by Mikayel Vardanyan
| Mar 15, 2011

Amazon Web Services
- Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
- Simple Storage Service (S3)
- On-demand Database and Messaging services
- Content Delivery Network
Advantages:
- Innovative, pay as you go
- Early entry into market
- Large capacity computer processing
- Database management and data center
- USA, Europe and Asia hosting locations
- Thought leader and more innovative
|
Disadvantages:
- Support
- Reliability
- No managed services
- Does not offer dedicated servers
- Missing hybrid offering of private, public combo
|

AT&T Synaptic Hosting
- Application hosting
- Virtual servers
- Virtual storage
- Integrated security
- Integrated networking
Advantages:
- Built-in infrastructure
- Data center assets
- Connectivity and billing systems in place
- Manage accounts through AT&T portal
- Brand recognition
|
Disadvantages:
- Inflexible sales and service
- Response is not proactive
- May be difficult to connect to non-AT&T
|

Google Apps
- Online office productivity software
- Calendaring
- Report sharing
- Website creation
- Developer app
- Platform as a Service
Advantages:
- Accelerates move to SaaS
- Supports Web security
- Credible service and application use
|
Disadvantages:
- Limited internal IT use
- Public cloud is typical
- Private use limited
- Limited enterprise level credibility
|

GoGrid
- Virtual servers, both Windows and Linux
- Web-based storage
- Pre-installed software
Advantages:
- Windows Server 2008 (latest)
- Offers 100% uptime agreements
|
Disadvantages:
- Offers individual user accounts, not managed
- Xen based provider; most enterprise is Vmware
- Limited global infrastructure and data centers
|

Microsoft Azure
- Windows as a service
- Developer access
- Build web-based Windows applications
Advantages:
- Consistency with Windows
- Corporate resources
|
Disadvantages:
- Packaged software model may not work
- Late entry
|

Rackspace Cloud
- Cloud sites for building websites
- Cloud files for storage
- Cloud servers
Advantages:
- Fanatic support
- Virtual private server capabilities
- Hosted data center services
- Trust and recognition at enterprise level
- Shared hosting
|
Disadvantages:
- Cloud offerings still separate from managed hosting
- Best at web-centric apps, not internal enterprise
- Lagging in enterprise-class solutions
|

Salesforce/Force.com
- CRM tools
- Sales force automation
- Application hosting
- Platform as a Service
- Application development
- Analytics
- Marketing
- Social networking
Advantages:
- Pioneered SaaS market
- Moving to platform as a service offering
- Quick build of business apps
- No software or hardware maintenance
- Economical data center designs
|
Disadvantages:
- Small business focus, may not address large company issues
- Stand-alone solution, difficult to layer in with IT infrastructure
|

SAVVIS
- IT infrastructure focus
- Flexible service model
- Ready-to-go services
- Web Solutions
- Cloud Computing
- Hosting
- Content Management
Advantages:
- Better serves the IT professional
- Green datacenter focus
- Cost savings
- Performance
|
Disadvantages:
- Sales and support staff not efficient due to depth of offering
- Not fully integrated cloud and managed services
- Offering more expensive than close competitors
|