5 Cloud Computing Predictions for 2011

January 10, 2011 1 Comment

  1. ESBaaS Will Emerge in Enterprise Clouds.  Enterprise service bus as a service will begin to emerge within enterprise clouds to allow common messaging within applications among different organizational units.  This will further support standardization within an enterprise, as well as reduce lead times for applications development.
  2. Enterprise Cloud Computing will Accelerate Data Center Consolidation.  As enterprises and governments continue to deal with the cost of operating individual data centers, consolidation will become a much more important topic.  As the consolidation process is planned, further migration to cloud computing and virtualized environments will become very attractive – if not critical – to all organizations.
  3. Desktop Virtualization.   As we become more comfortable with Google Apps, Microsoft Office 365, and other desktop replacement environments, the need for high-powered desktop workstations will be reduced to power users.  In addition to the obvious attraction for better data protection and disaster recovery, the cost of expensive workstations and local application licenses makes little sense.  The first migration will be for those who are primarily connected via an organizational LAN, with road warriors and mobile users following as broadband becomes more ubiquitous.
  4. SME Data Center Outsourcing into Public Clouds.  Small companies  requiring routine data center support, including office automation, servers, finance applications, and web presence, will find it difficult to justify installing their own equipment in a private or public colocation center.  In fact, it is unlikely savvy investors will support start up companies planning to operate their own data center, unless they are in an industry considered a very clear exception to normal IT requirements.
  5. Cloud Computing and Cloud Storage will Look to PODs and Containers.  Microsoft and Google have proven the concept on a large scale, now the rest of the cloud computing and data center industry will take notice and begin to consider compute and storage capacity as a utility.  As a utility the compute, storage, switching, and communications components will take advantage of greater efficiencies and design flexibility of moving beyond the traditional data center concrete.  This will further support the idea of distributed cloud computing, portability, cloud exchanges, and cloud spot markets in 2012…

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Cloud Computing Wish List for 2011

January 3, 2011 3 Comments

2010 was a great year for cloud computing.  The hype phase of cloud computing is closing in on maturity, as the message has finally hit awareness of nearly all in the Cxx tier.  And for good reason.  The diffusion of IT-everything into nearly every aspect of our lives needs a lot of compute, storage, and network horsepower.

imageAnd,… we are finally getting to the point cloud computing is no longer explained with exotic diagrams on a white board or Powerpoint presentation, but actually something we can start knitting together into a useful tool.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the United States takes cloud computing seriously, and is well on the way to setting standards for cloud computing, at least in the US.  The NIST definitions of cloud computing are already an international reference, and as that taxonomy continues to baseline vendor cloud solutions, it is a good sign we are  on the way to product maturity.

Now is the Time to Build Confidence

Unless you are an IY manager in a bleeding-edge technology company, there is rarely any incentive to be in the first-mover quadrant of technology implementation.  The intent of IT managers is to keep the company’s information secure, and provide the utilities needed to meet company objectives.  Putting a company at risk by implementing “cool stuff” is not the best career choice.

However, as cloud computing continues to mature, and the cost of operating an internal data center continues to rise (due to the cost of electricity, real estate, and equipment maintenance), IT managers really have no choice – they have to at least learn the cloud computing technology and operations environment.  If for no other reason than their Cxx team will eventually ask the question of “what does this mean to our company?”

An IT manager will need to prepare an educated response to the Cxx team, and be able to clearly articulate the following:

  • Why cloud computing would bring operational or competitive advantage to the company
  • Why it might not bring advantage to the company
  • The cost of operating in a cloud environment versus a traditional data center environment
  • The relationship between data center consolidation and cloud computing
  • The advantage or disadvantage of data center outsourcing and consolidation
  • The differences between enterprise clouds, public clouds, and hybrid clouds
  • The OPEX/CAPEX comparisons of running individual servers versus virtualization, or virtualization within a cloud environment
  • Graphically present and describe cloud computing models compared to traditional models, including the cost of capacity

Wish List Priority 1 – Cloud Computing Interoperability

It is not just about vendor lock-in.  it is not just about building a competitive environment.  it is about having the opportunity to use local, national, and international cloud computing resources when it is in the interest of your organization.

Hybrid clouds are defined by NIST, but in reality are still simply a great idea.  The idea of being able to overflow processing from an enterprise cloud to a public cloud is well-founded, and in fact represents one of the basic visions of cloud computing.  Processing capacity on demand.

But let’s take this one step further.  The cloud exchange.  We’ve discussed this for a couple of years, and now the technology needs to catch up with the concept.

If we can have an Internet Exchange, a Carrier Ethernet Exchange, and a telephone exchange – why can’t we have a Cloud Exchange?  or a single one-stop-shop for cloud compute capacity consumers to go to access a spot market for on-demand cloud compute resources?

Here is one idea.  Take your average Internet Exchange Point, like Amsterdam (AMS-IX), Frankfurt (DE-CIX), Any2, or London (LINX) where hundreds of Internet networks, content delivery networks, and enterprise networks come together to interconnect at a single point.  This is the place where the only restriction you have for interconnection of networks and resources is the capacity of your port/s connecting you to the exchange point.

Most Internet Exchange Points are colocated with large data centers, or are in very close proximity to large data centers (with a lot of dark fiber connecting the facilities).  The data centers manage most of the large content delivery networks (CDNs) facing the Internet.  Many of those CDNs have irregular capacity requirements based on event-driven, seasonal, or other activities.

The CDN can either build their colocation capacity to meet the maximum forecast requirements of their product, or they could potentially interconnect with a colocated cloud computing company for overflow capacity – at the point of Internet exchange.

The cloud computing companies (with the exception of the “Big 3”), are also – yes, in the same data centers as the CDNs.  Ditto for the enterprise networks choosing to either outsource their operations into a data center – or outsource into a public cloud provider.

Wish List – Develop a cloud computing exchange colocated, or part of large Internet Exchange Points.

Wish List Extra Credit – Switch vendors develop high capacity SSDs that fit into switch slots, making storage part of the switch back plane.

Simple and Secure Disaster Recovery Models

Along with the idea of distributed cloud processing, interoperability, and on-demand resources comes the most simple of all cloud visions – disaster recovery.

One of the reasons we all talk cloud computing is the potential for data center consolidation and recovery of CAPEX/OPEX for reallocation into development and revenue-producing activities.

However, with data center consolidation comes the equally important task of developing strong disaster recovery and business continuity models.  Whether it be through producing hot standby images of applications and data, simply backing up data into a remote (secure) location, or both, disaster recovery still takes on a high priority for 2011.

You might state “disaster recovery has been around since the beginning of computing, with 9 track tapes copies and punch cards – what’s new?”

What’s new is the reality of disaster recovery is most companies and organizations still have no meaningful disaster recovery plan.  There may be a weekly backup to tape or disk, there may even be the odd company or organization with a standby capability that limits recovery time and recovery point objectives to a day or two.  But let’s be honest – those are the exceptions.

Having surveyed enterprise and government users over the past two years, we have noticed that very, very few organizations with paper disaster recovery plans actually implement their plans in practice.  This includes many local and state governments within the US (check out some of the reports published by the National Association of State CIOs/NASCIO if you don’t believe this statement!).

Wish List Item 2 – Develop a simple, really simple and cost effective disaster recovery model within the cloud computing industry.  Make it an inherent part of all cloud computing products and services.  Make it so simple no IT manager can ever again come up with an excuse why their recovery point and time objectives are not ZERO.

Moving Towards the Virtual Desktop

Makes sense.  If cloud computing brings applications back to the SaaS model, and communications capacity and bandwidth are bringing delays –even on long distance connections, to the point us humans cannot tell if we are on a LAN or a WAN, then let’s start dumping high cost works stations.

Sure, that 1% of the IT world using CAD, graphics design, and other funky stuff will still need the most powerful computer available on the market, but the rest of us can certainly live with hosted email, other unified communications, and office automation applications.  You start your dumb terminal with the 30” screen at 0800, and log off at 1730.

If you really need to check email at night or on the road, your 3G->4G smart phone or netbook connection will provide more than adequate bandwidth to connect to your host email application or files.

This supports disaster recovery objectives, lowers the cost of expensive workstations, and allows organizations to regain control of their intellectual property.

With applications portability, at this point it makes no difference if you are using Google Apps, Microsoft 365, or some other emerging hosted environment.

Wish List Item 3 – IT Managers, please consider dumping the high end desktop workstation, gain control over your intellectual property, recover the cost of IT equipment, and standardize your organizational environment.

More Wish List Items

Yes, there are many more.  But those start edging towards “cool.”  We want to concentrate on those items really needed to continue pushing the global IT community towards virtualization.

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The Argument Against Cloud Computing

December 21, 2010 6 Comments

As a cloud computing evangelist there is nothing quite as frustrating, and challenging, as the outright rejection of anything related to data center consolidation, data center outsourcing, or use of shared, multi-tenant cloud-based resources.  How is it possible anybody in the late stages of 2010 can possibly deny a future of VDIs and virtual data centers?

Actually, it is fairly easy to understand.  IT managers are not graded on their ability to adopt the latest “flavor of the day” technology, or adherence to theoretical concepts that look really good in Powerpoint, but in reality are largely untested and still in the development phase.

Just as a company stands a 60% chance of failure if they suffer disaster without a recovery or continuity plan, moving the corporate cookies too quickly into a “concept” may be considered just as equally irresponsible to a board of directors, as the cost of failure and loss of data remains extremely high.

The Burden Carried by Thought Leaders and Early Adopters

Very few ideas or visions are successful if kept secret.  Major shifts in technology or business process (including organizational structure) require more than exposure to a few white papers, articles, or segments on the “Tech Hour” of a cable news station.

Even as simple and routine as email is today, during the 1980s it was not fully understood, mistrusted, and even mocked by users of “stable” communication systems such as Fax, TELEX, and land line telephones. in 2010 presidents of the world’s most powerful nations are cheerfully texting, emailing, and micro-blogging their way through the highest levels of global diplomacy.

It takes time, experience, tacit knowledge, and the trend your business, government, or social community is moving forward at a rate that will put you on the outside if the new technology or service is not adopted and implemented.

The question is, “how long will it take us to get to the point we need to accept outsourcing our information technology services and infrastructure, or face a higher risk of not being part of our professional or personal community?”

E-Mail first popped up in the late 1970s, and never really made it mainstream until around the year 2000.  Till then, when executives did use email, it was generally transcribed from written memos and types in by a secretary.  Until now, we have gradually started learning about cloud computing through use of social media, hosted public mail systems, and some limited SaaS applications. 

Perhaps at the point us evangelist types, as a community, are able to start clearly articulating the reality that cloud computing has already planted its seeds in nearly every Internet-enabled computer, smart phone, or smart devices life, the vision of cloud computing will still be far too abstract for most to understand. 

And this will subsequently reinforce the corporate and organizational mind’s natural desire to back off until others have developed the knowledge base and best-practices needed to bring their community to the point implementing and IT outsourcing strategy will be in their benefit, and not be a step in their undoing.

In fact, we need to train the IT community to be critical, to learn more about cloud computing, and question their role in the future of cloud computing.  How else can we expect the knowledge level to rise to the point IT managers will have confidence in this new service technology?

And You Thought is was About Competitive Advantage?

Yes, the cloud computing bandwagon is overflowing with snappy topics such as:

  • Infrastructure agility
  • Economies of scale
  • Enabling technology
  • Reduced provisioning cycles
  • Relief from capital expense
  • better disaster recovery
  • Capacity on demand
  • IT as a Service
  • Virtual everything
  • Publics, privates, and hybrids
  • Multi-resource variability
  • Pay as you go

Oh my, we will need a special lexicon just to wade through the new marketing language of the main goals of cloud computing, which in our humble opinion are:

  • Data center consolidation
  • Disaster recovery
  • IT as a Service
    Cloud computing itself will not make us better managers and companies.  Cloud computing will serve as a very powerful tool to let us more efficiently, more quickly, and more effectively meet our organizational goals.  Until we have he confidence cloud computing will serve that purpose, it is probably a fairly significant risk to jump on the great marketing data dazzling us on Powerpoint slides and power presentations.

We will Adopt Cloud Computing, or Something Like It

Now to recover my cloud computing evangelist enthusiasm.  I do deeply believe in the word – the word of cloud computing as a utility, as a component of broadband communications, as all of the bullets listed above.  it will take time, and I warmly accept the burden of responsibility to further codify the realities of cloud computing, the requirements we need to fulfill as an industry to break out of the “first mover phase,” and the need to establish a roadmap for companies to shift their IT operations to a/the cloud.  

Just as with email, it is just one of those things you know is going to happen.  We knew it in the early days of GRID computing, and we know it now.  Let’s focus our discussion on cloud computing to more of a “how” and “when” conversation, rather then a “wow” and “ain’t it cool.” conversation. 

Now as I dust off an circa 1980 set of slides discussing the value of messaging, and how it would support one-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many forms of interactive and non-interactive communications, it is time for us to provide a similar Introduction to Cloud. 

Get the pulpit ready

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Kundra Scores Again with 25 Point Federal IT Implementation Plan

December 19, 2010 Leave a comment

On December 9th Vivek Kundra, the U.S.Chief Information Officer (USCIO), released a “25 Point Plan to Reform Federal Information Technology Management.” Kundra acknowledges the cost of IT systems to the American people (~~$600billion during the past decade), and the reality that even with this investment the federal government lags behind private industry in both functionality and governance.

Kundra 25 Point PlanHighlights of the plan include a push towards data center consolidation, a “cloud first” policy for new IT projects (as well as IT refresh),a search and destroy mission looking for deadbeat and under-performing projects, as well as using professional program managers and acquisition specialists to streamline the purchase and implementation of IT systems. 

Sounds Good, But is it Real?

It is very possible the document was impressive and quite encouraging due to the talents of writers assigned to spin Kundra’s message. On the other hand, it all makes a lot of, well, plain good sense.

For example, on the topic of public private partnerships, and engaging industry early in the planning process.

Given the pace of technology change, the lag between when the government defines its requirements and when the contractor begins to deliver is enough time for the technology to fundamentally change, which means that the program may be outdated on the day it starts …

…In addition, requirements are often developed without adequate input from industry, and without enough communication between an agency’s IT staff and the program employees who will actually be using the hardware and software…

…As a result, requirements are too often unrealistic (as to performance, schedule, and cost estimates), or the requirements that the IT professionals develop may not provide what the program staff expect – or both.

This makes a lot of sense.  Face it, the government does not develop innovation or technology, private industry develops innovation.  And government, as the world’s largest IT users, consumes that technology.

And since the government is often so large, it is near impossible to for the government to collect and disseminate best practices and operational “lessons learned” at the same pace possible within private industry.  In private industry aggressive governance and cooperation with vendors are essential to survival and ultimate success as a company.

On Innovation

Small businesses in the technology space drive enormous innovation throughout the economy . However, the Federal Government does not fully tap into the new ideas created by small businesses…

…smaller firms are more likely to produce the most disruptive and creative innovations. In addition, with closer ties to cutting edge, ground-breaking research, smaller firms often have the best answers for the Federal Government

Kundra goes on to acknowledge the fact small companies are where innovation happens within any industry or market.  While Cisco, Microsoft, Google, and others such as Computer Associates have a wide range of innovative products and solutions, a large percentage of those ideas are from acquisitions absorbed in an effort to reinforce the large company’s market strategy.

Small, innovative companies produce disruptive ideas and technologies, and the federal government should not be prevented from exposure and potential purchase of products being developed outside of the Fortune 500.  Makes sense for the government, makes sense for the small business community.

Technology Fellows

Within 12 months, the office of the Federal CIO will create a technology fellows program and the accompanying recruiting infrastructure. By partnering directly with universities with well-recognized technology programs, the Federal Government will tap into the emerging talent pool and begin to build a sustainable pipeline of talent.

While projects sponsored by the National Science Foundation and Defense Advanced Project Research Agency (DARPA) have been around for a while, this is still a very refreshing attitude towards motivating both students and those who lead our students.

The American technology industry, while still the best in the world, works kind of like Cisco or Google. With a few exceptions, the skills and talent those companies need to maintain the competitive dominance in their market must be imported from other countries.  if you do not believe this, take a drive through Palo Alto, Milpitas, or stop for lunch on Tasman Drive in Santa Clara.  English is not always the dominant language.

However, that does not need to be the case, nor does the US tech brain pool need to revolve around Silicon Valley.  if the US Government and Kundra are true to this idea, then partnering with all levels of education throughout the United States to develop either high level technologies, or even small components of those technologies can only serve to increase the intellectual and subsequent technology capacity of our country.

People and companies rarely lose motivation when faced with attainable challenges or success – by nature they will gain additional and higher thresholds for additional successes. 

Cloud Computing is the Next Cyclone of Technology

Cloud Innovation as a CycloneOverall, everything in the 25 point plan eventually points back to cloud computing.  Like a low pressure system sucking in hot air and developing circulation, the CIO’s cloud computing strategy will continue to attract additional ideas and success for making Information and Communications Technology (ICT) efficient, and an enabling tool for our future growth.

Cloud Computing, within the context of the 25 point plan, enables data center consolidation, software innovation, public private partnerships, efficiency, transparency, “green” everything,

We need to replace these “stovepiped” efforts, which too often push in inconsistent directions, with an approach that brings together the stakeholders and integrates their efforts…

The cloud computing cyclone will not stop with the federal government.  Once the low begins to strengthen and develop circulation, it will continue sucking state government initiatives, local governments, the academic community, and industry into the “eye.” 

The financial benefits of converting wasted operational and capital budgets currently spent on building and maintaining inefficient systems into innovation and product development, or better program management for government and educational programs are essential in promoting economic growth, not to mention reducing a nightmare national deficit.

Hopping on the “Kundra Vision” Bandwagon

As Americans we need to expose ourselves to Kundra’s programs and strategy.  No strategy is perfect, and can benefit from the synergies of a country with 300 million citizens who have ideas, visions, and strong desires to contribute to a better America.  We need to push our ideas to both local and federal thought leaders, including the US CIO’s office.  Push through your representatives, through blogs, through your technology vendors.

If Kundra is good for his word, and this is the new vision for an American ICT-enabled future, your efforts will not be wasted.

Filed under Cloud Computing, Government Regulatory, International ICT, Internet and Telecom Tagged with , , ,

Are Public Mail Systems a Danger in Developing Countries?

December 14, 2010 Leave a comment

Over the past two years I’ve interviewed dozens of government ICT managers in countries throughout Asia, the Caribbean, and Europe.  One of the surprising items collected during the interviews is the large number of government employees – some at the highest levels, using public mail systems for their professional communications.

While this might appear as a non-issue with some, others might find it both a security issue (by using a foreign commercial company to process and store government correspondence), as well as an identity issue (by using an XXX@gmail.com or XXX@yahoo.com ) while communicating with a government employee or official.

Reasons provided in interviews concluded the reason why government employees are using commercial email systems include:

  • Lack of timely provisioning by government ICT managers
  • Concerns over lack of privacy within a government-managed email system
  • Desire to work from home or while mobile, and the government system does not support remote or web access to email (or the perception this is the case)
  • Actual mail system performance is better on public systems than internal government-operated systems
  • Government ICT systems have a high internal transfer cost, even for simple utilities such as email

and so on.

When pressed further, many were not aware of the risk that government correspondence processed through public systems potentially resulted in images being stored on storage systems probably located in other countries.  Depending on the country, that email image could easily be provided to foreign law enforcement agencies under lawful warrants – thus exposing potentially sensitive information for exploitation by a foreign government.

Are Public Email Accounts Bad?

Not at all.  Most of us use at least one personal email address on a public mail system, some many addresses.  Public systems allow on-demand user creation of accounts, and if desired allow individuals to create anonymous identities for use when using other social media or public networks. 

Public addresses can separate an individual’s online identity from their “real world” identity, allowing higher levels of privacy any anonymous participation in social media or other activities where the user wishes to not have their full identity revealed.

The addresses are also quite simple to use, cost nothing, and are in use around the world.

Governments are also starting to make better use of commercial or public email outsourcing, with the City of Los Angeles being one of the more well-known projects.  The City of LA has service level agreements with Google (their outsource company), assuring security an confidentiality, as well as operational service levels. 

This is no doubt going to be a continuing trend, with public private partnerships (PPPs) relieving government users from the burden of infrastructure and some applications management.  With the US CIO Vivek Kundra aggressively pushing the national data center consolidation and cloud computing agenda, the move towards hosted or SaaS applications will increase.

Many benefits here as well, including:

  1. Hosted mail systems may keep an image of mail in storage – much more secure than if an individual PC loses single images of mail from a POP server
  2. Access from any Internet connected workstation or computer (of course assuming good passwords and security)
  3. Standardization among organizational user (both for mail formatting and client use)
  4. Cheaper operating costs

To address recent budget and human resource challenges, the City of Orlando moved its e-mail and productivity solution to the cloud (application and cloud  hosting services provided by Google).  The City has realized a 65 percent reduction in e-mail costs and provided additional features to increase the productivity of workers. (CIO Council, State of Public sector Cloud Computing)

For developing countries this is probably a good thing – have all the features and services of the best in class email systems, while significantly reducing the cost and burden of developing physical data center facilities.

But for the meantime, as that strategy and vision is defined, the use of public or cloud hosted email services in many developing countries in one of convenience.  We will only hope that commercial email providers safeguard data processed by government user’s personal accounts, used for communicating all levels of government information, with the same service level agreements offered large users such as the City of LA or City of Orlando.

Filed under Cloud Computing, Government Regulatory, International ICT, Internet and Telecom Tagged with , , ,

Government Clouds Take on the ESBaaS

November 4, 2010 3 Comments

Recent discussions with government ICT leadership related to cloud computing strategies have all brought the concept of Enterprise Service Bus as a Service into the conversation.

Now ESBs are not entirely new, but in the context of governments they make a lot of sense.  In the context of cloud computing strategies in governments they make a heck of a lot of sense.

Wikipedia defines an ESB as:

In computing, an enterprise service bus (ESB) is a software architecture construct which provides fundamental services for complex architectures via an event-driven and standards-based messaging engine (the bus). Developers typically implement an ESB using technologies found in a category of middleware infrastructure products, usually based on recognized standards.

Now if you actually understand that – then you are no doubt a software developer.  For the rest of us, this means that with the ESB pattern, participants engaging in service interaction communicate through a services or application “bus.” This bus could be a database, virtual desktop environment, billing/payments system, email, or other services common to one or more agencies. The ESB is designed to handle relationships between users with a common services and standardized data format.

New services can be plugged into the bus and integrated with existing services without any changes to the core bus service. Cloud users and applications developers will simply add or modify the integration logic.

Participants in a cross-organizational service interaction are connected to the Cloud ESB, rather than directly to one another, including: government-to-government, citizen-to-government, and business-to-government. Rules-based administration support will make it easier to manage ESB deployments through a simplified template allowing a better user experience for solution administrators.

The Benefits to Government Clouds

In addition to fully supporting a logical service-oriented architecture (SOA), the ESBaaS will enhance or provide:

  • Open and published solutions for managing Web services connectivity, interactions, services hosting, and services mediation environment
  • From development and maintenance perspective, the Government Cloud ESB allows agencies and users to securely and reliably share information between applications in a logical, cost effective manner
  • Government Cloud ESBs will simplify adding new services, or changing existing services, with minimal impact to the bus or other interfacing applications within the IT environment
  • Improvements in system performance and availability by offloading message processing and isolating complex mediation tasks in a dedicated ESB integration server

Again, possibly a mouthful, but if you can grasp the idea of a common bus providing services to a lot of different applications or agencies, allowing sharing of data and and interfaces without complex relationships between each participating agency, then the value becomes much more clear.

Why the Government Cloud?

While there are many parallels to large companies, governments are unique in the number of separate ministries, agencies, departments, and organizations within the framework of government.  Governments normally share a tremendous amount of in the past this data between each agency, and in the past this was extremely difficult due to organizational differences, lack of IT support, or individuals who simply did not want to share data with other agencies.

The result of course was many agencies built their own stand alone data systems, without central coordination, resulting in a lot of duplicate data items (such as an individual’s personal profile and information, business information, and land management information, and other similar data).  Most often, there were small differences in the data elements each agency developed and maintained, resulting in either corrupt or conflicting data.

The ESB helps identify a method of connecting applications and users to common data elements, allowing the sharing of both application format and in many cases database data sets.  This allows not only efficiency in software/applications development, but also a much higher level of standardization an common data sharing.

While this may be uncomfortable for some agencies, most likely those which do not want to share their data with the central government, or use applications that are standardized with the rest of government, this also does support a very high level of government transparency.  A controversial, but essential goal of all developing (and developed) governments.

As governments continue to focus on data center consolidation and the great economical, environmental, and enabling qualities of virtualization and on-demand compute resources, integration of the ESBaaS makes a lot of sense. 

There are some very nice articles related to ESBs on the net, including:

Which may help you better understand the concept, or give some additional ideas.

Let us know your opinion or ideas on ESBaaS

Filed under Cloud Computing, ESB, Government Regulatory, International ICT, Virtualization Tagged with , , ,

Disaster Recovery as a First Step into Cloud Computing

November 1, 2010 1 Comment

fire-articleOrganizations see the benefits of cloud computing, however many are simply mortified at the prospect of re-engineering their operations to fit into existing cloud service technology or architectures.  So how can we make the first step? 

We (at Pacific-Tier Communications) have conducted 103 surveys over the past few months in the US, Canada, Indonesia, and Moldova on the topic of cloud computing.  The surveys targeted both IT managers in commercial companies, as well as within government organizations.

The survey results were really no different than most – IT managers in general find cloud computing and virtualization an exciting technology and service development, but they are reluctant to jump into cloud for a variety of reas0ns, including:

  • Organization is not ready (including internal politics)
  • No specific budget
  • Applications not prepared for migration to cloud
  • and lots of other reasons

The list and reasoning for not going into cloud will continue until organizations get to the point they cannot avoid the topic, probably around the time of a major technology refresh.

Disaster Recovery is Different

The surveys also indi9cated another consistent trend – most organizations still have no formal disasters recovery plan.  This is particularly common within government agencies, including those state and local governments surveyed in the United States.

IT managers in many government agencies had critical data stored on laptop computers, desktops, or in most cases their organization operating data in a server closet with either no backup, or onsite backup to a tape system with no offsite storage.

In addition, the central or controlling government/commercial  IT organization had either no specific policy for backing up data, or in a worst case had no means of backing up data (central or common storage system) available to individual branch or agency users.

When asked if cloud storage, or even dedicated storage became available with reasonable technical ease, and affordable cost, the IT managers agreed, most enthusiastically, that they would support development of automated backup and individual workstation backup to prevent data loss and reinforce availability of applications.

Private or Public – Does it Make a Difference?

While most IT managers are still worshiping at the shrine of IT Infrastructure Control, there are cracks appearing in the “Great Walls of IT Infrastructure.”  With dwindling IT budgets, and diskexplosive user and organization IT utility demand, IT managers are slowly realizing the good old days of control are nearly gone.

And to add additional tarnish to pride, the IT managers are also being faced with the probability at least some of their infrastructure will find its way into public cloud services, completely out of their domain.

On the other hand, it is becoming more and more difficult to justify building internal infrastructure when the quality, security, and utility of public services often exceeds that which can be built internally.  Of course there are exceptions to every rule, which in our discussion includes requirements for additional security for government sensitive or classified information.

That information could include military, citizen identification data, or other similar information that while securable through encryption and partition management, politically(particularly in cases where the data could possible leave the borders of a country) may not be possible to extend beyond the walls of an internal data center.

For most other information, it is quickly becoming a simple exercise in financial planning to determine whether or not a public storage service or internal storage service makes more sense. 

The Intent is Disaster Recovery and Data Backup

Getting back to the point, with nearly all countries, and in particular central government properties, being on or near high capacity telecom carriers and networks, and the cost of bandwidth plummeting, the excuses for not using network-based off-site backups of individual and organization data are becoming rare.

In our surveys and interviews it was clear IT managers fully understood the issue, need, and risk of failure relative to disaster recovery and backup.

Cloud storage, when explained and understood, would help solve the problem.  As a first step, and assuming a successful first step, pushing disaster recovery (at least on the level of backups) into cloud storage may be an important move ahead into a longer term move to cloud services.

All managers understood the potential benefits of virtual desktops, SaaS applications, and use of high performance virtualized infrastructure.  They did not always like it, but they understood within the next refresh generation of hardware and software technology, cloud computing would have an impact on their organization’s future.

But in the short term, disaster recovery and systems backup into cloud storage is the least traumatic first step ahead.

How about your organization?

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The Bell Tolls for Data Centers

October 17, 2010 1 Comment

MC900250330In the good old days (late 90s and most of the 2000s) data center operators loved selling individual cabinets to customers.  You could keep your prices high for the cabinet, sell power by the “breakered amp,” and try to maximize cross connects  through a data center meet me room.  All designed to squeeze the most revenue and profit out of each individual cabinet, with the least amount of infrastructure burden.

Forward to 2010.  Data center consolidation has become an overwhelming theme, emphasized by the US CIO Vivek Kundra’s mandate to force the US government, as the world’s largest IT user, to eliminate most of more than 1600 federal government owned and operated data centers (into about a dozen), and further promote efficiency by adopting cloud computing.

The Gold Standard of Data Center Operators hits  Speed Bump

Equinix (EQIX) has a lot of reasons and explanations for their expected failure to meet 3rd quarter revenue targets.  Higher than expected customer churn, reducing pricing to acquire new business, additional accounting for the Switch and Data acquisition, etc., etc., etc…

The bottom line is -  the data center business is changing.  Single cabinet customers are looking at hosted services as an economical and operational alternative to maintaining their own infrastructure.  Face it, if you are paying for a single cabinet to house your 4 or 5 servers in a data center today, you will probably have a much better overall experience if you can migrate that minimal web-facing or customer facing equipment into a globally distributed cloud.

Likewise, cloud service providers are supporting the same level of Internet peering as most content delivery networks (CDNs) and internet Service Providers (ISPs), allowing the cloud user to relieve themselves of the additional burden of operating expensive switching equipment.  The user can still decide which peering, ISP, or network provider they want on the external side of the cloud, however the physical interconnections are no longer necessary within that expensive cabinet.

The traditional data centers are beginning to experience the move to shared cloud services, as is Equinix, through higher churn rates and lower sales rates for those individual cabinets or small cages.

The large enterprise colocation users or CDNs continue to grow larger, adding to their ability to renegotiate contracts with the data centers.  Space, cross connects, power, and service level agreements favor the large footprint and power users, and the result is data centers are further becoming a highly skilled, sophisticated, commodity.

The Next Generation Data Center

There are several major factors influencing data center planners today.  Those include the impact of cloud computing, emergence of containerized data centers, the need for far great energy efficiency (often using PUE-Power Utilization Effectiveness) as the metric, and the industry drive towards greater data center consolidation.

Hunter Newby, CEO of Allied Fiber, strongly believes ”Just as in the last decade we saw the assembly of disparate networks in to newly formed common, physical layer interconnection facilities in major markets we are now seeing a real coordinated global effort to create new and assemble the existing disparate infrastructure elements of dark fiber, wireless towers and data centers. This is the next logical step and the first in the right direction for the next decade and beyond.”

We are also seeing data center containers popping up along the long fiber routes, adjacent to traditional breaking points such as in-line amplifiers (ILAs), fiber optic terminals (locations where carriers physically interconnect their networks either for end-user provisioning, access to metro fiber networks, or redundancy), and wireless towers. 

So does this mean the data center of the future is not necessarily confined to large 500 megawatt data center farms, and is potentially something that becomes an inherent part of the transmission network?  The computer is the network, the network is the computer, and all other variations in between?

For archival and backup purposes, or caching purposes, can data exist in a widely distributed environment?

Of course latency within the storage and processing infrastructure will still be dependent on physics for the near term, actually, for end user applications such as desktop virtualization, there really isn’t any particular reason that we MUST have that level of proximity…  And there probably are ways we can “spoof” the systems to think they are located together, and there are a host of other reasons why we do not have to limit ourselves to a handful of “Uber Centers…”

A Vision for Future Data Centers

What if broadband and compute/storage capacity become truly insulated from the user.  What if Carr’s ideas behind the Big Switch are really the future of computing as we know it, and our interface to the “compute brain” is limited to dumb devices, and that we no longer have to concern ourselves with anything other than writing software against a well publicized set of standards?

What if the next generation of Equinix is a partner to Verizon or AT&T, and Equinix builds a national compute and storage utility distributed along the fiber routes that is married to the communications infrastructure transmission network?

What if our monthly bill for entertainment, networking, platform, software, and communications is simply the record of how much utility we used during the month, or our subscription fee for the month? 

What if wireless access is transparent, and globally available to all mobile and stationary terminals without reconfiguration and a lot of pain?

No more “remote hands” bills, midnight trips to the data center to replace a blown server or disk, dealing with unfriendly or unknowledgeable  “support” staff, or questions of who trashed the network due to a runaway virus or malware commando…

Kind of an interesting idea.

Probably going to happen one of these days.

Now if we can extend that utility to all airlines so I can have 100% wired access, 100% of the time.

Filed under Cloud Computing, Internet and Telecom, Virtualization Tagged with , ,

Data Centers Hitting a Wall of Cloud Computing

October 9, 2010 1 Comment

Equinix lowers guidance due to higher than expected churn in its data centers and price erosion on higher end customers.  Microsoft continues to promote hosted solutions and cloud computing.  Companies from Lee Technologies, CirraScale, Dell, HP, and SGI are producing containerized data centers to improve efficiency, cost, and manageability of high density server deployments.

The data center is facing a challenge.  The idea of a raised floor, cabinet-based data center is rapidly giving way to virtualization and highly expandable, easy to maintain, container farms.

The impact of cloud computing will be felt across every part of life, not least the data center which faces a degree of automation not yet seen.”

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer believes “the transition to the cloud <is> fundamentally changing the nature of data center deployment.” (Data Center Dynamics)

As companies such as Allied Fiber continue to develop visions of high density utility fiber ringing North America, with the added potential of dropping containerized cloud computing infrastructure along fiber routes and power distribution centers, AND the final interconnection of 4G/LTE/XYZ towers and metro cable along the main routes,the potential of creating a true 4th public utility of broadband with processing/storage capacity becomes clear.

Clouds Come of Age

Data center operators such as Equinix have traditionally provided a great product and service for companies wishing to either outsource their web-facing products into a facility with a variety of internet Service Providers or internet Exchange Points providing high performance network access, or eliminate the need for internal data center deployments through outsourcing IT infrastructure into a well-managed, secure, and reliable site.

However the industry is changing.  Companies, in particular startup companies. are finding there is no technical or business reason to manage their own servers or infrastructure, and that nearly all applications are becoming available on cloud-based SaaS (Software as a Service) hosted applications.

Whether you are developing your own virtual data center within a PaaS environment, or simply using Google Apps, Microsoft Hosted Office Applications, or other SaaS, the need to own and operate servers is beginning to make little sense.  Cloud service providers offer higher performance, flexible on-demand capacity, security, user management, and all the other features we have come to appreciate in the rapidly maturing cloud environment.

With containers providing a flexible physical apparatus to easily expand and distribute cloud infrastructure, as a combined broadband/compute utility, even cloud service providers are finding this a strong alternative to placing their systems within a traditional data center.

With the model of “flowing” cloud infrastructure along the fiber route to meet proximity, disaster recovery, or archival requirements, the container model will become a major threat to the data center industry.

What is the Data Center to Do?

Ballmer:

“A data center should be like a container – that you can put under a roof or a cover to stop it getting wet. Put in a slab of concrete, plumb in a little garden hose to keep it cool, yes a garden hose – it is environmentally friendly, connect to the network and power it up. Think of all the time that takes out of the installation.”

Data center operators need to rethink their concept of the computer room.  Building a 150 Megawatt, 2 million square foot facility may not be the best way to approach computing in the future.

Green, low powered, efficient, highly virtualized utility compute capacity makes sense, and will continue to make more sense as cloud computing and dedicated containers continue to evolve.  Containers supporting virtualization and cloud computing can certainly be secured, hardened, moved, replaced, and refreshed with much less effort than the “uber-data center.”

It makes sense, will continue to make even more sense, and if I were to make a prediction, will dominate the data delivery industry within 5~10 years.  If I were the CEO of a large data center company, I would be doing a lot of homework, with a very high sense of urgency, to get a complete understanding of cloud computing and industry dynamics.

Focus less on selling individual cabinets and electricity, and direct my attention to better understanding cloud computing and the 4th Utility of broadband/compute capacity.  I wouldn’t turn out the lights in my carrier hotel or data center quite yet, but this industry will be different in 5 years than it is today.

Given the recent stock volatility in the data center industry, it appears investors are also becoming concerned.

Filed under Cloud Computing, Energy, International ICT, Internet and Telecom, startup business, Virtualization Tagged with , , ,

The Reality of Cloud Implementation Part 1 – Hosted Applications

September 13, 2010 Leave a comment

As a business consultant providing direction and advice to both government clients and commercial clients, several topics continue to drive discussion not only on short term IT strategy, but also longer term innovative contributions cloud computing can offer the organization.

However to get the conversation moving forward, managers contemplating major architectural change to their IT organizations need to find a good reference or pilot project to justify the expense and contribute to change.  Not the preferred approach, but a reality.

One easy IT project is the move from workstation-based applications, primarily office automation suites, to server-based applications.  The choice is between applications hosted within a private (enterprise) network, or to outsource the application to a commercial provider such as Microsoft Live Office or Google Apps.

Hosted applications make a lot of sense – for most users.  It is a great idea to offload the burden of desktop application administration IT managers when possible, with an expectation of the following:

  1. Greater control over intellectual property (files are stored on a central file server, not on individual hard drives and computers)
  2. Greater control over version and application code updates
  3. Greater control over security, anti-virus, and anti-spam definitions
  4. Application standardization (including organizational templates and branding)
  5. Better management of user licenses (and eliminating use of unauthorized or copied software)

If we look at profiles of most organizational users, the vast majority are office workers who normally do not need to travel, access files or applications from home, or stay on call 24 hours a day.  Thus we can assume, while at the office, computers are connected to a high performance LAN, with high bandwidth and throughout within the organization.

if that assumption is correct, and the organization implements either an enterprise-hosted or commercially-hosted (Google or Microsoft as an example), then those individual workstations can also eliminate keeping files on the local drives (can all be available and backed up to a file server), as well as using web-based applications for most activities.

The user’s relationship with the network, applications, and intellectual property is channeled through a workstation or web interface.  This also enables users, through use of VPNs and other access security, to use any compatible interface available when connecting to applications and files.  This includes home computers and mobile devices – as long as the data is retained on the host file server, and a record is created of all users accessing the data for both security and network/computer resource capacity management.

NOTE:  As a frequent traveler I also spend a considerable amount of time in airplanes, airports, and areas without easy access to the Internet or my file servers.  I do keep an image of MS Office on my laptop, and do have a very large hard drive, and do have a library of SD chips and flash drives for  use when un-tethered from my web apps.  I don’t see this changing in the near future – however I am probably in a  very small minority of professional road warriors who still justify use of local images.  Most do not.

An Unscientific Review of Web-Based Office Automation Applications

First, I am writing this blog entry using Microsoft’s Live Writer, a web/cloud-based application available for blog writers.  it is one application available within the Microsoft “Live-Everything” suite of web-based utilities, which include office automation and social networking applications.

writer The Live Writer application connects with my blog provider (WordPress), downloads my blog profile, and uses that as a what-you-see-is-what-you-get editing interface.  I feel as if I am typing directly into my blog, without the need to understand HTML commands or other manual features.

Adding video, tables, tags, hyperlinks, and SEO tools is effortless.

Going further into my Microsoft Live Office account I can upload, download, create, edit, and store documents in all MS Office formats, with the main free apps including World, Excel, Powerpoint, and One Note.  Mail, calendars, web sites, blogs – a variety of different utilities for personal and potentially professional use.

It is easy to share documents, create collaboration groups, and integrate MS Messenger-driven conferencing and sharing among other connected colleagues.  All available as a free environment for any user without the need to buy MS Office products for your personal computer.  Other commercial products offer a lot more utility, however as a basic test environment, the performance of MS Live Office is more than adequate for probably 95% of office workers world wide. 

Face it, most of us rarely us anything beyond the most basic features of any office automation product, and purchasing licenses for individual office automation suites for each organizational user really only benefits the vendor.

Google Docs, and the Google Apps engine provide similar features to the Microsoft Suite, and some additional unique features not currently available (or easily noticed) on the Live Office sites.  At a high level, Google provides network users:

  • Documents (word processing, spreadsheets, presentations)
  • Forms
  • Drawing/graphics
  • Templates
  • Blogs
  • Analytics
  • Lots of other stuff

In my absolutely unscientific testing of both Google and Microsoft web-based applications, I did not find a single feature which I normally use in preparing presentations, documents, and spreadsheets that could not be reproduced with the online edition.

If that is true for most users, then we can probably look toward a future where cloud-based and hosted office automation applications begin to replace software loaded on individual workstations.

The Danger of Easy Outsourcing

In a world of Service Oriented Architectures (SOA), and close inter-relationships of data, care is needed to ensure we do not create pilots “islands of unconnectable data.”  Today, nearly all data is connectable, whether tables and forms within an email message, SMS messages, spreadsheets, data bases, or any other potential SaaS application.

A word we need to keep in our IT vocabulary is “PORTABILITY.”  Anything we type into an application is a candidate for logging, enquiry, statistics, reporting, or other use of data.  This is a concern when using SaaS applications for not only office automation, but any other hosted application. 

Any and all data we create must be available to any other application which can consume or integrate organizational or industry community of interest applications.  We will look into the SaaS portability question in part 2 of this series.

Filed under Cloud Computing, Consulting, Internet and Telecom, Virtualization Tagged with , , , ,

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