Scoop: Is It a Surprise That Google and Microsoft Target Amazon?
May 22, 2012
Okay, “real” journalists are causing my blood pressure medicine to work overtime. I did not know that Amazon was a big deal. I am delighted that a major “real” news outfit reported for the first time in the history of mankind this insight: “Scoop: Google, Microsoft Both Targeting Amazon with New Clouds.” The insight which knocked me on my tail feathers was:
Google and Microsoft are two cloud providers that should have Amazon Web Services shaking a bit, in a way Rackspace and the OpenStack haven’t yet been able to. Google and Microsoft both have the engineering chops to compete with AWS technically, and both have lots of experience dealing with both developers and large companies. More importantly, both seem willing and able to compete with AWS on price — a big advantage for AWS right now as its economies of scale allow it to regularly slash prices for its cloud computing services.
Even though we have provided some insight to our hopeless befuddled investment bank clients, we totally missed the fact that Amazon had a cloud service, that Google and Microsoft seem to be playing a me too game, and that Amazon is rolling out new services.
How could the goslings have failed me? We thought Amazon was really a purveyor of hard backed books and diapers? I expect that the financial outfits who pay us to analyze the more subtle aspects of companies engaged in online will be firing us in the next minute or two. Now I know my IQ is below 70, not even “dull normal.”
I suppose I can become a WalMart greeter.
Stephen E Arnold, May 22, 2012
Sponsored by no one. I mean who would pay money to an outfit who did not know that Google and Microsoft were interested in cloud revenue.
SAP Floats Into Amazon Cloud
May 19, 2012
Amazon will soon host SAP’s All-in-One applications, GogaOm informs us in “Amazon and SAP Put All-in-One in the Cloud.” Writer Barb Darrow posits the move could boost the appeal of Amazon EC2, since SAP BusinessObjects analytics, Rapid Deployment solutions, and most of Oracle’s business applications already run on Amazon. The write up notes:
“The conventional wisdom is that big companies are wary of running ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) and other enterprise applications in a public cloud — because they tend to be quite customized and tied into other applications, which makes them difficult to forklift into the cloud. But Amazon is working to change that perception.”
I imagine so. Amazon Web Services director Terry Wise promised the next mission will launch SAP’s Business Suite ERP for larger customers into Amazon’s cloud, followed closely by SAP’s BusinessOne, the ERP for smaller companies.
Founded back in 1972 by five former IBM workers, SAP is headquartered in Walldorf Germany but has operations in over 50 countries. A longstanding leader in enterprise software, the company serves over 183,000 customers. It markets its solutions primarily through licensed local subsidiaries.
So, Amazon is edging into the enterprise. Google, are you watching?
Cynthia Murrell, May 19, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
Onix Inks Deal With Federal Government
May 11, 2012
A $34.9 million contract with the federal government has recently been inked and means big business for a Detroit Avenue tech company.
Onix Networking will provide cloud-computing services to the Department of the Interior, according to the Lakewood Patch article, “Lakewood Company Lands $35 Million Contract with Federal Government.” The company, founded in 1992, provides services like cloud computing, storage solutions, and Enterprise search. It is also a Google-centric vendor. The article asserts:
“The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday that the Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said shifting to a cloud-based email system will modernize the ways the agency does business and cut costs, amounting to ‘good government, plain and simple.’
He added that the contract is part of an initiative to ‘leverage modern technology to save up to $500 million in taxpayer dollars by 2020.’
The news may mean more growth for the Detroit Avenue company as it looks to expand into its nearly 40,000-square-foot location in the Georgetown Row half of the former Bonne Bell headquarters at the corner Detroit and Graber avenues.”
What else does this news release mean? Since Onix is a long-standing partner with Google (the first Google Premier Enterprise company to be precise,) it means the Google Search Appliance, at least in the US government market, is still alive and kicking.
Andrea Hayden, May 11, 2012
Sponsored by Ikanow
Stunning Statistics about Amazon Cloud Reach
May 9, 2012
Wired’s Robert McMillan recently reported on an oddly scary statistic in the article “Amazon’s Secretive Cloud Carries 1 Percent of the Internet.”
According to the start-up DeepField Networks, Amazon has one of the fastest growing cloud infrastructures. Apparently, one-third of the several million users in the study visited a website that uses Amazon’s infrastructure each day. It is also very popular with many big name companies like Netflix. However, no one really knows exactly how big Amazon’s cloud is.
McMillan states:
“Gartner researcher Lydia Leong estimates that Amazon’s cloud business was $1 billion in 2011, more than five times the size of its closest competitor, Rackspace. Last week Rackspace Chief Technology Officer John Engates was happy to tell us how many servers he has in his data centers: 80,000. But only 23 percent ($189 million) of Rackspace’s 2011 business was in the cloud. That implies that Rackspace could do the same amount of cloud business as Amazon with maybe 100,000 servers.”
It appears that Amazon’s business as slowly been growing faster than we ever realized. Maybe Google and Facebook should stop fighting each other and start paying attention to other threats.
Jasmine Ashton, May 9, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
Half of Amazon Cloud Users Overpay
May 7, 2012
Are you an Amazon Web Services [AWS] user? Business Insider reports, “Amazon’s Cloud Is Cheap, but You’re STILL Probably Paying Too Much.” Data from NewVem indicates that about half of Amazon Cloud’s users subscribe to more computing power than they actually use, wasting money. Writer Julie Bort reports:
“[NewVem] found that 53% of light AWS users leave more than half their instances idle. That means they are spending for twice as much as much cloud capacity than they really need. Heavy users do a better job. They are wasting less than 10% of their instances.
“It only costs between 8 cents (Linux) and 11.5 cents (Windows) per hour for an instance for small users, so the wasted ones don’t really add up to a lot of money. About $138 a month apiece. But if you are a budget-conscious startup, there are better ways to spend that cash.”
Indeed. Every little bit counts for small businesses.
NewVem, the company that supplied this data, is founded on an interesting concept. This startup provides a service, now in free beta version, that analyzes cloud operational data and makes recommendations so companies can get the most from their cloudy investments.
Cynthia Murrell, May 7, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
Our Cloudy Future
April 27, 2012
CNet News looks down the road in “Where IT is Going: Cloud, Mobile, and Data.” Of course, cloud computing, mobile devices, and big data are related. All are part of the move away from powerful, independent PCs to remotely accessed, communal data repositories.
Writer Gordon Haff rightly notes that “cloud” is a beleaguered term, suffering from “definitional overload,” but he manages to define it, rather broadly, for the purposes of his article:
“Think of cloud computing as being about trends in computer architectures, how applications are loaded onto those systems and made to do useful work, how servers communicate with each other and with the outside world, and how administrators manage and provide access. This trend also encompasses all the infrastructure and ‘plumbing’ that makes it possible to effectively coordinate data centers full of systems increasingly working as a unified compute resource as opposed to islands of specialized capacity.”
Mobile devices are the way we access this “unified compute resource,” but for Haff the term extends beyond smartphones and tablets. He cites sensors on large systems like power grids, and the ability for that system to use sensor information to make changes, as another example.
Big data is the well of information manipulated through the cloud, and Huff notes that our huge data collections are forcing a change in how that information is stored. We are moving away from disk arrays toward software-based storage spread across servers.
The article contains a good deal of information, and is a valuable read for anyone interested in the direction in which we are moving.
Cynthia Murrell, April 27, 2012
Sponsored by Ikanow
Is Amazon Building the Next Big Thing?
April 25, 2012
The Network Thinkers (TNT) blog believes it has discovered “The Next Big Thing:” social via Amazon. The write up posits that the information Amazon gathers from Kindle readers, which goes beyond “customers who bought this item also bought. . .” to include highlights and notes folks have made in their e-copies. The article asserts:
“It is what we specifically find interesting and useful in those books that reveals deep similarities between people – the hi-lites, bookmarks and the notes will be the connectors. Our choices reveal who we are, and who we are like! Today, Amazon introduces you to similar books. Tomorrow, they will introduce you to similar readers.”
Intriguing. What makes this post more interesting, though, are the comments; ideas presented as new strike some as covering old ground. “Anonymous” notes:
“Eh, not really that under the radar? Kindle.amazon has been recommending readers with similar profiles for quite some time. But more people take photos or have jobs than read books, so the scale will be less?”
Though his or her voice is tenuous, Anonymous makes a good point: book readers seem to be a dwindling breed (sigh), so the Kindleverse is unlikely to rival Facebook or LinkedIn anytime soon. Myspace, maybe.
Cynthia Murrell, April 25, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
Autonomy Private Cloud, Big and Growing
April 19, 2012
Now that’s big data: “Autonomy Puts 50 Petabytes in Cloud,” announces Gadget. Autonomy already held the record for the world’s largest private cloud, and this milestone stretches their lead. The write up reports:
“The Autonomy private cloud now manages more than 50 petabytes of web content, video, email and multimedia data on 6,500 servers in 14 data centers around the world. Fifty petabytes is equal to 665 years of HD-TV video, or 1 billion four-drawer file cabinets filled with text.”
Pausing to consider the amount. . . . Yep, that’s a lot. The article asserts:
“The continued dramatic growth of Autonomy’s private cloud is the result of a unique approach to cloud computing. Powered by Autonomy’s Intelligent Data Operating Layer (IDOL), the private cloud automatically recognises concepts and patterns in the billions of structured and unstructured data files it ingests and indexes every day.”
Most vendors talk about big data. Autonomy, it seems to us, does it. The company offers a full range of cloud-based solutions that use Autonomy’s IDOL to tame mind boggling amounts of unstructured data. Now owned by HP, the company was founded in 1996. It has offices around the world and helps over 65,000 customers derive meaning from their overwhelming collections of information.
Cynthia Murrell, April 19, 2012
Sponsored by TheTrendPoint
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Want to Slip Around the Systems Department? Go Cloudy
April 18, 2012
Silicon.com presents an interesting view of why cloud computing is of interest to executives in “Business Execs ‘Use Cloud Computing to Dodge the CIO’.” Um, shouldn’t different departments be trying to work together instead of flouting one another? Perhaps that’s too naïve. Or too logical.
Writer Steve Ranger points to research from Forrester which found that two thirds of CIOs now believe their business sees cloud computing as a way to circumvent IT. Two Thirds! The article tells us:
“Cloud computing is being used as a way for businesses to dodge the IT department and get services delivered more quickly. But as well as giving the CIO sleepless nights, this attempt to side-step the IT department is causing additional cost and complexity along the way.”
That’s one way to manage: go around the “problem”. Another silver bullet play by the uninformed. These executives may, however, find that they are shooting themselves in the feet. Datamation finds “Cloud Computing: Bigger and Better—But Still Flawed.” In that piece, Robert McGarvey explores the way cloud computing has failed to deliver, and the way it is playing out differently than previously conceived. He writes:
“Cloud computing, so far, has not lived up to expectations — it’s slow, it has troubles housing huge enterprise critical data, and it is perceived as insecure.”
We recall that Google at one time was working to find end user and information technology conduits into the enterprise. We are not sure how well this works. Google, after 13 years in business, generates only about five percent of its revenue from sources unrelated to online advertising. If Amazon jumps into the enterprise sector with more than cloud search, we think the developer angle Amazon takes may be more welcome than the “go around” approach.
Cynthia Murrell, April 18, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
CloudStack and OpenStack Compete for the Cloud
April 15, 2012
We need an “open” scorecard that goes beyond this blog and OpenSearchNews, our coverage of open source search systems, and TheTrendPoint, our information service about open source analytics.
ComputerWorld recently reported on an innovative new open source cloud project that IBM and Red Hat have recently joined, in the article, “Report: IMB, Red Hat to Join OpenStack.”
According to the article, the project known as OpenStack was started two years ago by Rackspace and NASA and has since grown to include more than 150 companies and almost two thousands developers. Other backers include: HP, Dell and Internap.
OpenStack is a global collaboration of developers and cloud computing technologists producing an open source cloud computing platform for public and private clouds.The project aims to deliver solutions for all types of clouds by being simple to implement, massively scalable, and feature rich. The technology consists of a series of interrelated projects delivering various components for a cloud infrastructure solution.
As with most projects of this sort, OpenStack already has some well backed competition. The article states:
“Citrix this week announced it would create a competitor to OpenStack by giving its CloudStack platform a license from the Apache Software Foundation. Meanwhile, OpenStack celebrated a milestone on Thursday related to the fifth release of its software, code named Essex.”
This is definitely some interesting open source maneuvering. We’re interested to see the solutions that CloudStack and OpenStack come out with. As important, what does open mean?
Jasmine Ashton, April 15, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
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