Everybody. At least, they should be, few large technology companies are immune to Googlenoia. This is especially true in the hosting market where “Economies Of Scale” has long been the mantra for defining growth potential and competitive advantages.
Essentially, hosting is a commodity. Every hosting company has the same seven, non-trivial problems. Whether it’s a mom & pop VPS provider, or the managed hosting arm of a Tier-1 ISP with geographically distributed datacenters and multi-billion dollar run rates, they succeed or fail by their execution on these seven key problems.
Here in Seattle, however, the locals disagree. Amazon Web Services is the “local boy done good”. We like to say that Amazon created the Cloud, and will forever own it despite Amazon’s less than stellar performance thus far. Comparing S3/EC2 with AppEngine is a good way to enthusiastically rally locals in favor of Amazon. .
Unfortunately, as Amazon is well aware, Google wins both in economies of scale, and in engineering prowess. AppEngine is Google dipping their toes into the Pacific in comparison to Amazon swimming in the Puget Sound.
In terms of pure scale, Google could start a price-war today that would make all other cloud companies irrelevant tomorrow. They would only have to re purpose some of their spare fiber, and servers towards the cloud. All of this is before taking into account offering the same proprietary technologies make Google sexy:
Scared yet?
Michael Halligan is a serial entrepreneur with more than 15 years of experience in IT architecture and operations. His primary role is chief technical officer of BitPusher, LLC, a managed application hosting firm based out of San Francisco and Seattle. He is currently starting up a new Web application providing intelligent services to the convention industry. He previously held architectural and management positions at start-ups MyPoints, Kontiki and Napster.
The opinions expressed in this Weblog are those of the writer and may not represent the opinions of Network World.
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AppEngine is a closed platform vs S3/EC2 is an open platform
I'm more scared about using AppEngine than EC2 in terms of the vendor lockin. EC2 is based on Linux - an open platform, and as a user I can take an application I deploy on EC2 and move it to another Linux based platform if Amazon isn't delivering the needed quality or becomes cost prohibitive. I have a way out with EC2 should I ever need it.
With AppEngine your application is hardwired to Google's platform, and the cost of moving elsewhere is prohibitive. You get some neat tools with BigTable etc., but you also lose a lot of the flexibility you have with full access to the LAMP stack that you get with EC2/Linux.
Plus if Google decides that they don't like what you have built (or if they decide they really like it), they can shut you out and you have no recourse. They are probably unlikely to do so, but they have established a track record of that behavior with their other products (AdWords, Blogger, Search), so I wouldn't completely rule the possibility out.
What about Microsoft?
Michael,
I certainly hope you are going to be balanced and even handed about your articles. I am surprised that you are a local Seattle person and did not even mention Microsoft. In terms of "hosters" they have all the same ingredients as Google and are doing a much better and "open" job of their infrastructure. I am no Microsoft Fan in particular but your avoidance of them smacks of "Google-worship".
I am glad you recognized the Amazon stuff though, in my opinion they are leaps and bounds ahead of both Google and Microsoft in terms of cloud infrastructure.
TechHermit
techhermit.wordpress.com
TechHermit, (for the record,
TechHermit, (for the record, I feel silly calling you techhermit)
Please feel free to enlighten me on Microsoft's open infrastructure, and their cloud initiatives. They've yet to make enough of a splash to make my radar in this industry, but I'd be curious to know more.
It seems to me that Microsoft is dedicated to working with the channel for services, software sales, and support contracts. At best a real cloud initiatives would entail shoot themselves in the feet. At worst, it would represent conflicts of interest with many of their VARS.
"Openness" isn't an accusation I've ever heard thrown at Microsoft before. Microsoft is tying a number of their web services together like Hotmail, IM, Passport, photo sharing sites, etc through Live. But can I build and host an application in their cloud?
My personal prediction is that Microsoft will enter this market too late, and struggle for relevance by throwing capital into acquisitions. It's rather telling that a year ago Ballmer was, whining that Google is hiring too many engineers too fast. A year later, he tried buying Yahoo primarily for their talent pool.
I certainly agree agree with you on Amazon's services. AWS is fantastic for a first stab. I have my gripes (SLA, poor performance, commonplace ideas being touted as features like persistent storage). However, right now it's the platform for two new webservices I'm developing.
Back to Microsoft. Luckily, I'm a blogger and not a journalist. I'll be writing about emerging trends which I find relevant and exciting. When Microsoft feels relevant, or even exciting to me, I promise you I'll be writing about them. To be "fair and balanced" I'd have to mention the 50 other companies I think have a chance of grabbing a piece of the cloud hosting pie.
You hit on something...
Feel free to call me Shane if you like. :)
TechHermit is the naming given to me by folks in my riding club because of most of them have no idea how computers work let alone work in a data center. But I digress.
You hit on something that is key and really indicative of the "data center" space. The term "data center" is becoming to fluid and means many things to many people. I will not argue that Microsoft is well behind on the application infrastructure or the ability to launch an EC2 like platform. EC2 kicks Google AppEngine up and down the road. Microsoft doesnt even have a horse in the race.
What they are doing very well is driving the infrastructure and data center technology space (the actual data center facilities, i am generator-jock after all). Its in this space that they are driving huge sharing across the industry and combatting Google's secretiveness around their operations. At the end of the day Microsoft is doing something right with only 30 people per data center to Google's 200 for effectively the same sized facilities.
Just want you to know that I love your level of interaction and chop.
TH
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