Category - Cloud Computing

Facebook…Time to go Enterprise !!

November 18, 2014
Alaa el Nawawy
Cloud Computing, Social Media
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Well everybody who has been closely watching must have seen this coming, the vast world of the consumer social media interactions , is actually becoming small for Facebook. Its no longer this startup company that everybody is excited about it now has wall street to look after, shareholders to please and a future to secure.

No wonder why Facebook has been rumoured at looking at a new flavour of Facebook, “Facebook at Work”. Which in a nutshell means that Facebook wants to tap into the millions being spent by large enterprises on software to further enable their work force , cause the money coming from the consumer/advertising business is no longer sufficient. I find it outstanding how this shift is happening to Facebook very soon after the enormous price tag is paid for Whatsapp !! , which kind of signalled that Facebook is more committed to the consumer market and not really interested in the enterprise sector.

So what would “Facebook at Work” if the rumour is correct would look like. Articles have been popping here and there all round suggesting that Facebook is building the new rival to LinkedIn, well I certainly hope they are not , cause that kind of really adds nothing to their portfolio and does not move them into the enterprise space . I am more of the idea that if this rumour is true , Facebook is actually creating a 21st century collaboration tool, so kind of what Yammer, SharePoint , Box, and Syncplicity failed to do over the past years.

If I would be in the room with people working on the “Facebook at Work” I would aim to create something that would be:

  • Being for work does not mean a crappy interface so something really neat
  • Proper mobility that does not loose the functionality you would get when using the desktop version
  • If we talk work then we are talking documents here not pictures, so a new innovative document changes tracking mechanism
  • Easy sharing functionalities
  • Proper multi-tenancy
  • Extreme control for every user, you do not want to end up with something that suddenly breaks your entire PC’s privacy and gets everything shared there.

In short if Facebook is to walk down this root of licensed software for the enterprise, it needs to do the collaboration aspect what Salesforce.com did to the sales force of every company which is practically almost everybody now.

Cloud “In a box”

August 9, 2013
Alaa el Nawawy
Cloud Computing
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The push for the cloud continues to be on the highest priority for all vendors that are focusing on enabling customers to the cloud. Yet all the big sharks in the market are after the big bites be that banks, telcos and large enterprises . SME markets seem to be seen as only target consumers of cloud services that those big bites are going to offer.

While eventually the biggest cloud market will remain in those sectors , but yet I think that there is an untapped sector which is an IT SME providing cloud services to the SME market.

Hence comes the idea of making a “cloud in a box” . IT vendors should start looking at enabling small startups kick start their clouds , by creating a product that has everything in a plug and play mode , meaning the server,storage,connectivity and most importantly the application . That application can be a CRM , ERP or any kind of application that SME’s would want to buy . The problem with the current market scene , is that large enterprises are thinking too big on how they want to launch these services, and the cost of integrating those applications with infrastructure etc, is costing a fortune and taking too much time, and also preventing small companies from starting up their own cloud service provider companies.

Giving those small companies, specially in undeveloped markets a ready made cloud in a single box, means they can start selling software as service immediately.

Strongly believe this can create a new market area that remains untapped.

P.S: have heard that CSC have started doing this already , but yet to read more about it.

Cloud Computing….what’s the end game ??

October 28, 2012
Alaa el Nawawy
Cloud Computing
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No doubt the next 4 to 5 years will witness a huge change in the IT scene , with cloud computing being pushed by practically everybody who is anybody ( even those who didn’t think so !!) the scene is set for major shuffle .

Looking at how IT companies are shaping themselves in the current time either through product restructuring, acquisitions or even mergers, I tend to see the whole scene going into a 3 tiered one , in which all those companies will blend into one of those tiers . Here is how I think it will look like :

 

 Here is my take on the roles of each tier in this cloud computing era.

 Tier 1: Those are the companies that will be making the most of this era , they will be the face to majority of the customers specially they SME and mid-market business . Companies  in this tier are Salesforce.com , Amazon and many others that are in the making or will boom in the next couple of years. This tier will be probably the tier making the most profits .

Tier 2: The management layer is currently picking up rapidly in the market these are companies that will be in charge of hosting, managing and operating the data centre infrastructure either for the Tier 1 companies or for Enterprise customers that will have to maintain private clouds , samples of those companies are Rack Space , Accenture , HCL ,Wipro and many others .

Tier 3 : The supplier layer is where the big “War” is going to happen in the coming years, companies will seek to broaden their product range to provide all what data centers are going to need . Tier 2 companies are the customers for the Tier 3 , in addition to some enterprise customers which are too big to be managed and are on the manage it yourself mode. This is the area where we see the unthinkable happen from my perspective. Even these days we have started hearing some of this “War” happen , rumors Juniper going on sale and EMC being a potential buyer , I would go even further and say that we might see bigger mergers happening ,how about an HP –Cisco Merge ?? or an IBM acquisition of Netapp?? I think this tier will not have room for plenty of players I would say 4 to 5 major players and the rest will get crushed by time.

Surrounding all this will be the service layer of companies , which are basically 2 groups of companies :

Group 1 : Software houses , whether they are giants like SAP , Microsoft or Oracle , or even small unknown ones, they will be more or less neutral to what is happening (although we have Microsoft poking its nose into virtualization with Hyper V) but I tend to think that Microsoft will spin off this Hyper-V business at some point.  This groups of companies will buy services/product from all 3 Tiers , and will sell services to all 3 as well .

Group 2 : Consumer hardware companies , those are the likes of Lenovo , the Dell and HP side of consumer electronics , which will remain a must have for the years and years to come even those divisions are not exactly well performing in the current time. One major game changer in this sector is if Apple decides to pull the trigger at some point and launch a business line targeting enterprises and that will be a totally different story.

 While I do not want to be seen as if I am doing some crystal ball future telling , it is just my take on how things look to be evolving . The trick about all this is that you get the buzz these days ,But it seems like nobody is willing to take the first move , I think its going to be a snowball effect from there. So who will be first to unleash the race to the final and toughest stretch of the journey to the cloud !!