Parting the Clouds

Posted by Chris Howard

At least once a week, Amie, our tireless PR resource, pings me with a request to talk about cloud computing. Amie works on the front line of our relationships with the business and technical press, and is a great barometer for topics that have traction "out there". Cloud computing is one that seems to be sticking right now, but it seems that there are many ways of defining it. It is interesting to me because it crosses many of our coverage areas, and is top of mind for CIOs and their staff.

In essence, cloud computing is about the consumption of services or resources that you don't have to directly manage. Usually, this equates to outsourced data center compute power. This enables organizations to reduce the size and complexity of their data centers by drawing compute resources from outside as needed to scale.

At a recent CIO event, Jack Santos heard an executive at a major financial services company proclaim: "I want to eliminate the data center altogether." <Pause><think> Whether or not this is completely feasible or without risk leads to a host of other questions. But the message is clear. Unrestrained buildout of datacenters is unsustainable and is causing executives to look for more efficient solutions. Virtualization within the company-managed datacenter helps solve some of this problem. Cloud computing offers an additional alternative.

Aside from issues of space and power limitation, cloud computing may also help companies meet regulatory mandates for localized data storage. As Phil Schacter on my team put it:

<Phil>

There may also be global regulatory requirements to host and process data regionally, and it doesn’t make financial sense to create a data center in each country – better to partner with a local/regional firm that can offer in-country cloud computing services. There could very well be a business opportunity for the ISPs to expand their offerings to include such a computing (and storage) on demand service.

</Phil>

Jack Santos, adds this warning:

<Jack>

It remains to be seen whether the security and availability  concerns with cloud computing have been overcome.  Not to mention vendor lock-in (are there cloud computing access standards?).

</Jack>

So, let me add my own cautionary note based on patterns I see of the rush to adoption. Economic constriction is leading to close analysis of the bottom line. Cloud computing offers potential quick-return savings. If cloud computing and related concepts are adopted at the accelerated rate we expect as a result, that will create a wave of need. Cloud providers see that wave coming and are rushing to find their foothold. My concern is that some will not find that foothold and will be swept out with the riptide, pulling their early customers along. We may be ready for the cloud, but is it ready for us?

To help clarify the current state and near-term future of cloud computing, Drue Reeves Research Director of our Data Center Strategies "pitches in" (Sorry Drue. The pun harkens back to a former life ;-))

<Drue>

We are really starting to see a “blurring of the lines” between traditional IT data centers, co-lo, hosting, and cloud IT services. Not only are "infrastructure in a cloud services" popping up on the internet, traditional IT data centers are offering their resources as a cloud to their business units. And, these IT organizations are accomplishing this feat using “cloud services” themselves…utilizing things like “backup as a service”.

In the future, I can see data centers in the cloud…where IT administrators own their workloads and lease cloud services to run those workloads. The effort will switch from managing infrastructure to managing the business units need from IT services. In other words, IT infrastructure becomes a utility and the real value is in workload management. This differs from “cloud data centers” that are huge data centers housing the infrastructure in the cloud. Cloud data centers will exist as well. But a virtual cloud data center is one where the IT workload admin leases compute infrastructure from cloud vendor A, storage from vendor B, and network from vendor C….creating a virtual/cloud data center in which to run his set of workloads.

</Drue>

Now, this sort of thinking makes the Enterprise-Architecture-sensitive members of my team a tad nervous. What happens between now and then? Can we gradually move things from inside to outside and back again as needed? How should I architect internal solutions now for a future cloud? Is part of the cloud already on the ground inside my four walls? This is what I call "Fog Computing" ;-)

Mike Rollings, never shy, casts himself into the fray:

<Mike>

Cloud computing is one step away from the fog: Chris' description of removing barriers between internal and external services. The cloud will exert pressure on IT to engage outside services like an internal application.  This will give rise to new expectations for identity federation, security and information integration.

</Mike>

The hybrid solution of the future with a combination of internally and externally managed solutions will require careful architecture to ensure functional, secure, scaled solutions. Over time, resources will move from one domain to another, transparent to the business consumers of those resources. 

As a result, cloud computing sits at the intersection of outsourcing, utility computing, and software as a service (SaaS). In 2008-9, Burton Group will be covering the cloud from multiple angles to help you understand the potential benefits and spectrum of risk involved. If you have questions, let us know.

(And we didn't even get into the "smart" network debate...that will have to wait for a future post...)