Archive for November, 2009
News: Rackspace Hosting Outdoes Itself – Profitwise
If you’re one of those people that balk at or doubt the rosy forecasts of cloud computing growth and revenue by analysts, perhaps you should pay more attention to the evidence, for example, cloud tech company earnings.
I just read that Rackspace Hosting, a San Antonio, TX-based provider of enterprise-level hosting services, posted better-than-expected profits of $162.4 million for the third quarter, a rise of 17.4% year-over-year. Earnings grew by 45.3% year-over-year to $7.6 million, or six cents a share.
The numbers were higher than during the second quarter, too.
But most telling of all was its growing cloud hosting business. Managed hosting revenue increased to $147.1 million, up 6% from the second quarter. And of that, cloud revenue grew to $15.3 million, up 17% from the previous quarter.
Rackspace Hosting’s cloud business now makes up 10% of its total net revenues, up from 5% this time last year.
Read more about Rackspace Hosting’s good fortune – fed increasingly by cloud computing – in this article.
How Cloud Providers Can Differentiate Themselves
It helps to have some guidance at hand when you are in the market for cloud computing services.
That’s why I’m recommending that you check out a recent article on “Five Competitive Differentiators” for cloud services. The piece covers SaaS, PaaS and IaaS. Actually, the article is written from the vendor point of view, noting: “If you are selling these services, consider this an outline for your next requirements document.”
But I think it will help businesses know what is unique to each cloud computing service and therefore help them make the right buying decision.
First mentioned is ease of operations, and this touches directly on the types of services Monitis offers. The story asks, “For instance, how does a company with hundreds of applications in the cloud strewn across a dozen or more vendors monitor and manage those applications to manageable service levels?”
User interfaces are bound to set some providers apart from their competitors, but it’s the work that goes on behind the scenes, such as APIs, publish and subscribe event streams, transparency and auditability systems, etc., that “will make the most significant differences between providers,” the story says. Even when the industry adopts more standardized processes, providers will still differentiate through extensions, quality of features and custom interfaces.
Next up: configurability. The story says that “…ultimately the complexity of the problems we wish to solve with information technology will dictate the amount of configurability we require from our infrastructure systems–even if they are delivered as a service by a third party.”
IaaS vendors can distinguish themselves with network architecture and data and server storage options, as well as services to enhance infrastructure – like security systems, message queuing, and storage tiering.
Performance, or speed, is another big differentiator. Cloud providers can fine tune processing speed, memory speed, storage access, read and write speeds, latency and bandwidth. And they can do this either through technology acquisition or via plain, old-fashioned superior engineering and operations expertise. So ask your vendor their speed-per-dollar rate!
Improved reliability and security is sorely needed in today’s cloud infrastructure – in light of all the very public outages and down incidences on consumer cloud applications. The author of the story calls it “risk mitigation,” and providers can demonstrate differentiation in both of these categories. For example, features such as redundant distributed data stores, early warning DDoS detection events, auditability API, transaction and EC2 monitoring can increase the transparency of both operations and security. Businesses need to trust that providers have made the cloud safe and dependable.
Lastly, cloud computing providers can stand out in the area of customer service. The author of the story says: “In a tongue-in-cheek post from early 2008, I noted that system administrators should “get good at waiting on hold for customer service representatives.” In reality, there is truth to that, but the providers have a lot of room to craft that experience.”
In my opinion, it’s worth it to ask your provider how you can:
-Collect data when a problem occurs
-Report a problem with a click
-Create a “self-service” case with fields to track the progress you’re making on issue resolution, which can be “mined” by the vendor’s support organization to discover trending bugs, etc.
-Easily search providers’ documentation for work-arounds or solutions
-Get help from a chat session
-Buy premium support for a single incident
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Buying Time for IT Managers: Announcing Monitis’ Universal Cloud Monitoring Framework
San Jose, CA – November 24, 2009 – Monitis, the leading provider of affordable, easy-to-use, 100% Cloud-based, network and systems monitoring solutions, today announced a another major release in its crusade to save IT managers’ time – a Universal Cloud Monitoring Framework that enables external and internal monitoring from all Cloud hosting providers.
Until today, Monitis was providing monitoring only for Amazon’s EC2 and S3 services. With the release of its Universal Cloud Monitoring Framework, Monitis can now sync to other Cloud computing providers very quickly – from Rackspace, GoGrid, Softlayer, and more. Monitis’ Universal Cloud Monitoring Framework will automate monitoring in highly dynamic cloud environments, where customers’ servers maybe added and terminated according to the load by management software or manually.
Given this dynamism, setting up end-user experience monitoring can become a tedious, resource intensive and error-prone process. Monitis’ Universal Cloud Monitoring Framework automates the configuration of external monitoring and server monitoring tools every time a new installation is called for – saving IT managers and system administrators around the world enormous time and hassle.
In addition to saving IT managers’ time, Monitis’ Universal Cloud Monitoring Framework gives users the confidence that comes from using a 3rd party tool to monitor Cloud infrastructure in an independent manner. Even when Cloud computing providers provide some sort of monitoring, there is an inherent conflict of interest – as they are keen to show higher uptime. By providing a customized, independent audit of SLAs (service level agreements), Monitis’ Universal Cloud Monitoring Framework increases the credibility of Cloud computing providers claims, which ultimately benefits both users and the industry, as a whole.
“We are passionate about one thing: saving IT managers’ massive amounts of time. The release of our Universal Cloud Monitoring Framework does just that.” said Monitis’ Founder and CEO, Hovhannes Avoyan. “It is also the first sortie in our move to become the industry standard for monitoring from the Cloud. We are already far, far ahead of the rest of the competition, but watch this space – more exciting things are yet to come!”
About Monitis All-in-One Monitoring Platform
Monitis is the only service which provides Cloud Monitoring from the Cloud. It is leading a new era of systems management tools – the Cloud generation. Monitis is a 100% Cloud-based, complete, and flexible IT monitoring solution, offered on a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model. Monitis consolidates backend monitoring, application monitoring, website monitoring, and cloud monitoring in an all-in-one, central monitoring service. The platform is easily customizable and may be used for managing of all kinds of IT assets such as websites, servers, routers, switches, VoIP devices, DNS, databases, processes and any other IP devices. Monitis provides users with a comprehensive view of their system’s health and performance.
About Monitis
Monitis believes that the Cloud is the biggest thing to happen in IT management since IT management. Having seen this vision early, Monitis is now the global leader in developing this market. It is the first affordable network and systems monitoring solution based 100% in the Cloud.
Besides Monitis’ enthusiastic and loyal user base of 50,000 customers from small businesses to Fortune 500 companies to government agencies and educational institutions, Monitis has won rave reviews from the technology analyst community. Recently, because it’s Cloud-based monitoring helps companies reduce system downtime, improve the productivity of their IT staff, and reduce operational expenditures, Monitis was named the Most Innovative Start-up for 2009 by The 451 Group at their annual Client Conference.
Monitis was founded in 2005 by a team of seasoned entrepreneurs and fed-up and worn-out developers who were tired of complaining about the limits of software-based tools, while inspired by the promise of the Cloud. Headquartered in San Jose, CA, Monitis is lead by a team of IT professionals with deep experience running enterprise-grade IT businesses, as well as starting and selling several IT start-ups. Using a global workforce, particularly its R&D team based in Yerevan, Armenia, Monitis is poised to move from strength to strength. At present, it has a loyal and enthusiastic user community of 50,000, and an average month-on-month revenue growth of over 10%.
Contact:
Monitis Inc.
Sales & Marketing Department
US & Canada Toll Free: +1-800-657-7949
UK + International: +44-845-527-3346
France + International: +33-48-607-9035
2880 Zanker Road Suite 203
San Jose, CA-95134
USA
Investigating Cloud Services Partnerships
There’s an interesting article you should check out on the lofty barrier to entry for cloud service providers. Yes, the cloud promises to reduce costs and increase efficiencies, but there’s often huge issues around investments in infrastructure, redundancy, staffing and market development for small and mid-sized companies.
As a result, new partnership opportunities in delivering and selling the cloud are arising. And according to one study, there are a variety of different cloud computing partnership models that enable solution providers to claim a stake in the cloud with varying degrees of investment. Competition in at least one area that I’m well familiar with – cloud-based transaction monitoring – continues to heat up.
Partnering provides a path to adoption and a place in the cloud, but not all partnerships and vendors are equal. A new white paper, “Finding Your Silver Lining in Cloud Computing,” offers potential cloud services partners insight and best practices into how to check each other out before combining talents.
But I also think that it’s worthwhile for customers of the cloud, including small businesses who want to access apps and store data, to understand the nature of their provider’s professional relationships and how services are delivered, among other things.
According to the white paper, investigation is worthwhile across eight different areas. These categories are:
- market position and value,
- vendor financial health,
- required investments and potential ROI,
- adoption requirements (organizational changes),
- vendor performance track record,
- customer relationships (protecting your customers),
- market awareness and marketing support,
- legal liabilities and regulatory requirements.
I’m sure there are a lot more things to consider and question for both cloud services providers who want to partner, as well as for actual customers. But these areas seem like good places to start for anybody who wants to go into a cloud service relationship – or, on the other hand, access those services – and with eyes and ears wide open.
New Whitepaper on Cloud Investing
The industry seems to be swimming in new research about cloud computing these days. Every time I turn around I find something new to read about the explosion of provider services, bandwidth or database capacity and cloud services, for example, site and server monitoring on the cloud.
Found another with a slight twist this time: a research report on how cloud computing will affect tech stocks.
Next Inning Technology Research, an online investment newsletter focused on semiconductor and technology stocks, said it published a special report on the emerging cloud computing trend covering companies including Amazon, Microsoft, Yahoo, Oracle and Motorola.
Apparently, the report covers questions such as:
– How does cloud computing, now the domain of companies like Google, have its roots in technology trends going back 40 years?
– Why do smartphones, netbooks, and other mobile, internet-connected devices represent a potential paradigm shift in the cloud computing trend?
– Where do companies like Amazon, Microsoft, Yahoo, Oracle, and Motorola fit into the cloud computing trend and how are they likely to benefit from it?
Unfortunately, to get a look at the report, you’ll have to visit Next Inning’s site, and enter into a trial service. But from what I read about the investment researcher and advisor, it might be worth it. “Next Inning Editor Paul McWilliams draws on his more than twenty years of experience in the technology industry to alert subscribers to companies and technologies that are poised for explosive growth,” the site says.
It also adds that McWilliams and the Next Inning staff “spend hundreds of hours each month speaking with industry contacts, analyzing data and company conference calls, and combing through financial statements looking for investment ideas.”
If you try out the service, I’d appreciate a head’s up to let me know where to invest.
Windows 7 Sales Strong
The Wall Street Journal reports that, during its first week on store shelves, Microsoft Corp.’s Windows 7 operating system sold like hotcakes. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was vague about the details, but was quoted as saying that sales have been “fantastic” since it launched October 22nd.
However, research firm NPD Group, which tracks retail sales, uncovered that unit sales of boxed Windows 7 in U.S. stores were 234% higher during the software’s availability in its first few days than they were for Windows Vista, which debuted in 2007. While NPD’s figures don’t account for business sales, the article quoted a tech reseller that caters to business, education and government customers, saying the firm has seen a “strong uptick” in demand for PCs and Windows 7 since the product debuted.
Other experts in the piece sited a mixed picture of hardware sales tied to Windows 7, and October is traditionally a weak period for PC sales – too late for back-to-school and too early for the holidays.
Microsoft remains hopeful: It’s waiting for the sales data from partners in the hardware and retail businesses, but a spokesman noted that the NPD figures are “in line with the anecdotal stories we’ve heard about excitement people have for Windows 7.”
Of course, my interest in Windows 7 sales has nothing to do with any stock positions or holdings that I may (or may not) have in Microsoft. LOL. Rather, it’s in 7’s features designed to work within the cloud computing framework. And, given the amount of PC users out there – in both homes and offices – I’m watching with great interest the adoption rate and subsequent exposure to the cloud.
And, of course, the more cloud users there are, the more companies will come to understand the critical need to keep their businesses running smoothly via website, network, app transaction, server, cloud storage – and even cloud – monitoring.
Lastly, I’m happy that people and businesses are buying again. Sick of this recession; time to let go of some of that money everybody’s hoarding.
Cloud Forecast 2009-2013: Huge Growth in Revenue
IDC has come out with its cloud industry forecast for 2009-2013. The basic message, over five major enterprise IT segments (Application Software, Application Development and Deployment Software, Systems Infrastructure Software, and Server and Disk Storage capacity) the five-year revenue growth outlook remains strong, at 26% – over six times the rate of traditional IT.
When I read this, I thought, ‘This outlook turns the recession on its head’ because, as IDC says: ” In spite of the challenging economy – or more accurately, because of it – this growth rate advantage expanded from last year’s forecast, in which cloud services were forecast to grow at over five times traditional offerings.”
So how do the individual IT segments stack up in IDC’s forecast:
App delivery and development, servers and storage are seen to benefit the most from growth. In 2009, App delivery holds 10% of the market, while in 2013 it’ll grow to 13%. Meanwhile, storage will grow from the current 9% to 14%, while servers will grow from 12% to 15%. Applications, meanwhile, will drop from 49% this year to 38% in 2013. While Infrastructure software will remain the same – at 20% of the pie.
Yet, despite the spectacular growth rate predicted, cloud will only be a fraction of overall (cloud and on-premise) IT spend, says IDC. Cloud spend is only 5% of the total this year, destined to double to only 10% of overall IT spend.
Clearly, despite the hype, cloud versus on-premise spend is still miniscule. But, spending is forecast to grow at double-digit number, and in this rough economy, that’s damn good news. Yes? My prediction, if I may be so humble to put forth one, is that the more spend that’s invested in cloud development, the more attraction it’ll generate – like bees to honey.
Interview with Microsoft’s Chou Emphasizes Importance of IaaS on the Cloud
I think it’s very valuable (and sometimes enjoyable) to read what top technology executives think about the future of the cloud. It not only gives you an idea of where their companies are going, in terms of their own development, but you sometimes get a good overview – and you pick up some surprises – of where the whole industry is headed.
That’s why I so enjoyed reading a recent article that interviewed Microsoft Architect David Chou. He believes that Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) is the area of cloud computing that will make the most noticeable impact in 2010 – especially for startups and small to medium-sized businesses.
In the story, Chou says product planners, marketing, business executives and other non-IT people in businesses are the biggest category of people who are currently not using the cloud – but who should be. He said: “IT people tend to look at the cloud as an infrastructure option, but we think the cloud is an enabling technology for new business offerings and capabilities.”
Asked how important SOA was to the cloud – and vice-versa – Chou said: “Absolutely important!” Chou stressed that SOA was even more crucial on the cloud than traditional SOA patterns of enterprise-wide “transformational efforts” (big SOA). He thinks that, for the cloud, it’s more important to integrate with private clouds, other cloud services and applications, breaching individual cloud vendor boundaries and enterprise firewalls. And so SOA is essential in spanning all types of distributed services.
Also, interesting to note: In the piece, one of the top five cloud computing companies Chou names is Microsoft. Gee, what a surprise! The others he mentions, by the way, are: Amazon, Google, Salesforce and VMWare. He thinks the landscape will change quickly, though, as IBM, Oracle, and SAP “solidify/clarify” their plans.
Chou points to the East (China), too, and mentions some possible rising stars: companies like Baidu and Tencent/QQ.
Nice to get somewhat of a big picture view, and also very cool to read about Microsoft’s view of the cloud as an IaaS tool. And, if the non-IT audience that Chou mentions migrates more to the cloud, I’m predicting that their companies will step up monitoring efforts to ensure things run smoothly.
Amazon Introduces Cloud-based RDS – Relational Database Service
Amazon Web Services in late October introduced the Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS), making it easier for customers to “set up, operate, and scale a relational database in the cloud,” according to the announcement on its blog. “We are always looking for ways to make it faster, simpler, and more fun to develop applications of all types,” said the blog. “Every hour that you don’t spend fiddling with hardware, tracing cables, installing operating systems or managing databases is an hour that you can spend on the unique and value-added aspects of your application.”
Amazon RDS gives its customers direct database access – without having to set up infrastructure, maintain software or manage a common database.
Using the RDS APIs or the command-line tools, Amazon said customers can access the full capabilities of a complete, self-contained MySQL 5.1 database instance in just minutes. “You can scale the processing power and storage space as needed with a single API call and you can initiate fully consistent database snapshots at any time.”
The blog took great pains to show how easy it is to use RDS, featuring step-by-step instructions to create a database instance, for example. It noted how complementary RDS would be to its Amazon SimpleDB. Amazon said that a number of its early adopters planned to use both of the services in their AWS applications.
Amazon also said it had a number of features planned for the coming months. Here’s another example of the wide-open field in developing apps for the cloud. I know that I, for one, will be looking out for future enhancements…as well as for any buzz and feedback from users.
Check out the full article on Amazon’s new cloud database service.
Monitis Wins the Innovator’s Showcase at The 451 Group Annual Conference
Press release
San Jose, CA – November, 2009 – Monitis, the leading provider of affordable, easy-to-use, 100% Cloud-based, network and systems monitoring solutions, has won the Innovators Showcase at The 451 Group 2009 Annual Client Conference held in Boston, USA held on November 3-4.
The Innovator’s Showcase highlights some of the world’s most exciting early-stage IT companies. Following a presentation to the conference, Monitis was voted the most innovative new start-up by attendees, who included leading venture capital firms, investment banks and peers in the technology industry.
A key theme at the conference was computing in the Cloud and how it is changing the rules for enterprise IT. Monitis, as the first and only 100% Cloud-based, enterprise-grade, all-in-one suite network and systems monitoring tools, embodies the benefits of this shift to the Cloud. In addition to freeing up massive amounts of time for IT managers who would otherwise be stuck sitting on-site with software-based systems, Monitis is simple to use, employs a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) subscription model which keeps costs low, and stops companies from having to worry about things like upgrades or server maintenance that are part of the hassle of software-based monitoring solutions.
“The cloud is the next frontier of IT operations management,” said Dennis Callaghan, enterprise software analyst at The 451 Group. “With its ability to do performance monitoring, testing and configuration management in the Cloud, and of workloads running in the Cloud, at an affordable price, we believe Monitis is a company to watch in the nascent Cloud management space.”
“To be invited to compete at The 451 Group’s 2009 Innovator’s Showcase was an honor in itself,” said Hovhannes Avoyan, Monitis’ Founder and CEO. “But to have over 350 opinion leaders from around the world choose Monitis as the most innovative start-up for 2009 is thrilling. It’s testament to the fact that we’ve hit upon a real market need with a product that is at least a generation ahead of the competition.”
About Monitis All-in-One Monitoring Platform
Monitis is a 100% Cloud-based, complete, and flexible IT monitoring solution, offered on a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model. Monitis consolidates backend monitoring, application monitoring, website monitoring, and cloud monitoring in an all-in-one, central monitoring service. The platform is easily customizable and may be used for managing of all kinds of IT assets such as websites, servers, routers, switches, VoIP devices, DNS, databases, processes and any other IP devices. Monitis provides users with a comprehensive view of their system’s health and performance.
About Monitis
Monitis believes that the Cloud is the biggest thing to happen in IT management since IT management. Having seen this vision early, Monitis is now the global leader in developing this market. It is the first affordable network and systems monitoring solution based 100% in the Cloud.
Besides Monitis’ enthusiastic and loyal user base of 50,000 customers from small businesses to Fortune 500 companies to government agencies and educational institutions, Monitis has won rave reviews from the technology analyst community for how its Cloud-based monitoring helps companies reduce system downtime, improve the productivity of their IT staff, and reduce operational expenditures.
Monitis was founded in 2005 by a team of seasoned entrepreneurs and fed-up and worn-out developers who were tired of complaining about the limits of software-based tools, while inspired by the promise of the Cloud. Headquartered in San Jose, CA, Monitis is lead by a team of IT professionals with deep experience running enterprise-grade IT businesses, as well as starting and selling several IT start-ups. Using a global workforce, particularly its R&D team based in Yerevan, Armenia, Monitis is poised to move from strength to strength. At present, it has a loyal and enthusiastic user community of 50,000, and an average month-on-month revenue growth of over 10%.
Contact:
Monitis Inc.
Sales & Marketing Department
US & Canada Toll Free: +1-800-657-7949
UK + International: +44-845-527-3346
France + International: +33-48-607-9035
2880 Zanker Road Suite 203
San Jose, CA-95134
USA