Dimension Data’s acquisition of OpSource marks the end of an era and illustrates how the Cloud Computing competitive landscape is expanding to encompass every type of tech vendor and service provider.

Although it is only a fraction of the size and has only a fraction of the brand equity of Salesforce.com, OpSource has had a disproportionate impact on the growth of the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) market and broader Cloud movement.

The company’s CEO, Treb Ryan, has been a tireless evangelist for the business value of SaaS and now the Cloud. He and his staff have invested heavily in educating and facilitating the industry’s growth through an endless stream of webcasts and whitepapers, and founding the industry’s most important annual gathering, the SaaS Summit, now known as “All About the Cloud” and managed by the SIIA.

Rather than simply offer a set of hosting services, OpSource put together … Read More »

OpSource and the Virtual Computer Environment (VCE) Company announced an alliance today which will offer joint solutions aimed at helping service providers (xSPs) launch public cloud services more quickly. This joint initiative is the latest effort by various vendors to enable  xSPs to fulfill their promise as potent ‘cloud brokers’.

VCE is a joint venture formed by Cisco and EMC, with additional investments from VMware and Intel, to create a new generation of networking, storage, virtualization and management technologies to improve xSP infrastructure operations. VCE’s primary product is the Vblock™ Infrastructure Platform for virtualization, data processing, networking and storage capabilities in cloud computing environments.

In this new alliance, OpSource is adding its cloud orchestration software capabilities to VCE’s Vblock Platform to enable xSPs to handle the user sign-up, provisioning, metering, billing, and reporting requirements associated with cloud services. Together, OpSource and VCE’s combined solution promises to eliminate needless development costs, accelerate the service providers’ time … Read More »

Years ago, I considered the week leading into Labor Day as the final hurrah of the Summer and tried to preserve it for an end of season vacation to cap off the warm weather months in New England. Then my kids became school age and schools started kicking off before the holiday weekend. (Don’t get me started on this silly practice.)

Now, the tech industry is also making a habit of getting back into stride for the new Fall season before the dog days of August are behind us. One of the important annual venues for kicking off the new season of activity is VMworld.

This year’s event is generating plenty of news, especially regarding cloud-oriented acquisitions and alliances. Here’s a quick sampling:

VMware Acquires Integrien and TriCipher 
Verizon and VMware to Launch Enterprise-Class Hybrid Cloud Solution 
BlueLock Introduces VMware vCloud Datacenter Service with CloudConnector 
EMC Transforms … Read More »

My past fews weeks have been consumed with weekly visits to the Bay Area to speak at SaaScon, moderate tracks at Under the Radar and co-host the AlwaysOn OnDemand conference, as well as numerous on-site client meetings. In between, I also had the privilege of presenting a kickoff keynote presentation at a VIP dinner for the State of the Cloud conference in Boston.

My hectic travel schedule has given me little time to comment on a variety of industry announcements which have occurred during this period. So, here’s my ‘lightening round’ assessment of some of the more significant events worth noting,

Cloud Conference Observations

SaaScon: When was the last time you heard CIOs talk about being heroes in their organizations? Well, the CIOs who spoke at SaaScon repeatedly described how the SaaS solutions which they’re implementing in their organizations are generating an overwhelmingly positive response from their end-users and corporate executives. … Read More »