UFC and Public Cloud Are Not That Different

The battle to see who will dominate the public cloud arena is shaping up like one of those original UFC tournament events where fighters of all sizes and backgrounds fought each other to see who was the ultimate fighter … and to see who had the ultimate martial art. 

We know Amazon are the dominators right now based on their customised XenServer (I believe but could be wrong).  Microsoft has, and continues to, put together a formidable threat to them, based on SaaS and Azure.  Google has a SaaS offering too.  And there are lots of other offerings from various point solution SaaS providers and hosting companies too based on VMware, XenServer, and Hyper-V.

Stepping up now are Dell and HP.  Dell have recently started recruiting developers and software architects in Dublin for their cloud offering.  OpenStack seems to be their preferred cloud solution with Azure Appliance … we do know that they have considerable custom hardware engineering expertise for large scale cloud deployments.  That knowledgebase will give them an advantage.   I read yesterday of a Linked In “leak” that leads us to believe that HP are focusing on VMware for their cloud.  They are announcing their cloud at VMworld according to the latest rumours, and it will be engineered to be similar to Amazon EC2. I know that their Galway (western Ireland) R&D operation has been recruiting Java and opensource skills and that seems to be backed up by the same “leak”.

IBM are also in the game.  The have Lotus Live (seems very limited compared to Office365 or even BPOS based on the brief look I had), but they also are doing something in the cloud arena.  Funnily enough, an ex colleague who started his first post-college job on the same day and in the same team as me is involved in their Dublin operation.

Using the UFC comparison, who will be the big powerful wrestler, throwing around their competition?  I think Dell stands a very good shot at that.  As a consumer, I’d be worried about HP’s commitment.  They were in the online backup game for a while and backed out, leaving a lot of customers in the lurch.

Who will be the boxer/kick-boxer who can always deliver that knockout punch, even when losing in the 5th round?  IBM are a mystery to me.  Other than some software that I hate (yes, I know many, but not the majority, of you love Domino/Notes), IBM makes an absolute fortune every year doing stuff we never hear about.  That makes them a heavyweight to me.  I’m also thinking Microsoft.  Their advantage is that they own a huge percentage of the on-premises market which is not going to disappear.  Integration via the hybrid or cross-premises cloud will be a nice clip to the chin.

And who will be the weedy looking Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu guy that takes everyone by surprise by dislocating the opposition’s ankle/knee/elbow or choking them out?  In my opinion, these are the folks to watch.  They’ll be the ones that are small enough to adjust to this emerging business.  Customer requirements, regulatory compliance, and other complications, are all still evolving.  The likes of IBM, Dell, Microsoft, HP and Amazon are all so big that change will be slow.  The “smaller” guys can adapt to the environment more easily.  When I say “small”, this could be a Rackspace or similar which are still very big presences but not on the same scale as the big boys, or they could be the smaller hosters who have even more freedom to engineer quickly.

Those early days of mixed martial arts saw this relatively unknown Brazlian choke out bigger, and allegedly badder guys than him.  Over the follow two decades, the sport evolved.  Now you normally cannot be a UFC champion without learning wrestling, (kick)boxing, and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (BJJ) all at the same time.  Any weaknesses are exposed and taken advantage of as a fighter moves up the ladder.  But there are many fighters who have decent careers being one-trick-ponies, as long as they always put in a good effort.  They may lose a bit, and might not be champions, but fans want to see them because they are entertaining in the octagon (ring).  And this is where things get interesting in the cloud world.

Microsoft do appear to be that complete fighter who does a little bit of everything.  They could be the complete George St. Pierre to defeat the traditional wrestler/boxer of Matt Hughes/Amazon EC2.  They have PaaS in Azure.  They have a form of IaaS (stateless so it’s limited) in Azure VM Role which could develop to a more complete IaaS down the road.  And they have a growing SaaS offering in Office365, Intune, System Center Advisor, CRM, etc.  They have the huge on-site presence that can be integrated.  They’re all over the world and are marketing like crazy.  Sales people are being instructed to sell cloud first, then infrastructure.  IBM talk at very high levels but I’ve never heard specifics.  HP are building something that is open source based.  There is room for that in the public cloud arena.  Dell are doing Azure Appliance which will give them a PaaS, and HP were thought to be doing the same.  Amazon are an infrastructure company right now.  They may not be the right company to build a PaaS to pair with their IaaS.  Google are just a SaaS offering right now. 

Those “BJJ” hosters are in for interesting times.  I’ve bleated on before about the Patriot Act.  It’s the smaller local companies that are in a position to take advantage of that opening to cater for sensitive customers who want to go into the public cloud.  And those folks that do innovate new services, develop customer bases, and grow, will be the folks who become acquisition targets in the future.  They will be the new “fighting skill” that must be acquired to become a complete champion of the “sport”.

All that remains to be seen now is who will be the ultimate fighter … of the public cloud!