Cloud companies design their services using Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a role model, hoping that they will be able to get a portion of Amazon’s pie or attract a new market.

Recent news reports that IBM is in partnership with Ogilvy and Mather to relocate the advertising titan’s SAP implementation from the hosted environment it currently uses to “SmartCloud for SAP Applications hosted in IBM’s most up to date, eco-friendly Smarter Data Centre.”

Amazon and SAP have collaborated to create SAP application that operate on Amazon’s EC2. This is exactly the kind of development that alarms IBM, Microsoft and HP. Google and other Cloud giants will, as a result, be targeting Amazon harder than they are already doing.

Some of the hardware companies, HP included, know that they must get on the cloud wagon if they intend to stay relevant and help their current software and hardware line survive. HP’s OpenStack-based public cloud has recently gone to public beta testing.

IBM’s Efforts

When IBM announced that SAP migration update, it also announced what SmartCloud Enterprise + and IBM’s managed cloud infrastructure can offer enterprises:

• Support for both x86 and P-series servers that are using Windows, Linux or AIX over either VMware or PowerVM hypervisors on a level not seen before
• Support for a number of different workloads and technology platforms associated with these including a brand new System z shared environment that will be obtainable in the States and the U.K. in the latter part of the year.

Good efforts have been made by Amazon’s competitors, however AWS is still ahead. See also GoDaddy’s recent entry in the market. IaaS is getting more crowded.