MS Antares Tweet

Obviously adds fuel to that fire too.

I remember back a few years when BPOS was introduced and HMC (Hosted Messaging and Collaboration) was effectively canned, there was much concern in the hosing community that Microsoft were basically walking all over their partners patch and undermining both pricing and delivery models in the market. This was true to a certain extent, those hosters who were simply selling the HMC solution were indeed impacted by BPOS because there was no real additional value being offered. This latest move is probably going to follow a similar pattern, those hosters who are simply selling space are going to be impacted (unless they are pitching at a very low price point) while those who have a more complete solution in place are going to be able to ride this through by maintaining the value of their delivery.

The bottom line here is that Azure is going to be leveraged more and more heavily over the coming months for Platform service delivery and as spin-out for spike and peak service expansion, if, as a hoster, this is going to impact you then now is the time to really take a good look at your product set to make sure that you’re offering specific solutions and values to your customers!

This is kind of a big deal as it brings into play an element which has been missing from the overall AWS offering, that being an easy way to integrate on-premise and AWS-hosted services. Eucalyptus’ on-premise Cloud stack is gaining traction and this would seem to be a very good move for both sides of the equation.

“By strategically and selectively removing the uncertainty regarding its APIs, Amazon gains literally overnight a credible private cloud offering, minimizing that as an angle of attack for competitors who might otherwise attempt to sell against Amazon by emphasizing its public cloud-only technology story,” – Stephen O’Grady, senior analyst and co-founder of analyst firm RedMonk

Here’s the press release:

STAMFORD, Conn., Mar 12, 2012 (BUSINESS WIRE) — The reign of the personal computer as the sole corporate access device is coming to a close, and by 2014, the personal cloud will replace the personal computer at the center of users’ digital lives, according to Gartner, Inc.

Gartner analysts said the personal cloud will begin a new era that will provide users with a new level of flexibility with the devices they use for daily activities, while leveraging the strengths of each device, ultimately enabling new levels of user satisfaction and productivity. However, it will require enterprises to fundamentally rethink how they deliver applications and services to users.

“Major trends in client computing have shifted the market away from a focus on personal computers to a broader device perspective that includes smartphones, tablets and other consumer devices,” said Steve Kleynhans, research vice president at Gartner. “Emerging cloud services will become the glue that connects the web of devices that users choose to access during the different aspects of their daily life.”

The past two years have been a whirlwind in the client computing space, leaving many enterprises asking what comes next and what the environment will look like in five years.

“Many call this era the post-PC era, but it isn’t really about being ‘after’ the PC, but rather about a new style of personal computing that frees individuals to use computing in fundamentally new ways to improve multiple aspects of their work and personal lives,” Mr. Kleynhans said.

Several driving forces are combining to create this new era. These megatrends have roots that extend back through the past decade but are aligning in a new way.

Megatrend No. 1: Consumerization — You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet

Gartner has discussed the consumerization of IT for the better part of a decade, and has seen the impact of it across various aspects of the corporate IT world. However, much of this has simply been a precursor to the major wave that is starting to take hold across all aspects of information technology as several key factors come together:

– Users are more technologically savvy and have very different expectations of technology.

– The Internet and social media have empowered and emboldened users.

– The rise of powerful, affordable mobile devices changes the equation for users.

– Users have become innovators.

– Through the democratization of technology, users of all types and status within organizations can now have similar technology available to them.

Megatrend No. 2: Virtualization — Changing How the Game Is Played

Virtualization has improved flexibility and increased the options for how IT organizations can implement client environments. Virtualization has, to some extent, freed applications from the peculiarities of individual devices, operating systems or even processor architectures. Virtualization provides a way to move the legacy of applications and processes developed in the PC era forward into the new emerging world. This provides low-power devices access to much-greater processing power, thus expanding their utility and increasing the reach of processor-intensive applications.

Megatrend No. 3: “App-ification” — From Applications to Apps

When the way that applications are designed, delivered and consumed by users changes, it has a dramatic impact on all other aspects of the market. These changes will have a profound impact on how applications are written and managed in corporate environments. They also raise the prospect of greater cross-platform portability as small user experience (UX) apps are used to adjust a server- or cloud-resident application to the unique characteristics of a specific device or scenario. One application can now be exposed in multiple ways and used in varying situations by the user.

Megatrend No. 4: The Ever-Available Self-Service Cloud

The advent of the cloud for servicing individual users opens a whole new level of opportunity. Every user can now have a scalable and nearly infinite set of resources available for whatever they need to do. The impacts for IT infrastructures are stunning, but when this is applied to the individual, there are some specific benefits that emerge. Users’ digital activities are far more self-directed than ever before. Users demand to make their own choices about applications, services and content, selecting from a nearly limitless collection on the Internet. This encourages a culture of self-service that users expect in all aspects of their digital experience. Users can now store their virtual workspace or digital personality online.

Megatrend No. 5: The Mobility Shift — Wherever and Whenever You Want

Today, mobile devices combined with the cloud can fulfill most computing tasks, and any tradeoffs are outweighed in the minds of the user by the convenience and flexibility provided by the mobile devices. The emergence of more-natural user interface experiences is making mobility practical. Touch- and gesture-based user experiences, coupled with speech and contextual awareness, are enabling rich interaction with devices and a much greater level of freedom. At any point in time, and depending on the scenario, any given device will take on the role of the user’s primary device — the one at the center of the user’s constellation of devices.

“The combination of these megatrends, coupled with advances in new enabling technologies, is ushering in the era of the personal cloud,” said Mr. Kleynhans. “In this new world, the specifics of devices will become less important for the organization to worry about. Users will use a collection of devices, with the PC remaining one of many options, but no one device will be the primary hub. Rather, the personal cloud will take on that role. Access to the cloud and the content stored or shared in the cloud will be managed and secured, rather than solely focusing on the device itself.”

Additional information is available in the Gartner report “The New PC Era: The Personal Cloud.” The report is available on Gartner’s website at http://www.gartner.com/resId=1890215 . The research is part of the Gartner Special Report, “Consumer Research: Personal Cloud” at http://www.gartner.com/technology/research/personal-cloud/ . The special report includes links to reports examine the impact of the personal cloud on enterprises, as well as video commentary.

Gartner analysts will provide additional analysis during the Gartner webinar, “Personal Cloud and the $2T Consumer Market” on March 27 at 11 a.m. EDT. To register for this complimentary webinar, please visit http://my.gartner.com/portal/server.pt?open=512&objID=202&mode=2&PageID=5553&ref=webinar-rss&resId=1923415&prm=WB_PCDR .

About Gartner

Gartner, Inc. IT +0.69% is the world’s leading information technology research and advisory company. Gartner delivers the technology-related insight necessary for its clients to make the right decisions, every day. From CIOs and senior IT leaders in corporations and government agencies, to business leaders in high-tech and telecom enterprises and professional services firms, to technology investors, Gartner is a valuable partner to 60,000 clients in 11,500 distinct organizations. Through the resources of Gartner Research, Gartner Executive Programs, Gartner Consulting and Gartner Events, Gartner works with every client to research, analyze and interpret the business of IT within the context of their individual role. Founded in 1979, Gartner is headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut, USA, and has 4,500 associates, including 1,250 research analysts and consultants, and clients in 85 countries. For more information, visit www.gartner.com .

SOURCE: Gartner, Inc.

        Gartner
        Christy Pettey, 408-468-8312
        christy.pettey@gartner.com

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Now of course there are other providers out there who will be competitors to HP too, including a lot of hosters running on HP server hardware and you’ve got to be wondering how they’re feeling at the moment!

HP’s senior vice president and general manager of cloud services, Zorawar “Biri” Singh has stated though that “We have to build a platform layer, with a lot of third-party services.” and they plan to offer a full service delivery with tools and environments for developers as well as full-blown enterprise applications.

But the project isn’t being seen a a business in it’s own right, but as a further way to leverage HPs whole product portfolio. Quite how this is going to be achieved I’m not sure, if I’m consuming Cloud-based services I’m not buying servers, so we’ll wait and see what develops. My guess is that this is a significant, strategic investment in underpinning the business for the longer term.

Details can be seen over at the Microsoft site if you want to digest them more fully.

The problem with general statements like “Cloud will make more jobs” is that’s they’re true, from a certain point of view (thank-you Obi-Wan for that one). The problem is that, the certain point of view isn’t always the one the affected folk on the ground have. When I’m out talking about the implementation and adoption of Cloud delivery environment and services, one of the impacts we discuss is that on the resources, our euphemistic term for people.

Make no mistake, the adoption of any new technology of solution affects people, but it’s up to those people AND we who promote such technologies to mitigate that impact as much as possible and help tp define the new roles and opportunities which can arise.

How Cloud will create jobs, and where they will be.

“On premise environments were 12 times more likely to have misconfiguration incidents in their environments. We think that’s kind of a big deal. If you think about things like patch management and basic good security hygiene, service providers are in the business of doing that for a living, and it’s interesting to see that the data sort of bears that out.” – Urvish Vashi, VP of marketing at AlertLogic

Of course there is more to the hosted vs on-premise discussion that this report alone provides but it’s worth looking at what thee folks have produced to provide a little more perspective if nothing else.

The full report is available from the AlertLogic website

“In the past year, there’s been a dramatic increase in the rise of cloud security awareness, I think there’s a sense around the world of a bigger push of cloud adoption, and we want to help prepare the industry for this move.”  Jim Reavis, co-founder and executive director of the CSA.

Reavis also believes that the money men behind the current crop of business are looking for ways to profit from the fact that the black-hats seem to own the internet, rather than trying to find ways to get rid of them.

I’ve followed the CSA and their work for a long time now and this really is an organisation which you should be part of if you are in any way involved with service provision, delivery or implementation. For more info head over to https://cloudsecurityalliance.org/

Before I point the finger at the particular offender I want to re-state the Cloud Computing has some fairly simple characteristics, some easy to understand service models and some straightforward deployment models – all as defined by NIST and adopted pretty much universally.

Essential characteristics of Cloud – if it doesn’t have these it ‘aint Cloud!

1. On-demand self service. A consumer can unilaterally provision computing capabilities, such as server time and network storage, as needed automatically without requiring human interaction with each service provider.
2. Broad network access. Capabilities are available over the network and accessed through standard mechanisms that promote use by heterogeneous thin or thick client platforms (e.g., mobile phones, tablets, laptops, and workstations).
3. Resource pooling. The provider’s computing resources are pooled to serve multiple consumers using a multi-tenant model, with different physical and virtual resources dynamically assigned and reassigned according to consumer demand. There is a sense of location independence in that the customer generally has no control or knowledge over the exact location of the provided resources but may be able to specify location at a higher level of abstraction (e.g., country, state, or datacenter). Examples of resources include storage, processing, memory, and network bandwidth.
4. Rapid elasticity. Capabilities can be elastically provisioned and released, in some cases automatically, to scale rapidly outward and inward commensurate with demand. To the consumer, the capabilities available for provisioning often appear to be unlimited and can be appropriated in any quantity at any time.
5. Measured service. Cloud systems automatically control and optimize resource use by leveraging a metering capability at some level of abstraction appropriate to the type of service (e.g., storage, processing, bandwidth, and active user accounts). Resource usage can be monitored, controlled, and reported, providing transparency for both the provider and consumer of the utilized service.

There, not hard really, but remember, these are MUST HAVE items for any service calling itself Cloud, or any provider saying they offer Cloud services.

Service Models

Software as a Service (SaaS).
The capability provided to the consumer is to use the provider’s applications running on a cloud infrastructure. The applications are accessible from various client devices through either a thin client interface, such as a web browser (e.g., web-based email), or a program interface. The consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure including network, servers, operating systems, storage, or even individual application capabilities, with the possible exception of limited user- specific application configuration settings.

Platform as a Service (PaaS).
The capability provided to the consumer is to deploy onto the cloud infrastructure consumer-created or acquired applications created using programming languages, libraries, services, and tools supported by the provider. The consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure including network, servers, operating systems, or storage, but has control over the deployed applications and possibly configuration settings for the application-hosting environment.

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS).
The capability provided to the consumer is to provision processing, storage, networks, and other fundamental computing resources where the consumer is able to deploy and run arbitrary software, which can include operating systems and applications. The consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure but has control over operating systems, storage, and deployed applications; and possibly limited control of select networking components (e.g., host firewalls).

That’s it, no CaaS, FaaS or whatever, no Storage, no Security, no Desktop nothing at all derivative or otherwise marketing BS. These are the definitions.

Deployment Models

Subject: Change to Postini Message Security for Google Apps

This message affects only customers who have activated the Postini Message Security as part of their Google Apps service. If you aren’t sure whether you are using Postini, please contact us.

What Changing?
The Google Apps team recently added key features of Postini Message Security directly into the Google Apps control panel. The email features– including compliance footers, restricted email delivery, attachment controls, and more — are comparable to those offered with Google Message Security, and simpler to manage.

As a result, Google is deprecating the Postini Message Security service that is integrated with your Google Apps account.

What’s Next?
Google is asking all Google Apps customers with integrated Postini Message Security to consolidate their email management settings in Google Apps and to remove Postini from their mail flow.

In the coming months, you will receive notifications from Google with instructions and a deadline for completing this transition for the domains on your account. We can work with you on making those changes and answer any questions you may have.

We also expect see lower false positive rates for messages sent within your organization by using only Gmail’s spam filtering capabilities.

• FAQ: Postini to Google Apps Transition
• User’s step-by-step Transition Guide (you will receive an email when your account is ready to transition)
• New email filters in Google Apps: Blog post and setup article

1. The first acquisition of the year? IBM has bought up cloud-based software testing platform Green Hat for an undisclosed sum. This continues IBM’s resurgence as a serious Cloud Services provider and shows how a solid long-term strategy can work. Remember when folks were ringing the death-knell of the former server giant when they made the decision to start dropping their hardware lines? Expect more from them this year too. http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/04/ibm-buys-cloud-based-software-testing-platform-green-hat/
2. It’s always interesting to speculate who is going to be ‘moving and shaking’ in this months ahead. GigaOm (http://gigaom.com/cloud/10-cloud-startups-to-watch-in-2012/) have put together their top-ten for the year ahead. Certainly some of these will fall by the wayside, but it’s interesting to take a look at the technologies and direction these new ventures are using and taking as they serve as a barometer for the market generally. In short, mobility and Cloud-based app development are tops with speedier infrastructure coming next on the list. It looks like were starting to turn a corner and looking beyond the basics of infrastructures towards streamlining those infrastructures for specific use cases.
3. Box also believe that mobile is the key to Enterprise Cloud adoption in an article over at Tech Crunch (http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/08/box-mobile-adoption-is-the-gateway-drug-to-the-cloud-in-the-enterprise/) Quote time! “one of the big drivers we see for mobile adoption – and one of the big reasons why mobile deployment growth was actually higher than the user growth – has to do with the fact that enterprises are adopting cloud services because of mobile.Mobile adoption is actually driving cloud adoption,” says Matthew Self VP for Mobile at Box, “which isn’t totally obvious. But when you get to mobile, it isn’t about Microsoft anymore. Less than half of the computing endpoints in the world are Microsoft now…They’ve forced CIO’s to defect from Microsoft’s own entrenched postion, which is sort of bizarre. But it’s not like a CIO can say, ‘oh, I’ll just wait a year or two on mobile.’ ”   Of course he makes a valid point, more and more we’re seeing Microsoft NOT being the end-point for consumed services and that’s something we need to be increasingly aware of when we’re talking about Cloud Services adoption.
4. Finally, an interesting article which talks about how existing IT Outsourcing contracts could be reviewed and re-examined to take Cloud Services into consideration, rather than simply waiting them out to take advantage of new solutions. The process here is of interest as it potentially opens some opportunities which would seem to be tied off for the next year or so. http://gigaom.com/cloud/bils-it-outsourcing-contract-cloud/

Cheers for now!