lustratus REPAMA

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I’ve just uploaded the first draft of my latest Cloud Computing REPAMA Segment Analysis Study.

This time I’ve looked at a couple of vendors in the Cloud Software / Cloud Management / Application Services Management segment (using the Lustratus REPAMA Cloud Computing market taxonomy / segmentation model). Specifically I’ve reverse-engineered the key go-to-market strategies of 3Tera and Appistry. I will add another couple of vendors to the study as time goes on but for the moment I thought these would be two good candidates to start with. They are very different companies with very different product approaches to solving similar, if not quite the same problems. I wanted to spend a little time here highliting some of the interesting findings.

Differentiation

I’ve already blogged on my concern that Cloud Computing vendors/ providers are currently differentiating themselves against previous paradigms as opposed to creating differentiation strategies versus their real competitors – i.e. other cloud computing solutions. So it’s no surprise to see that this trend continues in this study with 3Tera. Looking at where 3Tera fires its competitive differentiation fire power in the UNLIKE element of the positioning statement we can see that the focus is:

traditional dedicated infrastructure

To be honest this is an implied competitor/alternative because whilst 3Tera is very clear on its value proposition and target audience, it doesn’t appear to engage in traditional competitive differentiation. Nowhere does 3Tera clearly define what type of solution they feel they are a better alternative to. There is an obvious implied competitor / alternative which is the traditional ways of doing things. But this is never called out explicitly by 3Tera.

Appistry is clearer on its competitive situation. It believes that its competitive differentiation lies versus:

infrastructure approaches to cloud computing

The implication here is that Appistry focuses on the application and not the infrastructure which they believe yields many benefits.

Existing Applications

One area of strong correlation between the vendors in this study is that they both stress their ability to work with existing applications. This correlation suggests that this is a key customer requirement in this particular market segment. As shown in the chart below:

As you can see from the dashed pink line on the chart above (which represents the market mean – the average marketing strategy for this segment) there is strong support for existing applications in addition to the somewhat obvious “table stakes” feature of automated application deployment and management.

Value Proposition

Another strong area of correlation is in the value proposition. The first chart below shows the raw claims made by each vendor for the value they ascribe to their product offer.

Much of these categories of benefit/value are fairly generic and are all very similar to the the value propositions I would expect to see for a cloud computing product. When these value propositions are interpreted against our MITICOR value proposition classification, we can see a very strong correlation between the products of the different vendors as the chart below shows.

The value proposition for both of these products boils down to operational improvement and cost saving which again is very much as I would expect for a cloud computing technology in this segment.

Positioning Statements

I’m not completely 100% happy with either of these positioning statements as both of these companies appear to aim everywhere and focus nowhere. This lack of focus is important to note in itself as it is common in immature markets, but it does make nailing down a semi-accurate reverse-engineered positioning statement a little tricky. But here they are:

3Tera AppLogic Positioning Statement

FOR organisations looking to deploy successful online services to millions of users WHO are struggling to manage the complexity of the infrastructure required to serve online services to online users OUR AppLogic IS A grid operating system for web applications THAT PROVIDES the ability to assemble existing software into portable applications that run on any grid and scale from a fraction of a server to hundreds of servers with a single command UNLIKE traditional dedicated infrastructure OUR PRODUCT makes it extremely easy to deploy scalable web applications without dedicated IT resources and personnel

Appistry CloudIQ Platform Positioning Statement

FOR enterprises seeking to take advantage of cloud computing WHO need to migrate existing applications to the cloud and virtualized environments OUR CloudIQ Platform IS A Cloud application platform THAT PROVIDES enterprises with the ability to move multiple existing applications to the cloud and manage them across multiple cloud environments UNLIKE infrastructure-focussed approaches to cloud computing OUR PRODUCT allows existing applications to be packaged and deployed to a cloud without re-architecture

Both statements are weak in the target customer and their respective pain, need or desire reflecting the lack of clarity in their outbound marketing.

Slides

I’ve placed a slide deck which expands upon this research on Slideshare.net and this is embedded below. If you’d like more information on this study or a copy of the slides, please contact me. Details of  how to interpret REPAMA studies can be found in the Lustratus REPAMA Guide here.

Danny Goodall

I’ve been working on a way of categorising value propositions for some time. I’ve arrived at something I refer to as MITICOR which I believe represents the atomic value proposition elements.

By this I mean that all business to business value propositions can be broken down into these 7 base elements. I’m sure I will refine this over time but for our purposes these elements allow us to analyse and categorise the different value propositions that vendors use in their go-to-market efforts.

So what do these categories refer to?

Market

Elements categorised as “Market” include value propositions that relate to the organisation’s market or competitive situation, new product or service introduction as well as the organisation’s marketing efforts such as awareness, public relations or image.

Income

“Income” includes any offer that proposes to increase or sustain existing revenue. In addition new revenue streams fall into this category.

Time

“Time” relates to any value proposition that reduces the time it takes to achieve some organisational objective. Importantly this does not refer to reducing the time to achieve a tactical objective as this would likely be categorised under Operational below.

Institutional

Institutional value propositions relate to the organisation as an entity. Chief amongst these are value propositions that deliver value to shareholders. Taxational or political issues such as “green” policies also come under this heading.

Cost

Reduction in costs, offsetting costs and cost restructuring all fit under this value proposition category.

Operational

Propositions that deliver positive changes to the operational efficiency of the organisation come under this classification. Included in here would be propositions that provide visibility into the current operational effectiveness of the organisation.

Risk

The removal or mitigation of risk at a corporate, personal or project level falls under this value proposition classification.

Multiple Categories

Specific value propositions that vendors create will break down into one or more MITICOR category. It may be that a value proposition from a vendor relates to only one MITICOR category but it is likely that it will break down into more than one MITICOR category.

Examples

I’ve listed below some examples of vendor value propositions and the MITICOR categories that they break down into.

I wanted to document this classification in this blog because I will refer to them in future REPAMA research. I’ve also noticed during the course of my research that there are some very predictable value propositions/MITICOR element combinations. In a later blog I will try to document these MITICOR “chains” and specifically how they relate to the members of the decision making unit (DMU).

Danny Goodall.

I’ve been a bit busy recently and so instead of finishing off the complex REPAMA SAS into the “Cloud Computing / Cloud Software / Cloud Management / Application Services Management” study, I decided to produce a rough draft of the much simpler REPAMA into Force.com’s go-to-market strategy instead.

Whilst the segment analysis study only covers Force.com at the moment, I will add additional vendors/providers into the study over the coming weeks. If you have any suggestions who I should compare to/with Force.com, let me know.

I’m quite pleased with the result. Not because of any specific talent on my part but rather as I’ve already said here, Force.com’s marketing is a case study in how to take a new, disruptive technology to market. They understand their audience, they know what problems they solve and they know why they’re better/different. They communicate in clear language and they repeat their positioning strategy again and again and again consistently in all of their out-bound marketing communications. They’ve had successes and they’ve been able to document this and use it as proof of the claims they make. It’s been a joy to reverse-engineer it. That’s not to say that I think it’s perfect – they do tend to mix their audience and messages (audience strata mismatch) but it is very good indeed.

As I’m working through the cloud computing market and helping some vendors with their go-to-market strategies I’ve decided to share this and some  future studies on here because as I said in my ironic blog mission statement all those months ago, I want to highlight best practice in marketing communications and product marketing through this blog. So I thought it would be useful to share what value propositions and messages a market leader is using to address their prospects.

Anyway, below is the positioning statement that I’ve reverse engineered for Force.com’s proposition to end-user organisations. (I don’t plan to tackle the ISV or SI propositions yet)

It’s a little woolly and raw at the moment but even in that state it’s clear that Force.com knows its market, its competition and its USPs. The REPAMA SAS containing just Force.com at the moment can be found online at  Slideshare.net and is embedded below.

If you’d like a copy of the slides let me know. For details of how to interpret the results of the REPAMA study please review the Lustratus REPAMA Guide.

Danny Goodall

OK so having arrived at the first cut of a segmentation model for the Cloud Computing market, I am now embarking on a series of Reverse Engineered Positioning and Messaging Analysis (REPAMA) studies.

The problem I now face though as I start tp look in detail at various cloud vendors’ marketing propositions is that their products, capabilities and value propositions all appear to blur into one.

I guess this is a symptom of the early market nature of Cloud Computing. I would expect that as the market develops, real prospects will make real decisions based upon their real needs, and real differences will be stressed and perceived between the products and services of different vendors/service providers.

But right now the general approach I see is that no matter which product or service of a particular vendor I’m looking at, the proposition to the prospect typically boils down to.

Cloud Computing is good

…and this fits for any product in the portfolio. I see…

Cloud Computing does this, Cloud Computing enables that,Cloud Computing reduces this and Cloud Computing increases that.

Fine. But there are a couple of problems with that.

Firstly, and somewhat obviously, if all vendors/service providers simply evangelise the category like this instead of focussing on what they specifically can do, there is zero differentiation. And with zero differentiation the business typically goes the way of ‘market leader’ or at least the vendor/provider with the greatest market reach.

Secondly, if I were a prospect and all I hear about is the generic capabilities and benefits of the cloud, how do I know what each of the different products in your portfolio could do for me? It might be good to talk to me in terms of what the individual products do, how they are each different from/superior to competitors’ products or alternative approaches, what tangible things each product changes for me and what I would be left with AFTER I’ve bought each product from you.

I should stress that there is another category of proposition developing in my analysis which says cloud is good BUT there are lots of problems and potential problems to address first.

This is an obvious proposition and one that vendors/providers in new paradigms like cloud quickly rally around. It goes something like this…

Cloud will do lots of great things for your organisation but you have to make sure you do it right or all sorts of bad things could happen…

The problem with this proposition is that there is an obvious implication.

…and if you don’t solve these things, you’ll lose your job.

This negative connotation and association with the potential failures of cloud initiatives are perhaps not the best way to attempt to mobilise prospects. Having said that, as the movement toward the cloud builds pace it will likely be this “proceed with caution” proposition that gains traction. As cloud becomes a given, so it will be the vendors/providers that can prove that they can quickly address the deficiencies inherent with current cloud strategies and mitigate the risks involved that will rise to the top.

Anyway these are some of my early findings that I thought I would share.

I’ve decided to first look at the Cloud Software / Cloud Management / Application Services Management category from the segmentation model. And I’ve decided to take a look at Appistry first – mainly because its a category that I’ve had direct experience of but also because in a market as broad and as complex as this one, well, you have to start somewhere.

I’ll keep you posted as I move forward.

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

Attempting to classify and compare the various vendors in the various technical segments of the cloud computing market is tough.

And if I’m honest I’m struggling with the shear volume of vendors that apparently have cloud propositions. I find it amazing that so many vendors/service providers have apparently architected and built specific solutions for this space.

But between you and me, I’m not sure that every vendor/service provider now positioned in the cloud computing market has been beavering away producing a specialised solution. Some I’m sure have done that but others have just changed a name or added an adjective or modifier to a product name.

But one thing is for sure, they’ve all changed their marketing!

As I’ve blogged before, the press release boilerplate (“the about…” text that appears at the end of a press release as guidance for editors) is an invaluable tool for marketing analysts such as myself. As evidence, it is the equivalent of the smoking gun or the size 11 muddy footprints left on the dining room carpet in a detective novel.

As vendors evolve so their boilerplate changes. If a vendor started with a good strategy that only needed minor tweaks over time to turn them into a very successful business, so the press release boilerplate is only tweaked in a minor way over time.  But when a vendor is forced to significantly change course due to a lack of traction or success during their history, the changes are faithfully recorded in the evolution of their bolierplate text.

So when the name Cordys popped up in Google this morning associated with cloud computing I took a double-take. I knew Cordys as an early ESB turned BPM/Orchestration vendor, formed by Jan Baan. I obviously missed their re-positioning so I wanted to do a little digging to find out how they made the leap from one to the other. So I fired up my press release, article and archive research tool and this is what I saw.

On January 12th 2009 Cordys was a business process specialist who apparently hadn’t heard of cloud or “as a service” which was faithfully reflected in its boilerplate.

Business process management specialists form strategic alliance – Cordys and Inex establish Cordys BPMS Centre of Excellence in the UK

About Cordys – 12th January 2009

Cordys is a global provider of software for business process innovation. The industry-leading Cordys Business Operations Platform (BOP) consists of a complete suite for next generation Business Process Management (BPMS), Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) and an open, integrated set of tools and technologies including Composite Application Framework (CAF), Master Data Management (MDM) and a SOA Grid. The Cordys platform empowers customers to dramatically improve the speed of change, fundamentally altering the way they innovate their Business Operations to achieve a true customer-centric philosophy. Global 2000 companies worldwide have selected Cordys to achieve business performance improvements such as increased productivity, reduced time to market, higher security and faster response to ever-changing market demands. Headquartered in the Netherlands, Cordys is a global company with offices in the USA, the UK, Germany, China, India and Israel.

But 8 days later that was all changed and the new positioning was reflected in its  boilerplate.

Cordys award winning Process Factory now available as community platform free of charge Web-based application development and BPM accessible to the Open Community.

About Cordys – January 20th 2009

Cordys is a global provider of software for business process innovation and Enterprise Cloud Orchestration. The industry-leading Cordys Business Operations Platform (BOP) consists of a complete suite for next generation Business Process Management (BPM), Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) and innovative SaaS Deployment Frameworks (SDF), delivering a complete Platform as a Service (PaaS) solution. It includes an open, integrated set of tools & technologies including Composite Application Framework (CAF), Master Data Management (MDM) and a SOA Grid. The Cordys platform and its cutting-edge Cloud technology empowers customers to dramatically improve the speed of change, fundamentally altering the way they innovate their Business Operations to achieve a true customer-centric philosophy. Global 2000 companies worldwide have selected Cordys to achieve business performance improvements such as increased productivity, reduced time to market, higher security and faster response to ever-changing market demands. Headquartered in the Netherlands, Cordys is a global company with offices in the USA, the UK, Germany, China, India and Israel.

Now I don’t want to seem to be picking on Cordys unduly as there are many other examples of companies that have re-positioned to catch this wave. I’ve advocated, supervised or instigated similar populist strategies myself in the past and doubtless will do again in the future. Yes, I’m sure that with a provenance as good as Cordys/Baan this must have been part of a much wider initiative involving new product development and long-term strategies. Yes, I know that SOA/Orchestration does have an obvious if somewhat tangential connection to the cloud paradigm. But there was no apparent evolution to cloud, no obvious chain of functionality that led them to become a cloud service provider which makes me a little suspicious.

The issue however is that because it is this easy to become a cloud computing vendor/service provider the market has quickly become incredibly crowded. Until the cloud market starts to take some tangible form that is based on customer need/demand and not just vendor whim and spin, then it is going to make selecting and choosing a cloud or *aaS offer very difficult for legitimate prospects.

So I’ll add Cordys into the ever-growing list of cloud computing vendors and file them under platform services/integration. And when I get round to tackling that section of the REPAMA study, we’ll see how Cordys’ offer stacks up.

Danny  Goodall

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

Continuing my quest to segment the cloud computing market, I’m now looking at the role a channel might play in cloud computing…

…and I’m struggling a little to map the traditional channel role onto cloud. But here are my current thoughts.

There are some obvious areas in the cloud taxonomy/segmentation that look like a good old fashioned software sales model. So first let’s start with my draft / work in progress taxonomy/segmentation to help anchor the discussions in something solid. BTW draft/work in progress means that it will change.

Cloud Software

So the Cloud Software segment looks like a traditional software business. Using Brad Buck’s definition for this segment:

Cloud Software is off-the-shelf software that can be used to create an internal cloud or in some cases can be used to customise infrastructure services to mould a customer cloud solution.

Although Brad implies this, I’d extend that even further to say that cloud software will be the basis upon which infrastructure service providers build, host, manage, secure, monitor, etc. their own infrastructure services. So as this is real software being sold to real organisations the channel model I’ve come up with looks familar.

Software is sold to an organisation either directly or through some form of reseller/distribution channel. The end user IT organisation making the purchase either creates a cloud on their own premises for internal use (internal cloud) or a cloud service provider uses the cloud software to create a cloud service which is then made available to others.

Software Services

Looking at the software services segment, the definition here is

Software services are applications or components that can be used as an end application or used as part of a custom solution

So we have packaged applications or application components of varying degrees of complexity made available to application users directly by the software services provider. Application builders will incorporate some of these software services into their own applications which are tailored and then made available to application users – thus forming one channel to market.

The draft channel model I see there is as shown below:

Here we see that the application user is the ultimate consumer of the software service and that they are likely to consume that directly via the software service provider or via a third party application builder that modifies and extends the software service.

Platform Services

Broadly similar to the platform as a service definition, this segment is defined here specifically as:

Platform services offer a ready built infrastructure and application framework than can be used for building and running applications.

Platform services provide the frameworks in which applications can be built, tested and run. The application user is ultimately the end consumer of the service but some form of application builder will have used the platform service to make the application available to the user as shown below:

There is an argument here that the strict consumer of the platform service is the application builder who then makes the application available to the application user as a software service model. I need to think about this a little more before I cast this section in stone.

Infrastructure Services

Finally the infrastructure services segment is defined as:

Infrastructure services provide building blocks that can be moulded to run different application servers, packaged applications, grids, etc., which can be used to host applications.

These are basic data centre-like hardware, software and network elements that are provided as building blocks upon which software services and platform services can be deployed. In addition end user IT organisations also procure infrastructure services directly and then deploy their own software on to it, treating it as a virtual part of their own infrastructure.

This means that the channel model for infrastructure services looks like this:

Implied Channel Hierarchy

There is an implied channel hierarchy as shown in the diagram below but this is not always strictly followed. The diagram suggests that each level of service provider engages the services of the higher level service provider.

Whilst this certainly will be the deployment model for many cloud users it will not always be the the case. For example whilst it might make academic sense to assume that software services are built and made available using platform services which are then deployed in infrastructure services, in reality services at each level can be provisioned and delivered autonomously without the need for a relationship with providers at any of the other levels.

Conclusion

Well I can’t say that I’ve reached any sort of conclusion yet but I think getting these drafts down on paper has helped me think about the way that the IT industry’s traditional channel models will change over the coming years. I think it’s clear that we will either have less “middle-men” in our sales models or that the roles of these middle-men will change significantly as cloud computing becomes more prevalent.

OK, so back to the segmentation exercise. Next I need to decide on the candidate sub-segments within the major segments explored above. And then I need to decide on which vendors will appear in each of those sub-segments. Finally I need to decide which segments, sub-segments and vendors/providers will be the focus of our cloud computing REPAMA research. I’ll keep you posted on my progress.

The  DRAFT Channel Models for Cloud Computing presentation from which the diagrams above have been extracted is shown below.

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.

Danny Goodall

As mentioned earlier in these pages I’m documenting my quest to arrive at a market segmentation model of the cloud computing market. This will allow me to perform a series of REPAMA competitive marketing studies into various vendors in the cloud computing space. I’m uncovering more and more interesting research as I go and one such piece is described below.

The smart people at NIST (The US Governmental agency responsible for something or other – standards I think) have released some interesting work on cloud computing. Aimed at reaching a common set of definitions around cloud computing and its use cases, but recognising that these will change over time, their work can be found here.

I’ve reproduced some sections below because I think they add something to my quest to segment the cloud computing market. That said, I think they’ve omitted, perhaps consciously, an important characteristic and that is the commercial arrangements around cloud computing – namely its pay per use nature.

Anyway here goes:

A Definition of Cloud Computing:

Cloud computing is a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction. This cloud model promotes availability and is composed of five essential characteristics, three service models, and four deployment models.

Essential Characteristics of Cloud Computing

On-demand self-service. A consumer can unilaterally provision computing capabilities, such as server time and network storage, as needed automatically without requiring human interaction with each service’s provider.

Broad network access. Capabilities are available over the network and accessed through standard mechanisms that promote use by heterogeneous thin or thick client platforms (e.g., mobile phones, laptops, and PDAs).

Resource pooling. The provider’s computing resources are pooled to serve multiple consumers using a multi-tenant model, with different physical and virtual resources dynamically assigned and reassigned according to consumer demand. There is a sense of location independence in that the customer generally has no control or knowledge over the exact location of the provided resources but may be able to specify location at a higher level of abstraction (e.g., country, state, or datacenter). Examples of resources include storage, processing, memory, network bandwidth, and virtual machines.

Rapid elasticity. Capabilities can be rapidly and elastically provisioned, in some cases automatically, to quickly scale out and rapidly released to quickly scale in. To the consumer, the capabilities available for provisioning often appear to be unlimited and can be purchased in any quantity at any time.

Measured Service. Cloud systems automatically control and optimize resource use by leveraging a metering capability at some level of abstraction appropriate to the type of service (e.g., storage, processing, bandwidth, and active user accounts). Resource usage can be monitored, controlled, and reported providing transparency for both the provider and consumer of the utilized service.

Service Models:

Cloud Software as a Service (SaaS). The capability provided to the consumer is to use the provider’s applications running on a cloud infrastructure. The applications are accessible from various client devices through a thin client interface such as a web browser (e.g., web-based email). The consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure including network, servers, operating systems, storage, or even individual application capabilities, with the possible exception of limited user-specific application configuration settings.

Cloud Platform as a Service (PaaS). The capability provided to the consumer is to deploy onto the cloud infrastructure consumer-created or acquired applications created using programming languages and tools supported by the provider. The consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure including network, servers, operating systems, or storage, but has control over the deployed applications and possibly application hosting environment configurations.

Cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). The capability provided to the consumer is to provision processing, storage, networks, and other fundamental computing resources where the consumer is able to deploy and run arbitrary software, which can include operating systems and applications. The consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure but has control over operating systems, storage, deployed applications, and possibly limited control of select networking components (e.g., host firewalls).

Deployment Models:

Private cloud. The cloud infrastructure is operated solely for an organization. It may be managed by the organization or a third party and may exist on premise or off premise.

Community cloud. The cloud infrastructure is shared by several organizations and supports a specific community that has shared concerns (e.g., mission, security requirements, policy, and compliance considerations). It may be managed by the organizations or a third party and may exist on premise or off premise.

Public cloud. The cloud infrastructure is made available to the general public or a large industry group and is owned by an organization selling cloud services.

Hybrid cloud. The cloud infrastructure is a composition of two or more clouds (private, community, or public) that remain unique entities but are bound together by standardized or proprietary technology that enables data and application portability (e.g., cloud bursting for load-balancing between clouds).

I think this is a really nice and compact definition of cloud computing it characteristics and use cases. I particularly like the notes on deployment models which I certainly want to incorporate into my cloud computing market segmentation.

Kudos to Peter Mell and Tim Grance of NIST!

Danny Goodall

I’m continuing the REPAMA Segment Analysis Study into the Cloud Computing market attempting to arrive at a solid market segmentation and two things have become very clear.

Firstly, every vendor with a remotely related proposition appears to have added the word “cloud” to their product name, presumably in an attempt to bask in the reflected glory that cloud computing provides, perhaps in an effort to appease their investors. This means that there are a large number of vendors claiming to be part of specific segments that may or may not have legitimate claims. This makes the process I’m going through confusing and messy. And if I, as a marketing analyst am having problems, I wonder what sort of success a legitimate prospect would have in finding the product/service they need.

Secondly, the market is still in flux and as such nailing a clear segmentation down is, for some time, going to be like herding cats. This is a classic early market symptom where the market is currently led by vendors’ own ideas about what is needed and what is possible. Once the market starts to form properly and vendors align behind what their prospects and customers are actually buying, then the segmentation will become clearer.

But I have to start somewhere and the good news is that I’ve been corresponding with both Peter Laird of Tendril Inc. and Brad Buck of OpenCrowd and they both have given their blessing to this project and have offered to help if they can. Most importantly they are both happy for me to use their work on a cloud computing taxonomy/model, here and here, as a starting point for my cloud market segmentation.

One thing that I quickly realised was needed for my purposes was some form of professional services (human skills) offer. Plenty of large consultancies, smaller integrators and boutique IT shops offer consultancy services around cloud computing. Both Peter and Brad have rightly focussed on the categorisation of product capability and customer need in fleshing our “their” taxonomy. But to fully understand what propositions are being put together to service the cloud computing “need”, I must include cloud computing professional services.

So far I’ve identified the following list of services under the category of professional services. I suspect that it will grow some and be rationalised some before I finish.

• Strategy, planning and design
• Migration and implementation services
• Testing
• Security
• Cloud application design/porting
• Support services and training

I suspect that cloud application design/porting will be a relatively niche category for a while and that testing, security and support services may all become amalgamated as I carry on my research.

Another major category of cloud computing offer that has also presented itself is that of “Channel”. A number of organisations are white labelling, OEM’ing, reselling or otherwise fronting cloud vendors/service providers’ offerings. One concern that I have is that this sort of partnering is very common in hot early markets where one vendor with no cloud proposition hastily signs a partner agreement to simply tick a box. It does’t mean that either company will do any real business.  I’ll do some digging and and if it looks like a real enough category I’ll add it and blog on it soon.

Danny Goodall.