2010 was a big year for cloud computing and infrastructure, in general, but if there’s one fundamental truth in this market, it’s that it doesn’t sit still for long. The same goes for the companies involved in it; they’re constantly making moves (some small, some big) that ultimately could result in major market transformations.
In the case of the following companies (and one open-source project), I think that although they made lots of headlines in the past year, the true effects of their actions won’t be realized until later this year. In some cases, that’s because new offerings aren’t yet available; in others it’s simply because we don’t know what they’ll do. But either way, it’s a safe bet that the seeds they’ve sown will have some profound consequences.
Here’s the list, with a few links apiece to provide context. For the full analysis on what they did and why it was so notable, read the full post here (subscription required):
1. Calxeda
2. Cisco
- Former Sun Techie Is Now Cisco’s Cloud CTO
- Cisco Buying LineSider for Network Virtualization
- The VMotion Myth
3. CouchOne
4. Joyent
- For Dell, Joyent Weaves a Software Cloud
- Joyent Targets Large-Scale Online Gaming
- Intel Pumps $30M Into American Startups
5. OpenStack
- Why OpenStack Matters: Cloud Insiders Weigh In
- OpenStack to Be Production-Ready By January
- Microsoft Joins OpenStack to Add Hyper-V Support
6. Red Hat
- Red Hat CEO: Cloud Having Halo Effect on Revenues Today
- Red Hat Buys Makara, Adds PaaS to Its Cloud Mix
- Marten Mickos Talks Red Hat, OpenStack and M&A
7. Salesforce.com
- VMware and Salesforce.com Create the VMforce Love Child
- Benioff Delivers on Promise to Democratize Databases
- Salesforce to Buy Heroku’s Ruby Cloud for $212 Million
8. Twitter
- Twitter to Build Data Center to Beach the Fail Whale
- NoSQL Is for the Birds
- Gizzard Anyone? Twitter Open Sources Code to Access Distributed Data
Image courtesy of Flickr user Bitterjug.
Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d):
- 9 Companies That Pushed the Infrastructure Discussion in 2010
- Infrastructure 2011: 5 Trends Not to Expect
- Infrastructure 2011: The Real Cloud Computing Picture Will Emerge
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