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.

CLICK IMAGE to ENLARGE

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.

CLICK IMAGE to ENLARGE

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.

CLICK IMAGE to ENLARGE

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.

CLICK IMAGE to ENLARGE

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.

CLICK IMAGE to ENLARGE

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.

IDC Reports Cloud Computing Services to be a $42 Billion Market by 2012 : VMblog.com - Virtualization Technology News and Information for Everyone

IDCがCloud Computing市場の大きな成長を見込んでおり、２０１２年までに＄４２０億ドル市場になる、予測している。

IDCはSaaSのようなインターネットを利用したアプリケーション事業も含めて数字に盛り込んでおり、それらを "Cloud Services"と呼び、こういったサービスを実現するインフラ事業である "Cloud Computing"と区別している。 

 

市場を成長させている大きな要因として、BRICS諸国の成長、SMB市場の成長が一番寄与している、と見ており、Cloud Computings事業がグローバル展開される事を示唆している。 

 

IDC Reports Cloud Computing Services to be a $42 Billion Market by 2012

Cloud computing is reshaping the IT marketplace, creating new opportunities for suppliers and catalyzing changes in traditional IT offerings. Over the next five years, IDC expects spending on IT cloud services to grow almost threefold, reaching $42 billion by 2012 and accounting for 9% of revenues in five key market segments. More importantly, spending on cloud computing will accelerate throughout the forecast period, capturing 25% of IT spending growth in 2012 and nearly a third of growth the following year.

"A recent IDC survey of IT executives, CIOs, and their line of business (LOB) colleagues shows that cloud services are 'crossing the chasm' and entering a period of widespread adoption," said Frank Gens, senior vice president and chief analyst at IDC. "Moreover, IDC expects the cloud adoption trend to be amplified by the current financial crisis. The cloud model offers a much cheaper way for businesses to acquire and use IT – in an economic downturn, the appeal of that cost advantage will be greatly magnified. This advantage is especially important for small and medium businesses, a sector that will be key target in any plan for recovery."

To determine how big the cloud computing opportunity might be, and what it will take to capture that opportunity, a broad group of IDC analysts collaborated on the development of a formal point of view on just what cloud computing is.

When people talk about cloud computing, they are usually referring to the online delivery and consumption models for business and consumer services. In most cases, however, the "computing" lies behind a more recognizable service, like banking or shopping or online storage. Accordingly, IDC believes it is important to distinguish between cloud services and the cloud computing environment that enables these services.

• Cloud Services are the consumer and business products, services, and solutions that are delivered and consumed in real time over the Internet. (IDC identifies eight key attributes that more clearly define the new generation of commercial cloud services.)
  
• Cloud Computing is an emerging IT development, deployment, and delivery model, enabling real-time delivery of products, services, and solutions over the Internet.

The attributes of cloud services make the consumption of goods and services easier and cheaper – and often better – than through traditional delivery modes. These attributes also lower costs, simplify and accelerate access, enable fine-tuned provisioning, greatly increase the number and variety of available services, and improve the potential to integrate these services.

As the foundation for cloud services, cloud computing consists of a growing list of technologies and IT offerings that enable cloud services, including infrastructure systems (servers, storage, networks), application software, system and application management software, IP networks, and pricing agreements.

The shift toward cloud computing is being driven by three market forces: the search for growth (and revenues) in important new segments, including emerging markets like Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC) as well as the small and medium business (SMB) sector; the shortcomings of traditional approaches in capturing the growth in these increasingly important markets; and competitive pressures from new players with little to lose and everything to gain from pushing the new model.

IDC believes there are two principal opportunities for IT suppliers from the growth of cloud services. One area of opportunity for the IT supplier is to consider delivering its own IT products or services to customers via the cloud model. This means considering whether to get into the software-as-a-service (SaaS) business, the storage cloud business, the server cloud business, etc. The other area of opportunity for IT suppliers to consider is how its current and future offerings can support its customers' development, deployment, and delivery of a wide variety of business and consumer cloud services. In other words, providing the tools for others to get into the cloud services business.

To succeed, cloud services providers need to address a mixture of traditional and cloud concerns. According to survey respondents, the two most important things a cloud services provider can offer are competitive pricing and performance level assurances. These are followed by the ability to demonstrate an understanding of the customer's industry and the ability to move cloud services back on-premises if necessary.

More information about IDC's cloud services research can be found online at www.idc.com/research/cloudcomputing. Current postings include IDC's definitions of cloud services and cloud computing, results of the cloud computing survey, and the IT cloud services forecast.

Rackspace Acquires JungleDisk, Slicehost « Data Center Knowledge

Rackspace社がオンラインバックアップサービス企業であるJungleDisk社と、仮想マシンホスティング事業であるSliceHost社を買収した、と発表。  両社共にRackspaceのCloud Computing事業であるMossoのサービスを更に広げるために有効な技術を持っており、Amazon Web Serviceのような広範囲のCloud Computingサービス事業を狙っている戦略が伺える。 

 

 

Rackspace Acquires JungleDisk, Slicehost

October 22nd, 2008 : Rich Miller

Flush with cash, Rackspace (RAX) has decided to both buy and build as it seeks to expand its beachhead in cloud computing. The San Antonio managed hosting company said today that it has acquired online backup company JungleDisk and developer-focused virtual machine hoster Slicehost to hasten its expansion into the cloud. Rackspace's combined cost for the two acquisitions is $11.5 million, payable in cash and stock, with a potential earn-out of up to $16.5 million based on performance.

On the build side, Rackspace will rebrand the two cloud services it developed in house, and integrate its new acquisitions and third-party providers into its new suite of cloud offerings under Mosso, its cloud hosting unit. Here's the details Rackspace announced today:  

• The Hosting Cloud will now become Cloud Sites.
• Mosso's CloudFS storage service will become Cloud Files and host JungleDisk's customers (whose files are now stored on Amazon's S3 service).
• Slicehost's technology will be used to power Cloud Servers, which will offer on-demand cloud hosting using Xen virtualization software.
• Rackspace will expand its relationships with Sonian Networks, which will provide its cloud mail archiving solutions for customers of MailTrust, the enteprise e-mail unit of Rackspace.
• Rackspace will also expand its relationship with content delivery provider Limelight Networks (LLNW).
• Finally, Rackspace has lined up support for its new offerings from a number of cloud tool companies, including RightScale, CohesiveFT, rPath, SOASTA and Vertica.

"Our new offerings are part of a strategy to bring cloud benefits to all businesses with simple, cost-effective products that everyone can use, backed by the best customer support that only Rackspace can deliver," said Rackspace CEO Lanham Napier.

Nirvanix SDN- Press Releases

Cloud Computingの新興企業でCloud 上のストレージサービスを専門としているNirvanix社が企業内のサーバーにインストールできる自社のストレージサービスソフトウェア、CloudNASを発表した。  このソフトウェアは企業なのサーバにインストールする事により、そのサーバをNirvanix社の提供するCloud Storageサーバを利用したネットワークストレージサーバとして利用する事が出来る。 

 

Nirvanix CloudNASはNirvanixのCloud Storageサービスを仮想ドライブとしてマウントし、NFS、CIFS、FTP等のプロトコルでアクセス可能になる。  企業にとっては非常にスケーラブルで容易に導入できるストレージサーバとしての価値があり、従来のSANソリューションに対抗するものとして有効になる。 

 

Nirvanix Announces General Availability of CloudNAS

Turns 1U server into infinite secure storage and saves 80-90% over traditional solutions

San Diego, October 13, 2008 - Nirvanix, the premier "Cloud Storage" platform provider, today announced that its CloudNAS™, enterprise-class storage software, is now available to companies seeking instant access to secure global storage on the Nirvanix Storage Delivery Network™ (SDN). The revolutionary software instantly turns a standard 1U server into an infinite-capacity NAS filer accessible by popular applications and immediately integrates into an organization's existing archive and backup processes.

"Up until recently, cloud storage has primarily served as an on-tap back end for application developers," said Adam Couture, principal analyst at Gartner. "Today, we're starting to see enterprises begin to consider cloud storage as a low-cost storage tier for selective applications such as backup and archiving."

"We were looking for a way to easily store our archive and backup data in a cost effective way without purchasing additional hardware or needing specialized knowledge to install or maintain it," said Brad Larson, IT Manager at Crary Industries, an agriculture hardware manufacturer. "We also had a requirement to securely move encrypted data offsite but still needed the data to be immediately available. The CloudNAS fulfilled these requirements and enables us to focus on maintaining other key aspects of our business instead of worrying about maintaining and expanding IT infrastructure."

The Nirvanix CloudNAS for Linux mounts the Nirvanix Storage Delivery Network as a virtual drive that can be accessed via NFS, CIFS or FTP. After installation, storage administrators can apply standard file, directory or access permissions and users on the network can then access the Nirvanix-mapped drive from their existing applications or storage processes. Additionally, storage administrators get access to the robust Nirvanix SDN functionality such as automated policy-based file replication, single global namespace that scales to petabytes, and storage of secure, encrypted data on one or more of Nirvanix's globally clustered storage nodes.

Benefits of CloudNAS

• 80-90% cost savings over managing traditional storage solutions
• Eliminating large capital expenditures while enabling 100% storage utilization
• Encrypted offsite storage that seamlessly integrates into existing archive and backup processes
• Built in data disaster recovery and automated data replication on up to 3 geographically dispersed storage nodes for a 100% SLA
• Immediate availability to data in seconds, versus hours or days on offline tape

Nirvanix CloudNAS is ideal for companies that maintain repositories of archival, backup or unstructured data that requires long-term, secure storage, or organizations that use automated processes to transfer files to mapped drives. Example use cases include long-term archiving of data leveraging an established backup/archival solution; departments using a centralized, shared data repository; disk-to-disk-to-cloud replacing tape for archival of data; and simple back-up of all computers within a department.

"Today, all organizations must focus on cost management yet also address the challenges of long-term retention of critical digital assets," said Karim Toubba, VP Marketing and Product Management at Atempo. "By combining the power of Atempo data protection software with the Nirvanix Cloud NAS, companies can add a scalable, global and cost effective archive within minutes."

"CloudNAS is a turnkey onramp for the secure and cost effective storing of data on the award-winning Nirvanix Storage Delivery Network," said Patrick Harr, founder and CEO of Nirvanix. "In these tough economic times, CloudNAS significantly reduces the costs of maintaining in-house storage solutions for archiving and backup, easily integrates into existing storage processes, and eliminates the need for organizations to purchase expensive hardware. Just as important, CloudNAS enables a company to accommodate exponential growth in storage while shift CAPEX to OPEX."

Availability and Pricing
CloudNAS is free to use for companies who have a 2 TB or greater contract with Nirvanix and optional 24x7 support is offered at $200 per month per server. Companies who don't have a Nirvanix Account are invited to Experience Nirvanix Now – and have unlimited use of any of Nirvanix's tools including CloudNAS and up to 50 GB for 15 days, risk free. For more information on CloudNAS contact sales@nirvanix.com and to sign-up for 'Experience Nirvanix Now' visit, www.nirvanix.com/ExperienceNirvanix.aspx.

About The Storage Delivery Network

Nirvanix has built a global cluster of storage nodes collectively referred to as the Storage Delivery Network (SDN), powered by the Nirvanix Internet Media File System (IMFS). The SDN intelligently stores, delivers and processes storage requests in the best network location, providing the best user experience in the marketplace. With the ability to store multiple file copies in multiple geographic nodes, the SDN enables unparalleled data availability for developers, businesses and enterprises.

By using the Nirvanix SDN versus alternatives such as adding network storage systems or using first generation online storage platforms, businesses are guaranteed a shorter time-to-market, 80% savings over building their own storage operations, and also benefit from better flexibility and control for their operations.

About Nirvanix

Nirvanix is the premier global "Cloud Storage" platform provider. Headquartered in San Diego, California, Nirvanix is privately held and has raised more than $18 million in funding from world-class investors including Intel Capital. Nirvanix customers include Fortune 50, media and entertainment and leading Web 2.0 customers. For more information about the company and its services, visit www.nirvanix.com.

GigaSpace社はイスラエルを本社とする企業であるが、Private Cloud技術を提供するベンダーとして最近話題を集めている。

Priavate(企業内）そしてPublic（インタネット上）の両方で企業のアプリケーションを開発運用できる環境を提供する事を狙っている。

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GigaSpaces introduces portable PaaS

Update: Geva Perry clarified what exactly Gigaspaces "cloud framework" is all about on his blog.

I find GigaSpaces one of the more interesting middleware plays out there, with a unique "in memory" scaling model, and support for a wide variety of standard Java implementations. Today (on a Saturday?...really?...) GigaSpaces announces availability of their core product, Gigaspaces Application Server, on EC2.

Why is this interesting? Because you can also get Gigaspaces for your own data center--private cloud or not. And, according to Dekel's post linked above, they are actively pursuing similar stories for a variety of other vendors:

"This framework is designed specifically for cloud portability. EC2 is only the exciting beginning and expect CohesiveFT, Flexiscale, GoGrid, Joyent, RightScale and more to follow soon."

So, while there is (I would assume) some risk of coupling yourself to Gigaspaces when you write and deploy an application on the platform, in terms of infrastructure, on the other hand you can (or soon can) port away.

I haven't used GigaSpaces yet, but I would love to see many more application servers take this route, as well as introduce related development tool images that can be easily replicated to private servers. This makes the Google AppEngine story a little less unique, as anyone can get a development platform that scales (if it done right), without betting the farm on one company's compute capacity. I would especially like to see the open source vendors (ahem) concentrate on this for the coming year.

I'd love to hear from any of the private beta folks that have something interesting to say. Are you porting an existing GigaSpaces app to EC2? Are you porting an existing Java application to GigaSpaces and EC2? What are the perceived benefits of using EC2 instead of your own infrastructure at this point? How are you managing the deployment and monitoring of your applications in EC2?

I wish all the best to Geva Perry, Dekel and the rest of the GigaSpaces team.