IBM’s initial cloud offerings are aimed at testing environments and virtual desktop services, according to the New York Times. So, in low risk areas where CIOs have already taken steps to experiment with cloud computing. Down the line, other offerings are planned for data storage, and clouds for business analytics.
Fair enough – at least some progress. But this sounds just like SAP’s “moat” strategy I wrote about last week - “protect the core, on-premise product with a series of surrounding “best of breed” SaaS”. And I suspect it will involve red ties and blue suits and fail many of the “It’s not a cloud if…” filters.
And even longer than SAP’s thrashing on SaaS, IBM has been promising various versions of “on-demand” since 2001.
Maybe it’s because I live in Florida, but after such a long drought, you expect hurricane grade rains not just localized showers.
