Monday 15 March 2010
Provided below are two quotes, one from Larry Ellison of Oracle and one from Andy Isherwood of HP (both from 2008 so maybe their perspectives have changed). Not everyone, even those that would be serving this new Cloud Computing environment, are convinced that Cloud Computing is a new and improved way to do business. In fact, these two are claiming that they are already doing it. Luckily for us, not everyone is of the same mindset as these two but clients do have concerns and in some instances, rightly so.
The interesting thing about Cloud Computing is that we’ve redefined Cloud Computing to include everything that we already do. We don’t understand what we would do differently in the light of Cloud Computing other than change the wording of some of our ads. Gartner is also stressing to clients that they need to evaluate providers and service providers to ensure that their decisions to move to a Cloud Computing environment is the right one for them and their shareholders.
Organizations potentially can gain a competitive or cost advantage through selective adoption of cloud computing, but not without first taking a comprehensive look at the associated risks, ensuring that they are consistent with business goals, along with the expectations of regulators, auditors, shareholders and partners. Clients are not blind to these issues and you can see by this chart that their concerns map exactly to what we have been discussing as concerns with Cloud Computing.
A National Science Foundation grant project developed largely by graduate students at the University of California, Santa Barbara has resulted in Eucalyptus Systems, a three-month-old startup which has produced new open-source cloud infrastructure software that is a key component in Ubuntu’s upcoming 9.10 edition, Karmic Koala. Ubuntu is a popular Debian Linux-based open source operating system created by developer and Canonical Ltd. founder Mark Shuttleworth in 2004 that has been used increasingly in enterprise IT systems. Eucalyptus is an open-source software platform for developing on-premise private and hybrid clouds using a system’s existing hardware and software infrastructure, with no modifications. This is a little tricky to explain, so read this carefully: Karmic Koala [all Ubuntu releases are named after animals] is now in alpha testing and scheduled for general release in October 2009. Karmic Koala is the operating system of Ubuntu’s new cloud-building package called Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud, which includes Eucalyptus. Canonical released a preview edition of the UEC in April.
Canonical is making no secret of the fact that since Eucalyptus enables enterprises to test, deploy and experiment with their own private, in-house clouds, it competes squarely with Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) API. “The Eucalyptus project enables you to create an EC2-style cloud in your own data center, on your own hardware,” Shuttleworth wrote in his introduction to Karmic Koala in the Ubuntu users’ email list. “During the Karmic [Koala] cycle, we expect to make those clouds dance, with dynamically growing and shrinking resource allocations depending on your needs.
Instead of making an upfront investment for perpetual licenses, the new monthly licensing model allows SaaS ISVs to scale their investment in Oracle technology with their company growth and end-user demand. Committed to providing the leading technology platform for Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Cloud Computing partners, Oracle today launched a new commercial licensing model that enables Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) to purchase license and support for components of the Oracle Platform for SaaS on a monthly basis.
The new monthly option, called SaaS for ISVs, is available to any ISV interested in delivering a SaaS application in a one-to-many commercial deployment on Oracle Database, Oracle WebLogic Server and Oracle Application Server. The Leading Platform for SaaS and Cloud-Based Services The Oracle Platform for SaaS includes Oracle Database, Oracle Fusion Middleware, Oracle Enterprise Manager, and Oracle VM, and is a comprehensive, open and integrated set of technologies that allows ISVs to build, deploy and manage SaaS and cloud-based applications. This software platform uses Oracle Grid Computing technologies to enable ISVs to deliver SaaS and cloud-based services to multiple enterprise customers, while fully delivering on their requirements of scalability, high performance, high availability, integration, security and customization. ISVs, hosting service providers and system integrators also receive business and technology support via a designated Oracle SaaS Program for partners.
“Oracle has been active in the SaaS market for several years, selling our own SaaS offerings and working closely with an extensive ecosystem of SaaS partners - including ISVs, SIs and Managed Hosting Partners,” said Judson Althoff, Senior Vice President, Worldwide Alliances & Channels at Oracle. “With the new monthly licensing model, not only can ISVs leverage the leading platform for SaaS, they can also scale their investment to meet the evolving demands of their business. The combined Oracle Platform for SaaS and licensing options deliver the power and flexibility ISVs need to compete and win in today’s global SaaS marketplace.”
