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Choose A Cloud Or A Cloud Network?

Posted by James Staten on December 13, 2011

You've heard from us for a while that your cloud, whether public or private, should not be an island. Should this be true of your public cloud provider too?

A growing number of service providers are jumping into the Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) market not by building their own solution but by jumpstarting the effort with a cloud platform software provider like VMware, OnApp or CA. The benefits of this approach:

  • Faster time to market
  • Less R&D expense
  • In some cases brand equity
  • Potentially greater enterprise compatibility
  • And somewhat being part of a network of compatible providers
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Shining The Harsh Light On Cloud Washing

Posted by James Staten on December 8, 2011

For years I have been railing about cloud washing -- the efforts by vendors and, more recently, enterprise I&O professionals to give a cloud computing name to their business-as-usual IT services and virtualization efforts. Now, a cloud vendor, with tongue somewhat in cheek, is taking this rant to the next level. 

Appirio, a cloud integration and customization solution provider, has created the cloud computing equivalent of the Razzie Awards to recognize and call out those vendors it and its clients see as the most egregious cloud washing offenders. The first annual Washies will be announced next Wednesday night at The Cigar Bar in San Francisco, and in true Razzie tradition, the nominees are invited to attend and pick up their dubious honors in person. I'm betting that Larry Ellison will be otherwise engaged.

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When Will We Have IaaS Cloud Standards? Not Till 2015

Posted by James Staten on December 2, 2011

 

Guest post from I&O Researcher Lauren E. Nelson

If you’re sitting on the sidelines waiting for IaaS to become more standardized, stop it. You’ll be waiting there till 2015, while everyone else is building fundamental skills and ramping up their cloud knowledge. So jump in the game already!

In Forrester’s latest report, The State Of Infrastructure-As-A-Service Cloud Standards, we took a long look at the efforts in place today that drive cloud standardization and were not impressed. While there’s lots of effort taking place, progress thus far is miniscule. But that shouldn’t be a big surprise to anyone familiar with the standardization process since:

a.       Standards are always in arrears of best practice maturity

b.      Collaboration is often time consuming, delaying the creation and ratification process

But why 2015? Standards organizations are still exploring the market needs — which means that by the time they identify where to focus and actually develop a proposed standard it will be at least a year for now. From there it will be a long year of committee meetings to vet and vote on the standard itself and build momentum for its release. And if the standard makes it to release and there’s enough market momentum behind that proposed standard, it will be another year or two before there’s significant adoption where it actually becomes a market standard.  The standards timeline is easily three to four years out.

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