The Value of Cloud Computing Certifications

April 8, 2013 Leave a comment

A good indication any new technology or business model is starting to mature is the number of certifications popping up related to that product, framework, or service.   Cloud computing is certainly no exception, with vendors such as Microsoft, Google, VMWare, and IBM offering Cloud Computing Certificationscertification training for their own products, as well as organizations such CompTIA and Architura competing for industry neutral certifications.

Is this all hype, or is it an essential part of the emerging cloud computing ecosystem?  Can we remember the days when entry level Cisco, Microsoft, or other vendor certifications were almost mocked by industry elitists?

Much like the early Internet days of eEverything, cloud computing is at the point where most have heard the term, few understand the concepts, and marketing folk are exploiting every possible combination of the words to place their products in a favorable, forward leaning light.

So, what if executive management takes a basic course in cloud computing principles, or sales and customer service people take a Cloud 101 course?  Is that bad?

Of course not.  Cloud computing has the potential of being transformational to business, governments, organization, and even individuals.  Business leaders need to understand the potential and impact of what a service-oriented cloud computing infrastructure might mean to their organization, the game-changing potential of integration and interoperability, the freedom of mobility, and the practical execution of basic cloud computing characteristics within their ICT environment.

A certification is not all about getting the test, and certificate.  As an instructor for the CompTIA course, I manage classes of 20 or more students ranging from engineers, to network operations center staff, to customer service and sales, to mid-level executives.  We’ve yet to encounter an individual who claims they have learned nothing from attending the course, and most leave the course with a very different viewpoint of cloud computing than held prior to the class.

As with most technology driven topics, cloud computing does break into different branches – including technical, operations, and business utility.

The underlying technologies of cloud computing are probably the easiest part of the challenge, as ultimately skills will develop based on time, experience, and operation of cloud-related technologies.

The more difficult challenge is understanding the impact of cloud computing may mean to an organization, both internally as well as on a global scale.  No business-related discussion of cloud computing is complete without consideration of service-oriented architectures, enterprise architectures, interoperability, big data, disaster management, and continuity of operations.

Business decisions on data center consolidation, ICT outsourcing, and other aspects of the current technology refresh or financial consideration will be more effective and structured when accompanied by a basic business and high level understanding of cloud computing underlying technologies.  As an approach to business transformation, additional complimentary capabilities in enterprise architecture, service-oriented architectures, and IT service management will certainly help senior decision makers best understand the relationship between cloud computing and their organizational planning.

While reading the news, clipping stories, and self-study may help decision makers understand the basic components of cloud computing and other supporting technologies. Taking an introduction cloud computing course, regardless if vendor training or neutral, will give enough background knowledge to at least engage in the conversation. Given the hype surrounding cloud computing, and the potential long term consequences of making an uniformed decision, the investment in cloud computing training must be considered valuable at all levels of the organization, from technical to senior management.

Filed under Cloud Computing, Enterprise Architecture, Interoperability Tagged with , , , ,

ICT Modernization Planning

March 23, 2013 2 Comments

ICT ModernizationThe current technology refresh cycle presents many opportunities, and challenges to both organizations and governments.  The potential of service-oriented architectures, interoperability, collaboration, and continuity of operations is an attractive outcome of technologies and business models available today.  The challenges are more related to business processes and human factors, both of which require organizational transformations to take best advantage of the collaborative environments enabled through use of cloud computing and access to broadband communications.

Gaining the most benefit from planning an interoperable environment for governments and organizations may be facilitated through use of business tools such as cloud computing.  Cloud computing and underlying technologies may create an operational environment supporting many strategic objectives being considered within government and private sector organizations.

Reaching target architectures and capabilities is not a single action, and will require a clear understanding of current “as-is” baseline capabilities, target requirements, the gaps or capabilities need to reach the target, and establishing a clear transitional plan to bring the organization from a starting “as-is” baseline to the target goal.

To most effectively reach that goal requires an understanding of the various contributing components within the transformational ecosystem.  In addition, planners must keep in mind the goal is not implementation of technologies, but rather consideration of technologies as needed to facilitate business and operations process visions and goals.

Interoperability and Enterprise Architecture

Information technology, particularly communications-enabled technology has enhanced business process, education, and the quality of life for millions around the world.  However, traditionally ICT has created silos of information which is rarely integrated or interoperable with other data systems or sources.

As the science of enterprise architecture development and modeling, service-oriented architectures, and interoperability frameworks continue to force the issue of data integration and reuse, ICT developers are looking to reinforce open standards allowing publication of external interfaces and application programming interfaces.

Cloud computing, a rapidly maturing framework for virtualization, standardized data, application, and interface structure technologies, offers a wealth of tools to support development of both integrated and interoperable ICT  resources within organizations, as well as among their trading, shared, or collaborative workflow community.

The Institute for Enterprise Architecture Development defines enterprise architecture (EA) as a “complete expression of the enterprise; a master plan which acts as a collaboration force between aspects of business planning such as goals, visions, strategies and governance principles; aspects of business operations such as business terms, organization structures, processes and data; aspects of automation such as information systems and databases; and the enabling technological infrastructure of the business such as computers, operating systems and networks”

ICT, including utilities such as cloud computing, should focus on supporting the holistic objectives of organizations implementing an EA.  Non-interoperable or shared data will generally have less value than reusable data, and will greatly increase systems reliability and data integrity.

Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery (BCDR)

Recent surveys of governments around the world indicate in most cases limited or no disaster management or continuity of operations planning.  The risk of losing critical national data resources due to natural or man-made disasters is high, and the ability for most governments maintain government and citizen services during a disaster is limited based on the amount of time (recovery time objective/RTO) required to restart government services, as well as the point of data restoral (recovery point objective /RPO).

In existing ICT environments, particularly those with organizational and data resource silos,  RTOs and RPOs can be extended to near indefinite if both a data backup plan, as well as systems and service restoral resource capacity is not present.  This is particularly acute if the processing environment includes legacy mainframe computer applications which do not have a mirrored recovery capacity available upon failure or loss of service due to disaster.

Cloud computing can provide a standards-based environment that fully supports near zero RTO/RPO requirements.  With the current limitation of cloud computing being based on Intel-compatible architectures, nearly any existing application or data source can be migrated into a virtual resource pool.   Once within the cloud computing Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) environment, setting up distributed processing or backup capacity is relatively uncomplicated, assuming the environment has adequate broadband access to the end user and between processing facilities.

Cloud computing-enabled BCDR also opens opportunities for developing either PPPs, or considering the potential of outsourcing into public or commercially operated cloud computing compute, storage, and communications infrastructure.  Again, the main limitation being the requirement for portability between systems.

Transformation Readiness

ICT modernization will drive change within all organizations.  Transformational readiness is not a matter of technology, but a combination of factors including rapidly changing business models, the need for many-to-many real-time communications, flattening of organizational structures, and the continued entry of technology and communications savvy employees into the workforce.

The potential of outsourcing utility compute, storage, application, and communications will eliminate the need for much physical infrastructure, such as redundant or obsolete data centers and server closets.  Roles will change based on the expected shift from physical data centers and ICT support hardware to virtual models based on subscriptions and catalogs of reusable application and process artifacts.

A business model for accomplishing ICT modernization includes cloud computing, which relies on technologies such as server and storage resource virtualization, adding operational characteristics including on-demand resource provisioning to reduce the time needed to procure ICT resources needed to respond to emerging operational  or other business opportunities.

IT management and service operations move from a workstation environment to a user interface driven by SaaS.  The skills needed to drive ICT within the organization will need to change, becoming closer to the business, while reducing the need to manage complex individual workstations.

IT organizations will need to change, as organizations may elect to outsource most or all of their underlying physical data center resources to a cloud service provider, either in a public or private environment.  This could eliminate the need for some positions, while driving new staffing requirements in skills related to cloud resource provisioning, management, and development.

Business unit managers may be able to take advantage of other aspects of cloud computing, including access to on-demand compute, storage, and applications development resources.  This may increase their ability to quickly respond to rapidly changing market conditions and other emerging opportunities.   Business unit managers, product developers, and sales teams will need to become familiar with their new ICT support tools.  All positions from project managers to sales support will need to quickly acquire skills necessary to take advantage of these new tools.

The Role of Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is a business representation of a large number of underlying technologies.  Including virtualization, development environment, and hosted applications, cloud computing provides a framework for developing standardized service models, deployment models, and service delivery characteristics.

The US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) provides a definition of cloud computing accepted throughout the ICT industry.

“Cloud computing is a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.“

While organizations face decisions related to implementing challenges related to developing enterprise architectures and interoperability, cloud computing continues to rapidly develop as an environment with a rich set of compute, communication, development, standardization, and collaboration tools needed to meet organizational objectives.

Data security, including privacy, is different within a cloud computing environment, as the potential for data sharing is expanded among both internal and potentially external agencies.  Security concerns are expanded when questions of infrastructure multi-tenancy, network access to hosted applications (Software as a Service / SaaS), and governance of authentication and authorization raise questions on end user trust of the cloud provider.

A move to cloud computing is often associated with data center consolidation initiatives within both governments and large organizations.  Cloud delivery models, including Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) support the development of virtual data centers.

While it is clear long term target architectures for most organizations will be an environment with a single data system, in the short term it may be more important to decommission high risk server closets and unmanaged servers into a centralized, well-managed data center environment offering on-demand access to compute, storage, and network resources – as well as BCDR options.

Even at the most basic level of considering IaaS and PaaS as a replacement environment to physical infrastructure, the benefits to the organization may become quickly apparent.  If the organization establishes a “cloud first” policy to force consolidation of inefficient or high risk ICT resources, and that environment further aligns the organization through the use of standardized IT components, the ultimate goal of reaching interoperability or some level of data integration will become much easier, and in fact a natural evolution.

Nearly all major ICT-related hardware and software companies are re-engineering their product development to either drive cloud computing, or be cloud-aware.  Microsoft has released their Office 365 suite of online and hosted environments, as has Google with both PaaS and SaaS tools such as the Google Apps Engine and Google Docs.

The benefits of organizations considering a move to hosted environments, such as MS 365, are based on access to a rich set of applications and resources available on-demand, using a subscription model – rather than licensing model, offering a high level of standardization to developers and applications.

Users comfortable with standard office automation and productivity tools will find the same features in a SaaS environment, while still being relieved of individual software license costs, application maintenance, or potential loss of resources due to equipment failure or theft.  Hosted applications also allow a persistent state, collaborative real-time environment for multi-users requiring access to documents or projects.  Document management and single source data available for reuse by applications and other users, reporting, and performance management becomes routine, reducing the potential and threat of data corruption.

The shortfalls, particularly for governments, is that using a large commercial cloud infrastructure and service provider such as Microsoft  may require physically storing data in location outside of their home country, as well as forcing data into a multi-tenant environment which may not meet security requirements for organizations.

Cloud computing offers an additional major feature at the SaaS level that will benefit nearly all organizations transitioning to a mobile workforce.  SaaS by definition is platform independent.  Users access SaaS applications and underlying data via any device offering a network connection, and allowing access to an Internet-connected address through a browser.    The actual intelligence in an application is at the server or virtual server, and the user device is simply a dumb terminal displaying a portal, access point, or the results of a query or application executed through a command at the user screen.

Cloud computing continues to develop as a framework and toolset for meeting business objectives.  Cloud computing is well-suited to respond to rapidly changing business and organizational needs, as the characteristics of on-demand access to infrastructure resources, rapid elasticity, or the ability to provision and de-provision resources as needed to meet processing and storage demand, and organization’s ability to measure cloud computing resource use for internal and external accounting mark a major change in how an organization budgets ICT.

As cloud computing matures, each organization entering a technology refresh cycle must ask the question “are we in the technology business, or should we concentrate our efforts and budget in efforts directly supporting realizing objectives?”  If the answer is the latter, then any organization should evaluate outsourcing their ICT infrastructure to an internal or commercial cloud service provider.

It should be noted that today most cloud computing IaaS service platforms will not support migration of mainframe applications, such as those written for a RISC processor.  Those application require redevelopment to operate within an Intel-compatible processing environment.

Broadband Factor

Cloud computing components are currently implemented over an Internet Protocol network.  Users accessing SaaS application will need to have network access to connect with applications and data.  Depending on the amount of graphics information transmitted from the host to an individual user access terminal, poor bandwidth or lack of broadband could result in an unsatisfactory experience.

In addition, BCDR requires the transfer of potentially large amounts of data between primary and backup locations. Depending on the data parsing plan, whether mirroring data, partial backups, full backups, or live load balancing, data transfer between sites could be restricted if sufficient bandwidth is not available between sites.

Cloud computing is dependent on broadband as a means of connecting users to resources, and data transfer between sites.  Any organization considering implementing cloud computing outside of an organization local area network will need to fully understand what shortfalls or limitations may result in the cloud implementation not meeting objectives.

The Service-Oriented Cloud Computing Infrastructure (SOCCI)

Governments and other organizations are entering a technology refresh cycle based on existing ICT hardware and software infrastructure hitting the end of life.  In addition, as the world aggressively continues to break down national and technical borders, the need for organizations to reconsider the creation, use, and management of data supporting both mission critical business processes, as well as decision support systems will drive change.

Given the clear direction industry is taking to embrace cloud computing services, as well as the awareness existing siloed data structures within many organizations would better serve the organization in a service-oriented  framework, it makes sense to consider an integrated approach.

A SOCCI considers both, adding reference models and frameworks which will also add enterprise architecture models such as TOGAF to ultimately provide a broad, mature framework to support business managers and IT managers in their technology and business refresh planning process.

SOCCIs promote the use of architectural building blocks, publication of external interfaces for each application or data source developed, single source data, reuse of data and standardized application building block, as well as development and use of enterprise service buses to promote further integration and interoperability of data.

A SOCCI will look at elements of cloud computing, such as virtualized and on-demand compute/storage resources, and access to broadband communications – including security, encryption, switching, routing, and access as a utility.  The utility is always available to the organization for use and exploitation.  Higher level cloud components including PaaS and SaaS add value, in addition to higher level entry points to develop the ICT tools needed to meet the overall enterprise architecture and service-orientation needed to meet organizational needs.

According to the Open Group a SOCCI framework provides the foundation for connecting a service-oriented infrastructure with the utility of cloud computing.  As enterprise architecture and interoperability frameworks continue to gain in value and importance to organizations, this framework will provide additional leverage to make best use of available ICT tools.

The Bottom Line on ICT Modernization

The Internet Has reached nearly every point in the world, providing a global community functioning within an always available, real-time communications infrastructure.  University and primary school graduates are entering the workforce with social media, SaaS, collaboration, and location transparent peer communities diffused in their tacit knowledge and experience.

This environment has greatly flattened any leverage formerly developed countries, or large monopoly companies have enjoyed during the past several technology and market cycles.

An organization based on non-interoperable or standardized data, and no BCDR protection will certainly risk losing a competitive edge in a world being created by technology and data aware challengers.

Given the urgency organizations face to address data security, continuity of operations, agility to respond to market conditions, and operational costs associated with traditional ICT infrastructure, many are looking to emerging technology frameworks such as cloud computing to provide a model for planning solutions to those challenges.

Cloud computing and enterprise architecture frameworks provide guidance and a set of tools to assist organizations in providing structure, and infrastructure needed to accomplish ICT modernization objectives.

Filed under Cloud Computing, Consulting, Data Center, Disaster Recovery, Enterprise Architecture, Internet and Telecom, Interoperability Tagged with , , , , , ,

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 Looks Into Open Source Clouds and Data Backup

December 5, 2012 Leave a comment

LV-2Day two of the Gartner Data Center Conference in Las Vegas continued reinforcing old topics, appearing at times to be either enlist attendees in contributing to Gartner research, or simply providing conference content directed to promoting conference sponsors.

For example, sessions “To the Point:  When Open Meets Cloud” and “Backup/Recovery: Backing Up the Future” included a series of audience surveys.  Those surveys were apparently the same as presented, in the same sessions, for several years.  Thus the speaker immediately referenced this year’s results vs. results from the same survey questions from the past two years.  This would lead a casual attendee to believe nothing radically new is being presented in the above topics, and the attendees are generally contributing to further trend analysis research that will eventually show up in a commercial Gartner Research Note.

Gartner analyst and speaker on the topic of “When Open Meets Clouds,” Aneel Lakhani, did make a couple useful, if not obvious points in his presentation.

  • We cannot secure complete freedom from vendors, regardless of how much you adopt open source
  • Open source can actually be more expensive than commercial products
  • Interoperability is easy to say, but a heck of a lot more complicated to implement
  • Enterprise users have a very low threshold for “test” environments (sorry DevOps guys)
  • If your organization has the time and staff, test, test, and test a bit more to ensure your open source product will perform as expected or designed

However analyst Dave Russell, speaker on the topic of “Backup/Recovery” was a bit more cut and paste in his approach.  Lots of questions to match against last year’s conference, and a strong emphasis on using tape as a continuing, if not growing media for disaster recovery.

Problem with this presentation was the discussion centered on backing up data – very little on business continuity.  In fact, in one slide he referenced a recovery point objective (RPO) of one day for backups.   What organization operating in a global market, in Internet time, can possibly design for a one day RPO?

In addition, there was no discussion on the need for compatible hardware in a disaster recovery site that would allow immediate or rapid restart of applications.  Having data on tape is fine.  Having mainframe archival data is fine.  But without a business continuity capability, it is likely any organization will suffer significant damage in their ability to function in their marketplace.  Very few organizations today can absorb an extended global presence outage or marketplace outage.

The conference continues until Thursday and we will look for more, positive approaches, to data center and cloud computing.

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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.

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CloudGov 2012 Highlights Government Cloud Initiatives

February 19, 2012 1 Comment

Federal, state, and local government agencies gathered in Washington D.C. on 16 February to participate in Cloud/Gov 2012 held at the Westin Washington D.C.  With Keynotes by David L. McLure, US General Services Administration, and Dawn Leaf, NIST, vendors and government agencies were brought up to date on federal cloud policies and initiatives.

Of special note were updates on the FedRAMP program (a government-wide program that provides a standardized approach to security assessment, authorization, and continuous monitoring for cloud products and services) and NIST’s progress on standards.  “The FedRAMP process chart looks complicated” noted McLure, “however we are trying to provide support needed to accelerate the (FedRAMP vendor) approval process.

McLure also provided a roadmap for FedRAMP implementation, with FY13/Q2 targeted for full operation and FY14 planned for sustaining operations.

In a panel focusing on government case studies, David Terry from the Department of Education commented that “mobile phones are rapidly becoming the access point (to applications and data) for young people.”  Applications (SaaS) should be written to accommodate mobile devices, and “auto-adjust to user access devices.”

Tim Matson from DISA highlighted the US Department of Defense’s Forge.Mil initiative providing an open collaboration community for both the military and development community to work together in rapidly developing new applications to better support DoD activities.  While Forge.Mil has tighter controls than standard GSA (US General Services Administration)  standards, Matson emphasized “DISA wants to force the concept of change into the behavior of vendors.” Matson continued explaining that Forge.Mil will reinforce “a pipeline to support continuous delivery” of new applications.

While technology and process change topics provided a majority of  discussion points, mostly enthusiastic, David Mihalchik from Google advised “we still do not know the long term impact of global collaboration.  The culture is changing, forced on by the idea of global collaboration.”

Other areas of discussion among panel members throughout the day included the need for establishing and defining service level agreements (SLAs) for cloud services.  Daniel Burton from SalesForce.Com explained their SLAs are broken into two categories, SLAs based on subscription services, and those based on specific negotiations with government customers.   Other vendors took a stab at explaining their SLAs, without giving specific examples of their SLAs, leaving the audience without a solid answer.

NIST Takes the Leadership Role

The highlight of the day was provided by Dawn Leaf, Senior Executive for Cloud Computing with NIST.  Leaf provided very logical guidance for all cloud computing stakeholders, including vendors and users.

“US industry requires an international standard to ensure (global) competitiveness” explained Leaf.  In the past US vendors and service providers have developed standards which were not compatible with European and other standards, notably in wireless telephony, and one of NIST’s objectives is to participate in developing a global standard for cloud computing to prevent this possibility in cloud computing.

Cloud infrastructure and SaaS portability is also a high interest item for NIST.  Leaf advises that “we can force vendors into demonstrating their portability.  There are a lot of new entries in the business, and we need to force the vendors into proving their portability and interoperability.”

Leaf also reinforced the idea that standards are developed in the private sector.  NIST provides guidance and an architectural framework for vendors and the private sector to use as reference when developing those specific technical standards.  However leaf also had one caution for private industry, “industry should try to map their products to NIST references, as the government is not in a position to wait” for extended debates on the development of specific items, when the need for cloud computing development and implementation is immediate.

Further information on the conference, with agendas and participants is available at www.sia.net

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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 , , , , ,

Evaluating Public Cloud Computing Performance with CloudHarmony

October 27, 2011 Leave a comment

With dozens of public cloud service providers on the market, offering a wide variety of services, standards, SLAs, and options, how does an IT manager make an informed decision on which provider to use?  Is it time in business? Location? Cost? Performance?

Pacific-Tier Communications met up with Jason Read, owner of CloudHarmony, a company specializing in benchmarking the cloud, at Studio City, California, on 25 October.  Read understands how confusing and difficult it is to evaluate different service providers without an industry-standard benchmark.  In fact, Read started CloudHarmony based on his own frustrations as a consultant helping a client choose a public cloud service provider, while attempting to sort through vague cloud resource and service terms used by industry vendors.

“Cloud is so different. Vendors describe resources using vague terminology like 1 virtual CPU, 50 GB storage. I think cloud makes it much easier for providers to mislead. Not all virtual CPUs and 50 GB storage volumes are equal, not by a long shot, but providers often talk and compare as if they are. It was this frustration that led me to create CloudHarmony” explained Read.

So, Read went to work creating a platform for not only his client, but also other consultants and IT managers that would give a single point of testing public cloud services not only within the US, but around the world.    Input to the testing platform came from aggregating more than 100 testing benchmarks and methodologies available to the public.  However CloudHarmony standardized on CentOS/RHEL Linux as an operating system  which all cloud vendors support, “to provide as close to an apples to apples comparison as possible” said Read.

Customizing a CloudHarmony Benchmark Test

Cloud harmony Configuration

Setting up a test is simple.  You go to the CloudHarmony Benchmarks page, select the benchmarks you would like to run, the service providers you would like to test, configurations of virtual options within those service providers, geographic location, and the format of your report.

Figure 1.  Benchmark Configuration shows a sample report setup.

“CloudHarmony is a starting point for narrowing the search for a public cloud provider” advised Read.  “We provide data that can facilitate and narrow the selection process. We don’t have all of the data necessary to make a decision related to vendor selection, but I think it is a really good starting point.

Read continued “for example, if a company is considering cloud for a very CPU intensive application, using the CPU performance metrics we provide, they’d quickly be able to eliminate vendors that utilize homogenous infrastructure with very little CPU scaling capabilities from small to larger sized instance.”

Cloud vendors listed in the benchmark directory are surprisingly open to CoudHarmony testing.  “We don’t require or accept payment from vendors to be listed on the site and included in the performance analysis” mentioned Read.  “We do, however, ask that vendors provide resources to allow us to conduct periodic compute benchmarking, continual uptime monitoring, and network testing.”

When asked if cloud service providers contest or object to CloudHarmony’s methodology or reports, Read replied “not frequently. We try to be open and fair about the performance analysis. We don’t recommend one vendor over another. I’d like CloudHarmony to simply be a source of reliable, objective data. The CloudHarmony performance analysis is just a piece of the puzzle, users should also consider other factors such as pricing, support, scalability, etc.”

Cloud Harmony Benchmark Report

During an independent trial of CloudHarmony’s testing tool, Pacific-Tier Communications selected the following parameters to complete a sample CPU benchmark:

  • CPU Benchmark (Single Threaded CPU)
  • GMPbench math library
  • Cloud Vendor – AirVM (MO/USA)
  • Cloud Vendor – Amazon EC2 (CA/USA)
  • Cloud Vendor – Bit Refinery Cloud Hosting (CO/USA)
  • 1/2/4 CPUs
  • Small/Medium/Large configs
  • Bar Chart and Sortable Table report

The result, shown above in Figure 2., shows a test result including performance measured against each of the above parameters.  Individual tests for each parameter are available, allowing a deeper look into the resources used and test results based on those resources.

In addition, as shown in Figure 3., CloudHarmony provides a view providing uptime statistics of dozens of cloud service providers over a period of one year.  Uptime statistics showed a range (at the time of this article) between 98.678% availability to 100% availability, with 100% current uptime (27 October).

Cloud Service Provider Status

Who Uses CloudHarmony Benchmark Testing?

While the average user today may be in the cloud computing industry, likely vendors eager to see how their product compares against competitors, Read targets CloudHarmony’s product to “persons responsible for making decisions related to cloud adoption.”  Although he admits that today most users of the site lean towards the technical side of the cloud service provider industry.

Running test reports on cloud harmony is based on a system of purchasing credits.  Read explained “we have a system in place now where the data we provide is accessible via the website or web services – both of which rely on web service credits to provide the data. Currently, the system is set up to allow 5 free requests daily. For additional requests, we sell web service credits where we provide a token that authorizes you to access the data in addition to the 5 free daily requests.”

The Bottom Line

“Cloud is in many ways a black box” noted Read.  “Vendors describe the resources they sell using sometimes similar and sometimes very different terminology. It is very difficult to compare providers and to determine performance expectations. Virtualization and multi-tenancy further complicates this issue by introducing performance variability. I decided to build CloudHarmony to provide greater transparency to the cloud.”

And to both vendors and potential cloud service customers, provide an objective, honest, transparent analysis of commercially available public cloud services.

Check out CloudHarmony and their directory of services at cloudharmony.com.

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Filed under Cloud Computing, Entrepreneurs, startup business Tagged with , ,

Queplix Brings Data Portability into the Cloud

August 24, 2011 1 Comment

What can you do when your company data is locked in legacy applications such as DB2, Sybase, Oracle 10, or other proprietary systems when you want to graduate into the age of cloud computing and SaaS?  According to Mark Cashman, CEO of Queplix, the answer lies in having a tool to discover what data resides in existing systems, classify the data, and make that data available for future applications and reporting.

“We are out to solve the data discovery and integration problem that exists today,” says Cashman.  “Some of the largest companies in the world still have challenges integrating all these legacy systems, and how to populate information they have built over the past 20 or 30 years into SaaS applications residing in public or enterprise clouds so it is good, clean, persistent data.”

Queplix relies on its ability to discover and classify data sets into metadata.  According to Cashman, this process involves many steps, including:

  • Determining what data and information is available within existing systems
  • Determining the accuracy of existing information
  • Performing an object-oriented discovery process
  • Combining elements from the various existing systems to identify and establish a single “record of truth”
  • Using established data to harmonize or reconcile data elements across an organization

Data Portability

Having roots the CRM industry, Queplix founders are painfully aware of the difficulty reconciling data across different systems, both customer and internal, to allow sharing of data between applications.  Thus the vision of data portability and ability to transfer or transition between different applications is a priority with Queplix.

“We need to get away from the notion of what is the underlying database, or who you have to buy the database from, and look at the inherent value of data” emphasizes Cashman. “As we are at the data layer, we are transparent to applications and database formats.”

Once the metadata is classified and established on a metadata server, Queplix will be able to identify and use data contained within “discovered” systems through use of identifying data sources and locations via the metadata server, rather than requiring extensive searches through large legacy data bases – or use of multiple data base applications.

As that data is now known and identified, moving the data into new structures or locations becomes easy, again focusing on the data itself rather than complex proprietary relations set up within legacy systems.  This is valuable not only for developing SaaS or hosted applications, but also in recovering data sets in different locations or platforms following disasters.

“We’re at the data layer, and that’s how we describe our value – providing data liquidity”

Cashman provides a case study to explain how his product may add value to a government.

Let’s consider a small East European country that fell under the control and management of the former Soviet Union.  After the country democratized, adequate government bureaucracy was not in place to establish a national information technology plan, and subsequently many ministries, agencies, and offices within the government established their own data centers and data formats.

Now, with requirements for data center consolidation, virtualization, and integration of national data across agencies, there is a huge challenge in bringing the systems together into a functional ICT environment.

Cashman describes Queplix’s discovery process as “analogous to Tivoli’s ability to discover network elements.”  Queplix can go in, discover data elements and structure, classify that into metadata, and index what it finds into a metadata server which is transparent across all government platforms.  And will also allow consolidation of data as needed into single virtualized or common data systems.

In addition, each data element can be identified with security tags or classification, allowing the government to better control which data is available for use in reporting and display to individual offices or requesting users.

“Once a company (or organization) is able to identify and address their information, that is the ‘big bang’ for us” stresses Cashman.  “In addition, once companies or organizations have access to and unlock data located in (databases), or information produced by legacy systems our customers can start turning down some of their legacy applications,” taking advantage of more powerful cloud-based or SaaS enterprise and public cloud services.

Not to mention the potential savings of relieving the organization of financial licensing and hardware burdens imposed by continued use of legacy or obsolete applications and systems.

“Our Queplix applications help level the playing field around relational databases.” states Cashman.  “Many large consulting companies are signing multi-year, multi-million dollar contracts doing essentially the same thing we do.  But we are doing it for a fraction of the cost and in a fraction of the time required to accomplish the same objectives.”

You can learn more about Queplix and their products, services, and vision of creating a platform focused data mobility and bridging applications at:  www.queplix.com

Pacific-Tier Communications LLC interviewed Mark Cashman, CEO of Queplix on 23 August 2011

Filed under Cloud Computing, Consulting, Data Center, Disaster Recovery, Government Regulatory, International ICT Tagged with , , , ,

University of Washington Launches Certificate in Cloud Computing

August 5, 2011 4 Comments

In an online “blogger” press conference on 5 August, Erik Bansleben, Ph. D., Program Development Director, Academic Programs at the University of Washington outlined a new certificate program offered by the university in Cloud Computing.  The program is directed towards “college level and career professionals” said Bansleben, adding “all courses are practical in approach.”

Using a combination of classroom and online instruction, the certificate program will allow flexibility accommodating remote students in a virtual extension of the residence program.  While not offering formal academic credit for the program, the certificates are “well respected locally by employers, and really tend to help students a fair amount in getting  internships, getting new jobs, or advancing in their current jobs.”

The Certificate in Cloud Computing is broken into three courses, including:

  • Introduction to Cloud Computing
  • Cloud Computing in Action
  • Scalable & Data-Intensive Computing in the Cloud

The courses are taught by instructors from both the business community and the University’s Department of Computer Science & Engineering.  Topics within each course are designed to provide not only an overview of the concepts and value of cloud computing in a business sense, but also includes project work and assignments.

To bring more relevance to students, Bansleben noted “part of the courses will be based on student backgrounds and student interests.”   Dr. Bill Howe, instructor for the “Scalable & Data-Intensive Computing in the Cloud” course added “nobody is starting a company without being in the clouds.”   With the program covering topical areas such as:

  • Cloud computing models: software as a service (SaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), infrastructure as a service (laaS) and database as a service
  • Market overview of cloud providers
  • Strategic technology choices and development tools for basic cloud application building
  • Web-scale analytics and frameworks for processing large data sets
  • Database query optimization
  • Fault tolerance and disaster recovery

Students will walk away with a solid background of cloud computing and how it will impact future planning for IT infrastructure.  In addition, each course will invite guest speakers from cloud computing vendors and industry leaders to present actual case studies to further apply context to course theory.  Bansleben reinforced the plan to provide students with specific “use cases for or against using cloud services vs. using your own hosted services.”

Not designed as a simple high level overview of cloud computing concepts, the program does require students to have a  background in IT networks and protocols, as well as familiarity with file manipulation in system environments such as Linux.  Bansleben stated that “some level of programming experience is required” as a prerequisite to participate in the certificate program.

The Certificate in Cloud Computing program starts on 10 October, and will cost students around $2,577 for the entire program.  The program is limited to 40 students, including both resident and online.  For more information on University of Washington certificate programs or the Certificate in Cloud Computing contact:

Erik Bansleben, Program Development Director
ebansleben@pce.uw.edu

http://pce.uw.edu

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

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