Rivalries, M&A and Open Standards Dominate 2011 Cloud News

A lot of IT analysts, armchair quarterbacks and wags are calling 2011 “The Year the Cloud Came Into Its Own.” Now, I’m not saying anything, but TalkinCloud launched in December 2010 — how’s that for prescience?

Over the course of the last 12 months, we’ve kept our fingers on the pulse of the cloud service provider channel. Here are the three major topics that set this blogger’s fingers to the keyboard all year long.

Cloud Rivalries Heat Up

Originally, this section was titled, “Google vs. Microsoft.” But that wasn’t really unique to 2011, and besides, there are other clashes of ego over the cloud. For instance, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison and Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff have been bickering and sniping at each other ever since the latter was allegedly bounced from the former’s OpenWorld conference.

And funny enough, the Salesforce vs. Oracle debate mirrors the Google vs. Microsoft debate almost exactly: In both cases, the former (Google and Salesforce) argue their deeply entrenched corporate competition doesn’t understand the cloud, while the big guys claim these upstarts don’t understand business.

Here are some highlights from this year’s cloud battle report:

• Benioff Cries Foul Following Alleged OpenWorld Keynote Snub
• Oracle Public Cloud: Is Larry Ellison Innovating?
• Microsoft Cloud Chief: Office 365 is the Partner-Friendly Cloud
• Microsoft to SMBs: Avoid the ‘Google Tax’ in the Cloud
• Google Enterprise VP: We Will Never Compete with Partners

Cloud Standards Open Up

Between the OpenStack cloud compute/storage platform, Open Virtualization Alliance (OVA), Open Data Center Alliance (ODCA), oVirt open virtualization platform and probably a half-dozen other initiatives that slip my mind at the moment, 2011 saw a huge market push toward open standards and the prevention of vendor lock-in.

Take a look back with us at the year in open source:

• oVirt Working to Advance Open Source Cloud Technologies
• Can OpenStack Transform Telcos Into Cloud Services Providers?
• Study: VMware Cloud Foundry Voted the ISV’s PaaS of Choice
• Government Puts Cloud Roadmap Up for Review
• Reality Check: Does the World Need So Many Java PaaS Clouds?

Cloud M&A

If 2011 was the year the cloud arrived, it was propelled there by the big boys of the communications space. Time Warner bought NaviSite to get into the cloud market, while Verizon snapped up Terremark and, later, CloudSwitch. Traditionally IT-focused companies weren’t left out, either: Oracle bought RightNow, Dell bought CloudWorks, CenturyLink bought Savvis and so on.

• Dell Paid $612 Million for SecureWorks Cloud Acquisition
• Time Warner Buys NaviSite for SMB Cloud Computing Push
• Dell Paid $612 Million for SecureWorks Cloud Acquisition
• CenturyLink-Savvis: Will Savvis Continue Cloud Partner Push?
• Verizon Acquires CloudSwitch for Cloud Migration Technology
• Verizon Buys Terremark: Will Big Cloud Computing Deal Impact Small MSPs?