Computing's 3rd Era Pivots Into High Gear This Week At Cloud Foundry Summit

June 9, 2014 Stacey Schneider

In an hour, the Cloud Foundry Summit will begin in San Francisco’s Hilton. The opening keynotes by Pivotal’s CEO Paul Maritz will mark an important transition in computing.

Mainly, tonight about a 1,000 people will pack into the Grand Ballroom and learn more about the advances of computing’s 3rd platform, and how it is tangibly changing the dynamic of business today.

One of the advances is that will become apparent immediately is that this acceleration is due to the efforts of far more visionaries than Pivotal. Earlier today, we announced Swisscom as the 34th member of the Cloud Foundry Foundation. Considering the Foundation formed just about 4 months ago, this level of participation alone should make IT leaders take pause.

Then take a look at the names:

Cloud Foundry Foundation Members as of June 9, 2014

Their support and collaboration will permeate the halls and conversation. The level of participation and support from these vendors is crucial, and in many ways is the driving reason why the 3rd platform movement has eclipsed the 2nd platform, often referred to as client-server, so rapidly. One reporter for CMS Wire underscored how far along this sea-change is by citing, “we’ve heard it said that the only industry sector that’s growing more slowly than the one made up of computing’s client-server companies is the tobacco industry.”

The support of these 34 companies to Cloud Foundry is incredibly important. They are each pouring significant money, usually ranging from $30,000 to $100,000. They are providing a voice in the discussion and direction of the project, and contributing code to back it up.

Interestingly, they are also providing confidence to users that this is the horse to bet on in the PaaS race. A quick study on Yahoo! Finance of the market cap for just the platinum and gold members backing Cloud Foundry reaches $1.2 trillion. Red Hat’s OpenShift, while significant, pales at $9.4 billion.

The Foundation Moves Forward

While the Foundation does not formally take control of the project until later this fall, there is no doubt attendees will walk away understanding they are already passionately involved. The ecosystem of companies formally supporting Cloud Foundry will be on stage delivering keynotes. They will be leading sessions. They will be showcasing successes and plans for the future.

Some could even call this event the Foundation’s debut. Its first public act. In reality, while more companies may join and leadership is still forming, each of these companies is actively pushing the Cloud Foundry agenda forward in their own way.

Thinking about what it means as these companies further align, as is the point of this kind of event—this particular event can’t help but be a big boon to computing’s 3rd era. It’s only going to progress faster from here.

EDITOR’S NOTE: For those lucky attendees at this week’s event, I’ll be looking to capture as many of the stories as I can. If you are there and would like to schedule time with me to share your thoughts, hit me up via twitter @sparkystacey using the hashtag #CFSummit.

About the Author

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