The Four Horsemen of Cloud Computing

The first four of the seven seals, as described in the last book of the New Testament, represented pestilence, war, famine and death.  These four seals were depicted as beasts riding on white, red, black and pale-green horses.  These Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, as they became to be known, were said to have been unleashed to warn of upcoming events -- including the Day of Judgment.

That is heavy stuff.

Ok, now fast-forward some 2,000 years, and we had the "lite" version of the Four Horsemen:  Cisco, EMC, Oracle and Sun Microsystems.

Much less intimidating than famine or death, and certainly not as serious, but still imposing in their own right.

These were the four companies who prior to the rupture of the Internet bubble, were firing on all cylinders.

EMC had reinvented and reinvigorated the data storage solutions industry.

Oracle was king of the database software world.

Cisco networked the universe and at one point became the world's most valuable company.

And Sun "the network is the computer" Microsystems was happy, for a time, to sell the world as many high-end servers as it could manufacturer.

As a result, Wall Street had christened these companies the Four Horsemen of the Internet.

Today, three of the four continue to dominate their market segments while one has been subsumed by the other and lives on in technology only, no longer in name.

Although three of the four companies that comprised the Four Horsemen live on, The Four Horsemen of the Internet is done.  It's time has come and gone. Their 15 minutes of fame behind them.

Make way for the The Four Horsemen of Cloud Computing.

In alphabetical order, here they are, the Four Horsemen of Cloud Computing.

Akamai:  "At Akamai we've been optimizing the cloud for over ten years, building a global computing platform for over ten years, building a global computing platform that helps make cloud computing a reality."

Google: "the elephant in the cloud."

VMware:  "Advancing the Foundation for Cloud Computing."

But wait a minute. That's only three horsemen.

Well, I guess we could go with The Three Horsemen of Cloud Computing.  But to me, it lacks the panache of "The Four Horsemen of Cloud Computing."

Do you agree that we need a fourth?

If you do, please weigh in.

The cloud computing company that gets the most mentions will become the fourth horseman of cloud computing.   And you'll get the satisfaction knowing you helped make it happen.

CAFL and the Uber Cloud

I think high schools and colleges should consider offering a new course called CAFL -- an acronym we invented for Cloud as a Foreign Language.  In it, students would learn words like IaaS (infrastructure as a service), SaaS (software as a service), PaaS (platform as a service), Virtualization, Virtual Cloud, Hybrid Cloud, Public Cloud, Private Cloud and many more dynamic new additions to the language of the cloud that combine to make Ms. Connevey's high school French class all those years ago seem like un morceau de gâteau by comparison.

My suggestion for the final exam of CAFL would be to ask students to define the Inter-cloud.  

Oh yes, you marketers of the abstract, obtuse and occasionally ridiculous, the nascent cloud lexicon is already moving to the next level. 

Just for starters, here is how Wikipedia defines Inter-cloud idea: The Intercloud is an interconnected global "cloud of clouds" and an extension of the Internet "network of networks" on which it is based. 

Now, I could stop here, because I'm sure most of you completely appreciate the value of such a succinct definition.  Doesn't it stand to reason that the Inter-cloud would mean "cloud of clouds," "network of networks."   

But for those of you, like me, who might require just a smidgen more, let's push on to Lesson Two. 

In an April 2009 blog, this is how Cisco defined the Inter-Cloud:

• At some point in the not horribly distant future, some service providers will offer “virtual private cloud” services to allow “private clouds” to consume resources in the service provider infrastructure, while maintaining the illusion of being a part of the customer’s private cloud. This is simply extending “intranets” to consume services over the Internet without exposing the content to the general public–kind of like VPN? (Not a perfect analogy, to be sure.)
• In the meantime the set of public cloud services evolves, standardizes, and becomes a more open market. Not all will be virtual private clouds services; there will be other forms of interoperability. These sets of interoperable, interchangable clouds could be thought of as “open clouds”.
• In the early stages, however, there will be relatively tight coupling between the enterprise and any individual public cloud offering chosen; not necessarily lock-in, but the time taken to make a change is still somewhat onerous and involves direct agreements between the customer and the vendors involved. So “open clouds” are not yet the most elastic markets they could be.
• The network technology to enable the linkage of enterprises to all forms of public cloud offerings (not just virtual private clouds) in a way that takes the unique nature of cloud computing and running IT workloads in mind is called “cloud internetworking”.
• The final phase–many years from now–includes the introduction of publicly shared core services–very much like DNS and peering–into the carrier networks that enable a more loosely coupled relationship between customer and cloud vendors. This serves to greatly increase the elasticity of the cloud market, and creates a single public open cloud internetwork–the Inter-Cloud.

By now, I'm sure you have it.  But just to wrap this one, let's take one more crack at it just to prep for finals.

The Intercloud is really a futuristic concept of an uber cloud -- one all-encompassing cloud made up of the combination of all clouds -- thus a "cloud of clouds." It will incorporate the power and storage of all its member clouds. When one member cloud reaches capacity, it can use the combined processing and storage of the rest of the Intercloud (presumably for a fee). 

If I have this wrong, please let me know. I'm bucking for an A in CAFL and there are no Cliff Notes!

Social and Collaborative Applications are Working Their Way into Enterprise 2.0

The Enterprise 2.0 Conference is taking place through Thursday of this week at the Westin Boston Waterfront Hotel in the scenic Seaport District of the city.  As you probably guessed from the conference name, the focus of this tidy expo is collaborative technologies, Web 2.0 solutions, designed specifically to enable enterprises to become more efficient, productive and innovative.

Steve Wylie, the conference GM (you'll find tweets from the show at #e2conf), points out that while businesses are taking advantage of game changers like cloud computing and data center virtualization, applications that exploit these infrastructure technologies have lagged the application advances being made in the consumer market.

That's what e2conf is all about: examining and showcasing the latest developments in enterprise-class social and collaborative applications. And there's no shortage of talent at the expo.  Today I had the opportunity to spend a few hours listening to the keynotes, kicking tires on the show floor and asking a few questions of the software developers who were there.

As you might suspect, most of the exhibitors on hand are smallish, privately held software companies.  The big guys were there too, including Novell, IBM and Cisco.  But the vast majority are innovative, emerging companies developing very exciting social and collaborative solutions for business.

In one day it's impossible to get a close look at all the companies there, but I was able to take a look at quite a few.  From what I saw and heard, these three are my picks for the coolest companies at this year's e2conf:

• Doodle, in their own words, "makes scheduling virtually effortless."  Using Doodle, scheduling a meeting with busy coworkers is as easy as creating a poll, casting a vote for the preferred date and time, and informing participants of the outcome.  Doodle was founded in 2008 in Zurich, Switzerland and has about 10 employees.  And I love the name.  Do you Doodle?

• At the other end of the emerging company spectrum is Jive Software, a well-funded, well-established company with more than 2,500 customers (they claim).    Jive Software, now based in Palo Alto, Calif., (the firm was started in Portland, Ore.), is eyeing an IPO in 2011 and is led by industry veteran Tony Zingale, who led the sale of Mercury Interactive to HP four years ago.  I saw Zingale's keynote earlier today and he still turns it on.  Jive Software is partnering with heavyweights like Google and Twitter and looks to be well on its way to building an enterprise 2.0 company with staying power.

• I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Baydin, a San Francisco-based company and winner of today's "Launch Pad People's Choice," a fun text message-based audience-participation contest pitting four newish companies against each other.  Baydin has an "Unsearch" product that's built into Outlook and hunts down or "automatically discovers" in your email, documents and colleagues who could help you with any given project.  I love this:  at Baydin, they talk about "the future of search...is not having to search."

I apologize for leaving out so many other cool companies and I'm already looking forward to the next edition.