26 Aug 11

Update: am revising this still… Reposting now – but send me your comments via @CloudBzz on Twitter if you have them.

It seems like every day there’s a new company touting their infrastructure stack.   I’m sure I’m missing some, but I show more than 30 solutions for building clouds below, and I am sure that more are on their way.  The market certainly can’t support so many participants!  Not for very long anyway.  This is the definition of a “red ocean” situation — lots of noise, and lots of blood in the water.

This is the list of the stacks that I am aware of:

I. Dedicated Commercial Cloud Stacks

II.  Open Source Cloud Stacks

III.  IT Automation Tools with Cloud Functionality

IV.  Private Cloud Appliances

I hope you’ll pardon my dubious take, but I can’t possibly understand how most of these will survive.  Sure, some will because they are big and others because they are great leaps forward in technology (though I see only a bit of that now).  There are three primary markets for stacks:  enterprise private clouds, provider public clouds, and public sector clouds.  In five years there will probably be at most 5 or 6 companies that matter in the cloud IaaS stack space, and the rest will have gone away or taken different routes to survive and (hopefully) thrive.

If you’re one of the new stack providers – think long and hard about this situation before you make your splash.  Sometimes the best strategy is to pick another fight.  If you swim in this red ocean, you might end up as shark bait.

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    [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Cloud Bzz. Cloud Bzz said: RT @cloudbzz: The Red Ocean of Cloud Infrastructure Stacks (swim at your peril) http://bit.ly/dfmYZE (let me know if I missed any) [...]

  • John Palmieri

    John…. Are you not missing the ultimate cloud appliance the VBlock?

  • http://www.johntreadway.com John Treadway

    John – vBlocks are the infrastructure and virtualization. You still need the cloud control layer to make it work as a cloud. Add Eucalyptus to a vBlock, and you've got the underpinnings of a cloud. Make sense?

  • Gary Tyreman

    You may want to tease apart the list more into discreet buckets. The list is currently mixing virtualization, provisioning, policy management, paas layers and portals. All are ingredients but not really the comparable. This doesn't necessarily affect your assertion, but certainly will affect the deepness of the red. Then again, there should be a third column: product versus vision but that's a different discussion.

  • http://oakleafblog.blogspot.com Roger Jennings

    John,

    You don't consider Microsoft's Windows Azure Platform [Appliance] to be a stack?

    –rj

  • http://www.johntreadway.com John Treadway

    hmmm… okay, sure I'll add them.

  • http://www.johntreadway.com John Treadway

    Agreed, but too big a project if I start creating matrices etc. Bottom line doesn't change – friggin' crowded market eh?

  • Donald Norbeck

    John, I disagree, you can add VMware’s vCloud or the forthcoming Redwood and accomplish an integrated Cloud Appliance in the same stack as the VCE consortium and is a very effective appliance–i.e., pre-integrated. Much more like IBM Cloudburst or Unisys SPC than cloud like then Just a Bunch Of Disk and Just a Bunch Of Servers. Full Disclosure I work for Acadia/VCE. But I would say similar things about HP’s Matrix and Oracle’s platform for SaaS on Sun storage and servers. Perhaps there is another category in your not so blue ocean—Private Cloud Stacks.

  • http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/VX2EICDCS6RAP7UM6KGUCGCNB4 Geoff Arnold

    Don't forget Intalio – see http://www.intalio.com/products

  • http://www.johntreadway.com John Treadway

    Donald – thanks. Yes, if you add Service Director (f/k/a Redwood) to a vBlock it's a private cloud. But vBlock on its own – at least how it's defined now – does not have the self-service provisioning and other pieces to turn it from a great big stack of converged infrastructure to a full-fledged cloud. Technically you can add Unisys SPC to a vBlock because in our model the cloud resource infrastructure pool is independent from the cloud control layer (e.g. we'll work with anybody's gear, at least in principal). Or am I missing something?

    Regarding categorization – that gets a bit difficult when you drill into it. Nothing stopping you from using CloudStack or Enomaly for a private cloud, though I might agree that a lot of enterprise process features would be missing (ITIL, ITSM integration, etc.). Not so likely that a private cloud stack like CloudBurst would make a good public cloud engine. Even IBM's own Dev/Test cloud didn't use CloudBurst. Generally, though, it's a bit fuzzy.

  • http://www.johntreadway.com John Treadway

    Added – thanks

  • http://www.cloudave.com/link/morph-labs-gets-ready-to-take-on-the-competitive-marketplace-after-a-series-b-funding-round Morph Labs Gets Ready To Take On The Competitive Marketplace After A Series B Funding Round | CloudAve

    [...] on their execution.It seems I am not alone in this skepticism. John Treadway of Cloudbzz recently voiced similar opinion and listed out companies in this space.It seems like every day there’s a new company touting their infrastructure stack. [...]

  • http://exectweets.com/2010/07/16/18719757799/ Exectweets » randybias at 07/16/10 10:21:40

    [...] Pro Tweets You read my mind with the Red Ocean of IaaS Stacks post, @cloudbzz (http://www.cloudbzz.com/the-red-ocean-of-cloud-infrastructure-stacks/) randybias – Fri 16 Jul 22:21 All Things [...]

  • Gary Tyreman

    Crowded space tells you a couple things IMHO…

    1) when you see fast followers (like in this case) you can rest assured there are end user requirement gaps and this means the technology “isn't good enough”.

    and

    2) when all you hear is talk about the gaps (reasons it's not good enough) one will soon see “good enough”.

  • http://twitter.com/lasseoe Lasse Osterild

    I think you're missing a few still, how about LayerBoom, DAAS (daas.com), Surgient and ElasticHosts ?

  • http://www.cloudbzz.com/openstack-first-reaction-rackspace-open-sources-their-cloud/ OpenStack First Reaction – Rackspace Open Sources Their Cloud | CloudBzz

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  • http://php-app-engine.com/2010/google-app-engine/as-cloud-platforms-battle-for-credibility-openstack-is-pretty-solid/ As cloud platforms battle for credibility, OpenStack is pretty solid. › PHP App Engine

    [...] . It seems every few weeks yet another company announces a cloud computing infrastructure platform. I’m not talking about public clouds but the underlying software which can turn a virtualized [...]

  • Peter McSherry

    Not all aspirants enter the market to end up on top – but to get eaten by the more prosperous. I agree generally with primary market distinctions: enterprise private, provider public, and public sector – but not clear their may be other flavors, or 'mash-ups' yet to evolve.
    And what about Verizon or other carriers on here…

  • yam.

    please add a new stack named “wakame-vdc” (virtual data center). see also, http://wakame.axsh.jp/vdc.html (Japanese)

  • http://www.egrep.jp/blog/2010/07/20/nasa-and-rackspace-open-source-cloud-fxxxxxx/ NASA and Rackspace open source cloud fxxxxxx « すでにそこにある雲

    [...] いささか乱立気味の Cloud 基板 ですが、RackSpace にとっては、技術基盤が Open Source になっても、長年のホスティング事業でこなれた顧客や業務基板、また彼らの特徴であるサポートがあるかぎり安泰と。 [...]

  • http://www.korallenkacke.com/the-cloud-services-market-is-looking-like-a-red-ocean/ The Cloud Services Market is Looking Like a Red Ocean – www.Korallenkacke.com

    [...] Treadway of Cloud Bzz put together a comprehensive list. He says the market is looking more like a red ocean: “I [...]

  • http://international-news.org/2010/07/the-cloud-services-market-is-looking-like-a-red-ocean/ The Cloud Services Market is Looking Like a Red Ocean | International News – Stay up to date with the latest World News, Finance & Business, Green News, Technology and Sports

    [...] Treadway of Cloud Bzz put together a comprehensive list. He says the market is looking more like a red ocean: “I [...]

  • http://cincodata.com/technology/the-cloud-services-market-is-looking-like-a-red-ocean/ The Cloud Services Market is Looking Like a Red Ocean | Technology and Web 2.0

    [...] Treadway of Cloud Bzz put together a comprehensive list. He says the market is looking more like a red ocean: “I [...]

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    [...] Treadway of Cloud Bzz put together a comprehensive list. He says the market is looking more like a red ocean: "I hope [...]

  • http://technewsninja.com/2010/07/the-cloud-services-market-is-looking-like-a-red-ocean/ The Cloud Services Market is Looking Like a Red Ocean | Tech News Ninja

    [...] Treadway of Cloud Bzz put together a comprehensive list. He says the market looking more like a red ocean: “I hope [...]

  • http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/readwriteweb/~3/X0oZ6T873Go/why-telecoms-needs-the-cloud.php The Cloud Services Market is Looking Like a Red Ocean – ReadWriteCloud

    [...] Treadway of Cloud Bzz put together a comprehensive list. He says the market is looking more like a red ocean: "I hope [...]

  • http://www.activatedmedia.com/271860/the-cloud-services-market-is-looking-like-a-red-ocean/ The Cloud Services Market is Looking Like a Red Ocean | Tech News Today

    [...] Treadway of Cloud Bzz put together a comprehensive list. He says the market is looking more like a red ocean: “I [...]

  • http://www.activatedmedia.com/271860/the-cloud-services-market-is-looking-like-a-red-ocean/ The Cloud Services Market is Looking Like a Red Ocean | Tech News Today

    [...] Treadway of Cloud Bzz put together a comprehensive list. He says the market is looking more like a red ocean: “I [...]

  • http://www.family-learning-center.com/computers-technology/read-write-web/the-cloud-services-market-is-looking-like-a-red-ocean/ The Cloud Services Market is Looking Like a Red Ocean | Family Learning Center

    [...] Treadway of Cloud Bzz put together a comprehensive list. He says the market is looking more like a red ocean: “I [...]

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    [...] Treadway of Cloud Bzz put together a comprehensive list. He says the market is looking more like a red ocean: “I [...]

  • http://popularbloggers.com/?p=18919 The Cloud Services Market is Looking Like a Red Ocean – 25 Popular Blogs – Popular Bloggers.com

    [...] Treadway of Cloud Bzz put together a comprehensive list. He says the market is looking more like a red ocean: “I [...]

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    [...] Treadway of Cloud Bzz put together a comprehensive list. He says the market is looking more like a red ocean: “I [...]

  • Randy

    John. You are correct. Today vBlocks is neatly packaged infrastructure. Nothing more, nothing less.

    Don. OpSource seem to be the guys that have figured out VMWare, Cisco and EMC. They have amazing network capabilities, open APIs and full orchestration on top of a product that is enterprise ready, best of breed, and available today.

  • http://doubleclix.wordpress.com/2010/07/24/822/ Is PaaS “The SOA Reloaded” ? « My missives

    [...] the Red Ocean of cloud infrastructure stacks Randy refers in his blog has a good list …  July 24, 2010  ksankar [...]

  • Christian

    John,

    Interesting observations…I think it will be interesting to see not only how many “survive”, but how many of those who find themselves in the “top right” of the future Gartner Quadrant in this space, build their offerings on open standards. As many traditional large enterprises (such as the one I work for which shall remain nameless) fight with the concepts of “which cloud”, one of the major draws is the potential elimination of vendor lock-in via the acceptance of open standards. I can’t see how that can be far from the top of the “wanted list” for most IT/Business-savvy folks in positions like mine. I, for one, will be planning carefully for the movement of various workloads in and out of various clouds and, if the pain of doing that is akin to moving workloads from different platforms inside the “firewall” today, then I will know I’ve bet on the wrong horse…..

    Best,
    Christian

  • http://blogs.zdnet.com/SAAS/?p=1113 Choosing the right cloud platform | ZDNet

    [...] choice. Rackspace’s OpenStack initiative, unveiled last week, is the latest, but it’s by no means the only one [disclosure: Rackspace hosts my business and personal websites free of charge]. There are also [...]

  • http://kool-gadgets.com/2010/07/27/weekly-poll-is-the-cloud-infrastructure-market-too-crowded/ kool-gadgets.com » Weekly Poll: Is the Cloud Infrastructure Market too Crowded?

    [...] Cloud Bzz lists more than 30 providers. These include companies that provide enterprise private clouds, public clouds and public sector clouds. John Treadway's take is that over the next few years there will be at most five or six companies that matter in the cloud infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) space. [...]

  • http://www.lytechnology.com/weekly-poll-is-the-cloud-infrastructure-market-too-crowded/ Ly Technology » Weekly Poll: Is the Cloud Infrastructure Market too Crowded?

    [...] Cloud Bzz lists more than 30 providers. These include companies that provide enterprise private clouds, public clouds and public sector clouds. John Treadway's take is that over the next few years there will be at most five or six companies that matter in the cloud infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) space. [...]

  • http://popularbloggers.com/?p=19606 Weekly Poll: Is the Cloud Infrastructure Market Too Crowded? – 25 Popular Blogs – Popular Bloggers.com

    [...] Cloud Bzz lists more than 30 providers. That includes companies that provide enterprise private clouds, public clouds and public sector clouds. John Treadway’s take is that over the next few years there will be at most five or six companies that matter in the cloud infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) space. [...]

  • http://topsy.com/trackback?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cloudbzz.com%2Fthe-red-ocean-of-cloud-infrastructure-stacks%2F%3Fsms_ss%3Dtwitter&utm_source=pingback&utm_campaign=L2 Tweets that mention The Red Ocean of Cloud Infrastructure Stacks | CloudBzz — Topsy.com

    [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by friarminor, Adomas Svirskas. Adomas Svirskas said: The Red Ocean of #Cloud Infrastructure Stacks: http://bit.ly/cU10cf via @addthis [...]

  • http://twitter.com/geoffarnold Geoff Arnold

    Two more for your list! Skydera, and Attribo. See
    http://cloudcomputing.info/en/news/2010/08/skyd…
    and
    http://cloudcomputing.info/en/news/2010/08/attr…

    This is getting remarkably silly, isn't it?

  • Tudor Radoaca

    You should look into IBM's Tivoli and Systems Director VMControl solutions as well. They aren't packaged as a private cloud solution just yet, but they allow for the management of VMs as well as workload automation and provisioning. I think they are in the same position as HP's BTO and Cloud Assure – products whose roots were in datacenter and IT management but are being either rebranded or repurposed for the cloud.

  • http://www.johntreadway.com John Treadway

    Thanks. There are many IT automation tools that could be used in cloud stacks, but unless they are packaged as such I won't include them here. Best.

  • http://www.johntreadway.com John Treadway

    Yes, it is.

    Skydera and Attribo are more like cloud management tool plays – perhaps a bit like an enStratus, RightScale, or newScale. They manage AWS and other clouds, but don't provide the stack to build a cloud.

    Let me know if you find more.

    Thanks

  • Tudor Radoaca

    one more for your list: Convirture offers private cloud management with a focus on open source virtualization technologies (KVM, Xen)

    http://www.convirture.com/index.php
    http://www.convirture.com/solutions_cloudcomput…

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Joe-Drumgoole/660326996 Joe Drumgoole

    You need to add deltacloud.org to this list.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Joe-Drumgoole/660326996 Joe Drumgoole

    You need to add deltacloud.org to this list.

  • http://www.itravelsky.com/2010072801189.html Travel in the sky › Weekly Poll: Is the Cloud Infrastructure Market too Crowded?

    [...] Cloud Bzz lists more than 30 providers. These include companies that provide enterprise private clouds, public clouds and public sector clouds. John Treadway’s take is that over the next few years there will be at most five or six companies that matter in the cloud infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) space. [...]

  • http://blog.zettagrid.com/?p=221 Novell joins crowded cloud platform market

    [...] Treadway, director of cloud computing for Unisys, calls it a “red ocean“. And that is without even mentioning IBM rapidly turning Tivoli into something approximating [...]

  • http://ctolabs.com/2010/09/novell-joins-crowded-cloud-platform-market/ Novell joins crowded cloud platform market | CTOlabs

    [...] Treadway, director of cloud computing for Unisys, calls it a “red ocean“. And that is without even mentioning IBM rapidly turning Tivoli into something approximating [...]

  • http://www.cloudave.com/145/morph-labs-gets-ready-to-take-on-the-competitive-marketplace-after-a-series-b-funding-round/ Morph Labs Gets Ready To Take On The Competitive Marketplace After A Series B Funding Round

    [...] their execution. It seems I am not alone in this skepticism. John Treadway of Cloudbzz recently voiced similar opinion and listed out companies in this space. It seems like every day there’s a new company touting their infrastructure [...]

  • http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/3FOTMK35PHY3XLVFSXXSHNE6GA Sherly J

    Thanks for such nice list of cloud computing service providers. I know one more which is also doing well in CA. Its- http://www.onthenetoffice.com

  • http://www.johntreadway.com John Treadway

    I do list CA up above (CA/3tera AppLogic). Thanks

  • Avi K

    Xeround is another company that should be on the list – True Cloud Database

  • http://www.johntreadway.com John Treadway

    Xeround is not a cloud stack.

  • http://www.cloudbzz.com/a-vision-of-the-future-cloud-data-cente/ A Vision of the Future Cloud Data Center | CloudBzz

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    [...] I’ve written about previously, there are many tools in the market for building clouds – whether private or public. There are [...]

  • http://www.cloudbzz.com/ready-fire-aim/ Ready! Fire! Aim! | CloudBzz

    [...] to talk about cloud stacks again.  No, not that there are too many (though there are), but rather the one-track mind that [...]

  • http://virtualizationandstorage.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/cloud-management-panels/ Cloud Management Panels « Roshan Ratnayake – Solution Architect

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  • http://www.diversity.net.nz/morph-labs-gets-ready-to-take-on-the-competitive-marketplace-after-a-series-b-funding-round/2010/07/15/ Morph Labs Gets Ready To Take On The Competitive Marketplace After A Series B Funding Round

    [...] on their execution. It seems I am not alone in this skepticism. John Treadway of Cloudbzz recently voiced similar opinion and listed out companies in this space. It seems like every day there’s a new company touting their infrastructure [...]

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_VLN3NIG4O7LGVJBFWEAQVVQLPY kirbini

    I realize this is an old post but I thought I would add that CloudStack went fully open source last month.

  • http://williamtoll.com William Toll

    I keep coming back to this list. u00a0It’s a good one. u00a0Thanks John,

  • rondol

    What do you think of the news from June about Unisys and BMC working together for cloud solutions: http://www.unisys.com/unisys/news/detail.jsp?id=1120000970016110164

  • rondol

    What do you think of the news from June about Unisys and BMC working together for cloud solutions: http://www.unisys.com/unisys/news/detail.jsp?id=1120000970016110164

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  • Michael J Keen

    John you should add ASG Software’s CloudFactory. Check it out at http://www.asg.com