There have been a couple of trends in the Cloud marketplace recently that are noteworthy.
First there is now a general acceptance that enterprises will choose hybrid Clouds as the best way to meet their needs. This was picked up by David Sherr in his recent blog entry (http://dsherr23.wordpress.com/2010/07/08/ive-looked-at-clouds-frm-both-sides-now/) and covered by David Linthicum in his blog on InfoWorld (http://www.infoworld.com/d/cloud-computing/hybrid-clouds-new-twist-old-trick-514).
There has also been increasing debate about whether Microsoft will be one of the top 5 Cloud providers (or Cloud Champions as I refer to them) three to five years out. David Linthicum has covered this quite well in two of his podcasts in the last few weeks.
Microsoft has certainly devoted considerable resources to building its Cloud offering, but it is not clear that it can make the necessary changes fast enough. Bob Muglia a year ago said to his Microsoft colleagues, “We’re at the cusp of a major transformation in the industry called cloud computing. It will affect us all. But to get there it will require a lot of execution and changes. “ The Microsoft announcement this week that it is releasing some of its global workers and replacing them with more Cloud capable people also reflects this direction.
While Microsoft will clearly be one of the winners in consumer Cloud – along with Google – it is less clear that it will mirror this success in penetrating enterprises. Other companies like Amazon, IBM, and Oracle seem to have a more coherent approach to Cloud today, as we pick up in our Rankings report to be published next week. Based on what is happening today it is hard to see Microsoft in the top 5 for enterprise Cloud in 3 years time. Do you agree?
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