Telematique, water and fire.

De-nebulating "Cloud Computing"

While catching up on my reading (which is pretty daunting when Google Reader tells me that my "high priority" collection of virtualization and utility computing feeds is over 1000 new posts), I came across Alistair Croll's nine sector view of cloud computing.

Taking a look at that post, prompted me to revisit John Willis' post from February and the wealth of high quality comments he elicited. John's post, and now Alistair's, represent great "locations" in the blogosphere at which knowledgeable advocates and the loyal opposition convene to bring clarity to the conversation. What I also enjoy is that I've had and continue to have the privilege of knowing personally and working with so many of the participants.

I'm struck, as well, by what seems to be a gap ... or maybe several ... in their lists. And, being an amateur taxonomist and incorrigible entrepreneur, I view a gap as a puzzle to be solved and a potential market to be served. I'll take the time over the next few days to reflect on the gaps, and then pose a couple of questions and see if I can add to the fun. I'll be gratified if the result adds to the conversation established by John and Alistair, as well as those raised by James Urquhart, Greg Ness, Bert Armijo, Dave Durkee, and Rich Wellner (among others). (I'm most appreciative of Bert's most recent posts as well as the fun poked at the Cloud Computing Expo's Twenty Experts Define Cloud Computing piece.)


Inside the Cloud: 9 Sectors to Watch - GigaOM

There’s already a ton of activity taking place in the cloud computing space, so much so that it can be hard to know who to watch. In many cases, it’s too early to pick winners. But there are distinct sectors of the IT industry that are particularly well suited to the on-demand, pay-as-you-go economics of cloud computing. Here are eight segments — and one company that’s a segment all its own — that we’re tracking closely.

Why Cloudware and why now?

In September of last year, as I was preparing (mentally and emotionally) to get Replicate started on its current path, I considered issues of portability and interoperability in the virtualized datacenter. I posted a few comments about OVF but one in particular drew the attention of Bert Armijo of 3tera.

At that time, Bert indicated that he thought it "... too early for a standard,...", with a (perfectly arguable) claim that standards are often "... a trade-off to gain interoperability in exchange for stifling innovation." He went on to say that "(w)e haven't adequately explored the possibilities in utility computing." He then provided a critique of OVF. (Whether I agree with that critique or not is immaterial to this post, and the subject for another time.)

At the end of June, 3tera announced their Cloudware vision for a standards-based interoperable utility infrastructure. Since the arrival of Cloudware, there have been a number of venues at which "cloud computing" and interoperability has been on the minds of the cognoscenti... Structure08 and Velocity being the most heavily covered. In the past few weeks, there have also been claims, and counter-claims of support... and to be fair, the disputed claims of support were made by others, not by 3tera.

So... what's changed, Bert? Why is "now the time" to create the standard for interoperable cloud computing? What's happened in 9 - 10 months that has so changed the field, that these efforts don't also stifle innovation?

Simon Wardley has also reiterated his position most recently at OpenTech regarding substitutability between utility providers (which includes portability and interoperability) ... an outcome which he maintains will require not just open standards but open source standards. When compared to the Cloudware initiative, I can more easily support this "pure form" of standard creation. The commercial success of pure, open source standard approach for utility computing, however, requires a reasonably well-established reference implementation or some acknowledged leader as the de facto standard. (Again, the topic for yet another post.)

That said, Simon and I could not be more in agreement when he states that "... standards will emerge through competition and adoption rather than committee." I'd probably add to that statement that such standards don't (often) emerge as a result of the smaller, fragmented commercial interests banding together to form a "composite" competitor to a market leader.

I have to agree with John Willis when he states that "...what we today call the 'cloud' will really just evolve into a complex IT infrastructure ... which will link services from a myriad of inter connected inter-operable applications spanning internal legacy applications, internal/external virtual resources, private clouds and public clouds." (Full quote provided below.)

Head In The Clouds | 3Tera

Well I’m happy to say that I think the time has come when we have enough companies in the space working on creative products and services that a standard can progress productively. We’ve begun to share our vision for what that standard can achieve, it’s called Cloudware, and covers not only AppLogic but a whole new way to approach infrastructure.

john m willis ESM Enterprise System Management Blog

It is my belief that what we today call the “cloud” will really just evolve into a complex IT infrastructure of the future, and in the end, will just be referred to as infrastructure. There is no doubt the traditional IT landscape of the last 20 years is going through a substantial transformation on the same scale as what happened in the mid 1980’s as mainframe resources shifted to distributed computing and client server architectures.

This new complex IT infrastructure of the future will link services from a myriad of inter connected inter-operable applications spanning internal legacy applications, internal/external virtual resources, private clouds, and public clouds. For example, I can envision a scenario where a business service runs internal behind-the-firewall VMware instances for parts of an application and possibly inter-operates with resources on Amazon’s EC2, Flexiscale, Google’s App Engine, or a player to be named later. These same business services might also use resources from private internal clouds running 3Tera’s Applogic, IBM’s Blue Cloud, or Cassatt’s Active Power Management. Like it or not, Microsoft will have resources involved in this new IT management infrastructure of the future. Any interoperability discussion will need to include them as well. ...

Jurisdiction - where in the world is that VM?

James Urquhart has an interesting post on a topic that's fascinated me for a long time -- namely, under what legal jurisdiction does a computed "transaction" take place?

The problem first came to my attention (sometime during the last ice age) with the advent of ATM machines with services offered by national banking and credit card concerns. If I withdrew money or paid a credit card bill at the ATM, exactly where (for the purposes of the relevant legal jurisdiction) did the transaction take place? Banking laws being what they are, the industry got around a host of problems by declaring an ATM machine to be a "branch bank", in order to make sure that the geographic location at which the financial transaction took place made it clear for purposes of law.

The days of dumb terminals and thin client computing brought with it a boatload of jurisdictional issues. And now, cloud computing and virtual server migration add to the puzzle. It's a great problem on which to reflect. James' discussion is well grounded and presents the salient issues in a very nice way.

The Wisdom of Clouds: "Follow the law" computing

A few days ago, Nick Carr worked his usual magic in analyzing Bill Thompson's keen observation that every element of "the cloud" eventually boils down to a physical element in a physical location with real geopolitical and legal influences. This problem was first brought to my attention in a blog post by Leslie Poston noting that the Canadian government has refused to allow public IT projects to use US-based hosting environments for fear of security breaches authorized via the Patriot Act.

SPLA Application Streaming likely to make a SPLAsh

An interesting turn of events that I've missed while being "heads down" in the establishment of Replicate Technologies is the impending Microsoft Service Provider License Agreement (SPLA). This is a major breakthrough for desktop virtualization and promises to open up some very interesting business opportunities.

Microsoft Opens the Floodgates for Streaming Applications : VMblog.com

Endeavors Technologies, the pioneer in application streaming and virtualization technology, and its parent company, Tadpole Technology plc, today announced support for the Microsoft program amending the Service Provider License Agreement (SPLA). The new program allows service providers to stream Microsoft Office for delivery through a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model.

"We've anticipated this change and are pleased that Microsoft now has a date for allowing service providers to stream Microsoft Office," said Peter Bondar, CEO at Endeavors. "We have completed proof of concept programs with a number of providers and have been waiting for the amended SPLA program to roll out new services. Through our partnerships with Partner Advantage and others, we are poised to take advantage of the new business opportunities on day one. We applaud Microsoft in taking this bold step." ...

AWS EC2 gets more real(world)

The Amazon Web Services blog has announced some additions to Amazon EC2 that make it all that more viable for real world, production operations.

We just added three important new features to Amazon EC2: Elastic IP Addresses, Availability Zones, and User Selectable Kernels. The documentation, the WSDL, the AMI tools, and the command line tools have been revised to match and there's a release note as well.

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The Elastic IP Addresses feature gives you more control of the IP addresses associated with your EC2 instances.

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Availability Zones give you additional control of where your EC2 instances are run. We use a two level model which consists of geographic regions broken down into logical zones. Each zone is designed in such a way that it is insulated from failures which might affect other zones within the region.

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Finally, the User Selectable Kernels feature allows users to run a kernel other than the default EC2 kernel. Anyone can run a non-default kernel, but the ability to create new kernels is currently restricted to Amazon and select vendors.

EC2 becomes more viable as a commercial grade, virtual data center utility with each new feature. I'll be interested to see what this does to the service's adoption by both corporate IT and SaaS players with SLAs to maintain.

HP's Data Center Transformation ... don't forget the network.

Reading through some of the articles commenting about HP's announcement of the their Data Center Transformation initiative, I came across this rather odd bit from Arthur Cole at IT Business Edge. He mentions that he's had the opportunity to speak with John Bennett, WW Director of Data Center Transformation Solutions at HP. After setting the stage for the conversation, he makes the point that, too often, data center refurbishments are done to meet short-term goals, and distinguishes HP's approach as being a good deal more strategic.

“Rather than think of it as one massive project, we’ll develop a strategic view first, and then use individual projects over time to build out the next-generation data center,” Bennett said. “You’ll achieve your tactical objectives on particular projects, but you’ll also lay out the foundation for years of compounded returns.”

Sounds right, and then Cole points out what, to him, seems problematic.

... About the only flaw in the plan that I can see is a lack of network support. With server, storage and virtualization as part of the mix, I was a bit surprised when Bennett said he hasn’t had many dealings with HP’s networking unit. It seems unlikely that a series of ProCurve switches couldn’t be brought in should the need arise, although that need could be substantial given the level of virtualization and consolidation that uses are likely to require. It might make sense to make networking a more integral part of the strategy.

(.... pregnant pause..... raised eyebrow.)

HP and IaaS

Somewhere behind the shock of JPMorgan Chase buying Bear Stearns for $2 a share, there's the HP launch of a well considered Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) offering.... a virtual data center for enterprise class computing. Larry Dignan and Dan Kusnetzky do a nice job of summarizing the announcements.

As for the competition, what caught my attention is Dignan's reference to the Forrester Research list of players. With the exception of Amazon's AWS (which has some heft but appeals to a long-tail part of the market), that list of Cloud Providers looks terribly thin... not exactly what I'd call competition for enterprise computing offers. Sorry... this is a not yet a competitive market ... not by a long shot. HP's stolen a march on everyone, with the possible exception of those parts of the ecosystem we rarely hear about ... the big services outfits like T-Systems and their Dynamic Services for SAP Applications. That's the competition.

I'm looking forward to digging into the details of HP Insight Dynamics - VSE and Operations Orchestration, the software enhancements HP is really going to deliver. The (rhetorical ?) question continues to be asked as to whether "... business will bite on data center in the cloud?" (to use ZDNet's turn of phrase). My simpleminded analysis says that, given its current reliance on in-house data centers, enterprise IT can't and won't rely on virtual data centers / outsourced data centers until they have a technical and operational means of integrating both forms in a (dare I say it?) form of infrastructure collaboration.

The idea is that, when reallocating load for a SAP application or scaling out to meet the requirements of the end-of-month analyses, the systems which manage the application should be blind as to whether the resources are in the cloud or in the enterprise data center. This ability to span or bridge the in-house and outsourced data center operation is almost impossible today unless the data center infrastructure is purpose-built for just that kind of operation. The solution relies on interoperability of the outsourced service and in-house data center: they must both operate as utilities and have the same or compatible infrastructures.

Perhaps, if HP's offer gets adopted by enterprise for the in-house, next generation data center, they will create a demand for their IaaS . That strikes me as a limited market. Rather than a single infrastructure technology on both service side and in-house side, the necessity is one of "compatible" or communicating infrastructures. In order for collaborative data center infrastructures to come about, a piece of network virtualization infrastructure needs to come into existence.

Transactional Cloud DB

EnterpriseDB seems to be making some interesting moves with the announcement of their offering.  I'm not sure I understand how they both scale and transactional DB functionality with any kind of service level assurance.  But, I'm all ears...

Another Amazon 'cloud' database, but this one will be Oracle-compatible

EnterpriseDB plans in March to start beta-testing an online version of its Oracle-compatible database that will leverage Amazon.com Inc.'s Web-based computing and storage services.

The EnterpriseDB Advanced Server Cloud Edition will be much more powerful than the SimpleDB Web database that Amazon itself plans to offer, claimed Bob Zurek, the Edison, N.J.-based software vendor's chief technology officer.

Zurek added that EnterpriseDB, which bases its commercially licensed software on the open-source PostgreSQL database, will offer a new pricing model that will help it compete with Oracle Corp.'s databases and the MySQL open-source technology that Sun Microsystems Inc. recently agreed to buy.
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The Missing Piece in Cloud Computing: Middleware Virtualization

This is an interesting piece about the role of middleware (the "classic" tiers and APIs) and of virtualization in attaining the real benefits of utility computing and Cloud Computing (though I'm still hardpressed to distinguish the two terms in a meaningful way). 

What caught my eye particularly is the approach they've taken at Gigaspaces to virtualization for the application container. This notion of bundling and consolidating the logic needed to enforce SLAs and simultaneously meet the requirements of the application architects is an approach for which I have great respect, and which we're employing in our efforts regarding network virtualization at Replicate Technologies.

Nati Shalom's Blog: The Missing Piece in Cloud Computing: Middleware Virtualiztion

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In the current server-centric world we use middleware to provide common infrastructure services, such as application containers, data and messaging. To make that same model work in a cloud environment we need to virtualize all of those components. That is, we need to virtualize the container, the data and messaging. By doing so we abstract the application from the fact that it is running on a "cloud" and make the transition from a server-centric model to cloud computing relatively seamless. How do we achieve that?
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The SLA-driven container takes an application bundle and manages the deployment of that bundle over a set of containers based on Service-Level Agreements. The SLAs define the clustering topology (e.g., partitioning, size of the application pool, scalability, fail-over policies, etc.). It is used to map the available physical compute resources to the application needs. It is also used to provide self-healing capabilities to our application. For example, we can set an SLA to ensure that at any point in time we always have primary and backup instances for each node in our environment - and that each node's primary and backup must run on separate physical machines. In case a primary fails, the system will dynamically set the backup as the new primary, and will launch another backup on another machine.

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The new challenges for your network management software

Peter Williams of Bloor Research does a nice job of describing the issues facing IT's management of networks as well as the vendor's challenges in delivering the right network management systems.  The piece then goes on to be a plug for Entuity's 'Eye of the Storm' network management suite, but it's done in this context. The advertizing not withstanding, I liked the staging and premise on which it was written.

Stormy times for your networks? Time to re-assess your network...

Those who provide network fault and performance management software have been experiencing new challenges as technologies advance and new software emerges. Enterprises using network management software unchanged for only two years will be behind the curve; in fact the vendors themselves are struggling to keep up.

Think of the challenges. There is virtualisation—of the servers, storage pools and the networks—which builds in extra (hidden) layers of complexity in continually mapping the virtual to the physical. Various trends include a shift towards more server-based shared applications and content management, service-oriented architecture (SOA) and software as a service (SaaS). Conversely, there is also peer-to-peer networking, as well as converged data and voice sharing the same wire, and wireless networking for both.

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