Dana,
I agree with most of what you said and think that the newScale, rPath and Eucalyptus Systems collaboration model is an interesting development. Even so, when a target client is uncomfortable using our SaaS from a dedicated public cloud (Amazon EC2) instance, we're offering them only one other option for now, "a cloud in a box" via a hardware appliance. (An approach you rightly point out has its drawbacks at large scale, but that works very effectively for bringing one SaaS application in house quickly).
We didn't want to get slowed down with conducting research on our end to try to choose the ideal solution from packaged private cloud providers nor did we want to run the risk of having potential opportunities get held up for months as clients went through due diligence on their end determining which packaged private cloud provider(s) they were going to select.
Given that there it's too early to determine winners and losers in the packaged private cloud provider race for market share, an imperfect "cloud in a box" appliance solution doesn't seem at all bad to us for now. Also, by contractually requiring clients to update their appliances regularly, we're trying to mitigate the cost (to us) of maintaining multiple substantially different versions.
Once market shares between private cloud vendors become clear, and our customers have more experience working with them, we will consider altering our approach to private cloud infrastructure. This will definitely be an interesting space to watch over the next few years.
- Justin Hunter
Hexawise
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