Virtualization next Battlefield: in the Clouds

Like modern warfare the computing giants have extended the battlefield into the clouds. Any commercial computing magazines or website you read today will make mention of cloud computing. IT suppliers all over the world are now singing its praises and how it can help your business.

I first came across the term grid computing about six years ago. I did extensive reading into the technology and thought it was ahead of it time for the ordinary/small businesses. Six years ago most of the people needing that time of computing power and capability were large business and research lab. Last year was the next time came across the technology being offered as Amazon EC2. I was looking for a company to host my website.
A year later and almost everybody is offering cloud computing services. At this year VMworld 2008 conference in Las Vegas; cloud computing was the buzz word. According to VMware’s president the cloud it the next frontier for the company. It was at the conference that they launched their “vCloud initiative for Enterprise-Class Cloud Computing” with support from their partners, like BT and a host of others. They have since released their new Virtual Datacenter – Operating System (VDC-OS) and promise that in the coming months they will be releasing software to support this initiative.

Microsoft, like the others has launched their cloud initiative under the Windows Azure label. Unlike others their initiative covers most of their more popular systems both operating systems and applications e.g., visual studio. Unlike VMware which scale up and out across heterogeneous systems. The Azure for the moment is purely Microsoft on both OS and applications.

Google though quiet is in the running. They seem to be using their systems to support their current services. Sun Microsystems, IBM and HP are also in the running, but they seem to pitching to bigger organizations.

So what does the future holds for the cloud computing market? I think a lot of businesses don’t understand it (even though it’s being around for so long) so it will take some time for the small to medium size companies to start buy into this technology. As for suppliers, their will be a more coming into the market either as resellers of storage space or with vertical products. As the money start rolling in the mergers and acquisitions will start - give it about five years.