3个版本的云计算十大预言

 

 

Top 10 Cloud Computing Predictions for 2009

Appirio Predicts Strong Growth for Cloud Computing, Along with Azure Disappointment, a SaaS 1.0 Failure and the Rise of More Cloud Connections

SAN MATEO, CA. – December 18, 2008 – As the year draws to a close, many companies are left wondering what next year will bring for this year’s hottest technology trend – cloud computing. To answer these questions, Appirio (www.appirio.com) today released its top 10 predictions for how cloud computing will evolve in 2009 and the impact those trends will have on IT and business. Appirio is a leading on-demand product and professional services company, and one of the fastest growing companies in the cloud computing space.

Appirio’s predictions reveal that in spite of our current economy, cloud computing will continue to see strong growth and investment over the next year - a prediction that industry analysts agree with as well. As more and more companies like Flextronics, Genentech and Harrah’s publicly discuss their experience with cloud computing, it will pave the way for even more adoption over the coming year.

"This year cloud computing made the leap from an interesting proposition to a viable option for even the largest of enterprises. In 2009 it becomes mandatory," said Appirio co-founder, Narinder Singh. "Today’s economic climate will force enterprises to pick technology winners and losers for their environment in order to cut costs, be more efficient and deliver business-relevant innovation. Cloud computing makes this seemingly impossible task a possibility – much more so than with traditional software. This is why we believe cloud computing will be counter cyclical, with SaaS and Platform as a Service (PaaS) investment accelerating, and traditional software spending declining."

Here's a summery of Appirio’s 2009 predictions-- we'll blog here on each prediciton over the coming weeks:

1. The "cloud of clouds" expands but sees traction revolve around open platforms. We'll see Microsoft and other traditional software players invest even more in new but closed cloud platforms. At the same time, proponents of a more open approach, like Amazon, Facebook, Google and Salesforce, will push more and deeper "cloud connections" like they did this year. This will create a more heated debate between the value of closed versus federated platforms.
2. At best, Microsoft Azure will be a better platform for Exchange. Microsoft will continue to shower attention on Azure but will see relatively limited adoption from ISVs and customers. While it will likely disappoint users and remain well behind established cloud players for the first few years, it will become a viable platform by 2010 – primarily as a better foundation for Microsoft Exchange and existing on-premise .NET applications.
3. Google doubles down on the enterprise, enterprises return the favor by racing to Google Apps. Google has already shown they’re serious about winning over enterprises with acquisitions like Postini and investments in Google Apps. They’ll continue to expand their support for enterprise-class security, transparency, and development languages. In return enterprise customers, faced with economics that overcome preconceptions, will substantially increase their pace of adoption. We expect to see at least 3X the number of enterprises evaluating and moving to Google Apps, at the direct expense of Microsoft Exchange, Office and Lotus Notes (the Asbestos of Software).
4. A major SaaS 1.0 company will fail. Although SaaS and cloud investments will increase next year, a number of SaaS 1.0 companies – stand-alone companies who built their SaaS products from scratch on their own - will either falter due to the demands of creating infrastructure, or chose to re-platform. The progress of enterprise-ready platforms like Force.com makes it much easier for SaaS 2.0 companies to build advanced products that can leap ahead of the competition at a much lower cost.
5. A rise in serverless companies with 1000+ employees. In 2009, the market will start to hear about more and more companies going completely server-less. While this is already happening at smaller companies, larger and larger companies will optimize their business processes and cut IT expenses by outsourcing to cloud providers.
6. The rise and fall of the private cloud - While private clouds will continue to generate a significant amount of hype, customers in most cases will realize they are little more than a better data center implementation. They will be valuable for customers who have significant transaction volumes and stringent regulatory or security requirements, but will have little ROI for the average IT organization. In the end, private clouds will create more value for service providers than for customers.
7. Business Intelligence (BI) becomes the next functional area to SaaSify. Just as CRM and HRM applications became poster children for the shift to SaaS these last few years, we’ll see the same thing happening with on-demand BI. We’ll also see a bifurcation in this space, with one set of applications built from the ground up to leverage the inherent benefits of cloud computing and one set a repackaging of traditional BI features just delivered over the Internet.
8. SAP or Oracle gets into the PaaS game. While these companies may have hedged their bets in 2008 (or even berated the SaaS model), we believe one of these companies will see the writing on the wall and start at least talking about a new cloud platform they’re building over the next few years. In fact, they will attempt to switch the conversation and convince the market they have been working on this for years but called it something different.
9. Enterprises will figure out how to use social networks in the right way. Companies – especially their HR and marketing organizations - will finally figure out how to utilize social networks in day-to-day operations. More and more business (employees, leads, market intelligence) will come directly through business applications that tap into Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social networks that are already being used by employees and customers outside the workplace.
10. There will be at least one $100M software product built on Force.com. The myth that it is impossible to build a big business on an on-demand platform will finally be debunked by the emergence of a PaaS-enabled application in 2009 that has the potential for a $100M run rate.

These predictions are loosely based on what Appirio is hearing and seeing first hand from industry insiders around the globe – from a base of over 2,000 customers, partnerships with leaders in this space, and conversations with industry influencers.

For more details on these predictions and how they can impact IT and business, please check out Appirio’s CIO blog at www.appirio.com/blog. To rank these predictions, provide comments or add your own, please visit www.appirio.com/predict09.

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About Appirio

Appirio (www.appirio.com) provides products and services that help enterprises accelerate their adoption of on-demand. Appirio has a proven track record of delivering business value to customers by implementing mission-critical Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions based on platforms such as Salesforce and Google Apps, and developing innovative applications that connect and extend today's leading on-demand platforms. Appirio was founded in 2006, is the fastest growing partner of salesforce.com and Google, and is backed by Sequoia Capital.

 

 

The Cloud Market Grows
Cloud computing growth will exceed 20%. It's an educated guess, not the result of market research, but the main point is the cloud will grow at a healthy clip while enterprise software, hardware, and other IT segments struggle to grow at all. Amazon's nonretail business, which includes Amazon Web Services, grew 45% in the third quarter of 2008, and Salesforce's fiscal third-quarter revenue climbed 43%. Cloud services will appeal to budget-restrained IT departments.

2

Google Remains In A Niche
Google App Engine is an interesting alternative for developers building and deploying Web applications, but it will appeal mainly to startups, Web 2.0 companies, and small businesses. Google Docs (software as a service) and Google App Engine (platform as a service) will win over big companies, but not for the foreseeable future.

 

 

3

More Outages, Less Disruption
When Amazon's Simple Storage Service crashed for two hours in February, then for eight hours in July, S3-based Web applications also went down. As more companies sign up for cloud services this year, two things will happen. First, the added workload will cause more cloud failures. And second, cloud users will be better prepared with backup and recovery plans.

 

 

4

Big Companies Embrace It
Cloud computing has been popular mostly among smaller companies, but large user organizations will shed their inhibitions and adopt cloud services more aggressively this year. Why? Because they can. Enterprise-class management tools, data-integration technologies, and other prerequisites are becoming available. The promise of cost savings and the ease of subscription-style pricing also will fuel adoption among larger companies.

 

 

5

Microsoft Keeps 'Em Waiting
If 2008 was the year Microsoft raised the curtain on its cloud computing strategy, 2009 will be the year it begins to deliver. But don't expect too much. Its Windows Azure cloud operating system and related Azure Platform Services are still in development. We may see some Azure services in the second half of 2009, but 2010 is more realistic for general availability.

 

 

6

Cloud Startups Thrive
Cloud management vendor RightScale recently closed a $13 million second round of funding. Venture capital may be drying up around Silicon Valley, but cloud computing startups will be an exception.

 

 

7

Real Management Tools Emerge
It may seem like Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud is the granddaddy of cloud services, but EC2 only became generally available a few months ago, after a long test cycle. Now EC2 management tools are much needed. Amazon has promised EC2 management, monitoring, load-balancing, and auto-scaling tools in early 2009. IBM plans to add cloud management to Tivoli Service Request Manager, Provisioning Manager, and monitoring products. There will be more such examples.

 

 

8

We See Public-Private Clouds
IT departments will create public-private hybrid clouds. They'll use virtualization, APIs, and platforms such as Elastra's Cloud Server to devise cloud-like environments in their own data centers that work seamlessly with public cloud services. Work is under way to create a "wrapper" around Google App Engine that lets users deploy App Engine on their own servers.

 

 

9

Data Security Worries Return
I keep hearing IT pros are growing comfortable with cloud service providers' data security, that it's as good or better than what most IT departments can provide. Maybe, but it will only take one data breach before the flaw in that argument gets exposed--that consumers and regulators have yet to be convinced the cloud is a secure place for personal data.

 

 

10

Oracle (NSDQ: ORCL) Joins The Cloud
Larry Ellison loves to bad-mouth cloud computing, but Oracle's CEO also keeps rolling out cloud-like options . Having watched Salesforce thrive with SaaS, he no doubt sees it and other vendors raise the stakes with platforms as a service that give developers everything to build and run applications in the cloud. And Oracle's database is now available on Amazon's EC2. The obvious next steps: virtual databases and build-it, run-it Web applications, hosted by Oracle.

 

 

 

 

Ten Cloud Computing Predictions for 2009

Written by Michael Sheehan on Dec 2nd, 2008 | Filed under: Cloud Computing, Features, General, GoGrid, Hosting, Industry, Partners, ServePath
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After about a year of Cloud Computing under my belt, analyzing trends in the market, talking with various professionals as well as customers in the space and watching our own Cloud Computing product, GoGrid, take off as a Cloud Computing leader and innovator, I feel that it is time to make some 2009 predictions for Cloud Computing. Who would have guessed that 2008 would have been “The Year of the Cloud“? I think that 2009 will be “The Year of the CLOUDS” (emphasis on multiple).

A Quick Look Back

If you look back to January 2008, the players in Cloud Computing were few are far between. Obviously, Amazon was breaking ground in establishing themselves as the front-runner at that time. But the term was too new and largely undefined. One of my first blog posts discussed some trends of grid computing, virtualization & virtualized hosting, cloud computing and “green hosting.” For the most part, many of those concepts have not changed. Rather, they have evolved, grown and become more established as leading technologies for the future. As of the writing of that article, GoGrid was still in Private Beta, but with well over 2 years of development getting it ready for prime time.

Virtualization was definitely the buzzword of the beginning of 2008, mainly because it was something that people could fairly easily understand. There were several desktop virtualization products available for users to host different OS’s within their own OS. As Jeff Kaplan predicted, On-Demand services started to really take off for several reasons that are applicable even today (if not more so). His number 1 reason: “Services are Recession Proof” (more about that later in my predictions). While Jeff’s ideas were largely focused on SaaS, there is a lot to be said when you apply them to Cloud Computing in general.

 

Close to when GoGrid was launched at the end of March 2008, coincidentally(?) the search term “Cloud Computing” (according to Google Insight) really started a strong upward trend within World Wide Searches:

As the US (and World Wide) Economy fell off the cliff, so it seems, did the interest in the Cloud (but that could be due to other worldly distractions). What is actually a bit interesting is that just after the Economy went south, there was a big spike in interest in the Cloud…were people thinking it was recession-proof? Perhaps. (”Cloud Computing” is the blue line below and “US Economy” is appropriately red).

Analysis of the previous year is probably better handled through a separate post. On to some of my 2009 predictions.

Ten Cloud Computing Predictions for 2009

Below is a list of some trends or ideas that I think will surface or grow in 2009. Note, these are not ranked.

1. Clouds Reduce the Effect of the Recession
   The US Government just announced that the US has been in a recession since December 2007. To most people, this is simply stating the obvious. Many in the Cloud Computing field have been touting how moving to the Cloud can lower high Capital Expenditures (CapEx) and shift this to Operating Expenditures (OpEx). Coupling that with a pay-for-what-you-use, use-only-what-you-need model, and Cloud Computing becomes a panacea for extending the runway of your business. Prudent companies are slashing budgets and looking to weather the turbulent market for as long as possible. Those companies that are heavily dependent on advertising will be seeing the effects of cash hording in Q1 and Q2 of 2009. Utility-based spending is a shift in mind-set that could potentially slow the freefall and domino effect we are currently experiencing.
   Recently, I heard about a similar type of idea that could potentially help the sales of hybrid or electric cars. One of the primary barriers that is preventing users from purchasing “green” cars is the high cost associated with a purchase. If the auto industry were to adopt a cell phone business model where you pre-buy your electrical charges and the cost of the car is “subsidized” through the use of recurring and predicable revenue, users might more readily opt for a purchase (at a discounted price). However, several infrastructure changes would be required in order for such a pricing-shift to take place, meaning that charging stations would have to be abundant (and possibly government subsidized as well). In the long term, building the green infrastructure would reduce the US dependence on foreign oil, establish new businesses and competition for charging station infrastructure and move towards bettering the environment. While not exactly the same, similarities can be drawn between this idea and the shift from self-hosted servers to Cloud Infrastructures. CapEx is reduced (e.g., green cars become less expensive to buy/no need to purchase servers that are under-utilized) and costs are moved to OpEx (e.g., charging your car when you need to/paying for only the infrastructure you use).
2. Broader Depth of Clouds
   Cloud Computing providers are leapfrogging each other with new features and offerings. This will continue in 2009. GoGrid was the first to provide a wide assortment of Windows Server Clouds (Windows Server 2003 at launch and later Windows Server 2008). Towards the end of the year, Amazon’s EC2 announced the availability of Windows Server 2003. Microsoft jumped into the ring as a Cloud Platform with Azure. By far, AWS is leading the field by offering a wide array of Cloud services (EC2 – Cloud Infrastructure/ S3, SimpleDB, CloudFront, & SQS – Cloud Extenders). Their footprint continues to deepen as well. But sometimes it’s not bad being #2. GoGrid is a Cloud Infrastructure provider with Cloud Extenders (with GoGrid Cloud Storage) with an emphasis on mirroring standard IT infrastructure services with a focus on ease-of-use through a GUI and programmatic control through an API. Microsoft will be launching their own Cloud Infrastructure in 2009 as well as a variety of Cloud Applications (e.g., Exchange). Google will extend its Cloud Platform with services for storing and serving large files, larger dataset management, pay-for-use enhanced usage and new runtime languages (beyond Python). RackSpace made its move at the end of 2008 with SliceHost and Jungle Disk acquisitions; look to them putting all of the pieces together in 2009. I am seeing the trend towards a broader range of services by several large players. This may confuse the market in the first half of 2009 as IT organizations struggle to figure out the best Cloud solution and how to put it all together as a financially and technologically viable strategy.
3. VC’s, Money & Long Term Viability
   With the credit market increasingly tight, if not non-existent, VC’s, Angel funders and other investors will be faced with some tough decisions. The Dot-Com era allowed for almost anybody to get money for business plans that were essentially vapor-ware. Web 2.0 was slightly better, you had to have a viable business strategy, an established user base, and well on the path to monetization to receive funding. Even with that, there was no guarantee of survival. Many Web 2.0-ers are now shutting shop, despite the fact that they are loved by many. Web 3.0 will present a much steeper hill to climb from a funding perspective. I have spoken to a few investors and VC’s recently (as the Economy imploded) and they still seemed to be somewhat optimistic, but very cautious. But it is their job to keep a positive outlook as they look for the next best thing. With Cloud Computing services gaining even more momentum, this is a good market for funding. But the VC’s and others are really doing their due diligence this time through (are they finally learning from their mistakes over the past 10 years?). Cloud Infrastructure providers will not be the ones receiving the scarce capital, I don’t think. And SaaS providers are a dime a dozen (not in a derogatory way). The SaaS market will continue to grow (not as quickly as previously, I don’t think), in fact, the first Quarter of 2009, we may see a dip as some SaaS organizations actually go under, unfortunately. I think that Cloud Aggregators (those who work to provide integrated Clouds and management services around them) will be ripe for additional funding. For Cloud Platform providers the outlook is a bit trickier as frequently they are dependent on public run-time languages or maintaining proprietary code to keep momentum. I think the smaller providers may see an influx of capital in order to remain competitive, if not survive.
4. Partnerships Galore & Weeding Out of Providers
   Strategic alliances and partnerships are critical to any business success. Not only do you increase exposure to other audiences but also provide more innovative and robust services in the process. GoGrid recently announced partnerships with RightScale, Appistry and GigaSpaces to name a few, with several others coming in 2009 (GoGrid Partners). We will see several new alliances within the Cloud Computing space but this is where my crystal ball is a bit hazy. Cloud Aggregators will be the big movers here and they really have to be. Aggregators need to ensure their own fiscal viability by broadening and diversifying their offerings. If a provider is too attached to EC2, for example, and if Amazon decides to develop functionality that mirrors that of the Aggregator and offer it for free or at a fraction of the cost, the Aggregator will struggle to remain competitive. Aggregators will be core to driving standards and interoperability (#7 below) as they will have much deeper insight into the workings of each of their partners. If they can’t remain ahead of the curve, a big fail whale is on the horizon. Tied to #3 above ($$$), those providers who can’t remain solvent or make smart decision or even monetize in a clean, clear way will go under. Obviously I don’t wish this on any provider, but it is inevitable. I won’t make any predictions but several Cloud providers are for sale or seeking funding to keep their lifeline healthy.
5. Hybrid Solutions
   Not every corporation or business is looking to the Cloud as the next sliced bread. While the Cloud can be the catalyst for a potentially more sound IT and financial strategy, it will not solve every IT challenge. There are some IT infrastructures that must remain in a private datacenter or running on dedicated, bare-metal servers. Database intensive environments may not be conducive to exclusively residing within the Cloud. This year, GoGrid launched the 1.0 version of  Cloud Connect as a way to allow for these types of hybrid (dedicated servers connected to Cloud servers) solutions. Others are calling Hybrid Infrastructure “Cloudbursting.” I expect that some of the strategic partnerships coming in 2009 will include other hybrid solutions of this nature. In fact, they may give way to full mirrored failover or redundancy solutions where traditional infrastructures are mirrored within the Cloud, sharing common datastreams to ensure near-real-time availability of data and services.
6. Web 3.0
   Web 3.0 is upon us. I have long thought that it will be all about Integration and Standards (#7 below). I have written about “mashups” and integrations as being a large component of Web 2.0. Web 3.0 will make these integrations much more seamless and go well beyond that of simple visible shared data applications. What we saw with mashups was essentially proof-of-viability and with some experimentation thrown in. Like a strategic partnership, successful integrations are critical to the furthering the power of the Cloud. In 2009, we will see integrations taking place at a much lower level of IT. Data integrations will remain as they are fairly established. Infrastructure integration and companies offering this as a solution, either as consultation or aggregation of technologies, will drive the innovation of Web 3.0. These integrations will help create new and unique SaaS and even PaaS offerings to the market. The hurdle here will be in the explanation and usability of said solutions.
7. Standards and Interoperability
   While Cloud Computing seemed like the New World in 2007 and the Wild West in 2008, it has now been colonized and settlements established. 2009 will be that of Civil Engineering. The development of standards and interoperability between the varying levels of Clouds is inevitable. It is also tied directly to the needed adoption by the Enterprise. Without clearly defined standards, best practices and even open interoperability, further adoption of the Cloud will slowed dramatically. Just as Phone Number Portability was an important factor in reforming the telcos during the 1990’s and early 2000’s, I believe that Cloud portability (enabled only through guaranteed standards and interoperability) will be a movement in mid to late 2009. Everyone has “agreed to agree,” and now are making inroads towards standards, a reality. It will be important that the big players in the space (e.g., Amazon, Microsoft, Google) become involved. IBM has tossed their hat into the Cloud ring by announcing a Cloud Computing Certification called “Resilient Cloud Validation” (but only if they collaborate with IBM). Without these big players’ participation, there will be 2 types of clouds (standard and non-standard) and/or companies that provide filters or converters to allow for Cloud Portability.
8. Staggered Growth within the Cloud
   I will go out on a limb here as say that there will be tremendous growth within the Cloud. But that is an easy prediction to make. The Cloud encompasses so much that it would be difficult to really see a stagnation or shrinkage. SaaS will expand (perhaps not as rapidly as previously) and offerings by other layers within the Cloud Pyramid will deepen and broaden. Because of the complexity of building up Cloud Infrastructures (from a provider perspective), the Infrastructure layer will take a less steep growth curve as compared to Platform Clouds and Application Clouds will beat the previous two layers out as well. Cloud Aggregators will come and go, and Cloud Extenders will evolve and become more intertwined with other Cloud layers. 2009 will also see the increased visibility of Private Clouds, especially within the Enterprise, until standards and security concerns are met within Public clouds.
9. Technology Advances at the Cloud Molecular Level
   There is probably a new layer to the Cloud Pyramid that needs to be added, one that resides at the “molecular” level. Chip makers such as Intel, are making plans on enabling Cloud-optimized CPU and other types of chips to allow for a more unique control of built-in switches. They are extremely interested in many of the open and proprietary virtualization technologies out there (Xen, VMware, Virtual Iron, etc.) and are strategizing on how to make their chipsets more compatible and efficient for use in the Cloud. Obviously, their vision is to have all Cloud infrastructures running with “Intel Inside” stamped on them. Many Cloud Computing providers, including GoGrid, already hook into chip-level switches and controls to make better use of the processors. Dell, HP and IBM will most certainly release servers specifically designed and configured for running optimized Clouds. Since all Clouds are powered by physical hardware and as advances are made further propelling Moore’s Law into the stratosphere, Clouds will become more powerful and able to take the place of traditional servers even more readily.
10. Larger Adoption
    If one factors in many if not all of the items mentioned previously, the obvious conclusion is that Cloud adoption will be significant in 2009. The Enterprise will move beyond simply testing the waters and just using the Cloud for project work. Private Clouds will help with their acceptance and the undeniable call for cost-savings through reduced CapEx will be too loud to be ignored. My gut also tells me that Government will play a much larger role as well. In 2008 I spoke with a person from the French government whose mission it was to bring the Cloud to their government infrastructure. This is only the tip of the iceberg. With the 2008 US Election, Barack Obama proved how critical an online presence is to furthering the concept of “change.” The Obama-Biden Technology Agenda points to the obvious importance of Technology, especially with the appointment of a Chief Technology Officer for the US Government.  And, as always, Web 3.0 and Startups will remain on the bleeding edge of hosting technology yet conserving cash for a sunnier day (ok, it can be a bit “cloudy”).

It’s always fun trying to gaze into a crystal ball and predict the future. When peering into it for perspective and predictions on Cloud Computing, a “cloudy” crystal ball is a bit of an oxymoron. Cloud Computing is no longer a just a “newfangled” movement but rather an established IT and business strategy that will be critical to all companies regardless of business models. What are your predictions? Leave a comment!

 

 

http://blog.gogrid.com/2008/12/02/ten-cloud-computing-predictions-for-2009/

http://www.informationweek.com/news/internet/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=213000074&cid=nl_IWK_report_html

http://www.appirio.com/about/pr_predictions-09_121808.php