Contributed article by Gregory Ness, VP Worldwide Marketing, CloudVelocity

AWS Will Enter the Hybrid Cloud Market

Last year, I predicted that Amazon will "acknowledge the hybrid cloud", so this year I'll take it a step further and predict that they will enter the hybrid cloud market in 2014 with new products and a shift in strategy. That shift will center around DR and storage, and will be in response to anticipated developments with Azure and vCloud.

That prediction is at the core of how I see 2014 developing: 

1. Amazon will fully embrace hybrid cloud in 2014 - driven by the entrance of Azure and vCloud into the IaaS market, and supported by a high profile hybrid cloud strategy and offering that will make AWS a more credible option for cloud DR and other hybrid cloud operating models.


2. AWS reINVENT will threaten VMworld's leadership as a mainstream tech event as AWS embraces hybrid cloud.


3. Cloud (pay as you go) disaster recovery will accelerate cloud adoption in 2014, and be a critical hybrid cloud catalyst. It will have a material impact on the traditional colocation industry, especially for firms who have not embraced cloud.


4. Agility will become the prime driver for cloud in 2014, along with protection of apps and operating efficiency.
   

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About the Author

Before joining CloudVelocity Greg was Chief Marketing Officer at Vantage Data Centers, where he helped the company establish itself as a leader in wholesale data centers. He joined Vantage from Infoblox (BLOX) where he was Vice President of Corporate Marketing. Before Infoblox, Greg was Vice President of Marketing at Blue Lane Technologies (acquired by VMware) and Senior Director of Corporate Marketing at Redline Networks (acquired by Juniper Networks). Before Redline Greg had key marketing roles at IntruVert (acquired by McAfee) and ShoreTel (SHOR).

Gregory has a BA in Political Science from Reed College and a Master's Degree in Middle Eastern Studies from The University of Texas at Austin. He has spoken at Cisco Live, Future in Review, Interop, and Cloud Connect on topics related to networking, virtualization and cloud computing.