First, it adds more weight to the argument that VMware “gets” open source. Last month, news of its acquisition of Nicira, an OpenStack contributor, showed that VMware might be more receptive to joining forces with — or at least giving lip service to  – the OpenStack open-source cloud initiative. That would be a notable change since OpenStack has been seen as a counterweight to VMware in the cloud. VMware had already entered the open source fold with its Cloud Foundry PaaS but the company’s core vSphere franchise was seen as anything but open.

Reality bites VMware

To some, this move just shows that VMware — which had hoped to make vSphere the OS of the cloud — now grasps the reality that cloud data centers are not vSphere-only shops.

“I think they need to continue to find revenue opportunities up the stack, and although they want those to primarily drive vSphere workloads, they realize some of the higher level technologies, especially around PaaS and software-defined data centers, may use technology from other vendors, including technology from OpenStack. This and the Nicira relationship is what prompted the move at this time,” said Derek Collison, a former Cloud Foundry executive  via email. Collison left last year to found Apcera, a somewhat stealthy PaaS startup trying to define the next-generation cloud platform.

“There were a lot of questions on how Nicira’s role in software defined networks and OpenStack would continue post purchase, and I think this is trying to help with those fears,” Collison said.

VMware joining OpenStack doesn't make them more "open," it's shrewd & prudent, esp. w/Nicira acquisition. More like "OpenWallet"—
[Christofer] Hoff (@Beaker) August 27, 2012

A large VMware service provider partner who requested anonymity said, VMware remains dominant in server virtualization, but is having difficulty entrenching its other products both among service providers and end-user customers. “VMware is having a hard time selling SpringSource and some of its other acquired technologies,” he said. VMware bought SpringSource three years ago to become more of a full platform provider and to better compete with Microsoft.

In his view, Spring has not made a dent in either J2EE and .NET adoption. Beyond vSphere and Cloud Foundry, VMware is hurting — people see products like vFabric Director and vCenter Operations  Manager as maybe being good technology, but they’re cumbersome and hard to use, he said.

Others outside the OpenStack fold see possible conspiracy. Ignacio Llorente, program director of OpenNebula, which competes with OpenStack, has his own sets of questions that he posed via email:

Is VMware joining OpenStack for marketing or for strategic reasons? Are they going to discontinue the development of vCloud and create a new cloud manager based on OpenStack? What about the rest of the partners? Most existing OpenStack partners have their own cloud management tools (not OpenStack based) in the market … My point here is that these vendors want to make money with the cloud management layer and this conflicts with the creation of a foundation that plans to commoditize the cloud management layer … but thanks to this movement, they get the sympathy of the open-source community.

Citrix out in the cold?

OpenStack backers said this move puts Citrix at risk. In April, Citrix , which had been an OpenStack backer, surprised the foundation by backing its own more-mature CloudStack platform as an OpenStack rival. Citrix, with XenServer, is a big server virtualization rival to VMware.

The addition of VMware to the mix is a huge validation of the effort, said Randy Bias CTO and co-founder of Cloudscaling, an OpenStack Gold partner. “VMware’s embrace of OpenStack further cements the growing community as the de facto standard for building open clouds.  In retrospect, it now looks like the Citrix departure from OpenStack left an opportunity for their rival to make a strategic play.”

However, he also urged caution. “Alongside the announced Nicira acquisition, VMware appears to be making bold moves; however, it remains to be seen whether they can truly embrace ‘open.’ Its infrastructure products remain largely proprietary, difficult to extend or modify, and focused on solving virtualization, not cloud problems,” Bias said.

#VMware is about to join the #OpenStack Foundation ow.ly/dfHIP <keeping your enemies closer? #cloud—
Ed Nadrotowicz (@EdN2Z) August 27, 2012

Feature photo courtesy of Flickr user Dell’s Official Flickr Page.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Cloud computing infrastructure: 2012 and beyond
• Cloud computing 2013: how to navigate without a map
• The promise of SDNs in the enterprise

A year ago, a VMware-OpenStack hookup would have been seen as unlikely. When Rackspace and NASA launched the OpenStack Project more than two years ago, it was seen as a competitive response to VMware’s server virtualization dominance inside company data centers and to Amazon’s heft in public cloud computing.  Many tech companies including but not limited to Rackspace, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Citrix, Red Hat and Microsoft saw VMware as a threat and were bound and determined to keep the company from extending its virtualization lock into the cloud.

Steve Herrod, CTO and SVP of R&D, VMware
(c)2012 Pinar Ozger pinar@pinarozger.com

But, things change. VMware’s surprise acquisition of Nicira and DynamicOps last month, showed there might be a thaw in the air.  For one thing, Nicira is an OpenStack player. By bringing Nicira and DynamicOps into the fold, VMware appeared to be much more willing to work with non-VMware-centric infrastructure, as GigaOM’s Derrick Harris reported at the time.

This is a symbolic coup for OpenStack and its biggest boost since IBM and Red Hat officially joined as Platinum members in April.  And it’s especially important since Citrix, a virtualization rival to VMware undercut it’s own OpenStack participation last April by pushing CloudStack as an alternative open source cloud stack.

OpenStack Gold members, which include Cloudscaling, Dell, MorphLabs, Cisco Systems, and NetApp, pay a fee pegged at 0.25 percent of their revenue — at least $50,000 but capped at $200,000 according to the foundation wiki.  (VMware’s fee will be $66,666, according to the application, submitted by VMware CTO Steve Herrod, which is linked on the wiki post.) Platinum members —  AT&T, Canonical, HP, Rackspace, IBM, Nebula, Red Hat, and SUSE – pay $500,000 per year with a 3-year minimum commitment.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Cloud computing infrastructure: 2012 and beyond
• Infrastructure Q2: Big data and PaaS gain more momentum
• Migrating media applications to the private cloud: best practices for businesses

VMware’s new CEO Pat Gelsinger.

VMware’s annual VMworld shindig is next week, giving the company a golden opportunity to answer a lot of questions about its future and its future products. Here are five topics the company needs to address at the event where incoming CEO Pat Gelsinger, and out-going CEO Paul Maritz  will both keynote.

1: Settle the spin out question

Will VMware spin out its Cloud Foundry platform as a service and other cloud assets or keep them in house? As GigaOM reported last month, a spinout was under consideration as a way to help the company become a bigger player in cloud computing. Packaged together, the open-source Cloud Foundry PaaS, EMC’s Greenplum data analysis expertise and an infrastructure as a platform play – all of that could make a cloud foundation that could take on rivals Amazon, Microsoft and Google.

2: Clarify the software-defined data center product vision

Folks want to hear VMware CTO Steve Herrod talk more about the company’s notion of a software defined data center, in which software and virtualization assume roles long-held by specialized hardware. VMware’s acquisition of Nicira and its software-defined networking (SDN) prowess will play a big role there and will be the subject of much debate, although the deal is still in the works.

3: Show the world who’s in charge

One question that has dogged VMware since EMC bought it in 2003 is: Who is running the show? When VMware said last month that Maritz (pictured below) would move over to parent company EMC as chief strategist and would be replaced by Gelsinger, president of EMC’s Information Infrastructure Products group, reaction was all over the map. People had many theories such as:

• A. This was a move by EMC CEO Joe Tucci to tie VMware more tightly to the mother ship.
• B. Maritz was tired of day-to-day management.
• C. Gelsinger had to be appeased after Tucci said he would stay on as EMC CEO at least through the end of 2013.
• D: All of the above.
• E: None of the above.

VMware now needs to put these theories to rest with a statement of what Tucci’s role is and how he helps lead the company’s vision.

4: Lose the “memory tax.” For real, and once and for all

VMware infuriated customers last year with vSphere 5 licensing changes that amounted to a price hike (many dubbed it a “memory tax.”) With that release, VMware started charging a fee for the use of vSphere on every socket of a physical server and another fee on the amount of virtual memory used by the hypervisor. Now it’s been reported that VMware will drop the practice.

That single licensing move prompted many VMware shops to at least look at Microsoft Hyper-V or maybe XEN or KVM server virtualization alternatives. VMware needs to clean this up.

5: Address fear of a brain drain

What’s VMware doing to keep and recruit the best technical talent? As GigaOM’s Derrick Harris reported, a lot of engineers left VMware in the past year. Most recently Cloud Foundry luminary Dave McCrory took a new job at Warner Music Group. This perception of brain drain worries people like Bart Copeland, CEO of ActiveState, a Cloud Foundry partner, who wonders if VMware is doing enough to find new senior engineers to replace those who have left.  Whether it’s accurate or not, there is a perception that VMware is bleeding tech talent.

6:  Set priorities

Everyone knows VMware wants to be more than a server virtualization vendor, but despite lots of acquisitions, SpringSource, Zimbra, etc. — its core strength remains squarely what it’s always been: server virtualization. What does VMware want to be? And how will it pursue that expanded agenda without damaging or neglecting its core server virtualization franchise?

Gelsinger, who spent years at Intel before joining EMC, is viewed as a hardware guy, and many wonder how he will manage what is pretty clearly a software company.   They would like to know what VMware’s target market really is and who its primary competition is. Microsoft? Google? IBM? HP?  Positioning is important. So let’s hear about it.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Infrastructure Q1: Cloud and big data woo enterprises
• A near-term outlook for big data
• In Q3, Big Data Meant Big Dollars

1. The window is closing (closed?) on fundings for platforms as a service. I had this discussion with a few people this week, and I believe it’s true. DotCloud, AppFog and CloudBees might represent the last hurrahs of heavily VC-funded PaaS offerings. Consolidation has already started, and existing platforms such as Heroku, Microsoft, Red Hat and Engine Yard are firming up their offerings. Oh, and there’s VMware’s own Cloud Foundry, which has a small, but innovative, ecosystem already forming around it. I think we’re good.
2. The future is about applications. VMware’s Paul Maritz said it in his keynote. Steve Herrod introduced a slew of new technologies for delivering next-generation applications better across all sorts of devices. With PaaS funding dried up, innovators and VCs will have to look up the stack past application platforms to the applications themselves. But it’s the future, not the present, at least in mainstream IT. The show floor at VMworld and some of the conversations I overheard made it clear that we’re still way off from the level of IT automation and operating system agnosticism that will help companies really focus their IT attention on applications.
3. Dell will be just fine. A couple weeks ago, my colleague Stacey Higginbotham presented a fairly dire outlook for Dell, but I’m not so sure I agree. Look past the tough road ahead in consumer devices, and you see an enterprise IT future where Dell seems to just get it. Look how many servers it’s selling into webscale data centers. Granted, they’re partners now, but Cloudera COO Kirk Dunn made a couple of interesting observations about Dell during a lengthy discussion I had with him, including that he’s surprised how many new Dell webscale servers he’s seen installed even in traditionally HP or IBM shops. Look at its recent forward-thinking software acquisitions and partnerships, including Boomi, Joyent, OpenStack and Cloudera. Look at the trio of IaaS clouds it’s going to launch over the next year. I’m not worried about Dell.
   
4. Solid-state drives are poised to take over the data center. Everywhere you turned at VMworld, there was a solid-state storage vendor — Fusion-io , Pure Storage, Nimbus Data Systems, Nimble Storage and flash supplier Samsung. Pure Storage CEO Scott Dietzen told me flash will replace hard disk drives as the dominant storage medium within 10 years. He’s probably right. Sales are ramping up, prices are coming down and virtualized workloads now outnumber physical workloads. They’ll need SSDs to perform at the level mission-critical applications require, so look for flash vendors to pick some serious traction as storage refresh cycles roll around.
   
5. PCs will join hard disk drives on scrap heap? I pose this as a question because I feel like was supposed to be a theme of the VMworld show, but I’m not entirely convinced. Yes, consumerization is real and mobile devices will become more prevalent, but that doesn’t mean they’ll necessarily replace desktops and laptops. We might work on the go more often now, but white collar workers stil spend lots of time at desk, and 27 inches, 4 cores and a keyboard still rule in terms of efficiency. Of course, VMware’s vision, and that of numerous other exhibitors, is one of virtual desktops replacing our overpowered machines of today. Only, we’ve been talking about VDI forever, and there hasn’t been a whole lot of movement. But maybe that’s changing.
   

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Migrating media applications to the private cloud: best practices for businesses
• Infrastructure Q1: IaaS Comes Down to Earth; Big Data Takes Flight
• 9 Companies that Pushed the Infrastructure Discussion in 2010

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• A field guide to cloud computing: current trends, future opportunities
• Infrastructure Q1: IaaS Comes Down to Earth; Big Data Takes Flight
• Citrix and VMware strengthen their cloud credentials

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Infrastructure Q3: OpenStack and flash step into the spotlight
• Infrastructure Q2: Big data and PaaS gain more momentum
• The Structure 50: The Top 50 Cloud Innovators

Assuming that most of those are running atop some version of VMware’s hypervisor, there’s a lot of reason to care what Maritz has to say about the future of the cloud. His company will have a major role in defining the transition from virtualization to cloud computing.

Maritz noted that there’s a lot of hype around the cloud, even acknowledging that “We at VMworld are not immune to cloud fever,” he said, but he believes it’s more than just a fad. Maritz thinks there are three very profound, and very real, forces driving the move to cloud computing: modernization of infrastructure, investment in new and renewed applications, and entirely new modes of end-user access.

However, there’s a big difference between what drove the world to deploying 20 million VMs and what will drive it to modernize infrastructure even further with the cloud. Consolidation largely drove the move to virtualization, but applications and mobile devices will drive the move to cloud computing.

On the application front, Maritz looks to  what he calls canonical applications. “When canonical applications change, that’s when you see really profound change [across the computing ecosystem],” Maritz said. He pointed to bookkeeping applications as indicative of the mainframe era, and to ERP, CRM and e-commerce as the defining applications of the client-server era.

Real-time and high-scalability capabilities — both in terms of traffic and data — are driving the development of new applications. Being able to analyze data days after it’s generated, or to adapt to new traffic patterns within days, just isn’t good enough anymore. We can’t keep “putting lipstick around” current applications and expect them to meet these new demands, Maritz said.

How we write those applications also will be critical, because they’ll have to run on a variety of non-PC devices. We’re approaching the intersection of consumerization and next-generation enterprise IT, Maritz explained, which means that companies like VMware have to plan for very serious change. Running enterprise applications on consumer devices, especially of the mobile variety, is a big change.

They’ll have to embrace things such as HTML5 to enable cross-platform applications, and new programming frameworks to attract young developers that demand a simple, dynamic development experience. Companies will also have to figure out how to secure corporate data against the myriad threats that accompany employees downloading apps willy-nilly and operating often on unsecured (0r at least less-secured) networks. VMware CTO Steve Herrod actually will be highlighting VMware’s role in the mobile ecosystem at our Mobilize conference next month, and it’s safe to assume these will be among the topics he addresses.

Maritz, of course, thinks VMware has strong plays in all of these spaces — vSphere, Cloud Foundry, Horizon, the list does on — and he highlighted them. However, as my colleague Stacey Higginbotham pointed out while highlighting the key VMworld trends, VMworld isn’t alone in making this realization. It has major competition, including from companies like Microsoft that know both the enterprise and the consumer spaces very well.

Every year at VMworld, Maritz highlights the movement toward cloud computing and how VMware is driving that migration. In large part, he’s right every time on the latter point. Now that almost everyone is on board with Maritz’s vision, though, I’m interested to see how long VMworld, and VMware in general, continues to drive the discussion around the future of IT.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Takeaways from the second quarter in cloud and data
• Migrating media applications to the private cloud: best practices for businesses
• Infrastructure Q1: IaaS Comes Down to Earth; Big Data Takes Flight

VMware’s attempts to take new ground.

VMware may have started with a hypervisor, but it certainly hasn’t stopped there. As it has added functionality to its products in the form of management software, a new Platform-as-a-Service, an application market of sorts and more, the Palo Alto, Calif.-based company has proven that it’s staying relevant as the effects of virtualization change IT. This week, Gary Orenstein wrote about how VMware is making inroads into storage with its latest version of vSphere, but it’s also turning toward the database market with its database automation announcement Monday. Keep an eye out for VMware dipping its toes into new IT waters and markets during the event as it seeks to expand its role as the OS for the cloud.

Room for one more?

If VMware is the reigning champ as the OS for the cloud, there are plenty of others vying for that honor, including a new entrant from Joyent. A few weeks back, Joyent announced SmartOS, a new operating system designed for the cloud and the capabilities of today’s hardware that’s designed for virtualization. Calling it the first modern OS may seem a stretch, but VMware has truly become the OS of the cloud and other players such as Microsoft, Citrix and even OpenStack are hoping to catch up.

That’s why Microsoft posted a mocking video last week and is talking up its cloud offerings Monday. Citrix also announced it could support VMware with its recently acquired CloudStack private cloud software (from Cloud.com). According to Citrix, this benefits customers that don’t want to pay VMware licensing fees on their new virtualization efforts but still will have to manage their old VMware infrastructure even if they are running other hypervisors. And with Dell announcing a VMware-based compute cloud with plans for OpenStack and a Microsoft cloud to follow, it appears VMware may not hold onto default status in the enterprise as the set of support and tools around other options grow.

Family plans for the cloud.

Manage multiple clouds with one platform.

Speaking of transitioning from an all-VMware cloud, that’s another key trend. Several management dashboards and vendors are introducing seamless ways to manage applications running on multiple clouds. This isn’t the mythical cloudbursting, where one could switch the apps from one cloud to another if needed, but being able to see what’s happening across multiple IaaS or PaaS deployments is an important step in helping IT adopt cloud computing without fear of vendor lock-in.

Users of different clouds might also be able to take advantage of price differences or hardware optimizations for running different applications, while still managing compliance, cost and other necessary elements of running an enterprise application from one dashboard. It’s like being able to see and manage all your family cell phones on one account as opposed to having to manage them all individually. VMware is also tracking this trend with the release of VMware service provider program (VSPP), which is a set of different vendors offering VMware based clouds that can now be managed as one holistic cloud.

A tale of two platforms.

Platforms are another hot trend, as vendors build products aimed at developers that don’t want to manage infrastructure. The trend in PaaS is to offer multiple languages, like building a Tower of Babel for developers. But the question becomes how will companies want to use their polyglot PaaS. VMware’s Cloud Foundry product allows folks to choose their own Infrastructure-as-a-Service provider that could be on premise or in the cloud from Amazon or another provider. So, someone using it selects an IaaS underpinning, then chooses a language and gets to work. VMware has also created partnerships with existing language-specific platforms to support developers.

However, Salesforce.com has a different idea in mind. With its Heroku platform, that just last week announced it will support Java  and other languages, the infrastructure isn’t an option. And the bet it’s making is that people fundamentally won’t care about servers. Heroku’s co-founder, Adam Wiggins, told me last week that Heroku will add support for new languages and frameworks as time passes, but it wants to do so in a manner that really engages and serves the development community of a particular language. I’m curious if VMware’s pick-and-choose approach will gain traction over Salesforce’s more unified option, and if enterprise customers are really ready to give up choosing their infrastructure and can trust it to Salesforce.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Cloud computing infrastructure: 2012 and beyond
• Infrastructure Q1: IaaS Comes Down to Earth; Big Data Takes Flight
• Infrastructure Overview, Q2 2010

VMware breaks down the product set into three layers: infrastructure, application platforms and end-user computing. With an eye on understanding specific products, here’s what I saw this week:

Cloud Infrastructure and Management. VMware’s mainstay products – vSphere and vCenter — received plenty of attention at the show, specifically in the hands-on labs. However, what really galvanized the conference was the official release of vCloud. VMware’s entry into providing a complete cloud stack builds on the familiarity corporate data centers and service providers have with the vSphere data center virtualization platform and vCenter management products. This may give VMware a leg up in getting customers to adopt cloud architectures given the familiarity companies have with the underlying products. vCloud provides user portals, catalogs of common virtual machines, and security services for corporations and service providers so they can deliver self-service computing.

In conjunction with the official vCloud release, VMware also announced vCloud Datacenter Services, where service providers such as Verizon can deliver the same vCloud environment to corporations. The VMware strategy to empower both the enterprise and service providers with common infrastructure certainly makes sense and could help kick-start mass enterprise cloud adoption.

Also in the infrastructure category is vShield, a suite of virtualization security products that help deliver network services, such as firewalls, within vCloud environments.

Cloud Application Platforms. VMware boosted their Platform-as-a-Service offerings with vFabric, a cloud application platform that leverages the Spring Java development framework and the talent from the SpringSource acquisition. Other tools that have been integrated include the distributed data management layer GemFire from the Gemstone acquisition and the application messaging communications queue acquired with RabbitMQ. VMware has emphasized application portability at this tier and set up partnerships with Salesforce.com through VMforce and Google through AppEngine to allow enterprises to move applications across these platforms.

End-User Computing. VMware also announced a new version of VMware View intended to help manage end-user desktops across a proliferation of devices. VMware View is a big piece of VMware’s attempt to own more of the virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) arena, an area we profiled in Virtual Desktops are Hot Again. Another piece of the end-user pie is ThinApp, a technology VMware acquired from ThinStall to help streamline application delivery.

The challenge for VMware now might be how to communicate the breadth and depth of their product portfolio in a way that’s easy to digest and understand. VMware certainly has the arsenal to blanket both the enterprise and service provider segments with comprehensive offerings, but it’s now a much more complex sell than the simple message of server consolidation through hypervisors and virtual machines.

Next year, I anticipate that we’ll see the fruits of VMware’s labors, with enterprise and service provider adopters sharing their experience with the overall community. That will be the ultimate proof of the next stage of VMware’s potential success.

Gary Orenstein is Host of The Cloud Computing Show.

Virtualization and cloud computing aren’t always the answer. But we are slowly learning what applications work best in different types of environments. Let’s be clear — virtualization and cloud computing are two distinct, equally game-changing technologies. But given the hype and enthusiasm around them, it is always healthy to get a refreshing dose of why they may not always be the greatest approaches.

For instance, Basecamp, a popular web-based collaboration tool, released data in July showing that virtualization was slowing it down significantly compared with running on dedicated hardware. The full details are in a well-documented summary on its blog. Here are some highlights:

• For months, we’ve been running our applications on virtualized instances.
• For some time I’ve wanted to run some tests to see what the current performance of Basecamp on the virtualized instances was vs. the performance of dedicated hardware.
• We host all our infrastructure with Rackspace.
• To make a long story a little less long, we saw some pretty extreme performance improvements from moving Basecamp out of a virtualized environment and back onto dedicated hardware.
• We were able to cut response times to about one-third of their previous levels even when handling over 20 percent more requests per minute.

This is only one instance compared with hundreds that have benefited extensively from virtualization. But in the case of newly designed web applications that can be configured for multithreading and deployed relatively easily with tools like Chef, any perceived virtualization benefits are also confounded by a severe performance penalty.

When the Cloud’s Not the Answer

In late June, John Adams from Twitter operations gave an exceptional talk on “Fixing Twitter: Improving the Performance and Scalability of the World’s Most Popular Micro-blogging Site” (see video). In the presentation, John says cloud computing is not an option for Twitter. It’s not irrelevant for all — it’s just not practical for his company’s needs. Here are some excerpts from the video:

• We really want raw processing power.
• We want to be able to look at the metrics of the system and accurately predict what is going to happen.
• There is a place for clouds, and I’m sure that they work for a lot of people.
• Given the scale that we are under and the amount of traffic that we want to process it [cloud computing] is currently not working.
• We’d rather spend the time working on the real, hard computer science problems that we are under.

Twitter operations manages back-end software performance, availability, metrics-driven capacity planning and configuration management. But it does not oversee the physical plant, and instead relies on NTT for managed services including the server and network deployment. This isn’t really cloud computing, and I’d hesitate to call this infrastructure as a service because that implies the presence of a virtualization layer between the service and the infrastructure (which is exactly what happens with Amazon EC2). This is more like infrastructure leased, not bought, and with a full-time mechanic ready to do the racking and stacking. For Twitter, it works, and it showcases the need to explore options before a wholesale leap to the cloud.

So virtualization and cloud-based  infrastructure as a service are not the ubiquitous answers. At times, more efficient, streamlined access to raw hardware simply provides the best bang for the buck. For those interested in another perspective, Stacey recently spoke with Erich Clementi, the head of IBM’s cloud computing efforts, about Big Blue’s cloud strategy. Clementi pointed out, “Many people equate cloud computing to virtualization. It is not virtualization.” He further said:

I’d second Clementi’s comment about modeling the data center. But let’s not forget about the modeling application, the workload, and impact on infrastructure. Virtualization and cloud computing are here to stay, and provide compelling benefits. At the same time, smart software on raw hardware can be an equally compelling proposition.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• The 2013 task management tools market
• Takeaways from the second quarter in cloud and data
• A near-term outlook for big data