I have for several years now been pushing the idea off the IT buzzword called cloud services to be similar to the traditional production platform that the ISP´s (Internet Service Providers) delivered their auto provisioned services across. The whole idea was to be as efficient as possible both related to deliverables and cost.
Going even further back I just point at the CPU lease models from IBM via their big machine setup. “Easy” to use on demand service offering that has been working very well, just ask the banking world, for many years. 🙂
Now it seems the hardware world where DELL with their new hyper compute setup can be something to take a closer look at.
Interesting in this setup is also the steps Microsoft takes on their “software” platform for all that need an “engine” to run their software on. Interesting to listen to the development in the independent software vendor world.
Just adding the network side of this business we can take a closer look at what Cisco via their OpenStack offering is moving into the marked with. This is going to be interesting for anyone that believe that software need a “machine” attached to a network ++.
There are more of these examples and I think it is great that we see a development that huge companies take responsibility for the platforms that can be used to talk down to the server, – and network “engines”.
The next question now is… whom can supply the different engines needed in a fully scalable and reliable solution. Be aware that many of the suppliers that marked them selves as the solution have some interesting total pricing models when all elements are taken into account.
There is a window to be filled here and I see that the larger players will move alongside their existing business to fill the gap.
We will see some cool solutions out there and maybe we are able to see a combination of carrier class service offering with full scalability via the software “layer” and a working basement.. 😉
regards
bj