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Interesting article on virtualization and the cloud by Amy Newman at ServerWatch.
Aside from covering the news (Red Hat/IBM and VMware/Likewise announcements) Amy makes some prognostications of how the virtualization market may play out over time:
- VMware wins virtual server market in mid- and large-sized enterprises.
- Microsoft takes the top position in SMB virtualization.
- Citrix owns the virtual desktop.
- Red Hat succeeds in the cloud.
Interesting. Especially interesting for Likewise, as we work with all four of these companies. We license portions of our technology to both VMware and Citrix; we partner with both Red Hat and Microsoft. We know all of these companies very well.
Increasingly I’ve heard our customers discuss their Likewise deployments in context with their cloud initiatives. Here’s my take on the cloud, enterprise computing, and Likewise:
- The cloud is nearing the peak of the hype cycle.
- For the enterprise, most of the action (meaning $s) is in the internal cloud.
- The internal cloud is the modern data center — highly virtualized with the promise of vast scalability with a utility computing model.
- Companies are looking for common IT services across hypervisors, operating systems (Windows and Linux), and management components.
- The internal cloud is a bridge to hybrid and pure cloud topologies for enterprise computing.
- Winning technology providers will be those that unify these various pieces and platforms.
- Many organizations view authentication and policy as the right place to begin this unification process.
The one thing I know for sure is that the winner of the virtualization/cloud scrum will embrace cross-platform computing. CIOs want to work with companies that make the various platforms work well together, not ones that make the problem worse.
Many of our customers tell me that Likewise is a great position for the cloud computing revolution. I agree.
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