GigaOM » private clouds

How intelligent networks address enterprise cloud issues

doyleresearch — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 16:21:42 +0000

Communications service providers (CSPs) can deliver highly reliable, low-latency, secure networks between highly distributed user populations and applications running at remote cloud data centers. Because of this, they offer tremendous advantages for enterprises looking to adopt public and private cloud computing.

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Cloud and data first-quarter 2013: analysis and outlook

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 06:55:36 +0000

Cloud computing is finally starting to add value to business, as those in charge of cloud within enterprises are moving from talking to doing. That much was very evident in the first quarter of 2013.

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Private cloud mania drives data center expansion, survey says

Jordan Novet — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 18:45:06 +0000

Lots of large companies in North America are expanding their data centers this year or next, and the desire to run internal private clouds is a major motivating factor, according to the results of a new survey of IT decision makers. Despite all the flak private clouds have taken, it’s clear they have a piece of the cloud market, and that piece appears to be growing.

Of the 300 IT executives surveyed, 98 percent expect to expand their data centers in 2013 or 2014, and 61 percent cited establishing internal clouds as an extremely important reason, according to the study, commissioned by data center builder Digital Realty Trust and conducted by Campos Research and Analysis. Better security, energy efficiency and new applications and services are among the other stated reasons for expansion.

The hankering for private clouds is fascinating. It shows that objections to the concept could be fading. Critics say private cloud can’t replicate the cost savings that can derive from going with massively scaled shared-resource public clouds exemplified by Amazon Web Services. Others see private cloud deployments as unduly influenced by vendors trying to parlay their dominance in the current server and software realm into cloud. But, then again, regulatory or compliance concerns still rule out the use of public clouds, as GigaOM Research analyst David Linthicum wrote in February (subscription required).

The wider availability of the OpenStack cloud platform has surely made a difference in the rise of private clouds. It’s helped plenty of companies build private clouds, including eBay, Intel and Yahoo. That trend could keep up, but so could the rise in the adoption of public clouds.

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The fourth quarter of 2012 in cloud

Thu, 17 Jan 2013 07:55:48 +0000

The last quarter of 2012 saw the rise of cloud-based databases, the cloud awakening of software giants such as HP, and many cloud outages that have put question marks around the use of cloud computing. Many enterprises found more IT dollars in their budgets, and they will focus on the cloud for much of that spending. And while the enterprise focused largely on private clouds, interest in public cloud computing is greater than many analysts expected. This fourth-quarter analysis discusses these trends and more.

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Cloud computing 2013: how to navigate without a map

Tue, 18 Dec 2012 07:55:08 +0000

In 2013 IT organizations that support large enterprises will have to figure out how to successfully get mission-critical systems onto public and private cloud computing platforms. The way the industry will use cloud-computing technology in 2013 is not a matter of prediction but more a matter of following the existing adoption patterns and trends into the New Year. Those trends, discussed in this report, include the rise of standards, big data’s role in the cloud, industry-specific clouds, security, and more.

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Helix Nebula and the future of Europe’s cloud

Paul Miller — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 04:55:22 +0000

The Helix Nebula project combines the computing needs of large European research institutions such as CERN and the European Space Agency with the technical capabilities of companies like CloudSigma, Logica, and SAP. Working together, these two groups are addressing the technical, legal, and procedural issues that today make it difficult to seamlessly move jobs from one cloud to another at scale. Lessons learned from the project will be of wider relevance as Europe’s cloud activities gather momentum and create a projected 3.8 million jobs by 2020. This report examines Helix Nebula and how it could serve as a prototype for Europe’s future cloud.

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The new opportunity for PaaS vendors: cloud services curation

Peter Sonsini, NEA — Sat, 15 Sep 2012 19:00:49 +0000

The many benefits Platform as a Service (PaaS) bring to the enterprise are well known and well publicized — chief among them the ability for developers to build applications faster than ever before. But as this space begins to mature, a new opportunity is emerging for PaaS players that could broaden their reach and amplify their strategic impact within the technology landscape: cloud services curation.

Since coming to NEA out of VMware about eight years ago, I have been intensely focused on early-stage enterprise technologies, and my partners and I saw the early promise in PaaS, investing in companies like Engine Yard and Apprenda. The space is getting even more interesting as it evolves, with the rapidly proliferating services-based approach to cloud applications creating a host of new challenges — many of which can best be addressed by PaaS vendors, both public and private.

Developers are increasingly assembling applications in the cloud by tying in APIs provided as a service, rather than coding the applications from scratch or linking in code packaged into libraries. Numerous startups have emerged to provide these APIs to developers, such as Twilio for messaging, SendGrid for email and Stormpath (which NEA invested in earlier this year) for user security management. All of these cloud service providers enable developers to focus on the core logic that makes their application unique, rather than developing functionality that is common across applications. Yet while the explosion of cloud services has clearly been a boon to developers, it presents a new set of challenges in terms of discovery, implementation and management.

If I’m developing a new application, how can I find the most reliable, secure services that are compatible with my run-time environment and data store? Once I’ve implemented these services, how I can be sure I’m using them appropriately and cost-effectively? Furthermore, if I decide to offer the core functionality of my application to the public as a service, how can I ensure this service is discoverable, trusted and usable by other developers?

PaaS vendors, public and private, are in a perfect position to solve these challenges by sifting through the numerous available cloud services, curating those that are the most beneficial and trustworthy, and promoting these services to developers. Thousands of developers are already paying these vendors to help them build, manage and deploy applications, so the “chicken and egg” problem of creating a new marketplace has already been solved. They are a trusted partner. A PaaS also happens to be one of the first decisions a developer makes when building a cloud application, so it’s a natural extension for these PaaS vendors to curate third-party services to increase the value proposition of their platform to developers. Leading public PaaS vendors such as Azure, Engine Yard and Heroku, as well as private PaaS such as Apprenda, have a tremendous opportunity to lead the industry in cloud services curation.

You may ask, what about Amazon? As an Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) provider, they are primarily motivated to appeal to as broad an audience as possible in order to drive more compute cycles. This has caused them to open up their marketplace for the entire ecosystem, rather than curating an offering suited to a specific category of developer. In addition, it is no secret that third-party software developers are starting to trust them less and less. Amazon has gradually expanded upwards from the IaaS layer, adding on PaaS-like capabilities which compete directly with partners in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) ecosystem. As long as the fear persists that Amazon will take the best services in house, developers will be wary of relying on them as a channel to distribute their cloud services. The truly independent PaaS players who empower rather than compete with their developers will prevail.

The implications of cloud services curation for startups, PaaS vendors and enterprises are significant:

New companies that sell cloud services will increasingly go to market through PaaS vendors, greatly decreasing sales and marketing expense. As Apple’s App Store is to mobile independent software vendors (ISVs), marketplaces for PaaS vendors’ services will be to cloud service vendors.
PaaS vendors will offer new services to guarantee security and cleansing to ensure that everything on their platform is compatible, reliable and trustworthy. They will leverage their position as a trusted vendor for developers to make the most of this new way to develop applications.
Enterprises will win big. They only need to standardize on one trusted PaaS rather than individually certifying each cloud-based service. They can pay and manage numerous cloud services through one vendor. If anything does go wrong, they will have the support of an established partner to ensure the problem gets fixed quickly.

Ultimately, cloud services curation is likely to be provided as an additional offering by the handful of leading PaaS vendors, rather than stand-alone marketplaces or IaaS providers. In a world with an ever-expanding number of cloud services, curation will help developers discover the best services and help the best services achieve broader adoption — thus bringing innovative and secure applications to market faster than ever before. We expect cloud services curation to be one among several rich strategic opportunities on the horizon for PaaS vendors as the PaaS market transitions from nascent to mature.

Peter Sonsini, general partner at NEA, invests in early-stage enterprise software and consumer companies. In addition to the PaaS companies mentioned above — Apprenda, Engine Yard and Stormpath — his current investments include BeachMint, Conviva, Embrane, Eucalytpus Systems, Lithium Technologies, MapR, Splashtop, Tintri and Viddy. Peter’s previous investments include Xensource (acquired by Citrix) and Teracent (acquired by Google).

For more on the evolution of PaaS, attend GigaOM’s Structure:Europe conference in Amsterdam on October 16 – 17.

Image courtesy of Flickr user Materials Aart.

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PaaS market accelerators, 2012–2013

Wed, 27 Jun 2012 06:55:28 +0000

In recent months many have focused on PaaS solutions as an enabling technology to bring more control to the development and deployment of cloud-based applications and business processes. This research note will focus on the practical uses of PaaS technology for the enterprise, as well as how to move from an existing application-development technology to the use of PaaS solutions. It will also discuss how to make sense of the emerging PaaS market and players and make critical recommendations that will increase the chances of success in moving to PaaS technology.

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Deploying big data: 2012 strategies for IT departments

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 06:55:01 +0000

Cloud computing and big data are in the enterprise to stay. However, a recently conducted GigaOM Pro survey tells us that successfully mining data and getting the most benefit out of the cloud come with challenges: Seventy-four percent of large companies said business intelligence (BI) projects were still the domain of the IT group, and just under half of companies (45 percent) said the main reason BI projects fail is due to a lack of expert staff. This report examines the survey’s results in more depth and provides recommendations for making the most of your company’s big data.

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Infrastructure Q1: Cloud and big data woo enterprises

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 06:55:04 +0000

With enterprises now open to hybrid clouds, Amazon Web Services finally relaxed its rigid public-cloud-only stance and launched services to support hybrid-cloud deployments in the first quarter of 2012. On the big data front, the Hadoop players realized very few companies have teams of systems engineers to learn MapReduce. This has meant adding support for SQL and integrating Hadoop with existing data-management tools and systems. In other words, Hadoop has grown up and is now being taken seriously by companies like Oracle and Microsoft. This quarterly report examines these trends as well the exciting M&A and IPO news in this arena. It also includes a near-term outlook for the next 12–18 months.

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