December 22, 2008 11:57 AM PST

The great paradigm shift of cloud computing is not self-service...

Posted by James Urquhart

There has been significant discussion over the short life of the term "cloud computing" about how little it differs from concepts like managed hosting and ASPs. And there is some truth to these observations; if you really look closely, what are the key differences between EC2 and a more traditional managed hosting provider? Some would say multi-tenancy, self-service and pay-per-use (including billing and elastic capacity). With specific regard to EC2, I would tend to agree.

(I would also hasten to point out that Amazon provides some very PaaS-like services in conjunction with EC2, such as Simple Queuing Service (SQS) and SimpleDB.)

However, if this is the great "paradigm shift" of cloud computing, as offered by smart people like Krishnan Subramanian of CloudAve, then let me offer that these basic extensions to existing hosting models will be peanuts next to a shift that will create one of the most significant market opportunities since the explosive growth of the Internet itself. I'm not dealing in hyperbole here; I honestly believe that there is a clear evolutionary step to the cloud occurring well after stand-alone self-service clouds are mainstream (which they arguably are today) that will inspire massive innovation.

That game changing technology disruption will be the federation of disparate clouds, and the distribution of software, data and billing across commercial and private cloud boundaries. In other words, the introduction of secure, reliable workload mobility in an extension of the Internet itself--an "Intercloud", so to speak.

Workload mobility is one of the key innovations of the virtual server world (though it borrowed heavily from its technical ancestry). Technologies like VMotion and other live migration technologies allow system administrators to move running workloads from one machine to another, but today they are generally limited to one subnet.

However, expand the reach of VM motion to cross not only subnet boundaries, but even organizational boundaries, and you get an interesting new world of possibilities. Some of these have been anticipated for some time, but as I talk to more and more people about what could happen here, more and more use cases crop up. For example:

• Follow the Sun: Move workloads to where they are being most utilized at a given time, usually the "day" side of the planet.
• Follow the Moon: Move workloads to where power is cheapest, usually the "night" side of the planet.
• Follow the Law: Move workloads to where the legal and regulatory environment is optimal for the task being executed or the data being stored.
• Optimize Latency: Move workloads to where network routing is optimized for a system of components.
• Optimize Utilization: Move workloads to where the optimal use of compute and/or storage utilization is achieved.
• Optimize Cost: Move workloads to where the cost of computing is as cheap as possible for the workload at hand.

There must be several, perhaps even dozens, of ideas workload mobility would trigger for entrepreneurs and established service providers alike beyond these. I won't deign to have thought through all of the possibilities. The truth is, though, we will probably end up creating complex assemblies of basic sets of policies, mixing and matching as required to meet service levels.

To get to this level of workload mobility, four key areas need to be addressed:

• The mechanism behind workload mobility itself. We've got a great headstart from the likes of VMWare VMotion, but there needs to be more motion aware infrastructure to make this happen ubiquitously. For example, how do you handle what I like to call impedence mismatches between different infrastructure providers, such as one using AMIs and another kvm guest images?
• Integrated and ubiquitous security and control mechanisms. Security for the obvious reasons, but giving the illusion of control is a big part of the workload mobility story. To the owner of the workloads, they should always have the illusion that they are running in their own data center, regardless of where the workload is actually running--though they should control that too.
• Service Level Automation. This is a critical aspect of trust, perhaps the most illusive enterprise requirement in the cloud today. Define service levels at least in part in terms that automation systems can use to tweak elasticity, availability and resource consumption. That automation, in turn, guarantees within reason that customer service levels will be constantly adhered to. Without service level automation across organizational boundaries, it will be impossible to trust systems that become distributed among multiple providers.
• Integration and interoperability protocols and services. We long ago left the world in which production software can be moved around in units called "applications". Almost any system today is comprised of multiple end user applications and back-end services that must coordinate to complete their respective functions. This does not even take into account the management backplane that exists to support those complex systems, that also must coordinate across the same organizational boundaries. All of this has to be available on the shared network in which workload is mobile. If we want workload to be mobile across the Internet, then it must exist as protocols or services on the Internet itself.

The final step of the cloud computing maturity model requires that these requirements be addressed. There is some debate about from what part of the compute landscape these services should be delivered, and how the various "impedence mismatches" of disparate cloud platforms will be handled (or even if they can be handled). Of course, I believe that the network will play a major role, but others see options in pure server software or virtual appliance implementations.

Any way you cut it, though, if you think self-service changed computing and created opportunities, wait until you see the "Intercloud".

James Urquhart is a seasoned field technologist with almost 20 years of experience in distributed systems development and deployment, focusing on service-oriented architectures, cloud computing, and virtualization. James is currently market manager for the Data Center 3.0 strategy at Cisco Systems. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET.

Topics:

Cloud Computing,

IAAS (infrastructure as a service),

PaaS (platform as a service)

The great paradigm shift of cloud computing is not self-service... | The Wisdom of Clouds - CNET News

Gartner Releases Data on Hot Enterprise Topics

Gartner's 27th annual datacenter conference is producing research related to energy consumption, virtualization, cloud computing. Here are some of the most interesting numbers revealed at the conference.

Forty-two percent of IT professionals polled at the Gartner conference operate three or more datacenters in North America.

Forty-five percent are expanding or planning to expand datacenters in the next two years, while 43 percent are consolidating.

A standard 9,000 square foot, Tier 3 datacenter that supports 150 watts per square foot will cost approximately US$21.3 million (about Rs 105 crore) to build, with $1 million (about Rs 5 crore) in annual electrical costs.

Green IT practices that minimize use of chiller plants, fans and pumps, lighting and power supplies can more than halve the power costs of running a datacenter.

An aggressively "green" enterprise will pay $560,000 (about Rs 2.8 crore) in annual electrical expenses for a datacenter with a 500 kilowatt IT load. Enterprises with archaic datacenter practices will pay as much as $1.3 million (about Rs 650 lakh).

In a conventional datacenter, 35 percent to 50 percent of electrical energy is devoted to cooling. With best practices, that proportion is reduced to 15 percent.

Twenty-six percent of conference attendees buy green products only when they lower costs, save space or defer datacenter construction.

Thirty-four percent will buy green products even if they increase costs.

Storage spending is growing almost three times faster than the IT budget as a whole. From 2007 to 2011, storage spending will increase more than 7 percent a year, compared with annual IT budget growth of only 2.5 percent.
By 2012, users will install 6.5 times the amount of terabytes they installed in 2008.

Server virtualization, one of the key technologies driving costs down in datacenters, is suitable for about 70 percent of workloads.

Today, only 12 percent of x86 server workloads are running in virtual machines.
By 2013, that number will be 61 percent.

One out of every four x86 workloads deployed or redeployed in 2008 is being installed in a virtual machine. Still, vendor licensing, pricing and support plans are limiting virtualization efforts, according to 21 percent of conference attendees.

About 70 percent of virtual machines today are used in production. Just a few years ago, most were used only in test and development roles.

The server virtualization market will grow 30 percent a year through 2013, reaching $6.8 billion (about Rs 34,000 crore).

Desktop virtualization will also take off, with the number of virtualized PCs growing from less than 5 million in 2007 to 660 million by 2011.

Only two major server operating systems will experience significant growth through 2010 -- Windows and Linux. But lightweight operating systems will take off with double-digit growth, including JeOS, a variant of Ubuntu configured specifically for virtual appliances.

Thirty-eight percent of conference attendees are using some type of external cloud computing service.
By 2012 at least 14 percent of the infrastructure at Fortune 1000 companies will be service-oriented, scalable and elastic -- operated as if it they were "private clouds" for each company's users.

Source : Network World

Jon Brodkin

CIO India - Gartner Releases Data on Hot Enterprise Topics

December 04, 2008 | Comments: (1) | TrackBacks: (0)

Server virtualization: Gartner's view through 2011

Gartner predicts some game-changing numbers for server virtualization as the mass market adopts the technology into production environments

TAGS: Server Virtualization

This week in Las Vegas, Gartner's VP Distinguished Analyst Thomas Bittman delivered the keynote address at the 27th annual Gartner Data Center Conference. And as expected, one of the hot topics of discussion was server virtualization.

Bittman stated that only two or three years ago, server virtualization was mostly being used for test and development purposes. But now, the technology is being accepted into production environments to the tune of about 70 percent of all datacenters using virtual machines in some sort of production role.

[ To learn more about server virtualization, check out this InfoClipz video. ]

Bittman also announced three remarkable predictions about the virtualization industry:

• By 2012, at least 14 percent of the infrastructure and operations architecture of Fortune 1000 companies will be managed and delivered much like a cloud-computing provider, internally. These "private clouds" are essentially flexible computing networks designed to be like the solutions being offered by public providers such as Google and Amazon.
• Between 2007 and 2011, Bittman expects that the installed base of virtual machines will grow more than tenfold.
• And by 2012, he believes that the majority of x86 server workloads will be running within a virtual machine.

When talking about this hot virtualization technology, Bittman adds, "our key advice is to look beyond simple consolidation and cost savings. Virtualization can be the catalyst to drive many fundamental important changes in architectures, processes, and cultures. Even if short-term attention needs to be given to cost-savings, make sure you build a foundation that can be leveraged in a few years. Virtualization 'unlocks' cloud computing potential internally and externally."

Posted by David Marshall on December 4, 2008 07:15 AM

Server virtualization: Gartner's view through 2011 |Virtualization Report | David Marshall | InfoWorld