First, let’s have a round of applause for Verizon and their executive leadership. Verizon has shown the ability to move beyond marketing trends to acquire ‘smart’ technology companies that address core business needs. While others in this space have a ‘not invented here’ mentality, Verizon has no such issue. Need proof? Look no further than their Cybertrust acquisition in 2007.
Second, the giant smiles at Savvis, Rackspace, Hosting.com, GoGrid, and others are causing a blinding industry whiteout. Savvis and Rackspace are both innovators and leaders in this space and are hot growth and/or acquisition targets. These companies aren’t selling marchitecture; instead they are building unique architectures using leading-edge technologies from VMware, Cisco, EMC, Intel, and others.
Third, Amazon is the wild card in this equation. No slighting of Amazon’s cloud prowess in this blog, as they are clearly a disruptive and growing force within the industry. Amazon’s leadership made strategic bets before this rocket ship took off, and they are reaping the benefits of solid execution. What remains to be seen is if Enterprises are truly ready for a Cloud or if they will demand collocation and/or dedicated server hardware, of which Amazon does not currently offer.
Finally, here we go again, it’s AT&T vs. Verizon. Let’s not kid ourselves, Verizon’s real target is AT&T and Terremark gives them a strategic energy boost. However, AT&T’s no slouch in the Cloud or Managed Services arenas. AT&T offers a complete portfolio of IAAS, Cloud Storage, Co-Location, Virtualization, and Managed Services. Furthermore, AT&T has an impressive track record of providing high quality Enterprise Class Solutions to their customers. Not to mention, AT&T has a rock-solid partnership/relationship with IBM.
One last thought, lets not forget that the Cloud depends on many physical elements such as datacenters (real estate), servers, storage, networking, security, applications, and people (talent). As the cloud grows, datacenter growth (global) will become increasingly important. Verizon gains on all fronts with Terremark; not to mention a healthy mix of Government and Enterprise Customers.
Let the consolidation begin and may the best valuations win.
PlatenReport 