What you missed in Cloud: Shifting rivalries
The competitive lines of the public cloud shifted considerably last week as a number of major players repositioned to address their new priorities. VMware made the biggest splash after striking an unexpected alliance with Google to bring four of the latter’s most strategic services into the enterprise.
The deal is notable because the two firms directly compete in the infrastructure-as-a-service segment, a detail that both are evidently willing to overlook in order to promote their broader ambitions for the hybrid cloud. Under the agreement, the virtualization stalwart will enable users of its public cloud to access Google’s cheap objective storage service, schemaless database, real-time analytics engine and DNS on-demand through their existing contract.
The partnership provides VMware with value-added service to augment its pitch while opening a needed doorway into the enterprise for the search giant. It puts the firms in a better position to compete against Amazon, which dominates the public cloud with its infrastructure-as-a-service platform and poses an equally dangerous threat to both, albeit for different reasons.
As usual, Amazon didn’t let the announcement go by without a response. On the very same day that VMware and Google revealed their alliance, Amazon debuted a new security-centric corporate email service that takes direct aim at Gmail and Microsoft Exchange.
Amazon WorkMail promises to automatically encrypt messages against prying eyes, optionally using an organization’s own ciphers, and only make the contents accessible to the intended recipient. WorkMail also offers authentication and an extensive set of administrative controls, including the ability to remotely wipe emails on employees’ mobile devices.
While Amazon is shifting its focus to business users, CloudBees Inc. is doubling down on developers with $23.5 million in fresh capital from Matrix Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Verizon Ventures and other exiting investors. Announced shortly before WorkMail, the funding will help fuel the growth of the startup’s platform, a commercial version of the Jenkins project that enables enterprise engineers to push out changes to their applications in hours rather than weeks.
photo credit: Anas Ahmad via photopin cc
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