In introducing Cloud Computing as one of themes I flagged an intention to write profiles of suppliers and users. The first company to get in touch was Quest Software. I had an interesting talk with Joe Baguley (European CTO) and will try to capture his company’s approach.
Quest Software 2009 Backgrounder
Quest is a US management software company engaged in helping CIOs and software developers (usually in large organisations) manage their software deployments and improve efficiency. Its products cover four main areas – Microsoft Windows, Applications, Virtualisation and Database. I’ve shown the company’s revenues and profits in Figure 1. 
The company has grown through acquisitions, having bought Foglight and Fastlane in 2000, BB4 and Sitraka ($51.7m) in 2002, Aelita Software ($115m) in 2004, Imceda ($46.5m) Ventela ($56.5m) in 2005, Visioncore and Netpro ($78.7m) in 2008. It 2009 it was reported in India as looking to acquire an Indian software company. In comparison with other software companies it has barely been affected by the current recession – posting only a 4% decline in revenues in Q109. However Q408 and Q109 were the only quarters in my model (starting in 2003) in which Quest didn’t post double-digit revenue growth. It has been useful in helping users integrate non-Microsoft products into the Windows environment, saving major organisations large amounts of money in the process. Hardly surprisingly then Quest was awarded Microsoft Global ISV Partner of the year status in 2004 and 2007.
Quest’s Joe Baguley On Cloud Computing
First of all Joe mentioned that Quest are involved with Cloud Camp in London on July 9th. He thinks that Oracle’s Dave Chappell has a good taxonomy and user-oriented view of the subject. He believes that Cloud Computing will change things, but – for a large number of organisations – not quite as drastically as the current hype suggests and certainly not in the near future. He pointed out that there are different kinds of Cloud Computing – that Force.com and Microsoft Azure are different to Web 2.0 applications like Facebook and Twitter. Even Amazon EC2 is restricted by the fact that Amazon only has 2 data centres. As with many new developments, Cloud Computing – with its promise of ‘on-demand computing with zero entry costs’ and ‘application usage built on credit cards’ – appears to offer cheaper solutions. However we need to think about a number of other considerations. For instance:
- Cloud Computing doesn’t sit easily with issues of security and location. Local legislation is different in every country – one reason why Microsoft may have to investigate hosting Azure within the UK, despite have a data centre already set up in Dublin
- Exiting from Cloud Computing email services could be very difficult. User organisations need to ask ‘what are we trying to do?’, ‘what benefits do we see?’ and ‘how much is each mail box going to cost?’
- His main point is that Cloud Computing may not be as cheap as people think. In fact plus most CIOs don’t know how much it costs them to provide the services they run for end-users internally today – making comparisons to proposed Cloud cost models tricky, if not impossible
He realises the growing importance of Microsoft’s Azure as a platform utility using Cloud Computing as a back-end. Some large users will want to set up and run their own Azure implementations, which Joe believes Microsoft may eventually endorse (perhaps with a different name). Quest’s Cloud Computing approach isn’t exclusively tied to Microsoft Azure, but it recognises the need to build its offerings for specific (not generic) platforms. Many organisations are already building their own ‘private clouds’ using massively virtualised infrastructure on platforms such as VMWare’s vSphere . However the true cost-savings in such on-premise cloud computing will come through tools and operating processes that allow a very small number of administrative staff manage many thousands of instances, whilst also (in an ideal world) providing some form of charge-back mechanism. In-house private Clouds will allow organisations to charge their own divisions for internal application use. But building internal data centres to run private Cloud Computing will need large up-front investments. Before doing so many organisations will look to start with off-premise development, which is why Joe believes offerings such as Amazon’s EC2 are good. Joe pointed out that there are some big differences in billing model between internal and Cloud Computing models. In particular Cloud Computing suppliers either offer unlimited relational databases (Azure) and/or charges on a ‘GB in GB’ out model (Amazon EC2 and Azure). With these users could end up paying for a lot they don’t actually use. In addition users will be locked-in to the billing models. Joe believes it’s vital for CIOs to link the concept with the things they’re trying to achieve. They should be thinking about how Cloud Computing can help them cut operational costs, lower the entry price of application development and improve performance. He concluded that the Cloud Computing concept is great in kick-starting all organisations at many levels into thinking hard about how they do things now – and how they will do them in the future.
Where Does Quest Fit In My Cloud Computing Taxonomy?
As a supplier of monitoring and management software, the issues of helping users improve efficiency, reduce complexity and lower costs is paramount in Quest’s strategy. Therefore its approach to Cloud Computing is to get involved enough to propose specific products to help with these aims. 
Its customers are CIOs and software developers in large organisations (I put CIOs in with data Centre managers in Figure 2). Its products fall into the OS and Middleware and Metering/Billing categories in Figure 3. It’s involved mainly with helping users build private Clouds, although I’m sure some of the public Clouds also use Quest’s products. Do you have an interesting approach to Cloud Computing? Please let me know and I’ll try to write and overview of your approach.