2011 Cloud Predictions

Happy new year to fellow Cloud technologists, vendors, capitalists and enthusiasts!  There are almost too many Cloud year-in-review and Predictions to keep track of, and I apologize for adding yet another to the list, but these three predictions were inspired by a variety of sources, including smart work colleagues, respected industry voices and random online sources.  I've tried to give credit where it's due.  I look forward to sharing another very exciting year in the cloud community with you.

1.   Cloud becomes the default IT platform – We’re seeing growth estimates of 20-30% for public cloud offerings, and anywhere from 10-15% of IT spending being redirected to the cloud, so it should be a safe bet that Cloud will continue to grow in 2011.  But 2011may be the tipping point where for most companies, IT Project leaders will have to start considering a cloud option for every new project, and perhaps will be required to present the more demanding business case for On-Premise deployment versus the default of using Amazon, Azure or a SaaS provider.

2.   Hybrid cloud becomes the key battlefield – For now, most investment has been clearly either internal ‘private’ cloud or external SaaS, PaaS or IaaS, and never the twain shall meet.  IT teams in 2011 will have an epiphany that it all needs to connect together, whether because of performance, compliance or manageability.  Expect to see wide adoption of heterogeneous cloud management tools, continued investment and growth in the WAN optimization and cloud gateway space, as well as the convergence of SAN/LAN/WAN capabilities within underlying networking gear.

3.   Cloud M&A Peaks – Fueled by a low growth environment and cheap capital, we can expect to see a number of acquisitions across the IT landscape, including mega deals like Oracle buying Salesforce.com and/or CSC, IBM buying NetApp, HP buying SAP.  And specific Cloud-related deals will also rise, with vendors filling networking and capabilities gaps, such as Cisco buying Riverbed, Dell buying Brocade, and Cloud management tools like Rightscale, Abiquo and Joyent being snapped up and folded into the IT management suites of IBM and HP.

Special thanks to: Brook Reams http://brook.reams.me/, Datapipe http://www.datapipe.com/, IDC www.idc.com, Channel Buzz Canada http://www.channelbuzz.ca

Cloud Network Optimization validated

With the explosive growth of the Cloud Services market, exceeding $68 billion this year, it was obvious to expect lots of innovation in and around this space.  I had been mostly blogging about efforts in the Cloud Infrastructure and Storage space, and was seeing a microcosm of this opportunity with new classes of optimized gear to speed and secure the links from the customer to the cloud.

We recently have witnessed the emergence of Cloud gateways that appear as local NAS but act as intelligent controllers that cache, optimize, encrypt and convert data from the LAN out to the Storage cloud. Along with TwinStrata, Cirtas, StorSimple, and Nasuni, we can now add Panzura to this vendor list.

But I still expected to see a pure-play Cloud Network product in this area.  A device that performed the caching, dedupe, and encryption of a WAN opt. appliance but specifically aimed at datacenter-to-cloud traffic, where the protocols and acceleration are tweaked for storage data and larger pipes. It would be a network device, not a storage device, thus complementing new products such as EMC VPLEX to speed storage virtualization between data centers and enabling use cases such as VMotion over distance.  I had assumed an established network player would be first to meet this need, but a new player, Infineta, took the brass ring.

Infineta has been very distinct in their positioning, focusing on datacenter to datacenter and not branch office traffic which is the established realm of Riverbed and traditional WAN optimization.  And they released a cool new video on youtube. 

It's ultimately up to the analysts as to how the markets get defined, but with this latest product entry, I'm considering Cloud Storage Networking to be a validated market.  For IT organizations, now's the time to start thinking how you can use these new products to safely and cost-effectively transition archival and nearstore data out to the Cloud.