Nearly a year ago I wrote a blog post called The Cloud Computing Industry Segments. It made an initial pass at describing the cloud computing industry segments. As mentioned in that post, this is a somewhat tricky proposition since cloud computing products, services and technologies are all evolving so quickly. It is now time for an update.

Neovise started by using three “super-segments”

1. Cloud Services – including IaaS, PaaS, SaaS

On May 5, 2010, HP announced that Bill Veghte has been appointed executive vice president of the company’s Software and Solutions business, effective May 17. As a follow-on to the previous post, this raises a new question. Can and will HP build a broad software business?

Larry Dignan posted an interesting question and related blog post here: http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=33911

I love article titles that include a question mark. So inviting for response! So that is just what I've done here:

However, before answering the large question, a number of smaller questions raised in the article must also be addressed. A couple more points also need to be made.

The article states:
>Add it up and HP owns a piece of every part of the information technology stack now.

There remains at least one major hole in the HP stack: software. True, the article said HP owns a *piece* of every part of the IT stack. However, that is mostly IT management software and systems software sold with its hardware. HP is greatly lacking when it comes to applications as well as middleware. Yet it would seem that software is one of the greatest opportunities for revenue growth as well as increasing margins for HP. Strange they aren’t doing more here it? More on this later…

Understanding the Cloud Enabling Platform

Some readers may know that the Neovise website provides a number of resources for finding, understanding and selecting cloud computing services as well as cloud enabling technologies. Within the pages of the above resources link there is a page called IaaS Enabling Platforms.

Carpathia Hosting just announced it has teamed up with Citrix® Systems, Inc. to launch the second generation of its enterprise cloud offering, Carpathia InstantOn™. The announcement looks exciting for at least a couple reasons. First, Carpathia is communicating a focus on Citrix XenServer™ rather than VMware or other hypervisors. Of course Carpathia will remain hypervisor agnostic to some degree, allowing customers freedom of choice. Still, this is a big win for Citrix. The second big news is the launch of the second generation InstantOn cloud computing solution from Carpathia.

Background

Earlier posts have discussed some of the strategies that can be followed by infrastructure as a service (IaaS) providers. At a high level, IaaS strategies are typically based on some mix of low price (offering lowest prices per unit of value), high differentiation (offering unique capabilities), and focus (selling to a more narrow group of customers).

When I heard Mark Hurd (HP CEO) and Steve Ballmer (Microsoft CEO) were to speak on a teleconference last week announcing a major partnership between the two companies – involving cloud computing no less – I jumped right on the call. After all, Microsoft is doing some exciting work with its Windows Azure platform. And, conversely, HP has been lacking major strategic announcements in the cloud realm. So I figured an alignment between these two industry giants had the potential to be very significant.

Background

The previous post discussed some of the strategies that can be followed by infrastructure as a service (IaaS) providers. At a high level, IaaS strategies are typically based on some mix of low price (offering lowest prices per unit of value), high differentiation (offering unique capabilities), and focus (selling to a more narrow group of customers). But what is the “right” strategy? Well, there is no single right or best strategy for all IaaS providers. Instead, the question must be answered individually by each IaaS provider. To arrive at a profitable answer, each provider must also first understand customer needs, segmentation of customers, their own unique capabilities, strengths and weaknesses of competitors, and many others.

The infrastructure as a service (IaaS) market is continuing its rapid growth phase, gaining more competitors every month. Some of the companies are fresh new startups, while others – like hosting businesses and communications service providers – existed before the term cloud computing gained widespread popularity in the last few years. Datacenter infrastructure vendors and even booksellers (OK, maybe just Amazon) are also getting into the act. However, all of these varied companies still have one thing in common.

(Updated 11/24/09) - added section with more advanced topics.

Lots of people are still looking for ways to learn the basics about cloud computing. Below are some links to videos that may help:

• Cloud Computing Explained (from GoGrid, 5:22)
• Cloud Computing Plain and Simple with some humor (from rPath, 4:52)