Data Center Consolidation and Adopting Cloud Computing in 2013

December 31, 2012 Leave a comment

Throughout 2012 large organizations and governments around the world continued to struggle with the idea of consolidating inefficient data centers, server closets, and individual “rogue” servers scattered around their enterprise or government agencies.  Issues dealt with the cost of operating data centers, disaster management of information technology resources, and of course human factors centered on control, power, or retention of jobs in a rapidly evolving IT industry.

Cloud computing and virtualization continue to have an impact on all consolidation discussions, not only from the standpoint of providing a much better model for managing physical assets, but also in the potential cloud offers to solve disaster recovery shortfalls, improve standardization, and encourage or enable development of service-oriented architectures.

Our involvement in projects ranging from local, state, and national government levels in both the United States and other countries indicates a consistent need for answering the following concerns:

  • Existing IT infrastructure, including both IT and facility, is reaching the end of its operational life
  • Collaboration requirements between internal and external users are expanding quickly, driving an architectural need for interoperability
  • Decision support systems require access to both raw data, and “big data/archival data”

We would like to see an effort within the IT community to move in the following directions:

  1. Real effort at decommissioning and eliminating inefficient data centers
  2. All data and applications should be fit into an enterprise architecture framework – regardless of the size of organization or data
  3. Aggressive development of standards supporting interoperability, portability, and reuse of objects and data

Regardless of the very public failures experienced by cloud service providers over the past year, the reality is cloud computing as an IT architecture and model is gaining traction, and is not likely to go away any time soon.  As with any emerging service or technology, cloud services will continue to develop and mature, reducing the impact and frequency of failures.

Future Data CentersWhy would an organization continue to buy individual high powered workstations, individual software licenses, and device-bound storage when the same application can be delivered to a simple display, or wide variety of displays, with standardized web-enabled cloud (SaaS) applications that store mission critical data images on a secure storage system at a secure site?  Why not facilitate the transition from CAPEX to OPEX, license to subscription, infrastructure to product and service development?

In reality, unless an organization is in the hardware or software development business, there is very little technical justification for building and managing a data center.  This includes secure facilities supporting military or other sensitive sites.

The cost of building and maintaining a data center, compared with either outsourcing into a commercial colocation site – or virtualizing data, applications, and network access requirements has gained the attention of CFOs and CEOs, requiring IT managers to more explicitly justify the cost of building internal infrastructure vs. outsourcing.  This is quickly becoming a very difficult task.

Money spent on a data center infrastructure is lost to the organization.  The cost of labor is high, the cost of energy, space, and maintenance is high.  Mooney that could be better applied to product and service development, customer service capacity, or other revenue and customer-facing activities.

The Bandwidth Factor

The one major limitation the IT community will need to overcome as data center consolidation continues and cloud services become the ‘norm, is bandwidth.  Applications, such as streaming video, unified communications, and data intensive applications will need more bandwidth.  The telecom companies are making progress, having deployed 100gbps backbone capacity in many markets.  However this capacity will need to continue growing quickly to meet the needs of organizations needing to access data and applications stored or hosted within a virtual or cloud computing environment.

Consider a national government’s IT requirements.  If the government, like most, are based within a metro area.  The agencies and departments consolidate their individual data centers and server closets into a central or reduced number of facilities.   Government interoperability frameworks begin to make small steps allowing cross-agency data sharing, and individual users need access to a variety of applications and data sources needed to fulfill their decision support requirements.

For example, a GIS (Geospatial/Geographic Information System) with multiple demographic or other overlays.  Individual users will need to display data that may be drawn from several data sources, through GIS applications, and display a large amount of complex data on individual display screens.  Without broadband access between both the user and application, as well as application and data sources, the result will be a very poor user experience.

Another example is using the capabilities of video conferencing, desktop sharing, and interactive persistent-state application sharing.  Without adequate bandwidth this is simply not possible.

Revisiting the “4th Utility” for 2013

The final vision on the 2013 “wishlist” is that we, as an IT industry, continue to acknowledge the need for developing the 4th Utility.  This is the idea that broadband communications, processing capacity (including SaaS applications), and storage is the right of all citizens.  Much like the first three utilities, roads, water, and electricity, the 4th Utility must be a basic part of all discussions related to national, state, or local infrastructure discussions.  As we move into the next millennium, Internet-enabled, or something like Internet-enabled communications will be an essential part of all our lives.

The 4th Utility requires high capacity fiber optic infrastructure and broadband wireless be delivered to any location within the country which supports a community or individual connected to a community.   We’ll have to [pay a fee to access the utility (same as other utilities), but it is our right and obligation to deliver the utility.

2013 will be a lot of fun for us in the IT industry.  Cloud computing is going to impact everybody – one way or the other.  Individual data centers will continue to close.  Service-oriented architectures, enterprise architecture, process modeling, and design efficiency will drive a lot of innovation.   – We’ll lose some players, gain players, and and we’ll be in a better position at the end of 2013 than today.

Filed under Cloud Computing, Data Center, Disaster Recovery, Energy, ESB, International ICT, Internet and Telecom, Social Issues, Virtualization Tagged with , , ,

Gartner Data Center Conference Yields Few Surprises

December 4, 2012 3 Comments

Gartner’s 2012 Data Center Conference in Las Vegas is noted for  not yielding any major surprise.  While having an uncanny number of attendees (*the stats are not available, however it is clear they are having a very good conference), most of the sessions appear to be simply reaffirming what everybody really knows already, serving to reinforce the reality data center consolidation, cloud computing, big data, and the move to an interoperable framework will be part of everybody’s life within a few years.

Childs at Gartner ConferenceGartner analyst Ray Paquet started the morning by drawing a line at the real value of server hardware in cloud computing.  Paquet stressed that cloud adopters should avoid integrated hardware solutions based on blade servers, which carry a high margin, and focus their CAPEX on cheaper “skinless” servers.  Paquet emphasized that integrated solutions are a “waste of money.”

Cameron Haight, another Gartner analyst, fired a volley at the process and framework world, with a comparison of the value DevOps brings versus ITIL.  Describing ITIL as a cumbersome burden to organizational agility, DevOps is a culture-changer that allows small groups to quickly respond to challenges.  Haight emphasized the frequently stressful relationship between development organizations and operations organizations, where operations demands stability and quality, and development needs freedom to move projects forward, sometimes without the comfort of baking code to the standards preferred by operations – and required by frameworks such as ITIL.

Haight’s most direct slide described De Ops as being “ITIL minus CRAP.”  Of course most of his supporting slides for moving to DevOps looked eerily like an ITIL process….

Other sessions attended (by the author) included “Shaping Private Clouds,” a WIPRO product demonstration, and a data center introduction by Raging Wire.  All valuable introductions for those who are considering making a major change in their internal IT deployments, but nothing cutting edge or radical.

The Raging Wire data center discussion did raise some questions on the overall vulnerability of large box data centers.  While it is certainly possible to build a data center up to any standard needed to fulfill a specific need, the large data center clusters in locations such as Northern Virginia are beginning to appear very vulnerable to either natural, human, or equipment failure disruptions.  In addition to fulfilling data center tier classification models as presented by the Uptime Institute, it is clear we are producing critical national infrastructure which if disrupted could cause significant damage to the US economy or even social order.

Eventually, much like the communications infrastructure in the US, data centers will need to come under the observation or review of a national agency such as Homeland Security.  While nobody wants a government officer in the data center, protection of national infrastructure is a consideration we probably will not be able to avoid for long.

Raging Wire also noted that some colocation customers, particularly social media companies, are hitting up to 8kW per cabinet.  Also scary if true, and in extended deployments.  This could result in serious operational problems if cooling systems were disrupted, as the heat generated in those cabinets will quickly become extreme.  Would also be interesting if companies like Raging Wire and other colocation companies considered developing a real time CFD monitor for their data center floors allowing better monitoring and predictability than simple zone monitoring solutions.

The best presentation of the day came at the end, “Big Data is Coming to Your Data Center.”  Gartner’s Sheila Childs brought color and enthusiasm to a topic many consider, well, boring.  Childs was able to bring the value, power, and future of big data into a human consumable format that kept the audience in their seats until the end of session at 6 p.m. in the late afternoon.

Childs hit on concepts such as “dark data” within organizations, the value of big data in decision support systems (DSS), and the need for developing and recruiting skilled staff who can actually write or build the systems needed to fully exploit the value of big data.  We cannot argue that point, and can only hope our education system is able to focus on producing graduates with the basic skills needed to fulfill that requirement.

Filed under Cloud Computing, Data Center, Disaster Recovery, Social Networking, Virtualization Tagged with , ,

5 Data Center Technology Predictions for 2012

December 28, 2011 Leave a comment

2011 was a great year for technology innovation.  The science of data center design and operations continued to improve, the move away from mixed-use buildings used as data centers continued, the watts/sqft metric took a second seat to overall kilowatts available to a facility or customer, and the idea of compute capacity and broadband as a utility began to take its place as a basic right of citizens.

However, there are 5 areas where we will see additional significant advances in 2012.

1.  Data Center Consolidation.  The US Government admits it is using only 27% of its overall available compute power.  With 2094 data centers supporting the federal government (from the CIO’s 25 Point Plan  to Reform Fed IT Mgt), the government is required to close at least 800 of those data centers by 2015.

Data Center ConstructionThe lesson is not lost on state and local governments, private industry, or even internet content providers.  The economics of operating a data center or server closet, whether in costs of real estate, power, hardware, in addition to service and licensing agreements, are compelling enough to make even the most fervent server-hugger reconsider their religion.

2.  Cloud Computing.  Who doesn’t believe cloud computing will eventually replace the need for a server closets, cabinets, or even small cages in data centers?  The move to cloud computing is as certain as the move to email was in the 1980s. 

Some IT managers and data owners hate the idea of cloud computing, enterprise service busses, and consolidated data.  Not so much an issue of losing control, but in many cases because it brings transparency to their operation.  If you are the owner of data in a developing country, and suddenly everything you do can be audited by a central authority - well it might make you uncomfortable…

A lesson learned while attending a  fast pitch contest during late 2009 in Irvine, CA…  An enterprising entrepreneur gave his “pitch” to a panel of investment bankers and venture capital representatives.  He stated he was looking for a $5 million investment in his startup company. 

A panelist asked what the money was for, and the entrepreneur stated “.. and $2 million to build out a data center…”  The panelist responded that 90% of new companies fail within 2 years.  Why would he want to be stuck with the liability of a data center and hardware if the company failed? The gentleman further stated, “don’t waste my money on a data center – do the smart thing, use the Amazon cloud.”

3.  Virtual Desktops and Hosted Office Automation.  How many times have we lost data and files due to a failed hard drive, stolen laptop, or virus disrupting our computer?  What is the cost or burden of keeping licenses updated, versions updated, and security patches current in an organization with potentially hundreds of users?  What is the lead time when a user needs a new application loaded on a computer?

From applications as simple as Google Docs, to Microsoft 365, and other desktop replacement applications suites, users will become free from the burden of carrying a heavy laptop computer everywhere they travel.  Imagine being able to connect your 4G/LTE phone’s HDMI port to a hotel widescreen television monitor, and be able to access all the applications normally used at a desktop.  You can give a presentation off your phone, update company documents, or nearly any other IT function with the only limitation being a requirement to access broadband Internet connections (See # 5 below).

Your phone can already connect to Google Docs and Microsoft Live Office, and the flexibility of access will only improve as iPads and other mobile devices mature.

The other obvious benefit is files will be maintained on servers, much more likely to be backed up and included in a disaster recovery plan.

4.  The Science of Data Centers.  It has only been a few years since small hosting companies were satisfied to go into a data center carved out of a mixed-use building, happy to have access to electricity, cooling, and a menu of available Internet network providers.  Most rooms were Data Center Power Requirementsdesigned to accommodate 2~3kW per cabinet, and users installed servers, switches, NAS boxes, and routers without regard to alignment or power usage.

That has changed.  No business or organization can survive without a 24x7x265 presence on the Internet, and most small enterprises – and large enterprises, are either consolidating their IT into professionally managed data centers, or have already washed their hands of servers and other IT infrastructure.

The Uptime Institute, BICSI, TIA, and government agencies have begun publishing guidelines on data center construction providing best practices, quality standards, design standards, and even standards for evaluation.  Power efficiency using metrics such as the PUE/DCiE provide additional guidance on power management, data center management, and design. 

The days of small business technicians running into a data center at 2 a.m. to install new servers, repair broken servers, and pile their empty boxes or garbage in their cabinet or cage on the way out are gone.  The new data center religion is discipline, standards, discipline, and security. 

Electricity is as valuable as platinum, just as cooling and heat are managed more closely than inmates at San Quentin.  While every other standards organization is now offering certification in cabling, data center design, and data center management, we can soon expect universities to offer an MS or Ph.D in data center sciences.

5.  The 4th Utility Gains Traction.  Orwell’s “1984” painted a picture of pervasive government surveillance, and incessant public mind control (Wikipedia).  Many people believe the Internet is the source of all evil, including identity theft, pornography, crime, over-socialization of cultures and thoughts, and a huge intellectual time sink that sucks us into the need to be wired or connected 24 hours a day.

Yes, that is pretty much true, and if we do not consider the 1000 good things about the Internet vs. each 1 negative aspect, it might be a pretty scary place to consider all future generations being exposed and indoctrinated.  The alternative is to live in a intellectual Brazilian or Papuan rain forest, one step out of the evolutionary stone age.

The Internet is not going away, unless some global repressive government, fundamentalist religion, or dictator manages to dismantle civilization as we know it.

The 4th utility identifies broadband access to the ‘net as a basic right of all citizens, with the same status as roads, water, and electricity.  All governments with a desire to have their nation survive and thrive in the next millennium will find a way to cooperate with network infrastructure providers to build out their national information infrastructure (haven’t heard that term since Al Gore, eh?).

Without a robust 4th utility, our children and their children will produce a global generation of intellectual migrant workers, intellectual refugees from a failed national information sciences vision and policy.

2012 should be a great year.  All the above predictions are positive, and if proved true, will leave the United States and other countries with stronger capacities to improve their national quality of life, and bring us all another step closer.

Happy New Year!

Filed under Cloud Computing, Data Center, International ICT, Internet and Telecom, Social Networking, Virtualization Tagged with , , , , ,

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.

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

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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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?

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

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 , , ,

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