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Top 50 of Crypto Mining – June 2019

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Today, June 14, 2019, we released the second biannual list of Top 50 cryptocurrency mining pools.

We do this in conjunction with the Top 500 supercomputing list that is released twice a year, in June and November. That list has been a matter of national pride for the US, Japan, China, and many other countries.

Cryptocurrency mining is a specialized form of supercomputing, producing billions of dollars of economic value per year.

In the Information Age, money has become information. Bitcoin is energy converted to information and encapsulated as secure immutable transactions on a time chain. This is money in the Internet, that we call Money 3.0. Currently it is primarily a store of value, a sort of digital gold, but it continues to grow use cases as a medium of exchange, and unit of account.

Cryptocurrency mining operations are large-scale, run on clusters, but also consist of highly decentralized pools that anyone can join and contribute their equipment to the effort, for proportionate rewards. Most mining is done on custom ASIC computing rigs, highly optimized for the relevant crypto consensus algorithm.

Using statistics readily available on the hashing rates and block production rates for the large mining pools, we can tabulate the economic value produced by these pools.

We consider only mined coins, that is, those that use some type of Proof of Work algorithm such as Bitcoin’s Nakamoto consensus.

We do not consider coins created with other types of consensus mechanisms, since they require no significant supercomputer-class computation. This includes coins produced through premining, Proof of Stake, distributed Byzantine Fault Tolerance and the like since supercomputing resources are not involved.

While there are a number of lists that provide hash rates and block production rates for pools mining a single coin, our lists are the first aggregation of which we are aware.

This raises the question as to how to compare mined coins that have radically different hashing rates and whose consensus algorithms, although often similar to Bitcoin conceptually, differ in the details.

We settled on the economic value of the mined coins that are produced. This enables us to make comparisons across coins when rank ordering the list of mining pools.

We compare the dollar value of a day’s mining from a given pool, with that of other pools, across the top eight mined cryptocurrencies.

The top 10 mined coins have market caps above $0.5 billion dollars, and the #1 coin, Bitcoin, as of our snapshot taken on May 30, 2019, had a market cap of $154 billion.

When we rank order the top 50 mining pools we find that the top eight mined coins in economic value are: Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Litecoin (LTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Zcash (ZEC), Bitcoin SV (BSV), Dash (DASH), and Monero (XMR). All of these except Monero are ASIC-friendly, and production is dominated by ASIC miners and clusters. Monero relies on GPUs.

For Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin we have used 30 day averages as of May 30, 2019 for block production and hash rates; for the other coins 7 day average data was available.

Table 1: Top 8 Mined Coins (all mining pools, not just Top 50)

Coin

Hardware class

 Algorithm

New coins / day

Hash Rate

Hash units

Price 5/30/2019 US$

Economic Production per Day, Million $

Extrapolated Annual Production Million $
Bitcoin

ASIC

 SHA256

1800

47.1

 Exa

8701

15.662

5,717
Ethereum

ASIC

 Ethash

13,600

172

 Tera

284

3.862

1,410
Litecoin

ASIC

 Scrypt

14,825

352

 Tera

117.6

1.743

636
Bitcoin Cash

ASIC

 SHA256

1800

1.36

 Exa

469

0.844

308
Zcash

ASIC

 Equihash

7200

4

 Giga

86.9

0.626

228
Bitcoin SV

ASIC

 SHA256

1800

2.03

 Peta

222

0.400

146
Dash

ASIC

 X11

1693

1.68

 Peta

172.2

0.292

107
Monero

GPU

 CryptoNight

1934

329

 Mega

95.1

0.184

67
Totals

23.61

8,619

 

From Table 1  above, which is across all pools, not just the Top 50, we see that total annual economic value run rate (extrapolated from the recent average daily values) is about $8.6 billion. About 2/3 of the economic value created is from Bitcoin production alone, with about $15 million produced per day recently. Ethereum amounts to around one-quarter of that at almost $4 million per day. The next six coins add another $4 million daily. Overall around $24 million per day is currently being mined from all pools.

The locations of top mining pools can be multi-country. The next Table summarizes the major host countries for the Top 50 pools; China, the US, and Hong Kong account for 70% of the top 50 pools and almost all of the top 10 operators. China alone is responsible for nearly half of the annual value produced by the Top 50 pools. The Mixed category includes various combinations of US, China, the EU, Russia, or other Asian or European countries. This category has grown as Chinese operators begin to move to other geographies, as a result of pressure from the government to constrain cryptocurrency mining in China.

Table 2: Host Countries, Top 50 Pools

Country # Top Pools Daily M$ Annual M$

China

18

10.717

3911.7
US           11

4.77

1742.5
Hong Kong            6

2.77

1009.6
Mixed          12

2.69

980.4
Other           3

1.18

430.0
Totals         50

22.12

8,074

Table 3: Top 10 Pool Operators (aggregated across coins)

MultiPools Coins Number Daily M$ Annualized M$ Country
BTC(dot)com BTC, BCH

2

3.06

1115

 China
F2Pool BTC, ETH, ZEC, BSV, LTC 5

2.76

1007

 China
Antpool BTC, LTC, ZEC, BCH, DASH 5

2.38

868

 Hong Kong
Poolin BTC, ZEC, LTC, BSV 4

2.26

825

 China
SlushPool BTC, ZEC 2

1.62

592

 US
BTC.Top BTC, LTC, BCH 3

1.47

537

 China
ViaBTC BTC, LTC,BCH 3

1.34

488

 US
Huobi.Pool BTC, ETH 2

0.69

251

 China
NanoPool ETH, XMR 2

0.50

182

 US, EU, Asia
Bitcoin(dot)com BTC, BCH 2

0.34

124

 US
Totals 30

16.41

5,990

We have aggregated, for the top 10 operators, their results across all of the top eight coins, and summarized in Table 3 above. Some operators mine two different coins, others mine as many as five of the top eight. These pools account for, when broken out by coin, 30 of the entries in our Top 50 list. 

The #1 operator is BTC.com based in China, and it produces $3 million a day of economic value. F2Pool, Antpool, and Poolin each produce over $2 million of cryptocurrency per day. These  large operators are responsible for $6 billion of the $8 billion annual production by the top 50 pools. Three of the five largest operators are in China, one is in Hong Kong, and one is in the US.

The winners in this race, for this second list, are Bitcoin, naturally, with BTC.com again as the top pool, and China as the host country for the most top mining pools, including both #1 and #2 positions. Hong Kong has the #3 pool. The US has the second largest number of mining pools.

The economic value of mining has increased substantially. In the first list of November, 2018 we looked at the Top 30 pools, responsible for some $5.5 billion of annual run rate of mining. This new list of Top 50 pools indicates $8.1 billion of annual cryptocurrency creation (even the Top 30 for this list amounts to well over $7 billion).

We intend to update this list again in November, 2019. Suggestions and comments may be sent to: stephen.perrenod@orionx.net

A presentation with the full Top 50 list is available at SlideShare.net: 

https://www.slideshare.net/perrenod/top-cryptosupers-201906v1-149547256

References:

Overall: coinmarketcap.com, coinwarz.com, cryptoslate.com

BTC: btc.com 

ETH: btc.com, etherscan.io

BCH: btc.com, cash.coin.dance 

LTC, ZEC, XMR, DASH: miningpoolstats.stream

Cryptocurrency topics: orionx.net/blog

CryptoSuper500 Top 10 20190614

CryptoSuper500, 2nd Edition

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What is new with the most powerful crypto mining pools?

Thanks to the efforts of my colleague Dr. Stephen Perrenod, OrionX launched a new CryptoSuper500 list last November, coinciding with the eagerly awaited TOP500 list of most powerful supercomputers. The TOP500 has spawned variations that look at different workloads and attributes, for example, the Green500, Graph500, and IO500 lists. CryptoSuper500 was inspired by those lists.

Please see the material for the inaugural edition of the CryptoSuper500 list here and here. As you can see from what we can share publicly, we track business, technology, and policy issues surrounding emerging technologies and take a realistic approach to what they can do, and under what circumstances their use is a wise choice. Blockchain and cryptocurrencies are very much in that mix as are IoT, Quantum Computing, 5G, and Cloud.

Cryptocurrency mining operations are often pooled and are very much supercomputing class, typically using accelerator technologies such as custom ASICs, FPGAs, or GPUs. Bitcoin is the most notable of such currencies. Scroll down for the top-10 list and see the slides for the full list and the methodology. Contact us if you’d like discuss it in person.

We  issued the following press release to formally announce this 2nd edition. Read it below or here.

 

Bitcoin and BTC.com in China Continue to Top the Second Edition of CryptoSuper500 List

Inspired by the TOP500 list, biannual list of the most powerful cryptocurrency mining pools tracks compute power and economic value

MENLO PARK, Calif. – June 14, 2019 – OrionX Research today released the second edition of its CryptoSuper500 list. The list recognizes cryptocurrency mining as a new form of supercomputing and tracks the top mining pools. Cryptocurrency technologies include blockchains, consensus algorithms, digital wallets, and utility and security tokens. Aided by a recent surge in cryptocurrency prices, the top 10 mined coins have market caps above $0.5 billion dollars, and the #1 coin, Bitcoin, as of our snapshot taken on May 30, 2019, had a market cap of $154 billion.

Cryptocurrency Supercomputing refers to large-scale cryptocurrency mining operations which are typically powered by accelerator technologies such as GPUs, FPGAs, or custom ASICs. Bitcoin is the most notable of such currencies. Cryptocurrency mining via Proof of Work is important since it continues to represent the most effective consensus algorithm to maximize security in a decentralized manner.

“Driven by Artificial Intelligence (AI), Blockchain, Internet of Things (IoT), and 5G connectivity, a new wave of enterprise applications demands supercomputing power. Cryptocurrency mining is an important part of that mix, impacting investment decisions globally,” said Dr. Stephen Perrenod, OrionX Partner and Analyst and the developer of the CryptoSuper500. “CryptoSuper500 tracks supercomputer class systems that are used for such mining applications.”

The annual economic value (AEV) of the top 5 pools in the current list compared to the last list (published in November 2018) are as follows:

  • BTC.com in China with projected AEV of $1.05 billion compared to $694 million in November 2018
  • Antpool based in Hong Kong with an AEV of $710 million compared to $582 million
  • F2Pool in China with an AEV of $680 million compared to $368 million
  • SlushPool in the US with an AEV of $571 million compared to $444 million
  • Poolin in China with an AEV of $517 million compared to $289 million

ViaBTC in the US and BTC.Top in China were among the top 5 in the previous list and have been edged out by F2Pool and Poolin in the current list.

The eight coins mined with Proof of Work consensus algorithms and that made the cut for our analysis are Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash, Zcash, Bitcoin SV, Dash and Monero. All except Monero require ASICs for efficient mining. Only Bitcoin and Ethereum mining pools are found in the current top 10.

The full list with additional explanation is available in a slide presentation at OrionX.net/research.

“The traditional data center is becoming a supercomputer center,” said Shahin Khan, OrionX Partner and Analyst. “Corporate IT departments increasingly rely on versatile supercomputers as the engines of digital transformation. Green500, IO500, CryptoSuper500 and similar competitive lists point to the versatility of supercomputers and the need for supercomputing in Fortune 500.”

About OrionX

OrionX is a Silicon Valley firm with a new model that combines technology research, market execution, and customer engagement. More than 60 technology leaders in virtually every technology segment have trusted OrionX to help set new break-away strategies, ignite brands, and grow market share. Visit us at OrionX.net.

* Note: This effort is an analysis of the technologies and trends surrounding blockchain and cryptocurrencies. It is not, and must not be considered as, financial, investment, or legal advice.

 

References:

Overall: coinmarketcap.com, coinwarz.com, cryptoslate.com

BTC: btc.com

ETH: etherscan.io, btc.com

BCH: btc.com, cash.coin.dance

LTC, ZEC, XMR, DASH: miningpoolstats.stream

Cryptocurrency topics: orionx.net/blog

 

CryptoSuper500: the most powerful cryptocurrency mining pools

CryptoSuper500: the most powerful cryptocurrency mining pools

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Cryptocurrency mining pools have become larger. A new list, CryptoSuper500 tracks them according to economical value, computational power, and by extension, energy use.

If you are following my colleague Dr. Stephen Perrenod‘s blogs and reports, you know that he, and the rest of us at OrionX, aim to keep on top of business, technology, and policy issues surrounding this technology and take a realistic approach to what Cryptocurrencies can do, and under what circumstances their use is a wise choice.

The amount of energy that is used for crypto mining has been a source of controversy.  It only applies to cryptocurrency mining via Proof of Work (PoW), where the “work” is computationally intensive. PoW mining is important since it represents the most effective consensus algorithm to maximize security in a decentralized manner.  Mined cryptocurrencies continue to be in demand, with relatively high values. We expect this to continue despite significant ups and downs. We also expect efforts to create Proof of Useful Work (PoUW), but that is proving elusive at present, though I have not seen a proof that it cannot be done.

There are many other cryptocurrencies where the coin is not mined at all. Those tend to offer faster transactions and consume less energy. There are a few models here.

“Proof of Stake” (PoS) is the most prominent of what I call the “Proof of <insert costly thing>” approaches. Other well-known models include Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT) and Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAG). These algorithms do not mine and thus do not make use of specialized supercomputer resources. They are fine for many use cases and are produced more readily, but they tend to have lower security, and none are fully decentralized solutions.

So PoW mining uses substantial computing power, but it delivers something that is important and in demand. And if you look at other ways of achieving trust, it turns out that they are expensive in one way or another. So advocates believe crypto mining energy use compares favorably with the energy costs associated with traditional mining, refining, storage, and transport of precious metals.

So the list at Cryptocurrency Supercomputing, the large-scale cryptocurrency mining operations which are typically powered by accelerator technologies such as GPUs, FPGAs, or custom ASICs. Bitcoin is the most notable of such currencies. Scroll down for the full table.

Keeping track of these looks very similar to the TOP500 list of most powerful supercomputers. A list that has spawned variations that look at different use cases, for example, the Green500, Graph500, and IO500 lists. CryptoSuper500 was inspired by those lists.

We issued the following press release today to formally announce this list. Read it below or here and scroll down for the full table.

Bitcoin and BTC.com Top New CryptoSuper500 List

Inspired by the TOP500, biannual list of the most powerful cryptocurrency mining pools tracks compute power and energy use

MENLO PARK, Calif. – Nov. 12, 2018 – PRLog — OrionX Research today announced that Bitcoin and BTC.com top the first release of the CryptoSuper500 list. The list recognizes cryptocurrency mining as a new form of supercomputing and tracks the top mining pools.

“CryptoSuper500 tracks supercomputers that are used for cryptocurrency mining, an intensive application that has become a driver of technology development and investment decisions globally,” said Dr. Stephen Perrenod, OrionX Partner and Analyst and the developer of the CryptoSuper500 list. “The growth of the cryptocurrency market has put the spotlight on emerging decentralized applications, the new ways in which they are funded, and the software stack on which they are built.” Cryptocurrency technologies include blockchain, consensus algorithms, digital wallets, and utility and security tokens.

The top 5 pools are BTC.com in China with projected annual economic value (AEV) of $694 million, followed by Antpool based in Hong Kong with an AEV of $582 million, SlushPool and ViaBTC, both in the USA with equal AEV of $444 million each, and BTC.Top of China with an AEV of $400M. The full list is attached below and is available with additional explanation in a slide presentation and white paper at OrionX.net/research.

Cryptocurrency mining via “Proof of Work” is important since it continues to represent the most effective consensus algorithm to maximize security in a decentralized manner. Cryptocurrency Supercomputing refers to large-scale cryptocurrency mining operations which are typically powered by accelerator technologies such as GPUs, FPGAs, or custom ASICs. Bitcoin is the most notable of such currencies.

Other protocols and methods including premining, Proof of Stake, and Byzantine Fault Tolerance, eschew mining and thus do not make use of specialized supercomputer resources. Such tokens are produced more readily, tend to have lower economic value and security, and none are fully decentralized solutions.

At the same time, the amount of energy that is used for crypto mining has been a source of controversy even though it compares favorably with the energy costs associated with traditional mining, refining, storage, and transport of precious metals.

“TOP500, Green500, IO500, HPCG, and now CryptoSuper500 all point to the growing versatility of supercomputers,” said Shahin Khan, OrionX Partner and Analyst. “It is time to more explicitly recognize that supercomputers are, and will be, central to important new business applications. I expect we will see similar competitive lists for AI, Quantum Computing, and public Cloud providers.”

The TOP500 list of the world’s most powerful supercomputers is eagerly awaited twice a year, and the top position has been a matter of national pride and intense competition among vendors.

CryptoSuper500 is the first compilation of such a list across multiple cryptocurrency types which use different mining algorithms and blockchain protocols. CryptoSuper500 uses the economic value of the mined coins produced to make comparisons across coin types and mining pools when rank ordering the list. The first release of the list includes the Top 30 mining pools and their daily economic production, considering which crypto of the top 5 was produced.

About OrionX
OrionX is a Silicon Valley firm with a new model that combines technology research, market execution, and customer engagement. More than 60 technology leaders in virtually every technology segment have trusted OrionX to help set new break-away strategies, ignite brands, and grow market share. Visit us at OrionX.net.

* Note: This effort is an analysis of the technologies and trends surrounding blockchain and cryptocurrencies. It is not, and must not be considered as, financial, investment, or legal advice.

References:
Overall: coinmarketcap.com, coinwarz.com
BTC: btc.com, investoon.com
ETH: etherscan.io
BCH: btc.com, cash.coin.dance
LTC, XMR, DASH: miningpoolstats.stream
Cryptocurrency topics: orionx.net/blog

CryptoSuper500: Cryptocurrency Mining list

Blockchain-Tile1-640

OrionX Releases New Blockchain Constellation™ Research Paper

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I am very pleased and excited to announce the release of the newest paper in our Constellation™ series about blockchain/cryptocurrency technologies: “Cryptocurrency Outlook: More Chasm Crossing.”

This is a comprehensive look at this emerging and important technology, written by my colleague Dr. Stephen Perrenod who has been working with cryptocurrencies for several years and has focused his research on this topic for more than a year,

To learn more, read the press release below and view the paper in full at OrionX.com/Blockchain.

We are issuing the following press release to formally announce this paper:

A comprehensive look at what lies ahead in the cryptocurrency economy

Menlo Park, CA, April 2, 2018:  OrionX, a Silicon Valley-based technology research, market execution, and customer engagement firm, today released a new research paper in its Constellation™ series. Written by OrionX partner, Dr. Stephen Perrenod, “Cryptocurrency Outlook: More Chasm Crossing” provides an in-depth view of the current cryptocurrency economy and an analysis of what might be expected in the next 9-15 months*.

“Blockchain and cryptocurrency are at the forefront of online conversation,” said Dr. Stephen Perrenod. “Everyone from novice investors to seasoned economists is working to develop a new level of understanding of ‘money in the internet’ as cryptocurrency value remains volatile but seems to show staying power.” Perrenod’s research breaks down the specifics of how this technology works and what the future may hold in terms that are understandable to anyone seeking an education on what he calls “Money 3.0.”

The paper provides a detailed look at how cryptocurrency is evolving, with special attention paid to the key points below:

  • While many criticisms of Money 3.0 focus on technology issues like scaling, those issues are being addressed at a rapid pace.
  • Detailed view of the top five crypto “coins,” including key metrics on how they have performed in the past as well as parameters that can impact the future.
  • Predictions about how traditional institutions—banks and governments—may affect cryptocurrency markets in the coming months.
  • Amazon and PayPal changed the way we spend money, now cryptocurrencies are changing the way it is created and distributed.

In addition, the paper makes a number of predictions as conclusions to discussions of the relevant topics. Examples include:

  • Both the number of Ethereum addresses and the Ethereum market cap will exceed those for Bitcoin by the end of 2018.
  • Increasing regulation of ICOs and exchanges will open the taps for Wall Street investment.
  • The first unicorn ICO will occur this year.
  • The era of Bitcoin forks is largely behind us.
  • Dapps, decentralized apps, will blossom wildly.
  • We will see multiple social media blockchain unicorns. Facebook could react by implementing its own token, in fact they would be remiss not to.
  • Existing centralized exchanges will provide the facility for direct exchange from an individual’s wallet, mimicking the peer-to-peer experience of distributed exchanges.

To view the paper in full, please visit OrionX.net/blockchain

“Guided by its diverse technology clients, OrionX conducts research in advanced topics such as Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Blockchain/Cryptocurrencies, and Quantum Computing,” said Shahin Khan, founding partner at OrionX. The group’s technology foundation is in High Performance Computing (HPC), Data Center technologies, and Cloud Computing, which inform its general perspective.

OrionX also announced that it will present at the Advanced Scale Forum 2018 conference to be held May 6-8, 2018 in Austin, Texas. OrionX founding partner, Shahin Khan will present “Blockchain, Crypotocurrencies, Smart Contracts – Technologies You Can’t Ignore” in collaboration with Ryan Quick, principal at Providentia Worldwide, an advanced technology consultancy. Mr. Quick previously led PayPal’s Advanced Technology Group. The session will cover the essence of blockchain technologies, focusing on their impacts to other key trends (such as IoT, AI, and quantum computing), identifying their realities and promises, and exploring why blockchain may or may not deliver.

This talk follows Mr. Khan’s futuristic presentation (available from slideshare.com)  on “Critical Technologies of the Future” at the HPC-AI Advisory Council conference held at Stanford University in Feb-2018. A video of the talk is available from InsideHPC.com.

* This paper is an analysis of the technologies and trends surrounding blockchain and cryptocurrencies. It is not, and must not be considered as, financial, investment, or legal advice.

img_0567

Why Buffet Doesn’t “Get” Bitcoin

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Warren Buffett is the most famous name in stock investing, the second richest person in the world, and a leading expert in valuing companies and securities. He also is a big investor in banks, including Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, and Bank of America. So he has a lot of vested interest in the current monetary and financial system.

He recently said that bitcoin is in a bubble, which may well be true. He also said “You can’t value bitcoin because it’s not a value-producing asset”.

 

And yet, as of today, bitcoin has a market cap which is over $120 billion, substantially more than Buffet’s net worth. Bitcoin can be valued, but not like a security or a company, which is what Buffet does so well.

As we have written elsewhere, bitcoin is a currency, money, a cryptocurrency. Some will say it is a digital asset, like a digital gold. We say it is Money 3.0 (fiat is Money 2.0, gold and silver coins were Money 1.0).

Do these have value? Although none has intrinsic value and each costs a nominal amount to make the one on the right is worth quite a bit more than the one in the center, and the one on the left, more still.

Yes, money is designed as a store of value, a medium of exchange, a unit of account. Cryptocurrencies have the same design goals.

Bitcoin is a unit of account in a secure, distributed ledger. It has been a much better store of value than fiat currency in recent years.

In fact in 2014, Buffet said “It’s a mirage”. And yet, the value of a single bitcoin has increased 20 times since late October, 2014 to about $5800 today.

Money is valued by what you can exchange it for in the economy, by its utility. It is valued against other currencies. Bitcoin can be valued the same way, and thus by the vitality of the bitcoin economy.

Within the cryptocurrency world, bitcoin is the reference benchmark, just as the US dollar is globally. Bitcoin gets valued every single day, every minute of the day, against all major fiat currencies and against hundreds of cryptocurrencies. Like those currencies it has an economy and a turnover (or velocity) of the currency.

One thing we don’t normally think of with respect to cryptocurrencies is interest, or dividends. It is possible to lend out bitcoin for interest, as one can do with dollars, euros, or even gold. But bitcoin has effectively thrown off two special dividends this year, in the form of forks of the bitcoin blockchain. These are known as Bitcoin Cash (forked in August) and Bitcoin Gold (forked in October). Collectively, those two are worth close to $700, representing over 9% dividend rate to date during 2017, based on the current bitcoin price.

And for someone who bought at the beginning of the year, when bitcoin was under $1000, the dividend is around 70%. Not shabby, and a very reasonable reward for accepting the volatility.

Bitcoin is a technology for internet money, network money that is independent of any government, and it can be hard to fathom for the newcomer. Buffett has always said he does not understand technology. He was late getting into Apple, for example. He has not examined the technology and potential of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies sufficiently to have an informed opinion.

Bitcoin’s future value? It all depends on how the economy around bitcoin develops, but it will be quite an adventure. And bitcoin to bagels it will increase in value over the next several years.

AI-Survey-2017-Current-SW-Budgets

Epic AI Survey Completed: Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Deep Learning

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We are very pleased to announce the completion of our “epic” AI survey. Here is the press release that we issued this morning:

ORIONX RESEARCH ANNOUNCES SURVEY RESULTS REVEALING CUSTOMERS’ ADOPTION OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI), MACHINE LEARNING (ML) AND DEEP LEARNING (DL)

MENLO PARK, Calif., August 30, 2017 – OrionX Research today announced the availability of survey results of more than 300 North American companies representing 13 industries on what they are currently doing and planning to do with Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML) and Deep Learning (DL) technologies.

Considered one of the most comprehensive surveys to date on AI/ML/DL, the survey covers 144 questions/data points, presented in over 70 charts and graphs. It explores topics ranging from key drivers for AI project implementation to customer buying behavior to current and future AI budget spend to the most popular AI models.

Study highlights include:

  • Top challenges businesses are facing for their AI/ML/DL projects
  • Current and planned budgets for AI/ML/DL projects (broken down by hardware, software, services, cloud, consulting, education/training, staffing and more)
  • Who the decision makers are and which departments are driving AI purchasing decisions
  • Average AI project data size (TB) and the application areas that AI projects are being used for
  • User ranking of over 20 AI Frameworks with TensorFlow dominating at 52%
  • AI hardware usage (now and in the future), including most used hardware accelerators with NVIDIA in the lead at 82%
  • Customers’ key selection criteria and requirements when evaluating AI vendors

“The OrionX AI survey is the first to assess customer sentiment across a wide range of AI adoption issues,” said Shahin Khan, founding partner at OrionX.  “Among many insights, it shows how customer selection criteria is influenced by parameters such as vendor market presence, product roadmap, current product features, ease of adoption, ease of use, interoperability, security, performance, and robustness.” This comprehensive AI study will help customers better understand the AI/ML/DL landscape in order to set strategy and guide future investments.

To purchase the report and learn how OrionX research analysts can help companies navigate the multi-faceted and rapidly evolving AI/ML/DL marketplace, visit www.orionx.net/ai

AI Survey 2017 sample chart: App-Size-Scale

Sample Chart from the OrionX Research AI Survey

Enterprise-Cloud

For Enterprise Cloud, Oracle is the Only Choice Grounded in Reality

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Snapshot of Cloud Computing for Enterprise IT

There is a loudly expressed opinion that ‘the cloud’ is the future of computing and that companies such as Amazon, Google, and Microsoft will dominate the market, replacing established hardware and software vendors such as IBM, Dell, HPE, and Oracle. In some ways, this is true especially for startups, small companies, and perhaps even some midsize companies, but the situation for enterprise level deployments is very different.

For small companies, the use of cloud services minimizes the need for capital expenditure on infrastructure and the recruitment of IT specialists, accelerating their time to production, possibly at the expense of some customization.

By contrast, enterprise level organizations typically have a substantial reliance on established business critical applications.  Many of these applications cannot easily be rewritten or re-deployed on public cloud architectures.  Sometimes the systems they run on are not based on the x86 architecture, further complicating matters.

Existing enterprise applications, however, can and often need to be integrated with new cloud services to deliver a modern infrastructure as a cloud service while ensuring business continuity. This hybrid approach is an optimum combination of private and public cloud services. It leverages existing data center and infrastructure resources and combines elastic cloud services from external providers when needed. For businesses where regulation and compliance may affect where and how data may be located and accessed, or if large memory scale up data systems may be UNIX-based and are not well-suited or compatible with scale out Intel-based architectures, a hybrid cloud is particularly advantageous.

A Business Solution to the Cloud Problem

Enterprise customers are much more concerned with a business solution to their cloud problem than just a technical solution. Minimizing costly changes is valuable to them as long as the underlying technology has a reasonable and real roadmap. For them, a mixture of private and public cloud can address multiple requirements:

  • Application availability, without a big cost to port, migrate, and re-deploy
  • Governance, where ownership, location, and management of resources can be customized for different parts of a distributed cloud application
  • Modernization, driven by new technologies that enable new capabilities but remain “under the hood”

This approach focuses on business optimization, integrates and consolidates disparate systems, offers a flexible choice of on-premises, managed on-premises, or off-premises cloud.

For enterprise customers, this is a critical transformation. The service provider model is generally accepted as the way forward, but successfully navigating the journey requires the integration of existing business critical systems with new and agile applications. This requires differentiation at a business service level, it is not technology driven but must incorporate both the old and the new while optimizing capital costs and operational margins.

Market Landscape

Cloud computing means fewer but larger buyers of infrastructure technologies. Cloud service providers such as Amazon and Google buy standardized systems in large volumes. Other CPU and infrastructure vendors have doubled down on the capabilities of their architectures to support both legacy and modern systems.

Among established technologies, x86 continues to dominate at the CPU level but is unable to reach a large body of enterprise applications that were written for IBM, HP, and Oracle/Sun. HP has effectively moved to x86 and is not offering its own public cloud service. IBM has formed the OpenPower consortium as it attempts to build an ecosystem and is building its Softlayer cloud service, but relies on application software partners to complete the stack.  This leaves Oracle in the unique position of offering chips-to-apps-to-cloud in one place supporting x86 as well as its own SPARC chip (with the SPARC Dedicated Compute Service).  As the only UNIX public cloud service available from a major systems or cloud vendor, Oracle has a robust roadmap with everything available on-premises, managed-on-premises, and off-premises.

Comparing ‘Market Hype’ to Reality

For most enterprises, a successful transition to cloud service-based infrastructures is more important than a rapid transition. There are many market research reports that discuss the nature and pace of cloud adoption in ‘the Enterprise’, but one thing they have in common is the limited pace and scope of public cloud adoption. At the end of the day, it is business and workload considerations that drive decisions, not technology.

Cloud-Adoption-Datamation

While the graph (same link as the image) is slightly dated (2015), the trends have not changed and the presented results are still indicative. The common trends demonstrate that dependence upon isolated on-premises systems – even if virtualized – is declining. Private cloud, whether on-premises or hosted is and will be a substantial part of the market, but the dominant and growing sector that seems destined to dominate is hybrid cloud, a combination of on-premises, hosted and public cloud services.

For many enterprises, the challenge is to find a vendor that can offer all of those things with a viable business model. We live in very interesting times when the only global technology vendor that appears to be able to meet all the criteria is Oracle, with a viable alternative to Intel Architecture in the form of SPARC.

New podcast for big ideas in tech

New podcast for big ideas in tech

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Here at OrionX.net, our research agenda is driven by the latest developments in technology. We are also fortunate to work with many tech leaders in nearly every part of the “stack”, from chips to apps, who are driving the development of such technologies.

In recent years, we have had projects in Cryptocurrencies, IoT, AI, Cybersecurity, HPC, Cloud, Data Center, … and often a combination of them. Doing this for several years has given us a unique perspective. Our clients see value in our work since it helps them connect the dots better, impacts their investment decisions and the options they consider, and assists them in communicating their vision and strategies more effectively.

We wanted to bring that unique perspective and insight directly to you. “Simplifying the big ideas in technology” is how we’d like to think of it.

Thus was born our first podcast/slidecast series: The OrionX Download™

TheOrionXDownload-podcast-cohosts
The OrionX Download is both a video slidecast (visuals but no talking heads) and an audio podcast in case you’d like to listen to it.

Every two weeks, co-hosts Dan Olds and Shahin Khan, and other OrionX analysts, discuss some of the latest and most important advances in technology. If our research has a specially interesting finding, we’ll invite guests to probe the subject and add their take.

Please give it a try and let us know what we can do better or if you have a specific question or topic that you’d like us to cover.

OrionX Research Framework

Research from OrionX

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Today, we are announcing the OrionX Constellation™ research framework as part of our strategy services.

Paraphrasing what I wrote in my last blog when we launched 8 packaged solutions:

One way to see OrionX is as a partner that can help you with content, context, and dissemination. OrionX Strategy can create the right content because it conducts deep analysis and provides a solid perspective in growth segments like Cloud, HPC, IoT, Artifical Intelligence, etc. OrionX Marketing can put that content in the right context by aligning it with your business objectives and customer needs. And OrionX PR can build on that with new content and packaging to pursue the right dissemination, whether by doing the PR work itself or by working with your existing PR resources.

Even if you only use one of the services, the results are more effective because strategy is aware of market positioning and communication requirements; marketing benefits from deep industry knowledge and technical depth; and PR can set a reliable trajectory armed with a coherent content strategy.

Constellation™: Research from OrionX

The Constellation research is all about high quality content. That requires the ability to go deep on technologies, market trends, and customer sentiment. Over the past two years, we have built such a capability.

Given the stellar connotations of the name Orion (not to mention our partner Stephen Perrenod’s book and blog about quantum and astro- physics), it is natural that we would see the players in each market segment as stars in a constellation. Constellations interact and evolve, and stars are of varying size and brightness, their respective positions dependent on cosmic (market) forces and your (customers’) point of view. Capturing that reality in a relatively simple framework has been an exciting achievement that we are proud to unveil.

OrionX Constellation Research Model

Types of Data

The OrionX strategy process collects and organizes data in three categories: market, customer, and product. The Constellation process further divides that into two parameters in each category:

  • Market presence and trends: a vendor’s presence in the segment and its ability to shape or embrace market trends
  • Customer needs and readiness: a typical customer’s current needs and readiness to adopt a particular product
  • Product capabilities and roadmap: a product’s existing capabilities and competitive standing as well as its expected enhancements and replacements in the future

This data is then analyzed to identify salient points which are in turn synthesized into the coherent insights that are necessary for a clear understanding of the dynamics at play and effective market conversations and change management.

Types of Report

The resulting content leads to five types of reports that capture the OrionX perspective on a segment. We call these the five Es:

  • Event: industry milestones and periodic or seasonal topics)
  • Evolution: historical perspective on a technology or market as a way of defining the segment and understanding the parameters that impact customer sentiment
  • Environment: the players (stars) in the segment that is in focus
  • Evaluation: how customer needs have evolved and how they evaluate (or should evaluate) the products in a segment
  • Excellence: how OrionX analysts see the segment and score each vendor according to six parameters in the three categories of data, two parameters in each category.

OrionX Constellation Decision Tool

Visualizing six distinct parameters, each with its own axis, in three categories cannot be done with the traditional 2×2 or 3×3 diagrams. Indeed, existing models in the industry do quite a good job of providing simple diagrams that rank vendors in a segment.

To simplify this visualization, we have developed the OrionX Constellation Decision Tool. This diagram effectively visualizes the six parameters that capture the core of technology customers’ selection process. (A future blog will drill down into the diagram.)

Sample Reports

While OrionX is not a typical industry analyst firm, we will offer samples of our reports from time to time. We hope they are useful to you and provide a glimpse of our work. They will complement our blog.

As always, thank you for your support and friendship. Please track our progress on social media or contact us for a free consultation or with any comments. We’d love to hear from you.

Packaged Solutions from OrionX

Packaged Solutions from OrionX

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We are excited to announce 8 new packaged solutions designed to address several common requirements. Here’s a link to the press release we issued today.

One way to see OrionX is as a partner that can help you with content, context, and dissemination. OrionX Strategy can create the right content because it conducts deep analysis and provides a solid perspective in important technology developments like IoT, Cloud, Hyperscale and HPC, Big Data, Cognitive Computing and Machine Learning, Security, Cryptocurrency, In-Memory Computing, etc. OrionX Marketing can put that content in the right context by aligning it with your business objectives and customer requirements. And OrionX PR can build on that with new content and packaging to pursue the right dissemination, whether by doing the PR work itself or by working with your existing PR resources.

In all cases, the interactions among these three areas makes OrionX especially effective.  Strategy is aware of market positioning and communication requirements; Marketing benefits from deep industry knowledge and technical depth; and PR can create engaging content that is not just interesting but also insightful, etc.

Having helped over 50 technology leaders connect products to customers, we have seen several common requirements. It is different in every case, but business objectives are similar and the process can be substantially the same. Over the years, our solutions to these requirements have developed into what we can now unveil as packaged solutions: well-defined, targeted, and easy to adopt.

New Packaged Solutions

The packages being introduced today are:

  • Market Sizing
  • Customer Sentiment
  • Message Testing
  • Value Proposition & Messaging
  • Competitive Analysis
  • Go-To-Market Health Check
  • PR Essentials
  • Video Deep Dive

We are also offering a free consultation with one of our partners. In almost every occasion, we’ve been told that such consultations have saved our clients time and money and given them new insights. It’s been a good way for us to show our commitment to your success, and whether or not it leads to business, it has always led to new relationships and good word of mouth.

Please take a moment to look at the new packages and let us know what you think.

Dan Olds Joins OrionX

Dan Olds Joins OrionX

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Dan Olds, who founded Gabriel Consulting Group more than a decade ago, has joined OrionX.

An important part of the OrionX magic is the ability to understand technologies, the competitive landscape,  and customer needs. We put a lot of effort into that. That is what clients need to connect products to customers, and to meet real customer needs with genuine product capabilities.

Today we raise the bar in that effort as we announce Dan’s addition to the OrionX team and celebrate a new milestone. In addition to tracking key technologies and emerging market segments, Dan has built a well-established process to measure customer sentiment in enterprise IT, something every technology vendor needs.

Thanks to the support of all of you: our clients, colleagues, and community, OrionX is poised to grow its reach and expand its services in Strategy, Marketing, and PR. We’ve been lucky to know you and to work on leading edge technologies in important areas such as IoT, Cloud, Big Data, HPC, & Security, etc.

Here is the press release we issued today:

ORIONX APPOINTS BIG DATA & HPC EXPERT DAN OLDS AS PARTNER

Silicon Valley-based Strategy, Marketing & PR Consulting Firm Bolsters
Leadership and Expands Services

March 2nd, 2016, Menlo Park, CA – Pioneering a new consulting services model for strategy, marketing, and PR, OrionX today announced the appointment of Dan Olds as partner. Mr. Olds is principal analyst at Gabriel Consulting Group (GCG) a Portland, Oregon-based IT consulting firm, which he founded in 2002 and whose activities continue as part of OrionX.

“Our clients value OrionX’s ability to understand their technology, their competition, and their customers, as they pave the way for digital transformation,” said Shahin Khan, Founding Partner at OrionX. “We are raising the bar with Dan’s extensive knowledge of technology trends and insightful appreciation of customer adoption patterns.”

An authority on technology trends and customer requirements, Dan Olds is a frequently quoted expert in industry and business publications such as The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg News, Computerworld, eWeek, CIO.com, and PCWorld.

“I am thrilled to join OrionX and a group of professionals with whom I have collaborated closely in the past,” said Dan Olds, Partner at OrionX. “My work on technology trends and customer sentiment is a perfect match with OrionX as we expand our services to deliver sound advice and quality content to our clients.”

In addition to server, storage, and network technologies, Dan closely follows the Big Data, Cloud, and HPC markets. He writes the “HPC Blog” on The Register, co-hosts the popular Radio Free HPC podcast, and is the acknowledged go-to person for the coverage of the supercomputing industry’s highly lauded Student Cluster Challenge.

Dan Olds
Big Data and HPC Expert Dan Olds Joins OrionX

About OrionX

Mobile, Social, Cloud, Big Data and IoT are redefining B2B technology. OrionX.net is the pioneer of a new model for Strategy, Marketing, and PR. OrionX is known for its depth and agility, insightful advice, original content, and its stellar reputation in Silicon Valley. More than 40 technology leaders in virtually every B2B segment have trusted OrionX.net to help set new break-away strategies, ignite brands, and engage customers for increased market share. Visit us at OrionX.net

For more information: Cindee Mock, OrionX, cindee.mock@orionx.net 650-255-2975

titan31

Benchmarks, Schmenchmarks: Big Iron Data and the November 2015 TOP500

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There has been much discussion in recent years as to the continued relevance of the High Performance Linpack (HPL) benchmark as a valid measure of the performance of the world’s most capable machines, with some supercomputing sites opting out of the TOP500 completely such as National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign that houses the Cray Blue Waters machine. Blue Waters is claimed to be the fastest supercomputer on a university campus, although without an agreed benchmark it is a little hard to verify such a claim easily.

At a superficial level it appears as though any progress in the upper echelons of the TOP500 may have stalled with little significant change in the TOP10 in recent years and just two new machines added to that elite group in the November 2015 list: Trinity at 8.10 Pflop/s and Hazel Hen at 5.64 Pflop/s, both Cray systems increasing the company’s share of the TOP10 machines to 50%. The TOP500 results are available at http://www.top500.org.

A new benchmark – the High Performance Conjugate Gradients (HPCG) – introduced two years ago was designed to be better aligned with modern supercomputing workloads and includes system features such as high performance interconnects, memory systems, and fine grain cooperative threading. The combined pair of results provided by HPCG and HPL can act as bookends on the performance spectrum of any given system. As of July 2015 HPCG had been used to rank about 40 of the top systems on the TOP500 list.

The November TOP500 List: Important Data for Big Iron
Although being complemented by other benchmarks, the HPL-based TOP500 is still the most significant resource for tracking the pace of super computing technology development historically and for the foreseeable future.
The first petascale machine, ‘Roadrunner’, debuted in June 2008, twelve years after the first terascale machine – ASCI Red in 1996. Until just a few years ago 2018 was the target for hitting the exascale capability level. As 2015 comes to its close the first exascale machine seems much more likely to debut in the first half of the next decade and probably later in that window rather than earlier. So where are we with the TOP500 this November, and what can we expect in the next few lists?

Source: TOP500
Source: TOP500

Highlights from the November 2015 TOP500 List on performance:
– The total combined performance of all 500 systems had grown to 420 Pflop/s, compared to 361 Pflop/s last July and 309 Pflop/s a year previously, continuing a noticeable slowdown in growth compared to the previous long-term trend.

– Just over 20% of the systems (a total of 104) use accelerator/co-processor technology, up from 90 in July 2015

– The latest list shows 80 petascale systems worldwide making a total of 16% of the TOP500, up from 50 a year earlier, and significantly more than double the number two years earlier. If this trend continues the entire TOP100 systems are likely to be petascale machines by the end of 2016.

So what do we conclude from this? Certainly that the road to exascale is significantly harder than we may have thought, not just from a technology perspective, but even more importantly from a geo-political and commercial perspective. The aggregate performance level of all of the TOP500 machines has just edged slightly over 40% of the HPL metric for an exascale machine.

Most importantly, increasing the number of petascale-capable resources available to scientists, researchers, and other users up to 20% of the entire list will be a significant milestone. From a useful outcome and transformational perspective it is much more important to support advances in science, research and analysis than to ring the bell with the world’s first exascale system on the TOP500 in 2018, 2023 or 2025.

Architecture
As acknowledged by the introduction of HPCG, HPL and the TOP500 performance benchmark are only one part of the HPC performance equation.

The combination of modern multi-core 64 bit CPUs and math accelerators from Nvidia, Intel and others have addressed many of the issues related to computational performance. The focus on bottlenecks has shifted away from computational strength to data-centric and energy issues, which from a performance perspective influence HPL results but are not explicitly measured in the results. However, from an architectural perspective the TOP500 lists still provide insight into the trends in an extremely useful manner.

Source: TOP500
Source: TOP500

Observations from the June 2015 TOP500 List on system interconnects:
– After two years of strong growth from 2008 to 2010, InfiniBand-based TOP500 systems plateaued at 40% of the TOP500 while compute performance grew aggressively with the focus on hybrid, accelerated systems.

– The uptick in InfiniBand deployments June 2015 to over 50% of the TOP500 list for the first time does not appear to be the start of a trend, with Gigabit Ethernet systems increasing to over a third (36.4%) of the TOP500, up from 29.4%.

The TOP500: The November List and What’s Coming Soon
Although the TOP10 on the list have shown little change for a few years, especially with the planned upgrade to Tianhe 2 blocked by the US government, there are systems under development in China that are expected to challenge the 100 Pflop/s barrier in the next twelve months. From the USA, Coral initiative is expected to significantly exceed the 100 Pflop/s limit – targeting the 100 to 300 Pflop/s with two machines from IBM and one from Cray, but not before the 2017 time frame. None of these systems are expected to deliver more than one third of exascale capability.

Vendors: A Changing of the Guard
The USA is still the largest consumer of TOP500 systems with 40% of the share by system count, which clearly favors US vendors, but there are definite signs of change on the wind.

Cray is the clear leader in performance with a 24.9 percent share of installed total performance, roughly the same as a year earlier. Each of the other leading US vendors is experiencing declining share with IBM in second place with a 14.9 percent share, down from 26.1 percent last November. Hewlett Packard is third with 12.9 percent, down from 14.5 percent twelve months ago.

These trends are echoed in the system count numbers. HP has the lead in systems and now has 156 (31%), down from 179 systems (36%) twelve months ago. Cray is in second place with 69 systems (13.8%), up from 12.4% last November. IBM now has 45 systems (9%), down from 136 systems (27.2%) a year ago.

On the processor architecture front a total of 445 systems (89%) are now using Intel processors, slightly up from 86.2 percent six months ago, with IBM Power processors now at 26 systems (5.2%), down from 38 systems (7.6%) six month ago.

Source: TOP500
Source: TOP500

Geo-Political Considerations
Perhaps the single most interesting insight to come out of the TOP500 has little to do with the benchmark itself, and the geographical distribution data which in itself underscores the importance of the TOP500 lists in tracking trends.

The number of systems in the United States has fallen to the lowest point since the TOP500 list was created in 1993, down to 201 from 231 in July. The European share has fallen to 107 systems compared to 141 on the last list and is now lower than the Asian share, which has risen to 173 systems, up from 107 the previous list and with China nearly tripling the number of systems to 109. In Europe, Germany is the clear leader with 32 systems, followed by France and the UK at 18 systems each. Although the numbers for performance-based distributions vary slightly, the percentage distribution is remarkably similar.

The USA and China divide over 60% of the TOP500 systems between them, with China having half the number and capability of the US-based machines. While there is some discussion about how efficiently the Chinese systems are utilized in comparison to the larger US-based systems, that situation is likely to be temporary and could be addressed by a change in funding models. It is abundantly clear that China is much more serious about increasing funding for HPC systems while US funding levels continue to demonstrate a lack of commitment to maintaining development beyond specific areas such as high energy physics.

TOP500: “I Have Seen The Future and it Isn’t Exascale”
The nature of HPC architectures, workloads and markets are all in flux in the next few years, and an established metric such as the TOP500 is an invaluable tool to monitor the trends. Even though HPL is no longer the only relevant benchmark, the emergence of complementary benchmarks such as HPCG serves to enhance the value of the TOP500, not to diminish it. It will take a while to generate a body of data equivalent to the extensive resource that has been established by the TOP500.

What we can see from the current trends shown in the November 2015 TOP500 list is that although an exascale machine will be built eventually, it almost certainly will not be delivered this decade and possibly not until half way through the next decade. Looking at the current trends it is also very unlikely that the first exascale machine will be built in the USA, and much more likely that it will be built in China.

Over the next few years the TOP500 is likely to remain the best tool we have to monitor geo-political and technology trends in the HPC community. If the adage coined by the Council on Competitiveness, “To out-compute is to out-compete” has any relevance, the TOP500 will likely provide us with a good idea of when the balance of total compute capability will shift from the USA to China.

Peter ffoulkes – Partner at OrionX.net

Small cloud Blog Pic

OpenStack Cloud: “And then there were five!”

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The IT industry is arguably going through its biggest transformation since the introduction of the IBM PC in the early 1980s, and a cloud service based approach is the likely destination for most enterprise workloads. On August 26th and 27th  Mirantis hosted the “second annual” OpenStack Silicon Valley event at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View to a standing room only audience.

Setting the scene for the conference, Alex Freedland, Co-Founder and President of Mirantis, pointed out the market momentum gained by OpenStack in five short years, displacing other potential cloud platforms and propelling it very firmly to being one of just five viable cloud computing platforms for enterprise deployment: Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure, VMware, and the OpenStack Community and Partner Ecosystem.

On the surface this might seem to be a rather bold claim for such a young open source technology offering as OpenStack, but based on my end-user studies at 451 Research prior to joining OrionX, I find the claim entirely credible. It is important to remember that despite all of the hype surrounding cloud computing, most enterprises are still in the early stages of cloud adoption and that it is a complex transition. Although the technology platforms to build a cloud are critical to success, there are many more significant factors that will contribute to success. First and foremost, the shift to a cloud-based approach to delivering IT services is a huge cultural transition and with such transitions also come substantial business risk. This was one of the key findings of my own research, and also the main theme of the talk by James Staten, Chief Strategist of the Cloud and Enterprise division at Microsoft and until recently Vice President & Principal Analyst for cloud computing at Forrester Research.

Another factor in a successful transition is choosing the right partners for technology and business solutions. It is here that OpenStack gains enormous credibility, not so much from the current level of maturity of the OpenStack technology platform but from the massive amount of investment in both money and developers that is being poured into the effort to make OpenStack successful, something that simply cannot be matched by any single company on the planet today. There is still much to be done to turn OpenStack into a true enterprise-grade, production-ready cloud platform but it is also clear that OpenStack is funded for success, which is one very important consideration for any enterprise making a significant bet on the foundation for its future IT services.

There are too many proof points to mention that underpin the level of activity and initiatives supporting the momentum behind OpenStack, but a few recent and noteworthy ones are:

  • On Monday August 24th, Mirantis benefited from a $100 million investment led by Intel Capital as part of Intel’s Cloud for All initiative
  • Also as part of the Cloud for All initiative, on July 23rd Rackspace and Intel announced the OpenStack Innovation Center, designed to accelerate the testing and deployment of scale-out OpenStack environments.
  • Even the IRS likes OpenStack! On August 26th, after a lengthy process, including an initial denial and an appeal, the OpenStack Foundation was granted 501c6 tax exempt status, a clear recognition of the positive impact that the Foundation is having on the cloud computing industry.

So, are we all off to see the wizard, the wonderful wizard of OS [OpenStack]?

Possibly, but not quite so fast! There are still lions and tigers and bears, Oh my! There is still much work to do to bring OpenStack, and indeed all the other credible cloud platforms up to production enterprise deployment standards, and this will take time even if the money and the will is there, which it appears to be for OpenStack. Here are just a few of the initiatives outlined at the OpenStack Silicon Valley summit that point to what is in the pipeline to make OpenStack more enterprise ready:

Core Improvements:

Med OpenStack Core 1

Strategic Investments

Med OpenStackStrategic Investments 1

The long and winding road

Perhaps the biggest issue of all to be addressed is the current scarcity of OpenStack expertise and developers. They seem to be worth more than their weight in gold or Bitcoins, and they also seem to know it! These are some of the driving forces behind initiatives such as Intel’s Cloud for All, and why a company like Mirantis is gaining recognition for its expertise, and investment that enhances its ability to influence the future of cloud computing.

The journey to “the cloud” is a long and twisty one, and there will be more than one destination, but for now OpenStack seems likely to be one of the five most viable destinations. From here it appears to be more real than it does to be a mirage.

Peter ffoulkes, Partner OrionX

Peter ffoulkes Joins OrionX

Peter ffoulkes Joins OrionX

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Today, OrionX is celebrating another great milestone as we welcome a new partner to our team!  Peter ffoulkes, who was most recently Research Director at 451 Research is joining OrionX.

Thanks to the support of all of you, our clients, our colleagues, our community, OrionX is poised to continue to raise the bar for Strategy, Marketing, and PR.

Here is the press release we issued today which sums it up well.

OrionX Appoints Cloud Computing Industry and Marketing Expert Peter ffoulkes as Partner

Pioneer of a new consulting services model for Strategy, Marketing, and PR, Silicon Valley-based OrionX Bolsters Leadership Team in support of Expanded Services

Menlo Park, CA, September 1, 2015 – Pioneering a new consulting services model for strategy, marketing, and PR, OrionX today announced the appointment of Peter ffoulkes as Partner based in San Francisco. Mr. ffoulkes was most recently Research Director for Cloud Computing and Enterprise Platforms at 451 Research.

“We are thrilled to welcome Peter to OrionX to help serve and grow our expanding client base,” said Shahin Khan, Founding Partner at OrionX. “Peter’s record of excellence, deep understanding of emerging technologies and customer requirements, and his first hand experience leading strategy and marketing organizations perfectly matches the fundamental strategy at OrionX.”

Previously Mr. ffoulkes was Vice President of Marketing at Adaptive Computing, Director of Outbound Marketing at ClearSpeed Technology, Director of Marketing for High-Performance Computing at Sun Microsystems, and Director and Principal Analyst for the Worldwide Workstation Computing program at Gartner Dataquest.

“I am delighted to join OrionX, a group of professionals who are well known across the industry for their depth, breadth, and quality of work,” said Peter ffoulkes. “I am equally excited to work with a customer base that exemplifies the technology leadership and innovation that is transforming the IT industry.”

Peter ffoulkes joins OrionX.net

About OrionX

Mobile, Social, Cloud, and Big Data are redefining B2B technology. OrionX.net is the pioneer of a new model for Strategy, Marketing, and PR. Orion is known for its depth and agility, insightful advice, original content, and its stellar reputation in Silicon Valley. More than 40 technology leaders in virtually every B2B segment have trusted OrionX.net to help set new break-away strategies, ignite brands, and engage customers for increased market share. Visit us at OrionX.net

OrionX: a New Model for Strategy, Marketing, PR

OrionX: a New Model for Strategy, Marketing, PR

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Welcome to Orion and OrionX.net!

When we formed Orion Marketing more than 6 years ago, our vision was to offer a technology marketing capability that would cover the entire spectrum from the board room to customer programs. We anticipated that marketing as a function would be transformed in significant ways: more technology, more data, more social, more blending of arts and sciences, more integrated with every other function, and ultimately more critical to the organization.

This required a new model.

If marketing was to be so important, it needed first to have a deeper understanding of global trends, business strategy, services, technologies, sales, human resources, law, finance, operations, and geographies.  That is a big task, but it is what it takes to begin to do great marketing.

So from the beginning, our focus has been on the new world of marketing. That means depth, breadth and quality. It means synthesis that must follow analysis to create great content. In short, it means everything that must be in place to “connect products to customers,” as our tagline said.

That was the right focus, and thanks to that and our wonderful customers, Orion Marketing grew, which enabled us to codify and hone our core marketing services.  We also started a systematic program to build additional capabilities.

Today, we are ready to launch a significant expansion of our services based on a few years of work.

We have developed, delivered, and are now formally launching two additional services: Strategy, and PR services. This expansion warrants a new brand that recognizes our heritage and points to a future of innovation and customer value in the digital era.

OrionX-Logo-400x110

OrionX continues the same unique model: bringing together business acumen, technical depth, insightful industry perspective, high quality work and counsel, and a natural focus on customer success.

Marketing has come a long way in the last decade. Just as companies have a well-practiced understanding of what it takes to build a great product, they now have a growing appreciation of why marketing is essential to their business and what it takes to do great marketing. They recognize that marketing is the glue at the center of the organization, and must have high quality content at its own center.  Nearly 25 years after Regis McKenna’s article in Harvard Business Review, finally Marketing is Everything!

As we embark on the next phase of this journey, we strive to continue to deserve your support, advice, participation, and business.

Thank you!

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