Peering into the Cloud

Salesforce.com announced its vision for cloud computing at its Dreamforce conference in San Francisco last week. The company also revealed how it will utilize Amazon.com Inc.'s Elastic Compute Cloud or EC2 as well as tools for EC2. A recent study shows vendors are most concerned about Microsoft Corp.'s move into the cloud.

Focal Points:

• Salesforce.com at its Dreamforce conference stated that it now sees itself as a cloud computing vendor instead of an online applications provider. The company runs its cloud from two U.S. based data centers today but will be opening one in Singapore soon, followed by ones in Europe and Japan. Salesforce.com is also offering to host customer Web sites. While pricing was not disclosed, it will be based upon the amount of traffic attracted to the site. The Group Edition of Sites will be allowed to host up 50,000 page views a month; the Professional Edition, up to 250,000 page views; Enterprise Edition, 500,000 page views and Unlimited Edition, 1 million page views, executives said.
• Tasks that need computing power beyond that which Salesforce.com can provide within their facilities can be exported to Amazon's EC2 for execution. Salesforce.com is also offering Force.com Tools for EC2 using PHP today. Executives said that as additional toolkits emerge for interoperating with the Amazon cloud, they will be known as the Force.com Toolkit for Amazon Web Services. Officials hinted that Java and Ruby on Rails versions will be coming in short order. Customers can also tap into other Amazon cloud services. Salesforce.com can extend its storage layer to tap into the Amazon Simple Storage Service or S3 and offers the Force.com Toolkit for S3 to assist in invoking the Amazon S3 API.
• A Channel Insider survey finds that 37 percent of 300 veteran managed services companies surveyed say Microsoft will take or inhibit more of their services growth over the next 24 months. The company opened a facility in San Antonio, TX, which is one of several new data centers being built around the world by the firm to support its transformation to a cloud computing company. Last July Microsoft unveiled its intended revenue split models for its hosted services, in which partner solution providers would receive 12 percent of the total contract in the first year, and 6 percent recurring fees for the subsequent years of the engagement. The survey has IBM Corp. as the number two threat with a 23 percent share and Dell Inc. in third place with 21 percent. Amazon and Google Inc. were not viewed as major threats by the managed services firms.

Experton Group believes vendors are convinced cloud computing is the next disruptive technology and a number of key players are rushing to roll out cloud services. However, the lack of consistent definition for cloud computing will hinder enterprise commitments to the platform. Executives can expect this confusion to disappear over the next 24 months as cloud products, services, and standards are released.  IT architects and executives should understand the cloud computing architectures, roadmaps, strategies, and visions of their preferred providers as well as those of other leading cloud providers and incorporate appropriate cloud concepts into their target architectures.