State of the Cloud – September 2009
September 2nd, 2009 | Published in State of the Cloud | 14 Comments
Two months ago I began my quest to find out just how much use cloud computing infrastructures are seeing. With today’s third State of the Cloud, the trends are starting to emerge from the data.
Please refer to the first post in the series for methodology, data sets and caveats.
To avoid confusion, the analysis will focus on cloud IaaS providers only. Currently tracked are Amazon EC2, Rackspace Cloud Servers (Slicehost), Joyent and GoGrid. I’m inviting the community to comment below regarding providers you feel should (or shouldn’t) be included. I’ll also be digging deeper into the definition of an IaaS cloud in upcoming posts, so stay tuned.
Snapshot for September 2009
Of the 500k sites analyzed, these are the results for the IaaS providers tracked:
In terms of the standings themselves, no changes from last month. However, as we’ll explore further below, it appears Amazon EC2 is not only larger than its competitors, it’s also continuing to outpace them.
Monthly Growth
Let’s examine what has changed since last month:
Again we find Amazon EC2 in the lead, sustaining a growth rate of around 9% for the second consecutive month. Whereas Amazon was just a step ahead of Rackspace in terms of its current size in our sample, in terms of growth it leads by a wide margin, shooting forward almost 3 times as fast as Rackspace. Joyent disappointed this month with a net loss.
Trends
This month, we have enough data to begin examining the trends. (Please note that the first research examined EC2 only, hence it’s the only provider with 3 data points.)
Amazon EC2’s rapid growth is becoming clearly visible. Extrapolating back in time, we can estimate that EC2 overtook Rackspace sometime between June and July. Can Amazon keep up this trend? I’ll be following closely!
Notable Comers and Goers
Among the hundreds of changes this month, here are some that piqued my attention:
- Vogue UK left Conde Nast’s own network and is now running in Amazon EC2’s European region. Is Conde Nast outsourcing its IT into the cloud?
- Popular Spanish Dictionary site spanishdict.com left Amazon EC2 for SoftLayer. (It’s unknown whether this was to SoftLayer’s cloud service or to a traditional hosting environment.)
- Twitter-based apps twtpoll and twtvite switched to Joyent over from Rackspace’s traditional hosting.
- Pamela Anderson’s official site, which is set to relaunch this month, has left Joyent.
- West Liberty University migrated its website from local West Virginia company CityNet over to GoGrid.
September 3rd, 2009 at 2:40 pm (#)
popurls.com // popular today…
story has entered the popular today section on popurls.com…
September 3rd, 2009 at 2:55 pm (#)
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September 3rd, 2009 at 3:45 pm (#)
No Windows Azure?
September 3rd, 2009 at 9:12 pm (#)
[...] this page was mentioned by swardley (@swardley), CEO of Great Innovus (@dollars5), twtpoll (@twtpoll), twtvite (@twtvite), Bryan Bogensberger (@bbogens) and others. [...]
September 3rd, 2009 at 9:12 pm (#)
@Chris,
Windows Azure is a PaaS (platform as a service) solution. That means you write your code within a certain framework and the service takes care of the machines it runs on, scaling and so on. Google AppEngine, EngineYard and Heroku are comparable providers.
IaaS (infrastructure as a service) is lower down the chain in that you provision and manage the servers yourself, only that they are virtual not physical, you pay per hour and not book monthly and more. I’m planning to touch further on the definition of IaaS in an upcoming post, if only to make it clearer who is and isn’t included in State of the Cloud.
September 4th, 2009 at 12:14 am (#)
cmiiw, slicehost is only selling vps.
and rackspace cloud is http://www.rackspacecloud.com/ (previously, mosso.com)
September 4th, 2009 at 12:38 am (#)
@dennyhalim -
Rackspace have two cloud hosting services: Cloud Sites is formerly Mosso, a PaaS cloud (that should be compared to AppEngine, Heroku, etc.) and Cloud Servers which is formerly Slicehost, an IaaS cloud. You can refer to last month’s post where I briefly touched on the issue of counting Rackspace Cloud Servers this way.
September 4th, 2009 at 10:23 am (#)
[...] State of the Cloud – September 2009 :: Jack of all Clouds. This entry was posted on Friday, September 4th, 2009 at 8:32 am and is filed under Amazon, [...]
September 4th, 2009 at 1:22 pm (#)
Guy Rosen,
You are not correct in your reply to dennyhalim.
Cloud Servers is not a renamed Slicehost (you said “Cloud Servers which is formerly Slicehost”). I think your claim will be a surprise to Slicehost who are still Slicehost (go to slicehost.com to see them very alive and very well).
Cloud Servers was built on Slicehost technology but the two are different products, with different support teams, etc. I would say you would listen to Slicehost’s latest podcast where they chat about this very subject which will outline the differences to you.
September 4th, 2009 at 6:32 pm (#)
@Martha – thanks for the pointer. I’m going to be digging deeper into defining cloud services and who should and shouldn’t be included.
September 4th, 2009 at 10:14 pm (#)
Try. http://opsourcecloud.com/ — the new wave of cloud services
September 7th, 2009 at 8:31 am (#)
[...] and whoever number two actually is. Based on data recently published in the Jack of all Clouds “State of the Cloud” survey, Rackspace is clearly number two and the gap isn’t actually all that [...]
September 22nd, 2009 at 4:42 am (#)
[...] see it yet because their sales are still increasing, but a short look at some of the analysis by Guy Rosen on Amazon vs. Rackspace, GoGrid and Joyent shows that even some of the larger players out there are losing share to the galactic [...]
October 10th, 2009 at 2:35 am (#)
[...] State of the Cloud – September 2009 :: Jack of all Clouds :: Guy Rosen on Cloud Computing (tags: cloud amazon rating statistics market) This was written by andy. Posted on Saturday, October 10, 2009, at 1:35 am. Filed under Delicious. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed. Post a comment or leave a trackback. [...]