Bringing Cloud 2.0 into Focus at HCTS

For this week’s News and Views, we spent some time with Dr. Owen Rogers (@owenrog), Senior Analyst, Digital Economics and featured speaker at HCTS. As a contributor to the 451 Research Cloud Price Index, Owen will incorporate these findings into his presentation.

#451HCTS: Hi Owen, looking forward to hearing your presentation at HCTS next month. Can you give us a preview of your session,  ªPricing Benchmarks and Strategies: How Service Providers are Differentiating on Price and Increasing Margins º?

@owenrog: In the same way that a consumer price index uses a basket of groceries to measure inflation, our Cloud Price Index uses a basket of cloud services, which represents a typical cloud application, to measure how cloud pricing is really changing. There’s been lots of hype over the past year about cloud providers cutting prices, with some commentators saying regular price cuts of up to 50% are affecting service providersʼ profitability. We’ve been tracking pricing for nearly a year now and our big finding is ʻdon’t believe the hype!ʼ

#451HCTS: Without giving too much of your presentation away, what has the Cloud Price Index revealed that we weren’t previously aware of?

@owenrog: On the public cloud, prices aren’t being cut as much as people think – despite the headlines, our basket of goods has come down only 2.25% over the past year! On the private cloud side of things, we regularly hear of a so-called ʻtaxʼ on using commercial orchestration platforms – but due to the high cost of OpenStack engineers, we actually find that in our scenario, OpenStack has a greater TCO than the commercial platforms.

#451HCTS: How does your session tie into the overall theme of Cloud 2.0?

@owenrog: Enterprises want to choose the Best Execution Venue for all their workloads and needs, including IaaS, PaaS, private, hybrid and public cloud – the Cloud Price Index includes indicators across all of these venues. The CPI extends beyond compute and storage, and covers databases and value-added services. We recently launched a Private Cloud Edition, so we now have pricing data across a range of cloud services, on both public and private cloud.

#451HCTS: Based on your experience, what value will attendees take away from coming to HCTS?

@owenrog: I was a product manager in the cloud industry before joining 451 Research, and held HCTS in high regard. HCTS is a great place to get a validation on product strategy, and the networking and sessions can really stimulate ideas for new ways to differentiate.

#451HCTS: What advice would you give to new attendees to get the most out of their experience?

@owenrog: Coffee and business cards. I’m flying in from the UK for the event, and the regular coffee breaks help me stay on form and give me an opportunity to chat to attendees. I seem to always run out of business cards, so I recommend bring more than you expect to give out!

#451HCTS: Great tips! Thanks for joining us, Owen.

Join the conversation using #451HCTS and register now to attend!