lustratus REPAMA

Posts Tagged ‘DataSynapse’

So Steve and I had a briefing call with Kaavo yesterday who have some interesting technology. And it set me thinking about whether there is a market for pure play application services management in the cloud.

Kaavo automates the job of application configuration and management in the cloud. The product – imod, is rules and workflow-based and manages the life-cycle of application provisioning, including deploying and configuring the software components or services required to create the environment in which applications execute.

I hope I’m not dumbing it down too much to say that I think of it as a data centre automation tool that understands how to manage virtual IaaS instead of physical infrastructure. Kaavo’s CEO and founder Jamal Mazhar would I’m sure also point out that Kaavo takes a top-down, application-centric approach when compared to other solutions in the space. The IaaS deployment environments that they currently support include Amazon, Rackspace and GoGrid amongst others with support for the Eucalytpus project coming soon.

The product naturally fits into at least two of the categories of the market landscape / taxonomy / market segmentation model that I’ve developed. They certainly appear in

• Infrastructure Services/Services

But I could also make a case for them in

• Cloud Software / Cloud Management

and even

• Cloud Software / Cloud Management / Application Services Management

But whilst the business model of Kaavo remains service-based (they charge per CPU hour of managed application) then that pretty much excludes them from the last two software-based categories.

As I’ve been looking at the application services management category in some detail, one pattern that I’ve seem amongst vendors such as DataSynapse (TIBCO), Appistry, and 3Tera is that whilst they offer the management services to automate the deployment of applications, they appear to major on deploying those applications and application components to their own infrastructure as opposed to infrastructure provided as a service by a third party.

A number of these vendors have come to Cloud Computing via Grid Computing and as such it makes senses that the virtual infrastructure that they deploy to is their own grid. They would rightly point out that owning the management and the infrastructure leads to many benefits such as tighter control, better monitoring and better support for the scaling the infrastructure up and down to match demand. In fact some of these vendors do appear to provide the option for deploying to third-party infrastructure services such as Amazon’s EC2, so it suggests that this sort of hybrid infrastructure may be being endorsed.

But I guess I’m left wondering two things.

Firstly is there really a separate market for pure-play application services management where the infrastructure is always provided by a third party? Don’t get me wrong I can see the need and I can see the benefit but it looks a little too much like the existing discipline of application services management already present in today’s data centre automation tools. So if these existing tools add the capability to deploy to, monitor and manage virtual infrastructure as a service then they will be well placed to get the business. But then again perhaps adding this capability is not a trivial matter. Hmm. Not sure.

Secondly, assuming that there is a separate market – what is the route to market for this sort of pure-play, services-based ( as opposed to licensed software ) offer? Could it be taken to enterprises directly? Yes, but it would require significant resources. To me, it looks like a more natural proposition for aaS providers to help them manage the massive number of deployed applications that they will be looking after if the predictions for the impact of cloud are accurate.

Either way Kaavo has an interesting approach that I’m sure either Steve or I will revisit as they develop.

Danny Goodall

I’ve completed the first draft of the cloud computing segmentation model upon which we will build our REPAMA studies.

As I’ve mentioned before along my journey to arrive at this model, I’ve found the cloud computing market to have quickly become crowded and confused. This is largely due to the ease at which “traditional” vendors have re-repositioned themselves to catch the cloud computing wave.

The other issue of course is that over time cloud computing will cease to be a new paradigm and will quickly become the way consumers and businesses avail themselves of computing services. So what I’m seeing here is a market in transition where just about every category in traditional software sales will have an offer in the cloud computing space until on-demand models becomes “the norm”.

So I guess it’s really not that surprising to see so many vendors present in the space. But at the same time it is very confusing for legitimate prospects to cut their way through the mass of terminology to then examine vendors and service providers who appear to have broadly identical capabilities and value propositions.  How do they decide the best way to take their first steps into cloud computing? It’ll be interesting to see what our REPAMA studies say about how each of the vendors/service providers’ takes their products to market.

Anyway, I’ve uploaded a set of slides to slideshare.net which I think is probably the best way to make the material available but if anyone wants a copy of the slides please let me know. The slides are embedded below.

As I’ve said before, this segmentation model will undoubtedly develop and change over time as I look in more detail at the marketing efforts of the various vendors involved. The definitions for each of the functional areas are a little woolly right now. But at least I now have a structure that allows me to decide which segments and vendors/service providers I will include in our studies moving forward.

I’d like to once again acknowledge the significant role that Brad Buck, Peter Laird and Christofer Hoff played in helping to form the ideas on market segmentation and the role NIST has played in crystallising definitions on cloud computing and software/platform/infrastructure as a service.

Danny Goodall

Products and vendors included in the segmentation model are shown below. If you represent a vendor below and I haven’t represented your organisation correctly, or if you represent a vendor that isn’t included but should be, please contact me and let me know a little bit about your company and your proposition and where you feel you fit in the segmentation model.

10Gen MongoDB, 3Tera App Logic, Aconex, Advologix, Altor Networks, Amazon EBS, Amazon EC2, Amazon S3, Amazon SimpleDB, Amazon SQS, Amitive, Apache CouchDB, Apache HBase, Appian Anywhere, Appistry, AppJet, AppNexus, AppZero, Aptana, Aria Systems, Aster DB, Beam4d, Beowulf, Blink Logic, Boomi, Box.net, Bungee Labs Connect, Caspio, Cassandra, Cast Iron, Clickability, Cloud42, Cloud9 Analytics, CloudFoundry, CloudStatus, ClusterSeven, CohesiveFT, CohesiveFT VPN Cubed, ColdLight Neuron, Collabnet, Concur, CrownPoint, CTERA, CTERA Portal, DataSynapse, Desktoptwo, DirectLaw, DocLanding, DropBox, Dynamsoft, Dynect, Elastichosts, Elastra, EMC Atmos, Engine Yard, Enomaly Enomalism, enStratus, Etelos, Eucalyptus, eVapt, FathomDB, Fios, Flexiscale, Force.com, Gemstore Gemfire, Gigaspaces, Globus Toolkit, gnip, Google App Engine, Google Apps, Google BigTable, GridLayer, Hadoop, Hosting.com CloudNine, HubSpan, Hyperic, Hypertable, IBM Lotus Live, iCIMS, InfoBright, Informatica iTRICITY, Joyent Accelerators, JungleDisk, K2 Analytics, Kaavo, Knowledge TreeLive, LayeredTech, LiveOps, LoadStorm, LogiXML, LongJump, LucidEra, memcached, Mercury, mezeo software, Microsoft BizTalk Services, Microsoft SDS, Mosso Cloud Files, Mosso Cloud Servers, Mosso Cloud Sites, Mozy, MS Azure Services Platform, MSDynamics, MuleSource Mule OnDemand, NetDocuments, NetSuite, NewRelic, Ning, Nirvanix, Oco, Open.ControlTier, OpenCloud, opencrowd, OpenNebula, OpenQRM, OpenRSM, OpSource, OpSource Connect, Oracle Coherence, Oracle On Demand, Panaroma, Parallels, ParaScale, Parature, PingIdentity, PivotLink, Platform, Qrimp, Quantivo, Questys, rackspacecloud, Redi2, Reductive Labs Puppet, Responsys, Rightnow, RightScale, Rollbase, rPath, Salesforce.com, Scalr, Sertifi, Serve Path GoGrid, SkyTap, SnapLogic, SnapLogic SaaS Solution Packs, SOASTA, SpringCM, Sterna, StreetSmarts, Success Metrics, Sun Grid Engine, Symplified, Syncplicity, Taleo, TerraCotta, Terremark, TIBCO Silver, Tokyo Cabinet, Trigence, Vertica, VMWare vSphere, Vordel, Workday, Workxpress, Xactly, Xero, Xeround, Xythos, Ylastic, Zembly, Zmanda, Zmanda Cloud Backup, Zoho, Zuora, Mezeo Software, Workxpress, Trigence, AppZero, Platform, OneNetwork, SpringSource, Vaultscape

Continuing the research I’ve documented in these pages…

…I’ve either stumbled across, been gently reminded or have been actively asked to include specific vendors in the list of cloud computing vendors.

So here’s REV 4.

The actual list of vendors is shown in the tag list below. Also included in the Wordle is a list of the categories and classifications from DRAFT 1 of our market segmentation model which I will post here soon.

Danny Goodall

I’ve made a minor update and per some of the comments I received I’ve made the Wordle a little more readable – but not that readable as that’s sort of the point.

Danny Goodall

I’m going to maintain a wordle of vendors that appear to have an association with cloud computing. I will add to this during the course of my research.  Here’s the first draft.

Click for a larger version. Initial vendors supplied courtesy of the good people at Opencrowd.

Danny Goodall.