Cloud, Schmoud: Hardware Still Counts

One of the industry's pioneers in virtualization and an emerging leader in cloud computing, EMC, had appeared tentative for a while in rolling out its new cloud computing platform. Atmos, its hosted storage offering, launched last year but EMC was relatively quiet about it. That is, until last month. Then, EMC made an announcement: it would work to give a boost to its Atmos cloud infrastructure platform by adding data protection technology, which it calls GeoProtect, as well as upgrading its entire hosting infrastructure to servers running Intel Xeon 5500 chips.

The Xeon 5500s are, simply, the most powerful processors we've ever seen in the CRN Test Center lab. Last year, in one instance, we were able to take a dual-Xeon server, two 5570 CPUs, and install Windows Server 2008 R2 and 20 functioning virtual servers in about an hour. In a server the size of two pizza boxes, we were able to build a stable, virtual data center in no time.

The system itself registered a Geekbench score of almost 15,000. Even though this happened a year ago, that's still the highest system score we've ever used with that benchmark.

When one of the biggest players in the industry adopts the most powerful hardware standard for one of its most critical, emerging lines of business, it makes a statement. Hardware still counts. EMC could have just said it would upgrade its data center and left it at that. But by going public with the details, EMC was making an important statement and challenging the rest of the industry to do the same. The cloud doesn't mean infrastructure goes away. It just means some people will pay other people to manage it for them. It's as simple as that.

Consider Rackspace, an EMC competitor that has been working to capture as much of the cloud market as possible over the past two years. In its financial reports, Rackspace and San Antonio has been informing investors on specifics of its infrastructure buildout -- namely, installation of more than 2,000 servers per quarter. For each new server Rackspace takes on, it has been adding between four and five customers of its cloud and hosting businesses. As one of the few, profitable pure-play cloud companies, Rackspace is counting on stability and availability of this hardware, as well.

For VARs, the investment in data center scale and capability of companies like EMC and Rackspace means that the bar is now being set. For private clouds, hybrid solutions or public clouds, back-end infrastructure is still meaningful and will likely be a competitive weapon.

The bottom line: As much as Hardware- or Software- or Everything-as-a-Service providers will insist IT is simply the equivalent of a "dial tone" for business capability, speeds and feeds will always count. How they are deployed, how much they cost and the reputation of those delivering them will count, too. If the network is the computer, as Sun Microsystems' co-founder Scott McNealy used to say, the cloud is also the computer.

But let's not forget: The computer is the computer, too.

E-MAIL ED MOLTZEN AT EDWARD.MOLTZEN@EC.UBM.COM