Spot market for cloud services set for 2014 launch
Sun 27 Apr 2014
Cloud service users will be able to buy cloud services from a spot market of all major cloud providers this year after suppliers 6fusion and CME Group jointly announced an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) spot exchange.
The spot market will list financial products based upon 6fusion’s Workload Allocation Cube (WAC) as the standard unit of measurement and will be available for trading on an electronic platform using technology licensed from derivatives marketplace firm CME Group.
6fusion claims its UC6 software platform will be used to track fulfilment of physically delivered contracts traded on the spot exchange. The spot exchange beta is expected to launch later this year featuring a host of infrastructure buyers, sellers and partners.
Sceptics believe the market may be slow to move though. Commentator Ben Kepes said on the news: “I’d be interested to see an IaaS marketplace really gain traction but I’m not overly confident it’ll happen any time soon.”
The WAC is a patented benchmark to measure consumption and capacity of compute, network and storage resources. The WAC makes it possible for buyers to standardise IaaS requirements, making it simpler to determine the infrastructure type, quantities, and pricing that best match requirements across suppliers.
John Cowan, 6fusion CEO and co-founder said: “6fusion was founded on philosophy that on-demand IT infrastructure will not reach its true potential until it can be consumed like a true utility and traded on an open exchange. An open exchange is good for both buyers and suppliers of cloud infrastructure. For buyers, it unlocks unprecedented visibility and control over the enterprise cloud transformation process. For suppliers, it dramatically reduces the cost of business acquisition and drives increased transaction velocity.”
Bryan Durkin, CME Group chief operating officer said: “CME Group wants to provide customers the opportunity to hedge risk in the growing cloud computing industry. CME Group’s experience with new products and technological expertise makes the company an ideal candidate to innovate in this space and we’re happy to work with 6fusion to go to market.”
Owen Rogers, senior analyst for digital economics at 451 Research welcomed the move. He said: “The combination of CME Group’s wide ranging experience in commodity exchanges together with 6fusion’s unique metering capability puts the collaboration in a strong position to deliver the economic benefits of real utility computing.”
CME Group exchanges offer the widest range of global benchmark products across all major asset classes, including futures and options based on interest rates, equity indexes, foreign exchange, energy, agricultural commodities, metals, weather and real estate. It is also a central counterparty clearing provider,
6fusion claims to be able to quantify supply and demand for compute resources across public and private environments with the world’s only patented metering algorithm, the Workload Allocation Cube (WAC), and an open platform to measure any IT infrastructure environment.
