Interesting Forrester report called “Trends in Cloud Computing” by James Staten dated May 26th, 2009. Worthwhile read. Few noteworthy points:
“Cloud computing” contains the seeds of IT’s next generation – YES. This is real, much like client server and Web computing… in fact probably has benefits of both – cost and revenue.
Cloud’s customers (slide #16) – great customer segmentation. would like to add that almost all enterprise customers are using cloud for revenue or customer service related projects and using time to market/costs as the major drivers.
The systems vendors will not dominate (slide #22). This one requires a double take. James makes the point that for a vendor to succeed, it requires operations excellence in Web scale data center operations and system companies have expertise in managing enterprise data centers – wrong skills. This may seem like Wow! comment for many have not been through this, but for anybody who has built, deployed and managed enterprise apps. vs. Web apps they know the difference. The mindset is very different. The smart vendors are aware of this and will either focus on their sweet spot or acquire/grow into this space.
