Jake Sorofman, rPath, James Duncan, Joyent and Chet Kapoor, Sonoa Systems chat with Alistair Croll on the futures of cloud. These companies offer software, products that are adjacent to, or run on, the cloud. They are not cloud operators.
Which cloud you go to, depends on what you are moving. Move machines, code, processes or content. This is the clearest way to determine what type of cloud an operator is offering, ask them “what do I move to you – machines, code, processes or content”.
Alistair is qualifying “move”, in that some code might need to tweaked for the features/functions/services of the cloud, or perhaps re-written in the case of tightly coupled legacy code.
Alistair Croll is interviewing Amitabh Srivastava, Senior Vice President, Windows Azure, Microsoft. Amitabh is responsible for Azure, his background is core O/S. Once again, I’ve captured some, but not all of the conversation.
AC: Are you faced now with open cloud/closed cloud dilemma?
AS: Big advantage in cloud is centralized control. Cloud provider picks the hardware, don’t have to worry about accommodating old equipment and software. This control and homogeneity drives down the cost. However, still want to build a very general purpose platform. Microsoft views cloud as extension of enterprise. Developer can choose how to write the apps for the 3 screens – pc, phone, tv – in the environment that makes most sense. We are still 5 minutes into the first quarter of cloud.
Alistair Croll is “interviewing” Lew Moorman, CSO, of Rackspace. I’ve captured some, but not all, of the conversation.
AC: From your recent filing, you have 62,078 servers. 69% are cloud. Rest are managed. What’s the difference?
LM: Cloud is set of technology about pooling and automated software. Cloud makes shared environments robust and reliable. Previously, in a shared environment, if someone else burst, everyone else loses.
Alistair Croll is “interviewing” Werner Vogels in Fireside chat. Some of the conversation points:
AC: Where all are the enterprise use cases?
WV: Talks about enterprise IT challenges – thousands of enterprise application, cost, time to value. Then, potential cloud benefits: cost, agility. Says enterprises are doing small, or quiet, pilots right now. Will we hear more in the future? Yes, but it is early.
“While clouds are awesome, they aren’t for everyone. Better said, look different for enterprises versus startups.” After a bunch of housekeeping, Alistair is now talking cloud. Starts with, Nick Carr’s Big Switch and electricity analogy. (required reading for cloud speakers, apparently).
In discussing economics, talks about Moore’s Law and decreasing costs of bandwidth and storage.
