Tag: Germany

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Cloud Computing

Amazon AWS builds a data center in Germany: Nice idea!

The Amazon Web Services will open a new cloud region targeting the German market by establishing a data center in Germany (Frankfurt). But is this so exciting for German companies?

Amazon AWS to touch down in Germany

Apparently, Amazon AWS has recognized the importance of the German market and the concerns of German companies. Crisp Research knows from reliable sources that the cloud provider will open a cloud region for the German market with a location in Frankfurt in the coming weeks.

After the announcement of Salesforce of a German data center location, Amazon is the next big U.S. cloud provider to follow the trend. This again shows the attractiveness of Germany. After all, most American companies treat the German market rather stepmotherly. Typically, the majority of American cloud providers supply the European market through data centers in Ireland (Dublin) and the Netherlands (Amsterdam). This reduces the attractiveness of cloud providers, especially in the case of medium-sized German businesses. Consultations with IT users consistently show that storing data outside of Germany and an agreement that is based on maximum European law are a no-go.

[Update]: Technical evidence

On the 4th of July 2014 German blogger Nils Jünemann published an article technically referencing on a new AWS region “eu-central-1”. Using a traceroute to “ec2.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com” he proved, that something is available. However, when I traceroute ec2.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com on the 5th of July 2014 the host was unknown.

AWS Portfolio: Slowly reaching the enterprise IT

In addition to the data center site, Amazon has announced AWS CloudTrail last year, the first service to allow companies more control over compliance. AWS CloudTrail helps you monitor and record the AWS API calls to one or more accounts. Here views from the AWS Management Console, the AWS Command Line Interface (CLI), from your own applications or third party applications are taken into account. The collected data are stored on either Amazon S3 or Amazon Glacier for evaluation and can be viewed on tools from AWS or external providers. Amazon CloudTrail can be used free of charge. However, costs are associated with storing the data on Amazon S3 and Amazon Glacier as well as with Amazon SNS notifications.

AWS CloudTrail is one of the most important services for enterprise customers that Amazon has released in recent times. The collected logs support the compliance with government regulations by allowing recording of all accesses to AWS services. One can operate more successful security audits based on the log data, identifying the precise origin of vulnerabilities and unauthorized or erroneous hits on data.

Enterprise quo vadis?

After establishing itself as a leading infrastructure provider and enabler for startups and new business models in the cloud, the company from Seattle has been trying to get one foot directly in the lucrative business environment for quite some time. However, one question remains open. Will that be enough to achieve a critical mass of German companies in order to evolve from a provider for startups and developers to a serious alternative for IT workloads for business?

Yes, under certain conditions:

  • Business related services must be launched simultaneously in all regions and not only in the U.S..
  • AWS requires a network of partners in order to reach the mass of attractive German corporate customers.
  • The localization of all information, such as white papers, how-to’s and training is critical.
  • Less self-service, more managed services and professional services, e.g. through the partner network.
  • Reducing complexity by simplifying the use of the scale-out principle.
  • Cloud Connectivity for reliable access to the services.
  • Avoidance of the service lock-in.
  • Strengthening the AWS Marketplace for easier use of scalable standard workloads and applications.
  • Consideration of hybrid cloud scenarios and strengthening of the partner Eucalyptus on the private cloud side.

Note on the Eucalyptus partnership: Nearly all Eucalyptus customers should also be AWS customers (Source: Eucalyptus). This means, conversely, that some hybrid cloud infrastructure exists between on-premise Eucalyptus infrastructure and the Amazon public cloud.

The existing question marks: Microsoft and Google

Medium-sized businesses demand from cloud providers that the data are stored in a German data center. About 75 percent consider physical data location a necessity to enforce German law more easily.

After Salesforce, IBM and Amazon are the only remaining major cloud providers who could be expected to make investments in this direction.

About Google, one can unfortunately say that nothing will happen in the near or far future. The DNA and mentality of the company in terms of data location and customer concerns differ too strongly from those of other providers.

At Microsoft, the cards are basically good. However, the Redmond company doesn’t need to play them now. Microsoft is pursuing a different strategy by using the Cloud OS Partner Network for local providers worldwide (e.g. Pironet NDH in Germany), empowering them with the so-called “Azure Pack” to offer an own Microsoft Azure based cloud infrastructure in a hosted model from a local data center.

How the trend of building local data centers will develop remains to be seen. Bottom line is, Germany and especially the location of Frankfurt, among others due to the DE-CIX, are well prepared to take additional international cloud providers. A key finding of this development is that international providers have understood the concerns and are willing to make compromises in the name of what is good for the user.

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Analysis

The cloud computing market in Germany 2013

The significance of cloud computing continues to increase in Germany. If you believe in local market researchers the interest in on-demand services continues unabated and is even increasing steadily. The same can be said for the vendor side. Periodically, new services or even providers appear on the market. In particular, the software-as-a-service (SaaS) market is enjoying growing popularity in Germany. Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) providers are similarly well represented, but should not make the same mistakes as their international competitors. For platform-as-a-service (PaaS) provider is still enough space.

Cloud demand in Germany with steady growth

Believing in the figures from market researcher Techconsult, already a third of smaller German companies use cloud solutions. The greatest demand is there from the mittelstand preferred from trade, banking and insurance industry. Large corporations and medium-sized companies are among the leaders in the use, but also the small ones catching up rapidly. In the last year, only eight percent of small-and medium-sized companies planned to use cloud solutions, this year it’s already 24 percent .

29 percent of companies in the trade industrie are interested in cloud computing. This is an increase by 21 percent compared to last year. In service industries every fourth company relies on cloud services, on-year increase of over ten percent. The biggest interest comes from the field of banking and insurance. 33 percent of the companies in these industries rely therefore on cloud technologies, although the cloud was considered in the previous year rather skeptical.

Conferences show a similar behavior

At the first Amazon Web Services Summit in 2010 in the Berlin Kalkscheune manageable 150 participants could be counted. Meanwhile, Amazon has moved to the Berlin Conference Center, reaching 1,500 participants, so many that monitors had to be placed outside. The situation is similar with Salesforce. The as a SaaS CRM provider well known company welcomed at this year’s Customer Company Tour 13 up to 1,800 visitors, according to their own account.

Compared to the masses, that regularly rush on American conferences these numbers are rather Peanuts. In Germany, however, very good odds.

Distribution of the cloud computing provider in Germany

What the examples of Amazon and Salesforce show: Both companies are cloud service providers and do not trade with virtual resources. Even if Amazon was the first IaaS provider on the market and is considered as a prime example, it is about the web services around the infrastructure that provide the customers with the actual value. It’s the same with Salesforce. Started as a hybrid of SaaS and PaaS provider, the CRM vendor directed its platform to the future and topics such as The Internet of Things.

In the two points above, most of the German cloud providers stumble. The IaaS market in Germany is highly developed. In addition to many subsidiaries of international companies more and more vendors from Germany are looking for their place in this cloud segment. However, all rely on the same strategy and make the same mistake as many international vendors to gain IaaS market share. First, they focus exclusively on virtual resources (computing power, storage space) and provide no added value services around it, see Amazon AWS. Second, corporate customers are addressed exclusively. Developers are not be considered. From a financial perspective this is attractive, but means that developers must inevitably avoid to U.S. based providers, as there are no similar German but also European alternatives.

The largest cloud market in Germany is provided by the SaaS provider. Here, many famous IT players attend but also increasingly young companies with innovative ideas. SaaS offerings are primarily driven by market places from major service providers such as Deutsche Telekom or Fujitsu. Both collect, for them, high-quality services under one roof and provide an assorted offer, companies can choose from. A special characteristic of many German SaaS solutions is the fact that they take care of the construction of the necessary cloud infrastructure and consciously set on a German data center. Issues such as the future security of their own solution and trust by the customer are the main decision criteria.

The market for PaaS provider is still very open. The number of providers that are launched directly from Germany, can be counted on one hand and is very manageable. Moreover, two out of three set on IaaS offers from U.S. provider. In addition to some international competitors, here are still opportunities for a PaaS, which is operated directly in Germany. However, the large (German/ European) IaaS providers are asked to give young entrepreneurs and developers the ability to develop such a solution faster.

Germany is on a good way to the cloud

At the end of the day it can be said, that the German cloud computing market has a well balanced ratio of XaaS solutions. However, there is still some potential left behind by not addressing the important group of startups and developers with appropriate services for them, and this therefore having to avoid to overseas provider.

The distinguished figures in terms of cloud adoption in Germany show that the confidence in the provider is growing steadily and the understanding for the value of cloud services has reached. But it also shows that the providers have worked on themselves and are willing to eliminate the concerns and criticisms of their potential customers.

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Comment

PRISM plays into German and European cloud computing providers hands

The U.S. government and above all PRISM has done the U.S. cloud computing providers a bad turn. First discussions now kindle if the public cloud market is moribund. Not by a long shot. On the contrary, European and German cloud computing providers play this scandal into the hands and will ensure that the European cloud computing market will grow stronger in the future than predicted. Because the trust in the United States and its vendors, the U.S. government massively destroyed itself and thus have them on its conscience, whereby companies, today, have to look for alternatives.

We’ve all known it

There have always been suspicions and concerns of companies to store their data in a public cloud of a U.S. provider. Here, the Patriot Act was the focus of discussion in the Q&A sessions or panels after presentations or moderations that I have kept. With PRISM the discussion now reached its peak and confirm, unfortunately, those who have always used eavesdropping by the United States and other countries as an argument.

David Lithicum has already thanked the NSA for the murder of the cloud. I argue with a step back and say that the NSA “would be” responsible for the death of U.S. cloud providers. If it comes to, that remains to be seen. Human decisions are not always rational nature.

Notwithstanding the above, the public cloud is not completely death. Even before the announcement of the PRISM scandal, companies had the task to classify their data according to business critical and public. This now needs to be further strengthen, because completely abandon the public cloud would be wrong.

Bye Bye USA! Welcome Europe und Germany

As I wrote above, I see less death of the cloud itself, but much more to come the death of U.S. providers. Hence I include those who have their locations and data centers here in Europe or Germany. Because the trust is so heavily destroyed that all declarations and appeasement end in smoke in no time.

The fact is that U.S. providers and their subsidiary companies are subordinate to the Patriot Act and therefore also the “Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)”, which requires them to provide information about requested information. The provider currently trying to actively strengthen themselves by claiming more responsibility from the U.S. government, to keep at least the rest of trust what is left behind. This is commendable but also necessary. Nevertheless, the discussion about the supposed interfaces, “copy-rooms” or backdoors at the vendors, with which third parties can freely tap the data, left a very bad aftertaste.

This should now encourage more European and German cloud providers. After all, not to be subject to the U.S. influence should played out as an even greater competitive advantage than ever. These include inter alia the location of the data center, the legal framework, the contract, but also the technical security (end-to-end encryption).

Depending on how the U.S. government will react in the next time, it will be exciting to see how U.S. provider will behave on the European market. So far, there are always 100% subsidiaries of the large U.S. companies that are here locally only as an offshoot and are fully subordinated to the mother in the United States.

Even though I do not advocate a pure “Euro-Cloud” neither a “German Cloud”. But, under these current circumstances, there can only be a European solution. Viviane Reding, EU Commissioner for Justice, is now needed to enforce an unconditional privacy regulation for Europe, which European companies strengthens against the U.S. companies from this point in the competition.

The courage of the providers is required

It appears, that there will be no second Amazon, Google, Microsoft or Salesforce from Europe or even Germany. The large ones, especially T-Systems and SAP strengthen their current cloud business and giving companies a real alternative to U.S. providers. Even bright spots of startups are sporadic seen on the horizon. What is missing are inter alia real and good infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) offerings of young companies who do not only have infrastructure resources in their portfolio, but rely on services similar to Amazon. The problem with IaaS are the high capital requirements that are necessary for it to ensure massive scalability and more.

Other startups who are offering for example platform-as-a-service (PaaS), in many cases, set in the background on the infrastructure of Amazon – U.S. provider. But here have providers such as T-Systems the duty not to focus exclusively on enterprises and also allow developers to build their ideas and solutions on a cloud infrastructure in Germany and Europe through the “Amazon Way”. There is still a lack of a real(!) German-European alternatives to Amazon Web Services, Google, Microsoft and Salesforce!

How should companies behave now?

Among all these aspects one have to advise companies, to look for a provider that is located in a country that guarantees the required legal conditions for the company itself regarding data protection and information security. And that can currently only be a provider from Europe or Germany. Incidentally, that was even before PRISM. Furthermore, companies themselves have the duty to classify their data and to evaluate mission-critical information at a much higher level of protection than less important and publicly available information.

How it actually looks at U.S. companies is hard to say. After all, 56 percent of the U.S. population find the eavesdropping of telephone calls as acceptable. Europeans, and especially the Germans, will see that from a different angle. In particular, we Germans will not accept a Stasi 2.0, which instead of rely on the spies from the ranks (neighbors, friends, parents, children, etc.), on machines and services.

Categories
Analysis

Enterprise Cloud Portal: T-Systems consolidates its cloud portfolio

With its Enterprise Cloud Portal German Telekom subsidiary T-Systems presents its first cloud service-wide offering for corporate customers. On the portal, companies can inform about the cloud solutions from T-Systems, test them and order directly. The currently offered services include solutions for mobile device management, Dynamic Services for Infrastructure and the Enterprise Marketplace. A look at the site shows that great emphasis was placed on the compatibility with tablets.

Past the IT department

With its cloud portal T-Systems want to enable also non-technical users in large companies to access specific cloud solutions. The cloud provider refers to a study by Gartner, which says that up to 2015, about 35 percent of IT spending are selected and managed outside the IT department. Be mentioned here, for example, marketing, purchasing and accounting.

Mobile Device Management

The mobile device management from the cloud should help businesses in the administration of mobile devices with different operating systems, such as iOS and Android via a standardized web platform. In addition to security settings, control access rights to functions and applications can be made. In case of loss of the device, the data can be deleted remotely. A test of the mobile device management is free for the first four weeks for up to three mobile devices.

Dynamic Services for Infrastructure

For infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) two offerings are ready: On the one hand, the “Dynamic Services for Infrastructure” (DSI) from a hosted private cloud. Secondly, the “DSI with vCloud Datacenter Services” as a hybrid variant. The management of the resources does the client itself via a web-based portal or using its own VMware management software. Clear pricing models to make the cost of the infrastructure transparent. Thus, for example, a server from the hosted private cloud costs from 9 cents per hour in the package “Small”. For the hybrid solution the package price for a virtual data center in the smallest version is exactly at 999,84€ per month.

Enterprise Marketplace

The Enterprise Market Place includes, among other things, further IaaS solutions including operating systems for Linux and Windows Server, platform-as-a-service (PaaS) solutions, including Tomcat and Microsoft SQL Server as well as a growing number of software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings like Doculife, CA Nimsoft TAXOR, TIS, WeSustain, Metasonic, ARAS, Tibco Tibbr, Sugar CRM, Microsoft Enterprise Search and Microsoft Lync. In addition, companies should therefore be given the opportunity to apply a variety of applications highly safe in need-based formats, but also can migrate to host their own applications. The full availability of the Enterprise Market Place is planned for this summer. Currently, there is already a preview on the cloud portal.

Comment

With the Enterprise Cloud Portal T-Systems summarizes his entire cloud portfolio together under one umbrella. I had analyzed “The cloud portfolio of T-Systems” in an article for the German Computerwoche in 2011. At that time the offering was made of single and independent services. However, already at that time I came to the conclusion that T-Systems has a very well sophisticated and well-rounded cloud portfolio. This can be seen now in the consolidated Enterprise Cloud Portal. From SaaS over PaaS to IaaS and other solutions for mobile devices can be found. With it T-Systems is one of the few providers that have a full cloud stack and which is now even bundled into a single portal.

Especially in the Enterprise Marketplace is a lot potential. At this year’s CeBIT, I could take a first look at it which was in my opinion at this time still in an alpha state. Some basic and necessary essential functions for an IaaS offering, automatic scalability and high-availability may be mentioned only, were still missing. But that was in March and I’m assuming that T-Systems has already made ​​more progress here. In addition, I have already heard from a reputable source, that T-Systems/ Telekom will gradually change their cloud infrastructure to OpenStack, which will also give the Enterprise Market Place another boost in compatibility.

Where T-Systems sees an advantage for non-technical users in enterprises, should cause worry lines for IT managers. Indeed, I am also of the opinion that the IT department will become and even need to be a service broker. However, I think it is quite questionable if each department can simply run off and buy IT services externally as desired. Certainly, the blame lies with the IT departments themselves because they have built up a bad reputation over the years and are considered as slow and not innovative. I have philosophized about it here two years ago in detail (cloud computing and the shadow IT).

A certain supervisory authority in the form of a service broker is still necessary, because otherwise it is an uncontrolled proliferation of external services about which one will lose track. This can be controlled, of course, if one obtains the services from a single provider. And that is exactly the goal of T-Systems and its extensive Enterprise Cloud Portal. A customer should explicitly and across departments, refer the services from the T-Systems Cloud in order to avoid sprawl and to keep track. The question is whether this can be set internally by the customers that way. Because there are plenty of other services in the sea.

In the end I would like to address a topic that is currently causing a stir in the end customer market, but offers corporate customers a great advantage. The end-to-end offering of services. T-Systems is due to its situation, to be a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom, one of the few cloud providers who can offer a service level from the services at application level or even virtual machine level in the data center, including the data line. This enables customers to maintain a continuous Quality-of-Service (QoS) and a comprehensive Service Level Agreement (SLA), which many other cloud providers can not afford.

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Analysis

Microsoft probably builds a cloud computing data center in Germany

First, I have this information not from a Microsoft employee, so it is not a confirmed report. However, three people have told me, independently from each other, the fact that Microsoft plans to build at least one data center for its cloud services, including Windows Azure and Microsoft Office 365, in Germany. Therefore, one should assume that a little truth is behind this information. If Microsoft would confirm this, you should just say chapeau Microsoft! This is exactly the right way.

It fits into their strategy

Microsoft’s current strategy is “CLOUD First”. This is no secret and was confirmed to me several times by Microsoft’s side. Among others from the business division Dynamics CRM that is constantly growing through the cloud. At Microsoft since the launch of Dynamics CRM Online in 2011 the approach is “cloud first!” and this seems to prove themselves. The cloud solution has reached a high level of customer acceptance, which was able to win 30% more customers for Microsoft Dynamics CRM. While 60% of all new customers rely on the cloud solution.

The situation is similar in many other areas of the company. Be mentioned only Windows Azure, which is constantly being expanded, or Office 365. For this reason, the construction of at least one data center in Germany is and and would be the next logical step to meet us Germans with regard to confidence.

Data center in Germany: An enormous competitive advantage

Microsoft supplies the European market currently over its data centers in Ireland (Dublin) and the Netherlands (Amsterdam). This comes with many Germans, especially privacy officers and medium-sized enterprises, to discomfort. Storing data outside of Germany and a contract after a maximum of European law is not welcome. However, Germany should not be neglected as a business location. For U.S. companies Germany may indeed be a small country, but to underestimate the economic power would be fatal.

If the fact is true, that Microsoft is building a cloud data center in Germany, it would be an enormous competitive advantage over other providers such as Amazon Web Services or Google. Especially in the highly competitive market for corporate customers, where Amazon AWS and Google struggle and where Microsoft already has the best starting position, due to an existing broad customer base, Microsoft would make a big step forward.

Beyond – If the data center will be built, as I believe strategically, Amazon and Google will each no longer come around to build their own data center in Germany. Indeed both and in particular Amazon is the technologically leader in the cloud computing market, but the location advantage is not negligible with a data center in Germany to actively begin to take the concerns of the German companies.

After all, cloud computing is the future! Only the legal and data privacy issues need to be adapted to the level of countries plus the customer needs which must be considered. Technologies and services are allowed to and even have to be standardized! But contracts and organizational issues have to be lead at eye level.