever closer at this option that will provide them a data center without having to man it.

IBM has been perfecting the cloud computing model for clients around the world. For instance the new facility in Brazil will generate business such as massive scale collaboration programs. As Internet users in Brazil acquire more mobility, cloud computing will make Web-based business operations more efficient.

"Cloud computing is emerging as a fundamental change in IT approach," said Dr. Willy Chiu, vice president of IBM High Performance On Demand Solutions. "It is a key element of the evolution to a New Enterprise Data Center, and a powerful tool for efficient operations, especially in growth economies."

The "Cloud" is not only getting attention at the facility level, but at the OS level several new players in the operating system (OS) market have evolved mainly to compete in the niche cloud market.

Recently VMware announced its new Virtual Data Center Operating System (VDC-OS) and now Google who owns the internet browsing market sees an opportunity to compete against Microsoft by offering its own OS or let us say a web browser that will be fully compatible to handle the future of cloud computing.

If the portal to the cloud is through a web browser then you bet that Google is not going to allow Microsoft to jump into their turf. Therefore, Google has stepped up and has announced its "Operating System" called Chrome.

Calling Chrome an operating system may be stretching it a bit, but it is directly designed for the Cloud computing future and will likely become the cloud operating environment.
Finally, Intel and Oracle are teaming up to implement standards of security and efficiency, and for the overall improvement of cloud-based computing. The two companies are seeing the potential of cloud computing's professional use, and therefore are proceeding to provide a measure of standards and security to the concept, with enterprise users in mind.

The collaboration will be centered on marrying the Intel's Virtualization Technology (VT) with Oracle grid computing solutions like the Oracle database, Real Application Clusters (RAC), Automatic Storage Management, Application Grid, Enterprise Manager, and VM.
In helping with standardization, Intel and Oracle said that they will work with other companies to help develop provisioning and managing specifications for cloud-based systems, and would also help in developing standards for the portability of Virtual Machine images, like the Open Virtual Format.

Keep looking up because the "cloud" is getting bigger.

GigaSpaces as Alternative to GoogleAppEngine for the Enterprise

GigaSpaceというCloud ComputingベンダーがAmazon Web Serviceと異なり、いくつかの利点を持っている、という事を説明した記事。

- Enterprise向けのAPIをサポート（Java、C++、.Net、など）

- No Vendor Lock In （ユーザを囲い込むような戦略を持たず、あくまでも汎用的なインタフェースを提供）

- Enterprise CloudとInternet Cloud 両方をサポート。 最近登場しているInternal Cloudをサポートする有数の企業

- Enterprise Ready(障害対策、セキュリティ、Persisitence Memory、等企業として必要な機能をサポート）

今後ウォッチする必要のある企業である。 同社はイスラエルの企業である事にも注目。

I Just came across an interesting post by Josh Heitzman who writes about his negative experience with Google App Engine, which led him to examine a list of Alternatives to Google App Engine. He points out GigaSpaces XAP as one of them:

One particularly interesting EC2 third party provider is GigaSpaces with their XAP platform that provides in memory transactions backed up to a database. The in memory transactions appear to scale linearly across machines thus providing a distributed in-memory datastore that gets backed up to persistent storage. A lot of the docs reference Java, but the page returned by the aforementioned link states "…deploy applications that use Java, .Net, C++, or even scripting languages…" so after a cursory investigation it is not clear what aspects of their platform is only accessible via Java and which aspects are generally accessible. Bears more investigation.

[See my comment to the post relating to the question about .Net and C++ support]

Josh's post raises the question of what is Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS)?

Platform-as-a-Service is a term used to describe a new set of development platforms that are typically accessible through the web. These platforms enable you to develop new applications easily, without the need to install any software or set up a development and deployment environment. A good example of this is Force.com from Scalesforce.com. Other SaaS providers have similar platforms. It seems that the common motivation behind this trend is to enable the SaaS provider a way to expose their internal framework to other partners and users and build an eco-system around their SaaS product. This led to the emergence of dedicated, proprietary platforms. Google App Engine is a similar effort from Google initiative to expose some of their own platform to external users.

These platforms, as Josh experienced, were not designed as a general purpose enterprise platform, and therefore, it is not surprising that they lack many of the elements that you would normally expect from enterprise middleware, such as transaction support, security and standard APIs.

Unlike such Internet based platforms, GigaSpaces XAP was primarily designed as an enterprise middleware platform. It is used in the most demanding mission-critical applications that require extreme scalability and low-latency. During the past year we have extended our middleware platform to the Internet cloud, starting with tight integration with Amazon EC2 and followed with partnerships and integration with leading players in the market, including GoGrid, Joyent, RightScale, CohesiveFTand others. We recently launched our cloud framework in private beta. It enables building enterprise applications on GigaSpaces XAP via the internet. In this way, you can run an application on a hosted GigaSpaces environment, without even downloading the GigaSpaces software.

What makes GigaSpaces XAP an alternative to Google App Engine for the enterprise?

• Support for existing enterprise applications:

One of my previous posts discussed: Google App Engine - what about existing applications?

In this post, I want to reiterate this point, which goes to the heart of one of the main differences between GigaSpaces XAP and most Internet based PaaS, including Google App Engine and Force.com. Many enterprise applications are already built in Java, .Net or C++. To support enterprise applications, you first need support for these core languages. GigaSpaces XAP not only supports these languages, but also enables efficient interoperability among them.

• No vendor lock-in:

While I would argue that lock-in is unavoidable at some level, and that every platform imposes some lock-in, I'd also argue that it is important to examine the nature of the lock-in, and how easy it is to migrate from one platform to another. With XAP, we invested heavily in making lock-in minimal through abstraction, aspects, support for standard APIs and more. As of 6.6, we users can take existing web applications and deploy them on our platform without touching the application code. You can read more about this in: Can scaling be made seamless?
To make things easy, we published a migration guide that shows step-by-step how you can take existing transactional JEE applications and deploy them on our platform (locally or on the public cloud). We measured the performance and scalability gain you get by running JEE applications on GigaSpaces XAP versus traditional JEE application servers. We ran the exact same application code on both platforms and measured at least 5 times better scalability efficiency and performance increased as outlined here. We also published a new "pet clinic" demo that comes with source code, configuration and documentation, and can be used as a reference guide for running standard JEE application with zero or with minimal code changes. This reference implementation is available here.

• Designed to support both local enterprise clouds and Internet clouds:

Although GigaSpaces can now run entirely on a public cloud, such as EC2, it is clear that many enterprises are not ready to run on public clouds, but would rather run their apps on an on-premise, private cloud. Supporting this requires existing development tools used to develop enterprise applications. XAP enables use of common development frameworks (e.g., Eclipse, Maven, Ant, in Java; and Visual Studio in .Net). You can write, test and debug your application locally and then deploy it on the cloud for testing or for production. You can decide at any point where you want to deploy your application, whether on a public Internet cloud, or on a private cloud in the corporate data center. You can also create a hybrid model that involves both a public and private cloud simulataneously.

• Enterprise-grade reliability and scalability:

Most Internet-based PaaS impose a radical shift in the way applications are built, and specifically on scalability and reliability. Many of them leave you to deal with failure scenarios on your own, or alternatively, force you to accept the fact that you may lose data if you want to achieve scalability. They also require that you re-write your application if you want to make it scalable.
Many of the assumptions the platforms operate under are not acceptable to enterprise-grade applications. GigaSpaces XAP was designed to meet the most demanding requirements for maintaining both scalability and 24/7 high-availability without losing any data and without compromising scalability or performance.

This is only a partial list of differences, but I think that it makes clear how GigaSpaces is different than most Internet-based PaaS offerings, including Google App Engine.

You can read more about our cloud offering on gigaspaces.com/cloud. If you are interested, try out our new Cloud Framework and see for yourself how easy it is to set up a production-ready cluster with load- balancing and scalability within minutes.

EVE Online's server model - Massively

EVEと呼ばれる、世界で最大のオンラインゲームMMO(Massive MultiPlayer Online）サーバの記事。

EVEはすべてのプログラム、データをSingle Instanceで運用しており、全く分散化していない、との事、またそればさまざまな問題を起こしている要因担っている、という記事。

内容はゲーム専用用語が多く、ちょっとわかりにくいが、スケーラビリティを議論する上で参考となる記事。

Almost any time a discussion about EVE Online comes up, one way or another we end up talking about the server. EVE Online is unique among today's most popular MMOs for its single-server approach. While most MMOs deal with large number of users by starting up large numbers of separate servers with identical game universes, EVE maintains only a single copy of its game universe on a massive cluster of servers. CCP's decision to go with a server model that doesn't use any sharding or instancing whatsoever has had a major impact on in-game activities and how the game has developed.

Server woes:
Unfortunately for CCP, maintaining their vision of a single game universe has proven a lot more difficult and costly than anyone anticipated. Working with IBM, the EVE server cluster is maintained in London and is currently the largest supercomputer employed in the gaming industry. Even with this massive power behind the EVE universe, there are still problems as CCP tries to keep the server upgraded ahead of its ever-expanding playerbase.

In this article, I discuss the unique gameplay that is possible thanks to EVE's server model, the problems the server currently faces and what CCP is planning to do about it.

With a single game world, players are free to flock to whatever solar system they like even if the server that solar system is on can't handle the load. Popular trade hub Jita and several popular mission-running systems such as Dodixie suffer badly from lag at peak play times on the weekend. Massive fleet battles over important territory often suffer from the same crippling lag, turning what should be an amazing sci-fi space battle into a poor slideshow.

Server structure:
Each of EVE's 5000+ star systems is loaded as a separate process onto any one of hundreds of IBM blade servers, with some high-load systems being given a server all to themselves and many low-load systems being combined and run on servers together. These "SOL Servers" are tied into EVE's main database server where changes to the game take place (where the magic happens).

Since players need to move between solar systems, they are connected to proxy servers which keep track of which SOL server the player is on. It's an ambitious system but has worked well for over five years with constant upgrades going on in the background to keep up with the increasing number of players entering EVE daily.

Effect on PvP:
You could be forgiven for thinking that an MMO's server model doesn't affect its gameplay significantly but EVE Online has proven this wrong for five years running. Putting all players together in one server drastically increases the opportunity for PvP. Instead of the MMO norm of less than 5,000 potential players for you to interact with and barely 1000 online at peak hours, EVE's server houses over 300,000 players with a peak concurrent user record of over 40,000. Additionally, since there's only one server for all players, there's no option to sign up to a non-pvp version of the game. This puts all players in the same world with the same rules whether they like it or not. If all you want to do is trade, mine and run missions you're just as vulnerable to PvP as everyone else and that's a major factor in defining the harsh feel of the EVE universe.

If EVE did offer a non-PvP server option, roles such as the pirate or corporate spy wouldn't really be possible any more because most potential targets would be playing on the non-pvp server. The players on the non-pvp server would also suffer from having a duller, less challenging game experience. We'd have one server full of hunters with no prey and one server full of prey with no excitement to their game.

Ultima Online experienced this issue in the Renaissance expansion when they released Trammel, a server where non-consensual PvP was no longer possible. With all the cut-throat villains separated from the general population, the villains had nothing to do and the remaining players lost their opportunity to be heroes.

Territorial conflict:
The lack of instancing in EVE Online's game universe has had an even more profound impact on PvP than the lack of a non-PvP server. When a solar system is depleted of resources, is becoming overcrowded or is being camped by pirates, there is no second instance of the system to switch to. The ability to pursue attackers from system to system successfully or to lock down a star system and prevent your enemy from passing through allows for piracy and very real territorial control that just isn't possible with another server model. Conflict over resources and space arises as a natural consequence of gameplay and not from a developer-defined game mechanic. Real player alliances are forged and broken every week in EVE with complex politics behind them.

Economic impact:
EVE is often lauded for its realistic player-based economy and real working markets but neither of these would function well on a sharded server. Throwing all of the players together in one place forces the markets to act based heavily on the rules of supply and demand. Without enough players driving both sides of the supply and demand curve, a single player could interfere with the global market very easily for a very long time. This has been done before in games like World of Warcraft to manipulate prices for a profit. It worked because with so few players on each server, one particularly rich player's effect on the market can be proportionally massive.

In EVE's safer systems, even major price manipulations tend to be balanced out by other players in a matter of hours, making price manipulation in trading hubs a very expensive and risky venture. It's said that the number of players in EVE caused the markets to hit critical mass long ago, reaching a point where high demand is almost always met by players with adequate supply within reasonable time-frames. As a result, the game's market hubs are always stocked full of whatever you might need.

Upgrades:
CCP recently encountered a problem they hadn't seen since late 2005. Certain server nodes were running out of memory, filling up with legitimate user data and crashing. Their response has been a controversial change to introduce player limits to star systems under heavy load. Although this was changed to only affect trade hub Jita for now, it highlights hardware inadequacy that CCP are meeting head-on with another round of server upgrades. The current server hardware uses impressive processors and advanced solid-state RAMSAN disks with the fast access speeds and large storage capacity that EVE's servers require.The bottleneck at the moment is getting data from one processor or ram disk to another and this is where their latest project comes in.

CCP aims to link the processors and RAM drives of every SOL server together with high-speed low-latency "Infiniband" technology, allowing data transfer at rates of several gigabytes per second. This will allow any processes which can be threaded to be split off and run on a processor that's not being used heavily at runtime, which should massively increase the server's load-balancing ability. The infiniband project poses a huge task for EVE's programmers, who are in the unenviable position of having to rewrite large portions of the core server code. If all goes well with their internal infiniband tests, these major changes in server architecture could eventually spell the end of laggy fleet battles and node crashes.

Summary:
With the problems CCP are constantly facing with their server and the cost of its upkeep, other developers seem reluctant to take EVE Online's server model on board. However, this model affects a lot more than its running costs and complexity and may be practically required for any successful next-generation PvP based MMO. It makes avenues of gameplay such as meaningful politics, piracy and real territorial warfare not just a possibility but an unavoidable consequence of group play. Could the single server approach become commonplace in the next generation of PvP-based MMO? I, for one, hope it does.

Ingram Micro Seismic Shakes Hands With ConnectWise

Ingram Micro社は米国での最大級の代理店業者であるが、この業界でもCloud Computingサービスが成長している。 Ingram Micro社はSeismicというサービスを提供しており、この記事は、SeismicでAutotaskやConnectWiseといったProfessional Service Automation、というSEプロジェクト管理の自動化ソリューションをSaaS事業として提供している、という記事。

When it comes to partnering in the managed services market, the Ingram Micro Seismic team doesn't appear to be playing favorites. In addition to working closely with Autotask, Ingram is now reaching across the aisle to work with ConnectWise — one of Autotask's top professional services automation (PSA) software rivals.

According to a ConnectWise press release:

With ConnectWise, solution providers subscribing to Ingram Micro's Seismic Remote Management and Monitoring (RMM) and Help Desk now have the ability to leverage "two-way" RMM integration. Incidents identified through Seismic RMM will create service tickets in ConnectWise, where they can be reviewed, updated and closed by solution provider employees.

Since MSPmentor doesn't test software platforms, I can't say whether Ingram is working more closely with Autotask or ConnectWise. However, it's clear that Ingram is committed to letting customers choose the professional services automation (PSA) software that best fits their businesses.

20 Cloud computing startups - analysis

Cloud Computing企業の代表２０社を比較。

自社のホスティング環境を持っているか、他社のホスティング環境の上にCloud Computing環境を作っているのか、という点でまず分類、更に企業内にCloud Computing環境を構築できるソリューションを持っているかどうか（Internal Cloud)で区別。

Internal Cloud Computingソリューション企業が増えてきている事が印象的。 今後成長の兆し。

I was pointed to John Foley's InformationWeek article earlier this week of "20 Cloud Computing Startups You Should Know." Aside from the fact I could only count 19, it was a great survey of what types of companies, ideas and ventures are getting on the bandwagon.

The quick-and-dirty chart above is mine; what I found so interesting is that 8 of the players are building solutions on top of other clouds (like Amazon's EC2 and S3) while another 7 are investing in essentially building hosted services.

However, only 4 (ok, maybe 4-1/2) are thinking/trying to bring "cloud" technologies and economics to the enterprise's own internal IT. This certainly attests to the difficulty in reworking IT's entrenched technologies, and building a newer abstracted model of how IT should operate.

Even though Cassatt wasn't mentioned in the survey (maybe we were supposed to be #20) we also play in the "build-an-internal-cloud-with-what-you-have" space.

This model -- that of an "internal cloud" architecture -- will ultimately result in more efficient data centers (these architectures are highly efficient) and ones that will be able to "reach out" for additional resources (if-and-when needed) in an easier manner than today's IT.

I'd look to see more existing enterprises considering building their own cloud architectures (after all, they've already invested lots of $$ in infrastructure) while startups and smaller shops opt for the products that leverage existing (external) cloud resources.

BTW, John also just posted a very nice blog of a "reality check" to curb some of the cloud computing hype.

Decades of experience with Clouds: Telcos

Cloud Computingを何十年も前から事業として実践している事例としてテレコム業界を紹介したSDForumというイベントでのプレゼンテーションに対するコメント。

社内電話システムをPBX（Internal Cloud)でシステム化する一方、外部とのコミュニケーションは公衆回線を使う（External Cloud)ユースケースは、今後のCloud Computingの進む方向を示唆する一つの案かもしれない。

特にInternal Cloudの必要性についてはよくわかる。

While at yesterday's SDForum meeting on cloud computing, a panelist pointed out that we've been living with (a form of) cloud computing for decades. It's called Telephony.

On reflection, the telcos do give us an interesting model for what PaaS *could* be like, and a metaphor for types of cloud services. To wit:

• As users, we don't know (or care) where the carrier's gear is, or what platform it's based on so long as our calls are connected and our voicemail is available.
  
• There isn't technical "lock-in" as we think of it. Your address (phone number) is now portable between carriers, and the cloud "API" is the dial tone plus those DTMF touch-tones
• I can "mash-up" applications such as Voicemail from one company, conference calling from another, and FAX transmission from a third.
  
• There are even forms of "internal clouds" in this model -- they're called PBXs (private branch exchanges) which are nothing more than "internal" phone switches for your business

This last point interests me the most - that enterprises have economic and operational needs (maybe even security needs!) to manage their own internal phone systems. But inevitably, workers may have to use the public phone system, too.

Similarly, many enterprises will need to retain 100% control of certain computing processes and never outsource to a cloud; They'll certainly be attracted to the economics that external computing resources offer, but will eventually build (or acquire) a similar *internal* capability. Just wait.

Would you buy an Amazon EC2 appliance?

Internal Cloud Computingに関する興味深い記事。

企業の既存のリソースを切り離して、いきなりCloud Computingに自社の資産を移行する、という戦略は現実的ではなく、既存の資産を活かしながらCloud Computingの環境を付加価値として適用していく、というアプローチが自然な発想として生まれてくる。

その一つの形がInternal Cloudというコンセプト。 この記事は、Amazon Web Servicesがもしかしたらそのような機能を提供するアプライアンスを計画しているのではないか、という予測記事。

真意は別として、企業IT環境の中にCloud Computingレイヤーをつくり、CPU、ストレージ、ネットワーク等のI/Oリソースの利用効率を高めるようなソリューションを提供するベンダーはいくつか登場している。

Amazon Web Serviceにアプライアンスをあえて選ぶ意味は、基本的にシステムは企業IT環境の中で構築し、しかしリソースの内何かがキャパシティを超えた場合に自動的にAWSのネット上のサービスが補完をしてくれる、という機能を統合したアプライアンスが製造可能なのでは、という発想に基づく。

機能の補完はストレージだけではなく、CPU処理能力やその他のコンポーネントでもダイナミックにScaleする事が出来る、というコンセプトはCloud Computingの適用方法として非常に興味深いアプローチである、といえる。

Before you scream "a what?" I'm only posing this as a thought experiment...

But the concept was recently put forth as an illustration at last week's SDForum by an attendee. I kind of thought about it for a few minutes, and realized that the concept isn't as crazy as it first sounds. In fact, it implies major changes for IT are on the way.

First of all, the idea of a SaaS provider or web service provider creating a physical appliance for the enterprise is not new. There's the Google search appliance, but I also expect providers like Salesforce.com to do the same in the near future. (There are some very large enterprises that want to be 100% sure that their critical/sensitive data is resident behind their firewall, and they want to bring the value of their SaaS provider inside.)

So I thought, what would I expect from an Amazon EC2/S3 appliance to do? Similar to Google's appliance providing internal search, I'd expect an Amazon appliance to create an elastic, resilient set of compute and storage services inside a company, and it could support any/all applications no matter what the user demand. It would also have cost-transparency, i.e. I'd know exactly what it cost to operate each CPU (or virtual CPU) on an hourly basis. Same goes for storage.

This approach would have various advantages (plus a small limitation) to how IT is operated today. The limitation would be that its "elasticity" would be limited by the poolable compute horsepower within an enterprise. But the advantages would be huge -- who wouldn' t like a cost basis ~$0.10/CPU-hour from their existing resources? Who wouldn't like to shrug-off traditional capacity planning? etc. etc. AND they'd be able to maintain all of their existing compliance and security architectures, since they were still using their own behind-the-firewall facilities.

Does it still sound crazy so far?

NOW what if Amazon were to take one little extra step. Remember that limitation above -- the what-if-I-run-out-of-compute-resources issue? What if Amazon allowed the appliance user to permit reaching-out to Amazon's public EC2/S3? Say you hit peak compute demand. Say you had a large power outage or a series of hardware failures. Say you were rolling-out a new app and you couldn't accurately forecast demand. This feature would be valuable to you because you'd have practically infinite "overflow" -- and it would be valuable to Amazon since it would drive incremental business to their public infrastructure.

To be honest, I have no idea what Amazon is planning. But I DO know that the concept of commercially-available software/hardware to create internal "clouds" is happening today. And not just in the "special case" of VMware's "VDC-OS", but in a more generalized approach.

Companies like Cassatt can -- today -- take an existing compute environment, and transform its operation so that it acts like an EC2 (an "internal cloud"). It responds to demand changes, it works around failures, and it optimizes how resources are pooled. You don't have to virtualize applications if you don't want to; and if you do, you can use whatever VM technology you prefer. It's all managed as an "elastic" pool for you. And metered, too.

To be sure, others are developing similar approaches to transforming how *internal* IT is managed. But if you are one of those who believes in the value of a "cloud" but wouldn' t use it, maybe you should think again.

IDCの市場予測：  ２０１２年のCloud Computingの状況予測

 

現時点ではCloud Computingは全IT予算の４％程度しか占めていない。 これが年平均２７％の成長を続け、２０１２年になると９％までに成長する事が予測されている。  ９％程度であれば大した市場のカバーではないと思われるが、年２７％の成長率は従来のITの成長率の５倍以上である事が注目に値する。 

 

この急成長の要因として企業インフラに容易に導入できる事が大きな理由として挙げられている。

 

また、ビジネスアプリケーション（SaaS）がCloud Computing市場の半分以上を占め、その傾向は続く、と予測している。  これはアプリケーションが一番費対効果が大きい、と考えれている事が大きな理由。さらに、SMB市場がSaaSを本格的に採用し、市場を大きく成長させる事が想定されている。 

 

 

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IT Cloud Services Forecast - 2008, 2012: A Key Driver of New Growth

In our previous posts on the IT industry's shift to the Cloud Services era, we've provided definitions, market context, user adoption trends, and user views about cloud services benefits, challenges and suppliers.  

In this post, We offer our initial forecast of IT cloud services delivery across five major IT product segments.we offer our initial forecast of IT cloud services delivery across five major IT product segments that, in aggregate, represent almost two-thirds of enterprise IT spending (excluding PCs).  This forecast sizes IT suppliers' opportunity to deliver their own IT offerings to customers via the cloud services model ("opportunity #1", as described in our recent post Framing the Cloud Opportunity for IT Suppliers).

The development of this forecast involved a team of over 30 IDC analysts, led by Robert Mahowald (Business Applications/SaaS), Tim Grieser (Infrastructure Software), Steve Hendrick (Application Development & Deployment Software), Matt Eastwood (Servers) and Rick Villars (Storage), with additional contributions from David Tapper (Outsourcing/Hosted Services) and John Gantz (Global Research).  
 

An Opportunity In Its Infancy - But, Even Conservatively, Poised to Drive Big Marginal Growth

Of the $383 billion customers will spend this year within the five major IT segments noted above, $16.2 billion - or a mere 4% - will be consumed as cloud services.  By 2012, customer spending on IT cloud services will grow almost threefold, to $42 billion.By 2012 - based on a conservative forecasting approach (see "fine print" below) - customer spending on IT cloud services will grow almost threefold, to $42 billion, accounting for 9% of customer spending.

What does that mean?  On one level, one could argue that - in spite of the all the buzz about Cloud Computing and Cloud Services - this model will not even crack 10% of IT spending four years from now. And therefore, one could reasonably ask: why all the fuss?

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One reason IT suppliers are sharpening their focus on the "cloud" model is its growth trajectory, which - at 27% CAGR - is over five times the growth rate of the traditional, on-premise IT delivery/consumption model.  Spending on IT cloud services is growing at over five times the rate of traditional, on-premise IT.As noted in our recent user survey, this rapid growth is being driven by the ease and speed with which users can adopt these offerings, as well as the cloud model's economic benefits (for users and suppliers alike) - which will have even greater resonance in the current economic crisis.

Even more striking than this high growth rate, is the contribution cloud offerings' growth will soon make to the IT market's overall growth.  By 2012 - even at only 9% of user spending - cloud services growth will account for fully 25% of the industry's year-over-year growth in these five major segments.  In 2013, if the same growth trajectories continue, IT cloud services growth will generate about one-third of the industry's net new growth in these segments.

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The implication for IT suppliers is clear: during the next several years, IT suppliers must position IT suppliers must position as leaders in IT cloud services or forfeit an ever-expanding portion of the industry's growth.themselves as leaders in IT cloud services or forfeit an ever-expanding portion of the industry's growth.  Cloud services' accelerating impact on IT industry growth is consistent with the key insight from our cloud services user survey data: that IT cloud services are at a "crossing the chasm" moment, the point at which suppliers must step up their commitment to the new technology or model, and the point at which failure to do so starts to exact harsher penalties on supplier performance.  
 

Applications Are Leading the Way - and Will Continue To Do So

Among the five enterprise IT segments we analyzed, Business Applications dominate cloud services spending, both in 2008 (57%) and in 2012 (52%). 

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This should not be very surprising: Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is the most mature and widely deployed form of IT cloud services, in contrast to the more nascent cloud infrastructure offerings.  And Business Applications - in which, for this forecast, we include Collaboration offerings - have consistently been the largest portion of the SaaS market.  

Further, as we noted in IT Cloud Services User Survey, pt.1: Crossing the Chasm, Geoffrey Moore identifies applications (vs. component technologies) as the most successful offerings for crossing the chasm: they appeal to the line-of-business constituencies outside the IT department, who are most frustrated by the old model, and are most open to embracing new approaches.  

Another reason for the dominance of applications in One reason for the dominance of applications in IT cloud services spending is the role that SMBs will play.IT cloud services spending is the role that SMBs will play in this IT industry transformation.  As we've noted many times, the opportunity to open up under-served SMB segments, in both developed and emerging markets, is the primary motivation driving many IT suppliers toward the cloud model.  And SMBs' IT investments are driven - much more than large enterprise investments - by applications.  

The implication of the application-centricity of the current The most direct path to becoming a successful player in the cloud is to have strong links to the application world.and near-term IT cloud services market is also clear: the most direct path to becoming a successful player in the cloud is to have strong links to the application world.  This means, for example, becoming a SaaS provider, becoming a SaaS platform provider, or - for those in non-application parts of the IT market - becoming a key partner of SaaS application or platform players.  (More on this in later posts.) 

One other item of note in the IT cloud services spending shown above is the rapid growth in cloud storage.  Our storage analysts believe - and I concur - that the explosive growth of information in the cloud (and outside it) will, more than in any other infrastructure category, drive direct end user demand for storage in the cloud.

 

"Fine Print":  Important Notes About This Forecast

Forecasts about emerging models and offerings are rarely perfect predictions of the future.  Here is some "under the covers" information about this forecast that will be useful in thinking more deeply about this forecast and its implications:

• An  "End-User-Centric" View: These figures represent enterprise end-user demand for IT products and solutions, through both on-premise and cloud services models. By "end users" we mean businesses that consume these IT products and solutions either for their internal use, or as an "under-the-covers" ingredient within their offerings to the marketplace. Excluded from this forecast is spending by cloud services providers who are simply reselling the product/solution, without value-add other than the delivery model transform; we consider such services providers as resellers - the true "end-users" are their customers. In contrast, cloud services providers who are not explicitly reselling the forecasted IT product/solution as a service, but are using it as a supporting ingredient within their offerings, are considered end-users (e.g., Salesforce.com, a cloud services provider of CRM software, is counted as an end-user within the storage, server, and other IT segments outside of its own primary product/service segments [business applications, application development/deployment]).
• A Conservative Approach and Track Record: This forecast is on the conservative end of the spectrum. Our goal, as usual, is to be "anti-hype" - to recognize and highlight the disruptive trends in the market, but to avoid a forecast "bubble". That was our track record in forecasting Internet adoption in the late 1990s, and our Internet forecasts have held up extremely well - through, and beyond, the Internet Bubble period. We have also had a conservative track record in forecasting the SaaS market, for which we have traditionally underestimated growth, and increased our forecast significantly each of the past several years. If you have a more aggressive view of IT Cloud Services adoption, the other end of the spectrum - a more aggressive forecast - could well be 1.5-2 times the spending level in the forecast above.
• Watch "Conditions On the Ground": The ramp-up scenario for IT cloud services is very fluid - the forecast will be greatly impacted by: 1) major vendors' degree of aggressiveness in developing and promoting cloud offerings, 2) the rate at which partner ecosystems morph to adapt to - and drive - the cloud model, and 3) macroeconomic factors - such as impact of the current global economic crisis.  In our view, while the economic crisis could negatively impact the growth of this market, it is more likely that it will accelerate the roll out and adoption of Cloud IT services, because of the model's greater affordability (vs. traditional IT offerings), and IT's critical role in supporting much-needed innovation and economic growth.
• IT Cloud Services Adoption Will Drive (but Shift) On-Premise Demand: It is important to note that while end-users certainly consider "on-premise" vs. "cloud services" as alternative (and competitive) options for specific solutions, the cloud services delivery model for those solutions will not, for the most part, subtract from on-premise IT demand. In fact, end user IT cloud services demand will actually drive demand for on-premise IT products and solutions - but it will shift that demand to cloud services providers. This makes it extremely important for suppliers of IT products and solutions to develop detailed understanding of the changing routes to market, including the role of cloud services providers, both as end-users and as a new and growing channel.
• Some Definitional Details:  Here are the submarkets we included in each of the five major IT segments in the forecast:
  • Business Applications:  includes Collaborative applications (such as Messaging, Conferencing and Team collaboration software), and Business applications (such as CRM, ERP, Financial, HCM, PLM and SCM).
  • Application Development & Deployment Software:  includes Application Development software, Application Lifecycle Management software, Enterprise Mashup & Portal software, Information Management & Data Integration software, and Middleware & Business Process Management software.
  • Systems Infrastructure Software: includes System and Network Management software, Security software, Storage Management software, and System software.
  • Storage: includes Disk Storage.
  • Servers: includes all classes of Servers.

[The following IDC analysts contributed to this IT Cloud Services analysis and forecast: Michelle Bailey, Darren Bibby, Ray Boggs, Jean Bozman, Brian Burke, Chris Christiansen, Laura DuBois, Matt Eastwood, Mike Fauscette, John Gantz, Frank Gens, Al Gillen, Tim Grieser, Steve Hendrick, Martin Hingley, Mark Levitt, Robert, Mahowald, Stephen Minton, Chris Morris, Henry Morris, Brad Nisbet, Melanie Posey, Dave Reinsel, Christina Richmond, Sandy Rogers, Jed Scaramella, Rona Shuchat, Will Stofega, David Tapper, Vernon Turner, Rick Villars, Janet Waxman, Melissa Webster.]

 

IDC eXchange / Wed, 08 Oct 2008 19:54:49 GMT

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IDCのユーザサーべイの続き（その３）

 

企業がCloud Computingプロバイダーを選択する際の要件事項を調査。次のようなことが重要要件であることが判明。  普通のITに対する要求とあまり違いが無い事が興味深い

 

- 価格（安く、いいものを）

- SLAで性能の保証をする事

- 顧客のビジネス要件や市場の状況を理解してほしい

- Cloud上のシステムを必要に応じてOn-Premiseに戻せるようにしてほしい。

- システム全体のソリューションを提供してほしい

- 次世代のシステムを見据えたソリューションを提供してほしい

- 企業内のさまざまなIT要求に対応してほしい

- パートナー企業のネットワークは大きいものを

- 地元にサービス拠点がほしい

- 安心できる大企業である事

- 過去に自社とビジネスをした事があること

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IT Cloud Services User Survey, pt.3: What Users Want From Cloud Services Providers

As part of our ongoing research into Cloud Computing, IDC recently conducted a survey of 244 IT executives/CIOs and their line-of-business (LOB) colleagues about their companies' use of, and views about, IT Cloud Services.  Successful suppliers will need to address both the biggest challenges of cloud services, and the biggest traditional IT user issues.In part 1, we looked at current and future adoption of IT cloud services.  In part 2, we looked at users' views about the key benefits and challenges of IT cloud services.

This post, part 3, identifies the most important attributes users want in their preferred IT cloud services providers.  

 

Winning in Cloud Services Means Addressing Cloud and Traditional IT Challenges

My number one takeaway from the chart below - which looks at users' top-rated IT cloud services supplier attributes - is that successful suppliers will need to address both the biggest challenges of cloud services, and the biggest traditional IT user issues.

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The mesh of traditional and cloud issues - at the core of users' selection of cloud services providers - is most obvious when looking at the top two rated attributes above.  

• The #1 attribute users want from cloud services providers - competitive pricing - is exactly the same as users cited as #1 in last March's post on what users want from their IT suppliers overall.  
• The #2 requirement for cloud services providers - offering performance-level assurances - relates directly to the #2 and #3 challenges (performance and availability) users cited about cloud services in our recent post on cloud services benefits and challenges.  

The mesh of traditional and cloud IT issues continues as we move down the list of preferred supplier attributes.  

• The #3 attribute - understanding the customer's business and industry - was #3 among users' requirements for IT suppliers in general in last March's survey.  
• The #4 attribute - allowing cloud offerings to migrate back onto customer premises if needed -  takes us back, once again, to users' cloud concerns: worries about migrating cloud services back on premise was tied for #6 among cloud services challenges.

 

Cautionary Notes for Cloud Services and Traditional IT Players

This data suggests that there is a lot of opportunity for IT cloud services suppliers who display the attributes that cloud services customers are looking for - the attributes that directly address their customers' greatest challenges and concerns.  But there are cautionary messages as well.  

It is clear that business leaders are not looking at IT cloud services in isolation, but as a part of their overall IT strategy.  Amazon, Google, Saleforce.com, and others, are going to have to get very good at addressing the broader IT issues.This certainly is a cautionary note for cloud services pure-play and start-up firms.  This finding suggests that Amazon, Google, Saleforce.com, and others, are going to have to get very good at addressing the broader IT issues: ones that go well beyond the cloud, but - as seen above - are also very relevant to customers' cloud services choices.  In some recent briefings with some of these firms, I've noted that there is still some significant learning going on around these traditional user requirements.

There are also some important cautionary notes in these findings for traditional suppliers:

• First, traditional IT suppliers are the new kids on the block in the cloud services world: if they don't fully embrace the new model - for example, When it comes to cloud services vendor selection, customers are less biased toward their large, established incumbent suppliers.if they hold back on core requirements (like very competitive pricing) - in order to protect their traditional offerings, their leadership in traditional IT will fail to carry over into the cloud world.  
• Second, many traditional IT suppliers are still just coming up to speed in understanding customers' business/industry environments - they certainly don't have an insurmountale lead over cloud services specialist in that area.  They need to "keep the pedal to the metal", transforming their organizations (and offerings) to ones that are less "IT-centric", and more directly relevant to customers' business issues.
• Third - and this may surprise many people - the chart above suggests that, when it comes to cloud services vendor selection, customers are less biased toward their large, established incumbent suppliers, and are more interested in whether the supplier is a "future-oriented innovator".  This is a direct challenge to traditional industry leaders who are moving too slowly into the cloud services world.  It is a shot in the arm for cloud services newcomers - provided they are able to offer credible responses to the traditional IT issues discussed above. 

 

IDCのユーザサーベイの続き。

Cloud Computingを採用する最大のメリットは：

- 早く、簡単に運用開始できる事

- 必要なものだけに金をかける事

- 社内ITスタッフのコスト節約

- 月々の支払いが安い事

- IT環境の標準化に寄与

- システム環境やその上の情報の共有が容易

- 次世代のシステムインフラとして安心感

 

一方では、ユーザが一番懸念している問題は：

- セキュリティ

- システム性能（インターネットを通してのネットワーク性能）

- Availability（システムの可用性）

- 企業内ITシステムとの統合が困難なのでは

- カスタマイズが出来ないのでは

- On-Premiseに戻す事が困難なのでは

- 企業内外の規制がCloud化を禁じている（情報管理規則など）

- まだメジャーなベンダーが本格参入していない

 

など、日本の市場にも十分通じる内容が記載されている。

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IT Cloud Services User Survey, pt.2: Top Benefits & Challenges

As part of our ongoing research into Cloud Computing, IDC recently conducted a survey of 244 IT executives/CIOs and their line-of-business (LOB) colleagues about their companies' use of, and views about, IT Cloud Services.  In part 1, we looked at current and future adoption of IT cloud services.  

This post, part 2, looks at users' perceptions of the key benefits and challenges of IT cloud services.

Speed to Deploy, Favorable Economics, and Functionality Are Top Cloud Adoption Drivers

We asked 244 survey respondents to rate the importance of a variety of cloud services benefits to their organization.  This chart shows the percentage of respondents rating each benefit a 4 or 5, on a 1 (not important) to 5 (very important) scale.

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The number one benefit of sourcing IT from the cloud is speed and ease of deployment.  Anyone who knows a Sales VP who has signed up for salesforce.com, or any of the other SaaS CRM systems, can certainly believe this: the slow pace of traditional IT development and deployment of business systems has long been a frustration for line-of-business (LOB) executives, and a key driver of SaaS demand.  Users clearly see cloud services as an important answer to their need for speed - in their businesses and in their IT.Indeed, in our post earlier this year about What Users Want From IT, the number one message from LOB executives to their CIO was "speed up project delivery".  Speed was also a top request of CIOs by their internal customers in our 2006 (#1) and 2007 (#4) surveys.  Users clearly see cloud services as an important answer to their need for speed - in their businesses, and consequently in the IT that supports their businesses.

The next three key benefits deal with improving the economics of businesses' IT use: aligning costs with utilization, reducing the need for in-house IT staff (and related costs), and replacing large up-front financial outlays with streaming payments.  The importance of the economic benefits of the cloud model should be no surprise: pressure for CIOs to bring costs down shows up repeatedly in our research, most recently in CIOs' requests of their IT suppliers:  cost-competitiveness is a perennial #1 on the CIO wish list.  Importantly, our survey respondents see cloud services as an answer to that issue as well.

The fourth most highly-rated cloud services benefit is the ability to keep business systems/services up to speed with the latest capabilities in the market.  Since cloud services are based on a shared resources model, providing all users "instant" access to new functionality is exponentially easier for suppliers than through traditional models.   Users are coming to expect the pace and simplicity of Consumer Internet functionality introduction and adoption in their business systems as well.It's intriguing that users rate this benefit so highly - especially since, in the past 20 years, many have complained bitterly about overstuffed packaged software, bloated with features they don't use (but have to pay for).  My guess is that, as users have seen more and more functionality coming to market on the Internet, through a cloud services model (most dramatically in the Consumer market) - demonstrating that this model allows providers to more quickly, simply and cheaply introduce new functionality, and allows users to try out and either embrace or ignore new functionality at minimal cost - more users are coming to expect this pace and simplicity in their business systems as well.  The gap between the cloud services model's ability to support this lightweight "instant upgrade" and "try it out" model, and traditional models' "major upgrade" approach, will be a surprisingly, and increasingly, strong driver of cloud services adoption.

 

Cloud Services Still Need to Be More Secure, Dependable and Relevant

As noted in our prior survey post, IT cloud services are still largely in the early adoption phase.  As such, it is no surprise that there's a long list of issues cloud services suppliers need to address to drive mainstream adoption.  Here's how our respondents rated nine of the challenges commonly ascribed to the cloud services model.

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By far, the number one concern about cloud services is security: with their businesses' information and critical IT resources outside the firewall, customers worry about their vulnerability to attack.  

The next two concerns - performance and availability - are both aspects of a broader concern about cloud services dependability: will critical services in the cloud consistently be there, when and as needed by the business?  Dependability concerns cry out for suppliers who offer transparency of interdependencies and credible service level assurances.The complex web of interdependency that supports cloud services availability and performance - from network availability and performance, to the availability and performance of the cloud service provider's systems, and beyond, to the performance and availability of the "supply chain" of services that the service provider depends on - cries out for suppliers who can offer greater transparency of interdependencies as well as credible service level assurances. 

The next two challenges - the perceived difficulty of cloud services integration, and the limited ability to customize - are both related to the important issue of business relevance.  While customers certainly enjoy the economic and operational benefits of the off-the-shelf, standarized nature of many cloud services, this survey shows they nonetheless want greater ability to "fit" cloud services more tightly into the context of their specific business.   Users want greater ability to "fit" cloud services more tightly into the context of their specific business.

Users want to maximize the leverage of their many other critical business systems - in-house legacy systems and, increasingly, externally-sourced cloud services - by being able to integrate across these systems.  "SaaS 1.0″ systems - that lack standard-based APIs, and are effectively "islands" - are of diminishing value; this is why we include the requirement for web services APIs in our definition of cloud services.  

Users also want to be able to customize "off-the-shelf" cloud services, to make these services more relevant, more tailored to the needs of their businesses.  For suppliers, this is a delicate balancing act, since many of the user (and supplier) benefits of cloud services come from the multitenant model - maximizing leverage across many customers through a shared resources model.  One answer to this challenge - as we discussed in "Defining 'Cloud Services' and 'Cloud Computing'" - is the growing variety of "outside the code" approaches to providing users the ability to create cloud-based services that better fit their specific business.  The industry will need to continue to expand - and educate customers about - these options.  In the longer run, this need for more tailored solutions will also be addressed by the proliferation of "micro-verticalized" off-the-shelf cloud services, as well as the growth in the number of "next-gen" system integrators who know how to take advantage of both the diversity of cloud services, and the techniques of outside the code customization.

In part 3 of our Cloud User Survey, we will look at what users want most from prospective IT cloud services suppliers.  As we'll see, many of their top vendor selection criteria pivot around how well suppliers address these adoption challenges.

 

 

 

IDC eXchange / Thu, 02 Oct 2008 14:57:55 GMT

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Fountainhead: Awesome Blog/Report on Cloud Computing by IDC

IDCのブログで掲載されているCloud Computing特集で興味深い記事が連載されている。 

下記はIDCが実施したユーザインタビューの統計結果。 

 

アプリケーションのCloud化（いわゆるSaaS）が市場での展開が一番速い、という結果が出ている。 

 

IT Cloud Services User Survey, pt.1: Crossing the Chasm

As part of our ongoing research into Cloud Computing, IDC recently conducted a survey of 244 IT executives/CIOs and their line-of-business (LOB) colleagues about their companies' use of, and views about, IT Cloud Services.

This specific post looks at the current and future adoption of a variety of IT offerings delivered as cloud services. (Subsequent posts will look at users' perceptions of the key benefits and challenges of IT cloud services, as well as what they want most from suppliers of IT cloud services.)

Current and Future IT Cloud Services Adoption

We asked our survey participants to characterize the current and future usage - on a scale from 1 (none) to 5 (widespread) - of a variety of IT cloud services within their organizations. The chart below shows the percentage of respondents whose organizations are toward the higher end (4 or 5) of the usage scale, and/or will be there in three years.

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Among the key messages in this data, I find two particularly important:

IT Cloud Services Are "Crossing the Chasm"

The survey results suggest we're entering a period of accelerating IT cloud services adoption, with the portion of organizations exhibiting significant adoption moving from 15-25% today to 25-45% in three years. It's striking how much this data reminds me of Geoffrey Moore's Crossing the Chasm, in which he noted that the transition from Early Market to Mainstream Market adoption - the challenging, but rewarding period of "crossing the chasm" - typically occurs during the period from 15% adoption (innovators plus early adopters) to 49% adoption (prior adopters plus early majority). It's not a big leap to consider - given the chart above and the chart below - that IT cloud services are either at, or getting very close to, the "crossing the chasm" stage.

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If this is so, the implication for IT suppliers is very clear: the next three years, as IT cloud services expand from Early Adopters to the Early Majority, is the critical time to develop strong cloud offerings, and play a leadership role in bringing customers, your own organization and your partner ecosystem "across the chasm". As Moore famously points out, suppliers who fail to seriously contend for a leadership role will be left with decidedly minority share as their reward.

Cloud Applications - for Business Users and for IT Management - Are Leading the Charge

Even though IT infrastructure (e.g., server, storage capacity) cloud offerings - from Amazon, Nirvanix, FlexiScale and many others - are emerging and rapidly growing, the survey validates that the greatest adoption today, and for the next several years, is around applications delivered through the cloud.

This really should not come as a surprise. In fact, this survey finding validates an observation Moore makes in Chasm, about the critical role of applications in a market that's moving from Early to Mainstream markets:

"For actual chasm crossing, applications have a huge advantage. That is because disruptive innovations are more likely to be championed by end users than by the technology professionals that operate the current infrastructure. Applications are what an end user sees… To accelerate the adoption of platforms, then, vendors must clothe them in applications clothing. That is, they must tie them directly to an application in order to gain the end-user sponsorship necessary to secure a beachhead."

The success of companies like Salesforce.com, WebEx (Cisco), Microsoft and Citrix, with cloud/SaaS business applications and collaboration applications - in the early adopter phase of this market - is well known. And now, many other "traditional" players - such as IBM, Oracle and SAP - are bringing more cloud collaboration and business application cloud offerings online as we speak.

What might surprise some - and maybe even Moore - is that IT management applications, most notably around data/information backup and archiving, website monitoring and management, and IT security (including ant-virus and anti-spam), are also identified by respondents as key areas for current and future adoption.

The implication for IT suppliers bringing offerings to the cloud - especially during this next few years - is clear: the closer you can tie your offering to an end-user application (including "IT end-users" who are eager for solutions that solve the problem of managing and securing information and other IT assets), the more likely you are to quickly and successfully make the leap across to mainstream market-type growth.