Five years of revealing American cloud computing

The first companies to implement cloud computing practices within the enterprise, such as Google, Amazon, Microsoft, have invested most in cloud computing, such as HP, IBM and so on, are multinational companies headquartered in the United States, while Around these giants also appeared a lot of small and medium-sized enterprises to provide cloud computing industry in the downstream part of the product services, there are many viable cloud computing business model. Looking back on the development of cloud computing in the United States in the past 5 years, the observation and analysis of the participating parties--enterprises, government, institutions of the performance measures, the development of China's cloud computing industry will have a very positive reference significance.

Internet giants develop cloud computing services for their own needs

Before the concept of cloud computing, some of the internet giants had essentially deployed cloud computing systems inside the company. As Google pioneered the "cloud computing" terminology can be compared to the image of the system to generalize the characteristics of the external services, so it was widely recognized by the respective reference to packaging their own product services. It can be said that "cloud" is the first in fact, after its name, which also makes the cloud concept at the beginning of the time, there is a solid foundation of practice. Amazon, Google's cloud computing services development process fully illustrates this point.

Amazon's main business is consumer E-commerce, user traffic is not evenly distributed around the world, in certain time periods (such as Christmas), traffic will rise sharply, so Amazon in the investment of IT resources will face an embarrassing situation--to pay a large price of the server, storage, Bandwidth is only to cope with sudden peak traffic, and for most of the rest of the time, these resources are less likely to be utilized in half.

In this case, Amazon designed the cloud services AWS (Amazon WebService), the service is mainly to use unused IT resources, there is a point of "treasure" meaning. In the ensuing time, Amazon has introduced including EC2 (elastic Compute Cloud, Elastic Computing cloud, after the industry to talk about Amazon cloud services, mostly specifically EC2), simple DB and other nearly 20 kinds of cloud services, gradually improve the service category AWS.

This shows that AWS is not a brand new system for Amazon, but based on the original IT system to transform the packaging to adapt to the public to open up the service of the upgraded version. At the start of AWS, Amazon has accumulated a lot of operational experience to ensure the quality of cloud services. In fact, the biggest user of AWS is Amazon itself.

Look at Google again. In the start-up phase of the enterprise, Google has limited investment, only to save their own machine, but the poor machine can not meet the high performance and stability requirements of the server, so only on the basis of improved reliability, using a lot of "junk" machine to achieve higher performance. This has the embryonic form of cloud computing. It can be said that the construction of cloud computing technology framework upgrade and improve throughout the Google company's entire development process.

Before 2006, Google had a mature and complete cloud computing technology architecture, not only in the hardware network application of its own design of the rack architecture, server blades, data center, global network connectivity, but also in the software system to develop and improve the operating system, file system GFS, Parallel Computing Architecture MapReduce, parallel Computing database bigtable and development tools such as cloud computing system key components. The proposed "cloud computing" is a natural process. Rather than "cloud computing" is Google's packaging to guide the development trend of industrial technology, rather than Google's own development experience and technical accumulation of the systematic summary.

Industrial Division of Labor Fine, small and medium enterprises also have many opportunities

Cloud computing is suitable for the internet giants, but today the U.S. cloud computing market is not only the stage of the Giants, many small and medium-sized enterprises are also active, and show a strong potential for development.

Joyent Ltd.

The main business is similar to the Amazon EC2, providing IaaS, according to media reports, in 2009 Joyent has provided platform support for about 25% of Facebook apps, and one of its clients, LinkedIn, has already topped 1 billion per month of traffic, Another popular microblogging service provider like Twitter, identi.ca, also chose Joyent, while Joyent had a total of 22 employees, including management and sales staff. Another interesting thing is that, in 2008, Joyent persuaded Twitter to leave Joyent because it was frustrated with the instability of the Twitter architecture and refused to accept Joyent's optimization proposals.

Okta Ltd.

Okta focuses on the management of identity in the cloud, combining different services with enterprise software as a service (SaaS), providing users with a single sign-on portal with different kinds of SaaS applications. Okta's cloud LAN network is thought to be the development of LAN, combining and managing and protecting users ' cloud applications. In SaaS applications, fewer security threats are most beneficial to vendors than full cloud services. Okta founder Tom McKinnon has been involved in Salesforce.com's engineering development, so he has enough skills to deal with the management and recognition of cloud computing.

Skytap Ltd.

SKYTAP provides the user with a cloud-based Virtual Lab run sample and development environment. Its users are also developing its new uses, including the establishment of virtual training classrooms. Users have already established their deployment applications through SKYTAP. Skytap also allows users to build virtual private clouds in their own data centers. This service makes SKYTAP a significant representative of the private cloud market. Skytap has more than 100 clients. It also said its income had increased by one-fold compared with last year, but it did not disclose the exact number. As early as 2008, Skytap from Madrona Venture Group, Ignition, Bezos expeditions and Washington Capital gained 13 million of dollars in risky ventures.

Egnyte Ltd.

Egnyte has launched a cloud-based file storage service that provides new ways to store and back up data and share information. Since then, Egnyte has increased its commitment to the local cloud mix. In their products, when there is no Internet connection, users can access the hosted files and store data through the local cloud. When the Internet connection is restored, the Egnyte local cloud is seamlessly stored in sync with the Egnyte cloud file server. The company's founders said they initially offered the Egntye concept to solve problems they had encountered in their previous jobs-safely and conveniently accessing files from their familiar computing devices.

The relatively limited resources of small and medium-sized enterprises can not be as large companies to serve many customers or provide a comprehensive solution, focus on resources to focus on a particular customer or a business is their way to survive. and the development of mature division of fine market, but also for the survival of the way to provide a very broad space. Angel Investment, venture capital and other objectives to distinguish between the targeted institutions can provide financing for different periods of SMEs; the perfect supervision of credit system reduces the market transaction cost and reduces the risk of large enterprise customers to purchase SME service or business outsourcing; Non-core Outsourcing also enables large companies to focus more on their core business , disdain and small and medium-sized enterprises for profit, professional company to do professional things, their own. As a result, only a small company with a total of 22 employees, such as Joyent, provides platform support for 25% of Facebook apps. Internet upstarts such as Facebook and Twitter are also happy to outsource non-core businesses rather than single-handedly themselves.

Government stimulates cloud computing market through investment

The federal government has been cautious in the development of new Internet technology and services, with little public attention at the beginning of the 2006 cloud computing concept. Until March 2009, President Obama created a new post, the federal CIO, covering policy and strategic planning related to government information technology, responsible for all federal science and technology spending and helping to promote the president's technical policy agenda. From the position of Chief information Officer, the federal government began to show concern about cloud computing and began to formulate policy plans for cloud computing.

A series of initiatives and voices suggest that the federal government is concerned about cloud computing more for its cost savings.

In September 2009, the federal government launched a new website, apps.gov, to showcase and provide government-approved cloud computing applications. The Web site's cloud-based software can be used in a variety of devices, including business applications, cloud computing services, Office applications, and social media software. The move is designed to encourage government agencies to embrace the idea of cloud computing. Then Kundera said the Apps.gov website was launched to help government agencies reduce costs and drive innovation.

The White House announced in December 2010 that it plans to restructure the government's IT infrastructure by consolidating federal data centers and applications and by using so-called "cloud first" policies.

The first federal chief information officer, Kundera, unveiled the government's plan to promote cloud computing, and called for a reduction of at least 800 of the current government's 2,100 data centers by 2015, as well as a shift in the number of Governments at all levels to commercial, personal and government cloud computing systems. The aim is to help various government agencies to share services so as to avoid a lot of unnecessary duplication of work.

The federal government's focus on cloud computing is a direct boost to the US cloud computing market, with many cloud services providers joining the fray for government purchase orders.

In December 2010, Microsoft received the largest U.S. government-ever supply contract for cloud computing software, providing internet-based e-mail and other services to USDA. Previously, Minnesota, New York and California State have chosen Microsoft's cloud computing software. Google and IBM are also bidding on the project.

Over the same period, Google also announced that it had defeated Microsoft in other government procurement projects, winning a 6.7 million dollar contract to process e-mails for the U.S. General Administration. The United States General Services Administration is large, with 15,000 employees, responsible for purchasing and managing federal assets, and, more importantly, has a unique impact on new technology procurement decisions of other U.S. government agencies.

By the year 2011, the federal government had shown a firmer confidence in the development of cloud computing. With the use of cloud computing technology to consolidate data centers, the New York Times website reported that the U.S. federal government plans to close its 40% computer data centers in the next 4 years, the number of 800, To reduce the huge technology budget and modernize the way the U.S. government uses computers to manage data and provide services to citizens.

The federal government has no intention of dominating the development of cloud computing, its starting point is to adopt better technology to reduce its IT costs, concrete measures is to create market demand for government procurement to stimulate the development of cloud computing industry, through the government IT system security requirements, performance requirements, such as writing to the procurement contract to standardize the content of cloud services, Urge cloud service quality improvement.

Enterprises to guide the direction of technology development through joining standard organization

At present, Global cloud computing standardization work has been launched, the world has more than 30 standards organizations announced to join the cloud computing standards, and the number is growing. The more important standards organizations are: United States National Laboratory (NIST), structured Information Standards Propulsion Organization (OASIS), Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF), Storage Industry Association (SNIA), Open Grid Forum (OGF), Cloud Security Alliance (CSA), Open Cloud Consortium (OCC).

The standards organizations set out from their own launch goals, focusing on cloud computing in different areas of standard-setting. As：

NIST's goal is to provide technical guidance and promotional standards for effective and safe application in government and industry, which provides a definition of cloud computing, a security and deployment strategy for the U.S. federal government, focusing on the U.S. federal government's cloud standards, cloud interfaces, converged Cheng application development interfaces.

Oasis was established in 1993 as a non-profit federation organization with the goal of promoting the development, integration and application of open standards for the global information society. Oasis has great influence in the field of software development, and has submitted the famous XML and Web standards.

DMTF's goal is to unite the entire IT industry to develop, validate and promote system management standards, help simplify management worldwide, reduce IT management costs, and the current host operating system and hardware-level management interface specifications from the DMTF standards, so the organization is a very influential group.

Other standards organizations have also made great achievements in the storage, grid computing, energy saving, security and other aspects of the industry has established standards, published a number of cloud building has a good reference value of the white paper.

The major enterprises are the "first impetus" of developing emerging markets

In a mature market, the participating parties are the dynamic equilibrium relationship which promotes each other. By the formation of a complete industrial chain, production products, providing services, customers or users as market consumers use product services and pay for it, in addition to supporting the benign development of the market to participate in a variety of roles, such as regulation, circulation, finance and so on. Each role as a member of the market, not only to share wealth, but also to create wealth to play a role.

At the same time, emerging markets will be faced with the problem of supporting role vacancy, such as the lack of regulatory mechanisms, unfair competition, or the ability to support the role of limited capacity, such as the limited size of financing channels can not start major projects.

These difficulties determine the development of the industrial market at the beginning of the need for a strong force, to attract the sidelines stand outside the waiting enterprises to join, improve the industrial chain of the downstream Division of labor, promote the various supporting role of the market to improve, if necessary, or even temporarily as a supporting role to play a role. Such a force is the "first impetus" to push emerging markets from scratch.

SMEs can not be competent to promote the development of cloud computing industry chain backbone. The construction of cloud computing platform requires a lot of technology accumulation and a lot of capital investment, and before the mature business model can follow, is a high risk investment and return unknown business, small and medium-sized enterprises without this construction strength, also can not resist the risk of new business, it is impossible to become "the first impetus."

The federal government is just one of the buyers of cloud computing and has no intention of acting as the "first driver". In the past 5 years, the federal government has maintained its focus on cloud computing from public information, but does not attempt to dominate the cloud computing market, and its involvement in cloud computing is mainly aimed at saving government IT spending and improving government office efficiency by leveraging the benefits of cloud computing technology. The development of cloud computing has also been spurred by a growing number of IT budgets being invested in the procurement of cloud computing services. As a big customer, the federal government has a strong right to speak, in terms of product service quality requirements will have more critical requirements, which on cloud computing manufacturers to improve product quality, improve service level pressure, conducive to the development of the entire industry. With regard to data security, privacy protection, and intellectual property regulation, the judiciary is governed by legal procedures, and the federal government has no measures in place to regulate it. The federal government has not intervened in the technical direction of cloud computing, business innovation, standard-setting and other professional content, but the enterprise according to market demand to make its own decisions.

In this case, only large enterprises can become the "first impetus" of cloud computing

As mentioned earlier, large enterprises have been operating internally for many years before they put cloud services to market, guaranteeing quality of service. The big enterprise itself is the cloud service biggest user, this also can reduce the expansion cloud computing platform investment risk effectively. And, because of fierce market competition, and facing a large number of rapid growth of small and medium-sized enterprises new challenges, big enterprises need to constantly open up strategic market, in order to increase long-term income, to cultivate emerging markets for large enterprises have endogenous power, by a group of large enterprises to lead the development of cloud computing industry, Will inject a strong vitality into the cloud computing industry.

Most importantly, the cash flow, lines of business, channels and research and development power owned by large companies will be strong support in developing emerging markets. In the cloud computing industry chain is not perfect, some links are missing, large enterprises can rely on their own technical advantages of the business line to resolve independently.

such as Google's own design server rack frame and PC server blades to meet the cloud computing characteristics of large-scale computing, reduce power consumption, improve processor performance, their own development for cloud computing environment File system, parallel computing architecture, parallel computing database.

Amazon has the same situation, as its 2010 earnings report says, "the key to any system that is intended to expand to an oversized scale is state management." Many years ago, Amazon's demand reached a point where many of our systems were unable to find any commercial solution to support it, and in that case Amazon had to solve its own system-supporting software.

In the US cloud computing market development process, the big Enterprise has acted "the first impetus" the role, based on the past American it Internet market Development course, this is an inevitable result, in an equal competition restriction monopoly free market, this also is a suitable result.

(Responsible editor: Lu Guang)