Giants' Faith in the Cloud

by Ofir Nachmani
May 5, 2011

“The battlefield is a scene of constant chaos. The winner will be the one who controls that chaos, both his own and the enemies.” (Napoleon Bonaparte)

Microsoft – ״Last week, Microsoft president Jean-Phillipe Courtois announced that the company will be spending 90% of its research budget on improving cloud computing technologies. Since Microsoft’s annual R&D budget this year is $9.6 billion, this investment translates to a massive $8.6 billion.״ cloudweaks.com

Amazon – “Amazon.com Inc is thinking long-term when it spends heavily on “the cloud” …It has invested heavily in areas such as “cloud computing” — which allows companies to store data on its servers — to take on its rivals Google Inc and Apple Inc” reuters.com

IBM – “IBM expects to continue its investment on higher value businesses, and will increase research & development (R&D) spending by $35.0 billion in the next 5 years. The company expects to incur productivity savings of $8.0 billion over the next 5 years.” finance.yanoo.com

Rackspace – “This is Rackspace’s second acqustion in recent months. The company bought cloud-management start up Cloudkick in December.” theregister.co.uk

Cisco – “We are putting our partner community at the heart of Cisco’s cloud go-to-market strategy,” said Ralph Nimergood, vice president of data center and virtualization for Cisco’s Worldwide Partner Organization ..” crn.com

CA – At the heart of CA’s strategy is a big bet on the cloud. In October 2010, CA lifted the curtain on a new MSP channel program based off the acquisition it made of 3Tera and 3Tera’s AppLogic offering. Bill McCracken, CEO of CA Technologies says:

“The rate and pace is going to pick up,” McCracken told a gathering of CA solution providers in New York Tuesday, discussing cloud adoption. “The industry estimates are wrong. They’re low. You can write that down. It’s growing faster and moving faster than we’re predicting. The opportunity is standing in front of us.”