A quick & dirty look at web traffic trends on AWS, Azure, Force.com, GAE, and IBM Dev/Test cloud

Since the introduction of EC2 in 2005/2006, a lot has happened.  New service providers such as Google App Engine (GAE) and Force.com have emerged.  Existing hosting providers such as GoGrid & RackSpace have transformed to cloudify their service delivery model.  And, existing platform vendors such as IBM and Microsoft have raced to implement or acquire solutions to respond to this fundamental shift. 

Different types of vendors are competing for market positions.  Some are new: Abiquo,  Nimbula, Cloud.com (formerly VMOps)…  And, some are mature: VMware, Novell/Attachmate, CA, BMC, DELL, …  [The vendor landscape is big and complex, and includes other types of vendors including systems integrators…]

As we close 2010, I thought it would be interesting to look at some usage trends of the big names in the Cloud market. 

The statistics come from Alexa.  It uses its own methods for capturing HTTP traffic, and normalizing the data.  As such, it is important to note that it does not include non-web app workload deployed on these cloud services.  In addition, it is common for enterprises to use DNS aliasing (CNAME) to map to a custom URL.  So, it is important to consider traffic to custom URLs would not be included in the following presentation.

Comparing aws, azure, force, gae, and ibm

View more presentations from babak hosseinzadeh.

The intent is to provide some ideas about usage and future trends, as these vendors battle it out for dominance and market share.

Please send me any comments or questions at babakh@yahoo.com.

Wish everyone a Happy New Year!

More on VMforce - Part Deux

I blogged about VMforce a couple of times back in April.  In August, VMware/SpringSource and SalesForce.com provided more details about this service in a couple of webinars to introduce Spring framework to Force.com developers, and Force.com & VMforce to Java developers:

VMForce–Cloud Computing for Java Developers

Basically, VMforce enables developers deploy JEE webapps on Force.com, and access Force.com database to persist data using standard JEE interfaces (JPA):

SpringSource offers the tooling (STS) to easily build and deploy Spring-based applications to VMforce. Force.com implements a JPA adapter to provide secure, multi-tenant access to Force.com database.

On the development/tooling side, it doesn’t seem the Force.com Eclipse Plug-in can be installed on STS (yet).  Once they work this out, both sets of developers can install one Eclipse to implement either JEE/Spring apps or Apex. 

I think the significance of VMforce is beyond merely extending Force.com with Java EE support or providing extensibility for Apex applications.  VMforce is significant, because it will support the most common approach to Cloud migration by customers.   Customers need a reliable service from a reputable, enterprise-ready service provider to move their existing applications to the cloud as is without much re-factoring.  This is going to be the trend for the next few years.  VMforce is a key strategy to meet that need. 

And, of course with Spring framework programming model (abstraction, dependency injection), there is a good story for platform lock-in and change management.

What is not completely clear so far is how VMforce will meet monitoring and on-premise integration requirements for customers.

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Side note:

As I am writing this, I can understand how Google and SalesForce have partnered with SpringSource today to enable implementation of Cloud apps using the framework (i.e. skills).  However, this framework is based on “legacy Java EE” development and deployment.  Java EE, as it exists today, does not cover Cloud distributed programming model and patterns, and I don’t know if it could be easily extended to support them.   The problem here is that customers may have to invest in migration in the future.

However, there is no practical alternative available today.  Until there is standardization around Cloud development, deployment, and interoperability, Spring-based development seems to be a logical approach.

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Thoughts/Comments?

A brief look at Oracle and its Cloud Strategy

For the last couple of years, Oracle has shown a consistent strategy to Cloud Computing.  It has made strategic acquisitions such as Virtual Iron to gain x86 virtualization management software, and has also made investments in new products such as Virtual Assembly Builder to facilitate configuration and governance of virtual environments.

Oracle has made clear that it intends to be a provider of technology to both enterprise customers and service providers.  That it does not plan to be a public cloud provider/operator like AWS or Savvis.  Instead, Oracle works with public cloud services as a distribution and delivery partner. 

[Note: See AWS/Oracle announcement of  support for Oracle middleware and apps on EC2 using Oracle VM images.]

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This post is a brief look at Oracle and its cloud strategy.  First, I will review Oracle business, financial, and what it brings to Cloud Computing.  Next, I will provide a 5-minute SWOT analysis of Oracle Cloud Strategy.

Oracle business

Oracle’s goal is to be the world’s most complete, open and integrated enterprise software and hardware company.  In FY2010, it booked more than $26B in revenue.  The company breaks down its revenue as follows:

• Software
• New software sales
• Software license renewals & support contract
• Hardware
• Hardware sales
• Hardware support & maintenance contract
• Services
• Consulting
• Education
• On Demand

Here is their revenue trend for the last 5 years:

• Oracle made over 32% of its 2010 total revenue ($26,821 million) from database & middleware renewal, and about 16% from Fusion apps renewal.  This is due to the fact that almost 90% of Oracle customers renew contracts.   [Renewal has a margin of 85%, and is the key factor to Oracle’s overall profitability.]
• Oracle’s On Demand, which is where it offers hosted Fusion application, has also contributed to about 3% of total revenue.  This segment has shown steady growth.  In fact, since 2005, it has grown almost 3 times.  [This is a key area to future growth for Oracle especially considering all the investments they have been making to standardize Fusion apps on Fusion middleware and continue to “SaaSify” the applications.]

Oracle Cloud Business Strategy

As stated earlier, Oracle intends to be primarily a Cloud technology provider/enabler as opposed to a service operator.  This was further evidenced as it halted the rollout plans for Project Caroline after the Sun acquisition.

For enterprise customers, Oracle is addressing the needs for private cloud by providing integrated machines such as Exadata and Exalogic.  These machines help customers consolidate workloads and scale up/down as demand grows.  Oracle also continues with new products and enhancement of its middleware and enterprise management solution to enable customers build private clouds on their own hardware.

I think Oracle will be forced to change their cloud strategy for the following reasons:

• According to analysts, about 10% of IT budget is spent on external cloud services and that percentage will keep growing (see Gartner’s survey).  Oracle needs to pay attention to this shift in enterprise IT spending, if it plans to increase marketshare and revenue.  Large customers struggle with supporting workloads in the cloud, so they look for a vendor to not only help them move workloads to the Cloud, but also provide support and management.  So, they look for hosted managed private clouds.  Oracle could address this need by leveraging Sun assets such as Caroline to offer such services.  This would position it well for future growth.   
• It is common knowledge that Oracle wants to reach $100B in revenue in the next 10 years.  Cloud Computing, including integrated systems, is a key growth strategy for Oracle.    Oracle needs to diversify to reach that level of revenue in the next decade.  It can’t rely on acquisitions to make that happen.  Let’s assume Oracle acquires CA.  That would only boost Oracle’s revenue by $4B.  

Sidebar: Let’s play the following scenario.  Let’s assume that on average with every Exalogic Oracle charges $1M for hardware and $3M for software. Furthermore, let’s assume a %20 maintenance revenue per box / year.  If Oracle sold 1000 units every year for the next 3 years, they would book a total of $12B in combined new hardware and software + $4B in maintenance.  Everything else constant, by 2014, Oracle’s revenue would grow by $16B to $42B.  Can they do that? 

Oracle Cloud Solution

The following diagram describes Oracle’s cloud solution model:

Oracle models its solutions based on different Cloud service offering.   The diagram is pretty self-explanatory.  At the IaaS level, Oracle Sun hardware,  and virtualization technologies (Virtual Iron + Sun).  Oracle offers other capabilities that are not listed in this diagram such as Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) and Oracle VM Virtual Box.

In the PaaS layer, Oracle uses a combination of virtualization to isolate workloads and management deployment + grid technologies to enable dynamic resources and scaling for applications.

At the top layer, Oracle and non-Oracle apps can be deployed on this platform.  Oracle Fusion apps are optimized for Oracle Fusion middleware. 

Finally, on the right hand side, there is the management layer…The slide is a cut and paste of Richard Sarwal’s presentation at Oracle OpenWorld.  In that presentation, Richard also mentioned that there other capabilities and solution that Oracle will be offering in the next year (i.e. self-service portal, metering & charge-back, etc)

Oracle Cloud SWOT

In terms of integrated systems, Oracle will face competition primarily from IBM CloudBurst and Acadia.  On the middleware side, IBM offers a similar set of offerings based on WebSphere and Tivoli (i.e. WebSphere CloudBurst, WebSphere Virtual Enterprise, Tivoli Cloud Management stack).   Oracle will face competition from VMware vFabric.   IBM has embraced VMware as a virtualization partner (on x86)whereas Oracle decided to acquire its own virtualization.  That has been a source of friction between the two vendors.

In terms of deployment and support, IBM offers more choices than Oracle:

• IBM & Oracle both offer enterprise-owned cloud
• IBM offers managed private cloud services (using customers assets), but Oracle does not.  A customer would have to get a managed services contract from an Oracle partner like Wipro.
• IBM offers IBM-hosted private cloud, but Oracle does not.  A customer would have to sign a contract with an Oracle Cloud provider like Savvis that offers both hosting and support services.
• IBM offers a public cloud where multiple tenants share the same infrastructure. This is useful for certain workloads (i.e. email, public website) and cloud scenarios (development and testing).  Oracle doesn’t offer that.  A customer would have to find a Pay-As-You-Go provider like AWS.

So, here is a quick SWOT of Oracle Cloud:

Let me know what you think? 

Do you think Oracle can reach $100B in the next 10 years through an acquisition only strategy?   What other challenges do you see in Oracle’s cloud strategy, and selling its middleware machine into the enterprise?

A review and analysis of IBM Test & Development Cloud, and opportunities

IBM finally GA'd its Development & Test Cloud last week: http://www.ibm.com/cloud/enterprise
In addition to a public cloud service offering, IBM is also providing an option to deploy such an infrastructure-as-a-service model on-premise (private cloud): http://www-935.ibm.com/services/us/index.wss/offering/midware/a1030965

I believe Cloud Computing is critical to IBM’s future growth.  It may even be the only solution to declining revenues in some of IBM’s business segments.    I will share some opinions below after a quick solution review.

The IBM cloud is built on Rational & Tivoli components.  Rational provides design, development, testing, and application lifecycle management & governance, and Tivoli enables automated resource provisioning & service management (self-service request management, performance monitoring, usage metering, billing):

IBM Test & Development Cloud

I think there is an opportunity for IBM’s Cloud to be a huge success for the following reasons:

Virtualization
For IBM public cloud, KVM powers the virtualization layer.  The on-premise solution is virtualization technology agnostic: KVM, PowerVM, and VMWare.

• In a previous post, I made the observation that most large enterprises cannot standardize on a single virtualization infrastructure.  They have to deal with multiple virtualization technologies.   While there seems to be some gaps in IBM’s on-premise solution (ex. no Xen or Hyper-V support), I think IBM is in a much better position than VMWare or Oracle to unify management across different virtualization technologies.   This would be a a big competitive differentiator and value to the enterprise.
• Secondly, in the world of Cloud Computing, vendors are primarily focused on x-86 platform.  All other platforms are ignored.  If IBM can extend their public cloud to support pSeries and maybe even zSeries (mainframe-as-a-service ?), this would also be a huge competitive differentiator.  This would allow more workloads to be moved to the Cloud and benefit customers.  As an example, customers would be able to move some of their mainframe batch jobs to the Cloud to save MIPS.

OS Coverage
The initial set of OS images are limited. In the initial public offering, IBM only offers Red Hat & Novell images.  There are no Windows images (yet ?).  I think it is just a matter of time for IBM to offer Windows images on their public cloud.

As I said above, the on-premise solution can support AIX images now, and maybe zOS in the near future (why not?).  If IBM were to offer AIX & zOS VMs in the Cloud, it would not only be able to realize a new revenue stream and possibly revive that segment, but keep customers from migrating to other platforms.  I think this could open new opportunities.  The challenge is how to do this in a balanced way without cannibalizing the existing customer base, and creating incentives for IBM sales teams to execute after those opportunities.

Pricing
IBM’s cloud “infrastructure pricing” is competitive to AWS.  However, for IBM software, there are different licensing & subscription options:

Customer scenarios	Software	Infrastructure
	Charge	Charge
You "bring your own IBM license" ("BYOL")	Prepaid for software license	Per VM per hour
You own an IBM software license and can use the pre-built IBM images in the portal catalog
You "pay-as-you-go" ("PAYG")	Per Image per hour	Per VM per hour
You choose the desired software, accept the license terms online, and receive a monthly usage bill
You "bring your own software and licenses"	Prepaid for software licenses	Per VM per hour
You bring your own software or software for which you hold valid licenses and install them on the servers you provision
You want to test "pre-release" software	No charge for restricted use	Per VM per hr
From time to time, pre-released software images will be made available on a temporary basis for test (non-productive) use
You are an eligible ISV/SI developer	No charge or by usage	Per VM per hr
You can use selected IBM "development use only" ("DUO") software for development, test, proof of concept and sales demos on the IBM Cloud
Options available vary by software package.

IBM hasn’t published detailed pricing on their software subscription pricing (PAYG), but it would be a fair to assume it will be less than what they charge on Amazon.  [N.B. on AWS, IBM only offers a very small subset of its software primarily targeting ISVs for development & testing as opposed to enterprise customers.]
Now, let’s talk about the market and the opportunity for IBM.

Market maturity, opportunity & customer addressability
Since the recession a couple of years ago, Cloud Computing has gained more momentum in the enterprise.  IDC estimates spending on Cloud services in the range of $42B by 2012. 
If you look at early Cloud providers such as Amazon or Google, while I have enormous respect and appreciation for the innovation and technical design and delivery of the services, I argue they haven’t been able to gain traction in the enterprise space.  The only exception is SalesForce.com [take a look towards the bottom of this post.].  They have done well, because the founder had an enterprise software background.

As an example, if you look at Google’s enterprise business in 2009, it booked around $209M (that includes revenue from their search appliance + Google Apps).  In a previous post, I estimated AWS revenue to be around $200M / year.    If you compare these numbers with IBM SWG, MSFT or Oracle software revenues, I think it would be easy to conclude they haven’t captured a big marketshare in the enterprise space.  I think this is fundamentally due to their lack of business relationship, partnerships, and investments in sales & marketing.

So, I think this is a good time for IBM to enter the market.

In terms of opportunity and access to market, IBM is a global company with delivery centers around the world. It has business segments that align well with customers considering or transitioning to Cloud Computing. To understand the potential opportunity for IBM better, let's look at some numbers. 

IBM Development & Test Cloud is an offering from Global Technology Services (GTS):

The numbers above are in millions.  In 2009, GTS revenue was around $37B with a gross margin of around 35%.

There are several business lines in GTS:

• Strategic Outsourcing (SO) – This segment offers outsourcing services to commercial and public sector.  In 2009, IBM’s SO revenue was $19.3B.
• Integrated Technology Services (ITS) – This segment offers different IT services (project based) from IT strategy –> middleware services –> infrastructure services.  In 2009, ITS’ revenue was $8.7B.
• Business Transformation Outsourcing (BTO) – This segment focuses primarily on business process outsourcing (BPO), and “IT transformation” services.  In 2009, BTO’s revenue was $2.2B.
• Maintenance – This segment offers product maintenance and support services.  In 2009, GTS maintenance revenue contribution was almost $7B.

IBM has C-level relationships in Fortune companies in all industries.   Some of these companies have already entrusted IBM with their IT infrastructure and mission critical systems.  This puts IBM in a huge advantage over other service providers. 

As SO contracts are renewed, and as ITS engages customers in IT strategy and middleware services, IBM should also be able to harvest opportunities for both private cloud as well as public cloud. 

[N.B.  The cool thing about Cloud services is that they are not like SO contracts (i.e. fixed).  Once you sign up a customer, as long as you’re meeting your SLAs, and manage the offering in terms of features/capabilities, you should be able to maintain a profitable recurring revenue stream (i.e. reduced sales & marketing costs, reduced infrastructure costs through efficient multi-tenant delivery).]

Consider this....If IBM were to convert 10% of 2009 GTS revenue from existing base to Cloud, let's say over the next 3 years, they would make about $3B in Cloud revenue by 2013…Now, that’s revenue & marketshare.

Here is another reason why Cloud could help IBM.    IBM Software Group booked $22B of revenue in 2009:

SWG revenue breaks down as follows:

• Cross-brand middleware:  This is combined revenue from WebSphere, Tivoli, Lotus, Rational, Information Management worth over $12B.  IBM doesn’t break down the revenue by brand. 
• Other middleware: This include legacy middleware such as CICS & IMS.  IBM made over $4.6B there.
• Operating Systems: This includes software such as zOS, AIX, AS/400, & TPF.  In 2009, the OS revenue was > $2.1B.  This is dependent on how IBM’s hardware group (Systems & Technology Group) performs.
• Product Lifecycle Management (PLM): I think it is a joint venture with Dassault Systems.
• Other: This includes all IBM Software Group services (aka Lab services).  In 2009, the revenue for this part was $1.4B.

As you can see above, except for lab services, x-brand middleware is the only segment that’s been reporting growth. There are two reasons for this:

• Acquisitions: IBM has made some big acquisitions in this space: (i.e. Cognos for $5B, FileNet for $1.7B, Sterling Commerce for $1.2B…).  Acquisitions help IBM book new business.
• Renewal rates: This is recurring revenue from existing customers.  I was told by a software sales exec, average renewal rates for a successful enterprise software company is around 98% (depending on the product, maturity, etc).   So, this is helping IBM SWG maintain revenue and marketshare.

I haven’t heard of any new notable products out of SWG lately.  So, looking at the above, I think it is fair to conclude acquisitions have been the primary vehicle for growth in SWG.  So, with Cloud Computing, SWG  should be able to develop a new revenue stream.

So, for SWG, I think Cloud Computing can offer the following benefits:

• Use Cloud as a sales & delivery channel for SMB.  This would be very helpful to IBM.
• Offer a viable alternative to clients looking at other sourcing options
• In the beginning, I think Cloud can offer a parallel revenue stream for SWG particularly for WebSphere, Tivoli, and Rational
• Compete with other private cloud vendors and public cloud service providers
• Partners and alliances help IBM realize almost a third of its total revenue.  SWG gains a lot from these GSIs and ISVs.  SWG can offer new solutions to these partners to help grow its revenue.  Also, help ISVs cloudify their solutions.

All of the above should help IBM sustain growth.

[N.B. There is some difference between private and public clouds in terms of revenue.
Software is a high margin business.  In the case of IBM SWG, the gross margin for SWG was 86%.  The reason for this is software licensing & maintenance costs.  With public clouds, this is radically different. It is a volume business.  For IBM to be profitable in the public cloud space, they must sign up more and more customers.  On the private cloud side, they should be able to do better.]
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IBM is building a good story here.  From SWG side, with WebSphere CloudBurst, the recent acquisition of Cast Iron, and Rational Software Delivery Services, IBM is putting together all the asset to enable Cloud Computing for the enterprise.  On the GTS side, IBM is in a good position to create opportunities, and work with enterprise customers to help transition to Cloud.

Finally, from a competitive perspective, in the enterprise space (as opposed to consumer space), I don’t think IBM needs to worry too much about AWS or Google.  As long as IBM prices its public cloud offerings from GTS, Lotus, etc competitively, and maintain a close relationship with enterprise accounts, I think they should be able to do OK.

In the enterprise space, I think SWG should keep an eye on Oracle and VMWare on one side, and MSFT on the other.  GTS will have to worry about the usual competitors such as CSC, HP/EDS, etc...

More on VMForce

As expected, VMware and Salesforce unveiled more details on VMForce offering yesterday:

VMForce is a service that allows developers write any Java applications using SpringSource framework (AOP-based programming model and reflective abstraction, SpringSource Tool Suite, SpringSource TC Server), and deploy to a virtual environment using vCloud.  The deployed code runs on Force.com infrastructure and virtualized and managed using vSphere.
You can read the key announcements at the following:

• http://cloudblog.salesforce.com/
• http://blog.springsource.com/2010/04/27/vmforce-spring-cloud/

At first glance, the model looks very similar to SpringSource CloudFoundry offering which facilitates implementation and management of application on AWS.   There is a difference.  With CloudFoundry, VMware virtualization is not involved, as Amazon uses Xen. 
This is good for VMware and SpringSource.  With such moves, they are aggressively  moving to position SpringSource as a “common application stack”.  As enterprises increase the migration of their workloads to the Cloud, VMware/SpringSource can be a great enabler offering value-adds such as preventing vendor lock-in, code & skills portability, etc…
As I mentioned in my previous post, this is also good for Salesforce, because it enables them to host non-CRM related apps on their platform. 
The only question that I am struggling with is the revenue model/rev share.  Force.com pricing is clear and VMForce should help them increase subscribers. However, I am not sure how VMware will be able to make a sustainable business out of this, especially since SpringSource (open-source, cloud infrastructure, etc).   As far as I know, the CloudFoundry pricing is still unknown.  
How do you view in comparison to Azure and GAE?  Microsoft & Google own both the infrastructure and the application middleware.  It seems to me that application framework and tooling would not be the major revenue contributors. Thoughts/comments?

vmforce: Is Salesforce getting into IaaS?

VMware and SalesForce.com have scheduled a joint webcast on April 27th. Rumors are circulating that Salesforce is planning to offer IaaS based on VMware virtualization platform. 
If true, this would be a good move for Salesforce for the following reasons:

• Currently with Force.com, you can build and deploy only a limited set of applications (i.e. CRM centric, business process-based/case-management types of apps).   With IaaS, it will possible to deploy all sorts of applications on their platform. 
• Building on top of VMware virtualization stack (i.e. vSphere), Salesforce should be able to facilitate integration and management of hybrid computing environments for those enterprises that have already invested in VMware.   This would be a huge advantage over competitors such as Amazon & Azure.
• Azure already offers hosting (Windows).  In some cases, an IaaS from Salesforce may be viable alternative to MSFT.
• Obviously, an IaaS Cloud Service offering enables Salesforce to engage enterprise customers on multiple levels thereby increasing marketshare.

So, what about VMware?   How would this help them?
VMware wants to be the technology backbone for all IaaS providers.  This is evident in their vCloud initiatives, and investments in vCloud Express and Terremark.   Salesforce.com is a key player in Cloud computing.  Enabling Salesforce deliver an IaaS on top of their virtualization stack is a major deal for them.  If the model proves successful, it can become a big headache for Amazon, Azure, and GAE. 
VMware also sees itself as a platform for hybrid Cloud Computing:

At this point, this is all speculation.  We should find out more on April 27th. 
What are your thoughts about vmforce?  Do you think VMware would be able to strike a similar deal with Google, eBay or Yahoo to offer an IaaS?

The enterprise has to deal with a mixed bag of virtualization vendors…

A couple of weeks ago, I was at Oracle Open World and attended a good session on JRockit (JRockit: What’s new & What’s coming).  The presenters were from JRockit lab in Sweden, and they presented many things from  new features, JVM performance, JRockit Mission Control (JRMC), JRockit Real Time (JRRT), and JRockit Virtual Edition (JRVE).   JRVE is a JVM that sits directly on bare metal hypervisor (it eliminates the OS layer, thus offering better performance, and simplification in terms of installation, configuration and maintenance).

Back in the BEA days, they showed a prototype of WLS VE running on JRVE at VMWorld in 2007.   That version was running on VMWare’s ESX.  With this version, it only supports and is certified on Oracle VM… Not a big surprise, if you think about it.  Since Oracle’s acquisition of Virtual Iron, Oracle has been optimizing its stack on its own virtualization infrastructure…

I was talking to a customer the other day to ask them about their Virtualization strategy.  This is large company that has deployed different types of servers and OS for different kinds of workload.  Currently, for Microsoft platform, they are using VMWare (when I asked him about Hyper-V, he said no plans yet).  For Linux, they are standardizing on RHT Enterprise Virtualization (KVM)… Oh, not to forget, on the mainframe, they are using zVM.

It occurred to me there is already a myriad of different virtualization tools and technologies deployed in the enterprise.  With Oracle’s solution strategy, there will be compelling reasons for many to deploy yet another virtualization technology in their environment (i.e. Oracle PaaS).  Furthermore, in addition to virtual machines and appliances deployed within the enterprise, many enterprises that adopt Cloud computing (hybrid clouds) will have to deal with additional virtualization infrastructures (i.e. EC2), their set of provisioning APIs and other management interfaces… 

The good news is that major virtualization vendors already support DTMF standardization efforts (i.e. OVF, VMAN) in their solutions or plan to support it.  There are also new standardization efforts around open APIs (i.e. vCloud) to abstract the virtualization technology, and provide a standard programming model to provision and consume virtual resources as well as support those interoperability use cases in the hybrid Clouds…  On the other side of spectrum, there is a growing number of virtualization vendors with provisioning solutions to facilitate packaging, grouping of related VMs (i.e. vApp)  for multi-tiered applications.

So, I don’t think most enterprises can standardize on a single virtualization vendor.  The trick is to figure out a virtualization management strategy that provides unified visibility and control in terms of asset & configuration management as well as infrastructure operation and governance.  Let me know what you think…

Linux Foundation Report

Following my post on VMWare’s acquisition of SpringSource, a friend of mine alerted me to the latest report from Linux Foundation. It contains various statistics on the Kernel development including contributors (both individuals & vendors). On page 11, it shows Red Hat as #1, followed by IBM, Novell, Intel…

With all this investment and involvement, Red Hat’s virtualization strategy, and not to forget Xen and vendors like Citrix, I think competitive pressure on VMWare will intensify much more in the next 12 – 18 months…