When looking at the space that cloud computing occupies, it's difficult to imagine that cloud computing could actually cause a number of casualties. However, as with any new technology, there are winners and losers.
So what could take a hit?
Service Governance. There are two types of service governance technologies: runtime, or the ability to enforce service policies during execution, and design time, or technology supporting the design and implementation of service policies. Policies are placed around services to control who can access those services and what they can do with them. Obviously, when using services you don't own or host, such as the case with cloud computing, the need for service governance goes way, way up.
Today SOA is a huge reality as company’s ramp up to leverage cloud computing or have an SOA that uses cloud-based services. Thus, the focus on runtime service execution provides much more value. Many of the existing runtime SOA governance players support enough design and implementation capabilities that separate design-time tools are not required. Cloud computing is simply accelerating the focus on the requirement for runtime SOA governance, and sooner or later design time will fall by the wayside.
Old clouds. Given how recent the cloud hype is, it's difficult to picture cloud computing providers that have been around for five years or more. But in fact, a few of them are out there. Ironically, some of these early cloud providers have not seen the implications of the recent growing interest in the cloud. These providers are typically bit players in the cloud, providing pieces of solutions, but not holistic solutions themselves.
Most of these organisations use proprietary software stacks in their own datacentres, while the newer breed of small cloud players use open source stacks that run in somebody else's cloud. Thus, these older providers support operational cost models that are just not in line with their peers. Moreover, well-funded and rapidly growing larger providers find that replicating many of the features and functions of the smaller and older clouds is just a quick internal development project. Therefore, we'll see many of the venture capital walking away from these older companies; if they're lucky, a larger provider will scoop them up.
Tier 2 Enterprise Software. It's no surprise that cloud computing is changing the way enterprises purchase and consume software. While the larger Tier 1 providers such as SAP, Sun, and Oracle have felt the pinch, the Tier 2 enterprise software vendors are going to have their markets taken out from under them if they don't get act quick.
The reality is that cloud computing is initially focusing on the small-to-medium-size business marketplace, which Tier 1 providers have largely left alone. The rapidly expanding cloud computing market addresses SMBs out of the box, and many of these smaller enterprises are finding that it is much more cost-effective to move to SaaS and other cloud services than to stay with the Tier 2 on-premise software vendors that traditionally dominated the SMB market.
Could be an interesting market going into 2011.
This article originally appeared at Infoworld.com.