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So we recently learned that Amazon's cloud business is $6bn and growing. Apparently, Microsoft are second in size when it comes to cloud platforms, and either Google or IBM are third - probably. (There is precious little transparency to the cloud business....)
I was also reminded how predictable this all was by this article from the Boston Consulting Group. The internet has brought us many things - movies on demand, the long tail and greater transparency into...well just about everything. But a basic observation of the economics of many industries from almost 30 years ago still seems to hold true-ish: A stable competitive market for an industry has at most three major players. Further, the ratio of the market share of those 3 competitors is 4:2:1.
And so there it is, we can call it now for the cloud - the winners are Amazon, Microsoft and TBD. But as Paul Miller pointed out, there will be plenty of other cloud business to go around, it will just be in niche markets. IBM - third or not - are already targeting those niches. Last week, IBM unveiled the Internet of Things on Bluemix, with ARC being briefed by Neil Postlethwaite and Pete Karns. Just to recap, Bluemix is a Platform-as-a-Servce (PaaS) designed to facilitate rapid application development and deployment. (See Cool Blue: IBM using Bluemix to reach young devs, and Can IBM be the go-to-vendor for Industrial IoT Computing?). Notably, when IBM host Bluemix hackathons, the greatest number of use cases are in IoT.
The IoT Zone in Bluemix is partly IoT-specific services, and partly an exercise in guidance. For example, there are services that focus on key IoT challenges - such as secure device registration and scaling device connectivity. Curation can be surprisingly powerful too. When I first moved to the USA, choosing a favo(u)rite loaf of bread from the dozens on offer in the supermarket was no easy feat! It was actually stressful. Guiding IoT developers to the most likely services they will need can speed app development, and ensure devs get productive quickly, rather than just walk away in bewilderment. Recipes also provide blueprints or templates for common devices and use cases to help people get started. From an Industrial IoT (IIoT) perspective, the Cummins engine example that Ralph Rio mentions leverages Bluemix.
Finally, pricing is flexible and reasonably transparent and predictable too, which is a bit of a thing for me...it's a combination of the number of devices, the data volume exchanged between devices, and the amount of data retained in a database. Fees are levied monthly, with 20 devices, 100 MB of data traffic, and 1GB of stored data free each month. Above that, pricing is in three tiers - up to 100 active devices, 3,000 active devices, or 15,000 active devices. Incremental charges for more data also apply.
I was also reminded how predictable this all was by this article from the Boston Consulting Group. The internet has brought us many things - movies on demand, the long tail and greater transparency into...well just about everything. But a basic observation of the economics of many industries from almost 30 years ago still seems to hold true-ish: A stable competitive market for an industry has at most three major players. Further, the ratio of the market share of those 3 competitors is 4:2:1.
And so there it is, we can call it now for the cloud - the winners are Amazon, Microsoft and TBD. But as Paul Miller pointed out, there will be plenty of other cloud business to go around, it will just be in niche markets. IBM - third or not - are already targeting those niches. Last week, IBM unveiled the Internet of Things on Bluemix, with ARC being briefed by Neil Postlethwaite and Pete Karns. Just to recap, Bluemix is a Platform-as-a-Servce (PaaS) designed to facilitate rapid application development and deployment. (See Cool Blue: IBM using Bluemix to reach young devs, and Can IBM be the go-to-vendor for Industrial IoT Computing?). Notably, when IBM host Bluemix hackathons, the greatest number of use cases are in IoT.
The IoT Zone in Bluemix is partly IoT-specific services, and partly an exercise in guidance. For example, there are services that focus on key IoT challenges - such as secure device registration and scaling device connectivity. Curation can be surprisingly powerful too. When I first moved to the USA, choosing a favo(u)rite loaf of bread from the dozens on offer in the supermarket was no easy feat! It was actually stressful. Guiding IoT developers to the most likely services they will need can speed app development, and ensure devs get productive quickly, rather than just walk away in bewilderment. Recipes also provide blueprints or templates for common devices and use cases to help people get started. From an Industrial IoT (IIoT) perspective, the Cummins engine example that Ralph Rio mentions leverages Bluemix.
Finally, pricing is flexible and reasonably transparent and predictable too, which is a bit of a thing for me...it's a combination of the number of devices, the data volume exchanged between devices, and the amount of data retained in a database. Fees are levied monthly, with 20 devices, 100 MB of data traffic, and 1GB of stored data free each month. Above that, pricing is in three tiers - up to 100 active devices, 3,000 active devices, or 15,000 active devices. Incremental charges for more data also apply.