So while ATT jumped into the ever-crowding fray of companies offering cloud computing services, we had arguably our first cloud computing IPO take place this week. It was interesting to see the results. Rackspace (RAX) had initially discussed pricing their IPO at $16, but then settled for $12.50. Near close today, it’s trading at $10.01.
As the Motely Fool said, “It’s a shame, because this is usually the kind of tech stock that the market can rally around in good times. Rackspace is growing nicely, and it’s consistently profitable. Webhosting may be seen as a cutthroat commodity, but the company also has the “cloud computing” buzz working for it, as software makers turn to hosts to reliably serve their applications.”
What I wonder is whether the decrease in stock price is due to lack of confidence in “new technologies” or the overall market being very volatile. I also wonder if this is a sign of things to come with cloud computing. The strength of virtualization was that it was clearly defined and provides a clear benefit. It’ll also be something that network teams will have to take seriously when monitoring performance.
Cloud computing isn’t as well defined with analysts having different explanations for the trend. James Governor does a great job of explaining what it’s not. While the benefits seem clear to me, I’m not sure that businesses especially in the SMB are going to buy in. From the perspective of the network team handling cloud computing, we see it as a broader trend that really began with VoIP of critical applications or functions moving to the network.
It can be difficult to express how cloud computing will really impact the network, as it depends upon the implementation. Are we really talking about Software as a Service (SaaS) or leasing computer cycles to do complex computations for an R&D project? What type of access to the service is needed? How much will bandwidth demand increase as a result of the new project? Will peak demand times change? These are questions best addressed by the vendor.
From here I don’t really see best management practices changing. Any advice on implementing cloud computing services? Did it change the way you manage the network? I’d be interested in hearing.
Tags: att, cloud computing, manage cloud computing, network, rackspace, rax, saas
August 11, 2008 at 9:07 am |
funnily enough I think SMB will be major consumers of “cloud-based” services, if not “clouds” – Google Docs and the new hosted Microsoft apps both make *so* much sense.
August 11, 2008 at 11:23 am |
That’s a good point that I wasn’t thinking of when I first wrote the post. When you say makes so much sense, what advantages are you thinking of? I could see from a cost and collaboration (info sharing) perspective why these apps would be attractive to the SMB. InfoWorld ran a good review that included Zoho and Google Docs.
http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/07/15/29TC-office-alternatives_1.html