Kelly Manchester

Today’s cloud computing providers are focused on infrastructure. However, this will not be the case in the near future. It just can’t be. Vendors will want to stand out so they will have to move their services to include applications.
This is just like the history of enterprise computing. It is played out in months and years rather than decades.
Oracle has been known to set the strategy in motion with the acquisition of a complete infrastructure-plus-applications portfolio in order to lower client acquisition costs and enhance its competitive edge for CIOs. IBM and Microsoft followed the same route although in varied degrees and ways.
Cloud computing platform providers will have to go through the same steps, except that they no longer have the luxury of waiting.
It’s not enough for these vendors to build infrastructure and pray that customers will come because they won’t – not without applications and other issues worked out for their needs and not by them.
Even Google, which was born in the cloud, knows this all too clearly. Instead of inviting its government clients into the public cloud, the company is creating a dedicated linux server cloud to cater to government organizations in the United States.
Vendors are also clamouring to satisfy the demand for cloud-based apps. Google is on its way through Gmail and other applications that it has introduced to the market lately. Others such as Microsoft, Cisco, VMware and IBM are getting into the M&A market in order to round out their offerings and deliver full application suites.

Filed under: The Technology Way, World Wide Web Resources