In addition to the challenges with the existing computing model, some important trends create new opportunities and threats for customers:
x86 hardware becoming more prevalent – multi-core processors, very large systems with hundreds of processors, lots of memory etc - x86 hardware becoming more capable than ever all at a decreasing real cost. As a result, x86 systems can support bigger and bigger applications and the share, importance and relevance of x86 systems is on the rise.
Innovation and experimentation with application architectures/stacks. SOA, web 2.0 – multi element, mixed OS applications are becoming more prevalent. There is a lot of experimentation and vibrant innovation in application stacks which makes it hard to predict what that prevalent app architecture in the future is going to be, if there is one. this poses a real challenge for customers to future-proof their infrastructure investment.
Massive cloud datacenters being built by SaaS, cloud, traditional hosting providers such as Google or Amazon. These massive datacenters can provide capacity on-demand very cheaply. However, today to take advantage of this cheap capacity, enterprise applications have to undergo a great deal of customization/porting. Also, customers have to make the difficult choice of either doing things the old way – or completely recreating applications to run off-premise.