Commentary

Enterprise Clouds Require Service-Level Discipline

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 10:00:00 EST

The Enterprise Cloud Requires a real time infrastructure and a management discipline that understands and can enforce service level discipline. Organizations have become increasingly dependent on technical infrastructure to enable customer interactions. As such, the business has a vested interest in making sure its technology partners understand what constitutes good customer experience so that it’s prepared for projected volumes and rapidly knows how to resolve any impediments.

Did Western Union Invent Cloud Computing?

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 09:30:00 EST

Interesting post by Nick Carr in which he points to the supposed first published evidence of the concept of Cloud Computing. The proof comes in the document, dated March 30, 1965 which outlines a Western Union executive's ambitious plan to create "a nationwide information utility, which will enable subscribers to obtain, economically, efficiently, immediately, the required information flow to facilitate the conduct of business and other affairs." In a nutshell Western Union invented cloud computing.

The Character of Cloud Computing

Sun, 29 Nov 2009 04:00:00 EST

Here's an important reminder for cloud service providers: character counts. Ethics, Values, and Trust are table stakes – for anyone who wants to succeed in business long term – but especially for cloud service providers. As a cloud customer, I am not simply buying/renting your hardware and software. I am grafting my company onto yours. We are intermingling our corporate DNA. I am loading my databases on your disk drives. I am modifying my internal processes to map to your services.

Why The Cloud Needs Virtualization

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 03:00:00 EST

Lots of discussion lately about the need for virtualization in a cloud computing context. On one side you have people saying it's not necessary and adds extra complexity, on the other you have people (vendors) saying that virtualization is inherently a cloud infrastructure. Some even go as far as saying that virtualization and cloud computing are one in the same. I'm here to tell you that neither is true. My position is Virtualization Doesn't Make the Cloud, it makes the cloud better. Sure, you could manage raw servers Google style, but why? For me, it comes down two main aspects of scale, scaling up, and scaling out.

First let's look at scaling out, or to scale horizontally which basically means to add more nodes to a distributed system, such as adding a new servers or storage (which is easier). These could be in the form of physical or virtual servers. An example might be scaling out from one web server system to many dedicated slaves machines. Google has made an art form of scaling out. They have data centers around the globe geared toward this one core task - just in time hardware provisioning, but for most this is a very difficult and costly endeavour. Virtualization makes this sort of instant replication & provisioning of many virtual machines much easier.

Next is scaling up or the ability to scale vertically which means adding resources to a single server in a distributed system. Typically this involves the addition of CPUs or memory to a single virtual server in the form of Virtual CPU and RAM. Unlike a physical server, in a virtual environment you can change your virtual hardware characteristics, a physical server is what it is. You run at it's maximum potential limiting it's ability to easily scale up. If you need more scale you need more hardware or have to manually add more components to the physical server (RAM, CPU, storage, etc), which means downtime while the servers are upgraded. In virtual environment this isn't a limitation and can often be done on the fly.

Vertical scaling of existing systems also enables you to better leverage Virtualization technology because it provides more resources for the hosted Operating system and Applications that can share these resources in a multi-tenant environment. Virtualization also allows for more automated programmatic control of the system resources in correlation to the demands placed on the infrastructure or application being hosted. This is because in a virtual infrastructure you are not managing any actual physical components but instead virtual representations of them.

So it is very true that virtualization isn't a requirement of a cloud infrastructure, it just makes it a heck of lot easier to manage and scale out or up or both.

The Five Layers within Cloud Computing

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 10:00:00 EST

As a preface to the series of articles I will be writing on the Value Proposition and Business Cases for Cloud Computing, I wanted to discuss the layers below and within the cloud. It is important to understand what each of the layers is composed of, what the intended function of that layer is, and how these layers interact with each other. By simplifying the cloud computing concept into layers, it is easier to define the roles within the overall structure and explain where your business fits into the model.

The Future of Cloud Computing Belongs to Asia

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 11:55:00 EST

People often ask me where I believe the biggest opportunities for Cloud Computing currently are, at first I thought they were asking about the technical particulars like public clouds, platforms etc, but recently I've come to realize it isn't so much the technology as much as where the technology is being adopted that is important. Really what they're asking me is where is the money? I'm here today to tell you, it's in Asia.

What Makes a Cloud Server?

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 23:00:00 EST

With the massive push toward cloud computing in the enterprise, there are some considerations that hardware vendors will have to come to terms with in the long run. Unlike the old infrastructure model with hardware bearing the brunt of fault tolerance, the new infrastructure model places all fault tolerance concerns within the software layer itself. [...]

The Cloud Opportunity Window is Now Officially Open

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 13:15:00 EST

At the Cloud Computing Conference and Expo in Santa Clara, California, the opening keynote session venue was completely filled, with the organizer (SYS-CON Events) obliged to quickly expand the audience into two overflow rooms, in addition to mounting displays in hallways adjacent to the main ballroom. According to the conference organizer more than twice as many have signed up and are attending the conference than planned. And cloud "buzz" is electric within the halls.

What is Enterprise Cloud Computing?

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 20:30:00 EDT

What is enterprise cloud computing? Simply stated, it’s a behind-the-firewalls use of commercial, Internet-based cloud technologies specifically focused on one company’s or one business environment’s computing needs. Enterprise cloud computing is a controlled, internal place that offers the rapid and flexible provisioning of compute power, storage, software, and security services to meet your mission’s demands.

Cloud Will Become Pervasive: 3Tera CEO

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 05:07:00 EDT

"Virtualization requires massive volume to be profitable. Cloud computing will enable that massive volume." With succinct sound bites like that, it is not surprising that Barry X Lynn, CEO of 3Tera, is much in demand as a speaker at conferences devoted to Cloud & Virtualization. In this brief interview with SYS-CON's Cloud Computing Journal, Lynn discusses the current buoyant state of cloud computing, including the whys and the wherefores of its growing success and pervasiveness.

Infrastructure-as-a-Service Will Mature in 2010: Microsoft's David Chou

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 05:00:00 EDT

While acknowledging that lots of work is currently being done to differentiate and integrate private and public cloud solutions, Microsoft Architect David Chou believes that Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) is the area of Cloud Computing that will make its impact most noticeably in 2010 - especially for startups, and small-medium sized businesses. In this quickfire mini-interview with SYS-CON's Cloud Computing Journal, Chou also mentions who he deems to be the Top Five Companies in the Cloud as at Fall 2009. One of the five he chooses, hardly surprisingly, begins with M.

Cloud Computing Journal Continues To Publish World's Best Cloud Analysts

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 11:00:00 EDT

Only one publication in the world has been tracking Cloud Computing 24x7 since December 6, 2006, when we first mentioned the concept in an article: Cloud Computing Journal. Since then worldwide interest in the Cloud paradigm of massively scalable IT resources and capabilities delivered as a service using Internet technologies has been mushrooming at a breakneck pace.

Data Portability in The Cloud

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 07:00:00 EDT

Spectacular “cloud” failures over the past few weeks have raised the hue and cry for portability and interoperability across clouds for data.The problem is that the cry is based on the false assumption that a “cloud service” is the same as an “application service.”

Apparently Microsoft felt Google and Amazon were getting too much attention with their recent outages and decided to join the game. The absolute loss of data for ~~thousands~~ lots and lots of T-Mobile Sidekick users is regrettable and yes someone needs to address such issues but that someone is not a standards group or a committee or even Microsoft.

The problem here seems to be that people equate “cloud services” with “application services”. Sidekick, etc… is not a cloud service, it’s an application service and that’s an important distinction. Even if it were deployed in a cloud, which it is not, it would still be an application and not a cloud service. Yet folks continue to make this very basic and very important mistake despite the FUD that results from their inaccurate verbiage. For example, Lauren Weinstein’s blog on Microsoft’s recent Sidekick-related data loss, has this to say on the subject:

Another important related risk is being "locked into" particular cloud services. Most cloud computing services make it as simple as possible to get your data into their universe. But getting your data out again can often be anything but trivial. If your data is "trapped in the cloud" and something goes wrong, it can be a very serious double whammy indeed.

Yes, users should be able to get their data out of a cloud with the same relative ease with which it went in, but we aren’t talking about cloud services we’re talking about application services. And interoperability and portability between applications has never, ever been a guarantee. E-mail is about the only exception to this rule and you can thank RFC 822 for that. Unless we’re willing to sit down and write this level of detail for every application known to man and every application that does not yet exist, consider e-mail data interoperability a fluke of nature and thank the powers that be that we have that much. No, HTML and HTTP don’t count because they don’t actually deal with data; they just define the transport, access, and presentation of data. There is a difference, and it’s on the same level as the difference that separates cloud services from application services.

Any application deployed in a cloud and accessed by users IS NOT A CLOUD SERVICE. I repeat, it’s NOT A CLOUD SERVICE. It’s an APPLICATION.

AN IMPORTANT AND NOT ALL THAT SUBTLE DISTINCTION

The “cloud service” is Microsoft’s platform. A “cloud service” is Google’s platform, or Salesforce.com’s platform, or BlueLock or GoGrid or Amazon. A “cloud service” is used by IT, by developers, by the technical community at large. What consumers access is an application, and nothing more. They aren’t the user of the cloud service, they are the consumer of an application deployed in a cloud environment. Google Docs is an application. Gmail is an application. Twitter is an application. None of these are “cloud” services, even when using APIs designed to integrate them with other applications; they are still, always and forever, applications.

Interoperability and portability, whichever Lauren (and others) is calling for, is not going to solve this problem. This problem can only be solved by the application provider, which in this case is T-Mobile. It is the responsibility of T-Mobile to provide a means by which the data stored in its application can be transferred to another application – cloud-based or otherwise – and its data is properly backed up (which is yet another piece of this supposed cloudtastrophe puzzle that isn’t being addressed enough). And that’s it. It is the responsibility of other application providers to offer a means by which that data can be imported and transferred to their application, thus providing the portability that is apparently demanded by consumers if we are to listen to the myriad cries erupting at every little hiccup in the cloudosphere.

Portability of application services, like Sidekick, is not a cloud problem. It is an ancient problem that goes back to the first attempt at sharing data across two applications that continues to plague enterprises and developers like some kind of immortal, invulnerable locust. An entire software industry focuses on making this process as simple as possible; you may have heard of it, it’s called enterprise application integration (EAI). This industry exists because no two applications store their data in exactly the same way or in the same format or in the same database. Thus there are standards and tools provided to allow two applications to share, extract, transform, and otherwise access that data.

Lauren mentions this later in her post:

There are positive ways to proceed. Google, for example, a leader in cloud computing, has recently launched a specific project -- The Data Liberation Front -- explicitly including as a key facet the goal of making sure that users can quickly and easily export data from Google products. This ambitious and extremely important effort should be a model for the rest of the cloud computing industry.

Note the operative “from Google products.” Google isn’t going to provide interoperability or portability of its cloud services, it’s providing access to application data that effectively promotes integration of its application services with third-party application services – wherever they may be hosted. This is no different than taking advantage of Salesforce.com’s Web Services API to enable integration between its application services and some enterprise-hosted application.

But the cloud services, which are the applications, will be no more or less portable than they are today when at last you can get at the data. Because that data, surely in some kind of raw format (XML, JSON, etc…) will not be usable by consumers anyway. It will need to be interpreted by yet another application. Another application that is, likely, running as a cloud-based application.

Once people start recognizing the distinction between the two then perhaps we’ll actually be able to make some headway toward resolving the application integration challenges in the cloud. Until then, we’re just spewing so much pollution into the clouds with these calls for “cloud” portability and interoperability that no one can see what’s really necessary.

Technorati Tags: MacVittie,F5,cloud,cloud computing,portability,inteoperability,sidekick,t-mobile,microsoft,google,standards,data,application,integration,eai,enterprise application integration,api,cloud service,applicaiton service,blog,internet,web

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Immutable Service Containers on Amazon EC2

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 07:00:00 EDT

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Tue, 28 Apr 2009 13:45:00 EDT

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