Who is who in the clouds, part 2
The second, final part of the developer survey, which conducted Evans Data Corp.
Supplier ratings for scalability, reliability, response time, vendor independence and price / quality ratio.
SCALABLE
If security problems are the biggest obstacle, then scalability is the strongest driving factor in cloud computing. Immediate scaling from a handful of users to a set and back would normally require multiple servers that would stand idle most of the time. This is not just ineffective, it is truly ruinous. Even with virtualization, support for highly dynamic applications requires additional physical resources.
Fig. four
Google over the course of time showed excellent results in scaling across several data centers and deservedly occupies the first line of the developer rating. Google App Engine uses master / slave replication between data centers. This approach was chosen by Google to ensure low-latency recording, high data consistency, enhanced reliability and resiliency of the data center. Notice how big the gap between Google and Amazon is on this indicator. Taken together with forecasts for the adoption of solutions for the coming year, insufficient scalability compared to Google could be a challenge for Amazon in competition on the field of public clouds.
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RELIABILITY / UPTIME
Another obstacle to the use of clouds is the fear that the service provider’s servers or communication equipment will fail, or for some other reason the vendor will not be able to maintain the cloud for some time. For some or all users, this will mean that it is impossible to work.
It is understandable why the developers consider this a serious obstacle. As in the case of security, the likelihood of problems is not so great, and in any case, in the “native” data centers, catastrophic failures occur no less frequently than with providers. However, there is a question of control. Own systems can be continuously monitored and backed up. When using cloud solutions, reliability becomes a matter of trust in the supplier.
Effective use of numerous data centers by Google gives developers such confidence (Fig. 5). IBM is second on the list in terms of reliability, with Amazon taking up the top three by a small margin. AT & T, which offers SLA at 99.9% availability, has not yet been particularly enthusiastic for developers - perhaps due to a recent market entry.
Fig. five
WAIT TIME
Cloud infrastructure services offer rapidly scalable architectures that can support internal applications without burdening their own corporate resources and increasing response time. But this promise of much greater productivity is weakened when it comes to the time-consuming and costly delivery of massive amounts of data to the cloud computing environment. The latency parameter significantly affects the efficiency of cloud services, and if the latency exceeds certain limits, this leads to the failure of customers from cloud services.
Fig. 6
Fig. 6 demonstrates that the decisions of the two cloud computing market leaders are perceived by developers as having the lowest latency. Both Amazon and Google are initially Internet companies that have proven successful in an environment for which fast response is a key parameter. Therefore, the developers and consider them the best by this criterion.
AT & T received higher marks for waiting times than the others, thanks to its powerful networking capabilities.
INDEPENDENCE ON VENDOR
Vendor independence, although not as important as safety or reliability, is still an important factor in evaluating cloud offerings. Linking to a vendor occurs, for example, if the provider of a “platform as a service” offers such a development environment that applications created in it will only work on this platform. This is, for example, the case of Salesforce. Dependency can also occur if the vendor offers development tools that provide the creation of applications that work with only one hypervisor, or if the proposed database has a proprietary structure that does not allow for the correct export of data. Dependence on the vendor can be a serious problem, because it limits the customer's capabilities in the long term. Interoperability protects against this dependency and should provide the ability to transfer applications to and from the cloud, as well as between different clouds.
Fig. 7
Despite the fact that you should be worried about Google’s proprietary Big Table database, developers are still quite confident that Google will not bind them to their technology. Quite a strange result of the survey are low estimates of AT & T and IBM on the criterion of openness. In fact, both companies build their cloud services on open technologies that provide low or zero dependence on the vendor.
PRICE-QUALITY RATIO
The cloud computing market is new and highly competitive, and most public cloud services have little or no difference in price. The cost of private cloud implementations varies from project to project. Because of this, it is impossible to single out a single vendor, which is objectively better in terms of price / quality, and the differentiator at this point of the survey is the subjective perception of quality rather than price.
Fig. eight
In the perception of developers, Google shines against all other companies in terms of the value provided. The reason for this may be the fact that Google for many years freely distributes tools to open source developers. In addition, a business model based on the sale of advertising, rather than products, allowed Google to provide developers with substantial engineering resources for working on Google platforms and with the tools of this company for free. This is definitely a good model to get high marks for money from developers.
Brief conclusions
Despite the fact that most of the suppliers declare their intention to promote both public and private cloud infrastructures, in reality these are still two significantly different markets, with different leaders. Amazon, which was the pioneer of the public cloud market, is now sharing leadership with Google. In this case, Google, from the point of view of developers, demonstrates greater potential, and plans for mastering Google solutions are more solid than for competitor solutions. Google is likely to lead the way in public clouds.
In the field of private clouds, IBM has clearly taken the lead and is in the strongest position, which in the future will allow it to maintain a dominant position in this segment. This is especially true when it comes to large corporations, which most often are IBM's customers, as well as those companies for which the reliability and security of the solution are of paramount importance. IBM, with its impeccable reputation in the corporate environment, offers private clouds built behind a client firewall, as well as cloud implementations of the same level and manageability as public solutions, but without security problems inherent in public clouds. IBM also offers pre-integrated cloud computing equipment that facilitates the deployment and configuration of private clouds.
Two companies that are at the junction of public and private clouds, AT & T and Microsoft, have great potential. In the case of AT & T, thanks to the existing physical infrastructure, and in the case of MS, thanks to the developed network of developers and well-known software capabilities. However, both companies were somewhat late for distribution, and this is a significant drawback for a player in a market that is developing so rapidly.
Janel Garvin is the founder of Evans Data Corp. and an analyst for cloud computing, parallel programming and development tools.
In the course of reading and translating a few quick ideas arose:
- The survey was conducted before the incident with the Sidekick, which, in my opinion, revealed another hefty cloud computing problem - relatively speaking, the problem of holes in the business processes of the provider. A broken backup and the lack of double-triple backup, staff cuts or lack of training in working with the hardware and software of third-party companies and other crap that came to light after this data loss is stronger than Goethe’s Faust. If we were interviewed after this scandal, Microsoft would be much lower in assessments, but this is not the point, MS in this sense is not at all unique, a mess that thrives in many places. It turns out that it will be necessary to strictly certify cloud providers in terms of the quality of business processes, although this is not a guarantee from anything, of course.
- Indeed, it is very strange that IBM, by vendor-independence, gave such estimates. If you look at their Development and Test on the IBM Cloud , then there is SUSE, Rational, which is all over Eclipse, Informix Dynamic Server DE, with which you can write for Amazon EC2, for example, without any particular problems. Quite an interoperability.
Probably, all the same vendor independence is very strongly associated with frivarny software.
- Sun just before selling rolled out a very interesting cloud solution. Wildly it is a pity that now they have missed this market because of all this bodyagi with the merger.
Supplier ratings for scalability, reliability, response time, vendor independence and price / quality ratio.
SCALABLE
If security problems are the biggest obstacle, then scalability is the strongest driving factor in cloud computing. Immediate scaling from a handful of users to a set and back would normally require multiple servers that would stand idle most of the time. This is not just ineffective, it is truly ruinous. Even with virtualization, support for highly dynamic applications requires additional physical resources.
Fig. four
Google over the course of time showed excellent results in scaling across several data centers and deservedly occupies the first line of the developer rating. Google App Engine uses master / slave replication between data centers. This approach was chosen by Google to ensure low-latency recording, high data consistency, enhanced reliability and resiliency of the data center. Notice how big the gap between Google and Amazon is on this indicator. Taken together with forecasts for the adoption of solutions for the coming year, insufficient scalability compared to Google could be a challenge for Amazon in competition on the field of public clouds.
')
RELIABILITY / UPTIME
Another obstacle to the use of clouds is the fear that the service provider’s servers or communication equipment will fail, or for some other reason the vendor will not be able to maintain the cloud for some time. For some or all users, this will mean that it is impossible to work.
It is understandable why the developers consider this a serious obstacle. As in the case of security, the likelihood of problems is not so great, and in any case, in the “native” data centers, catastrophic failures occur no less frequently than with providers. However, there is a question of control. Own systems can be continuously monitored and backed up. When using cloud solutions, reliability becomes a matter of trust in the supplier.
Effective use of numerous data centers by Google gives developers such confidence (Fig. 5). IBM is second on the list in terms of reliability, with Amazon taking up the top three by a small margin. AT & T, which offers SLA at 99.9% availability, has not yet been particularly enthusiastic for developers - perhaps due to a recent market entry.
Fig. five
WAIT TIME
Cloud infrastructure services offer rapidly scalable architectures that can support internal applications without burdening their own corporate resources and increasing response time. But this promise of much greater productivity is weakened when it comes to the time-consuming and costly delivery of massive amounts of data to the cloud computing environment. The latency parameter significantly affects the efficiency of cloud services, and if the latency exceeds certain limits, this leads to the failure of customers from cloud services.
Fig. 6
Fig. 6 demonstrates that the decisions of the two cloud computing market leaders are perceived by developers as having the lowest latency. Both Amazon and Google are initially Internet companies that have proven successful in an environment for which fast response is a key parameter. Therefore, the developers and consider them the best by this criterion.
AT & T received higher marks for waiting times than the others, thanks to its powerful networking capabilities.
INDEPENDENCE ON VENDOR
Vendor independence, although not as important as safety or reliability, is still an important factor in evaluating cloud offerings. Linking to a vendor occurs, for example, if the provider of a “platform as a service” offers such a development environment that applications created in it will only work on this platform. This is, for example, the case of Salesforce. Dependency can also occur if the vendor offers development tools that provide the creation of applications that work with only one hypervisor, or if the proposed database has a proprietary structure that does not allow for the correct export of data. Dependence on the vendor can be a serious problem, because it limits the customer's capabilities in the long term. Interoperability protects against this dependency and should provide the ability to transfer applications to and from the cloud, as well as between different clouds.
Fig. 7
Despite the fact that you should be worried about Google’s proprietary Big Table database, developers are still quite confident that Google will not bind them to their technology. Quite a strange result of the survey are low estimates of AT & T and IBM on the criterion of openness. In fact, both companies build their cloud services on open technologies that provide low or zero dependence on the vendor.
PRICE-QUALITY RATIO
The cloud computing market is new and highly competitive, and most public cloud services have little or no difference in price. The cost of private cloud implementations varies from project to project. Because of this, it is impossible to single out a single vendor, which is objectively better in terms of price / quality, and the differentiator at this point of the survey is the subjective perception of quality rather than price.
Fig. eight
In the perception of developers, Google shines against all other companies in terms of the value provided. The reason for this may be the fact that Google for many years freely distributes tools to open source developers. In addition, a business model based on the sale of advertising, rather than products, allowed Google to provide developers with substantial engineering resources for working on Google platforms and with the tools of this company for free. This is definitely a good model to get high marks for money from developers.
Brief conclusions
Despite the fact that most of the suppliers declare their intention to promote both public and private cloud infrastructures, in reality these are still two significantly different markets, with different leaders. Amazon, which was the pioneer of the public cloud market, is now sharing leadership with Google. In this case, Google, from the point of view of developers, demonstrates greater potential, and plans for mastering Google solutions are more solid than for competitor solutions. Google is likely to lead the way in public clouds.
In the field of private clouds, IBM has clearly taken the lead and is in the strongest position, which in the future will allow it to maintain a dominant position in this segment. This is especially true when it comes to large corporations, which most often are IBM's customers, as well as those companies for which the reliability and security of the solution are of paramount importance. IBM, with its impeccable reputation in the corporate environment, offers private clouds built behind a client firewall, as well as cloud implementations of the same level and manageability as public solutions, but without security problems inherent in public clouds. IBM also offers pre-integrated cloud computing equipment that facilitates the deployment and configuration of private clouds.
Two companies that are at the junction of public and private clouds, AT & T and Microsoft, have great potential. In the case of AT & T, thanks to the existing physical infrastructure, and in the case of MS, thanks to the developed network of developers and well-known software capabilities. However, both companies were somewhat late for distribution, and this is a significant drawback for a player in a market that is developing so rapidly.
Janel Garvin is the founder of Evans Data Corp. and an analyst for cloud computing, parallel programming and development tools.
In the course of reading and translating a few quick ideas arose:
- The survey was conducted before the incident with the Sidekick, which, in my opinion, revealed another hefty cloud computing problem - relatively speaking, the problem of holes in the business processes of the provider. A broken backup and the lack of double-triple backup, staff cuts or lack of training in working with the hardware and software of third-party companies and other crap that came to light after this data loss is stronger than Goethe’s Faust. If we were interviewed after this scandal, Microsoft would be much lower in assessments, but this is not the point, MS in this sense is not at all unique, a mess that thrives in many places. It turns out that it will be necessary to strictly certify cloud providers in terms of the quality of business processes, although this is not a guarantee from anything, of course.
- Indeed, it is very strange that IBM, by vendor-independence, gave such estimates. If you look at their Development and Test on the IBM Cloud , then there is SUSE, Rational, which is all over Eclipse, Informix Dynamic Server DE, with which you can write for Amazon EC2, for example, without any particular problems. Quite an interoperability.
Probably, all the same vendor independence is very strongly associated with frivarny software.
- Sun just before selling rolled out a very interesting cloud solution. Wildly it is a pity that now they have missed this market because of all this bodyagi with the merger.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/73687/
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