rlebherz wrote: Alf,
Interesting article. I think the Cloud services and cloud infrastructure lines are a bit blurred, but I agree with most of what you are saying.
Dont underestimate the SLA's role in accountability. For companies that have dynamic requirements and no down time can be afforded, make sure you have very tight SLAs. For example, OpSource provides a 100% SLA in the cloud and 100%SLA around production application environments. Now 100% is ideally perfect, it comes down to accountability, yo...
What do the following companies all have in common: Amazon, Microsoft, Google, EMC, VMware, IBM, Sun, Dell, Akamai, SalesForce.com, NetSuite, and Activision. Answer: Cloud Computing. Merrill Lynch analysts reckon that by 2011 the volume of cloud computing market opportunity will amount to $160BN, including $95N in business and productivity apps (e-mail, office, CRM, etc.) and $65BN in online advertising.
Merrill Lynch recently issued a research note: “The Cloud Wars: $100+ billion at stake” (07 May 2008). The analysts write that by 2011 the volume of cloud computing market opportunity would amount to $160bn, including $95bn in business and productivity apps (email, office, CRM, etc.) and $65bn in online advertising.
The authors identify 10 companies + 2 “unconventional plays” with exposure to Cloud Computing growth. I tried to sketch their market position in a diagram (my own interpretation):
Top 10 (+2) Cloud companies
It is interesting that Merrill Lynch researchers added Activision to their top cloud company list. They are absolutely correct, though. If you manage to operate a 10 million WoW gamer user base in a distributed network, you definitely deserve to be in the champions league.
I will pick up other interesting aspects of the note in later blog posts. Comments, ideas?
[This post appeared originally here and is republished in full by kind permission of the author, who retains copyright.]
About Markus Klems Markus Klems is a research assistant at Germany-based FZI Research Center for Information Technology. His main areas of interests are cloud computing, grids, distributed programming and agile Web development - the technological point of view as well as business models. He blogs at http://markusklems.wordpress.com/.
Merrill Lynch's estimate most likely does not include the rising number of smaller providers entering the SaaS marketplace. For instance, www.HostedDatabase.com, is a product from a small company but offers very simple-to-use template applications. This company along with others aim to compete at the lower end of the spectrum, off the radar of larger players like Salesforce.
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Richard Davies commented on 7 Jul 2008
Whilst Amazon, Google, etc. get a lot of the press, there is a good ecosystem of smaller vendors offering cloud computing products - e.g. in the web hosting market these include [http://www.mediatemple.net MediaTemple], [http://www.mosso.com Mosso], [http://www.gogrid.com GoGrid] in the US and [http://www.elastichosts.com ElasticHosts], [http://www.flexiscale.com FlexiScale] in the UK.
Dean J. Garrett wrote: Merrill Lynch's estimate most likely does not include the rising number of smaller providers entering the SaaS marketplace. For instance, www.HostedDatabase.com, is a product from a small company but offers very simple-to-use template applications. This company along with others aim to compete at the lower end of the spectrum, off the radar of larger players like Salesforce.
Richard Davies wrote: Whilst Amazon, Google, etc. get a lot of the press, there is a good ecosystem of smaller vendors offering cloud computing products - e.g. in the web hosting market these include [http://www.mediatemple.net MediaTemple], [http://www.mosso.com Mosso], [http://www.gogrid.com GoGrid] in the US and [http://www.elastichosts.com ElasticHosts], [http://www.flexiscale.com FlexiScale] in the UK.
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What do the following companies all have in common: Amazon, Microsoft, Google, EMC, VMware, IBM, Sun, Dell, Akamai, SalesForce.com, NetSuite, and Activision. Answer: Cloud Computing. Merrill Lynch analysts reckon that by 2011 the volume of cloud computing market opportunity will amount to $160BN, including $95N in business and productivity apps (e-mail, office, CRM, etc.) and $65BN in online advertising.
