Google & Amazon, innovators in cloud computing technology

Cloud computing has become the new buzzword in the IT industry though it is still a long way before it becomes a mainstream activity. Gartner believes that cloud computing is an opportunity as well a threat to the tech firms. (Source: ET)

The future of cloud computing will revolve around services, platforms and ecosystems. Most of the enterprises will be cloud service providers. The simplest cloud/Web platform is an individual site that exposes at least one capability for programmatic access via the Web. However , successful cloud/Web platforms provide a range of capabilities from multiple parties in a co-ordinated fashion.

Ecosystem management is a specialised set of services that is used by service providers to orchestrate the creation of composite applications (mashups) and support the delivery of services to customers (for example, metering and billing services).

There are few players who are the early movers in providing cloud-based services like, the vendors can be loosely categorised into 2 things, one the higher-level perspectives (cloud versus computing). Google and salesforce.com align well with the ‘cloud’ (service consumption) view while most enterprise vendors (for example, IBM, HP, SAP and Oracle) have more of an operations or service provider view.

Two vendors are particularly hard to categorise: Microsoft and Amazon. Both exhibit both points of view. Both clearly provide cloud-based services and tools to help others provide cloud-based services.

Vendor positioning represents “enlightened self interest” . To every largescale system or service vendor today, cloud computing constitutes either a threat or an opportunity. With few exceptions , vendors are not sitting idly by — they are positioning themselves visa-vis where they think they can have an impact on (or benefit from) cloud computing. The verticals that are early adopter of cloud based services are — finance , pharmaceutical, ISV startups, media companies.

And when it comes to IT services providers play in delivery of these services The consumer/Web-influenced vendors are the most mature in cloud/Web platforms, from the technology and community perspectives. Google and Amazon are two innovators that are leading the industry toward the new cloud-based computing style. The business /enterprise-influenced vendors have rich business services and are, at times, mature at selling business services , but do not necessarily provide a cloud/Web platform.

Recently, IBM and Microsoft made multi-billion-dollar investments to establish an independent footprint for their own renditions of cloud computing . SAP and Oracle pledged that the next generation of their business applications will be cloud-enabled and available optionally as SaaS.

The Web platform service market is multilayered and complex. With time, this variety of offerings will likely consolidate , but not in the immediate future , where we expect a continuing emergence of new, innovative players and offerings.

Would be great to know your views on Cloud computing which will be major force where vendors, service providers and businesses will revolve around cloud computing.