raghucs 's List: Cloud Computing

This doesn’t mean the little guys will run the cloud show. Not even kind of. Cloud Computing’s Big Five – IBM, Microsoft, Amazon, Salesforce and Google – each has an hyper-aggressive eye on the prize.  

 Microsoft, with its Azure cloud initiative, is quietly investing massively in leviathan datacenters across the country to host its cloud offering (imagine, a software firm pouring big bucks into physical machinery). IBM’s cloud push benefits greatly from the company’s global stance and deep focus on services. Google’s cloud strategy is supremely well positioned, with a well-tuned international server network and its Web-based Chrome OS. Some industry wags deride Amazon as the utility cloud provider whose offering isn’t differentiated enough, yet it keeps growing. Plucky, self-promoting Salesforce – with its Force.com cloud platform – is perennial acquisition bait, with the leading rumored suitors Google and Oracle (why not EMC – they snapped up VMware?)

"Cloud of Clouds" - the first in a series on our 2009 predictions. 

 
 
 2008 Recap

In 2008, we saw the early seeds of a "cloud of clouds" emerging. It started in April with Salesforce and Google announcing integration between Google Apps and Salesforce to bridge the gap between Google's productivity applications and Salesforce. Later in the year, at Dreamforce, Salesforce expanded the idea of a "cloud of clouds" by announcing integrations with Facebook (for social graph information) and with Amazon (for raw computing infrastructure). Salesforce ended the year with a bang, by announcing Force.com for Google App Engine. In a period of 12 months, Salesforce laid the seeds of a "cloud of clouds" bringing together the strengths of multiple, complementary, on-demand platforms to create a "virtual platform" for the industry.

2009 prediction

The "cloud of clouds" expands around connected platforms. We'll see increasing investment from Microsoft, IBM, and other traditional software players in new but siloed cloud platforms. At the same time, proponents of a more open approach like Amazon, Facebook, Google, Salesforce will push more and deeper “cloud connections” like they did this year - creating a more heated debate between the value of siloed versus federated platforms.

What this means for customers

Customers will face a choice in 2009 about where to focus their investment in cloud computing. Companies like Microsoft and IBM are building cloud offerings that recreate the old software paradigm using new infrastructure (both offerings warrant a prediction of their own, coming soon). This will offer customers some incremental cost-savings and slightly more flexibility, but does not enable anything fundamentally new.

What is unique about the "cloud of clouds" is the ability to connect realms of software that have never been connected in the past, e.g., business applications, collaboration applications and social applications. This enables increases in both efficiency (through improved productivity) and effectiveness (through insight and new connections between information). A few examples:

• Allow communication and collaboration in the context of business information: On-demand solutions offer the potential to finally bridge the gap between the tools that businesses need to run and the tools that people use to get things done. Imagine an account team communicating and collaborating in the context of their live customer data. That's the power of bringing together Salesforce and Google.
• Bring social graph information into sales and recruiting: Imagine a sales person seeing how they are connected to a prospect before they send out a critical email. This would result in a far superior interaction and most likely a higher close rate. Imagine an employee using Facebook to identify the best candidates for their company's open job positions. These employee referrals are likely to be of a significantly higher quality than typical applicants. That's the power of bringing together Salesforce and Facebook.
  
So, the choice for companies is clear. Closed clouds offer the opportunity for more of the same done slightly better, while the Salesforce/Google/Facebook/Amazon "cloud of clouds" offers the opportunity for order of magnitude improvements in core business processes!

What do you think?

Today’s Situation

 

No single cloud platform can meet every enterprise challenge. But imagine if you could bring the best of each leading cloud platform together to meet your business needs? That's what we call the "cloud of clouds"—combining the powerful application platform of force.com with the communication and collaboration capabilities of Google, the compute and storage capabilities of Amazon and even the social graph of Facebook.

 

Appirio Solution

 

Appirio has taken a leadership role in connecting the cloud, ever since we wrote our first Google gadget to display Salesforce data in 2007. Today, we offer a portfolio of widely adopted packaged and custom-built solutions that bring together the best of the cloud—including 3 top 10 AppExchange apps used by 2,500 organizations.

 
 
• Salesforce / Google: Bridge the gap between the tools that businesses need to run and the tools that people use to get things done. Imagine an account team communicating and collaborating in the context of their live customer data. That's the power of bringing together Salesforce and Google.
 
• Salesforce / Amazon: Use the limitless storage and compute capabilities of Amazon web services to extend the capabilities of Salesforce.com
 
• Salesforce / Facebook: Connect today’s leading social network with your core business applications to engage a community and encourage word of mouth referrals.