Virtualization and Cloud executives share their predictions for 2014. Read them in this VMblog.com series exclusive.
Contributed article by John Zanni, chief marketing officer, Service Provider, Parallels
2014 – Cloud Management Platform Leaders Continue to Evolve
The market for Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) is
projected to grow dramatically, with
Parallels
SMB Cloud Insights research predicting cloud-based
IaaS revenue will double in the next three years, from $15.8 billion in 2012 to
$31.3 billion in 2015. Increasing demand from service providers for a cloud
management platform (CMP) to address this opportunity is
resulting in a rapidly evolving set of solutions and options in the market.
What should service providers do in 2014 to take advantage
of these future IaaS opportunities? With so many CMPs already in the market,
and more on the way, how can you make sure you keep your options open while
addressing current demand?
One strategy is to ensure that your service provisioning and
management systems enable you to easily integrate a variety of cloud management
options into your service infrastructure. These options might initially include
support for a proprietary CMP, while enabling you to take advantage of the
emerging open source-based solutions in the future. Extending your offerings with
a variety of syndicated IaaS services allows you to address a variety of target
markets with a broader range of services than you could if all your solutions
were based on a single CMP.
The market for open source CMP solutions is continuing to
develop, but it is unlikely open source CMPs will displace proprietary
solutions in the near term. OpenStack is emerging as the leader among the open
source CMPs, but it is essentially just a framework for components and not a fully
mature product that would be easy for service providers to deploy. OpenStack
proponents, notably Rackspace, HP and Red Hat, have asserted that OpenStack
will eventually become the CMP of choice for private clouds, including
enterprises, as well as public and private service provider clouds. However,
OpenStack's minimalistic feature set makes it unlikely to displace more
full-featured proprietary solutions. The other leading open source CMPs, Citrix
Cloud Platform and Eucalyptus, are both more mature than OpenStack but don't
have its large base of supporting contributors.
While the open source CMPs are making progress, it is also unlikely
that they will displace VMware's vCloud suite or competing products such as BMC
Cloud Lifecycle Management, over the next five years. Microsoft is also rapidly
growing its market share, thanks to its stronghold in IT organizations and
frequent role as a strategic vendor.
At Parallels, we believe that the market will continue to
evolve rapidly and may take several years before clear leaders emerge. Our
strategy is to ensure the service providers who choose Parallels Automation can
deploy a wide variety of IaaS services including storage
solutions that enable high availability
services. Parallels Automation leverages the APS standard to enable a variety
of proprietary and open source CMPs, as well as syndicated IaaS services.
To learn more about how Parallels is working to ensure that service
providers can take full advantage of the growing IaaS opportunity, contact us
and make plans to visit us at Parallels
Summit in New Orleans on February 24-26,
2014.
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About the Author
John oversees the company's global service
provider marketing function, spanning the full service provider channel.
He leads integrated marketing communications through product marketing,
partner marketing, advertising, public and analysts relations, digital
marketing, events, and relationship marketing. This includes developing
partnerships with Parallels' most strategic technology companies to
enable hosting service providers using Parallels solutions to quickly
create profitable cloud services that meet the diverse needs of their
end customers.
Prior to joining Parallels, John was general manager of the
Worldwide Software plus Services Industry team for the Communications
Sector at Microsoft. In this role, he was responsible for driving the
strategy for Microsoft's hoster Cloud business. He worked closely with
all types of service providers including Web Hosters, SAAS ISVs and
Telcos to ensure that they were provided with the tools and resources
necessary to grow their business.