Cloudware Players
Subscribers
Small and medium businesses, Web 2.0 and SaaS companies, as well as enterprises – anyone who needs to build up IT infrastructure and have working web applications and services.
Subscribers can have their applications operate in the cloud, without the need to own or manage servers, data centers, network peering, etc. They can deploy any desired architecture, middleware, including existing applications; scale applications per their needs, and operate them anywhere in the world, paying only for what they use.
Data Center Operators
Data center operators and hosting providers "publish" computing resources – such as servers, storage and network connectivity – making them available to subscribers. Data center operators include hosting providers, managed service providers, enterprise datacenters and other clouds. The data center operators determine the prices for the resources they publish and who can use them – from individual subscribers (e.g., when an enterprise data center adds private resources for use by other subscribers in the enterprise), to general use by any subscriber. In addition, data centers can publish their excess capacity, or have the unused servers shutdown to conserve power until needed.
Publishers
Independent software vendors, vendors of virtual appliances, infrastructure, platform and tools can publish appliances, ready-made architectures, and whole ready-to-run applications in the global catalog. Publishers determine which subscribers have access to what published resources and at what price. Virtual appliances allow, among other things, all hardware appliance vendors to provide a software equivalent of their appliances, including firewalls, load balancers, security appliances, etc.; platform and middleware vendors can provide ready-to-use packages of their software that can be used without complex installation and configuration. IT professionals can productize their expertise by publishing ready to use architectures: LAMP, Ruby-on-rails, J2EE, including scalable versions, such as clustered database servers, application servers, etc. Verticals can publish their applications in a ready-to-run form that can be delivered by managed service providers or used by customers directly.
Vendors for Integrated Web Services
Vendors can provide value-adding web services that are available to all subscribers.
Examples include advanced monitoring tools, billing services, transaction monitors, lifecycle management, storage and policy engines, etc.
Providers for Outsourced Services
Outsourcing providers can publish their services and make them easily available on the cloud, whether the services are application development, monitoring, support, or application management
