Prebuilt devices are a ray of clarity amid the fogginess of hybrid

Hybrid can be a difficult thing to define in cloud computing. The term “hybrid” is overused by vendors but underused by customers, causing general confusion over its definition as well as solid examples of hybrid solutions. An area of the market that cuts through those areas of confusion is hybrid cloud integrated systems. These are physical devices (appliances) that are designed to integrate with public cloud services and can be used in customers’ own data centers. The idea that customers can physically touch the box and also integrate with external cloud services makes integrated systems one of the easiest and most obvious hybrid scenarios.

Examples of integrated systems solutions include Azure Stack from Microsoft and its hardware partners and Cloud at Customer from Oracle. While adoption and usage of these hybrid cloud solutions remain limited, the trend is picking up momentum and is prompting vendors such as Amazon and Google to move closer to competing in the space, particularly as customer demand from heavily regulated industries favors local versions of vendor-hosted cloud infrastructure. For example, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft are the two front-runners in the race to win the U.S. Department of Defense’s Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) contract. While AWS has largely been seen as the overall favorite, its Snowball Edge offering does not meet the same bidirectional synchronization requirement of the tactical edge device that Azure Stack does.

Kubernetes season is in full swing as OpenStack falters

For large enterprise customers, open-source technologies have garnered much interest as part of their cloud strategies. The ability to utilize solutions that provide the same backbone as large cloud providers while maintaining the control associated with open source has been an attractive value proposition for those with the resources to implement and manage them. However, predicting which technologies will be the most commonly adopted has been more challenging, creating uncertainty around frameworks such as OpenStack, which has yet to garner significant momentum in the market.

Compounding the hurdles for OpenStack to overcome continues to be the ongoing explosion in growth among public cloud IaaS front-runners AWS, Google, Microsoft and Alibaba. OpenStack founders and former OpenStack pure plays are making notable shifts toward Kubernetes. The difference, though, is that Canonical and Red Hat are still holding onto OpenStack, while others, such as Rackspace, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, IBM and Mirantis, de-emphasize it.

Customers increasingly understand the benefits of containers and container orchestration platforms and embrace the portability and interoperability they provide. According to a recent interview done as part of TBR’s Cloud Customer Research Program, a retail SVP, CIO and CTO said, “You need to make sure there are escape clauses in your contracts in case you need to get out. Once you’re in it, you’re pretty much married, and that divorce is really bad. That’s the reason we have a container. … Because if it starts to get too expensive, we want to pull it off quickly.”

This is just one example of the immediate enterprise benefits of container and container orchestration platforms, which can change the game for enterprises in terms of their cloud adoption road maps and long-term cloud plans.

Hybridization is becoming even more widespread than customers realize

While pre-integrated devices are the most obvious examples of hybrid usage, the vast majority of activity is occurring in more subtle situations. This activity is driven by the desire among vendors to sell broader solutions and the desire among customers to implement services that integrate with existing and other new technologies. The good news for both sides of the market is that there are more capabilities than ever to put those more cohesive, integrated solutions in place.

Salesforce, whose solutions are commonly integrated into hybrid environments, has taken a notable step into the hybrid enablement space by acquiring MuleSoft. The acquisition, which closed on May 1 at the start of Salesforce’s FY2Q19, brings MuleSoft’s well-known integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) solution and services into Salesforce’s arsenal. The implications for Salesforce, its customers and the market are vast, as the company can create connections between its applications and the variety of other cloud and legacy systems residing in customers’ environments. Salesforce quickly leveraged the iPaaS technology, bringing Salesforce Integration Cloud to market within the first few months of having MuleSoft on board, enabling customers to augment their Salesforce applications and derive greater insights from their non-Salesforce data.

Last December, EY Global Blockchain Leader Paul Brody recognized the breakout market for initial coin offerings (ICOs) and launched a longitudinal study, centered on class of 2017 companies that is fueled by this new way of raising money for software startups. One year later, as detailed in EY’s report published today, market valuations for the top 10 ICOs were off 55% — abysmal performance by any standard. Buried in the bad news for almost all the companies, one can find a few bits of success, particularly with companies providing blockchain infrastructure. The incredibly poor performance around incubation makes a strong case, to use a “Deadwood” metaphor, that snake oil salesmen made up most of those 2017ers. As this year comes to a close, around one-quarter of the initial ICO-backed companies have a product in the market, further evidence the breakout included a number of outright frauds. In addition, of the 25 companies that had products, seven devalued the use of utility tokens by allowing payment in fiat currency, facing up to enterprises’ persistent reluctance to conduct business transactions in anything but hard currencies. Curiously, paying in tokens, according to Brody in a discussion with TBR prior to today’s announcement, came across as only the second-biggest obstacle to commercial adoption, with the first being the desire for transaction privacy — a desire pure public blockchains cannot satisfy. In EY’s previous report on ICOs, issued last December, the firm anticipated the third-greatest objection, concerns over full regulatory compliance, an insight that tracks closely with EY’s tax and audit credentials.

Today’s report includes a few nuggets revealing the depth of EY’s study:

• “Companies that have made meaningful progress toward working products only increased by 13% in 2018. 71% have no offering in the market at all. Typically, within one year of a traditional venture-backed software startup, you would expect to see a significantly higher percentage of the companies with a functional early stage product.”
• “Seven out of 25 reviewed projects accept other currencies, rendering utility tokens less valuable. Some projects have altogether dropped their utility tokens to focus on functionality. To become a means of payment, utility tokens have to be stable. If it remains stable, the token is of little interest to speculative investors.”
• “Globally, sources of funding will likely shift away from retail investors toward entities that can understand and manage the downside risks, such as venture capital and digital asset-focused investment funds.”

Will next year be better? The blockchain infrastructure companies will likely be surpassed by a second wave of ICO-funded companies, with most of these taking an asset-backed approach to token issuance, essentially creating a product that is enterprise-ready at a time when buyers are not convinced of the benefits of placing all their assets on the public blockchain domain. This then raises the question: Do new wave ICO-funded companies need to rip pages from Ethereum’s playbook or simply play within its orbit? Ethereum is not a one-size-fits-all solution, but it certainly provides a solid foundation for many to learn from, especially around its “smart” contact functionality. Further advancing along some of the must-do steps EY pointed out in its December 2017 report, this second wave will more adequately address the need for clear justifications for blockchains and tokens; an ICO process more closely aligned to the initial public offering (IPO) process; enhanced security; and something close to legal compliance, or the regulators will simply begin enforcement substantial enforcement. In short, privacy trumps transactability.

The regulatory aspect piques my interest, in part because of the know-your-customer (KYC) aspects of post-ICO-linked financial transactions and recent efforts of EY, among others, to better incorporate emerging technologies into anti-money-laundering and KYC operations.

In this wild west, with its unregulated moral hazard, where does EY fit in?

My initial thoughts had the consultancy as the “Deadwood” preacher, known to all and trusted, but neither the law nor the bank. My colleagues convinced me EY will be more like the General Store, providing certified, trustworthy services and goods, helping clients mine for gold without shortcuts and faulty equipment that bring down the whole operation. Now imagine artificial-intelligence-enhanced, blockchain-powered resupply brought into Deadwood.