Recently I wrote a blog post titled "Is Ninefold the Only True Cloud Provider in Australia". Since then a lot of research, marketing material and random spruiking has come my way about the cloud market in Australia, amongst which has been the Longhaus report. Of all the information I found that to be the most in-depth and honest. After all the data I was inundated with I discovered that the answer to my question is squarely - NO.
One of m biggest complaints about the cloud market is what's been dubbed "Cloud Washing". E.g. re-branding your online service as a 'cloud solution'. While this is widespread, it's not in fact as bad as it first appears, because the needs of different types of companies varied. As a special note here, I'm not talking about software solutions (e.g. Salesforce.com, Office 365, Google Apps, or any SaaS). Offering your software, with on-demand licenses and solution stored off-premise and "on the cloud" is an excellent move.
I'm talking about ITaaS. Putting your IT infrastructure "on the cloud" to avoid needing an on-premise solution and paying for how much and how long you will use it for. With that in mind I thought I would create a quick write-up to act as a guide to choosing a cloud provider. Without promoting any particular company, I will highlight the solutions suitable for each need and how they stack up against each other.
Software Development
If you want a platform to develop new technology and have it accessible on-line there are a lot of things to consider: Force.com, Google AppEngine, Microsoft Azure, etc. These PaaS solutions allow for software development on the cloud, and are a cost effective way to develop software without purchasing a full IaaS solution.
Tech Savvy Businesses or Technical Business Units
The On-Demand, Per-Hour/Week/Month, pure IaaS solution is probably best suited to a startup, a small business with a good IT person/IT team, or a technical business unit within a larger company. If you're technical enough that all you need is infrastructure and you know what you're going to do with it, then these types of services are best suited to you. These offer "true" cloud pricing models and aren't as heavy on the value added services. Good providers to consider:
- Ninefold
- Cloud Central
- BitCloud
- 6YS
- Amazon EC2/EC3
For a small business who wants a managed service there are a lot of providers out there that can offer a cloud solution. This is for people who wants more than an online portal where they can purchase cloud-computing 'space' with a credit card and be done with it. They are more interested in the Value Added Services, managed services, etc. Good providers in this space:
- Brennan IT
- ASE IT
- Applaud IT
- Melbourne IT
- Bluefire
Smaller Enterprises
Smaller enterprises need to start worrying about security, data integrity and bandwidth. If they grow rapidly can their cloud provider support this growth? Do they have data centre capacity? How much support do they give and can they support multiple VAS.
- Any of the Multi-National Consultancies with a good cloud offering (CSC, IBM, Fujitsu, HP)
- Any of the major B2B Telcos (Macquarie, Telstra, Optus, Verizon, AT&T)
- Smaller infrastructure based consultancies (Brennan, Infoplex, Bluefire, NEC)
Larger enterprises need to consider bandwidth, security, data-centre capacity, bulk user discounts, VAS, service delivery management and account management for a large number of users. At this stage the heard begins to be thinned. "On-Demand" and truly elastic solutions with short-term billing become less capable of delivering 100+ seat solutions.
- Any of the Multi-National Consultancies with a good cloud offering (CSC, IBM, Fujitsu, HP)
- Any of the major B2B Telcos (Macquarie, Telstra, Optus, Verizon, AT&T)
For a large Australian company (Banking, Mining, Government and potentially media & entertainment) there are different concerns. They have a larger number of seats (10,000+), need dedicated account management and possibly multiple service delivery management streams. Companies like AT&T and Verizon have had a poor track-record delivering local solutions with a lack of Australian capability. Many companies have noted they over-promise and under deliver.
Stick to Telstra, IBM and Fujitsu. Consider CSC, but their local capabilities are certainly not considered as strong as the other contenders.
MNCs - APAC Solutions
For multi-national companies it's not always wise or even possible to have a 'global' solution and often they need to consider an alternative APAC provider. With Verizon and AT&T they can combine network infrastructure, voice and data infrastructure to get a good group bundle. Many IT consultancies (Accenture, IBM, etc) use their cloud solutions for WANs, VaaS, etc and would potentially be better suited going to Telstra. But I'm not sure about Telstra's international capabilities.
For companies with their telecommunications and network infrastructure sorted I would suggest staying away from the Telcos and going with a consultancy with APAC datacentres - IBM, Fujitsu, CSC.
I would steer clear of the Off-Shoring companies - their cloud offerings have received quite poor ratings and the only reason to go with one is an attempt to substantially reduce ITC costs. We can leave the On-Shoring/Off-Shoring debate for another blog-post.
Do you have any feedback, comment or questions? Leave a comment below or contact me on LinkedIn:
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