MSPmentor

Competition in the Web hosting market continues to rise. The latest example involves Salesforce.com, which has unveiled a new service — called Force.com Sites — that allows customers to run their Web sites in the Salesforce.com cloud. The move comes only a few days after Microsoft launched its Azure cloud services.

For managed service providers, the growing list of cloud services from which to choose can seem overwhelming. But we’re in a hype cycle and I expect many cloud services to disappear into vapor over the next few years. Here’s why.

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It was only a matter of time. Amazon.com’s Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) will soon support both Windows Server and SQL Server, according to this blurb on the Amazon.com Web site.

Faced with the reality that Red Hat Enterprise Linux and JBoss middleware were already available in the Amazon EC2 cloud, Microsoft pushed hard to ink the agreement with Amazon, according to one source close to the online retailer.

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At what point does the online backup market become saturated? I ask myself that question at least once a week. The reason: I get flooded with emails, voicemails and press releases about managed service providers and resellers signing up for online backup services.

The latest example: Pro Softnet Corp. says its IBackup service now has more than 2,000 reseller partners and 150 new resellers are signing up per month.

Here’s how managed service providers can continue to compete — and differentiate — in the managed storage market.

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A strong financial report from Amazon.com lifted the SaaS 20 Stock index a tiny 0.20% gain for the week ended July 25. The index has now climbed almost four percent since early July. Are software as a service (SaaS) stocks ready to continue a rally? We’ll find out on July 30, when RightNow (RNOW) is scheduled to announce 2Q results after the market closes.

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Does Apple want to be a managed service provider? In some ways, yes. But so far those efforts aren’t going too well. The company’s MobileMe service — a cloud-based system designed to manage your contacts and calendars across a range of devices — is taking a beating from critics. Even The Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg, typically an Apple advocate, is telling readers that MobileMe is filled with problems.

From Apple’s MobileMe to Amazon.com’s Simple Storage Service (S3), we are seeing multiple examples of consumer-oriented companies stumbling a bit as they introduce managed services, software as a service (SaaS) and cloud-based solutions. Read More >

Software as a service (SaaS) sounds so simple. But the SaaS model gets complicated when businesses depend on multiple SaaS applications from multiple companies. The big challenge: How can an organization — or a managed service provider — coordinate data between multiple SaaS clouds? SnapLogic, an open source startup, is working to address that issue. Read More >

Amazon.com’s Simple Storage Service (S3) suffered its second big service outage this year on Sunday, July 20, notes GigaOm. Om Malik reports that some S3 services were down for eight hours.

I’m packing at the moment for some business travel, so deeper analysis will have to wait. But here’s a quick thought: If Amazon.com can’t keep its cloud system online, should we all be hyping the reliability of cloud computing to our customers just a bit less?