Blogs for Scott Swanburg
Post to Twitter
It's always best to define a topic such as this, especially in light of the fact that "X as a Y" has been loosely connected to Cloud Computing in every way imaginable. IT as a Service is no different. Although several articles have been written about IT as a Service, the underlying core elements have not. To really understand how we can approach something as monumental as the topic, we have to break it down into its core sub-elements, namely Software as a Service, Desktop as a Service and Platform as a Service.
Software as a Service (SaaS) - commonly defined by web based applications, this technology approach allows for the delivery of applications from a location separate from the local end device (PC, MAC, Mobile, etc). This can be accomplished by utilizing a web browser to access the application or an application may be virtualized and transported to the end device. In either case, the application is generally loaded in a central data center and delivered via LAN, WAN or open Internet connection. In most cases web based applications are delivered over the Internet to the end device. This gives rise to the notion that applications of the future will not be the sole responsibility of an Enterprise IT group. Although the group may administer certain aspects of the applications and resulting end user data, the application itself is owned and core administration is done off-premise at the site of the application owner's facility (usually known as a Independent Software Vendor or ISV). Some applications are being re-developed for this environment. Microsoft Office 2010 is a perfect example. Whereas previous releases have required the expert administration of the local (on-premise) IT personnel, the design of Office 2010 is much different.
To seed the market and the new approach, Microsoft is offering up 'light' versions of Office 2010 free of charge, delivered over the open Internet. The target audiences for this product are consumers and 'light' users who will only require a fraction of the capabilities of the Office products. Other companies, such as Salesforce.com and Citrix (GoToMeeting) have created this new paradigm. Microsoft (and others) are merely following suit to what is an emerging mechanism for the delivery of applications. Business owners and executives looking for a way to circumvent expensive IT infrastructure and personnel are looking at SaaS as a way to augment (or dissolve completely) their Information Technology groups. There are technologies available today that enable locally run applications to be delivered in a SaaS model.
Desktop as a Service (DaaS) - One of the more confusing approaches under the IT as a Service mantra, DaaS recognizes that the ultimate goal is to connect a person to a machine. In other words, an application is only a portion of what any user does on a personal computer, thin client or smart phone. Where SaaS focuses on the individual application, DaaS focuses on the Individual. DaaS allows not only applications to be delivered to an end device from a LAN, WAN or open Internet, but associates specific characterizations such as icon placement, desktop settings, interaction between desktop applications and interaction between an operating system and the applications. There are many forms of DaaS including but not limited to Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI). In DaaS, anytime an end user wants access to his or her applications and data, the entire desktop is presented to them based on their individual (personalized) set up. By using certain technical approaches, many of these characteristics can be delivered to the end user as well without the encumbrance of a direct connection with the operating system. Client hypervisors are emerging to further arbitrate the hardware and associated operating systems from the applications and data themselves. In parallel, server based computing has been a means to accomplish both the delivery of applications and the entire desktop. The critical path to success for any DaaS approach is to understand the end users requirements and then deliver a technology approach that meets the demand. DaaS implementations are becoming more commonplace but come with a cost. By definition application delivery utilizes less bandwidth and server capacity than an entire desktop. For service providers this is crucial as the offerings tend to be in the hundreds of thousands if not millions of subscribers from a single data center.
Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Once again PaaS has many definitions but seems to be concentrating around the notion that in order to develop structured environments (whether for Information Technology or for Software Engineering) there needs to be a mechanism to manage and control all of the pieces of the system. As data centers (whether on-premise of off-premise) become more virtual in the way in which applications are loaded, delivered and managed a need is arising to create a platform by which to simplify the work and workloads. This platform is really the orchestration of many different elements of a data center. For instance, in the Applications Platform as a Service (APaaS) model, software development is accomplished as a virtual entity. All of the available resources (memory, CPU, UI, O/S) are made available to the developer on virtual machines and software images stored for execution off-premise. This allows for rapid development cycles and on-the-fly iterations of production code.
In a production software delivery environment, the 'platform' is managed via a "universal management console" where virtual servers, O/S and applications can be stored, delivered and recovered with ease. In either case, the PaaS approach is used to provide an endless means of flexibility and efficiency by arbitrating the physical hardware from the developer and the end user. Many of the technologies required for this approach are already available but the System Level Management to easily manipulate the information and provide secure access are embryonic. Service providers who will need agility and scale that a PaaS can offer will need a fully integrated solution to make this approach a reality.
When we roll all of this together we begin to see the possibilities and the challenges. Each of these approaches brings benefits to what we have previously known as on-premise IT. IT as a Service then is the combination of SaaS, DaaS and PaaS in order to deliver a simple, manageable, secure ecosystem which always has one common denominator... The end user. When considering buying or selling any or all of these approaches, the most beneficial way to start is with the end user. Critical questions need to be asked in order to determine the right fit. What are the end user needs? When is it appropriate to use SaaS vs. DaaS? How will a PaaS implementation be managed and what are the critical elements of the system? Once this has been determined, a reasonable TCO/ROI model can be built with the end customer's needs in mind. Without answering these questions, we merely replace one technology with another and potentially the ability to exponentially expand a bad Information Technology approach.
T-Mobile and Microsoft announced that a Microsoft subsidiary had suffered a "data-service disruption" that wiped out all Sidekick users' contacts, calendar entries, to-do lists, and photos. In the joint statement, Microsoft/Danger and T-Mobile said its teams were working "around the clock in hopes of discovering some way to recover this information." However, it noted that the likelihood of doing so "is extremely low." - From NewsFactor.com (Oct 12, 2009)
Google Search and Google News performance slowed to a crawl, while an outage seemed to spread from Gmail to Google Maps and Google Reader. From ComputerWorld (May 4, 2009)
It's hard to believe in this day and age that we should hear of data recovery being an issue, isn't it? Even the government has explicit input into this worrisome problem. Yet in the past six months we've seen two major Cloud Computing corporate faux pas. More correctly, here we are talking about Business Continuity or drilling down one level, Workforce Continuity.
One of my colleagues, who shall remain nameless, was aghast with these news releases and asked if it would negatively affect the push we are seeing in industry toward consumption based delivery of IT services. Specifically, if Citrix technology was associated with one such disaster as a part of the Citrix Service Provider program, would we end up with a "black eye" and thus a negative brand implication?
Ironically, when I was working on our CSP TCO/ROI calculator, the question came up about Disaster Recovery and whether or not service providers offer it as a part of their subscription/hosting business.
The next logical question is 'Do service providers also provide some form of disaster recovery for themselves?' It's one thing to back up data for the end customer, but what if the service providers' whole farm goes down? Well... this is really a great question, but as we've seen from the recent press, it may be a matter of big fish vs. small fish. For example, smaller hosting/service providers can and do back up their data using larger enterprises such as Amazon's S3. Why? The costs are relatively low and the processes relatively easy to use.
Also, because storage arrays are relatively inexpensive and technologies such automated failover are available, many smaller scale service providers opt to use their own backup and recovery systems on premise.
So one might ask, what about the big guys (Google, Amazon, Microsoft)? Who provides their data recovery systems? Well... based on the performance recorded in the press over the past few months, that appears to be a very good question. There are speculations that because large Cloud Compute companies use (very) low cost equipment (servers and storage arrays) that duplicating real-time data for instantaneous recovery is just a part of their operations. But is it really?
One of the challenges with scale is that you have to have enough compute power and storage to not only service the masses, but to provide continuity (and backup) in the event of a catastrophic failure. Will negative press such as that from Google and Microsoft's "Danger" (what a name for a DR company!) keep businesses from using service providers for their mission critical data? Anecdotally I've got to say no... at least at the SMB level because the data shows an increase in off premise IT services. But maybe Google and Microsoft need to take a closer look at how they handle these types of services, especially for the large enterprises.
I've got a question for you. When was the last time you actually tested your Business Continuity system? I mean, really tested a failure to see if your processes meet your users' expectations? Don't get caught in the news answering the question like these guys did!
There is an $8 Billion market opportunity for hosting Windows applications, but if you don't have the right marketing approach, you'll be sitting on the sidelines. Our partners, who are both Microsoft SPLA (Service Provider License Agreement) and CSPs (Citrix Service Providers) have been screaming for more marketing insight, so here it is!
I wrote a blog back in August about Marketing IT Services and this blog speaks specifically to Step 2 - "Know Thy Customer" and Step 3 - "Know Thy Marketing Approach". For Step 1 "Know Thy Product and Value" we are running a separate webinar that you can sign up for by hitting the links listed here...
| Title: | |
CSP Business Overview - Citrix Cloud Center: Infrastructure and App Services |
Date: Wednesday, October 28, 2009*
*If you can't make any of these times, you can register afterwards for the recorded session.
Under the "Know Thy Customer" heading, you've got to pick a way to get to them after you've figured out your product offering. One of the most cost effective approaches today in this market is through your website. Most service providers know this but don't spend the right resource emphasis to make it a reality. Look, 1990s marketing approaches won't work in this space and your (potential) customers are searching for ways to do business the same way they are doing all of their other research, via the web. So if you don't have the right content, or tools to monitor your sales approach, you will be stuck going door-to-door, which is the recipe for long sales cycles in a volume subscription market... not what you want!
The first question you need to ask is, "Is my site effective?" To know this you'll have to employ some kind of web analytics to get the information required to determine the effectiveness of your online campaigns and lead generation. If you want to do this on the cheap, Google has a free tool you can pick up that will show you things like "bounce rate" (people who leave your site from the top page).
The second question you should ask is, "How do I get visitors to immediately sign up for my service?" One way to do this is to provide them with an interactive tool where they can see for themselves the benefits you provide over their existing model. The CSP Marketing Team has created a great TCO/ROI tool that you can repurpose and rebrand for your site. Another way to do this is by allowing customers to trial the service without having to pay right up front. One way to accomplish this is to sign up with a billing clearinghouse/broker who will allow you to encourage "impulse buying" by your prospective customers. According to one company, "customers who use the service spend 75% more per transaction than a website's typical buyer".
Now that you've got a way to get knowledgeable about your customer and a way to allow he or she to access your services more easily let's talk about the "Know Thy Marketing Approach" for a minute.
It may seem infantile in this age of high tech, highly graphical marketing, but online selling gimmicks such as Avatars are very effective. There are companies who specialize in this marketing approach and can set you up with the tools to rapidly put these animated sales people to work for you. Buy the way, according to some experts, among virtual sales reps, female avatars produce twice as many sales as males.
You should also offer "Amazon.com-style recommendations". This may seem like expensive proposition again, but there are companies that specialize in setting up the tools for you and you'll know in just a couple of months whether or not this is worthwhile for you. One company who issues this software claims you'll see an average increase in sales of 20%.
Lastly, use Email advertising. Hear what I am saying...DON'T SPAM your customers. Rather once you have your analytics from the tools you incorporate, ask for potential customers to "opt in" to messaging from your company. You have to be careful with this approach and be very targeted with your email ads. I subscribe to five different services for marketing research and I can tell you that I'm fed up with all but one of them because they send me information that has nothing to do with my work... and so they have now been either discontinued or sent to my SPAM mail box. If you do this correctly, you could see up to 35% conversion rates on the ads you send.... if you do it incorrectly you'll not get another chance with that same customer.
Follow these steps and I can assure you that you will do better than just throwing a web site together and hoping for the best. By the way, if one of your senior people isn't personally running your electronic marketing, then you might as well just stop doing it. Research shows that there is a direct proportion of sales (or lack thereof) to the quality of the team supporting the content.
Note: I need to credit INC magazine for some of the content here. They had a great article in their February 2008 edition if you're interested.
They were once multi-billion dollar technology companies and now they no longer exist!
Well we could leave it right there and just chalk up the demise of these companies to poor economies or even to a fatal flaw in their technology. But neither of these answers would be true. In fact, in their hay-days each of these companies would have been called the darling of the industry. What Wang did for business productivity shot them to the top of the charts back in the 80's and at $3 Billion in sales with over 40,000 employees one would have thought them to be a long term contender. Wang got so overly focused on a single platform application (word processing) that by 1992 they had to file for bankruptcy.
In 1987 I was a software engineer doubling as a Systems Administrator for engineering workstations at a company called TRW (which was also a multi-billion dollar company that no longer exists). We were just migrating from DEC equipment to Sun Sparc Stations... and man did those things run fast (at the time). Sun was said to have (3) generations of workstations ready to ship but there was so much demand for their hardware the rumor was they were holding back the shipment of new technology until they gave themselves enough time to sell what was already going like hot-cakes. But hold on to that for a second while I back up to talk about DEC.
We had a gaggle of Systems Admins for the DEC VAX computers in 1983-85. DEC was crushing IBM at the time with performance/cost and shares of DEC stock were going through the roof. However, as Sun began to emerge there was a whispering on the wind about the proliferation of Sys 5 and BSD based operating systems. DEC was proprietary at the time and you had to be a PhD in VMS command line just to know how to boot a machine. With so much frenzy over Unix, DEC decided to get into the business but do it in a way that ultimately led to their demise. They had so much expertise in their own operating environment that they had to pay huge sums of money to get Unix developers on board and get their own version of Unix (called Ultrix) into market. But to pay for the development DEC came up with a scheme that ultimately put them in the ground. They decided to charge double the amount for system maintenance and software upgrades to all of the customers that had been loyal to them for years. And when Sun came out with higher performance minis and IBM fought back with their 6000 series, DEC was caught with their pants down. The net result was an exodus away from the VAX machine and no loyal customers to foot the Ultrix bill.... Good-bye DEC!
By 1990, Sun was the "Super-Hero" and they began to forge ground against the incumbents like IBM and HP. There was a huge following of Sun both in terms of performance/cost and in terms of the scientific community as Sun became known as the anti-establishment technology company sprouting forums for the enhancement of open source collaboration. So superior was their technology that the big mainframe companies tried desperately to steal their talent away. But the die-hards at Sun would have nothing of it. Besides creating the best platforms in the world, Sun had become the giant for networking with their mantra of "The Network is the Computer". Driving network development through the precursor to Internet Protocol, Sun was on a rocket ship ride. But then something odd began to happen. Sun began to fragment their development and soon the performance of their equipment was not as stellar as their focus shifted to a world of Java collaboration. They had a great run but couldn't figure out how to monetize all of their engineering efforts to create a Java enabled world. With millions of devices running Java clients, but no revenue streams, Sun began to bite the bullet... and now... swallowed by Oracle!
So now there are some new darlings on the block regarding Cloud Computing... aren't there? And Citrix is staying the course with the technology that has enabled our growth for 20 years. We just announced XenDesktop 4, which is a logical path to virtualization... both for applications and for desktops. I think we've learned from the past mistakes of others that you've got to keep doing what got you here and do it better than anyone else. And don't forget about the next generation of IT Services that are coming on like gang busters. We're in that market too!
I've been doing a lot of research of late around the future of the Cloud, what of the hype is real and where the market dominance will be for Internet based applications delivery. I read a piece by one of the analysts I follow and he gave some sage advice about not getting drawn into the herd of marketers who are using Cloud as a platform to sell anything in their portfolio by renaming it "Cloud -X". Another analyst I follow put together a great map of the differing technologies that make up Cloud Computing and one of the huge foundational pieces is that of Software-as-a-Service. In fact both of these analysts would say that SaaS is absolutely not hype and is one of the pieces of Cloud that will not only emerge, but flourish in the process.
In my research, I've been trying to assess the total number of Windows based applications that are in market today. The purpose is simple. To determine the total market opportunity in the SaaS space you first have to determine who is playing in it, what the applications are and who will subscribe to those applications. SaaS is defined as "a model of software deployment whereby a provider licenses an application to customers for use as a service on demand" and there is no distinction between Windows based applications and Web based applications.
Since Windows still enjoys over 90% market share in the operating systems realm, it also makes sense to extrapolate service offerings based on what businesses are currently using... which happens to be Windows based solutions. The difficulty in making an assessment for the total number of Windows based application in market today is nobody wants to talk about it. Microsoft got in hot water in 2000 with the DOJ because of the volume of Windows applications in market creating what was being called a "barrier to entry" for developers of other platforms. As a result, Microsoft doesn't publish this information. And the forums that support Windows developers are only microcosms of the larger eco system.
Third parties make attempts to extrapolate the total population of Windows based apps, but we don't often see real data to support it. To add to the problem, some support programs for Windows based apps are considered applications themselves. Some estimates have the total number of Windows based applications in the 100,000 range and above. In 2008, Windows Mobile apps alone totaled 18,000. Even if we take a fraction of these estimates there are still a huge number of applications to consider. For purposes of this blog, let's take a total number of 120,000 and divide that by 1/2. That would leave us with approximately 60,000. If we cull that number by another 50% to delineate only business applications we get a total of 30,000 applications. If we use an equal distribution of applications per business segment (Finance, Gov't, Healthcare, Communications and Services) we have 6,000 applications per segment.
That means that there is an opportunity for 6,000 Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) in each major business segment to expand their base by offering a different route to market. Many of these ISVs have been stifled in their growth because of their current sales motion and distribution channels. Also, servicing their existing customer base is expensive because upgrades must be done through expensive marketing, downloads and retail shrink-wrap sales. Up to now, there has only been one alternative... re-engineer and re-code to a web enabled browser based application. This is a very, very expensive approach. But what is an ISV to do? If he wants more revenue through expansion of his base of customers, is there any alternative?
Well the answer is yes but I continue to be dumb founded that more ISVs don't look to Citrix when they begin this analysis. When Terminal Services was in its infancy, Citrix was solving the problem of remote access even before the Internet reached the masses. The identical technology can be used today to solve the dilemma of ISVs in the SaaS space. Why re-code when you can host the application just as it is and give users the same experience as being loaded locally? The question is will the ISV of today be savvy enough to choose the Citrix path before spending millions on re-engineering the code? Time will tell.
I'm willing to bet that any Windows based ISV who does adopt Citrix technology to expand his base of customers through SaaS will be miles ahead of his competition who are spending money on re-engineering instead of capitalizing on additional subscriber growth with the same code.
By the way... if you've got a better assessment of the total number of Windows Application in market today I'd love to see the comment!
Sometimes I wonder if people really connect the fact that Citrix Systems and Citrix Online are the same company. I also wonder if people understand that the same company that completely dominates the hosted application and desktop market also is the dominant player in online collaborative services. In fact Citrix Online products rank top 4 in the world among Software as a Service (SaaS) vendors. Next time you see a GoToMeeting advertisement on Fox News, Discovery or whatever your favorite TV channel is... take a good look. You'll notice at the end of each commercial a tie-in to Citrix.
Maybe one of the reasons that this connection is not readily understood is the market dynamic. Could it be organizations using GoToMeeting or GoToMyPC may not be using XenApp or XenDesktop? In fact the Online products are so easy to use, IT is rarely involved. You merely sign up for the service and start to use the meetings, webinars, and other collaborative tools.
So while I'm musing I also wondered how many service providers (or hosting companies) out there understand the value they would bring to one of their customers if they could bundle a collaboration service with other application/desktop hosting solutions. Did you know that according to many analysts collaboration is the #2 revenue generator in an $8+ Billion Market? It's just behind business grade email in terms of demand.
The service from Citrix Online is so easy that I used it the other day to give a presentation to a customer in China. That's right... I used my Internet connection from home (East Coast time was 10:00 P.M. - too late to be in the office) to do the presentation. But what was really cool was pulling my PowerPoint up using XenApp, making changes securely over the Internet 5 minutes before the meeting and then firing up GoToMeeting in four different locations on three different continents. What a business case in this new economy...Just think of all the applications your customers (SMB) have while they continue to grapple with shrinking travel budgets.
If you're in the hosting business and want to enhance your ability to service your customer, why aren't you in the Citrix Online Affiliate Program? All you have to do is sign up, plaster one of the best brands in the world on your web site and begin to collect revenues for it. Not quite ready to take the full steps to being an Affiliate but still want to make some cash? Citrix Online also pays for referrals. Sounds easy enough, doesn't it? Now you can take your million dollar business and add another couple of hundred thousand to it. Why would you not do this? I dunno?
Seems like a pretty good idea to me.
While some enterprises are still debating about the overall benefits of virtualization, Cloud Providers use virtual workloads as the de facto standard for all of their business. The question for Cloud Providers is not when to Virtualize but rather what is the best way. Can you say "Best enterprise class virtualization platform in the world for FREE!" Well that is exactly what XenServer is. And with our recent upgrades to the product there is no reason why every Cloud based service provider on the planet shouldn't be using it.
I had a conversation with an ISV who is also a Hosting Service Provider a couple of months ago (at the Microsoft Hosting Summit) who was using ESX at the time. Amazingly, he didn't know anything about Citrix. I proceeded to let him in on the technology we provide and he kept asking me over and over again, "Is this really free?" I saw him later in the day at one of the break-out sessions and he told me he had contacted his VMware rep. He said to the rep, "I've just been informed about an offering from Citrix that blows you guys away. If you can't come up with something comparable... you're out!" A great testimony to our technology and go-to-market strategy I would say.
So now that we're beyond the basics of server virtualization, it's time to talk about taking the next step and having access to the best enterprise level management tools for virtual data centers. That's right, I'm talking about Essentials for XenServer and Hyper-V. If you're a service provider looking to move up to Xen, then we've got some terrific news about some training you won't want to miss... led by our very own XenServer Architect in Readiness, Oliver Withoff. If you're interested (and by the way the training is FREE) you'll want to sign up at one of the sessions listed below...
Monday, October 5, 2009
9:00 AM - 10:30 AM EDT: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/228005408
2:00 PM - 3:30 PM EDT: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/975636224
9:00 PM - 10:30 PM EDT: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/126336201
Sometimes we are so focused on what the (technical) media tells us that we can lose perspective on reality and market dynamics that can (and often do) affect our businesses. Analysts are great and perform a valuable role, but they are not entrepreneurs, inventors or architects. This being the case, if we put too much stock in what they say or where the market will go, we can mislead ourselves. This could result in a false sense of direction leading us to the wrong conclusions about our roadmaps. Such is the case with Cloud Computing and mass delivery of Internet Protocol applications and services.
To set the stage let me start with the misconception that Cloud Computing has somehow been isolated to large ISPs such as Google and Amazon. We could include Microsoft in the mix but they are currently not offering a consumable solution yet. Why would we believe that these companies are the only focus of the market? What about the Fortune 100 communications companies that have already been in business for many years providing IP communications and services in mass? Isn't it possible that these are the "real" contenders in the Cloud Computing space and we keep listening to analysts tell us 'they don't belong' or large service providers are in a different segment and therefore aren't on their radar.
I have to admit I've found this to be the case. Within the large analyst firms there are specializations of expertise; IT, Virtualization, Infrastructure, Networks, and Communications to name a few. These analysts often don't communicate or collaborate with each other and as a result we get a very monolithic view of an industry. Since IT has evolved to be in every sector from Energy to Entertainment, gaining a holistic view of future offerings (Cloud Computing included) is difficult to say the least when confronting "experts" in individual sectors. All the while huge communications and entertainment companies such as AT&T, Verizon, Deutsche Telekom, and Comcast are building out massive IP networks and services that would dwarf any Enterprise, ISP or Software company.
Note that the convergence of IT services for a "utility" offering is the core definition of Cloud Computing and yet Utility type companies are not usually included as contenders in the space. I would venture to guess that companies such as AT&T for instance should be considered players in the Cloud Computing business. Wouldn't you? To prove the point, one only has to look at the offerings available in the market today and see that there is a huge potential to fulfill the promise (and demand) of Cloud Computing.
The diagram below is a depiction of the current AT&T U-verse network. Note that it is a pure Internet Protocol (IP) network and provides utility based data and communications to a mass population with Service Level Agreements (SLAs) capable of providing High Definition Video Entertainment services, IP Voice services, and Internet Applications services. AT&T has two major data centers which aggregate traffic from Video Head Ends as well as their own ISP connections and contracts to Internet asset providers such as Yahoo!. The IP traffic flows from the data center via fiber optic cable to Digital Subscriber Line Access Multiplexers (DSLAM) within a neighborhood or office complex. These DSLAMs then provide network access to the individual home or office via Very High Speed Digital Subscriber Lines (VHDSL) capable of carrying high bandwidth IP applications such as HDTV or heavily intensive graphics applications. VHDSL is an asynchronous network technology meaning there is a disparity between upstream and downstream bandwidth. However, the upstream path is still very capable of providing certain types of real-time communication and high bandwidth IP data/applications paths. 
Further, if we take a look at the AT&T U-verse home/office extension we'll note that Cisco has partnered with AT&T to provide a low cost, high speed (100 GB) combination wireline/wireless router. They have also created an extended end point Set Top Box (STB) which is really a Central Processing Unit (CPU) with both volatile and non volatile memory. Further, Microsoft is included in this partnership and has written a light version of their Operating System (O/S) called Mediaroom in order to provide a platform for services from the data center. These include custom applications that can be accessed from any PC/Mac in the world and used to control both Entertainment and Communications applications rendered either on the IPTV or on the local PC. Mediaroom resides on the STB and communicates to the data center through the Cisco router using IP. Microsoft has installations of Mediaroom in (25) major service providers around the world in every geography (including China).
Applications can be on-boarded through this network into the home/office by merely sending the code over the IP network to each individual STB in the home/office. One has to wonder will it be long before AT&T, partnering with Microsoft and Cisco begins to offer applications for home/office use over this network as well. All of the elements are already in place, being used and a billing model producing revenues. This is not the case with Google, Amazon or any other emerging Cloud provider.
Similar types of services are available from other large communications companies around the world but they do not seem to be captured as companies worthy of being on the Cloud Computing radar. Cloud Computing will evolve that is for sure and many companies will either opt out or be pushed to the side by the real contenders. However, the convergence of IP technologies and the emergence of utility based computing is much broader than just a few ISPs and the sooner all the players are brought into the mix, the better for those of us who are attempting to set future roadmaps to enable the Cloud to be real.
In order to connect Unified Communications (UC) with Cloud we first need to start from a model for business integration that includes the processes and data models defining how a business operates. The best representation I've found of this is a work by Paul R. Smith as shown in the diagram below (redrawn by Marcel Douwe Dekker). Note that there are two distinct areas that define the Business Model, namely Processes and Data. Business Process Integration is the sum of converging Data and Processes and results in the requirements that define the total operations of each business. This is important because without the analysis of both sides of the business, critical requirements are often missed and a comprehensive Information Technology approach becomes difficult. 
In the world of UC, elements of each (processes and data), are merged to "provide a consistent unified user interface and user experience across multiple devices and media types", including but not limited to "communication services such as instant messaging (chat), presence information, IP telephony, video conferencing, call control and speech control with non real-time communication services such as unified messaging (integrated voicemail, e-mail, SMS and fax)". As shown in the diagram (above right) both real-time and non real-time communications flow up into the Business Model Integration schema to round out the entire business operations definition.
Unified Communications has been the 'holy grail' for large service providers looking to bridge the gap between IP and voice services over the past 15 years. Now, with the emergence of Software as a Service and Platforms as a Service, Cloud Providers have the ability to virtualize a solution to fill the requirements of Business Model Integration, but many are not bridging the gap to communications. As depicted in the diagram below, by delivering VMs, Desktops and Applications as well as real-time and non real-time communications in a PaaS model, a foundation for automation can be built for the next generation of Information Technology and Business Model Integration. The missing link in a complete service offering has been the integration of UC and SaaS.
Unfortunately, Cloud Providers have not been able to grasp the idea of Holistic Cloud Computing yet and therefore have largely been focused on Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). Alternatively, Incumbent Service Providers (AT&T, BT, Telefonica, Unicom, etc) are mainly concentrating on the UC portion of the model, and are not providing SaaS but have relegated this offering to companies such as Saleforce.com, WebEx/Cisco and CitrixOnline. SaaS providers tend to be monolithic in their offerings providing software applications but do not offer IaaS or PaaS.
The demand is growing for a more holistic approach to providing ubiquitous service. Incumbent Services Providers have the means (cash, network, and brand) but no sense of urgency and a misunderstanding of their role in PaaS. Cloud Providers have the technology, but not the UC implementations. Although beginning to move into the collaboration portion of UC, most SaaS providers tend to focus on a silo of applications and are growing so rapidly they have little desire to broaden their offerings. This creates a tremendous opportunity for Tier 2 and Tier 3 Cloud Providers to quickly gain market share as the demand is left unmet by larger players (i.e. Tier 1 Service Providers and Tier 1 Cloud Providers). The key to capturing this market is to understand the emerging SaaS model that includes both Web and Windows based applications as well as incorporating UC offerings into subscription services.
Citrix enables IaaS/PaaS with our C3 technology. Microsoft enables a UC suite of applications. Once the redefinition of SaaS is embraced (both Web and Windows apps) Service Providers will enable services through the hosted desktop using the Citrix Service Provider program.
Sounds pretty complicated doesn't it. Well in fact it can be. When I was marketing data plans at Cingular Wireless we employed a firm who did nothing but sort through and analyze reams of data from our customer base (54 million subscribers) and find the sweet spot for maximizing our advertising, sales programs and promotions. But what if you are an emerging business not quite at the Fortune 100 level yet? Can you still take advantage of these techniques and use them to grow your business. ABSOLUTELY! In this electronic, e-Marketing, Web based business world, you'd be foolish not to.
But where do you start? Do you have to employ an Analytics firm with a gaggle of Mathematics PhD's? Not quite. There is some very good information (publically) available about how to get the most out of your efforts to market in the new millennium economy. Business Week recently ran an article entitled "The Web Knows What You Want" (July 27, 2009 edition). They also have a fantastic resource online... Predictive Analytics Delivers Value Across Business Applications. There you will find methods on subjects such as Direct Marketing - Customer Responses, Behavior Based Advertising - Which ad customers will click on and Email Targeting - Which message customers will respond to.
As an example of these techniques I'd like to share with you some methods and analytics from this blog series. First and foremost it is important to pick a subject matter that fits your business model and the audience you are trying to reach. Note that every article published in this series is directed at people who are interested in CITRIX, SaaS, CLOUD, SERVICE PROVIDER and VIRTUALIZATION. Each title and subsequent verbiage in the series uses these specific key words so that search engine optimization (SEO) is invoked. Also, care is taken to insure relevant information is available (published online) whenever a major corporate event is taking place. People have a higher level of interest in specific topics (and in your company) when they are going to spend money to get to a venue. In the trend chart below, note the increase in viewer traffic before and during our Synergy and iForum (Europe) events (May-June).
One of the keys to engage people in e-Marketing through social media is writing about topics that are both newsworthy and have some kind of personal impact. Once you gain an interest level or following, your potential to introduce product/service relevancy is greatly enhanced. Why? Because you're not just throwing marketing jargon around and there is a specific value to the writing that pertains to the need of the reader. Social Media Marketing is also effective because you have the opportunity to grow the base of readers over time. Note the graph below that depicts the aggregate views of all blogs in this series. As people resonate with one topic, they are more likely to read more from the same author.
Most importantly, you should keep your messages short and concise... Doh! I just violated that point with a two page blog! Sooooo, in closing create your e-marketing programs with relevancy for the reader, venue awareness and personal impact in mind. Save the flash and hoopla for major events and try to be CONCISE.
After 16 years with a Golden Retriever it is safe to say my family loves dogs. When she went to the happy hunting ground (doggie heaven) we decided to get another. My wife wanted a small dog so that it could live in the house and she could hold it and snuggle up. Well, I got her a small dog... at least it was when we bought it
. He was the cutest little guy ever and weighed in at a meager 12 lbs (about 5.5 Kilos). Unfortunately, he grew at a rate of 5 lbs (2.3 Kilos) per week after that for a long time.
It may seem like a stretch, but a lot of companies are shopping for just the right size Cloud provider to handle all of their IT needs. On the one hand there are huge Clouds that provide a great service if you're looking for an endless amount of capacity and you have the technical savvy to create a virtual data center inclusive of applications, profiles, back-up utilities and a schema to run the whole thing. On the other hand there are smaller Micro Clouds (another word I just made up) that will offer up services but don't look or act like their huge Cloud cousins.
The bottom line is that there are all types of companies with differing needs when it comes to Information Technology and the emergence of Clouds. The problem is that companies who need the care and nurturing a Micro Cloud provider can offer really get confused when they go to buy a service they think will be able to cuddle up with them only to find that they have purchased a monster that is growing up to be something larger than they expected.
So what's the point of all this as it relates to my typical diatribe on Citrix Service Providers? If you want to get into the business of Cloud provision, make sure you know what your purchasing ahead of time... otherwise you might find that what you thought you wanted, turns out to be something way more than you bargained for and you might just be spending a lot of time in the dog house feeding it!
Just like the puppy I bought that now weighs 145 lbs (70 Kilos) and pretty much rules my house! 
I just finished reading an internationally acclaimed book about "how to create uncontested market space and make the competition irrelevant". Wow! Can I really do that? Well, maybe not me specifically, but entrepreneurs who have the right stuff can. At least that's the premise of the book by the title of this blog (minus the "and Citrix). Why then did I add "and Citrix" to the title? Because according to the author, "value innovation" is the paradigm required to enter into a new market space, or "Blue Ocean" and Citrix provides the innovation creating value to end customers. From page 12 of the book, "Value innovation is the cornerstone of blue ocean strategy. We call it value innovation because instead of focusing on beating the competition, you focus on making the competition irrelevant by creating a leap in value for buyers and your company, thereby opening up a new and uncontested market space."
These are the crown jewels of the service provider partner who uses Citrix technology to create an innovative value to end users who are looking to displace their IT services. Think about it. Five years ago no self respecting IT manager would be looking outside of his company to get help from someone else. His job would have been at stake... well here we are in 2009 and guess what? If IT managers don't look outside for help (or another way to do business more cost effectively) their job is at stake. What a difference a few years make.
So now we've got a perfect storm where companies are trying to outsource parts (or all) of their IT and we have the emergence of service providers who can meet that demand. I talked to one of them this morning and they are creating a Blue Ocean of services through innovation created by Citrix XenApp. The company is ExtrinsicaGlobal and they've got a unique Blue Ocean approach. Started about four years ago they provided IT services to Agencies of the Government of the UK. They began to develop a core of personnel who could ostensibly relocate entire IT resources.
But the founder and Managing Director, Simon Smith didn't stop there. He realized that if he could provide these types of services to the Government, why not to the SMB market as well. And so he began to embark on the journey of creating a Blue Ocean Strategy of IT services using Citrix XenApp and subscription licenses to provide any application, to any SMB, anywhere in the world. To embody that approach, Simon supplies IT services to the Kawasaki World Superbike team that travels on a world-wide circuit. At every stop, ExtrinsicaGlobal is there to supply IT services on-the-go. Simon told me "we expect to expand this business to tens of thousands of subscribers. With Citrix technology, it isn't hard to see that scaling is just a matter of constructing your data center to handle the load."
Why is this so important to businesses today? Well for one thing, using the same old methods just won't work in this new world economy and businesses are waking up to that fact every day. Good thing Citrix is at the forefront yet again of "value innovation" creating an environment for hosting the desktop in a new Blue Ocean. If you want to find out more about how to get going with subscription services and make your competition irrelevant, just take a look at our web site or you can also visit our CSP Community online.
So my wife drug me to the movies to see "Julie & Julia" this week and for some reason I seem to be thinking about everything in terms of cooking up a master piece. I'll have to ask you to forgive me if this blog seems a bit "Julia Child-esh" but I can't seem to help myself...
Ingredients:
(2) NetScalers
(2) Web Interface Farms
(2) XenApp/XenDesktop Farms
(30) XenServer VMs w/Essentials
(1) Provisioning Farm
(10) Storage Arrays
(2) High Speed Access Lines
First, mix the ingredients in a data center and test to perfection.
Next pick (3) market verticals for the highest expected IT spend in your area (hint: in 2009 that would be Finance, Gov't, and Services). Find the local trade associations for each vertical and sign up (hint: In the U.S. Personal Finance Sector, American Association of Debt Management Organizations (AADMO), the nation's largest trade association for the credit counseling and debt management industry).
After hobnobbing with the trade association's board of directors, offer to provide a teaching seminar on "How to save up to 40% on your IT operating costs!" for all of the members of the association.
Create a presentation that the business owners of the association can identify with (hint: specific to the Debt Management business IT - remote access, call centers, etc). After filling an auditorium with Executives show them specifically how they can remove cost by taking them through the Citrix Service Provider TCO Calculator (that you've naturally branded with your company's identity). Make sure that you finish your presentation with the pièce de résistance (Disaster Recovery included in the service).
Offer (2) months of free service (hey, you've got to hook them you know?).
Sign 30 companies with 50 subscribers in each company with a service fee of $70 per subscriber per month.
...And voilà, you have a run rate of $105,000 per month (or $1.3 Million per year).
If you are providing IT services to your customers in the form of hosted solutions, growing revenues depends on your ability to market your offering in a very focused way. It's just not enough to put a data center together, hang a shingle on the street and wait. That's a recipe for disaster and why should you fail with so much opportunity at hand. Follow these simple steps and I promise your results will be much more predictable.
Step 1 - Know Thy Product and Value
The question most of your customers will ask is "What would I do if I didn't use this service?" If there is an alternate solution then customers will usually seek the lowest cost, easiest implementation. So you must clearly articulate the value of your product and services. As an example, if you are offering a hosted desktop (using XenApp) with Microsoft Office as the key service offering, then your customer has a choice to load the applications locally and manage them locally or use a hosting service. A great tag line for this type of implementation might be "Lower total cost of ownership for Microsoft Office by 50% using our hosted desktop solution!" If your value is lowering cost, state it right up front. If your value is flexibility, then state it. Remember that the customer always has other options so you'll want to clearly articulate why your solution is better.
Step 2 - Know Thy Customer
Who is it that you're selling to? Is it the Small Office Home Office (SOHO)? Is it the CEO of a 100 employee firm? Is it specific to a market segment such as Finance, Legal, Manufacturing. Messaging to the decision maker who owns a manufacturing firm with task workers is much different than messaging to a Law firm. If the problem you are solving in a manufacturing firm is product line efficiency then you'll want to hit hard on the "up time" of the factory floor because your service offers higher reliability than on-premise solutions. If on the other hand you are allowing attorneys to better focus on their workloads (vs. focusing on constantly rebooting their local machines) then you should put the highlighter on higher revenues through increased billable hours. Focus on just a few of these types of customers and then show case examples of how their business will grow as a result of using your service(s).
Step 3 - Know Thy Marketing Approach
The ability to pick the right Content, Collateral and Context will mean the difference between success and failure. What do you want to say? What format do you want to say it in and what is the context in which a customer will hear it? The content should be succinct and to the point. Don't color your message too much or it just sounds like marketing jargon. Put it in a form that is most easily understood. If your customers are more likely to read a trade publication than the Wall Street Journal then call the editor and see if they will do a feature story on your services. Don't talk in generality if the context calls for specifics. For instance if you are an ISV who has developed software for the insurance business, don't talk about IT infrastructure savings. In that case, the context demands you explicitly point out the benefits of using your specific software features to complete tasks or simplify the work. If you have $10,000 of marketing budget make sure you've got the right mix of message and messaging. In other words, if you can't measure with certainty the return on your investment (qualified sales leads) from your marketing, DON'T DO IT! Even awareness can be measured in terms of the Average Sales Price of your service. If you command a higher price than your competition for similar service types, this can be a measurement of your brand.
Step 4 - Know Thy Support Plan
If you market your product or services but don't adequately support your customer then your brand will turn on you. Further, your marketing content will be diminished by your reputation or lack thereof. A perfect example of this was the Ford Motor Company "Quality is Job One" campaign run in the 70's, 80's and early 90's. Wildly popular and producing great results at first, over time, the slogan began to wane in street cred as Ford's light trucks began to flip over on the highway. While Consumer Reports was slamming Ford products (such as the Explorer) as being substandard and losing quality to Japanese manufacturers, Ford continued to run advertisements to the contrary. The savvy consumer was not only put off by the ads but began to show distain for the product every time they had to take their car in for repairs while their neighbors had no significant problems with their Japanese equivalents. Your products/service need to be supported when launched, during use and when upgrades are needed. Using support tools like GoToAssist will aid you.
Follow this formula, and you'll find that customers will not only understand your value and purchase your product/services, but will also provide word of mouth advertising that is priceless in this business.
I was out on PTO (vacation) last week and have to admit I did a little work while away. It dawned on me how awesome it was to take advantage of our implementation of SaaS and Application Delivery through the Cloud.
I take this stuff for granted sometimes but with the market exploding around off-premise services and using the Internet as a means to access everything from applications to support I wanted to share my experience from a users perspective. After all, it's the user who ultimately will determine whether or not Cloud Computing actually works.
Citrix uses Single Sign On (SSO) as a feature of XenApp so I first logged into our corporate portal with one click and then accessed my profile using two factor authentication. Immediately I was configured with secure access through our Access Gateway product. I was presented with a portal of applications I could access for the user profile preset from our IT group. I also had access to all of the data files and Sharepoint files under my user name and password. I wanted to check my blog for comments so I used the internally controlled corporate web site to get to my landing page (didn't have to sign in again because of SSO). I then opened up an Excel spread sheet where I log some Search Engine Optimization (SEO) metrics. The spread sheet was part of my personal directory structure loaded on the corporate XenServer farm so I can access it from anywhere even though I created it from a local PC in Florida.
Next I checked my Citrix Online Webinar metrics page to view participants who were accessing the recorded webinars I had done a couple of weeks ago. I was having some problems viewing them so I called our IT Hotline and they immediately had me start a GoToAssist session. It took about 30 seconds for them to see that I didn't have the Windows Media Player loaded so we accomplished that while on the call and it solved my problem. I decided to set up a meeting for when I returned from vacation with some sales folks in Europe so I opened a GoToMeeting session, added participants and it automatically saved the meeting (date/time/participants) to my Outlook Calendar.
Just for grins I wanted to show my family one of my blogs so I disconnected the laptop I was on from the cabled connection and it switched over to the wireless router at my son's apartment. I never lost the connection and everything (Outlook, IE, Excel) continued to work seamlessly... and STILL connected to my corporate server. I passed the laptop around to get comments... family can be brutal sometimes 
.
I answered a couple of emails and then logged off so I could get back to my vacation. I was 2,500 miles from my office, connected via wireless router/cable modem from a PC I didn't own, accessing files and applications in my corporate environment. The cool thing was you couldn't tell I was out of the office! All of this possible because I was using Citrix Online, Citrix XenApp and Citrix XenServer to get to my information. And all of it over the open Internet.
It would take another couple of pages to go through all of the technology wizardry that allowed me to "work" through Citrix Cloud Center technology... but at the end of the day that doesn't matter to the user, does it? I'm just glad we have the technology to do what I need to do, whenever I need to do it . The other cool thing is I get to sell the stuff I use and it works... flawlessly. This IS the next big thing for Cloud providers who want to use state of the art technology and get it at a decent price. That's why we created the Citrix Service Provider Program and I'm proud to be a part of the team!
Please take a minute and complete the poll below so that we can continue to evolve our program...
Small and Medium businesses. The SMB! Why are they so important to the market we are in? Because there are over 50 million of them worldwide. Who services them and how much money is there to be made in this space? Some say that the SMB will be the key to recovery from this worldwide recession.
SMBs are not so different from larger enterprises. They have employees, products, and even computers and software applications. Just like larger enterprises they have a top line (Revenue) and a bottom line (Profit). They also have operations costs that come between their top and bottom lines. Which is where they spend money on things like Information Technology.
Most SMBs go through plateaus in their growth where they make major decisions about their operations and IT is no exception. When a company reaches about 99 employees they begin to be faced with a major decision... What am I going to do about all of these information technology issues I have today? This ranges from Customer Relationship Management (CRM) to Communications (Email and VoIP) to plain old vanilla business productivity applications (Microsoft Office). The problems begin to occur at this growth period because there are enough software application versions and data repository issues that day-to-day operations could be at risk with any and all disruption caused by IT. And so, for the most part IT becomes a necessary evil that requires additional outlay of cash to keep it under control.
But now there are products that come through the "Ether" and don't require an entire staff of IT professionals to run them. So when the guy who has to cut the check each month is looking at decreasing profits because he keeps paying for applications to be loaded (and they don't seem to work together because of a lack of version control or service packs missing or O/S problems) it shouldn't surprise anybody that he is looking for alternatives. He keeps hearing about this thing called "Cloud Computing" but can't quite get his head around how "The Cloud" is going to help him with his bottom line.
Enter the Citrix Service Provider... These companies are supplying services to the SMB so that they don't have to worry about application version control and O/S service packs and additional IT staff. It's really kind of funny because I was on the phone with one of our large enterprise customers this week and he told me "what these Citrix Service Providers are doing is exactly how I run my IT group". In other words, the Citrix Service Provider is kind of like a co-op for the SMB so that they can get the same economy of scale that a large enterprise gets, only without the encumbrance of a full fledged IT staff.
There is a company in Manchester, U.K. that provides just these types of services... IT Farm. They've got a nifty 90 second demo of just how easy it is to offload all of your IT issues and let someone else deal with it... Just sign up and overnight you've got instant access to all of the applications you want without the worries of having to do-it-yourself. And they are firm believers that Citrix is the only company on the planet that has the technology to fit their business model. Dr. James Huntington, the Managing Director at IT Farm had this to say about it... "IT Farm has enjoyed a long lasting relationship with Citrix. With the advent of the newly developed Citrix Service Provider program, we now have the ability to rapidly expand our base and provide our customers with the best technology on the market for the delivery of applications and desktops." With over a hundred SMBs serviced with their offering, thousands of desktops are no longer a problem for the guy who writes the check.
Would you believe that up to twenty percent of the 50 Million SMBs worldwide are at this stage of growth and trying to find companies who will offload their IT... that's about 10 Million by my count. So if you're one of those companies who want to get in the game and become "the Cloud" for the millions of subscribers looking for an alternative, what's stopping you? We have the technology if you've got the desire!
If you need to get back on the rails with Citrix XenApp and more importantly if you are a Service Provider just getting started with XenApp then boy do we have an event you won't want to miss. Two of our best field readiness managers, Jo Harder and Craig Marinella will be leading a webinar on the 22nd of July to cover the following topics.
XenApp Premium Overview -
Designing and Implementing XenApp - App Delivery and Management
Designing and Implementing EdgeSight - Your built in reporting tool
Information Resources and References
Don't miss this great opportunity to learn about implementing the technology used around the world with 230,000 customers and servicing over a million users for application delivery.
Just click on the links below to get access to this invaluable session from Citrix... the new kid on the block for Windows based SaaS.
EMEA - XenApp Premium Overview
Americas - XenApp Premium Overview
APAC - XenApp Premium Overview
...and if you missed the Business Overview Webinar for CSPs you can take a look at the recorded session link below...
Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Google Talk, Grand Central, Google Voice, Goog-411, Adroid, Chrome, Chrome O/S, Google Earth, Google Maps, Street View, Google Maps Mobile, Google Maps GPS, Adroid Phone, Android Applications... free downloads, free service, free open source. All of it free? Free, free, free!
2004 - $100 per share, 2005 - $200 per share... $300 per share, 2006 - $400 per share, 2007 - $500 per share... $600 per share... $700 per share, 2008 - $470 -> $262 per share (poor Google), 2009 - $400 per share. Wanna buy some... too expensive.... too too expensive.
Google, no more beta... nope. No more beta! What? Why not? "We realize this puzzles some people". Whatayamean? "More than 1.75 million companies around the world run their business on Google apps... We've focused our efforts on reaching our high bar for taking products out of beta, and all the applications in the Apps suite have met that mark."
Still free? "We have much more in store, and IT managers can read more about how to make the switch to Apps..." No I said, is it free? "Ever since we launched Google Apps suite for business two years ago, it's had a service level agreement, 24/7 support, and met or exceeded all the other standards of non-beta software." Oh, then I guess it isn't free anymore is it?
What's that your saying? I can't hear you. Can you come down off that pile of money? What? You say this is what a $130 billion market cap looks like?
Hey, are you trying to take over the telecommunications market? You launched that 411 service that's taking all of the money away from the phone company, right? "We launched 1-800-GOOG-411." Yeah but doesn't it use someone else's network? "It's a free service that let's you search for businesses by voice". Yeah but aren't you using their network and it costs them money but you don't have to pay anything? "[You] get connected to those businesses for free". Aren't you also using your mapping technology to build awareness in that market so that you can take it over some day? "...just say map it and you'll get a text message with the details of your search plus a link to a map of your results right on your mobile phone." Oh I see. You don't won't to talk about it. Well O.K. then.
You launched Chrome to take over the browser business right? "It's been an exciting nine months since we launched the Chrome browser. Already over 30 million people use it regularly." Didn't someone get in big trouble for doing that a few years ago? "We designed Google Chrome for people who live on the web...". Yeah but aren't you using your search engine optimization algorithms as an unfair advantage? "...searching for information, checking email, catching up on the news, shopping or just staying in touch with friends." Yeah but now you're trying to turn it into an Operating System aren't you? "...the Operating System that browsers run on were designed in an era where there was no web." Isn't that kind of arrogant? I mean, there are still a lot of people using great applications on the existing operating systems aren't they? "Because we're already talking to partners about the project, and we'll soon be working with the open source community, we wanted to share our vision now so that everyone understands what we are trying to do."
So let me get this right. You're sitting on a pile of cash... about $18 billion. Up until now you've given away all of your products for free. But now all of your software is being officially released. You've got your own operating system and applications for mobile phones, your own operating system and applications for computers and netbooks, your own search engine, mapping routines and advertising analytics engine like no one else's in the world. You own the largest data center in the world and you've got your hands in everything from mobile phones to web browsers and now a new operating system?
Isn't there other ways to evolve the existing Information Technology world based on existing proven technology? Isn't there a way to allow businesses to utilize their existing infrastructure by delivering applications to any device? Aren't there other players in the space that have been offering up solutions that are now being defined as Cloud Computing?
Can you say Microsoft and Citrix Systems?
"During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act." Those are the words of the infamous George Orwell. The same guy who wrote Animal Farm and forever changed our views about social behaviors. Orwell developed a farm full of animals to imitate the behaviors of humans in their most despicable forms. For those of you who have read the book (and for those of you who are less enlightened) you'll remember that the Pigs wield the power of deceit to convince the rest of the "animals" that their situation is much better than it really is... creating a power base from which they (the Pigs) rule.
Well, with all of the hype around what Clouds are and are not, I've got some great news for you. There is a storm on the horizon and it's full of Clouds that have applications pouring out of them. That's right, it's an application fest and Citrix is seeding the cloud with a form of "silver iodide and frozen carbon dioxide" (oops, dare I say that with Cap and Trade on the horizon). We want it to rain applications and give service providers the means to successfully pull additional revenues by supplying their customers with applications that run better and give a High Definition User eXperience (HDX).
Wouldn't it also be awesome if you could manage your entire data center and have a fully optimized workload management capability that provided high availability and flexibility. Well then... you need to look at how server virtualization works with application delivery as well for a highly profitable approach to the Cloud.
So tell all of your friends that might want to know more about how to make this happen by registering for the Citrix Service Provider Business Webinar and you won't be fooled by the Pigs.
Registration Information
Citrix Service Provider Business Overview -
EMEA (https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/527632217)
Americas (https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/822345865)
One hundred and fifty billion dollars! That's $150,000,000,000 or €107,635,000,000 or ¥14,458,000,000,000. In any currency we are talking about a lot of money. According to some estimates this represents the total projected revenues for Cloud Computing by 2013. Don't you wish you could capture just a small percentage of that total market? Just think, a 2% capture rate would yield $3,000,000,000 or €2,152,700,000 or ¥289,160,000,000... still a lot of money.
Well we may be on our way as we see the evolution of Amazon S3 and EC2, Google Apps, Microsoft Azure and IBM's LotusLive Connections. Even though Larry Ellison has been quoted as stating Cloud Computing is "gibberish", now Oracle has even entered the mix. How are we to make heads or tails out of all this? What is the breakdown of the Cloud from a business perspective and what is the evolution from where we are today.
It all starts with two basic descriptions, "private" and "public" Clouds. There is a very important distinction here in that the road to implementation will be markedly different in each area. How Information Technology evolves between now and 2013 has everything to do with these terms. Kind of scary but even the U.S. Government is involved as the National Institute of Standards and Technology has published their definitions and findings.
In the Private Cloud world, large enterprise businesses will be looking for ways to evolve their current IT environment. And like a wave similar to electronic miniaturization when microchip technology finally came of age, IT will be changed forever. Enterprises will be trying to figure out how to model their internal IT operations after the Web and web based applications. There are a few model companies today who have already done the math, understand the value proposition of working this way and are full steam ahead in implementation.
Bechtel is one such large enterprise. In an article entitled "Around the Clock, Around the World", they talk about how they are changing the future by using virtualization infrastructure today, "Bechtel's Information Systems and Technology group developed a "virtual company" of dedicated servers, firewalls, and software programs to enable massive transfers of engineering data..." As a result of this progressive approach to managing information using private cloud technology, "Bechtel's intranet, combined with work-sharing software and advanced network security, is making it possible for far-flung team members to communicate and tap securely into linked databases, CAD models, and other tools." Bechtel relies on technology from Citrix to achieve this state.
The second and possibly more controversial category is the Public Cloud. The companies given the most publicity in this area are those highlighted at the beginning of this blog. Amazon, Google, Microsoft and IBM have the most notoriety. However, companies like RackSpace are emerging as well. There is quite a bit of swirl around how these monoliths will shake out in terms of winning the space. The end goal for these companies is to produce utility based Information Technology. Some would say that this is the commoditization of services heretofore called the IT organization. The truth is that there will be a mix of virtualized data center infrastructure (IaaS) and application delivery platforms (PaaS) starting with non-mission critical workloads and services.
Within this "Public Cloud" category is a subset that currently services the Small and Medium Business segment. These are the companies who have seen the hype and latched onto the taxonomy. What were at one time "Hosting Service Providers" now look at themselves as Cloud Providers. And why not? They have very similar business goals as the Amazons and Googles of the world... namely, the portability of services from on-premise to off-premise using a time based subscription model. Most of these companies are part of the Microsoft eco-system driving revenue for themselves and for Microsoft through the Service Provider Licensing Program. Why is this important to those who would play in the Cloud space? Because there are over 5 Million SMBs in this target market worldwide with an average employee count of 100. In each of these SMBs, a percentage would be considered knowledge workers who require business productivity applications.
Nasstar, a "cloud provider" in Europe is taking advantage of this new ideology and technology approach. They boast subscriptions for SMBs in London and the surrounding area with a growing contingent of customers.
Now to round out the discussion. With a typical subscription rate of $50 per month for productivity apps in the SMB, the projected worldwide annual revenues for the Hosting Service Provider community could be $30,000,000,000 or €21,577,000,000 or ¥2,891,000,000,000. And that is a lot of money too!
Whether Private or Public, Large Monolithic or Hoster (for SMB) one thing is agreed upon by all who are in the market....namely, there is only one way to achieve the scale needed to capture these revenues....Virtualize!