The weekend review: the SDN landscape, private clouds, and proximity-based social networks
This week we’re excited to announce the launch of the new GigaOM Pro report format. This new HTML report allows you to read reports directly on the website, without downloading a PDF first. Check out Shannon Arvizu’s “Disrupting the university: near-term opportunities in the digital learning market,” the first report to be published in this new format. Of course, you’ll still be able to download all GigaOM Pro content as PDFs, but our new report format will improve your on-site report viewing and browsing experience. And now on to the most popular content of the week:
First, in “Forecast: sizing the software-defined networking market,” Lee Doyle looks at the rapidly evolving software-defined networking (SDN) landscape, as fresh batches of startups and established corporations alike enter this competitive arena. The outlook for the SDN enterprise market continues to expand, and recent acquisitions (such as VMware’s $1.2 billion deal with Nicira) indicate major opportunities ahead. Doyle analyzes the current and near-term future prospects for SDN in the enterprise, focusing on the products (hardware, software, and services), use cases, and applications that business customers will find most relevant.
Next, David Linthicum’s latest weekly update tackles more thorny cloud questions in “Are private clouds worth it?” Linthicum analyzes data from a recent Enterprise Management Associates survey and takes a look at what a “private” cloud actually means, and — more importantly — what private clouds are not before weighing the benefits and disadvantages for a private or public cloud deployment for enterprise purposes.
Last, Peter Crocker looks at the most recent iteration of social networking services in “Proximity-based mobile social networking: outlook and analysis.” Using the examples of apps such as Highlight and Grindr, Crocker defines proximity-based social networking applications as services that connect users based on physical proximity to one another, as well as facilitating connections among people in a certain time and place. Mobile application vendors have quickly and deeply grasped onto this market segment, and Crocker predicts that the market will grow to $1.9 billion by 2016. In this report, Crocker analyzes the types of social networking mechanics presently in use and the existing technology and market structure before providing his forecasts for the next four years.
Also popular this week:
The wearable-computing market: a global analysis
The 2013 task management tools market
Orchestra’s Mailbox makes email triage effortless
