Showing posts with label cloud computing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cloud computing. Show all posts

10 cloud startups to watch in 2012


The past few years have been nothing if not a boon for entrepreneurs looking to cash in on venture capitalists’ lust for all things cloud.  All the activity has been great, and we’ve seen some exciting new companies emerge and prosper — companies such as Heroku, RightScale and New Relic — but it also means there’s precious little room on the playing field for newcomers. Startups that want to get noticed, get funded, and ultimately have a winning exit must either find their own unique niche or stake out ground on a different field altogether.

Here are 10 cloud computing startups that launched in 2011 and that have a chance to make it big in 2012.
1. AppFog 
AppFog is one of a handful of Platform-as-a-Service startups to launch in 2011, but AppFog is unique because it leverages the open-source Cloud Foundry code as its core. The switch to a Cloud Foundry foundation over the summer resulted in a name change from PHP Fog, as the company was immediately able to support numerous new programming languages. Going forward, AppFog can ride Cloud Foundry’s development wave, while focusing its own efforts on building the best user experience.

2. Bromium
Little is known about Bromium other than that is plans to use virtualization technology as a tool for securing the myriad endpoints (e.g., desktops, mobile phones and tablets) that connect to enterprise networks. While securing cloud servers, as other startups such as CloudPassage attempt to do, is important, the advent of consumerization means endpoints need security. Among Bromium’s founders is Simon Crosby, who co-founded XenSource and served as virtualization CTO at Citrix Systems.

3. Cloudability
Cloudability provides a simple service with a lot of value: it monitors customers’ spending on cloud computing resources. It might uncover something as commonplace as cloud-server sprawl because so many employees are spinning up instances, or it might find something nefarious such as hackers using a company’s instances serve boatloads of network traffic. As use of cloud services proliferates, companies will need an easy tool to help them keep track of what they’re spending and where.

4. CloudSigma 
The Infrastructure-as-a-Service space is a tough racket to enter because it means competing with the likes of Amazon Web Services and Rackspace, but CloudSigma has a plan. The company is all about giving customers high performance and lots of control. CloudSigma sits in the impressive SuperNAP data center and offers 10 GbE interconnects as well as solid-state drives, and developers can buy and manage resources with the granular control normally found in co-location.

5. Kaggle

Kaggle, a crowdsourcing platform for solving big data challenges, is about the hottest thing going in big data right now. The idea behind the service is simple: although not everyone has data scientists in-house, there are plenty of them floating around the world perfectly happy to put their skills to work on a problem for cash prizes and a little bit of credit. It takes a lot of computing power to host hundreds of teams on any given competition, as well as the data sets, which is why Kaggle utilizes Amazon Web Services.
6. Nebula 
Nebula isn’t the only company pushing a commercial version of the open-source OpenStack cloud computing software — it isn’t even the only one founded by a former NASA employee — but it does have a unique approach and an impeccable pedigree. Nebula ties OpenStack to an optimized hardware platform designed to make building public clouds a plug-and-play experience. Among its founders are former NASA CTO Chris Kemp, and investors include Andy Bechtolsheim, David Cheriton and Ram Shriram.

7. Parse
Parse is trying to become a PaaS specialist for mobile apps, a laudable ambition given how many people now rely on their mobile devices just about everything. It will be difficult to distinguish itself from competitors such as Stackmob, as well as from web-app PaaS offerings such as Heroku and AppFog, but Parse seems to have the right ideas in mind. It has a backend focused on the needs of mobile apps, and a frontend designed for mobile developers that might not have extensive programming chops.

8. ScaleXtreme
What ScaleXtreme lacks in sexiness it makes up for in functionality. Everyone needs server-management software, but not everyone needs the big, expensive software offered from traditional software vendors, or even wants to manage software at all. ScaleXtreme gives users a cloud-based service to manage both physical and cloud-based servers, and, it says, has also garnered a lot of interest from cloud providers thinking it might be a good value-added service to their users who want more control.

9. SolidFire
SolidFire wants nothing less than to revolutionize cloud computing by making it palatable to large enterprises wanting to run mission-critical applications. The company targets cloud providers with SSD-based storage systems that make it possible to store virtual machine images in the cloud and still deliver high performance. Cloud providers utilizing SolidFire gear could find themselves hosting far more relational databases and other applications that presently remain in house.

10. Zillabyte
Zillabyte, still operating in private beta mode, wants to provide users with both data sets and the algorithms needed to process them. Data sets aren’t uncommon on the web, but they usually don’t come with algorithms and a processing backend. The service will initially focus on web data and text-based algorithms, but there’s plenty of room for growth into new types of data and algorithms as the service matures. Zillabyte was co-founded by two former Google software engineers and a former Intel engineer.


Reference: http://gigaom.com
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Beware Cloud Computing Advice from IT Research Firms


 CIO — I don't know how I missed this, but at the Gartner IT Symposium in October, Darryl Plummer (Chief of Gartner Cloud Research) apparently stated that enterprises should deploy applications in a public cloud provider as a default, and only deploy them in a private cloud if the public alternative is not appropriate.
I became aware of Plummer's recommendation, which caused quite a stir in the blog world when he first announced it, via Twitter earlier this week.
Naturally, much of the furor over Plummmer's pronouncement was a reaction to the quick summary: Gartner prefers public cloud. Wow. That's a big deal, right? Gartner is probably telling all of its clients that they should trim their private cloud plans and instead focus on public cloud service providers. And, in response, all of its clients are scrapping their private cloud initiatives and planning a big move to public providers, right?

Actually, that's quite unlikely, for some very sensible reasons.
First, people misunderstand the nature of analyst firms. They assume that these firms are corporate in nature and monolithic in their positions. In fact, a better way to look at analyst firms is that they are much like professional firms (e.g., law firms, consulting partnerships, etc.). Such firms are comprised of relatively independent individuals, each with his or her own opinion.
For example, one can present the same issue to two attorneys within the same law firm and get two different recommendations about what to do (I speak here from personal experience). Likewise two analysts from the same firm will hold different opinions about the right approach to a specific technology issue.
Consequently, even if one or more (or most) analysts at a firm hold one opinion, there are probably others who hold a different opinion. At the very least, when presented with a specific issue, analysts will likely proffer different recommendations, based on their interpretation of the issue. Of course, it's important to keep in mind that every situation is specific and different. If blanket advice were sufficient, there would be no need for analyst firms. Let me be clear, I'm discussing this phenomenon in general—not picking on Gartner specifically. As I said last week, I am not one to gainsay Gartner.
Second, as a complement to the fact that opinion at analyst firms differs, clients tend to take their recommendations selectively. Companies tend to have their goals and they seek support and affirmation for them, searching until they find third-party advice that can be cited as impartial evidence for pursuing the direction that they have already decided upon. This is crudely referred to as "shopping for an opinion." 

Continue Reading at CIO.com

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Domestic cloud computing estimated to grow at 53%: Study


As per a report published on Moneycontrol.com website:
The domestic cloud computing industry is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 53% to be a Rs 2,434 crore market by 2014, a study conducted by CyberMedia Research India said.
"The public cloud computing market in India is estimated to touch Rs 2,434 crore in 2014 after growing at a CAGR of 53% between 2010-2014," a company statement said.
"Cloud computing is witnessing widespread interest from the vendor-service provider-channel community on the one hand and business leaders and CIOs on the other," CyberMedia Research India Software and IT Services Research Lead Analyst Kamal Vohra said.
This is fuelled by the strong belief that cloud computing will allow a large number of SMB enterprises to adopt the same enterprise class software and technology solutions, it added.
As per the study, penetration in cloud computing is expected to grow by 6.8% in 2012 from 4% in 2010.
On the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) industry, the study said the market was expected to grow by 50% to touch Rs 465 crore by this year-end.
The Infrastructure-as-a-service Industry (IaaS) was also expected to pickup pace after 2012. The overall CAGR for the India IaaS market during 2010-2014 was expected to be at 49%, the statement added.

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Microsoft Updates Office 365 | Cloud Computing Journal

Microsoft Updates Office 365
— Microsoft has released its first major update of its cloud-based Office 365, the online combination of Office, SharePoint, Exchange and Lync. It’s also expanding the service to 22 additional markets including Argentina, Iceland, Indonesia, South Africa and Taiwan.
Office Division president Kurt DelBene said in a statement that “Customers are adopting Office 365 eight times faster than our previous service, and the solution is on track to become one of our fastest-growing offers in Microsoft history. We are also seeing great traction with small businesses, with more than 90% of our early Office 365 customers coming from small businesses.”

Article URL:
http://cloudcomputing.sys-con.com/node/2086224
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SAP buys SuccessFactors for $3.4 billion

SAP has agreed to buy San Mateo's SuccessFactors Inc. for $3.4 billion in cash in a bid to catch up with rival Oracle in the cloud-computing market.

The move is the latest acquisition by co-CEOs Bill McDermott and Jim Hagemann Snabe, who took charge of SAP when CEO Léo Apotheker was forced out in 2009.

McDermott and Snabe have pledged to make the largest maker of business-management software better at meeting demand for new technologies, such as cloud computing, real-time analytics and mobile applications.
The SuccessFactors deal shows SAP's previous go-it-alone approach to the cloud was lacking, said Thomas Otter, a vice president at Gartner Inc.

"My first reaction was: What took you so long?" Otter said. "This means a fundamental shift in terms of their cloud strategy, which has been rather slow to get off the ground. This is a tacit admission that their cloud strategy was a failure."

Stock takes a hit

SAP shares dropped 1.6 percent to 44 euros in Frankfurt Monday, valuing the company at 54 billion euros.
"In addition to the high price paid, which we think investors will see negatively, the other question will be whether the decision to acquire reflects a sign of SAP's strength or its weakness," UBS analyst Michael Briest said Monday. He cut his rating on SAP shares to "neutral" from "buy."

SAP, Oracle and companies such as Apple, Salesforce.com, IBM, Amazon.com, Dell and Microsoft are promoting cloud computing as a secure way to outsource data centers and reduce the need for pricey servers and other hardware.

SuccessFactors, which makes software used to manage employee performance, has more than 3,500 customers and 15 million subscribers in 168 countries. The company is predicted to have $502 million in revenue in 2013, according to analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg.
SAP is paying 8 times SuccessFactors' forecast revenue for next year, compared with a median of 3 times revenue companies paid for 32 North American software targets over the past five years, Bloomberg data show.

'Crown jewel'

"You get what you pay for, and if you want the crown jewel in this industry, you have got to pay for it," McDermott said. "We are very comfortable with the relationship between the price and 2012 revenues. It's very much in the medium range. We don't consolidate old, tired companies that don't grow anymore."
SAP may take a break from large deals after the close of SuccessFactors, while it concentrates on expanding in cloud computing, mobile business software, data analysis and in-memory computing, McDermott added.

"For now, I think we have the assets we need to win," he said.

McDermott and SuccessFactors CEO Lars Dalgaard first met on Sept. 27 at SuccessFactors' office in San Mateo. One asset SAP gains is Dalgaard himself.
Dalgaard, 44, will have the job of overseeing SAP's broad software-as-a-service efforts, including its Business ByDesign Web programs for midsize companies. Peter Lorenz, an SAP executive vice president in charge of the group of products, will report to him, McDermott said.
"Lars will oversee the entire SAP cloud," McDermott said. "This is our catalyst."

Owning SuccessFactors, which helps companies decide which employees to retain and how much to pay them, can help SAP sell "human capital management" software to the highest echelons of its customers' management, McDermott said.

SuccessFactors may also add programs for handling logistics and supply-chain operations, Dalgaard said.
"The talent management market will probably be worth about $3.5 billion this year," Otter said. "SAP has essentially spent what the whole market will be worth this year in one swoop. It is a lot to pay for a niche in their portfolio, but human resources technology is a hot space."

The global market for cloud services may surge to $148.8 billion in 2014 from $68.3 billion in 2010, Gartner estimates.
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IDC Predicts 2012 Will Be the Year of Mobile and Cloud Platform Wars

01 Dec 2011
FRAMINGHAM, Mass., December 1, 2011 – One year ago, International Data Corporation (IDC) predicted that the IT industry's next dominant platform, built on mobile computing, cloud services, social networking, and big data analytics technologies, would begin its transition into the mainstream. Today, spending on these technologies is growing at about 18% per year and is expected to account for at least 80% of IT spending growth between now and 2020. With future market revenues at stake, IDC predicts that 2012 will be marked by some of the first high-stakes battles as companies seek to position themselves for leadership in these critical and fast-growing technology areas.

"The industry's shift to the 3rd Platform will accelerate in 2012, forcing the industry's leaders to make bold investments and fateful decisions," said Frank Gens, senior vice president and chief analyst at IDC. "Companies like Microsoft, HP, SAP, RIM, and others – including Apple – will face 'crossroads moments' in 2012. By the end of the year, we should have a good idea which vendors will – and won't – be among the industry's leaders at the end of the decade."
Overall, IDC predicts that worldwide IT spending will grow 6.9% year over year to $1.8 trillion in 2012. As much as 20% of this total spending will be driven by the technologies that are reshaping the IT industry – smartphones, media tablets, mobile networks, social networking, and big data analytics. Meanwhile, emerging markets (defined as all markets except North America, Western Europe, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand) will drive more than half of all IT spending growth worldwide in 2012, led by the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) and a handful of other fast-growing markets like Indonesia, Vietnam, and Saudi Arabia. The growing importance of these markets is reflected in IDC's prediction that China will surpass Japan as the world's second largest IT market sometime in the course of the year.
2012 will also be the Year of Mobile Ascendency as mobile devices (smartphones and media tablets) surpass PCs in both shipments and spending and mobile apps, with 85 billion downloads, generate more revenue than the mainframe market. The mobility market will see heated competition in 2012 as Microsoft joins the crucial battle for dominance in the mobile operating system (OS) market and the Kindle Fire challenges the iPad in the media tablet market. Similarly, a host of new mobile devices with "good enough" capabilities (think "smartphone lite") will challenge the current device leaders on price and functionality in key emerging markets like China, India, Indonesia, and Brazil.

Competition will also characterize the world of cloud services in 2012 as the strategic focus shifts from building infrastructure to the creation of application platforms and ecosystems. Here the battle for enterprise platform dominance is just getting underway with established players like IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle facing serious challenges from Amazon, Google, Salesforce.com, and VMware. As evidence of this challenge, IDC expects Amazon Web Services to exceed $1 billion in cloud services business in 2012 with Google's Enterprise business to follow within 18 months. IDC also expects a merger and acquisition (M&A) feeding frenzy as these companies seek to gain a competitive edge. Look for Microsoft to buy a content/media cloud, like Netflix, to provide a marketplace for its apps and content. Other prime targets for acquisition include Cloud Application/SaaS companies, like Workday, NetSuite, and Taleo. 

Social networking technologies – especially where they are being accelerated by mobile technologies – will be recognized as a mandatory component in every major enterprise IT vendors' strategy. As a result, IDC expects a number of major IT vendors to make "statement" acquisitions in social business while others continue to expand their community platforms. Companies like LinkedIn, Spigit, BrightIdea, Attensity, and Lithium are logical acquisition targets for Microsoft, IBM, and Oracle. Meanwhile, Facebook will attempt to leverage its consumer dominance into a broader role serving as the business-to-consumer platform of choice. 

Finally, Big Data will earn its place as the next "must have" competency in 2012 as the volume of digital content grows to 2.7 zettabytes (ZB), up 48% from 2011. Over 90% of this information will be unstructured (e.g., images, videos, MP3 files, and files based on social media and Web-enabled workloads) – full of rich information, but challenging to understand and analyze. As businesses seek to squeeze high-value insights from this data, IDC expects to see offerings that more closely integrate data and analytics technologies, such as in-memory databases and BI tools, move into the mainstream. And, like the cloud services market, 2012 is likely to be a busy year for Big Data-driven mergers and acquisitions as large IT vendors seek to acquire additional functionality.
  • In addition to key developments in mobile, cloud, social business, and big data, IDC predicts that 2012 will be a notable year in a number of other areas:
  • Mobile data network spending will exceed fixed data network spending for the first time
  • 80% of new commercial enterprise apps will be deployed on cloud platforms
  • 15% of new mobile apps will be based on HTML5 by year's end
  • Vendors from emerging markets, such as Huawei and China Telecom, will make an aggressive push into developed markets, including the U.S.
  • The number of intelligent, communicating devices on the network will outnumber "traditional computing" devices by almost 2 to 1 within next 24 months, changing the way we think – and interact – with each other and devices on the network
"Even though the IT industry will follow along the same transformational path as it did in 2011, the events, the choices, and the stakes will be very different in 2012," added Gens. "The urgency to act – and to make the right decisions – will dramatically increase. By the end of 2012, we should be able to see much more clearly which players have successfully positioned themselves in the 'lead pack' of the marathon-like race for industry leadership in the decade ahead."

IDC's predictions for 2012 are presented in full detail in the report, IDC Predictions 2012: Competing for 2020 (Doc #231720). In addition, Frank Gens will lead a group discussion of this year's predictions in an IDC Web conference scheduled for December 1 at 12:00 pm U.S. Eastern time. For more information, or to register for this free event, please go to: http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=IDC_P24932.

International Data Corporation (IDC) is the premier global provider of market intelligence, advisory services, and events for the information technology, telecommunications, and consumer technology markets. IDC helps IT professionals, business executives, and the investment community to make fact-based decisions on technology purchases and business strategy. More than 1,000 IDC analysts provide global, regional, and local expertise on technology and industry opportunities and trends in over 110 countries. For more than 47 years, IDC has provided strategic insights to help our clients achieve their key business objectives. IDC is a subsidiary of IDG, the world's leading technology media, research, and events company. You can learn more about IDC by visiting www.idc.com.

Source: http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS23177411
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Six Types of Cloud Computing


Article Summary:
Six Types of Cloud Computing — Everyone is talking about cloud computing today, but not everyone means the same thing when they do. While there is this general idea behind the cloud – that applications or other business functions exist somewhere away from the business itself – there are many iterations that companies look to in order to actually use the technology. Cloud computing offers a variety of ways for businesses to increase their IT capacity or functionality without having to add infrastructure, personnel, and software.
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Top 10 cloud computing providers of 2011

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Cloud Computing for SMEs


It May seems surprising but the scope of cloud computing is much greater for SME industries as compared to large industries since small companies are much concerned regarding their expenditure in IT services and management as compared to large scale industries. No, it does not mean that large industries are not worried of their IT resources, but small companies are very much limited to their budget for IT spending as compare to large companies. In such a scenario, cloud computing will serve as a boon for such industries, of course security will remain a major concern.
According to a recent survey undertaken by freelancing site PeoplePerHour.com among 1,300 SMEs in the United Kingdom, it was found that as many as 74% do not use ‘Cloud’ computing. What gives greater cause for concern is that 43% of the respondents did not even know what the term “Cloud computing” means. Still majority of small companies still maintain their old age IT assets and investing heavy money to keep a pace with the growing technology and requirements. This unnecessary cost not only adversely affects their bottom line, but also hamstrings small businesses as they attempt to keep pace with an increasingly internet-based world.
The Future of SME Cloud Computing
Most industry experts predict that the global market for cloud technology will increase from its current $8 billion, to approximately $14 billion by 2014. The engine for this growth as it relates to small businesses is expected to be something referred to in cloud parlance as SaaS – Software as a Service. Solutions like Oracle, SAP and deployment environment will become more affordable and manageable with the usage of cloud computing. Best of all, cloud computing services like SaaS are available to business owners and their employees anywhere they can find an internet connection. Sales automation solutions providers such as salesforce has added tremendous value in the managing the sales across verticals. Services like DropBox provides realtime access of documents and other items while on the move and even can be shared efficiently worldwide.
Major Benefits that cloud computing brings for SMEs are:
·         Major saving in terms of Capital Expenditure. Only internet connection and PC or laptop with general configuration is required
·         The size of the IT infrastructure can be reduced or increased instantly as and when required. Quiet scalable...
·         Pay only for the services being used. Need not to maintain additional IT infrastructure which is not required very often.
·         Services can be accessed from remote location with the use of computing device and internet. No need to wait to reach office to update the data
·         Ease of implementation and management: Without the need for implementation of hardware and various other components which can take several hours.  You can be running your business in almost as much time as it takes to setup a Gmail account. Also managing the infrastructure will not be at all a matter of concern. Skill resources will be taking care of all the issues and management all the time thereby ensuring 99.99% uptime
·         World-class infrastructure: Without much investment in IT, companies will be using the world class IT infrastructure with best response time as compared to local IT infrastructure.
·         Green Computing: Protect the environment with energy efficient environment. Cloud Computing setups uses less energy than traditional data centres which is important to many in this day and age.




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