Within just a few years, companies began switching from hardware to cloud services because they were attracted to benefits like a reduction in capital costs as well as an easing in IT staffing issues.
Some customers will want a private cloud implementation to maintain greater control of the end to end experience, other customers are already moving data and applications to the Windows Azure cloud to take advantage of the reduced management and hardware costs the public cloud offers.
They say it will offer the same comprehensive one-stop cloud hardware and software shopping as HP and IBM, with more up-to-date equipment.
We often focus on market share for hardware, but cloud media services increasingly dictate our lives after the devices have reached our bags and pockets.
Generally, says Whyman, value in the market is likely to migrate from hardware to apps and cloud services.
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This has created a new market for large existing vendors and emerging-growth providers of intelligent hardware, software applications and cloud services, while also generating billions in shareholder equity.
Software's migration to "the cloud" will reshape hardware too.
To be fair, Apple too is quick with its own spec comparisons, but because Cupertino controls the entire platform from hardware to OS to APIs to cloud and other services, they have a much greater playing field on which to innovate.
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FileFinch helps users create a personal, secure cloud solution using their own hardware.
More than anything else, Project Mighty is a demonstration of how hardware and software can work together with cloud services to make really useful products.
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The object of Deltacloud is to open up competition and choice in the cloud market, just as Red Hat Linux did in the hardware market, eliminating the switching cost of investing in a new stack of proprietary offerings and allowing cloud users to invest the savings into conducting application development that truly differentiates them.
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The Nebula hardware appliance helps automate building a massive private cloud from thousands of inexpensive servers.
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In addition, because most cloud-based services used standardised hardware and software it was far easier to keep an eye on who was doing what.
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He built the technology needed to take all executables off the wire, and essentially unpack and run them in a mini-cloud of virtual emulators on a hardware appliance.
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The spreading of the cloud darkens the outlook for traditional hardware makers such as Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsystems, which have already been buffeted by fears of a U.S. recession.
So after pioneering online retailing, Amazon has moved into selling all manner of goods including clothes, into providing cloud computing services, and now hardware to give users access to all sorts of media content.
Isis and Google are backing conflicting versions of the same technology (Near Field Communications, or NFC), and equally significant players like PayPal are going entirely different directions with cloud-based (rather than hardware-based) mobile payment initiatives.
And Oracle, the software, hardware, and database company, recently announced its Cloud API managing infrastructure.
The idea is that the cloud revolution feeds IBM's existing hardware, software and consulting businesses, with little need for a new line on the balance sheet.
The company has to evolve into selling cloud software as well as higher-end hardware systems.
With the cloud product, Acquia uses Amazon for the hardware, but manages all aspects of the website for its clients.
But a private cloud deployment can allay these concerns because the hardware and software are dedicated to a single company.
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WiFi-enabled hardware, filters, optional "intelligent" faucets and a cloud-connected smartphone app that'll tell you when to swap out old cartridges for new ones.
The OpenStack Foundation and the Open Compute Project is a community of 150 companies committed to building cloud architecture based upon open source software and open hardware standards.
Thirdly, converged infrastructures for cloud could get a boost through tighter integration between the hardware and OS, thanks to performance optimizations, better resource automation, and fault management throughout the stack.
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Our Forrsights Hardware Survey showed a significant increase in Enterprises saying they were establishing formal cloud management strategies.
Renting a server from Amazon Web Services promises all the advantages of the Cloud: ephemeral, convenient computing without the nuisance of owning hardware.
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Of course, that seems like the goal of every old-line hardware and software giant who is trying to move to the world of cloud computing.
In addition. there may need to be additional bandwidth investments, as well as hardware investments so infrastructure components may need to be upgraded to integrate with cloud services.
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However, to me, Openness (and with it Broader adoption, private, hybrid of Public) about the Cloud starts with open Standards for APIs, reference architecture and hardware (Open Compute is a good example of that).
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