Perhaps it is time for SPaaP

The IT industry has always had a penchant for coming up with new names for its developments, not least because they make excellent marketing tools. `Cloud computing’ is one of the best examples of this, not least because it can be sub-divided into so many variants within which vendors can differentiate themselves.

Some of these are even useful. For example, the `X’aaS nomenclature model has proved useful, and some of those `…..as a Service’ terms have claimed a good market niche. Software as a Service (SaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) are two of the best examples, if only because they define the two extremes of cloud-delivered services – the base layer of infrastructure resources a business will need to provide a cloud service of some sort (IaaS) and the soup-to-nuts, end-to-end service where a complete business function is provided via the cloud (SaaS).

The trouble is, the marketing suits then try to sub-divide such definitions to achieve ever-more granular differentiation where their company can be the `market leader’. There are, for example, as many definitions of Platform as a Service as there are people to define it.

But an announcement from Virtustream, about it collaborating with Intel to deliver the HANA-Hadoop Managed Service for big data analytics, as a cloud delivered service, raises a slightly different view. The company is already labelling it as Big Data as a Service. But is this actually an example of something different?

Virtustream already spotted that it needs to develop into something more than it currently is. It has a strong reputation in the field of IaaS, but there is a strong school of thought which suggests that IaaS providers are, long term, set to take a beating; they will inevitably end up competing largely on price alone. That style of competition always tends towards zero, which is a poor business model.

That is why we have seen even the `big gorilla’ of IaaS, Amazon’s AWS, adding more and more services so that it can add value to what it offers.   

That next defining demarcation is one that Virtustream’s Big Data service falls into. I would call it Service Provision as a Platform (SPaaP).

This is broader than just SaaS, which is the provision of a specific, often specialist service capability. SPaaP is about targeting a business area and providing the services and resources required to provide its needs. Obvious examples of it in action already exist, of course. Companies like Netsuite and Salesforce.com have done well out of targeting areas of business need which can be serviced more completely via the cloud than by just selling customers software packages.

And those businesses continue to add new services that provide value for their customers by clearing their decks of developing and operating `processes’, leaving them free to use those processes for the benefit of their core business. It becomes a platform on which those customers can build more and more of their `process of business’ and just exploit the services provided.

As an IaaS vendor now adding functional services of value, that is where Virtustream seems to be heading with this latest announcement.

The company will be using the Intel Distribution for Apache Hadoop (IDH) in conjunction with its own xStream cloud management software and recently announced HANA Managed Service. The goal is to  enable customers to analyse large data sets in the cloud at high speed.

“Users will be able to run predictive analytics and generate real-time analytics on large data sets, including business data, social media and point of sale data, in the cloud – while ensuring the environment is secure, compliant, efficient and flexible.”

“We are pleased to be collaborating with Virtustream on providing cloud based, enterprise class data management solutions with the Intel Distribution for Apache Hadoop together with SAP HANA,” said Boyd Davis, vice president and general manager of the Datacentre Software Division at Intel. “Users will be able to run predictive analytics and generate real-time analytics on large data sets, including business data, social media and point of sale data, in the cloud – while ensuring the environment is secure, compliant, efficient and flexible.”

As an in-memory database, SAP HANA allows highly accelerated reporting and analytics, while Hadoop enables users to process large sets of unstructured data. Combining both environments with Virtustream’s HANA-certified cloud should provide greater agility and scalability, together with a consumption-based pricing model.

There is also the advantage of fast setup of analytical services with no CapEx requirement, plus having access to HANA and Hadoop database engineers.

Virtustream’s portfolio also includes expertise in migrating the entire portfolio of SAP applications to the cloud. In May, the company launched their SAP HANA Managed Service and successfully deployed the first SAP ECC-on-HANA in production in the cloud.