Graham Crich of VMware delivers a main forum session
(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — The first Thursday afternoon session in the main forum was delivered by Graham Crich of VMware, who set out to talk about the cloud market in the next few years, and specifically how the role of service providers is going to change.
He showed a chart illustrating which individuals within organizations tend to be blockers or advocates toward moving to the cloud. One of the interesting things it illustrated was that IT managers are commonly advocates for the cloud, where they were more commonly blockers for more traditional outsourcing to hosting providers.
Another chart, showing the reasons for opposition to the cloud, offered a surprising indication that users aren’t familiar enough with the benefits of moving to the cloud.
He says the major public cloud providers like Amazon and Azure are gaining traction, but his personal experience with CEOs is that they’re not considered strategic resources. They don’t offer the amount of organizational control that businesses tend to require.
There is a misperception among service providers that their customers are not interested in pay-as-you-go cloud resources, and partly because those service providers want their own services to be seen as a different kind of service. But Crich says there is an appetite there for pay-as-you-go too.
He also feels strongly that the service providers need to work, in partnership with their own vendors (including VMware) to educate customers on defining the cloud, illustrating its benefits and clarifying the security requirements.
He also offered some predictions.
Change in the cloud space will be constant, he says. You are going to make mistakes. And you have to be prepared for that to happen, and ready to correct them quickly.
A lot of businesses are going to enter the market, and a lot of them are going to leave (it may be the big ones).
He expects a lot of merger and acquisition activity – which could be a good thing for hosting companies getting into the space right now. Another possibility there is companies getting into the space by partnering with existing public cloud providers. There’s an opportunity for hosts there, too, in being prepared to be that partner.
People are going to specialize. Customers don’t want every cloud to look the same. They may want solutions built specifically for companies in their market. If you already address specific vertical markets, you’ll want to design your cloud with them in mind.
Virtual desktop is important. We’ve heard it for a few years, he says, but use of that sort of product is growing, and he’s hopeful the point where it catches on is near.
He thinks people in emerging countries are going to go straight to SaaS, the way many of them skipped over wired telecommunications and jumped right to mobile.
Aggregators and cloud brokers are starting to emerge, he says. Not like specialized hosting resellers, but people who are going to pull cloud services in from a variety of spots and deliver them to customers through a single interface.
Overall, VMware’s strategy sees its direct customers building private clouds while its service provider partners building public clouds, with VMware building the functions for those two resources to be consumed as a hybrid cloud. The company is directly encouraging customers to seek out service providers.
Crich encouraged hosting providers in attendance to seek out the company and find out about getting involved with its VSPP partner program, which has pay-as-you-go pricing for software for partners.
About Liam Eagle
Liam Eagle has worked as a contributor to the Web Host Industry Review since its inception in 2000, and as editor since 2003. He has been editor of the WHIR's print magazine since its launch. His daily involvement in the gathering and reporting of Web hosting news and his regular interaction with Web hosting leaders gives him an uncommonly broad appreciation of the issues and tends facing the business. Through his WHIR blog, Liam spots Web hosting trends and offers opinions on the industry-wide impacts of major developments and the motivation behind big announcements. Follow him on Twitter @liameagle
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