{"id":654898,"date":"2013-04-28T11:00:11","date_gmt":"2013-04-28T15:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gigaom.com\/?p=640373"},"modified":"2013-04-28T11:00:11","modified_gmt":"2013-04-28T15:00:11","slug":"the-week-in-cloud-the-argument-for-lots-of-clouds-mobility-rules-catching-up-with-dell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/654898","title":{"rendered":"The week in cloud: the argument for lots of clouds; mobility rules; catching up with Dell"},"content":{"rendered":"

Enterprise cloud adoption ticks up<\/h2>\n

\u00a0A RightScale survey<\/a> released last week said \u00a0bigger companies \u2014 those with more than 1,000 employees \u2014 are \u201cslightly more likely\u201d to claim \u00a0cloud adoption than their \"One-Size-Fits-All<\/a>smaller brethren: 77 percent of large companies surveyed said they\u2019re adopting cloud in some form compared to 73 percent for smaller companies. The survey reinforced what RightScale CEO Michael Crandell says all the time: most companies want to use multiple clouds to avoid over-reliance on one provider.<\/p>\n

Of course companies like RightScale and competitors like Enstratius<\/a> and Server Density,<\/a>\u00a0which promise \u00a0a single dashboard for multiple clouds, have a vested interest in multi-cloud being the adoption mode of choice. So do most of the cloud providers who fear a world were Amazon Web Services will become the cloud standard.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Amazon Web Services keeps chugging along. For Amazon\u2019s first fiscal quarter, the business category including AWS, logged $750 million in net sales<\/a>, down from $769 million from the historically strong fourth quarter, but still a pretty impressive number.<\/p>\n

Mobile cloud access is hot hot hot<\/h2>\n

\"Many<\/a>Not that it\u2019s a surprise, but mobile is big. More people tap their cloud services with their tablets and smartphones instead of (or in addition to ) their PCs. that\u2019s why Facebook bought Parse<\/a>, the mobile backend as a service (MBaaS) provider. \u00a0And why AWS is bulking up its mobile development efforts<\/a>. And also why\u00a0Rackspace and Salesforce.com<\/a>\u00a0are building up their own mobile development portfolios.<\/p>\n

All of that activity comes after Apigee\u2019s acquisition of UserGrid<\/a>, a pure-play MBaaS and\u00a0Appcelerator\u2019s buy of CocoaFish<\/a>. It\u2019 s clear that expertise in mobile development platforms is a huge draw right now.<\/p>\n

The takeaway from this activity? Expect more \u201cacqui-hires\u201d by big companies of mobile back end services players.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s up with Dell cloud?<\/h2>\n

In January, Dell said it would\u00a0hold off on its public OpenStack cloud\u00a0<\/a>until the fourth quarter and\u00a0two week\u00a0sago it announced a partnership with\u00a0SUSE\u00a0to build out its private OpenStack implementations. Under that pact, \u00a0Dell will package up\u00a0SUSE\u2019s\u00a0OpenStack implementation on Dell\u00a0hardware<\/a>\u00a0in a sort of easy-to-plug-in cloud appliance. In the background, the battle raging around Dell\u2019s future ownership model has had to be a distraction. That may start easing up since\u00a0Blackstone, which had been mulling its own bid,\u00a0<\/a>reportedly\u00a0dropped those plans<\/a>\u00a0last week.<\/p>\n

\"Image<\/a>And, in a surprise appearance at the annual Silverlake Management conference in New York, company founder and CEO Michael Dell said IT security and cloud computing are key customer pushes for the company going forward \u2014 and \u00a0defended the much-maligned PC business in a world obsessed with smartphones, according to\u00a0Bloomberg News.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Mr. Dell is partnering with Silverlake\u00a0to\u00a0take his company private in\u00a0a deal valued at about $24.4 billion<\/a>\u00a0when it was announced in January. \u00a0Some shareholders, including\u00a0Southeastern Asset Management<\/a>, which owns about 8.4 percent of Dell shares, and\u00a0Carl Icahn\u00a0<\/a>characterized\u00a0that as a\u00a0sweetheart\u00a0deal that undervalues\u00a0the company.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

There\u2019ll be lots of cloud infrastructure talk, including on mobility, at Structure 2013<\/a> in San Francisco June 19-20. Please join us.<\/p>\n

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