Citrix CTO On Demanding Clarity From Cloud Vendors

Citrix Systems CTO Simon Crosby sat down with Andrew Conry Murray at Interop 2011 for a candid question-and-answer session on a variety of subjects, including emerging cloud power centers--Citrix is a major player in some. The company is also pushing emerging standards on a variety of fronts, including cloud computing and application performance. Crosby talked about the company's goals for these efforts. He also advised IT to demand more vendor clarity about the cloud.

Conry Murray: Citrix CEO Mark Templeton described four power centers that seem to be emerging in the cloud: Amazon/Xen, VMware, Microsoft Azure, and OpenStack. Do you agree with that assessment, and would you modify it in any way?

Crosby: I think it's right. Certainly, Amazon has an enormous lead. I think the outage of a few weeks ago and subsequent explanation of how they fixed it shows how hard it is to run a public cloud service.

Conry Murray: Do you think these power centers will change over time?

Crosby: The traditional service provider segment wants to be a part of this. You'll see more acquisitions as service providers look to add to their portfolios; so Verizon took out Terremark, and you'll see others. And you'll see specialization. There will be geographic specializations to address compliance issues of where data can be stored. There will be a phenomenal adoption of cloud in Japan because they are going to have 25% less power in the coming summer.