Blog Archives
Gartner’s cloud IaaS assessments, 2016 edition
We’re pleased to announce that the 2016 Magic Quadrant for Cloud Infrastructure, Worldwide has been published. (Link requires a Gartner subscription. If you’re not a Gartner client, there are free reprints available through vendors, and various press articles, such as the Tech Republic analysis. Note that press articles do not always accurately reflect our opinions, though.)
Producing the Magic Quadrant is a huge team effort that involves many people across Gartner, including many analysts who aren’t credited as co-authors, administrative support staff, and people in our primary-research and benchmarking groups. The team effort also reflects the way that we produce an entire body of IaaS research as an integrated effort across Gartner’s research divisions. (The approach described below is specific to our IaaS research and may not apply to Gartner’s assessments in other markets.)
Whether you already have a cloud IaaS provider and are just looking for a competitive check-up, you’re thinking of adding one or more additional providers, or you’re just getting started with cloud IaaS, our work can help you find the providers that are right for you.
The TL;DR list of assessments:
- Magic Quadrant (market and technical evaluation)
- Evaluation Criteria (230+ technical and service traits to look for in a provider)
- In-Depth Assessments (detailed assessments of specific providers against the Evaluation Criteria)
- Critical Capabilities (use-case-based technical evaluations; 2016 update coming soon)
- CloudHarmony and Tech Planner Cloud Module (real-world stats and cost-performance comparisons)
- Peer Insights (IT leaders review providers)
(Note that not all of these might be available as part of your current Gartner client subscription.)
Gartner has produced a Magic Quadrant for Cloud IaaS since 2011. The MQ is our overall perspective on the market, looking at the provider solutions from both a technical and business angle. Gartner clients can use the interactive MQ tool to change the weightings of the criteria to suit their own evaluation priorities (if you read the detailed criteria descriptions, there’s an explanation of how each criterion maps to buyer priorities). The interactive MQ can also be used to get a multi-year historical perspective.
The MQ covers public, hosted private, and industrialized outsourced private cloud IaaS; it’s not just a public cloud MQ. We look at multi-tenant and single-tenant, located in either provider or customer premises, cloud IaaS offerings. We also look at the full range of compute options (VMs, bare-metal servers, containers) that are delivered in a cloud model (API-provisionable via automation, and metered by the hour or less), not just VMs. In addition, we consider some integrated PaaS-layer services (we call these cloud software infrastructure services, which include things like database as a service), but we have a separate enterprise application PaaS MQ for pure aPaaS. While we consider the provider’s overall value proposition in the context of cloud IaaS (including their ability to deliver managed services, network services, etc.), this isn’t a general cloud computing or outsourcing MQ.
2016 marks our sixth iteration of a pure cloud IaaS MQ. Previously, in 2009 and 2010, we included cloud IaaS in our hosting MQ, but by 2010, it was already clear that the hosting and cloud IaaS buyer wants and needs were distinctly different. Since 2011, we’ve produced a global cloud IaaS MQ, along with three regional hosting MQs (suitable for customers looking for dedicated servers or managed hosting on a monthly or annual basis), and three regional data center outsourcing MQs (which include customized private cloud services as part of a broader portfolio of infrastructure outsourcing capabiities). Not every infrastructure need can or should be met with cloud IaaS.
The core foundation of our assessment is our Evaluation Criteria for Cloud IaaS. Over the years, we’ve converged the technical-detail questionnaire that we ask providers to fill out during the Magic Quadrant research process, with the Gartner for Technical Professionals (GTP) document that we produce to guide buyers on evaluating providers. This has resulted in nearly 250 service traits that the Evaluation Criteria document categorizes as Required (almost all Gartner clients are likely to want these things and these have the potential to be showstoppers if missing), Preferred (many will want these things), and Optional (use-case-specific needs). This gives us a consistent set of formal definitions for service features — things you can put a clear yes/no to. As a buyer, you can use the Evaluation Criteria to score any cloud IaaS provider — and even score your own IT department’s private cloud.
In the course of doing this particular Magic Quadrant, providers fill out very detailed questionnaires that list these service features and capabilities (broken down even more granularly than in the Evaluation Criteria), indicating whether their service has those traits, and they’re also asked to provide evidence, like documentation. We also ask them to provide other information like the location of their data centers, languages supported across various aspects of service delivery (like portal localization and tech-support languages spoken), a copy of their standard contract and SLAs, and so forth. We score those questionnaires (and check service features against documentation, and with hands-on testing if need be). We also score things like the buyer-friendliness of contracts, based on the presence/absence of particular clauses. Those component scores are used in many different individual scoring categories within the Magic Quadrant.
We also produce a set of In-Depth Assessments for the providers that our clients are most interested in evaluating. The In-Depth Assessments are detailed documents that score an individual provider against the Evaluation Criteria; for every criteria, we explain how the provider does and doesn’t meet it, and we provide links to the corresponding documentation or other evidence. The results of our hands-on testing are noted, as well. For many buyers, this minimizes the need to conduct an RFP that dives into the technical solution; here we’ve done a very detailed fact-based analysis for you, and the provider has verified the accuracy of the information. (Buyer beware, though: Providers sometimes produce something that looks like one of these assessments, even quoting the Gartner definitions, but with their own more generous self-assessment rather than the stringent Gartner-produced assessment!)
Then, we produce Critical Capabilities for Public Cloud IaaS (2016 update still in progress). This technical assessment looks at a single public cloud IaaS offering from each of the providers included in the Magic Quadrant. The same technical traits used in the other assessments are used here, but they are divided into categories of capabilities, and those capabilities are weighted in a set of common use cases. You can also customize your own set of weightings. In addition to providing quantitative scores, we summarize, in a fair amount of detail, the technical capabilities of each evaluated provider. This allows you to get a sense of what providers are likely to be right for your needs, without having to go through the full deep-dive of reading the In-Depth Assessments. (Critical Capabilities are also available to all Gartner clients and reprints may be offered by providers on their websites, whereas the In-Depth Assessments are only available to GTP clients.)
Performance, and price-performance, is important to many buyers. Gartner provides hardware benchmarking via a SaaS offering called Tech Planner. We offer a Cloud Module within Tech Planner that uses technology that we derived from our acquisition of CloudHarmony. We conduct continuous automated testing on many cloud IaaS providers, including all providers in the Magic Quadrant. We benchmark compute performance for the full range of VMs and bare-metal cloud servers offered by the provider, along with storage performance and network performance; we use this to calculate price-performance metrics. We monitor the availability of their services across the globe. We track provisioning times. All this data is used as objective components to the scores within the Magic Quadrant. Much of this data is directly available to Tech Planner customers, who can use these tools to calculate performance-equivalencies as well as determine where workloads will be most cost-effective.
Finally, we collect end-user reviews of cloud IaaS providers, called Peer Insights. IT leaders (who do not need to be Gartner clients) can submit reviews of their providers; we verify that reviews are legitimate, and it’s one of the very few places where you’ll see enter senior IT executives and architects writing detailed reviews of their providers. We use this data, along with vendor-provided customer references, and the many thousands of clients conversations we have each year with cloud IaaS buyers, as part of the fact base for our Magic Quadrant scoring.
More than a dozen analysts are directly involved in all of these assessments, and many more analysts provide peer-review input into those assessments. It’s an enormous effort, involving a great deal of teamwork, to produce this body of interlinked research. We’re always trying to improve its quality, so we welcome your feedback!
You can DM me on Twitter at @cloudpundit or send email to lydia dot leong at gartner.com.
Open invitation to MSP partners of hyperscale cloud providers
Back in January, I announced the creation of a new Gartner Magic Quadrant for Public Cloud Infrastructure Managed Service Providers. This MQ will evaluate MSPs that deliver managed services on top of Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud Platform.
We are currently putting together a contact list of providers to survey. We expect to begin this process in late July. We encourage MSPs who are interested in participation to add their names to the contact list.
MSPs should fill out THIS FORM.
My 2016 research agenda
At the beginning of February, as part of a little bit of organizational deck-chair shuffling here at Gartner, some analysts were transferred to teams that better reflect their current research focus. I am one of those people; I’ve been transferred from our Technology and Service Provider (T&SP) division to our IT Leaders division’s Infrastructure Strategies team, reflecting the fact that I’ve mostly been serving the IT Leaders constituency for several years now.
My planned research agenda for 2016 remains the same, and I’ll continue to work with the exact same people and clients, but I now have a new team manager (Rakesh Kumar — and hopefully a better alignment between the things that I’m actually doing and the way Gartner sets goals and incentives for analysts.
I will continue to write research for both our end-user (IT Leaders) clients, as well as for our T&SP (Business Leaders) clients. Vendor clients should note that my transfer does not change access privileges to my documents targeted at vendors, or inquiry access. You will still need to hold a Business Leaders seat to read T&SP content that I author, or to ask inquiry questions related to that content.
My research agenda for 2016 centers on five major themes:
- The managed and professional services ecosystem for cloud providers
- Large-scale migration to the cloud
- Excellence in governance
- The convergence of IaaS and PaaS
- The adoption of containers
I’ll talk briefly about my interests in each of these spaces.
Managed and professional services
The MSP ecosystem, especially around AWS and Azure, is a vital part of driving successful cloud adoption, especially with late-majority adopters. This is my primary research focus this year, as I build out both research for end-users (IT Leaders clients) as well as service providers and technology vendors. This is largely a run-up to a new Magic Quadrant slated for Q4 2016 publication.
Large-scale migration to the cloud
Customers have begun migrate existing workloads to cloud IaaS at scale (i.e., migrating entire data centers or substantial portions of their existing infrastructure estate). This is no longer just early pioneers, but mainstream, non-tech-centric companies, often in the mid-market, usually with the assistance of third parties. These customers typically articulate needs that have been more commonly associated with outsourcing in the past — cost-optimization, better management of infrastructure and apps, staff reduction, keeping pace with technology evolution, and the like.
This is my next greatest priority in terms of writing this year. I’m building research aimed at clients who are evaluating migrations, as well as those who are in the process of migrating. I’m also writing research that is aimed at the vendor/provider side, since this new wave of customers has different requirements, necessitating both a different go-to-market approach as well as different sets of priorities in service features.
Excellence in governance
As organizations grow their use of the cloud, the need for governance is vital. Governance is not control, per se, and IT organizations need assistance in understanding the emerging best practices around governance. The vendor ecosystem also needs to build appropriate products and services that help IT organizations implement good cloud governance — which differs in some vital ways from traditional models of IT governance.
The convergence of IaaS and PaaS
As the IaaS and PaaS markets move ever closer together, customers need guidance as to how to best adopt integrated offerings. Moreover, this has implications for providers on both sides of the spectrum (and their ecosystems), as well as vendors who sell technology to build private clouds.
Containers
Last year, I spent just about as much time talking to clients about containers as I did about cloud IaaS — that’s how much of a hot topic it was. This year, as container coverage is dispersed across a lot more analysts, it’s become less of a focus for me, but I remain deeply interested in the evolution of the ecosystem, not just in the cloud, but also within traditional data centers.
Other Work
While these topics are some key broad themes, I’ll certainly be thinking about and writing about a great deal more. I tend to be a more spontaneous writer, and so I might sit down in an afternoon and rapidly write a note about something that’s been on my mind lately, even if it’s not part of my planned research. Indeed, I tend not to plan research except to the minimum extent that Gartner requires (generally “big rock” items like Magic Quadrants and so forth), so if you have feedback on what you’d like to see me produce, please feel free to let me know.
Introducing the new Hyperscale Cloud MSP Magic Quadrant
As has been noted in Doug Toombs’s blog post (“Important Updates for Gartner’s Hosting Magic Quadrants in 2016“), I will be leading the introduction of a new Gartner Magic Quadrant this year for managed service providers (MSPs) that deliver services on hyperscale cloud providers (specifically, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud Platform).
This new global Magic Quadrant will be titled the “Magic Quadrant for Public Cloud Infrastructure Managed Service Providers”, and it is slated for early Q4 2016 publication (watch the editorial calendar for an official date). It will have accompanying Critical Capabilities that will be specific to each hyperscale cloud provider. In 2016, this will be a “Critical Capabilities for Managed Service Providers for Amazon Web Services”; in the future, as their ecosystems mature, we expect there will be a CC each for MSPs for Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform as well.
Stay tuned for more. In the meantime, I’ve begun building a body of related research (sorry, links are behind client-only paywall):
How to Choose a Managed Service Provider for a Hyperscale Cloud Provider. Hyperscale integrated IaaS and PaaS providers are not mere purveyors of rented virtualization. MSPs need to have a very specific skillset to manage them well. This is the fundamental “what makes a good hyperscale cloud MSP” note.
Best Practices for Planning a Cloud IaaS Strategy: Bimodal IT, Not Hybrid Infrastructure. We advise customers to think differently about cloud IaaS based on their priorities — safety and efficiency-driven IT, vs. speed and agility-driven IT. This tends to lead to different styles of operations, which in turn drive different managed and professional services needs.
Three Journeys Define Migrating a Data Center to Cloud Infrastructure as a Service. An increasing number of customers are migrating existing applications and even entire data centers into cloud IaaS. This sets out those journeys, and explores the managed and professional services that are useful for those journeys.
Use Managed and Professional Services to Improve Cloud Operations for Digital Business. Mode 2 and digital business applications are often architected and operated in ways that are not broadly familiar to many IT organizations. We explore different styles of adopting managed and professional services for these needs.
Market Guide for Managed Service Providers on Amazon Web Services. Our introduction to the AWS MSP market explores use cases, classifies MSPs into categories, and profiles a handful of representative MSPs.
Market Trends: Channel Sales Strategies for Cloud IaaS Should Focus on Developer Ecosystems. We provide advice to cloud IaaS providers who are trying to build ecosystems and channel sales strategies — but MSPs will find this note valuable when trying to understand what their value is to their partner cluod provider.
I’ll soon be publishing a set of notes directed at MSPs who are currently in this market, or intended to enter this market, as well. And I’ll be doing a series of blog posts about what’s ahead.
Recommended reading for 2016 Cloud IaaS Magic Quadrant
I am beginning the process of refreshing Gartner’s global Magic Quadrant for Cloud IaaS. Research will be conducted during Q1 and is currently targeted for publication in May, continuing our annual refresh cycle. See the status page for the current timeline.
Every year, I highlight Gartner research 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.
Service providers do not need to agree with our perspective in order to rate well, but they do need to be able to clearly articulate their vision of an alternative future, back it up with data that supports their world-view, and demonstrate how their unique perspective results in true differentiation, customer wins, and happy customers.
This updates the 2015 MQ list of foundational research. Please note that those older notes still remain relevant, and you are encouraged to read them.
If you are a service provider, these are the 2015 Gartner research notes that it might be helpful to be familiar with (sorry, links are behind client-only paywall):
Magic Quadrant for Cloud IaaS, Worldwide, 2015. 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, Worldwide, 2015 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). Free reprints are available for both the MQ and the CC.
Technology Overview for Cloud Infrastructure as a Service. This foundational note provides Gartner’s market definitions and fundamental research positions for cloud IaaS.
Evaluation Criteria for Cloud IaaS Providers. Our Technical Professionals research provides extremely detailed criteria for large enterprises that are evaluating providers. While the relative importance of these 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 technical criteria in this evaluation closely parallel the technical criteria used in the Magic Quadrant and Critical Capabilities.
Best Practices for Planning a Cloud IaaS Strategy: Bimodal IT, Not Hybrid Infrastructure. We advise customers to think differently about cloud IaaS based on their priorities — safety and efficiency-driven IT, vs. agile IT. We evaluate cloud IaaS providers on their ability to serve each of these modes.
Three Journeys Define Migrating a Data Center to Cloud Infrastructure as a Service. An increasing number of customers are migrating existing data centers into cloud IaaS. This note is useful for understanding how we structure our thinking about those journeys in a Mode 1 bimodal context.
Use Managed and Professional Services to Improve Cloud Operations for Digital Business. Although this note is managed services-centric, it is useful for expanding your understanding of how we see Mode 2 needs in the cloud.
A Comprehensive List of Management Requirements for Organizations Using Public Cloud Services. We provide deep-dive advice to architects. Service providers should consider how they enable the functions detailed here.
Take a Risk-Based Approach to Public Cloud IaaS. The customer view of security, risk, and compliance and the cloud is evolving. Use this note to understand how we advise customers on these aspects and our view on how the market has changed.
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).
Recommended reading for 2015 Cloud IaaS Magic Quadrants
We are beginning the process of refreshing Gartner’s global Magic Quadrant for Cloud IaaS, along with the regional Magic Quadrants for Cloud-Enabled Managed Hosting. We are also introducing a new Japanese-language Magic Quadrant for Cloud IaaS, Japan. The global cloud IaaS MQ will publish first, with research conducted during Q1 and published at the beginning of Q2; see the status page for the current timeline.
As I do every year, I am 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 last year’s list of foundational research. Please note that those older notes still remain relevant, and you are encouraged to read them.
If you are a service provider, these are the 2014 Gartner research notes that it might be helpful to be familiar with (sorry, links are behind client-only paywall):
Magic Quadrant for Cloud IaaS, 2014. 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, 2014 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). Free reprints are available for both the MQ and the CC.
Technology Overview for Cloud Infrastructure as a Service. This foundational note provides Gartner’s market definitions and fundamental research positions for cloud IaaS.
Evaluation Criteria for Cloud IaaS Providers. Our Technical Professionals research provides extremely detailed criteria for large enterprises that are evaluating providers. While the relative importance of these 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 technical criteria in this evaluation closely parallel the technical criteria used in the Magic Quadrant and Critical Capabilities.
Market Trends: How Customers Purchase Cloud Infrastructure as a Service, 2014. This note lays out Gartner’s perspective on customer desires and how this translates into marketing and sales cycle for cloud IaaS. This also explores the impact of bimodal IT on the market.
Market Trends: Cloud IaaS Providers Expand Into PaaS, 2014. The convergence between the IaaS and high-control PaaS markets is a crucial market trend that significantly impacts the way that Gartner views what is necessary to be a leading cloud IaaS provider.
Predicts 2015: Cloud Computing Goes Beyond IT Into Digital Business. This set of predictions for the future covers the blurring between public and private cloud IaaS, the delivery of managed services on top of third-party cloud IaaS platforms, and the growth in Docker and other container-related technologies.
Research Roundup: Cloud Computing Services in the Digital Industrial Economy. This is a relatively comprehensive round-up of recent Gartner cloud services research.
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).
Yet more reasons to work at Gartner with me
The TL;DR: My team at Gartner has an open position for someone who has a strong understanding of cloud IaaS — someone who has experience architecting for the cloud, or who has worked on the vendor side of the market (product management, solutions architecture, engineering, consulting, etc.), or is an analyst at another firm covering a related topic. If you’re interested, please email me or contact me on LinkedIn.
The details:
A few years ago, I wrote a blog post on “Five reasons you should work at Gartner with me“, detailing the benefits of the analyst role. I followed it up last year with “Five more reasons to work at Gartner with me“, targeted at women. Both times we were hiring. And we’re continuing to hire right now.
We’re steadily expanding our coverage of cloud computing, which means that we have multiple openings. On my team, we’re looking for an analyst who can cover IaaS, and if you have a good understanding of cloud security, PaaS, and/or DevOps, that would be a plus. (The official posting is for a cloud security analyst, but we’re flexible on the skill set and the job itself, so don’t read too much into the job description.) This role can be entirely work-from-home, and you must work a US time zone schedule, which means candidates should be based in North America or South America.
Previously, I noted great reasons to work at Gartner:
- It is an unbeatably interesting job for people who thrive on input.
- You get to help people in bite-sized chunks.
- You get to work with great colleagues.
- Your work is self-directed.
- We don’t do any pay-for-play.
In my follow-up post for women, I added the following reasons (which benefit men, too):
- We have a lot of women in very senior, very visible roles, including in management.
- The traits that might make a woman termed “too aggressive” are valued in analysts.
- You are shielded from most misgyny in the tech world.
- You will use both technical and non-technical skills, and have a real impact.
- This is a flexible-hours, work-from-anywhere job.
I encourage you to go read those posts. Here, I’ll add a few more things about our culture. (If you’re working at another analyst firm or have considered another analyst firm in the past, you might find the below points to be of particular interest.)
1. People love their jobs. While some analysts decide after a year or two that this isn’t the life for them, the ones that stay, pretty much stay forever. Almost everyone is very engaged in their job, works hard, and tries to do the right thing. Although we’re a work-from-home culture, we nevertheless do a good job in establishing a strong corporate culture in which people collaborate remotely.
2. We have no hierarchy. We are an exceptionally flat organization. Every analyst has a team manager, but teams are largely HR reporting structures — a support system, by and large. To get work done, we form ad-hoc and informal groups of collaborators. We have internal research communities of interest, an open peer review process for all research, and freewheeling discussions without organization boundaries. That means more junior analysts are free to take on as much as they want to, and their voices are no less important than anyone else’s.
3. We have no hard-and-fast coverage boundaries. As long as you are meeting the needs of our clients, your coverage can shift as you see fit. Indeed, to be successful, your coverage should naturally evolve over time, as clients change their technology wants and needs. We have no “book of business” or “programs” or the like, which at other analyst firms sometimes encourage analysts to fiercely defend their turf; we actively discourage territoriality. Collaboration across topic boundaries is encouraged. We do have some formal vehicles for coverage — agendas and special reports among them — but these are open to anyone, regardless of the specific team they work on. (We do have product boundaries, but analysts can collaborate across these boundaries.)
4. We have good support systems. There are teams that manage calendaring and client contact, so analysts don’t have to deal with scheduling headaches (we just indicate when we’re available). Events run smoothly and attention is paid to making sure that analysts don’t have to worry about coordination issues. There’s admin and project manager support for things that generate a lot of administrative overhead or require coordination. Management, in the last few years, has paid active attention to things that help make analysts more productive.
5. Analysts do not have any sales responsibility. Analysts do not carry a “book of business” or any other form of direct tie to revenue. We don’t do any pay-for-play. Importantly, that means that you are never beholden to a vendor, nor do you have an incentive to tell a client anything less than the best advice you have to give. The sales team understands the rules (there are always a few bad apples, but Gartner tries very hard to ensure that analysts are not influenced by sales). Performance evaluations are based on metrics such as the popularity of our documents, and customer satisfaction scores across the different dimensions of things we do (inquiries, conference presentations, documents, and so on).
If this sounds like something that’s of interest to you, please get in touch!
HP buys Eucalyptus
In an interesting move that seems to be predominantly an acquihire, HP has bought Eucalyptus for an undisclosed sum, though speculation is that the deal’s under $100m, less than a 2x multiple on what Eucalyptus has raised in funding (although that would still be a huge multiple on revenue).
Out of this, HP gets Eucalyptus’s CEO, Marten Mickos, who will be installed as the head of HP’s cloud business, reporting to Meg Whitman. It also gets Eucalyptus’s people, including its engineering staff, whom they believe to really have expertise in what HP termed (in a discussion with myself and a number of other Gartner colleagues) the “Amazon architectural pattern”. Finally, it gets Eucalyptus’s software, although this seems to have been very secondary to the people and their know-how — unsurprising given HP’s commitment to OpenStack at the core of HP Helion.
Eucalyptus will apparently be continuing onward within HP. Mickos had indicated something of a change in direction previously, when he explained in a blog post why he would be keynoting an OpenStack conference. It seems like Eucalyptus had been headed in the direction of being an open-source cloud management platform (CMP) that provides an AWS API-compatible framework over a choice of underlying components, including OpenStack component options. In this context, it makes sense to have a standalone Eucalyptus product / add-on, providing an AWS-compatible private cloud software option to customers for whom this is important — and it sidesteps the OpenStack community debate on whether or not AWS compatibility should be important within OpenStack itself.
HP did not answer my direct question if Eucalyptus’s agreement with Amazon includes a change-of-control clause, but they did say that partnerships require ongoing collaboration between the two parties. I interpreted that to mean that AWS has some latitude to determine what they do here. The existing partnership has been an API licensing deal — specifically, AWS has provided Eucalyptus with engineering communications around their API specifications, without any technology transfer or documentation. The partnership been important to ensuring that Eucalyptus replicates AWS behavior as closely as possible, so the question of whether AWS continues to partner going forward is likely important to the fidelity of future Eucalyptus work.
It’s important to note that Eucalyptus is by no means a full AWS clone. It offers the EC2, S3, and IAM APIs, including relatively full support for EC2 features such as EBS. However, it does not support the VPC networking features. And of course, it’s missing the huge array of value-added capabilities that surround the basic compute and storage resources. It’s not as if HP or anyone else is going to take Eucalyptus and build a service that is seriously competitive to AWS. Eucalyptus had mostly found its niche serving SMBs who wanted to run a CMP that would support the most common AWS compute capabilities, either in a hybrid cloud mode (i.e., for organizations still doing substantial things in AWS) or as an on-prem alternative to public cloud IaaS.
Probably importantly to the future success of HP Helion and OpenStack, though, Mickos’s management tenure at Eucalyptus included turning the product from its roots as a research project, into much slicker commercial software that was relatively easy to install and run, without requiring professional services for implementation. He also turned its sales efforts to focus on SMBs with a genuine cloud agility desire, rather than chasing IT operations organizations looking for a better virtualization mousetrap (another example of bimodal IT thinking). Eucalyptus met with limited commercial success — but thus far, CloudStack and OpenStack haven’t fared much better. This has been, at least in part, a broader issue with the private cloud market and the scope of capabilities of the open-source products.
Of the many leaders that HP could have chosen for its cloud division, the choice of Mickos is an interesting one; he’s best known for being CEO of MySQL and eventually selling it to Sun, and thus he makes most sense as a leader in the context of open-source-oriented thinking. I’m not inclined to call the HP-Eucalyptus acquisition a game-changer, but I do think it’s an interesting indicator of HP’s thinking — although it perhaps further muddies waters that are already pretty muddy. The cloud strategies of IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, and VMware, for instance, are all very clear to me. HP hasn’t reached that level of crispness, even if they insist that they’ve got a plan and are executing on it.
Edit: Marten Mickos contacted in me in email to clarify the Amazon/Eucalyptus partnership, and to remind me that MySQL was sold to Sun, not Oracle. I’ve made the corrections.
Bimodal IT, VMworld, and the future of VMware
In Gartner’s 2014 research for CIOs, we’ve increasingly been talking about “bimodal IT”. Bimodal IT is the idea that organizations need two speeds of IT — call them traditional IT and agile IT (Gartner just calls them mode-1 and mode-2). Traditional IT is focused on “doing IT right”, with a strong emphasis on efficiency and safety, approval-based governance and price-for-performance. Agile IT is focused on “doing IT fast”, supporting prototyping and iterative development, rapid delivery, continuous and process-based governance, and value to the business (being business-centric and close to the customer).
We’ve found that organizations are most successful when they have two modes of IT — with different people, processes, and tools supporting each. You can make traditional IT more agile — but you cannot simply add a little agility to it to get full-on agile IT. Rather, that requires fundamental transformation. At some point in time, the agile IT mode becomes strategic and begins to modernize and transform the rest of IT, but it’s actually good to allow the agile-mode team to discover transformative new approaches without being burdened by the existing legacy.
Furthermore, agile IT doesn’t just require new technologies and new skills — it requires a different set of skills from IT professionals. The IT-centric individual who is a cautious guardian and enjoys meticulously following well-defined processes is unlikely going to turn into a business-centric individual who is a risk-taking innovator and enjoys improvising in an uncertain environment.
That brings us to VMware (and many of the other traditional IT vendors who are trying to figure out what to do in an increasingly cloud-y world). Today’s keynote messages at VMworld have been heavily focused on cost reduction and offering more agility while maintaining safety (security, availability, reliability) and control. This is clearly a message that is targeted at traditional IT, and it’s really a story of incremental agility, using the software-defined data center to do IT better. There’s a heavy overtone of reassurance that the VMware faithful can continue to do business as usual, partaking of some cool new technologies in conjunction with the VMware infrastructure that they know and love — and control.
But a huge majority of the new agile-mode IT is cloud-native. It’s got different champions with different skills (especially development skills), and a different approach to development and operations that results in different processes and tooling. “Agility” doesn’t just mean “faster provisioning” (although to judge from the VMware keynote and customer speakers, IT Operations continue to believe this is the case). VMware needs to find ways to be relevant to the agile-IT mode, rather than just helping tradtional-IT VMware admins try to improve operations efficiency in a desperate grasp to retain control. (Unfortunately for VMware, the developer-relevant portions of the company were spun off into Pivotal.)
Bimodal IT also implies that hybrid IT is really simply the peaceful coexistence of non-cloud and cloud application components — not the idea that it’s one set of management tools that sit on top of all environments. VMware admins are obviously attracted to the ability to extend their existing tools and processes to the cloud (whether service provider IaaS or an internal private cloud), but that’s not necessarily the right thing to do. You might run traditional IT both in non-cloud and cloud modes and want hybrid tooling for both — but you should not do that for traditional-IT and agile-IT modes (regardless of whether it’s non-cloud or cloud), but instead use best-of-breed tooling for each mode.
If you’re considering the future of any IT vendor today, you have to ask yourself: What is their strategy to address each mode of IT? The mere recognition of the importance of applications and the business is insufficient.
(Gartner clients only: See Taming the Digital Dragon: The 2014 CIO Agenda and Bimodal IT: How to Be Digitally Agile Without Making a Mess for a lot more information about bimodal IT. See our 2013 and 2014 Professional Effective Planning Guides, Coming to Terms With the Nexus of Forces and Reshaping IT for the Digital Business for a guide to what IT professionals should do to advance their careers and organizations given these trends.)
AWS 2Q14 and why the sky is not falling
Amazon posted weaker 2Q 2014 results for Amazon Web Services, leading some to speculate about competitive pressures despite continued enormous growth in usage.
Investors are asking, probably reasonably, what’s going on here. Is the overall market for cloud computing weakening? Are competitors taking more market share? Or is this largely the result of the price cuts that went into effect at the beginning of 2Q? And if it’s the price cuts, are these price cuts temporary, or are they part of a larger trend that eventually drives the price to zero?
The TL;DR version: No, cloud growth remains tremendous. No, AWS’s market share likely continues to grow despite the fact that they’re already the dominant player. Yes, this is a result of the price cuts. No, the price cuts are permanent, and yes, cuts will eventually likely drive prices down to near-cost, but this is nevertheless not a commodity market.
The deep dive follows. Note that when I use the term “market share”, I do not mean revenue; I mean revenue-generating capacity-in-use, which controls for the fact that prices vary significantly across providers.
What’s with these price drops?
I have said repeatedly in the past that the dynamics of the cloud IaaS market (which is increasingly also convergent with the high-control PaaS market) are fundamentally those of a software market. It is a market in which customers are ultimately buying IT operations management software as a service, and as they go up-stack, middleware as a service. Yes, they are also getting the underlying compute, storage, and networking resources, but the major value is the actually in all the software that automates this stuff and delivers it as an easy-to-consume, less-effort-to-manage solution. The automation reduces a customer’s labor costs, which is where the customer sees cost-savings in services over doing it themselves.
You’ll note that in other SaaS markets, the infrastructure is effectively delivered at cost. That’s extremely likely to be true of the IaaS market over time, as well. Furthermore, like other software markets, the largest vendors with the greatest breadth and depth of capabilities are the winners, and they’re made extra-sticky by their ecosystems. (Think Oracle.) Over time, the IaaS providers will make most of their margin off higher-level services rather than the raw resources; think about the difference between what a customer pays for Redshift data warehousing, versus raw EC2 compute plus EBS storage.
The magnitude of the price drops is scaring away many rival providers. So is the pace of innovation. Few competitors have the deep pockets or willpower to pour money into engineering and data centers in order to compete at this level. Most are now scurrying to stake out a niche of the market where they believe they can differentiate.
Lowering the price expands the addressable market, as well. The cheaper it is to do it in the cloud, the more difficult it is to make a business case to do an on-premises solution, especially a private cloud. Many of Gartner’s clients tell us that even if they have a financially viable case to build a private cloud right now, their costs will be essentially static over the amortization period of 3 to 5 years — versus their expectation that the major IaaS providers will drop prices 30% every year. Time-to-value for private cloud is generally 18 to 24 months, and it typically delivers a much more limited set of features, especially where developer enablement is concerned. It’s tough for internal IT to compete, especially when the major IT vendors aren’t delivering software that allows IT to create equivalent capabilities at the speed of an AWS, Microsoft, or Google.
The size of the price cut certainly had a negative impact on AWS’s revenues this past quarter. The price cut is likely larger than AWS would have done without pressure from Google. At the same time, the slight dip in revenue, versus the magnitude of the cuts, makes it clear that AWS is still growing at a staggeringly fast pace.
The Impact of Microsoft Azure
Microsoft has certainly been on an aggressive tear in the market over the last year, especially since September 2013, and Azure has been growing impressively. Microsoft has been extremely generous with both discounts and with free credits, which has helped fuel the growth of Azure usage. But interestingly, Microsoft’s proactive evangelism to their customers has helped expand the market, particularly because Microsoft has been good at convincing mainstream adopters that they’re actually late adopters, spurring companies to action. Microsoft’s comprehensive hybrid story, which spans applications and platforms as well as infrastructure, is highly attractive to many companies, drawing them towards the cloud in general.
Some customers who have been pitched Azure will actually go to Azure. But for many, this is a trigger to look at several providers. It’s not unusual for customers to then choose AWS over Azure as the primary provider, due to AWS’s better feature set, greater maturity, and better ecosystem; those customers will probably also do things in Azure, although they may be earlier-stage and smaller projects. Of course, many existing AWS customers are also adding Azure as a secondary provider. But it may well be that Microsoft’s serious entry into this market has actually helped AWS, in terms of absolute usage gains, more than it has hurt it — for the time being, of course. Over time, Microsoft’s share gains will come at AWS’s expense.
The Impact of Google
Google has been delivering technology at an impressive pace, but there is an enormous gulf between its technology capabilities and its go-to-market prowess. They also have to overcome the perception problem that people aren’t sure if Google is serious about this market, and are therefore reluctant to commit to the platform.
While everyone is super-interested in what Google is doing, at the moment they do not seem to be winning significant customers from AWS. They’re doing reasonably well in batch-computing scenarios (more as a rival to AWS spot instances), and in scenarios where all of Google Cloud Platform, including App Engine, is of interest. But they do not seem to have really gotten market momentum, yet.
However, in this market and in many other markets, a competitor does not need to win over the market leader in order to hurt them. They merely need to change customer expectations of what the price should be — and AWS has allowed Google to set the price. As long as Google seems like a credible threat, AWS will likely continue to be competitive on price, at least for those things that Google also offers. Microsoft has already publicly pledged to be price-competitive with AWS, so that pretty much guarantees that the three providers will move in lockstep on pricing.
The Impact of Smaller Providers
Digital Ocean, in particular, is making a lot of noise in the market. They’ve clearly established themselves as a VPS provider to watch. (VPS: virtual private server, a form of mass-market hosting.) However, my expectation is that Digital Ocean’s growth comes primarily at the expense of providers like Rackspace and Media Temple (owned by GoDaddy), rather than at the expense of AWS et.al. A Digital Ocean droplet (VM) is half the price of an AWS t2.micro (the cheapest thing you can get from AWS), and they’ve been generous with free-service coupons.
VPS providers have friendly control panels, services that are simple and thus easy to use, and super-low prices; they tend to have a huge customer base, but each customer is, on the average, tiny (usually just a single VM). These days, VPS is looking more and more like cloud IaaS, but the orientation of the providers tends to be quite different, both from a technology and a go-to-market perspective. There’s increasing fluidity between the VPS and cloud IaaS market, but the impact on AWS is almost certainly minimal. (I imagine that some not-insignificant percentage of AWS’s free tier would be on VPS instead if not for the free service, though.)
There’s plenty of other noise out there. IBM is aggressively pitching SoftLayer to its customer base, but the deals I’ve seen have generally been bare metal on long-term contracts, usually as a replatform of an IBM data center outsourcing deal. Rackspace’s return to its managed hosting roots is revitalizing. CenturyLink continues to have persuasive sales. VMware customers remain curious about vCHS. And so on. But none of these providers are growing the way that AWS and Microsoft Azure are, and both providers are gaining overall market share at the expense of pretty much everyone else.
The sky is not falling
With Microsoft and Google apparently now serious about this market, AWS finally has credible competitors. Having aggressive, innovative rivals are helping to push this market forward even faster, to the detriment of most other providers in the market, as well as the IT vendors selling do-it-yourself on-premises private cloud. AWS is likely to continue to dominate this market for years, but the market direction is no longer as thoroughly in its control.
CloudPundit: Massive-Scale Computing 