The winners of 2014 Cloud IaaS Gartner Magic Quadrant are best for HPC

HPC stands for High Performance Computing and includes High Performance Throughput computing. The intent to separate the two terms are really politics in academia. If we look at those from entrepreneurial point of view, they are the same

What is the connection with Gartner Magic Quadrant? Just read to the end.

Gartner Magic Quadrant for Cloud IaaS

The much expected and world famous Gartner report Magic Quadrant for Cloud Infrastructure as a Service for 2014   is out today.

Over the last few years, Lydia Leong and her team have won a status of a rock star group. She is to cloud computing what Roger Ebert is to movies.

The report makes an important distinction between Cloud IaaS and Cloud-Enabled System infrastructure (CESI)

We draw a distinction between cloud infrastructure as a service, and cloud infrastructure as a technology platform; we call the latter cloud-enabled system infrastructure (CESI). In cloud IaaS, the capabilities of a CESI are directly exposed to the customer through self-service. However, other services, including noncloud services, may be delivered on top of a CESI; these cloud-enabled services may include forms of managed hosting, data center outsourcing and other IT outsourcing services. In this Magic Quadrant, we evaluate only cloud IaaS offerings; we do not evaluate cloud-enabled services. (See "Technology Overview for Cloud-Enabled System Infrastructure," "Technology Overview for Cloud-Enabled Managed Hosting" and "Don't Be Fooled by Offerings Falsely Masquerading as Cloud Infrastructure as a Service" for more on this distinction.)

Here is the 2014 Magic Quadrant 2014

Magic Quadrant Cloud IaaS May 28, 2014

 From the blog entry Amazon Web Services: We hate you and We love you. see below the succession of magic quadrants  for 2010, 2012 and 2013.

In December 2010, Savvis, AT&T, Rackspace, Verizon and Terremark were in the winning quadrant 2. Verizon bought Terremark later, but the combined company dropped down. Amazon was not present at all  in the winning quadrant.

But from 2012 onward, Amazon AWS shot up and they blew the dust away from all competitors.

It is sad to see Joyent, one of the best promises we had - completely loose its status as the darling company of Cloud IaaS, after both founders left, particularly the charismatic Jason Hoffman

The biggest surprise is Microsoft. Now Seattle is the world capital of Cloud IaaS, as Amazon is also there.

Fig. 1 Gartner Magic Quadrant Cloud December 2010
Note AWS in the middle of the pack, with a below overlarge ability to execute.

Fig. 2 Gartner Magic Quadrant Cloud October 2012
Note AWS takes off. The 2010 judgement that AWS
has no ability to execute probably motivated Jeff Bezos

Fig. 3 Gartner Magic Quadrant Cloud  August 2013.
AWS further distances from the pack who seemingly move backwards.
Perhaps all others were unable to update their visions?

What does it mean for High Performance Computing?

It means commercial Cloud IaaS offering can no longer be ignored as way to run most complex HPC applications on demand.

There is no coincidence that the winners in the 2014 Gartner Cloud IaaS magic quadrant are also the best infrastructures ready for HPC applications. Cycle Computing extraordinary and meteoric success is based on building HTC and HPC applications on demand on  IaaS provided by Amazon Web Service. 

Microsoft acquisition of GreenButton  shows how serious Microsoft Azure cloud IaaS is about performance computing applications

This create new, unlimited opportunities for entrepreneurs in HPC / HTC, like Jason Stowe from Cycle and Scott Houston from Green button.

Following my article on Exabyte.io and Timur Bazhirov its founder who set up a shop in San Francisco, I receive  email from many others who would like to follow.

In Europe, Atos Buys Bull To Commercialize HPC, Build Out Cloud  HPCwire has an article on How Outdated Infrastructure Will Cripple HPC  that for the first time stated that the emperor has no clothes:

It’s time for the HPC community to start regarding system administration as a critical aspect of an HPC cluster. We can build better administrative frameworks by drawing on the strategies and tools developed for enterprise IT. Working together as a community, we can dramatically reduce the amount of time that is wasted on outdated, inefficient cluster management practices.

But the most recent and one of the most efficient enterprise tools is application on demand via a clouds.

From Kiev, Ukraine, Vladislav Falfushinsky send me a paper Cloud Computing Platform within Grid Infrastructure authored by him and two colleagues from V.M. Glushkov Institute of Cybernetics

My  advise to Vladislav is to escape the political turmoil and non-sense in Ukraine come here in Silicon  Valley and see how their paper can evolve into a tangible business model.

My HPC /HTC friends can tell me hundreds of reasons why high performance startups  will fail. I listen to them all. What makes me happy is to see researchers from Kiev anxious to do something. 

Then I ask myself: "Why not in Wisconsin, Nebraska, Indiana, Mississippi, and so on where there are fantastic centers of expertise in HTC/HPC and they are not located in Burkina Faso?"