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Cloud Computing
is here - big time!
Let's explore:
Definitely, it’s just the beginning of this emerging trend
as every xyz company, big or small, is ramping-up to somehow attach this coveted cloud tag to its profile, either
as a provider or as a consumer.
It seems the demand of Cloud images are rising exponentially in the market as
every other company is putting up a cloud image on it’s website! Just kidding. But it’s almost true that today
it has become a fashion, sort of, to put up a cloud image on the company website!
You can read the basic of Cloud Computing on Clear Cloud's
Network - use the search box at top to locate....:
Cloud Computing Service: A Basic Introduction - 1
Cloud Computing:
A Basic Introduction – 2
India Based Cloud Computing Service Providers
Best &
Free Cloud Computing Applications
(above limited to Clear Cloud Clients)
Forget the companies, even the slow
& steady tortoise Governments around the world are taking a note. As usual the lead is from the White House, and
it aims to save billions with its cloud initiative with the help from NASA Ames. Vietnam & South Korea are following closely.
Indian government is yet to take any significant initiative
but it seems the mother of all project i.e. Unique Identity Project (mapping of 1 billion+ people) will definitely
need a private cloud service to succeed!
Optional Info: The R&D for the
cloud computing actively started in the beginning of this decade. Interestingly the recession hit consumers are pushing in
favor of the Cloud Computing In contrast the service providers companies are also pushing their company in favor of
the cloud albeit with a little twist, earn.
Rough estimate: 180+ companies providing cloud based
services exist and many more are ramping up for the billion $$$ chase. Cloud based services can be broadly divided into following
3 *aaS or 3 layers of Cloud Stack:
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
Data-as-a-Service(DaaS)
is a subset of IaaS.
Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS)
Software-as-a-Service
(SaaS)
Optional Info:IaaS
is all about hardware, data storage, networking and bandwidth i.e. Server, Routers, Switches etc. Amazon & Rackspace
are good examples.
PaaS is OS + Application Server Stack like .Net framework,
VS.Net, SQL Server etc. Best example of PaaS, Microsoft’s Azure & Google’s AppEngine.
SaaS is simply order an application & start consuming in minutes. Saleforce.com
is the pioneer in this category.
Now let’s check which are the best companies in the ongoing
Battle Royale of Cloud Providersin the year 2009. Following is my list of top Cloud Service
Providers of 2009 in reverse order.
Note: It’s a logical deduction from my
understanding of the cloud trend in particular & my following of the IT industry in general!
Offers CloudWare: An
architecture to provide an open framework to allow the development of a cloud computing environment that’s open enogh
to work on any web/enterprise application. Lack of cloud computing standards have lead to a vendor-lock, where every
cloud vendor has proprietary cloud.
What if I want to share my application among different vendors/clouds?
Currently I can’t. CloudWare is a big step towards bridging the clouds, and
creating standards which will lead to open environment for clouds. Hope, soon consumers will be able to move around with their
application and data, that will span multiple clouds.
#9. NetSuite
Specializes in SaaS. It offers SuitCloud Platform: a comprehensive offering of on-demand products,
development tools and services designed to help customers and software developers take advantage of the significant benefits
of cloud computing. Also a leading provider of web-based Business Software Suite for CRM, ERP tools and Accounting.
#8. IBM
The Big Blue has announced Blue Cloud
computing platform way back in the year 2007. IBM Smart Business Development and Test on the IBM Cloud is
designed to augment and enhance software development and delivery capabilities, particularly in large enterprises. On
16 Nov 2009, IBM announced the world’s largest
private cloud computing environment.
The cloud will launch initially with more than a petabyte of data, the equivalent
of more than 300 billion ATM transactions.
#7. Joyent
It’s the
only Cloud provider company to deliver all the three layers of the Cloud Stack i.e. Cloud service for all 3 *aaS. It was in
the news for partnering with Dell to provide over $3 million worth of hosting services for free to Facebook
developers.
#6. Microsoft
Specializes
in PaaS. It offers Azure, a Windows-as-a-service platform consisting of the operating system and developer
services that can be used to build and enhance Web-hosted applications. Azure is available for VS 2008 via Web Platform Installer.
Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 has all the features you need to code, debug, and
deploy your cloud service.
Optional Info: I may sound more confident than Steve
Ballmer, but today I can safely predict that Microsoft has the potential & is going to derail almost all the top 5 contenders
of the list to be right at the top! So, don’t be shocked if my next year’s list of Top Cloud Service Providers
of 2010, ranks Microsoft at #1 or #2. Given the history of Microsoft, coming from behind, and storming the scene
with its financial might, it’s possible.
Moreover, Azure is going to get .Net advantage,
a well established enterprise application development platform.
#5. Salesforce.com
Leader in SaaS. Offers Salesforce CRM
(Sales Cloud 2, Service Cloud 2) & Force.com Platform (Custom Cloud 2, Development Platform).
#4. Rackspace
The company specializes in IaaS. It
offers Rackspace Cloud, cloud services are: Cloud Sites, Cloud Servers, Cloud Files.
It offers vCloud:
Run, secure and manage applications in the private cloud or have them federated on-demand to partner-hosted public clouds.
vCloud is giving a tough competition to more established Amazon’s AWS.
It was recently in the news for partnership with Cisco & EMC, to offer equipment called Vblocks
and support a new joint venture called Acadia that will help business customers and service providers build out clouds based
on the Vblock gear packages.
#2. Google
Specializes in PaaS & SaaS. As SaaS it offers Google
Apps: a web-based communication, collaboration & security apps which includes, Gmail, Google Calendar, Google
Talk, Google Docs & Google Sites. 15 Sep 2009, Google announced that it will provide GovCloud,
which will host Google Apps in a separate data environment with enhanced encryption for meeting state and government security
standards.
As PaaS it offers Google App Engine:
a platform for developing and hosting web applications in Google-managed data centers. Currently, the supported programming
languages are Python and Java (by extension other JVM languages are also supported).
You build your application using Google’s
PaaS and Google handles deploying code to a cluster, monitoring, failover, and launching application instances as necessary.
Good news, Google App Engine is free, but only up to a certain level of used resources.
And the Winner is…
#1.Amazon
Specializes in
IaaS. It offers through Amazon Web Services (AWS): Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Amazon
SimpleDB, Amazon CloudFront, Amazon SQS. It claims to have 82 billion objects
stored in Amzon S3 (Simple Storage Service)!
You can debate about the ranking from #10 to #2. But when it comes
to the number 1 company for Cloud based Service provider, Amzaon is the undisputed winner, without any much competition till
now. You may call it an early-bird advantage! Is it?
also watch out for the following companies:
Enomaly: Founded in 2004, The kid among
the veterans, is in the news cause it provides services to the Cloud Providers.
GoGrid Specializes in IaaS.
It offers wide Variety of Ready-to-go Windows and Linux Cloud Servers. It has the most generous SLA in industry which says:
24/7 Support and 100% Uptime.
AT&T: Needs no introduction. The iconic AT&T Inc. (The
largest provider of local, long distance telephone services in the United States) has already started offering its cloud services.......
AND WHAT OF CLOUD BASED TABLET SERVICES?
Amazon’s Android tablet device hasn’t even been announced yet and research firm Forrester
is already betting on its success.
“If it’s launched at the right price with enough supply, we see Amazon’s tablet easily selling
3 million to 5 million units in Q4 alone, disrupting not only Apple’s product strategy but other tablet manufacturers’
as well,” says Sarah Rotman Epps, the report’s
author.
The
device, rumored to launch
this October, could even
kick app development for Android tablets into high gear, Epps says. Currently, estimates suggest that less than 500 apps optimized for Android tablets are available in the Android Market.
By contrast, more than
100,000 apps have been
built specifically for the iPad.
What is that magic price of Amazon’s tablet? Forrester says that if Amazon releases a 9-inch LCD touchscreen
tablet for $299 and has enough supply to meet demand, it could outperform Apple’s first quarter with the iPad, which
moved 3.27 million units.
Amazon should be able to price it that
low because, like with the Kindle ereader, the company stands to profit from selling services and goods on the device, so
it can afford to sell hardware at a loss, Forrester says.
The lion’s share of Apple’s revenue, on
the other hand, comes from sales of the iPad itself.....
