Categories

Tags

12.5.2012

There is no question that the social gaming market has the potential for huge returns. Today it is an industry worth billions of dollars and, the largest game developers in the world are quickly moving to the cloud as they recognize its potential and inevitability in the future of computer gaming.  In this article we will take a look at the world’s top five online game developers and what they are doing today with regard to cloud gaming.

What is the appeal of social gaming?

People play online games for different reasons. According to studies done on the subject, there are three main reasons why people engage in social gaming:

1. To entertain themselves when they are bored.
2. To be part of a social circle and fit in with their peers.
3. As a way of escaping reality.

There are several other reasons apart from the top three. Many gamers engage in social games because of the competitive aspect. In fact, this is starting to gain more widespread appeal as a competitive sport marketing and competition structure starts to emerge (a good example of this phenomenon is the incredible popularity of StarCraft in South Korea as a spectator competitive sport.)

Trends in social gaming

Initially, most social games used a pay-to-play subscription model. However, one of the largest trends in social gaming has been the acceptance of a free to play model. This allows companies to quickly monetize on the aspects listed above that draw people to social gaming. There are three main ways in which companies monetize on free to play gaming:

1. Some games allow access to all in-game content but sell vanity items and advantages to gamers. While it is possible to experience the whole game for free, paying subscribers will have an advantage in the form of a richer, easier, or more customizable gaming experience.
2. Other kinds of games restrict access to certain parts of the game, but leave enough of it for free to attract new players. This model of gaming strongly encourages players to purchase a subscription to access the full version.
3. There are some games (mainly social browser games) that use a completely free to play model and monetize on advertisements and product placement, offering customers a paid version that is ad free.

The top five gaming companies in the world and their involvement in cloud gaming

1. Activision-Blizzard. This company tops the list with an impressive annual revenue of $4.7B from online gaming. They are the second overall most important game developer in the world and, thanks to the massive popularity of World of Warcraft, the undisputed leaders of MMORPGs (Massive Multi-player Online Role Playing Games.) New games released in this genre are inevitably measured against World of Warcraft and there hasn’t been a serious contender to its place at the top in the eight years since this game was released. World of Warcraft uses a standard subscription model.
2. Vale. This company generated $2.25B last year from online gaming. This revenue has mainly been made thanks to first person shooter games, starting with their Counterstrike series and continuing to their Team Fortress series of games. They pioneered the free-to-play movement by switching Team Fortress to this model and selling in game vanity items like attractive hats for their players’ avatars.
3. Sony. Although there is serious competition between Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo, with $1.9B last year, Sony is leading the console race when it comes to online gaming. These revenues mainly come from the company’s implementation of the PlayStation Network (PSN.) This online service has no monthly subscription fee, unlike its competitors’, and has allowed Sony to generate impressive profits from online gaming without releasing as many high profile, expensive online gaming titles.
4. Microsoft. Xbox Live Arcade is PSN’s biggest competitor, and has allowed Microsoft to generate $1.75B in the last year alone. Microsoft’s revenue, unlike Sony’s, comes mainly from their popular games including their main cash cow, Halo.
5. Zynga. No discussion of cloud gaming would be complete without mentioning Zynga’s successful integration with social media networks in order to develop some of the most played games on the planet. Although they are currently experiencing some backlash, there is no question that their social gaming model is more likely to represent the future of online gaming than the production of expensive, risky blockbusters.

Be Part of Our Cloud Conversation

Our articles are written to provide you with tools and information to meet your IT and cloud solution needs. Join us on Facebook and Twitter.

About the Guest Author:

Nida Rasheed is a freelance writer and owner of an outsourcing company, Nida often finds herself wanting to write about the subjects that are closest to her heart. She lives in Islamabad, Pakistan and can be found on Twitter @nidarasheed.

12.4.2012

Not much needs to be said about the rate at which cloud computing is growing. Both small businesses and large companies have embraced the cloud with great gusto and with immediate improvements to their capability and bottom lines. In fact, IDC has gone on to predict an annual growth rate of 26% over the next five years – this is six times the growth predicted for other more ‘traditional’ IT.

PaaS Solutions

While most CEO’s understand the SaaS model with ease – after all it is the same (or similar) software they use, only running remotely – with obvious benefits, the same is not true for Platform as a Service. To begin with, the term ‘platform’ itself may be poorly understood by the non-initiated. Therefore there can be doubts as to why PaaS is so important.

Let us look at a very recent case study where PaaS helped an international organization better itself.

Al Jazeera and the Egyptian Spring

In February 2011, Al Jazeera was in the forefront of reporting on the Egyptian uprising. Its grassroots organization in Egypt ensured that the world was given access to the latest in what was happening at Tahrir Square. As a result, the web traffic being handled by the channel’s Internet arm rose by 1000% (this is not a typo). Previously Al Jazeera was hosting its web site with a traditional hosting service, but this was obviously unable to handle the surge in traffic and visitors had some nasty experiences. That is when Al Jazeera moved its site to a commercial PaaS service. In effect it obtained an elastic number of web server platforms that grew and shrunk in response to the traffic.

The focus is on two important aspects of this story – the first and more obvious is the advantage that PaaS gave Al Jazeera in terms of its ability to respond to changes in traffic. The number of servers could increase to keep pace with the traffic. The other benefit which is not so obvious is the speed with which Al Jazeera was able to bring this capability into being. If the Channel had decided to (say) increase its web servers tenfold by procuring new servers, it would have taken much more time, required large upfront expenditure and additional manpower.  All of this was achieved with no upfront expenditure and very little (if any) additional manpower.

Here are some more PaaS benefits that may appeal to CEOs :

Using specialized platforms – Smart phone sales have already beaten PC sales and this gap will only widen.  The cloud offers smart phone users native methods to stay connected when they are on the move. This is bringing in new efficiencies to businesses. PaaS helps companies make solutions that are specifically aimed at the mobile user.

Cutting expenditure – This is obviously an area every CEO will love. Traditional IT expenditure relies on physical hardware, infrastructure and manpower. It has been said that more than 50% of all IT projects go well over budget, 31% of all projects end up being canceled and maintenance can cost far more than the original project itself. In PaaS projects, all of the hardware ends up in the cloud service provider’s premises.

Scalability and Growth – All PaaS solutions are scalable and elastic. Companies do not need to factor in future needs into their IT solutions because the size and numbers of your deployments can be programmed to grow automatically with the load. There is also no long term commitment to staying with a particular company if you can get a better deal elsewhere.

When super storm Sandy was about to hit the East coast, many companies shifted their applications from data centers in the area about to be affected by the storm and moved them elsewhere. In fact the cloud computing companies assisted their users with this and did not even charge them for the technical assistance. Research indicates that the PaaS market will grow from $512 million to $1.7 billion by 2015. Companies that move in early will have an opportunity to experiment and fine tune their operations. Later as their scale of operations grow, this knowledge will pay rich dividends.

Be Part of Our Cloud Conversation

Our articles are written to provide you with tools and information to meet your IT and cloud solution needs. Join us on Facebook and Twitter.

About the Guest Author:

Sanjay Srivastava has been active in computing infrastructure and has participated in major projects on cloud computing, networking, VoIP and in creation of applications running over distributed databases. Due to a military background, his focus has always been on stability and availability of infrastructure. Sanjay was the Director of Information Technology in a major enterprise and managed the transition from legacy software to fully networked operations using private cloud infrastructure. He now writes extensively on cloud computing and networking and is about to move to his farm in Central India where he plans to use cloud computing and modern technology to improve the lives of rural folk in India.

12.3.2012

When we talk about latest IT trends in the market today, no one would miss out on the importance of cloud computing. This revolutionary technology has created marvels in modern day business enterprises. They have helped businesses reduce costs significantly in terms of infrastructure, computing power, software resources and tools, manpower and so on.

Even non-IT firms have embraced upon its benefits with ease thanks to the simplicity and efficiency of cloud based service platforms. All you need to enjoy the cloud is a reliable and fast internet connection enabled device. So who has been at the forefront of cloud technology implementation? The answer is not at all surprising. Japan, the Asian giant lives up to its recognition globally as the land of the rising Sun. It is not just the land where the Sun sets its foot first but also any new technology that we envisage today.

According a recent survey by both VMware and Asia Cloud Computing Association (ACCA), Japan is at the top of the list of Asia Pacific countries in terms of implementation of cloud computing. The nation’s ranking remains unchanged from that of last year. The progressive minds of Japanese innovators are a steady contributor to the success of almost any computing or related technologies. With massive infrastructure building capability available with plenty of resources locally, Japan has a very high appetite for technology.

Japanese business enterprises have leveraged cloud services from both domestic and international cloud service providers to streamline their business activities in tune with demand and has thus brought about significant changes in the way IT has worked magic for business enterprises. Japanese businesses have benefited greatly with respect to the fact that their initial infrastructural costs especially that of IT companies have gone down by over a great margin thanks to their shift to cloud paradigm.

Even government agencies have leveraged benefits of cloud computing in Japan and even overtaken western nations in this sector. Many medical institutions prefer to keep their records online thereby making it accessible to physicians anywhere anytime. Cloud computing has brought changes in ways we could never imagine. Those that refused to move to the cloud earlier citing very vague reasons have begun to realize what potential the technology has and how it can bring about never before seen agility and efficiency in their operations.

There are numerous reasons for which cloud computing becomes dearer by the day to people all over the world. The imminent threat of hardware failure in personal computers is in itself a big reason to have their daily operational resources and computing platforms moved to an online cloud based service so that the risk of data and information loss is minimal.

Next up is the ease of access. Cloud computing allows you to take your work with you wherever you go. If you have with you an internet-enabled device like a laptop, you can work remotely from anywhere on the planet via an online interface. All your resources would be made available in front of you as though it was there with you all the time. The faster the internet goes, the greater the operational efficiency of cloud computing. Moreover, recovery from disasters is sped up by cloud computing thanks to its remote location access features and online backup capabilities.

Japan has been praised by several experts for its policies that greatly encourage the flourishing trend of cloud computing. Despite facing severe setbacks due to outages thanks to the devastating earthquake back in 2011, businesses and IT powerhouses have been increasingly dependent on cloud based delivery models. The reason cited by many for this growing affinity towards cloud computing is that even though downtimes can be lethal, efficient backup and easy access to remote resources have brought numerous advantages to them and hence the slight setbacks can be ignored taking the power of the greater good.

The survey also evaluated other Asian countries in terms of cloud adaptation and found out that everyone was following Japan’s model and is catching up. In countries like India, cloud computing is gaining momentum not even witnessed in developed nations like the United States. This positive outlook clearly shows us that cloud computing is here to stay for the long term and it is undoubtedly the core business platform of the near future.

Be Part of Our Cloud Conversation

Our articles are written to provide you with tools and information to meet your IT and cloud solution needs. Join us on Facebook and Twitter.

About the Guest Author:

Mandira Srivastava is a fulltime freelance writer who specializes in technology, health and fitness, politics, and financial writing. Equipped with degree of mass communication and having worked for both private and corporate clients, I have experience meeting a wide range of writing requirements and styles.