Great article in Network World. The article shows why Cloud Computing with a service component is the wave of the future. Not every company is going to have someone who is equipped to manage the internal infrastructure in the cloud. However in order to compete in today's business environment, virtualization is important. The companies that are succeeding are doing more with less. Which then points to a virtual infrastructure with a little added bonus, support.
The new breed of cloud provider offers the service component which enables any company to run as efficiently as a nimble web 2.0.
Enjoy the article.
By Denise Dubie , Network World , 05/20/2009
LAS VEGAS -- Despite the reported benefits of virtualization, a majority of IT managers polled at Interop this week say they experience problems with the technology and don't always realize the cost benefit.
Network Instruments polled 120 network managers, engineers and IT executives at Interop to learn how IT organizations are putting server and desktop virtualization technology to use. Fifty-five percent reported they virtualized mission-critical servers, including e-mail and Web servers, and another 50% said they run DNS and DHCP servers on virtual machines. And nearly 40% have already extended virtualization to their desktop environments.
Yet 55% told the network analysis vendor they experience more problems than benefits with the technology, while the remaining 45% said they had realized the benefits of virtualization. Among the problems were a lack of visibility and tools to troubleshoot performance problems in virtual environments for 27% of respondents. More than one-fourth of those polled at Interop cited a lack of training on virtual infrastructure and 21% expressed concern over an inability to secure the infrastructure.
For nearly 60%, the primary problem with virtualization was a lack of experience to appropriately manage the technology and nearly 50% said that technology implementation costs were too high, according to Network Instruments.
Managing the technology doesn't seem to have become less challenging for network managers. Last year, nearly 40% of 117 network managers polled at Interop also listed virtualization as the emerging technology that represents the "greatest monitoring challenges," according to a joint survey conducted by Network Instruments and NetQoS.
"Not surprisingly, a high number of companies have deployed critical network services on virtual machines," said Charles Thompson, product manager at Network Instruments. "The number of organizations without appropriate monitoring tools, however, definitely caught my attention. Without proper tools, application performance can unnecessarily degrade and network teams waste hours troubleshooting."
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 Cloud computing services are projected to hit $42 Billion by 2012. It is certainly the hottest buzz word since SAAS. Some even consider SAAS to be Cloud Computing. It seems there is a land grab for the cloud computing market.
According to Information Week, in three separate announcements, software vendors SAS Institute, NetSuite, and Salesforce (NYSE: CRM).com show they have deepened their commitments to cloud computing.
SAS Institute announced Thursday plans to build a $70 million, 38,000-square-foot cloud computing facility to support expansion of its OnDemand software-as-a-service offerings.
The OnDemand model is what is so attractive for many cloud computing consumers. In a colocation environment there will be committed and unused bandwidth, power, space and server capacity. In the cloud model, the customer only pays for what they use. Currently the household names in the cloud space are Terremark, 3Tera and Amazon, and a few others.
It seems SAS Institute will really attempt to challenge Terremark, 3Tera and Amazon in the cloud space. To build out a 38,000 foot server farm inside a data center is no small task. It also leads to believe they are either going to have a very strong sales and marketing campaign or they already have some of it pre-sold.
Before the cloud concept there was no possible way anyone would attempt to build this data center unless either near a major internet hub or they may have taken over a distressed asset.
Cloud computing has really flattened out the server market where companies in the tier 2 markets or buildings can compete along side the major metropolitan areas and or carrier neutral data centers.
The companies that do well in the cloud market will have the infrastructure and revenue stream in place. Amazon made the most of their infrastructure when they formed the EC2. Salesforce is another great example of a company building to the need when they complimented their hosted CRM software with a true cloud computing offering.
As the economy forces companies to become more creative cloud computing will grow. The Apache Website posted in October 2008 stating, 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 important, 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.
As companies look to add revenues they will also look to become more efficient. From the service provider side, they will try to look at where they have already sunk costs and maximize them. From the customer side they will try to pay as little as possible only for what they need.
Either way it means the virtual land grab for tech customers is predicted to keep growing by leaps and bounds, so get it while it's hot. |