The Platform: Need vs. Want
These last couple weeks have been incredibly exciting here at Carpathia. We have been working on a lot of architectural-related improvements with our cloud and there are some very cool new features coming. I have been engaging with one of our newest partners, Vyatta, to enable some new networking features for an upcoming release. Next, I’m going to be going to the OpenStack Design Summit at the end of April which I’m looking forward to because I’ll get to meet many of my peers across the industry. It will be really interesting to get a pulse on how everyone feels about the future of cloud and where OpenStack will play.
Lately, I have been putting a lot of thought around what to think about all these questions we’re hearing with the latest cloud-related buzzword, “Platform”.
“What is your IaaS platform running on?”
“What do you think about the OpenStack platform?”
“How is your platform better than Amazon’s EC2?”
The last two are ones I think about quite a bit. There is no question that there is some fantastic innovation happening on the cloud front, and keeping up with all the various platforms and their respective nuances is quite a challenge. On my way home from the office today while sitting in the always wonderful Northern VA traffic, I had one of the moments Gregory House has every week.
“The platform doesn’t matter.”
Before I get flamed on Twitter, please let me explain.
Every day, I am involved in conversations with potential customers. They tell us what they want and we figure out a solution that meets their budget and their need. Customers always want to virtualize their legacy-dedicated systems and have some sort of high availability. Easy. First question we ask internally is “What platform should we use?” Almost always we go down the Citrix XenServer path. You may ask, “What about VMWare?” A lot of the customers we talk to do not need all the features that platform offers, and the cost is simply too much for what they require.
Now for a quick analogy. Let’s briefly switch to a completely different business segment, the car industry. The 2012 Acura TL platform has a total of 62 buttons on the steering wheel and center console. The number one selling automobile platformin the US - the Toyota Camry - has somewhere around 20. If Toyota's customers needed 62 buttons, then I guarantee they would have no problem adding an extra 42.
Customers don’t care about what the platform is - they only care about if their needs are being met.
The Carpathia platform meets the needs of new and existing customers everyday. We are constantly innovating and will continue to do so while keeping our customer’s needs in mind.
[ Authors ]
- Jon Greaves (44)
- Brian Winter (2)
- Carpathia Hosting (17)
- Paul Roberts (3)
- Teejay Riedl (5)
- Tim Burke (1)
- Rich Thompson (2)
[ Categories ]
[ Archives ]
Archives
- July 2012
- June 2012
- April 2012
- March 2012
- February 2012
- December 2011
- October 2011
- May 2011
- April 2011
- March 2011
- February 2011
- January 2011
- December 2010
- November 2010
- October 2010
- September 2010
- August 2010
- July 2010
- June 2010
- May 2010
- April 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- March 2009
- January 2009
- January 2008
Write a comment
Posts: 20
Reply #20 on : Mon January 28, 2013, 21:03:07
Posts: 20
Reply #19 on : Mon January 28, 2013, 05:58:08
Posts: 20
Reply #18 on : Sat November 10, 2012, 09:54:23
Posts: 20
Reply #17 on : Sat November 10, 2012, 02:26:28