Gregory Ness

Infrastructure 2.0 Outlook: Timing Is Everything

I think there are at least two approaches. You invest in the service providers or htose who sell equipment/solutions to them. For service providers its a question of who can deliver "real" cloud services (versus the marketing hype). This in itself is a lively discussion on tech blogs/Twitter etc. For the suppliers of gear/solutions its a matter of who you think will deliver the best solutions (the cloud switches/meash/automat... and be designed in by the service providers.

It is very messy at this point placing bets on who will win. The point of this article was to suggest that a big shift is coming and there are a set of milestones that one could follow to help guide a strategy. I think that Cisco, Arista (privately held) and VMware are hte furthest along to delivering on the promise of I2.0, but they certainly don't have it wrapped up. Citrix has been complementing their legacy middleware expertise and base with some great acquisitions and has IMHO been building a solid ecosystem. Yet I think VMware has led when it comes to enterprise go to market. They were the first to embrace the power of virtualization security, even during the early stage one virtualization deployments; and IMHO they were also faster in building relationships with the network equipment/security leaders.

That being said, the fruit of those relationships has been long time coming. I attribute to the challenges "binding" virtual and physical infrastructure and engaging network teams. When that happens (and by whom) will be IMHO all that matters.

I'm not making investment advice... but rather offering a perspective on tech trends that could be game changers. One cannot rule out Microsoft or Amazon either... because of footprint (MSFT) and business model compatability (AMZN).

All opinion.

Greg


On Oct 15 11:29 AM mws wrote:

> Mr. Ness,
>
> May I ask what you perceive to be the best way to invest in this
> "groundbreaking" technology. Are you a proponent of the "Citrix Ready
> Open Networking Program" and its partners: Ankeena, Apere, Arista,
> Dell, Fujitsu, HP, Intel, Joyent, Oracle, SoftLayer, Trend Micro
> and Vyatta?
>
> Thanks in advance for any insights you can give both myself and other
> readers.