The future of VMware public clouds

For those of you who run cloud infrastructures or operate hosted virtual servers there's a good chance you are using VMware. In fact if you read the latest "Cloud Infrastructure as a Service and Web Hosting" Gartner Magic Quadrant, there is criticism for providers who aren't using VMware.

When it comes down to licencing, because VMWare end user licencing agreements do not allow for products to be used in hosting environments, service providers have to enter into a VMware Service Provider Program (VSPP).

The reason for me asking about the future of VMWare public clouds is that the current VSPP which is based on charging per active virtual machine will be defunct by March 2012. The replacement VSPP agreement will be charged on the amount of virtual memory allocated to each virtual machine. This isn't a major issue until you start creating VMs that are allocated over 3GB RAM, for example the cost for a 32GB VM will work out over 13 times more expensive than under the previous scheme (to the provider).

My question though is how this will impact the big public cloud providers such as Navisite, Rackspace & Opsource who run on VMware and charge by actual RAM usage. Surely this will be impossible to maintain as if a user creates a 32GB RAM VM but only draws 2GB RAM, then the provider will be in a position of having to pay VMware for a 32GB VM licence and only receiving customer revenues for 2GB of actual usage.

I'm sure it will come out in the wash, but I wouldn't be surprised to see some major pricing structure changes from the big providers over the next 12 months.

Quantix driving profit growth through Cloud services

Source: TechMarketView

Privately owned Quantix, a managed hosting services provider, has updated us on trading for its first half, which shows rising growth and profits on the back of its move to provide cloud services. With turnover for the first half of £4m, the company is projecting revenues of £9m for the full year (up 7%) and EBITDA up 23% to £2.1m – not a bad performance in the current climate. Managed services was up 15% and forms the centrepiece of its ambitions for the coming years. Quantix may be a new name to many, but has a familiar heritage: the company was created in 2007 by an MBO of the support services division of IT distributor Sphinx CST, part of Lynx, backed by PE firm ISIS.

Quantix is primarily a provider of managed services around the Oracle platform to medium-large organizations in the private and public sector. Recently it has been investing in its data centre capacity to expand its range of managed services. Most interesting, it has ‘packaged up’ its offering as “Oracloud,” a solution which essentially allows companies without the necessary IT resources / skills to set up private clouds based on Oracle, VMware, Juniper etc. This can include software companies, and they are one of the major targets for Quantix’s current marketing

Indeed, we became interested in Quantix in part through one of its contracts, with IDBS, to provide IDBS software as a Cloud service to a major pharmaceuticals company and its partners (see IDBS - update). Quantix’s affable MD, Dick Salmon, told us that he saw a significant opportunity in supporting software companies in their moves to offering software-as-a-service. Undoubtedly “the cloud” is changing profoundly the structure of the IT industry and routes to service delivery. We see big opportunities in managed services provision around companies like Quantix and will be writing much more on this theme in the future.

*aas Virus

The *aas virus is rumoured to have been created by a marketing department in 2005, who were disillusioned with the IT industry. Initially the terms SaaS, Paas & Iaas were coined which made perfect sense and were a good way of explaining the benefits and opportunity of cloud computing. However, the virus rasied it's head, it started mutating into multiple forms and propogated the internet at an alarming rate. Strange *aas's such as aaas and gaas which are surely not the work of rational humans started appearing on the internet and everyone finally breathed a sigh of relief as it was surely limited to 26 varaints due to the number of letters in the alphabet. After a little resistance it broke through creating terms such as DBaaS, STaas etc..but then as if to laugh in the face of the IT industry multiple meanings of the same *aas appeared.

...Ok that's obviously a bit tongue in cheek...but for a bit of fun I want to create a list of every *aas and it's definition out there. Below is as far as I have got but it you spot a new *aas please post a comment on this blog with a web link to the site. To qualify it must be quoted in a serious context on a companies website. I will then update the list on a monthly basis.....happy *aas spotting.

AaaS – Authentication as a Service; Application as a Service; Anything as a Service; Architecture as a Service; Analytics as a Service; Aggregation as a Service; Accounting as a Service; Anti Virus as a Service; Auctions as a Service;

BaaS – Business as a Service; Backup as a Service; Banking as a Service; Bandwidth as a Service; Blog as a Service; Business Process Management as a Service;

BBaaS – Black boxes as a Service;

BIaaS – Business Intelligence as a Service;

BLaaS – Blog as a Service;

BPaaS – Business Processes as a Service;

CaaS – Computing as a Service; Communication as a Service; Cells as a Service; Compliance as a Service; Crimeware as a Service; Content as a Service; Capability as a Service

CRMaaS – CRM as a Service;

DaaS – Datacentre as a Service; Database as a Service; Desktops as a Service; Data as a Service;

DBaas – Database as a service;

EaaS – Ethernet as a Service; Everything as a Service; Environments as a Service

FaaS – Firewall as a Service; Frameworks as a Service; Finance as a Service;

GaaS – Grid as a Service; Globalization as a Service; Governance as a Service

HaaS – Hardware as a Service; Humans as a Service

IaaS – Infrastructure as a Service;

IDaaS – Identity as a Service;

IMaaS – Information as a Service;

JaaS – Java as a Service;

KaaS – Knowledge as a Service

LaaS – Lending as a Service;

MaaS – Mashups as a Service;

NaaS – Network as a Service;

OaaS – Organization as a Service; Operation as a Service

PaaS – Platform as a Service; Process as a Service;

PRaaS – Processes as a Service

QaaS – Query as a Service; Quality as a Service;

RaaS – Resources as a Service; Reporting as a Service; Research as a Service; Restore as a Service

SaaS – Software as a Service; Service as a Service

SEaaS – Service Ecosystems as a Service;

STaaS – Storage as a Service;

TaaS – Testing as a Service; Technology as a Service; Tools as a Service; Trust as a Service

UaaS - Utilities as a Service;

VaaS – Voice as a Service; VMware as a Service; Video as a Service

WaaS – Web as a Service

Xaas – (umbrella term for all the aas’s!)

YaaS -

ZaaS – Zimbra as a Service


Cheers,

Andy