Everyone is talking at mobile today, but few people know where to start, or where to turn for help in talking about how to take key business processes to a mobile device. We have been working in and around mobile technology for over four years and have always focused on how cloud and mobility intersect to meet a client needs.
We have made Cross-platform mobile development a core focus so it is possible to have a single code base and have the same application run across multiple form factors on multiple mobile operating systems built by multiple manufacturers. Why is this important? Many companies do not have the luxury of rolling out an application for only one mobile device, they usually need to support multiple devices which can make mobile application development more costly and to increase project risk exponentially.
Before we get into the details of what is supported and how this is possible, here is a brief video that outlines what the 2GO Platform is at the highest level.
True Cross-Platform Customizable Applications
When the iPad was introduced many people labeled it as a device looking for a need. Today it is clearly leading the tablet charge in the Enterprise and has been so successful for Apple it is even taking some marketshare from Apple's laptop sales. However as more tablets come to market, many companies are also looking at Android options to lower costs or at the RIM Playbook.
The platform is optimized for tablets and is designed from the ground up to be used with a touch interface. We now have tablet support for the following customizalbe applications:
Account and Contact Management
Call Planning/Call Reporting
Order Entry
Digital Sales Aid
Route Planning
Field Service
Inventory Management
Bar Code Scanning
Signature Capture
Social Enterprise (Salesforce.com Chatter)
Cloud access even when you can't access the Cloud
What I'm really proud of is the fact that 2GO provides access to back-end cloud data whether or not you have internet connectivity. Even in this day and age there are many places where we don't have connectivity (basements, office buildings, remote customer sites) and still need access to critical business information. Offline synchronization is core to the platform and all information is stored locally in an encrypted database to provide safe and secure access to key information regardless of internet connectivity.
Simplifies Maintenance
Applications rarely are static, business processes evolve and it is a struggle for most mobile applications to keep up with the speed of business. The 2GO Platform helps applications to easily grow and change without any code changes. It leverages something called meta-data (data about data) to make this magic happen. What this means to a business user is when they add a field to a back-end Cloud application, that field is immediately accessible in their 2GO mobile application.
Cross-platform Tablet2GO running on multiple tablets
Here is a brief video that shows the Accounts, Contacts and Social Enterprise modules running on an Apple iPad, a Motorola Xoom and a RIM Playbook.
One of the most popular applications we have delivered is using a tablet as a Digital Sales Aid. Essentially using a tablet as a replacement for a paper brochure, or one-sheet and presenting content about products and services in a very engaging way.
Cross-Platform Digital Sales Aid
Here is an example of the Digital Sales Aid application configured for the Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) vertical that shows products on a virtual store shelf.
Cross-Platform Tablet2GO on an iPad
Here is a brief video showing how Tablet2GO looks and feels on an iPad
Cross-Platform Tablet2GO on an RIM Playbook (running QNX)
Here is a brief video showing how Tablet2GO looks and feels on a Playbook
Cross-Platform Tablet2GO on a Motorola Xoom (running Honeycomb)
Here is a brief video showing how Tablet2GO looks and feels on a Xoom
The above videos showed 2GO running on a variety of tablets with the same codebase. However we haven't forgotten about the original mobile form-factor, the smartphone. The same codebase is smart enough to know whether or not it is running on a tablet or a smartphone and the user interface is adjusted accordingly.
Here is an example of 2GO running on a Motorola Droid. This is the same application that was shown in the tablet videos, however the interface is optimized for the smartphone (one column of data instead of two, and more of a wizard like interface).
The mobile team is still hard at work and there is more to come. I will keep you posted on our progress as we make a few more announcements in the coming weeks that will make it even easier for you to access these and other 2GO applications and easily roll them out to your organization.
Today Amazon made a big announcement, the availability of Oracle as an option for their Relational Database Service (RDS). For those who are unfamiliar with RDS, it is a balance between a pure play multi-tenant Cloud database (think SimpleDB, Database.com) and running your own RDMS (MySQL, Oracle) on a virtual server in a cloud. RDS launched as a managed MySQL offering and AWS takes care of all the heavy lifting (patches, backups, etc) and makes it very easy to switch sizes and increase the horsepower if need be.
However many Enterprises still like the reliability and stability of an Oracle database, and now AWS is offering an Oracle option for their wildly popular RDS service. This will immediately open up doors to make AWS an easy option for Enterprise dev and test environments and make it easier to do production applications in AWS that are backed by Oracle.
The offering comes in two versions:
·License Included - This version includes a license for an Oracle Database Standard Edition One database included and starts at $0.16/hr. The hourly charge is for the Oracle license and all hardware and virtual server costs.
·BYOL – Bring Your Own License – This allows customers to bring their own Oracle licenses to AWS and run Standard or Enterprise Edition databases starting at $0.11/hr.
I predict this will be very popular and will give companies another reason to move systems to the cloud, or do dev/test or quick projects on Oracle instead of an open source database.
It is a good time to be a developer. The PaaS space is heating up and now developers have a great new option to use to deploy, run and manage their applications, Beanstalk. The name is a departure from the normal Amazon alphabet soup, and is certainly unique and memorable.
I’m especially excited about this service because Model Metrics had early access to this and built the Travel Log sample application for AWS that shows off Best Practices around how to do Java development on AWS and is essentially the “Hello World” application for Beanstalk.
Name aside I like that AWS took a slightly different approach than what other PaaS providers have done. With VMForce or Google App Engine a developer essentially deploys their application into a massive cloud and providing it meets the governor guidelines and limits imposed by that cloud, it just runs. This approach is great for some developers, the tradeoff of some functionality for the pure abstraction of allowing code to run with no knowledge or access to the underlying infrastructure. However if you want to have the same ease of deployment, but with more access to what is under the covers, then Beanstalk is a great option.
Beanstalk essentially does the same thing as GAE or VMForce, upload a Java application and choose a few options and it just works. You no longer have to worry about provisioning an EC2 server, installing Tomcat, etc… However you do still have control over what size/type of instance your app will run on, and how many instances it can scale up to. The fact that you are running on your “own” stack means you don’t have to worry about governor limits or limitations imposed by other PaaS providers, but it also means you are running closer to the actual server level which can be a pro or a con depending on your mindset.
Time will tell which approach people will prefer, but I predict that this will be a successful service for AWS and really makes it much easier for a new developer to navigate the AWS waters and get their application up and running quickly.
Now that I have a few days of distance from Dreamforce, and more importantly some sleep, I wanted to re-cap my thoughts on the conference I just attended along with 30,000 of my closest friends. First off I’m amazed at how much larger Dreamforce gets every year. This was my 6th one and I’ve had the privilege of speaking at the last five so I’ve seen it grow from being a smaller show at Moscone West, to taking over Moscone North and South, and now this year taking up all three venues. I think the big announcement back in ’05 was something around “Multi-force” and having multiple applications by switching the drop-down on the top right of the screen (which just essentially changed what tabs were available). This year we got to see VMForce go into private beta and become a reality, hear about the launch of database.com and the intent to acquire Heroku.
To me these announcements show that Salesforce.com is serious about the platform and making force.com a true competitor to other cloud platforms that are available today. The ability to support multiple languages (Apex, Visualforce, Ruby, Java, or anything and use database.com) shows a real commitment to the custom development community. Past Dreamforce’s have felt more CRM focused with some excitement around Force.com, but this one seemed more like the ship is truly changing directions and that the company is changing it’s focus and truly trying to broaden it’s reach. The training wheels have been removed from Force.com and now it can be used by developers of almost any background.
As with any marketing driven company we will have to wait a bit to see how this all comes together, what limits or governors exits, and the timing of these new options. I think one of the bigger announcements was a quiet one, that they will be reducing some governor limits by 70%. As with any PaaS platform you have to take the good with the bad. You have this huge platform to use and it takes away all of the low-level details and tweaks from you (which can be good), but since it is a shared environment you also have to be a good citizen and abide by the rules of sharing and governors (which can be challenging). The fact that these limits are raising will make developing on the platform even easier and will allow for richer applications.
More options, more languages, lower governors, I like where this is going.
So I decided to make the switch to Android from my iPhone, and started the process of switching carriers and trying to actually start using it. The most surprising part of the journey involved the reactions of those around me. Several friends or co-workers were literally shocked that I would give up my iPhone. Has Steve Jobs done such a good job of convincing us the iPhone can do anything short of solving world peace? I think he has based on the shocked looks of those around me.
Once I jumped through the carrier switching hoops and activated my phone at a nearby Verizon store I received my first call, it was my wife. I told her it was my first call on the new phone and her reaction? “Wow, I can actually hear you!” She didn’t realize how bad the voice quality was on the iPhone until she talked to me on the Droid 2. I can’t say how much of the credit goes to the Droid 2 and how much goes to Verizon, but it was a step in the right direction and helped reassure me that my switch was going to work out. So how about everything else? Here is a breakdown:
Positive Changes
Call Quality
Verizon is one of the main reasons you would even consider a switch right? Believe me, it is worth it. Call quality is much better than the iPhone. Of course with Verizon the network is much better as well, so that’s almost a reason to switch right there. Time will tell if rumors are true of the iPhone going to Verizon in 2011
Paradigm Shift
The biggest change to the migration is the paradigm shift away from iTunes. Everything is synchronized over the air. Contacts, software updates, even music can be synchronized wirelessly. Even as a software developer I was surprised (for some reason) that I could actually install other music players (such as WinAmp). It is a big world outside of the Apple walled garden.
Email
Our company uses corporate Gmail, so the Google integration was a prime draw for me. I like how easily it fit in to my email routine, has threaded messages, and understands labels and other Google paradigms. The physical keyboard on the Droid2 helps as well, but I’m still using the onscreen one about 50% of the time (probably because of my 2+ years with the iPhone)
Calendar
The calendar is great on the Droid2 and is again tightly integrated with our corporate Google Calendar. It is much easier to create an event and invite people to it than on the iPhone.
Free Turn-by-Turn Nav!
I along with millions of others relied on Google Maps on my iPhone as a navigation aid when I was travelling and didn’t bring my Garmin. But the Droid2 has a great turn-by-turn Nav and seems to work really well. The best feature is that it is free and has no monthly charges. The phone also came with a Verizon branded version that has a monthly fee, I can’t imagine why anyone would want to pay for that when the base version seems great.
Voice Control/Speech to Text
The Droid2 (and Android 2.2 “Froyo”) has a great speech-to-text feature that actually works. I love being able to send a text by speech (and it is usually fairly accurate), or do a search by voice. I’m not sure if this will stop people from texting and driving, but it should make it much safer if you chose to ignore Oprah’s advice and do so.
Apps
Literally every one of the iPhone applications I actually use was available on the Android Market. Pandora, Shazam, Evernote, Facebook, Weather Channel and yes even a free full version of Angry Birds.
Adobe Friendly
Now I can actually see a menu at those restaurants that have Flash only sites. Even better I can easily run a mobile version of the same AIR code base that runs on a laptop or a desktop. To install a development version of an application I just need to install a file from an email. I don’t have to worry about my iPhone UDID (Unique Device Identifier), Ad Hoc Builds, Provisioning Profiles, etc…
Neutral Changes
Learning Curve
It does take a little while to get used to the idea of using the hardware buttons. There is a “back” button, a “menu” button, a “home” button and a “search” button. Once you get used to the idea it is great, but it takes a bit of getting used to. I’ve really learned to appreciate the back button and really noticed it when playing around with my old iPhone 3GS (which is basically now an iPod touch) when I kept trying to use it. The Settings menu isn’t quite as intuitive as the iOS design.
Contacts
I had a tough time figuring out how to just get the contacts I cared about to my Droid2. Since everything, and I mean everything comes over to the phone I paid for Gmail’s tendency to create a contact for everyone I ever emailed. I had hundreds of contacts I didn’t care about and others that I did were just listed as the phone number and all the details (name, email, company) were just listed out as text in the Notes field. After some Google searching I found a way to export my iPhone contacts as Address Book vcards (I use a Mac) and import them into Google as a new Contact Group. Then I could weed out the old junk Contacts and just use those I cared about.
Drawbacks
Fit and Finish
The fit and polish of the OS and the hardware isn’t quite up to Apple standards. It is very usable but doesn’t have the same “wow” factor as an iPhone. I think with the widgets and other features it is getting closer, but it isn’t as intuitive and has taken me awhile to figure out which apps to move to the home screen, how to have multiple home screens, etc… I think it will get there, but still lags behind Apple a little in this category.
Music and Video
The iPhone has its heritage from an iPod, and the Android phone is definitely weaker in this area. It ships with the Amazon MP3 store installed, which is good, but there is not a straightforward way to get your music library on it from iTunes, and then even if you do the music player isn’t the greatest. The same can be said for Video/Movies. There are some good 3rd party players out there to consider which can definitely help. I’m in the process of setting up some Open Source application (iTuneMyWalkman) on my Mac in an attempt to make the iTunes connection tighter.
Notifications
This might seem small, but is my biggest pet peeve about Android at this point. With an iPhone you get a pop-up type window front and center even if your phone is locked when a text message comes in, or an appointment reminder goes off. With Android everything is housed within the Notifications bar that you pull down from the top of the screen. It does place a little icon up there if you get a new text or have a calendar reminder, but it is very easy to miss the fact that you have a new message or are about to miss an important call. I haven’t been able to find a way to turn off email notifications (which I don’t care about) so something is always in my notification bar.
There may be some 3rd party applications out there that help mitigate this issue but I haven’t taken the time to look too closely to find out. Hopefully this gets more robust with future Android releases.
Summary
All in all I made the transition fairly unscathed. I’m loving the Verizon network and call quality. I’m able to send email, update twitter and facebook and do everything I need to on my phone with ease. I’m still enjoying the turn-by-turn Nav and getting to know the voice commands, but I love sending texts by voice. The minimal nature of the notifications leaves a lot to be desired and I often miss text messages and I need to pay closer attention to my calendar to make sure I don’t miss a meeting. I don’t regret the switch and it has been fun to get to know a new platform more closely. I still have a few barriers to conquer and smooth out (such as iTunes sync), but overall I’m a happy camper.
I’ve had an iPhone for quite awhile. Not from the very beginning. I wasn’t in line they day they first went on sale to pay what was it? Something like $600 for it? No, but I had one fairly early on was excited to get early access to the developer program. It was exciting to create one of the first business applications for the AppStore and to be on it the day it launched. The first generation iPhone was a huge step forward from my current Smartphone at the time, an HTC something or other from T-mobile that ran Windows Mobile 5.
Looking back I’ve always been an early Smartphone fan. I had my first one, a Palm Treo 180 almost 10 years ago. It was basically a monochrome Palm Pilot with a phone app on it and a very delicate hinged earpiece that did eventually die. I upgraded to the newer Treo, this one was in COLOR! But it had the same hinge issue and despite my best efforts, it eventually quit working too. I think I then tried an early version of the Sidekick. I liked that it was unique, but didn’t appreciate how closed the platform was. I couldn’t just install other Palm apps like I could on my Treo’s. I got a Sidekick 2 and liked the new features, but it still fell short and at some point I moved over to Windows Mobile. With Windows Mobile I liked the openness, but the interface was terrible, going into the Task Manager to kill runaway processes, etc… So I was excited when Model Metrics got into the iPhone fray early on and I was able to expense an iPhone.
Looking back it was the first time I had a Smartphone without a physical keyboard. I think in my mind that is why I gravitated towards the Smartphone was because I wanted to use them for email and liked the idea of a full keyboard. I grumbled along with everyone else saying, “It’s not as fast for email as a Blackberry, but you get used to it”. I didn’t upgrade to the 3G model when it later launched, but did get a 3GS when they hit the street as my first gen was getting long in the tooth and I liked the idea of a faster processor.
Now we are doing development of mobile applications across several platforms and one of those is Android. We have some test Nexus 1 phones in the office that are used for development and testing. I liked a few things about them, but found the trackball and general approach fairly primitive when compared to the iPhone I was used to. I appreciated the idea of Android (open source, multiple manufacturers, runs Flash, supports Adobe AIR), but I kept wondering in the back of my mind how it would really feel to try using it as a primary phone?
Gradually other phones have made their way into our company. Some had the first generation Droid, others some of the newer Android models from HTC or Samsung. It wasn’t until I was at the Adobe MAX conference in October and was given a Droid2 along with thousands of other developers that I truly thought about leaving the iPhone fold. I played with the Droid, connected my Google account and tried downloading a few applications. Everyone asked what I thought about it and I realized I couldn’t really say unless I tried it as my primary phone. So I just made the switch (which was surprisingly painful), not because of Android, but involved the procedures of moving off the company AT&T plan, to a personal plan, to a personal Verizon plan and then back to the company Verizon plan just to keep my number. Tune in for my next blog where I’ll break out my thoughts after going Android and how it compared to my iPhone.
Today Salesforce.com announced a new technology that should make IT pause before writing another big check to Oracle. Database.com is another reason to look at the Force.com platform as an alternative to in-house development, a private cloud or other cloud offerings.
Salesforce.com has had a few years to firm up Force.com and it now offers a robust PaaS option that includes a cloud-based language for logic and data access (APEX), and a cloud based language for user interfaces (VisualForce). Both are very similar to Java, are easy to learn, and take advantage of unique elements of the Force.com platform (flexible data model, security, scalability). In order to bolster adoption, they announced VMForce earlier this year in conjunction with VMWare as an attempt to add the millions of Java developers to the Force.com fold by supporting the Spring framework and Java code natively on the platform.
The announcement of database.com opens yet another door for IT to add Force.com to their platform toolkit. Essentially, database.com allows a developer in any language (Java, .NET, PHP, Ruby, etc.) to use Force.com as their back-end instead of their own database or another database-as-a-service option.
Salesforce.com was astute in how they developed this new offering by creating a user interface and an approach that assumes no knowledge of Force.com or Salesforce. The browser-based interface allows a developer to easily create tables (objects), relationships, stored procedures (triggers), and perform queries. This is a very low barrier to entry for any developer and gives them a powerful database platform to start using while removing the need for a DBA. Database.com takes care of the tuning, indexing and even back-ups of the data, allowing developers to focus on application development.
I’m personally excited about the announcement today and believe that database.com will be a viable offering that will give IT departments a strong alternative when they are looking at database options. I predict this will open up the back-end of Force.com to new developers, and that a variety of applications written in several different languages will utilize it as an easy, yet powerful back-end. This approach will allow Force.com to more easily play in the hybrid cloud architecture of the future where a front-end could be hosted internally in a private cloud, or on another public cloud such as AWS and the back-end could be on Force.com.
Everything seems to be going mobile, and IT is scrambling. Yesterday’s policies aren’t cutting it when company executives buy the latest-whiz-bang-mobile-gadget-bling and then want to read their company email on it, and other employees soon follow.
Traditionally companies had one supported device, the RIM Blackberry. We all know it still has the dominant business market share, but Apple has made huge gains over the last couple of years and now Android devices are coming on strong and overtaking Apple. The waters are further muddied by tablets (iPad today, Android tablets tomorrow) and how IT will support, condone and manage them.
Some companies have moved towards a “employee liable” approach allowing individuals to bring their own device in an attempt to save $300-$400 a device. However this can become a support nightmare and most companies find it cheaper in the long run to provide a few devices that they can more easily manage and support. Saving a few hundred bucks can cause more support headaches than it’s worth.
So where do we go from here? Several companies are emerging to provide device management support. But what is the inflection point to move towards a solution like this?
Security – For regulated industries such as Life Sciences, Pharma and Financial Services security is a must
Pain – Once you move above 200 devices the support pain can get too much
Cost Management – To contain roaming charges and data overages
Application Management – Apps are proliferating and need management
There are options from vendors such as Zenprise, AirWatch, Mobile Iron and iPass to help with some or many of these needs.
At a recent conference I heard stories of people seeing a $1,500 iPad bill for data overages (most likely due to Netflix), or surprised by roaming charges when travelling.
I’d recommend that IT departments get in front of this quickly and create and update their device policies and management systems to get ready for the continued tsunami of mobile devices and tablets headed their way.
Compute Costs are cut in half; every 18 months, Fiber costs are dropping, storage costs are dropping, but why is IT still expensive?
500 Billion dollars are wasted a year in IT. How? Around half of all IT projects fail, and over half of commercial software features are not used.
Jim Whitehurst, The CEO of RedHat presented an interesting vision during the Interop NYC Keynote. First off he did not spend time discussing RedHat products, but focused on his macro view of the IT Industry. It went something like this:
IT Vendor Feature Lists + Buggy Software = Vendor/Customer Tension and Failed Projects
He has a unique viewpoint as he presided over Delta airlines during their bankruptcy process. He was able to squeeze dollars out of catering contracts and every area of the company, except IT. IT was locked into multi-year contracts they didn’t need and was dealing with buggy software and failed projects.
He stated that commercial software quality (defects per 1,000 lines of code) has not improved over the last 30 years. However Open Source quality is much higher than commercial quality and continues to improve. He categorized Open Source on the level with the Kaizen revolution in manufacturing.
His view of the future includes Open Source (of course) but also Public Cloud Computing. RedHat is one of the building blocks behind many clouds (Salesforce.com for one) but they are also adding functionality to make it easier for the end customer to leverage the public cloud. They are adding a layer that will abstract cloud differences and make it easier to pull in elements of various public clouds with a common Cloud API.
His prediction is that today an Enterprise developer spends 2/3 of their time “Trying to figure out how to do something” and not delivering business value. He estimates that a common Cloud API will make them 3x more productive.
“If you are paying for it when it is turned off, it isn’t a cloud. I can put a goat in my front lawn and it can eat the grass, but I can’t call it a lawnmower” - A public cloud evangelist reflecting on the private cloud.
The Private Cloud seems to be gaining traction within the halls of Enterprise IT and was a hot topic at Interop NYC 2010. But do Private Clouds exist? What are their shortcomings, and what does this mean for the Public Cloud?
I live in the Public Cloud world and spend my days with Force.com/Salesforce, Amazon Web Services and Google. I tend to agree with the their viewpoint that private clouds are not really clouds at all. However I was struck with how popular the idea of private clouds were to those at the Interop NYC 2010 conference. This seems to validate the opinion that companies are asking IT “What is our cloud strategy?” and they are flocking to the private cloud as it seems like a safer and more importantly “comfortable” option for IT to pursue. This demand is also driven by vendors who see this as a good opportunity to sell more hardware and management software to IT. This trend seems to ring true with the global SI’s as Dan Elron from Accenture stated that the private cloud makes up around 80% of Accenture’s cloud revenue and is “growing like gangbusters”.
We all know that IT budgets are tight and are asked to do more with less and generally have a large backlog (usually years) of projects that are waiting in the wings. I can’t imagine that many IT departments are going to have the budget or time to fully embrace a private cloud initiative. If only 20-30% of IT has embraced virtualization (which has been around for ~10 years), how will they be able to turn that into a private cloud? I’m sure a few are diving in head first, but many more are probably trying private clouds in small ways or adding a level of self service over any virtualization they may have.
I heard a statistic during one session where the speaker shared that without virtualization you achieve about 10% utilization on your hardware. If you add virtualization it goes up to around 30-35%, and if you add a private cloud on top of that it goes to ~38% utilization. Why so low? The real issue behind these numbers is that almost all companies have some degree of spiky demand. Either there is more demand during working hours to handle the 9-5 end users, or more demand overnight for batch processing. Either way, virtualized, private cloud or bare metal, the hardware needs to be sized for that demand plus a certain amount of overage. That leaves troughs. Times where that capacity is not used or needed no matter how virtualized that hardware is configured.
The challenge with virtualization and private cloud isn’t just the technical aspects, it really centers around process and change management. Many companies use slow hardware provisioning and IT backlog as a mechanism to kill projects or ideas that should never see the light of day. Most IT departments are built around these delays and moving server provisioning to minutes from months can have unintended consequences. Sys Admin’s suddenly are trying to manage 5 to 10x the number of virtual servers if developers have easy access to provisioning their own servers. I’ve seen companies put processes and artificial delays in place to handle these types of issues and it lessens the advantages that can be achieved.
I’ve lived in the public cloud world for the last six years and certainly understand the benefits and shortcomings of the various leaders in this space. However I recently had an opportunity to speak on a panel at a Datacenter Dynamics conference around the topic of “The future of the data center” to provide a “cloud viewpoint”. I’ve been away from that world for awhile and I was struck how hard it really is to create and run a data center. You need to be an architectural expert (where to put cooling, raised floor, pillars, generators) and electrical engineer (how to power it, add redundancy, cooling, cabling) and a system administrator (server setup, configuration, management, backup). While my fellow panelists debated whether or not the mechanicals (fans, cooling, etc) needed to be on a UPS or not before temps hit critical mass during a power failure, I just thought about how much I love not having to worry about any of that with the cloud. At the end of the day, why do you want to have your own data center and worry about all of those types of details?
While talking to some of the Interop panelists who spoke during the private cloud summit another trend emerged. It turns our that several of them don’t actually have a private cloud, but “they are working on it”. No one was able to articulate what it really takes to build one beyond using some of the newer offerings from VMWare or other vendors plus a lot of custom development. There is no clear answer today and it is made worse by the “Cloudwashing” going on by all vendors who are quick to state the cloud benefits of their particular solution.
So what does all this mean for the future of the private cloud? My prediction is that it’s future is bright for the short term. It “feels safe” for IT, is being pushed by vendors such as VMWare and IBM and is validated by global SI’s who see it as a great vehicle for long term consulting contracts. Longer term I think everyone will realize that it has limited benefits and but it will be a stepping stone toward the public cloud. As Allistair Croll put it during his closing remarks, the future is the Hybrid Cloud.
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