While enterprise IT is transitioning form on-premise deployment to an emerging architecture of hybrid cloud, IT professionals are facing unprecedented challenges to change from managing servers deployed on premise to managing services in hybrid cloud, at the same time extraordinary opportunities to upgrade and expand an individual’s skill profile and become a leader in cloud initiatives and a contributor in IT communities.
Windows Azure relevant to Microsoft private cloud solutions is, in my view, as critical as what Active Directory means to Windows infrastructure. In a Windows domain, Active Directory holds the one version of truth and is the ultimate authority of all resources defined. Similarly when it comes to Microsoft cloud computing, there is no question that Windows Azure is the de facto platform as an extension of Active Directory in the cloud. While enterprise IT is transitioning form on-premise deployment to an emerging architecture of hybrid cloud, IT professionals are facing unprecedented challenges to change from managing servers deployed on premise to managing services delivered with hybrid cloud, and at the same time extraordinary opportunities to upgrade and expand an individual’s skill profile and become a leader in cloud initiatives and a contributor in IT communities.

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Scott Bils has a post on the “Five Mistakes that Enterprise Cloud Service Providers are Making” over on Leverhawk. Points four and five were particularly interesting because it seems there’s a synergistic opportunity there.
Point number four from Scott:
Omitting SaaS and PaaS: Cloud infrastructure service providers have little incentive to migrate customers to public cloud SaaS offerings such as Salesforce.com or Workday. For many customers, migrating legacy apps to SaaS models will be the right answer. Many enterprise cloud service providers conveniently omit this lever from their transformation story and lose customer credibility as a result.

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A new sub-market of the broader cloud-computing market has emerged: the cloud service broker, but the market has yet to fully define it.
Emerging markets don’t generally follow smooth, predictable paths. Rather, they struggle and jerk unexpectedly, much like an eaglet escaping from its shell. Vendors, analysts, and pundits may seek to define such markets, but typically fall short. After all, vendors don’t establish markets. Customers do.

Today, cloud computing is still in its birth throes. Yes, many organizations are now achieving value in the cloud, but many more still struggle to understand its true value proposition as cloud service providers (CSPs) and vendors mature their offerings in the space. One problem: cloud computing is not a single market. It is in fact many interrelated markets, as its core service models, infrastructure-, platform-, and software as a service (SaaS), fragment as though they were so many pieces of eggshell.

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Unifying identity and access management has been a stretch goal for IT for nearly a decade. At first it was merely the need to have a single, authoritative source of corporate identity such that risks like orphaned or unauthorized accounts could be addressed within the enterprise.
But with a growing number of applications – business applications – being deployed “in the cloud”, it’s practically a foregone conclusion that organizations are going to need similar capabilities for those applications, as well.
It’s not easy, there are myriad reasons why unifying identity and access control is a stretch goal and not something easily addressed by simply deploying a solution. Federation of identity and access control requires integration. It may require modification of applications. It may require architectural changes.

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“We are pleased with the responses we are receiving from our service provider partners and will continue making a substantial investment in our expertise and knowledge initiatives,” said Birger Steen, CEO of Parallels, on the occasion of the publication of the latest report in the Parallels SMB Cloud Insights series.

Now entering its third year of annual publication, the research results continue to confirm that SMBs remain the fastest growing segment for cloud services and the optimal target market for service providers of all sizes, with the global market for SMB cloud services expanding at a 28 percent CAGR to $95 billion by 2015.

“Parallels SMB Cloud Insights research is core to our commitment to help service providers make both strategic and tactical decisions about the rapidly growing market for SMB cloud services,” Steen said.

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“We are pleased with the responses we are receiving from our service provider partners and will continue making a substantial investment in our expertise and knowledge initiatives,” said Birger Steen, CEO of Parallels, on the occasion of the publication of the latest report in the Parallels SMB Cloud Insights series.

Now entering its third year of annual publication, the research results continue to confirm that SMBs remain the fastest growing segment for cloud services and the optimal target market for service providers of all sizes, with the global market for SMB cloud services expanding at a 28 percent CAGR to $95 billion by 2015.

“Parallels SMB Cloud Insights research is core to our commitment to help service providers make both strategic and tactical decisions about the rapidly growing market for SMB cloud services,” Steen said.

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SaaS-based application performance monitoring start-up New Relic, which has already raised $34.5 million in venture capital, has gotten a whopping $80 million in mezzanine financing to move into native mobile applications, open an office in Europe, add staff and prepare to IPO.
The handsome sum, which gives it a total of $115 million and a reported valuation of $750 million, comes largely from Insight Venture Partners and T Rowe Price, marking the first time since Twitter that the pair has funded a start-up together.
Other participants include Dragoneer Investment Group, Passport Ventures and the company’s existing investors Allen & Company, Benchmark Capital, Trinity Ventures and Tenaya Capital.

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I recently got some feedback on my previous musing that from the customer viewpoint, PaaS equals automation. That led me to think of ways to articulate better what this means both to customers and vendors.

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I recently got some feedback on my previous musing that from the customer viewpoint, PaaS equals automation. That led me to think of ways to articulate better what this means both to customers and vendors.

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