The future of cloud computing may lie in “a cottage industry of specialists” who are able to put together solutions tailored to the needs of individual clients. Rich Miller of DataCenterKnowledge.com is covering Gartner’s Data Center Conference in Las Vegas, and there he heard the researcher’s Thomas Bittman on the subject:
“In the future, we expect to see thousands of providers in the cloud,” with services being “put together like Lego blocks,” Bittman predicted. “We’re moving from this monolithic, ‘one provider does everything’ model to an ecosystem. We’re moving toward a more distributed, open world, and toward more customized services. We believe there will be a large number of mid-sized providers.”
That’s a big difference from thee idea many people have had about a few, big service providers who have the resources to build data centers covering acres of ground.
More:
The proliferation of specialized cloud computing services will provide opportunities for companies function as service brokers for end users, Bittman said, citing systems integrators and value-added resellers (VARs) as likely candidates to assume this role.
What Miller’s not sure about is whether Bittman’s predictions give enough weight to the desire, and ability, of big players to acquire smaller players. For those of you in the space, a lot of questions about the ecosystem’s direction remain.
Tags: cloud computing, data centers
