Red Hat, Inc. announced its vision for a comprehensive Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) solution as part of its Cloud Foundations, a portfolio that will promote consistency between enterprise applications and the cloud. Red Hat is the only vendor that has the infrastructure capable of delivering an open source, flexible cloud stack, incorporating operating system, middleware and virtualization. Based on JBoss Enterprise Middleware, Red Hat PaaS is designed to be the solution within the portfolio that will allow enterprises, cloud service providers, ISVs and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) providers to take existing assets and develop new applications and deploy them to a wide range of public and private clouds.

Red Hat plans to bring the JBoss Enterprise Middleware strategy of Open Choice to the cloud through flexible deployment options in addition to a choice of development frameworks and languages. Red Hat’s next-generation PaaS solution will be designed to simplify the development of new simple web applications as well as complex, transactional enterprise applications and integrate them into an enterprise. Additionally, Red Hat PaaS is expected to offer a comprehensive reference architecture to enable existing applications to be re-purposed within a wide choice of private and public clouds, protecting existing investments. With Red Hat PaaS, enterprises, cloud service providers, ISVs and SaaS providers will have the opportunity to leverage their existing skills without rewriting applications.

“Application infrastructure (middleware) is a key technology layer in enterprise computing, and it is of equal role and importance in cloud computing as well. To achieve the full cost, agility, productivity and scale benefits of cloud computing, applications must be deployed over a native cloud-enabled application infrastructure. Mainstream organizations must prepare to evaluate a full range of deployment options, including cloud, when planning their future application infrastructure investments,” said Yefim Natis, vice president, Distinguished Analyst, Gartner, Inc.

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The certification only covers the use of Google Apps within GSA, but Google officials believe it gives the company a leg up in the race to move federal networks at other agencies into the cloud.

“We see this really as a green light for agencies to move forward with cloud computing,” David Mihalchik, head of business development for Google’s federal team, said “Given the leadership role GSA plays … we fully expect that other agencies will leverage this certification.”

GSA is heading up the Obama administration’s cloud-computing initiative, and last month it asked contractors for proposals to move GSA’s e-mail systems and other applications into the cloud.

Google’s certification is “something other agencies could look to, but not that they could use,” GSA spokeswoman Sahar Wali said.

This fall, GSA plans to set up a program called Fedramp that will speed adoption of cloud computing by allowing agencies to piggyback on each other’s cloud-related FISMA certifications. Existing certifications would give companies a head start once Fedramp is up and running.

Security has been a primary concern for federal department heads, to help alleviate those fears, Google will store government customers’ data in a system located in the continental United States and keep it separate from other Google customers’ information.

“Most agencies we have worked with have found that Google Apps provides at least equivalent, if not better, security than they have today,” Kripa Krishnan, technical program manager for Google Apps for Government, wrote in a blog post Monday.

Google Apps is already in use by more than a dozen federal agencies, but only for small projects that did not require FISMA certification, Mihalchik said.

In his keynote address, Roskill, who took the helm earlier this month as corporate vice president of the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Group, spoke to partners about the industry transformation that is under way with the emergence of the cloud, and the opportunity that creates for partners to grow and evolve their businesses.

“The industry is at an inflection point, and Microsoft is leading the charge through what will be one of the biggest industry transformations of our time,” Roskill said. “Partners have always been fundamental to Microsoft’s business, and we are committed to helping our partners adapt and find the right cloud opportunities so we can grow and succeed together.”

Roskill detailed new tools, resources and sales support that Microsoft is delivering to help partners plan and build profitable businesses in the cloud and advance their cloud knowledge, including partner opportunity guides for cloud services, the new Microsoft Cloud Essentials Pack and Microsoft Cloud Accelerate Program designation, and new solution incentives for partners. Roskill also spotlighted the winners of the 2010 Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards. More information on Roskill’s announcements can be found at http://www.microsoftpartnernetwork.com/RedmondView/Permalink/Crossing-the-Chasm-Turning-Cloud-Opportunity-Into-Reality-for-Partners.

With the shift to Cloud 2, the demand for social enterprise apps is becoming clear and compelling. Chatter’s rich suite of social collaboration components, including profiles, status updates, and real-time feeds are also a part of Force.com, enabling developers and salesforce.com partners to build new social business apps. Now that Chatter is available, all 160,000 custom apps built on the Force.com platform can immediately become social.

ISV apps in the Chatter Exchange include: Akritiv, All-Rounds, Appirio, Apttus, Avankia, AvePoint, Bluewolf, CA Technologies, Cameleon Software, Cast Iron, CloudApps, Cloud Conversion, DocuSign, EchoSign, Fairsail, FinancialForce.com, Genius.com, Glovia, InsideView, Intellect Solutions, Jobpartners, Jobscience, Kugamon, Linvio, MPC, PropertyBase, SaasPoint, ServiceMax, SupplierSoft, Vertical Response, Xactly, ZenKraft and Zuora

COLLABORATIONCLOUD.ORG For Sale

“While the trend has been toward greater openness, system interoperability remains complex and costly,” said Rob Koplowitz, Principal Analyst, Forrester. “When the information that workers need exists in separate, non-integrated systems, the process of gathering all relevant information to make informed decisions becomes complicated.”

“Businesses today face a major information challenge – they need to centralize and manage massive amounts of crucial content, while also reducing their reliance on costly, high maintenance infrastructure,” said Aaron Levie, Co-founder and CEO of Box.net. “Traditional enterprise content management systems like SharePoint are now looking to the cloud to address this issue, but take a disjointed approach with separate on-premise and cloud-based products; at Box, we’re providing a compelling alternative by building a seamless bridge from the desktop to cloud content management, with Box Sync as an extension of our core platform. We think this approach will prove disruptive, with immense cost savings and productivity benefits for businesses.”

In line with Box.net’s core mission to make it easy to manage, collaborate and share content from anywhere, Box Sync gives users the flexibility to work offline and engage with content through desktop applications, while also keeping colleagues and partners up to date with the latest versions. Box Sync is available as a downloadable desktop client that lets users sync selected Box.net folders with a single click, making it easy to extend active content to the desktop. Designed specifically for the needs of businesses, Box Sync provides sophisticated conflict management, alerts collaborators when relevant files are created or updated, and incorporates real-time updates in users’ activity feeds. Box Sync will be rolled out for free to Box business users in waves over the summer, with a modified version made available to the remainder of Box.net’s 4 million users later in the year. Launched initially for Windows, Box Sync will soon extend to Mac OS and Linux platforms.

“The collaborative sync goes far beyond simple storage,” said Mark Brennan, the SaaS Architecture lead at Xactly and a beta user of Box Sync. “We’ve said `Sayonara’ to old versions, colliding edits, email attachments and out-of-sync updates.”

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With sales of web-based business software soaring, companies that focus on cloud computing are slipping into a sweet spot as technology giants look to bolster their presence in this fast-growing segment.

Cloud computing, or software as a service, allows businesses to cut back on hardware and space by having their software hosted in remote datacenters they access over the Web.

Deep-pocketed technology firms like IBM  or Oracle Corp might be looking to snag deals in this area to complement their own traditional, mostly on-premise services.

Human resource management software makers SuccessFactors Inc and Taleo Corp  and retail-focused software firm DemandTec Inc  could be the early targets, according to analysts.

“The themes of cloud computing and software as service (SaaS) are so real, and it’s still so early, that I think there should be lot of activity,” said Raymond James analyst Terry Tillman.

Janney Montgomery Scott analyst Sasa Zorovic believes companies like NetSuite Inc, Rightnow Inc, Kenexa Corp  and Constant Contact could all be attractive takeover targets.

Most big players delayed entering the cloud space and now want the scalable platforms provided by these SaaS companies to build efficient applications.

“With the growth of software as a service, companies have an increasing need to integrate data and business processes across on-premise and cloud systems,” IBM said in a recent statement.

Customer relationship management (CRM) software provider Salesforce.com Inc, which helped pioneer software as a service and is one of the fastest-growing software stocks, might also be considered as a takeout target. However, its size and rich valuation might not make for an easily digestible deal.

Since these companies deliver their software products over the Internet, it saves clients the cost of buying licenses in advance and running programs on their own computers.

The adoption of software as a service is expected to far outpace market growth through 2013, a Gartner report shows.

Currently, Salesforce.com accounts for about half of overall web-based CRM software sales, according to the report.

NICHE SELLS

However, firms with niche products like SuccessFactors and Taleo are also seeing explosive growth, as smaller companies queue up to vie for a share of the pie.

“SuccessFactors is adding a lot of potential total addressable market to the mix with all the stuff they are getting into,” said Tillman.

The company, which makes software that helps firms manage staff performance, posted a 37 percent jump in 2009 revenue. Revenue for 2010 is expected to grow 18 percent to 19 percent.

The company trades at a whopping multiple of 1,138 times forward earnings — 25 times the sector average. Its shares have risen more than two and a half times in the last one year.

In contrast, Oracle trades at 14 times forward earnings and SAP at 17.

DemanTec, another possible target, provides pricing and merchandise optimization for retailers. Its largest customer is Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

“For DemandTec, it was initially about fitting large global retailers like Target Corp  or Walmart to buy the best buy, but then they started selling software to their suppliers,” Tillman said.

The company’s products manage the same stores sales environment and help improve gross margins, he said, which could make it a valuable addition to large systems integrators that these retailers rely on, or even large enterprise companies.

Shares of the company have, however, dropped about 40 percent in the last one year.

RECENT CONSOLIDATION

The software sector has recently seen a flurry of activity with SAP AG’s offer to buy Sybase Inc and IBM’s move to acquire AT&T Inc’s business-to-business software unit.

Analysts believe these buyouts could accelerate the pace of consolidation in the tech industry in the next 12 months to 18 months.

“Just the fact that a large application vendor like SAP could become more aggressive increases the urgency of what other players like Oracle, IBM, Hewlett Packard Co or Microsoft Corp feel about M&A,” said Tom Roderick, analyst at Thomas Weisel.

Roderick’s pick in the SaaS space is Salesforce.com, but he said the company did not look like an immediate target.

“It is the property that has the most strategic value. It is the market leader in SaaS by a long shot and CRM technology is certainly one, if not the hottest, application sectors in the marketplace right now,” he said.

The company’s revenue grew 21 percent in fiscal 2010, compared with fiscal 2009 and is expected to grow 18 percent to 19 percent in fiscal 2011 to between $1.55 billion and $1.56 billion.

The company trades at 75 times forward earnings and its shares have more than doubled in value in the last 12 months.

India gets this coveted opportunity since there are over 1300 independent software vendors (ISVs), 1.4 million developers and more than 11000 system integrators (SIs and custom software development organizations) in its powerful ecosystem, and  India is ideal to tap this growing opportunity. The growing boom in software development for cloud computing estimates around 300,000 jobs related to cloud services to be created in India over the next 5 years. Zinnoy, one of the global consultants and analysts, estimates the global cloud computing market to be worth over USD 70 billion by 2015.

The CEO of Microsoft Corporation went on to urge that India would be the obvious hub of the global IT transition for cloud computing services. “India will not only see a surge in consumption of cloud services, driving growth in domestic IT usage, but  companies all over the world will look to India to support their transition to  cloud computing.” said Ballmer. Microsoft recognizes cloud computing to be the next big thing in software development industry and hence has a robust cloud infrastructure that supports over one billion customers and 20 million businesses globally. Microsoft India in its press release NIIT, CDC, Cognizant, and IISc are sharing plans for software development using the cloud computing services based on Microsoft Azure.

The largest chain of institutes for IT professional across India, NIIT, leads the cause by training over 100,000 students on Windows Azure over the next three years. Rajendra Pawar, the Chairman of the National Institute of Information Technology (NIIT) foresees the power of the cloud the talent that is needed to fulfill the void in the skill set required for software development. Pawar says that NIIT attempts to bridge this gap by offering an exclusive program to train professionals on Windows Azure for the first time in India. Other nationally renowned IT institution such as the IITs and IIITs are also building large India-relevant projects leveraging Microsoft’s Azure platform.

CDC Software plans to roll out its flagship product built on Windows Azure, CDC Respond, globally for banking and government sectors for managing complaints and feedbacks from the customers.

Cognizant, a major India based software development company and consultant, has announced the creation of a vertically aligned set of industry frameworks and prebuilt solution accelerators to enable implementation, migration and management of cloud enabled application portfolios built on Azure for clients both in India and globally. “Windows Azure helps customers unlock the value that can be derived from cloud-enabled services, and helps them build strong and agile businesses,” said Chandrasekaran, president and MD (global delivery), Cognizant.

The Indian Institute of  Science (IISc), Bangalore, is building a large scale application on Windows Azure to study the basic resource allocation constructs and strategies required for addressing enterprise needs on cloud computing.

These announcements are in addition to the over 4000 applications that have already been built on the Windows Azure platform in India.

ISVs and SIs including Wipro, Infosys, TCS, HCL Technologies and Mahindra Satyam are building applications and solutions across verticals ranging from healthcare to banking to manufacturing for both local and global markets.

In lab-based tests with Levi Strauss & Co., the technology partners demonstrated potential TCO reductions by running SAP software on Vblock. Vblock Infrastructure Packages are integrated IT offerings that include best-in-class virtualization, compute, storage security and management technologies. These include the Unified Computing System and Multilayer Director Switches (MDS) from Cisco, EMC Symmetrix V-Max and EMC CLARiiON CX4 Storage Systems (secured by RSA), and the VMware vSphere™ platform.

“From both a business and IT perspective, the results are significant and highly compelling, clearly showing how a private cloud environment could help us better manage our SAP landscape and contain costs at the same time,” said Tom Peck, SVP and CIO, Levi Strauss & Co. “We also saw how we could achieve greater agility in our business applications to rapidly meet our internal customer business needs. And all of this was achievable through better utilization of our infrastructure assets, without sacrificing performance, security or availability — a really big plus.”

TCO Reductions Benefits Revealed
Independent tests commissioned by SAP, Cisco, EMC, VMware and Accenture show that running SAP software on Vblock architecture can reduce TCO in a number of key areas, including:

• Reduction in capital expenses for hardware and software due to use of scalable servers and proprietary virtualization management tools
• Fewer implementation costs due to reduced planning and design requirements, simple setup and reconfiguration of virtual machines and the use of pre-configured templates
• Savings in project costs due to increased business agility achieved through reduced system management efforts and the ability to add or remove virtual machines based on demand
• Less spent in upgrade expenditures due to quick and easy provisioning of test- and training systems on demand and fallback scenarios right out of the box

“Today’s announcement marks an important step forward in our private cloud strategy,” said Vishal Sikka, chief technology officer and member of the SAP Executive Board responsible for Technology and Innovation. “This collaborative demonstration of success is only possible when combining the strength of SAP’s world-class business applications and the offerings from global technology leaders such as Cisco, EMC and VMware. Through our partnership and commitment to reducing costs of computing and increasing agility, we were able to prove that customers can quicken application development, lower TCO and improve overall system up-time for the entire SAP landscape, including production systems. As our team works even closer with customers like Levi Strauss & Co., this project will continue to evolve and thrive based on new advances in in-memory computing which SAP will make available and based on customer input into refining and ripening products that will pave the way for the secure private cloud.”

Citrix and Wyse are committed to driving innovation in Wyse Xenith™, continuing to raise the bar in delivering greater simplicity and the best user experience. Companies in all industries are increasingly adopting virtual desktops as a mainstream technology with the goal of increasing security, simplifying desktop management and offering users flexibility. With its universal Citrix Receiver software client, XenDesktop customers have the flexibility to extend virtual desktop access to a broad range of devices, including PCs, Macs, laptops, tablets and smartphones. For office workers, however, many customers prefer thin client devices that deliver low cost, longer life and easier maintenance.

The new Wyse Xenith™ zero client with Citrix HDX takes the concept of thin clients to an entirely new level. Its groundbreaking design requires no local configuration or management, has virtually no attack surface for malware, auto-discovers XenDesktop right out of the box, and launches a full Windows desktop in seconds. For the first time, IT decision-makers will not have to make tradeoffs in endpoint simplicity, security and end user performance.

“Desktop virtualization gives customers new ways of empowering workers that are orders of magnitude simpler, more flexible and more secure than traditionally managed desktops,” said Mark Templeton, CEO of Citrix. “When it comes to delivering virtual desktops to office workers, the combination of Citrix XenDesktop and the new Wyse Xenith™ zero client deliver a level of performance and value that we believe is going to blow a lot of people away.”

“Desktop virtualization and cloud computing will render the old PC hardware model obsolete,” according to Tarkan Maner, CEO at Wyse. “With the introduction of the Wyse Xenith™ zero client, the first adaptable, no-compromise, Citrix HDX-fluent zero client, we’ve realized a vision to deliver the benefits of high-performance virtual computing without the limitations associated with PC computing.”

Customers who have seen previews of the new Wyse Xenith™ in advance of its debut at Synergy this week have had high praise for the new solution.

“Our security concerns have been addressed as the Wyse Xenith™ is designed to be virus immune. My end users can plug in their peripherals and watch rich Flash videos with amazing performance. Best of all is that Wyse Xenith™ is completely plug-and-play,” according to Adrienne DiPrima, Manager, Strategic Technologies Technical Support at Miami-Dade County. “All they have to do is plug in the cables, and it automatically finds and attaches to my XenDesktop environment. Wyse’s Xenith™ has resolved our security and performance issues to a degree I never thought possible.”

“Every IT person and CIO has security on the top of their list of concerns while every end user cares most about functionality and a fantastic user experience,” added Albert Alvarez, Desktop Virtualization Technical Lead at Miami-Dade County and an early user of Wyse Xenith™. “With the release of Wyse Xenith™, Wyse has answered the concerns of end-users, IT support staff and the CIO with a single device.”

“Customers moving to desktop virtualization solutions such as Citrix XenDesktop have started to recognize the benefits of client devices with no embedded operating system,” according to Bob O’Donnell, Program VP, Clients and Displays at IDC. “These types of products enable nearly instant boot times and significantly ease the process of bringing virtual clients into the enterprise.”

“Every day barriers to desktop virtualization adoption decrease,” according to Adam Bari, Managing Director at IPM, and member of the M7 Global Partner network. “Security and performance are by far the top concerns of our customers but Wyse has eliminated those issues in one fell swoop with the introduction of Wyse Xenith™.”