The supply side of the web service world has changed.
Just ask Jeff Cotten or Jared Wray.
Mr Wray sold his company to Centurylink and is now CTO Cloud at Centurylink Technology Services. He is building a cloud platform which will integrate with the telecoms company’s network.
He predicts that within five years there will be no more than five global cloud players. Scale, scale and scale are what’s required.
Mr Wray is also aware of the chequered reputation that telecom’s firms have for traditional service delivery but says that his goal is to turn telecoms customers into fans.
Meanwhile at Rackspace, international managing director Jeff Cotten says that at heart Rackspace is a services company – or is rapidly evolving into one.
Rackspace says it has the partners to be a global agnostic services provider.
And in a Q+A dedicated solely to the development and future of Openstack, Cotten speaks in depth about the challenges it faces including simplification and bursting between Openstack clouds.
Testing times are over, believe both Wray and Cotten, production times are here.
Elsewhere in this issue we explore in depth the web services offering from IBM Global Services and examine its strengths and weaknesses in the market.
And if you still getting lost in the cloud and wondering just who does what, we offer a whistle stop tour of companies and their offersings.
In addition there is an analysis of those software companies who were born or who have chosen to live on the web. We look at three of the fastest movers.
On the demand side I ask each and every CIO the same question: Are you moving to the cloud in 2015.
The answer is always the same: Yes, as quickly as possible for as much as possible.
But the competition is hotting up.
