A service has launched that in its business scope is similar to Hotwire.com by creating spot markets for excess capacity from cloud computing providers.
SpotCloud provides a way for sellers to market excess cloud computing capacity from existing infrastructure. Buyers may purchase capacity at what amounts to bargain prices.
That’s similar to Hotwire.com, the service that provides people with the ability to find hotel rooms at bargain prices. Hotels provide the rooms they have vacant. In essence, putting its excess capacity on the market for people to purchase.
Enomaly launched the service this morning and with it came a number of questions about the terminology and the value of the service.
The service is similar to Zimory, a service that some say got its start a bit early.
Krishnan Subramanian of Cloud Ave. writes:
“This is not something new or trailblazing. In fact, Zimory attempted this sometime back and they didn’t get much of a traction. Part of the reason could be that Zimory was too early in the market and, now, the cloud ecosystem is much more vibrant than a year or so back. Even though I showed lot of enthusiasm when Zimory offered a similar service, I am little less enthusiastic now. Partly, I have seen the resistance from the enterprise customers to put their data outside of their firewall. In fact, if they could open up to trust another enterprise provider, they can as well trust a neutral third party public cloud provider who can even offer a much better SLA without going through an intermediary. Even though I like the idea of SpotCloud, I don’t see much of an opportunity in the enterprise cloud market at present.”
George Reese of Enstratus said such a service makes sense for the hotel market. The travel industry has a lack of transparency that makes such a service possible. But lower down the stack, it’s a question if such a service will work. “I think the cloud brokerage opportunity is at the application level, not at the infrastructure level,” Reese said on Twitter.
Ben Kepes takes a different view:
“Infrastructure is, despite what many would contend, a relatively undifferentiated marketplace that, over time will continue to compete primarily on price – as such a service that allows excess capacity to both be driven down in price and, more importantly, utilized as close as possible to maximum, is a valid market offering.
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Sam Johnston used Reuven Cohen’s own words to discount the value of a commodity exchange. Cohen is the founder of Enomaly. He is pretty much responsible for the launch of the SpotCloud service.
An excerpt from Johnston’s “find and replace,” post:
If nothing else, the conversation about SpotCloud shows that the cloud computing space definitely has an energy about it. But SpotCloud’s future? We’ll have to see how that debate unfolds.
