Salesforce.com, HP Partner For Private Cloud 'Superpods' - InformationWeek

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Comments
Salesforce.com, HP Partner For Private Cloud 'Superpods'
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D. Henschen
50%
50%
D. Henschen,
 User Rank: Author
11/20/2013 | 5:34:13 PM
Benioff Sets Superpod Record Straight
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff finally got into the details on Superpod and ended some of the speculation late Tuesday (well after the publication of this article). Salesforce's current services run on multi-tenant "pods" that run in the company's data centers. These new HP-powered "Superpods" will have the same architecture and design -- including multi-tenancy -- but they will be dedicated to single, large customers. The applications and services will be maintained and updated by Saleslforce the same way it handles all of its other pods.

HP itself is the first Superpod customer, but the U.S. Government already has its own pod. It takes advantage of the multitenancy to run separate instances for each government agency customer. When Salesforce said this is aimed at large customers, it wasn't kidding. The way Benioff described it, it sounds like it will only be a practical option for really, really large customers on the scale of HP, the U.S. Government and so on.
Rodney Brown
50%
50%
Rodney Brown,
 User Rank: Author
11/19/2013 | 12:29:52 PM
Re: Superpod spin
If it is dedicated hardware, it is a hosting solution, not a cloud solution, no matter what Salesforce.com and HP want to label it as. Sure, it may have a web front end, but putting it all into an appliance makes it a remotely hosted server just like any old-school database in a datacenter. And you have an excellent about about flexibility and scalability. Can you add resources on the fly to the Superpod and remove them as easily? If not, again, not a cloud.
cbabcock
50%
50%
cbabcock,
 User Rank: Strategist
11/19/2013 | 12:26:30 PM
A Salesforce and HP managed service
A Salesforce Superpod is "a dedicated instance in the Salesforce multi-tenant cloud," as the announcement says. I think this is a step back from Salesforce's pioneering software as a service to more of the managed service model that preceded it. This appears to be hardware and software, owned by the provider, but assigned to one user. Good for compliance, bad for cloud economics.
D. Henschen
50%
50%
D. Henschen,
 User Rank: Author
11/19/2013 | 12:09:04 PM
Re: Superpod spin
This is "private cloud," but it is running in Salesforce.com data centers. Think of it as "cloudy," just like many of the Oracle and SAP "cloud" options. The new concensus on "cloud" where enterprise apps are concerned seems to be that it lets you tap into apps and services without having to provision or manage the hardware and infrastructure. Another question concerns flexiblity. In what increments can you buy Superpod capacity and quickly can you scale up and down the capacity and related costs?
David F. Carr
50%
50%
David F. Carr,
 User Rank: Author
11/19/2013 | 11:34:01 AM
Re: Superpod spin
Wow, this is heresy. Can a private cloud instance of Yammer be far behind?
Laurianne
50%
50%
Laurianne,
 User Rank: Author
11/19/2013 | 10:52:42 AM
Superpod spin
Fascinating that Salesforce, which preached that private cloud was not cloud, vocally and for the longest time, is calling this arrangement Superpods. That sounds much more hip than private cloud, doesn't it? And much better than datacenter-in-a-box.

Perhaps Salesforce creative adviser Will.i.am got in on the naming action?
D. Henschen
50%
50%
D. Henschen,
 User Rank: Author
11/19/2013 | 10:30:42 AM
HP's New Friends Are Microsoft Enemies
I'm guessing it's no coincidence that HP has been rubbing elbows with the likes of Google and, now, Salesforce.com (rival of Microsoft's Dynamics enterprise apps business). Ever since Microsoft put big money into Dell's privatization (as in billions), there's a chill in the air where the once-strong HP-Microsoft partnership is concerned.


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