Oracle, HP, Cisco embrace the cloud

SAN JOSE, California (TNS) -. A cloud of Internet crowd is wrapping some of the legendary Silicon Valley companies, forcing a revolution in the way they did business for decades.

In what some would say is a belated recognition that the cloud is the future of computing, the venerable Valley businesses as Hewlett-Packard, Oracle and Cisco Systems are struggling to build data centers to launch new lines of business to create services cloud and convert software supplied on a software box that is rented on the Internet.

"Senior management, the Board and investors see this giant iceberg that comes to them," said Patrick Moorhead of Moor Insights and Strategy. "It is not a trivial task to make a request of their own people age 10 and moves it to the cloud."

But there is another option - a change from the traditional networks internally companies faster, cheaper centers accessible data through Internet is changing the business model of information technology and to create a market Cloud $ 235.1 billion in 2017, according to research firm IHS."There is a radical change in what most customers are looking for," said Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman analysts in September. "Our customers are in a period of transformation and transition seen only once every 10-15 years in this industry."

Next month, HP will split into two companies, one of them - Hewlett Packard Company - will be managed by Whitman and focus on business services, big data, mobile computing public and hybrid and private cloud.The new HP is the result of a "journey" of four years, the company began in 2011, 

Whitman said.
 
"We were in danger of falling behind in the technology sector began a plate tectonic shift in what we call the new style of computing driven by cloud, big data, security and mobility," she dit-. The full extent cloud HP revenue will be about $ 3 billion, a growth of 20 percent for the coming years, he added.

In further evidence of the changing market, Dell announced this month it bought storage company EMC data in a merger $ 67 billion that is driven in part by the pressure on the two companies' mobile computing and cloud with Michael Dell citing "the need to enter this new era" in an interview with CNBC

Nowhere conversion to the more striking than Oracle, traditionally sold software and hardware companies to operate their own data centers cloud.

Oracle founder Larry Ellison is renowned for rejecting the cloud as little more than the latest in computer mode.

"I do not know what everyone is talking about," he told financial analysts in 2008. "It's a really complete gibberish. When idiocy going to stop?"That was then. The giant software company has just completed three years of construction of data centers worldwide as co-CEO Safra Catz called "this very rapid transition see who you really are the backbone of this fiscal year."

"This is one of the most important changes in the history of the company," said Shawn Price, senior vice president of Oracle, speaking by telephone from Sao Paolo, Brazil, where Oracle opened a new data center. Price was hired away from SAP last year to run the cloud strategy and marketing at Oracle."The future is here and now. We bother. We say that a lot of companies are trying to solve, can not solve the principle" with its own data center operation, Price said. "We say, 'Let's run for you."Oracle deploys its cloud services in 19 data centers in 14 different countries over 90 times increase in data center capacity, Ellison told analysts on a conference call in September on its results for the first quarter of society.

"In the last three years, we have been in the cloud of our start-up business," Ellison said, sounding like a true believer. Oracle has installed more than 40,000 physical devices, virtual machines and 100,000 over 8 petabytes of storage, he said. "We now have in place the physical infrastructure to significantly expand our customers from the central cloud.""It has changed a lot in two years," said David Bartoletti, cloud and Management Analyst at Forrester Research. "I think it was a natural reaction. When you're a big software company whose income depends quotas and licenses, the cloud looks very scary."For many businesses, the public cloud is one way to save on the cost of operating your own data operation. No need to buy expensive server computers, it is not necessary to buy and upgrade software, and should not maintain the system.

"Companies see it as a cost of wells where the money is going to die," said Carl Brooks 451 Research."You have an IT department to do the double last year and no budget to do it. The only way to resolve it is to seek external economies. Amazon for $ 1 is twice as much as I can. I do the same Amazon takes 17 cents on top, and said: "We will be there when you need us." You must not break any ground, dig holes or build a building All companies, faced with this extreme pressure to increase capacity. (data) without increasing the budget, look out. "

The cloud has another great advantage, in addition to cost savings: speed. For example, Softlayer, acquired by IBM, can build a data center for a client and start working in a couple of days, analysts said.Cisco Systems, which sells network equipment for corporate clients, announced an investment of billions of dollars in "cloud infrastructure" Two years ago, and "continue to make investments in engineering and procurement transform other parts of its portfolio in the age of the cloud, "said a spokesman."In many ways, Cisco will be a strong supplier for all who build and manage clouds," Bartoletti said. "Everything will depend on the solid rock in an entire network."

But Cisco faces headwinds that large cloud computing companies, Facebook, Google and Amazon, to develop their own network hardware.

"Companies are trying to reduce their investments in internal hardware, and the cloud is very attractive," said Jack Gold of J. Gold Associates. "They should not go out and buy a lot of servers and Cisco routers."Another company of antiquity, the chip maker Intel, seems to win no matter what, since almost everyone uses chips it does for data center servers. But even Intel is jumping on the cloud. An initiative will be announced in July to help companies implement "hybrid" public and private cloud.

"We all like the clouds," said Intel spokesman Mark O. Miller. "We do not have to pick winners."