The Week in Cloud Storage and and Cloud Computing - Industry News October 22nd

It has been an interesting week for cloud storage and cloud computing. Interop discussed the cloud and came to the conclusion that "Hybrid Clouds Will Rule", which is a pragmatic approach that most people agree with that dramatically accelerates the time to cloud deployment. Licensing and pricing is one of the most discussed subjects on the cloud. Traditional vendors are fed on upfront license fees of software that often sits on a shelf. IDC discuss this subject and the changes in licensing. When I did my research on this subject it is interesting that software is often licensed to a company to run on premise, as in the old days this protected a company from its software be used at a another unlicensed company. This does not work today. The other premise may be a cloud. Why should you have to buy software a second time just to run it on the cloud? This is part of the reason a hybrid cloud is so attractive - Keep the same software, IT processes and procedures on premise and bring the cloud into your enterprise applications without being forced to move your applications to the cloud (and potentially buy the licenses again).

The Wall Street Journal discussed the Dow Jones VentureWire Top 50 where the leading cloud companies  were heavily featured - Cloudera, Eucalyptus, Nimbula and StorSimple. These companies are becoming a common theme in cloud leader polls.

When you talk about the cloud security is always on peoples lips. Forrester discuss the rapid growth of a new category - the cloud security market.

Government continues to be early adopters of the cloud with New York city choosing Microsoft.

Talking of Microsoft, this week they announced Office 365. It is interesting to see the adoption of Outlook/Exchange moving to SaaS more rapidly than other applications such as SharePoint which are often integrated into other enterprise application and processes where the hybrid cloud is more appropriate. Also, as Microsoft say "The Cloud is Invetable" and along those lines  Zane Adams talks about a year of Windows Azure.

Have fun reading about this week in cloud storage and cloud computing in more detail...

What's Hot in the Cloud - Cloud Innovations

VentureWire’s FASTech Conference Spotlights Most Promising Start-Ups

According to a Wall Street Journal article, Dow Jones VentureWire examined hundreds of technology startups that have raised venture capital during this challenging economy and chose 50 of the most promising ones to watch. Top venture capitalists, technology experts and Dow Jones editors hand-picked these 50 startups to be featured at Dow Jones VentureWire FASTech, Nov. 3-4 in Redwood City, Calif.

Interop: Hybrid Clouds Will Rule 

One of the hottest debates around cloud computing is whether a public cloud or private cloud is the best solution for most organizations. But, according to a panel of experts who spoke Thursday at the Interop IT Conference and Expo in New York City, the majority of businesses will adopt a hybrid approach to the cloud to get the best of both worlds.

The CIO View and Cloud Economics

Forrester: Cloud Computing to Fuel Security Market

A new report from Forrester Research projects the cloud security market will grow to $1.5 billion by 2015 - a shift that will disrupt the "security solution ecosystem."

In a report entitled ‘Security and the Cloud’, Forrester analyst Jonathan Penn predicts that rather than reallocating portions of existing security budgets to the cloud, organizations will allocate money to security within cloud projects – creating “a whole new category of revenue for the security market.” 

Cloud Computing Disrupting Software Licensing, Pricing

The move to cloud computing will change the game when it comes to software pricing and licensing models according to a new reportfrom market research firm IDC together with application usage management software provider Flexera Software.

Buzz around the cloud is being replaced quickly with real deployments. And, in response, most software vendors are not taking any chances of losing business in the transition process. Sixty percent believe they’ll need to change and evolve their current licensing models in the next 24 months in order to adapt to cloud computing popularity. Thirty percent think that change will lead to a significant shift in pricing models and strategy, and that includes back-end licensing and entitlement management as well.

• Today, 65 percent of software vendors offer seat and 62 percent offer concurrent user pricing models.
• Enterprises prefer concurrent user models (59 percent) and usage-based models (16 percent).
• Vendors hear the cry for usage-based models, and are responding. Forty-one percent plan to offer usage-based models, while, today, only 22 percent offer it as an option.
• One-third of companies that have or plan on implementing usage-based pricing do not track usage at all.
• Many deployed applications are out of compliance with licensing requirements -- 53 percent of enterprises also responded that at least some of their software license spend is associated with applications that are overused and therefore, out of compliance.
• Another big loss of potential cash is in under-used but overpaid license fees. Eighty-five percent responded that at least some of their software license spend is associated with under-used software, or “shelfware.”

Cloud Computing: Demystifying IaaS, PaaS and SaaS

Cloud Computing has the entire IT industry buzzing, with companies such as Microsoft, IBM, Amazon, Google, and others investing billions of dollars in this new form of computing in recognition of its potential to usher in a new era of responsiveness, effectiveness, and efficiency in IT service delivery. In fact, Gartner recently named Cloud Computing as the second most important technology focus area for IT users in 2010. But what is Cloud Computing exactly? 

The Cloud in Government

Microsoft, New York City Ink Licensing, Cloud Computing Deal

New York previously had 40 different licenses for Microsoft products across several different agencies. The Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DoITT) will consolidate that into a single license that will reach about 100,000 city workers and is expected to save approximately $50 million over five years.

About 30,000 of those employees, meanwhile, will have access to Microsoft cloud services. That will allow developers to create city-specific applications that can be used across the board, as well as provide employees with access to Internet-based Office products that will facilitate real-time editing and syncing.

Apps.gov to Begin Offering IaaS Cloud Services

Federal, state, local, and tribal governments will soon have access to cloud-based Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) offerings through the government’s Apps.gov cloud-based services storefront, the General Services Administration said Thursday. The GSA has awarded contracts to 11 applicants, including many of the major players in the cloud computing industry. The companies will need to pass security requirements of the Federal Information Security Management Act, which governs federal cybersecurity requirements.

Microsoft

Zane Adam talks about the first year experience of Microsoft’s PaaS offering

Microsoft launched its Azure platform as a service (PaaS) offering at the beginning of this year.

“All the way from Windows Azure to SQL Azure to AppFabric – the portfolio’s growing. We have over 11,000 customers on the platform already and that’s getting rapid adoption.”

Windows Azure: The Cloud Is Inevitable

Recently I had the pleasure of talking a bit with Sébastien Noël, Sr. Director DPE, Microsoft Central & Eastern Europe about Windows Azure, and Microsoft’s foray into the Cloud.

“At a high level you have three components of Azure. One is Azure itself which is about providing the computing power, storage and management tools.

Then you have SQL Azure, which is the second building block, a relational database, and then you have AppFabric which is an area where you manage the connectivity of your app with other services and access control,” he explained.

Microsoft Goes Deeper into the Cloud with Office 365

In a move meant to keep its Office cash cow earning ever more income, even as the IT world moves towards computing in the cloud, Microsoft introduced a set of cloud-based computing offerings Tuesday that it says are scalable from the smallest to the largest organizations.

Dubbed Microsoft Office 365, the core offering combines Office Web Apps on the client side with Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, and the newly rebranded Lync Online on the back-end -- all on a subscription basis. 

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Read about how StorSimple supports a SharePoint hybrid cloud strategy on our new website

 

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