八大著名IT企業(yè)云計算策略(英文版)

1、.：.；八大著名IT企業(yè)云計算戰(zhàn)略英文版 云計算的夢想開場照進(jìn)現(xiàn)實(shí)。從預(yù)測未來IT的八大趨勢 到 云計算的企業(yè)意義，都在闡明云計算離我們越來越近。 好像內(nèi)容管理、知識管理一樣，云計算曾經(jīng)有了比較成熟的概念，但是在很多人看來這個概念還是像“云一樣在天空飄著，沒有落地，是白云還是烏云，是晴天還是下雨，都還言之過早。 不過在美國，關(guān)于云計算的討論和論壇很多，美國的很多機(jī)構(gòu)和組織經(jīng)常隨時組織概念、技術(shù)的交流和討論(這點(diǎn)值得我們中國學(xué)習(xí)，討論來討論去，關(guān)于云計算還是有一些爭議，至少還很難給云計算一個準(zhǔn)確的定義。 不過，大家都以為：Amazon 的web效力，谷歌的運(yùn)用和Salesforce的CRM，這些

2、都是以云計算為中心的企業(yè)2.0的代表。 對于一個企業(yè)IT部門應(yīng)該更多地了解云計算，由于企業(yè)具有云計算的很多前提條件，比如集中的網(wǎng)絡(luò)、數(shù)據(jù)中心等等。 在這里，筆者向大家引見“八大著名IT企業(yè)云計算戰(zhàn)略，其目的就是希望國內(nèi)的同行可以自創(chuàng)和參考。一方面協(xié)助 更多的企業(yè)和個人了解云計算，另一方面可以判別何時、何地地運(yùn)用云計算。 筆者沒有把這些翻譯成中文，只是覺得下面的英語很簡單，很容易懂。 這八家企業(yè)是：亞馬孫Amazon 、谷歌、SALESFORCE、微軟、SUN、IBM、Oracle、EMC 它們都是業(yè)界巨頭，所以非常有代表性。 1、Amazon的云計算戰(zhàn)略 Amazon made its rep

3、utation as an online bookstore and e-retailer, but its newest business is cloud computing. One of the first vendors in this emerging market more than two years ago, Amazon is a good starting point for any business technology organization trying to decide where and when to plug into the cloud. Amazon

4、s cloud goes by the name Amazon Web Services (AWS), and it consists, so far, of four core services: Simple Storage Service (S3); Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2); Simple Queuing Service; and, in beta testing, SimpleDB. In other words, Amazon now offers storage, computer processing, message queuing, and a

5、 database management system as plug-and-play services that are accessed over the Internet. A tremendous amount of IT infrastructure is required to provide those services-all of it in Amazon data centers. Customers pay only for the services they consume: 15 cents per gigabyte of S3 storage each month

6、, and 10 to 80 cents per hour for EC2 server capacity, depending on configuration. Already, AWS represents three of the defining characteristics of the cloud: IT resources provisioned outside of the corporate data center, those resources accessed over the Internet, and variable cost. Amazons first c

7、loud service was S3, which provides unlimited storage of documents, photos, video, and other data. That was followed by EC2, pay-as-you-use computer processing that lets customers choose among server configurations. Why is Amazon moving so aggressively into Web services? In its rise to leadership in

8、 e-commerce, the company developed deep technical expertise and invested heavily in its data centers. Now its leveraging those assets by opening them to other companies, at a time when many CIOs are looking for alternatives to pumping more money into their own IT infrastructures. What a lot of peopl

9、e dont understand is that Amazon is at heart a technology company-not a bookseller or even a retailer, says Adam Selipsky, VP of product management and developer relations for AWS. Selipsky is wooing developers to AWS Developers-defined as anyone, from individuals to the largest companies, who signs

10、 up for AWS-are glomming onto Amazons infrastructure to develop and deliver applications and capacity without having to deploy on-premises software and servers. More than 370,000 developers are on board. Amazon Web Services werent aimed initially at big businesses, but enterprises are tapping in for

11、 the same reasons that attract small and midsize businesses-low up-front costs, scalability up and down, and IT resource flexibility. To better support large accounts, Amazon began offering round-the-clock phone support and enterprise-class service-level agreements a few months ago. For instance, if

12、 S3 availability falls below 99.9% in a month, customers are entitled to at least a 10% credit. Amazon isnt foolproof-its consumer-facing Web site recently suffered a series of outages and slowdowns. Amazon hasnt morphed into a software-as-a-service vendor, but startups and other software developers

13、 are using AWS to offer their own flavors of SaaS. They include Vertica, which sells S3-based data warehouses, and Soniaf building new data centers in Iowa, Oregon, North Carolina, and South Carolina, at an average cost of about $600 million each. 2、GOOGLE的云計算戰(zhàn)略 Google built a supercharged business

14、model around searching the Internet. Now its opening its cloud to businesses in the form of application hosting, enterprise search, and more. In April, Google introduced Google App Engine, a service that lets developers write Python-based applications and host them on Google infrastructure at no cos

15、t with up to 500 MB of storage. Beyond that, Google charges 10 to 12 cents per CPU core hour and 15 to 18 cents per gigabyte of storage. This month, Google disclosed plans to offer hosted enterprise search that can be customized for businesses. Yet Google, like Amazon, has demonstrated the risks of

16、cloud computing. Google App Engine last week was crippled for several hours. Google blamed the outage on a database server bug. For end users, theres Google Apps-Web-based documents, spreadsheets, and other productivity applications. Google Apps are free or $50 per user annually for a premium editio

17、n. Microsofts PC-based Office 2007 suite, by comparison, costs up to $500 per user. More than half a million organizations have signed up for Google Apps-including General Electric and Procter & Gamble-and there are now some 10 million Google Apps users. But keep that in perspective: The majority of

18、 those users are consumers, college students, and employees of small businesses, not the corporate crowd. Google senior product manager Rajen Sheth acknowledges that Googles apps arent intended to replace business tools like Office. Google has taken steps to make its applications, originally aimed a

19、t consumers, more attractive to IT departments. Last year, the company acquired Postini, whose hosted security and compliance software is now part of Google Apps, and in April it partnered with Salesforce to integrate Salesforce CRM and Google Apps, including a premium package that comes with phone

20、support and third-party software for $10 per user each month. Google is also adjusting to the reality that users sometimes need to work offline. Google Gears is a browser plug-in for doing that. Google has teamed with IBM to provide cloud computing to university students and researchers. The Google-

21、IBM cloud is a combination of Google machines and IBM BladeCenter and System x servers running Linux, Xen virtualization, and Apaches open source Hadoop framework for distributed applications. One great advantage we have, and one of the reasons we started to explore this, is that we run one of the l

22、argest online apps in the world, if not the largest, says Sheth, referring to Googles Web search engine. The project, Sheth says, will help foster new innovation and new ideas about cloud computing. Google and IBM have been cagey about any plans to extend their cloud collaboration to enterprises, bu

23、t it would be an obvious next step. Theres not that much difference between the enterprise cloud and the consumer cloud beyond security requirements, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said a few weeks ago. The cloud has higher value in business. Thats the secret to our collaboration. With its plug-and-compute

24、 simplicity, the cloud seems ethereal, but dont be fooled. Googles cloud represents a massive investment in IT infrastructure. Google has recently completed or is in the processing of building new data centers in Iowa, Oregon, North Carolina, and South Carolina, at an average cost of about $600 mill

25、ion each. 3、SALESFORCE的云計算戰(zhàn)略 Salesforce became the proving ground for software as a service with its Web alternative to premises-based sales force automation applications, and dozens of SaaS companies followed. Salesforces next act: platform as a service. Marc Benioffs company is making its Web appl

26、ication platform, Force, available to other companies as a foundation for their own software services. Force includes a relational database, user interface options, business logic, and an integrated development environment called Apex. Programmers can test their Apex-developed apps in the platforms

27、Sandbox, then offer the finished code on Salesforces AppExchange directory. In the early going, developers used Force to create add-ons to Salesforce CRM, but theyre increasingly developing software unrelated to Salesforces offerings, says Adam Gross, the vendors platform VP. Game developer Electron

28、ic Arts built an employee-recruiting application on Force, and software vendor Coda crafted a general ledger app. At the same time, Salesforce continues to advance its own applications, which are now being used by 1.1 million people. An upgrade due this summer will include the ability to access Goog

29、le Apps from within a Salesforce application, more than a dozen new mobile features, an analytics snapshot, enhanced customer portals, and improved idea exchange and content management. Salesforce is getting into other cloud services, too. In April 2007, it jumped into enterprise content management

30、with Salesforce Content, which lets users store, classify, and share information similar to Microsoft SharePoint and EMC Documentum. Salesforce has adopted a multitenant architecture, in which servers and other IT resources are shared by customers rather than dedicated to one account. Theres no ques

31、tion theres an evangelism involved with doing multitenancy, but, with education, customers quickly come on board with the model, says Gross. The proof is in the sales figures. Salesforces revenue grew to $248 million in the quarter ended April 30, a 53% increase over the same period a year ago, keep

32、ing it on pace to become the first billion-dollar company to generate almost all of its sales from cloud computing. 4、MICROSOFT的云計算戰(zhàn)略 If any technology company has had its cloud strategy questioned, its Microsoft. Now, after a couple of years of putting the pieces into place, Microsoft is showing pr

33、ogress. Some vendors envision a future where most, if not all, IT resources come from the cloud, but Microsoft isnt one of them. Its grand plan is to provide symmetry between enterprise-based software, partner-hosted services, and services in the cloud, chief software architect Ray Ozzie said a few

34、months ago. More simply, Microsoft calls it software plus services. Microsofts first SaaS offerings for business, rolling out this year, are Dynamics CRM Online, Exchange Online, Office Communications Online, and SharePoint Online. Each will be available in a multitenant version, generally for small

35、 and midsize businesses, and a single-tenant version for companies requiring 5,000 or more licenses. For consumers, Microsofts online services include Windows Live, Office Live, and Xbox Live. A handful of large companies-Autodesk , Blockbuster, Energizer, and Ingersoll-Rand among them-are early ado

36、pters. Anyone who doubts that Microsoft has entered the cloud services game should consider this: Coca-Cola plans to subscribe to 30,000 seats of Microsoft-hosted Exchange and SharePoint by next year. Microsoft senior VP Chris Capossela says customers can mix and match hosted and on-premises version

37、s of its software, an attractive option for companies with branch offices that lack IT staff. Microsoft hasnt disclosed pricing for its online services, but Capossela says its naive to think that cloud services will be cheaper than on-premises software over the long haul. Youre going to pay forever,

38、 he says. Its a subscription, for goodness sake. Whats next? A project called MatrixDB would extend on-premises SQL Server databases to Microsoft-hosted databases in the cloud. Thats still a couple of years away, but it hints at future possibilities. And Microsoft points to BizTalk Services, its hos

39、ted business process management software, as one element in a forthcoming Internet service bus that functions like an enterprise service bus, albeit online. As for the Windows operating system, Microsofts upcoming synchronization platform, Live Mesh, and some of the Windows Live services will be mor

40、e tightly integrated with it. The shift to cloud services has forced Microsoft to rethink not just the way its products are architected, but its data center strategy, too. For years, Microsoft leased its major data centers, but it has now begun to design, construct, and own them, with U.S. facilitie

41、s recently completed or under construction in Illinois, Texas, and Washington, and another under way in Dublin, Ireland. 5、SUN MICROSYSTEMS的云計算戰(zhàn)略 John Gage, Sun Microsystems co-founder, coined the phrase the network is the computer nearly 20 years ago. Arguably, that was the beginning of the cloud-b

42、ut the wind changed direction. Sun got it backwards, CTO Greg Papadopoulos now says. How so? With its Sun Grid technology, Sun focused on mission-critical, highly redundant data center environments. We found that nobody cared about that, says Papadopoulos. They just want it to be easy to use. Making

43、 cloud computing easy to use is now the focus of two initiatives at Sun: Network, a collection of grid-enabled online applications available on a pay-per-use basis, and Project Caroline, a research effort to make cloud-based resources available to developers working on Web applications and services.

44、 They coincide with what Papadopoulos calls Red Shift, his theory that computing demand will exceed capacity at many companies. The obvious solution: cloud computing. Network is evolving into a virtual on-demand data center that customers can use in real time as business demands change, says senior

45、director of software Mark Herrin. Cloud computing must be easy, says Suns Papadopoulos Project Caroline is intended to become a hosting platform for SaaS providers. The goal is to make it far more efficient to develop multiuser Internet services rapidly, update them frequently, and reallocate resour

46、ces flexibly and cost-efficiently, according to Sun. An open source project led by Sun VP of technology Rich Zippel, Caroline supports applications built in several programming languages, including Java, Perl, Python, Ruby, and PHP. We dont really think that all applications will tie back to Sun ser

47、vers on the Internet, Zippel writes on his blog. Were really bullish about the ability to develop, deploy, and deliver software services on the Internet. Like Microsoft ，Sun expects businesses to continue to need some of their own IT infrastructure. Suns data-center-in-a-box, Blackbox, is designed f

48、or companies that face massive computing requirements but arent ready to shift all their infrastructure to the cloud. Similarly, Suns Constellation groups together Sun Blade 6000 servers. 6、IBM的云計算戰(zhàn)略 IBM last year unveiled Blue Cloud, a set of offerings that, in IBMs words, will let corporate data c

49、enters operate more like the Internet by enabling computing across a distributed, globally accessible fabric of resources. The pieces of Blue Cloud include virtual Linux servers, parallel workload scheduling, and IBMs Tivoli management software. In the first phase, IBM is targeting x86 servers and m

50、achines equipped with IBMs Power processors; in phase two, IBM will loop in virtual machines running on its System z mainframes. Blue Cloud is not just about running parallel workloads but about more-effective data center utilization, says Denis Quan, CTO of IBMs High Performance On Demand Solutions

51、 unit. IBMs first commercial cloud computing data center is going up in Wuxi, in southern China. It will provide virtualized computing resources to the regions chipmaking companies. IBMs advantage in cloud computing is its expertise in building, supporting, and operating large-scale computing system

52、s. IBM got into cloud computing a few years ago with its Technology Adoption Program, an innovation portal run out of the Almaden Research Center to give engineers on-demand resources, such as DB2 databases and Linux servers. Last October, IBM announced a partnership with Google to provide cloud com

53、puting gateways to universities. Intended as a way of teaching university students how to use parallel programming models, the initiative is critical to the next generation of cloud-based applications, Quan says. Three cloud computing centers for academia have gone live, one at Almaden, one at the U

54、niversity of Washington in Seattle, and one in a Google data center. For IT departments, IBMs cloud software, systems, and services can be brought together into what the vendor calls the New Enterprise Data Center, with quality-of-service guarantees to reassure CIOs that theres nothing hazy about th

55、e cloud. 7、ORACLE的云計算戰(zhàn)略 Despite its sometimes-contradictory signals, Oracle was an early proponent of the on-demand model, launching Oracle Business OnLine in 1998. At that time, CEO Larry Ellison described the new Web-based delivery model as an extension of the companys existing software business.

56、Today, its clear that Oracles destiny lies in the cloud, even if the company has been reluctant to switch its lucrative on-premises software license business over to a subscription model. Speaking to financial analysts last September, Ellison downplayed the SaaS movement, saying theres no profit to

57、be made in delivering applications over the Internet. (Hes obviously wrong on that point.) President Charles Phillips has said Oracle plans a stair-step approach to the cloud, gradually moving on-premises customers over to Web-based software. Oracle got into cloud computing in one fell swoop with it

58、s 2005 acquisition of Siebel Systems for $5.8 billion. At the time, Oracle executives called the deal a beachhead against SAP, but its clear in hindsight that Siebels on-demand CRM applications were every bit as important to Oracles long-term strategy. Oracle On Demand comprises much of the vendors

59、software stack, including the companys flagship database. Oracle has developed a pod architecture for its on-demand data centers. Pods can be configured for individual customers, in clusters for large companies with multiple departments, or in multitenant versions for shared use. Oracles on-demand b

60、usiness generated $174 million in revenue in the fiscal quarter ended March 26, up 23% from the same quarter last year, and its on track for $700 million for the year. While On Demand represents only about 3% of Oracles revenue, its the fastest-growing part of the business, with 3.6 million users. T