Open Cloud Computing Manifesto: IBM and Microsoft do Not smoke war

"Cloud computing" in the field, the big IT companies fighting smoke. According to the news released by Gartner Inc.2009, a leading market research firm, sales in the global cloud computing market amounted to $56.3 billion trillion, up 21% from the previous year, based on IDC, an information technology consultancy. Cloud computing services spending will reach one-third of the overall IT spending growth in 2013, while Merrill Lynch believes the global cloud computing market could be larger than $95 billion trillion over the next 5 years.

At the same time, the war between IBM and Microsoft, the two giants, in the area of cloud computing has also aroused widespread concern.

As early as 2009, IBM and the major technology companies signed the "Open Cloud Computing Manifesto" (Open Cloud Manifesto), the move to make Microsoft sneer at, a year later, Microsoft CEO Ballmer issued a statement, the company will be the future development of cloud computing services, IBM has also smashed more than 20 billion dollars in mergers and acquisitions, developed cloud computing, and launched its network software this month, once again charging rival Microsoft in the public cloud computing market.

Open Cloud Computing Manifesto: First "standard" IBM lost to Microsoft

At the end of March 2009, IBM launched, including IBM, AMD, EMC, Sun, SAP, VMware and other industry-renowned chips, storage, virtualization, software and other dozens of manufacturers and organizations, together signed a "Open Cloud computing Manifesto" for the Open cloud computing principles, To ensure the interoperability of future cloud computing.

However, the manifesto was also resisted by Microsoft, which unveiled the Azure platform, Amazon (Amazon), the EC2 (the Flexible Computing cloud), and cloud pioneers such as Google Apps, Google and Salesforce, which refused to sign the manifesto.

Industry analysts believe that the companies or organizations that require standards to sign the declaration are in fact for their own benefit. They lag behind in the competition for cloud computing, so use the standard to simplify the pace of development in order to catch up. IBM and Microsoft are the most direct rivals.

Microsoft's "Windows Azure" Cloud Computing Program, released in 2008, aims to create an operating system that allows users greater flexibility in using Windows, allowing businesses to run certain programs on their own computer networks, or to entrust Microsoft with certain tasks in its large data centers. Through Azure, Microsoft hopes to develop its own cloud computing market with the influence of its software and industry, as well as its already large number of corporate clients.

At the time, Businessweek commented that if Azure was successful, Windows would undoubtedly be a "sharp weapon" in Microsoft's hands, as many companies and individual consumers already knew how to make and run windows-based software, Azure, in turn, leads them to easily extend these software to the Web.

The IBM-led "Open Cloud Manifesto" is undoubtedly a challenge for Microsoft Windows Azure. Given that the cloud computing market was still in its infancy, the industry believed that the most direct purpose of IBM was to use the manifesto to dilute or slow down Microsoft's foray into the cloud computing market, which was the real goal.

IBM's attack was hit by Microsoft's strong counterattack

Steven Martin, Microsoft's senior manager for developer platform Management, on March 26, 2009 on his official blog, criticized the manifesto for its flaws, lack of transparency, Will be directed at IBM. Microsoft believes that such a document, from drafting to completion, should allow public participation in comments and discussions through an open mechanism. Martin wrote: "It is clear that there is a company, or a handful of companies, intent on controlling the development of cloud computing, not through an open process, and with all important parties, including cloud users." "

Inspired by Microsoft, many people are worried about IBM's leadership role in building the new organization that leads the cloud. Some people believe that IBM has no clear cloud computing strategy or has not proposed its own cloud computing strategy.

Perhaps these "concerns" have played a role, and the Cloud Computing Interoperability Forum (Cloud Computing Interoperability Forum) announced at its forum March 29 that it had decided to cancel the signing of the Declaration. "Because it lacks an open and fair process, CCIF cannot sign the declaration. The organizer of the forum wrote.

Because of opposition, the first round of the standard war, IBM did not get the best results, Microsoft has prevailed. However, from IBM's "Open Cloud Manifesto" to Microsoft's response, not only to promote the cloud computing standards, openness and interoperability, but also proved that cloud computing will be the future of industry trends.

Hit 20 billion dollars: back to war public cloud market IBM Microsoft Unknown winner

This January, Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard announced a partnership that would invest $250 million in the next 3 years to provide cloud products and services for corporate users and compete with one-stop technology companies such as Oracle and IBM. and Hewlett-Packard chairman and CEO Hurd and Microsoft CEO Ballmer together appeared in the Conference, make this cooperation looks extremely unusual. It is reported that both sides regard this cooperation as "one of the world's largest technology companies and the top software companies to join hands with the industry's most integrated technology to promote cloud computing."

Ballmer further promoted Microsoft's "cloud services" plan. In a speech at the University of Washington on March 4, Mr. Ballmer said the company would put future developments on cloud computing services. "I can tell you that we are betting the future of our company on cloud technology, and I believe that many companies in the industry are betting on the future of their companies in the cloud, and that $3.3 trillion worth of global industries are betting on incredible cloud technology." "said Ballmer.

"Blue giant" IBM naturally unwilling to let Microsoft gamble successfully. "We are passionate about cloud computing because it will return all investment," said Clementi Clementi, IBM's strategy director. According to him, IBM began testing the online development software from last October, and now it is ready to launch the market formally. It is understood that IBM's development software will enable users to test and create software on the Internet. IBM believes that IBM's software will be able to operate on multiple platforms, while Azure only supports Microsoft's own operating system. However, analysts point out that IBM's move was nearly 2 years behind Microsoft's Azure platform.

James Staten, analyst at Forrester Research, Stanton that Microsoft is far ahead of IBM in the corporate Cloud project. In fact, prior to announcing cooperation with HP, Microsoft has released a more complete product and strategy for integration into "cloud computing", in addition to the Azure series "cloud computing" services, including network delivery, lightweight Office applications and the latest live mesh intermediary software.

In order to get new revenue growth channels, IBM has invested more than 20 billion dollars in the cloud computing sector. IBM also hinted at the development of public cloud services. Clementi says many cloud computing customers have a unique cloud space that will be protected by the company's own firewall, and therefore considered to be more secure than public cloud space. However, the global market will move towards mixed cloud services, some operations will be done in-house, some operations need to move to the outside, so it is important for enterprises to be able to integrate.

However, Stanton that IBM is lagging behind Microsoft in the development of the public cloud space market. "IBM claims to be ready to move into the cloud computing market, but this is only a marketing strategy rather than a practical one." "Stanton said. So far, the industry generally think that the "cloud" the best companies have Google, Amazon and so on, they have their own applications, and then continue to develop such technology, and Microsoft has its own advantages, strong stamina, IBM, Cisco, Hewlett-Packard in this area are backward.

"Blue giant" although rich, but in the field of cloud computing, want to beat Microsoft, 20 billion of dollars of input, still is not enough, IBM need to do a lot of things.