As the big players in tech keep jockeying for position one term keeps coming up over and over again, the private Cloud. Everyone is looking to offer their own solution for users to backup data and sync devices. There’s even been a rush to gobble up Cloud Computing companies as quickly as possible to gain the upper hand. Whether it’s Cloud security, tracking usage, or infrastructure, you name it and it’s been acquired recently. What’s the big deal?
It’s becoming readily apparent that the war for mobile dominance is quickly evolving. As Google and Apple continue to fight in the mobile OS landscape the battle is evolving. In the past we’ve been locked into phone contracts that have provided highly subsidized devices in exchange for multi-year contracts of exclusivity. Well now we can add another layer onto that, locking users into a private Cloud. The next evolution of mobile operating systems are going to rely heavily on the ability to push/pull data from/to your server, home computer, notebook, and tablet.
How do private Clouds figure into this? If all of your data sits in a location controlled by the big players two things happen.
1. Data is invaluable, if companies can look at what you have and provide the info to Marketers they’ll make more money selling info than selling storage (Facebook anyone?)
2. As you upload and download data it can be tracked and billed based off of pure usage. (Google/Verizon?)
HP, Google, Apple, and Microsoft all want a piece of the pie. All of them are in the midst of building their own data centers and building both infrastructure and platforms to this end. For the next wave of phones and mobile devices instead of simply choosing one based on the best OS, we’ll measure devices by the number of apps that are provided and ease of access for data between them. The big players are eyeing a Gold rush. The new Gold is data and you don’t have to mine it, you have to convince people to give it to you.
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Doesn’t private cloud almost demand MSP involvement? I mean, clients demanding private cloud presumably will want more direct contact with the service provider, more accountability, greater comfort level in the SP’s experience and trust, etc.
Maybe private cloud is precisely what the MSP channel has been waiting for.
I believe you’re correct. We’re going to be pushing private cloud in the coming weeks since we’ve had some great success. Everything we do with the cloud is branded and billed by the MSP partner. If you have customers that need private cloud for hosted desktops, servers, or infrastructure as a service, I hope you’ll take a look at ThinkGrid.
Regards,
Gregg Berretta
ThinkGrid (www.thinkgrid.com)
As a shameless plug, I’ll mention that ThinkGrid solved the private cloud challenge with the ability to allow MSPs to re-brand (white label) the private cloud for larger companies needing the infrastructure on prem. By setting up the hardware inside the firewall and then layering on the licensing/API’s/etc. on top, ThinkGrid allows an MSP to offer an on-prem for the employees on site and a truly hosted solution for those employees and vendors needing access remotely.
Gregg Berretta, ThinkGrid