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This Week in Cloud, December 22, 2010: Rackspace acquires Cloudkick, MSPs doing crazy things in cloud, Amazon laughs last. And More…
Feature Article
MSPs are doing crazy things in cloud…are you?
By Matthew Richards, CA Technologies
As I talk to MSP customers around the world, I am amazed by the variety in what they are doing with "cloud." In pastposts I have pointed out that MSPs are the biggest cloud instigators. If it weren't for them, we probably wouldn't see business users complaining so much about the time it takes to deploy a new server using traditional methods. So, MSPs are clearly on the cutting edge of the market. To that point, I thought I would take this holiday post to have some fun - to dig into the evolution of this market, and outline a few interesting business models that MSPs (or service providers, if you prefer) are going after. Let's get into a few of the more interesting business models.
Dear Santa, I want a pony...and a cloud business. Read the full article.
Cloud News
- Rackspace announced it is buying Cloudkick, a startup that provides server management and monitoring. GigaOm blogger Derrick Harris believes Rackspace purchased the company in order to better compete with AWS, which recently announced new features for its CloudWatch monitoring service. In this blog, Harris also explains that Rackspace intends to use Cloudkick for SysAdmin level monitoring and reporting, and will continue to leverage Nimsoft for in-depth application and infrastructure monitoring.
- Citrix acquired Netviewer AG, a SaaS provider of online collaboration and video meeting services, to advance its SaaS offerings and expand its presence in Europe, according to this Network World article.
- Oracle announced Cloud Office, a web-based productivity suite that will compete with online applications from Microsoft and Google. Cloud Office includes a spreadsheet, text and presentation application and integrates with Microsoft Office, according to this PCWorld article.
Upcoming Cloud Events
- Global Services Conference 2011: Enabling Transformation through Global Sourcing, January 27 NYC
- ComputerWorld IT Leaders Conference: Extreme Convergence: Fusing IT and Business in a Learner, Global, Virtualized World, March 6 – 8, Palm Springs, California
- Cloud Connect, March 7 – 10, Santa Clara, California
Cloud Views
- Amazon laughs last: as this FoxBusiness article opines, that Amazon.com survived prolonged attacks from Wikileaks supporters the week of December 6th without so much as a performance slow-down (much less outage) is proof of cloud safety for businesses.
- In this eWeek article, Google responds to accusations from Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation, that Chrome OS is “pushing people into careless computing by forcing them to store their data in the cloud, rather than locally…where they can control the data.” In this WSJ blog, Walter Mossberg shares his first impressions of a Chrome OS-based laptop that he has been beta-testing for a week.
- This Computerworld article titled ‘The bumpy road to private cloud’ picks up on a recent research report (registration required) written by James Staten about the fact that most enterprises aren’t ready for private cloud.
