In as soon as only a few months from now, businesses of all sizes may be able to easily purchase their own cloud infrastructure capacity on the open market. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) is an increasingly growing industry, and fierce competition is already creating a price war between big IaaS providers, including Amazon's AWS and Google Computer Engine. However, collaboration between the global derivatives marketplace CME Group and cloud Return on Investment (ROI) tools vendor 6fusion is expected to result in the development and marketing of an IaaS spot exchange that will list financial products according to the rules of 6fusion's Workload Allocation Cube (WAC).
The ultimate result of cloud infrastructure entering the open market would be that larger companies would no longer have a clear monopoly on the industry, opening up the doors for competitive and affordable pricing. This allows smaller businesses to enter the cloud-computing sector without placing a huge risk on their finances.
The WAC facilitates this by providing a consistent unit of measurement for companies to purchase IaaS cycles. This will include all of the base components of IaaS and cloud computing, including processing power, storage, networks and systems messaging. 6Fusion claims that the beta version of their exchange will be available in the second half of 2014.
At the current growth rate of the IaaS market, Google and Amazon are expected to dominate the scene by 2020, earning a combined revenue in excess of $40 billion while competitors are expected to fade away into obsolescence. In this grim depiction of the IaaS market, businesses would be left entirely at the whims of these two giants who would set the rules for pricing much in the same way that today's mobile phone market is dominated by big players like Verizon and AT&T.
A spot exchange that features contracts based on the WAC's standard unit of measurement could help avoid this bleak situation by keeping track of the fulfillment of physically delivered contracts that are traded on the spot exchange. This makes the fluctuations of supply and demand transparent for those looking for IaaS, allowing business networks to quickly and easily find the solution that fits their needs best.
Edited by
Maurice Nagle
