Different Approaches to the Future of Cloud Computing
The future of computing is in the clouds.
Even though companies seem to agree that cloud computing is the way things are going, there are different strategies emerging to get there, as evidenced by the recent announcements at the big annual tech conferences.
At Google I/O, the corporation revealed improvements to its Google Cloud Platform, made its Google Compute Engine available to anyone, and introduced Google Cloud Datastore, a standalone infrastructure for storing non-relational data. Its wide selection of services are elastic and available on demand.
Redmonk founder and analyst Stephen O’Grady, in reviewing Google’s cloud announcements, wrote, “The statement made by Google…is that the war for mobile will not be won with devices or operating systems. It will be won instead with services.”
Amazon Web Services is deploying a similar focus, with its Elastic Cloud Compute and Simple Storage Services supporting many major, high-traffic sites. Today it also was announced that AWS cloud servers in the US are now approved for government use. Considering this expanded capacity and the fact that Amazon’s is considered the cloud service to beat, it’s no wonder Google is expanding its offerings to try to compete.
Taking a different approach is SAP, the business management software leader that introduced the new HANA Enterprise Cloud at its Sapphire event recently. The managed cloud service runs with the SAP HANA in-memory platform.
But because use of SAP’s cloud requires you to have your own HANA license, it’s prompting critics to ask: Is this even a cloud?
Forrester analyst Stefan Ried is one of those critics, calling the HANA cloud a “half-baked” business model:
The Hana Cloud is a very careful move to a new business model. It is not disruptive and will NOT accelerate Hana usage to the many more customers who have been struggling with Hana on-premises because of its licensing.
The announced Hana Enterprise Cloud follows the 'Bring Your Own License' paradigm. While this is great for customers that already have a Hana license and would like to relocate it into the cloud, it is useless for customers that might have largely fluctuating data volumes or user numbers and might specifically use a cloud because of its elastic business model. …
The SAP Hana Enterprise Cloud is version 2 of the initial Hana in-memory database, but the cloud offering based on 'Bring Your Own License' is more version 0.1 of a cloud business model.
AWS senior vice president Andy Jassy also argues that private clouds like SAP’s aren’t true cloud offerings because they don’t fit the mold of being truly elastic, reducing hardware management, and operating on a pay-as-you-go template.
Do you think there is room for both public and private cloud models, to be used separately by customers and by businesses? Or are Google and Amazon the future of enterprise computing? Respond in the comments section below!
