Monthly Archives: January 2014
The end of the beginning of cloud computing
As my colleague Daryl Plummer has put it: We’re at the end of the beginning phase of cloud computing.
As 2014 dawns, we’re moving into an era of truly mainstream adoption of cloud IaaS. While many organizations have already been using cloud IaaS for several years, gradually moving from development to production, with an ever-expanding range of use cases and applications, the shift to truly strategic adoption is just getting underway. Increasingly, organizations are asking what can’t go to the cloud, rather than what can.
Organizations that haven’t done at least a cloud IaaS pilot by now, however informal (“informal” includes that one crazy developer who decided to give his credit card to Amazon) are at the trailing edge of adoption. The larger the business, the more likely it is to be doing things in cloud IaaS; this is a trend that starts from enterprises and works its way down. (Technology companies of all sizes, of course, are comfortably ensconced in the cloud.)
Gartner’s clients with multiple years of cloud IaaS under their belts are now comfortably going towards more strategic adoption. What’s interesting, though, is that later adopters are also going towards strategic adoption — they’re skipping the years of early getting-their-feet-wet, and immediately jumping in with more significant projects, with more ambitious goals. That makes a great deal of sense, though — by this point, the market is more mature, and there are immediate and clear answers to practical issues like, “How do I connect my enterprise network?” (That one question, by the way, continues to benefit Amazon, which has a precise answer, versus the often-fuzzy or complex answers of other competitors who have less industrialized processes for doing so.)
I’ve said before that developers are the key to cloud IaaS adoption in most organizations. It’s also becoming clear that the most successful strategic efforts will be developer-led, usually with an enterprise architect as the lead for the organization-wide effort. It is the developers that have the strategic vision for the future of application development and operations, and that care about things like faster delivery (i.e., business agility), continuous integration, continuous deployment, application lifecycle management, and infrastructure as code. IT operations seems to almost inevitably be mired in thinking about solely their own domain, which tends to be focused on a data center view that effectively reduces to “how do we keep the lights on, at a lower cost?” This has a high probability of leading to solutions that might be right for IT operations, but wrong for the business.
At the moment, I’m writing research focused on best practices — the lessons learned from the trenches, from organizations who have adopted cloud IaaS over the last seven years of the market. I’m always interested in hearing your stories.
Recommended reading for 2014 Cloud IaaS and Managed Hosting Magic Quadrants
If you’re a service provider interested in participating in the research process for Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Cloud IaaS (see the call for vendors), or the regional Magic Quadrants for Cloud-Enabled Managed Hosting (see that call for vendors), you will probably want to read some of my previous blog posts.
The Magic Quadrant Process Itself
AR contacts for a Magic Quadrant should read everything. An explanation of why it’s critical to read every word of every communication received during the MQ process.
The process of a Magic Quadrant. Understanding a little bit about how MQs get put together.
Vendors, Magic Quadrants, and client status. Appropriate use of communications channels during the MQ process.
General tips for Magic Quadrant briefings and Specific tips for Magic Quadrant briefings. Information on how to conduct an effective and concise Magic Quadrant briefing.
The art of the customer reference. Tips on how to choose reference customers.
Gartner’s Understanding of the Market
Foundational Gartner research notes on cloud IaaS and managed hosting, 2014. Recommended reading to understand our thinking on the markets.
Having cloud-enabled technology != Having a cloud. Critical for understanding what we do and don’t consider cloud IaaS to be.
Infrastructure resilience, fast VM restart, and Google Compute Engine. An explanation of why infrastructure resilience still matters in the cloud, and what we mean by the term.
No World of Two Clouds. Why we do not believe that there will be a separation of the cloud IaaS offerings that target the enterprise, from those that target cloud-native organizations.
Cloud IaaS market share and the developer-centric world. How developers, rather than IT operations admins, drive spend in the cloud IaaS market.
Foundational Gartner research notes for cloud IaaS and managed hosting, 2014
With the refresh of the Magic Quadrant for Cloud IaaS, and the evolution of the regional Magic Quadrants for Managed Hosting into Magic Quadrants for Cloud-Enabled Managed Hosting, I am following my annual tradition of highlighting researching that myself and others have published that’s important in the context of these MQs. These notes lay out how we see the market, and consequently, the lens that we’re going to be evaluating the service providers through.
As always, I want to stress that service providers do not need to agree with our perspective in order to rate well. We admire those who march to their own particular beat, as long as it results in true differentiation and more importantly, customer wins and happy customers — a different perspective can allow a service provider to serve their particular segments of the market more effectively. However, such providers need to be able to clearly articulate that vision and to back it up with data that supports their world-view.
This updates a previous list of foundational research. Please note that those older notes still remain relevant, and you are encouraged to read them. You might also be interested in a previous research round-up (clients only).
If you are a service provider, these are the research notes that it might be helpful to be familiar with (sorry, links are behind client-only paywall):
Magic Quadrant for Cloud IaaS, 2013. Last year’s Magic Quadrant is full of deep-dive information about the market and the providers. Also check out the Critical Capabilities for Public Cloud IaaS, 2013 for a deeper dive into specific public cloud IaaS offerings (Critical Capabilities is almost solely focused on feature set for particular use cases, whereas a Magic Quadrant positions a vendor in a market as a whole).
Magic Quadrant for Managed Hosting, North America and Magic Quadrant for European Managed Hosting. Last year’s managed hosting Magic Quadrants are likely the last MQs we’ll publish for traditional managed hosting. They still make interesting reading even though these MQs are evolving this year.
Pricing and Buyer’s Guide for Web Hosting and Cloud Infrastructure, 2013. Our market definitions are described here.
Evaluation Criteria for Public Cloud IaaS Providers. Our Technical Professionals research provides extremely detailed criteria for large enterprises that are evaluating providers. While the customer requirements are somewhat different in other segments, like the mid-market, these criteria should give you an extremely strong idea of the kinds of things that we think are important to customers. The cloud IaaS MQ evaluation criteria are not identical (because it is broader than just large-enterprise), but they are very similar — we do coordinate our research.
Technology Overview for Cloud-Enabled System Infrastructure. If you’re wondering what cloud-enabled system infrastructure (CESI) is, this will explain it to you. Cloud-enabled managed hosting is the combination of a CESI with managed services, so it’s important to understand.
Don’t Be Fooled By Offerings Falsely Masquerading as Cloud IaaS. This note was written for our end-user clients, to help them sort out an increasingly “cloudwashed” service provider landscape. It’s very important for understanding what constitutes a cloud service and why the technical and business benefits of “cloud” matter.
Service Providers Must Understand the Real Needs of Prospective Customers of Cloud IaaS. Customers are often confused about what they want to buy when they claim to want “cloud”. This provides structured guidance for figuring this out, and it’s important for understanding service provider value propositions.
How Customers Purchase Cloud IaaS, 2012. A lifecycle exploration of how customers adopt and expand their use of cloud IaaS. Important for understanding our perspective on sales and marketing. (It’s dated 2012, but it’s actually a 2013 note, and still fully current.)
Market Trends: Managed Cloud Infrastructure, 2013. Our view of the evolution of data center outsourcing, managed hosting, and cloud IaaS, and broadly, the “managed cloud”. Critical for understanding the future of cloud-enabled managed hosting.
Managed Services Providers Must Adapt to the Needs of DevOps-Oriented Customers. As DevOps increases in popularity, managed services increasingly want their infrastructure to be managed with a DevOps philosophy. This represents a radical change for service providers. This note explores the customer requirements and market implications.
If you are not a Gartner client, please note that many of these topics have been covered in my blog in the past, if at a higher level (and generally in a mode where I am still working out my thinking, as opposed to a polished research position).
Last call for vendors for 2014 Cloud IaaS Magic Quadrant
We began the call-for-vendors process for Gartner’s 2014 Magic Quadrant for Cloud Infrastructure as a Service, as well as the regional Magic Quadrants for Cloud-Enabled Managed Hosting, in December. (See Doug Toombs’s call for vendors for the latter.)
The pre-qualification survey, which is intended to gather quantitative metrics and information about each provider’s service, is going out imminently. We sent out contact confirmations on December 26th to all service providers who are currently on our list to receive the survey. If you haven’t received a contact confirmation and you want to receive the survey, please contact Michele Severance (Michele dot Severance at Gartner dot com), who is providing administrative support for this Magic Quadrant. You must be authorized to speak for your company. Please note we cannot work with PR firms for the Magic Quadrant; if you are a PR agency and you think that your client should be participating, you should get in touch with your client and have your client contact Michele.
This year, we are doing an integrated survey process for multiple Magic Quadrants. The cloud IaaS MQ is, in many ways, foundational. Cloud-enabled managed hosting is the delivery of managed services on top of cloud IaaS and, more broadly, cloud-enabled system infrastructure. Consequently, this year’s survey asks about your platforms, your managed services levels, and how those things combine into service offerings. Because the survey is longer, we’re starting the survey process earlier than usual.
The survey is an important part of our data collection efforts on the markets, not just for the Magic Quadrants. We use the survey data to recommend providers throughout the year, particularly since we try to find providers that can exactly fit a client’s needs — including small niche providers. Far from everything fits into the one-size-fits-all mold of the largest providers.
The Cloud IaaS MQ continues to be updated on a 9-month cycle, reflecting the continued fast pace of the market. It will have similar scope to last year, with a very strong emphasis on self-service capabilities.
The best guide to this year’s Magic Quadrant is last year’s Magic Quadrant. Read the interactive MQ if you’re a client, or the free reprint if you’re not.
Please note that receiving a survey does not in any way indicate that we believe that your company is likely to qualify; we simply allow surveys to go to all interested parties (assuming that theyâre not obviously wrong fits, like software companies without an IaaS offering).
The status for this Magic Quadrant will be periodically updated on its status page.
Shooting squirrels from the roof
I’ve been spending the last week revising the combined service-provider survey for our Magic Quadrant for Cloud IaaS, and the new regional Magic Quadrants for Cloud-Enabled Managed Hosting.
With every year of revision, the way I ask questions becomes lengthier and more specific, along with the boldfaced “THESE THINGS DO NOT COUNT” caveats. These caveats almost inevitably come from things vendors have tried to claim count as X, with varying degrees of creativity and determination.
I consider my behavior part of a category I’ll call “shooting squirrels from the roof”. It comes from a story that a friend once told me about a rental agreement on a house. This rental agreement had all the usual stipulations about what tenants aren’t allowed to do, but then it had a list of increasingly specific and weird directives about what the tenant was not allowed to do, culminating in, “Tenant shall not shoot squirrels from the roof.” You just know that each of these clauses came from some previous bad experience that the landlord had with some tenant, which caused them to add these “thou shalt not” behaviors in great specificity to each subsequent lease.
So, I use the phrase “shooting squirrels from the roof” to denote situations in which someone, having been burned by previous bad experiences, tries to be very specific (often in a contract) to avoid being burned in that way again.
When I look at customer contracts for managed hosting and indeed, for services in general, I sometimes see they’ve got “shooting squirrels from the roof” contract clauses, specifying a list of often-bizarre, horrible things that the provider is not allowed to do. Those customers aren’t crazy (well, at least not entirely); they’ve just been burned before. No doubt if you’re in the services business (whether IT or not), you’ve probably had this experience, too.
CloudPundit: Massive-Scale Computing 