Picking up where we left off with the results of a cloud computing survey among Parallels Partners, in the last post I noted that there is a lot of interest among hosting providers to offer cloud infrastructure services but a noticeable lack of plans for many. In particular, I asked about current offerings or plans to offer API-based servers, Storage, Database services, and CDN.
Among the 30 participants, the most noticable adoption was around API-based servers. While only 2 (7%) respondents actually indicated they currently offer API-based servers, 12 (40%) said they DO have plans. Another 13 (43%) would like to offer this service but do not have plans.
Drilling a little deeper into the possible markets for cloud infrastructure services, we see that Hosters expect the best segments to be (in order): 1) Small and Medium Business, 2) Enterprises, and 3) VARs/SIs. Other segments like Government, Education, and Software Vendors were not seen as particularly promising markets.
What do you think? Does this jive with your expectations for target markets of infrastructure cloud services?
In my next and final post, we will look at the types of workloads hosting providers are seeing or expect to see on their cloud infrastructure.
About Joshua Beil
Joshua Beil (@joshbeil) is the Director of Market Strategy and Research for Parallels, the leading provider of automation and virtualization software to the web hosting community. Previously, Josh was the Director of Social Media & Technology at a Level 3 Communications [Nasdaq: LVLT] where he provided strategic and tactical sales support. Before that, Josh was CEO and cofounder of Skywave Broadband, Inc, the largest commercial WiFi service provider in Hawaii. He was named one of Pacific Business News' Forty Under 40 for 2006, and in 2005, he was named a High Tech Leader by the Pacific Technology Foundation. Before co-founding Skywave, Mr. Beil was VP of Research and Development for the market research boutique, Tier 1 Research, where he covered the Internet infrastructure sector as an analyst, and negotiated and sold subscriptions to Tier 1's research services. Josh has also previously served as the Senior Analyst for Exodus Communications as well as the internationally known market research firm, IDC. He holds a Certificate in E-Business from UCSC Extension, and he graduated with honors from the University of California at Santa Cruz with a major in Psychology.
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