Virtual Strategy Magazine - Cloud Computing: The Perfect Storm

Cloud Computing: The Perfect Storm

By Gail Dutton

published: Monday, March 03 2008

If your head is in a cloud, rejoice! You're at the leading edge of a computing storm that has the potential to blow away computing as we know it.

The "cloud" in cloud computing is actualy a massive utility platform composed of an enormous network of servers. In this environment, users - whether systems developers or end users - select the applications they need and are connected to them without any need to be aware of the underlying infrastructure. Cloud computing is similar to grid computing, except that in a cloud environment, the resources are managed as one entity, while grid clusters are managed individually. As IBM explains, "Cloud computing lets data centers operate more like the Internet, enabling computing across a distributed, globally accessible fabric of resources rather than on local machines or server farms."

Clouds Appearing

If that explanation seems amorphous, there's good reason. "The term is still taking shape," notes Bert Armijo, senior vice president of sales and product management at 3Tera . The key element is that users give up some degree of control in exchange for increased computing power, scalability and access to certain applications they may not otherwise have. "The companies engaged in this tend to be very large," he says.

eBay, for example, has embraced cloud computing to enhance the agility of its IT department. Nimbleness is particularly important, because eBay adds about 6 million listings per day and hosts 520,000 stores worldwide. Its listings are searched 3,800 times per second. It built its own computing cloud in a move to provide nearly infinite scalability while managing its network on a single system.

Management tools to support this are continually evolving in a way that negates downtime, thereby improving productivity, equipment utilization and lowering operational costs. As part of the development, eBay launched what it bills as one of the world' largest Web services development platforms that includes SOA that helps projects move through their lifespans, from short-term applications through full-scale roll-outs.

Accessible for Small Firms

Google, MySpace, FaceBook, IBM, Amazon and other computationally intensive companies have developed clouds for their own use and employed them to great effect. Now some of these companies are beginning to commercialize those resources. Consequently, cloud computing is becoming accessible for even small companies, and will become increasingly prevalent as the skills needed to manage applications in a cloud environment become more widely understood.

That's the same type of change manufacturers underwent in the early 20^th century. Initially, many had to be vertically integrated simply to obtain the goods and services needed to manufacture their products and maintain their workforces. Ford Motor Company, for example, built its own steel mill, and many companies built their own power plants. Eventually, as the infrastructure technology became more broadly understood, more widely applicable and more desirable, third parties emerged to handle the infrastructure issues, which then became broadly available. Everyone benefited through the economics of scale, and manufacturers could then concentrate on their core businesses. Similar economies of scale are anticipated with cloud computing.

IBM launched its Blue Cloud computing concept last November , based on its earlier Web 2.0 work. At a demo in Shanghai last fall, it showed how cloud computing could be used to dynamically provision and allocate resources as application workloads fluctuate. The goal, according to Dennis Quan, chief technology officer, "is allow next generation centers to power out their data centers. The first product, due out this spring, will be a blade center using Power and x86 processors."

Applications

Cloud computing, Quan says, is driven by space constraints within the data center and ever- increasing energy costs, coupled with the need for companies to continue to grow. Blue Cloud, therefore, has the high levels of automation needed to run large scale operations. "We've invested in automation and put in provisioning system that lets you deploy resources, sometimes, within minutes. All machines are fully virtualized, functioning in a virtualized environment, using templates," so deployment is merely a matter of copying a machine image to a virtual server. Blue Cloud's goal, Quan says, is to make cloud computing applicable to customers of all sizes, worldwide.

Initially, "Blue Cloud will help our customers quickly establish a cloud computing environment to test and prototype Web 2.0 applications within their enterprise environment, " according to Rod Adkins, senior vice president, development and manufacturing or IBM Systems & Technology Group, speaking at the Shanghai demonstration. "Over time," he continues, "this approach could help IT managers dramatically reduce the complexities and costs of managing scale-out infrastructures whose demands fluctuate." Importantly, Blue Cloud integrates with existing IT infrastructure through SOA-based Web services. Later this year, IBM plans to launch a mainframe cloud environment, called System z.

3Tera took a different approach. Rather than build its own cloud environment from scratch, it aggregates the existing knowledge and infrastructure, and provides an interface to let its customers-typically hosting providers-layer applications atop it. "Scalability is easy," Armijo says, so "going from 2 servers to 200 and back to 2 is no big deal."

That the type of scalability and ease of use that 3Tera's customers prize. One, a search engine company, wants to run its service without managing the hardware, Armijo says. "They want to focus on their custom code," rather than expend resources on the infrastructure. Cloud computing, which is virtualized, lets that happen.

Amazon's EC2 is one of the largest commercial applications of cloud computing. Located within Amazon's Web Services offering, "EC2 is a web service that provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud...to make web-scale computing easier for developers," according to Amazon spokesperson Kay Kinton. "It has a simple web service interface that lets users obtain and configure capacity with minimal friction," and completely control their computing resources even though those resources run on Amazon's computing environment.

For systems administrations, this "reduces the time required to obtain and boot new server instances to minutes," Kinton says, thus allowing rapid scaling as computing needs change and "freeing developers from the heavy-lifting typically associated with launching and growing a successful Web business." Because Amazon EC2 is completely controlled through web service API, developers can respond instantly. "There's no need to contact humans, schedule time and plan ahead," to meet spikes in traffic or demand, Kinton says. That's possible, she explains, because clients aren't limited to a fixed number of resources for a fixed timeframe, so they can control the number of resources in use at any given time. Like many cloud services, users pay only for the capacity they actually use.

Instant Access

From the users' perspective, cloud computing gives them access to the network from any connected device. That capability already has transformed public safety in Mississippi by consolidating information and providing a single access point for the information needed by law enforcement and other first responders. "That's the core of Homeland Security - local agencies sharing information," Julian Allen, associate vice president for research and economic development at the University of Southern Mississippi, notes.

As Allen explains, a law enforcement officer pulling over a car for a traffic violation typically checks the car and driver against arrest warrants. Before the Mississippi Automated System Project (MASP) was implemented, the officer could only check warrants issued within his or her own county - information wasn't linked and parts of it wasn't even computerized. Now, thanks to MASP, when an officer checks for outstanding warrants, data is returned from all counties that participate in the program. It currently handles arrest warrants, criminal data, mug shots and call histories, as well as computer aided dispatch, records management, fire management and jail management systems and is connected to mobile computers in responders' vehicles. And, it does it without relying upon periodic updates from 30 different agencies. Instead, the databases on arrest warrants, for example, appear to the user to be one database although, as far as each agency is concerned, it owns and controls its own database.

The infrastructure that makes it possible to share data among agencies as one database is invisible to the thirty agencies using it, but it is based on Sun's Secure Global Desktop software, Windows and Linux operating systems and VMware ESX Server sharing application and x86 hardware. What the agencies do see is instant access to critical information, increased productivity, and the economies of scale that result from sharing the infrastructure. And, because the network is administered by one group - the University of Southern Mississippi - rather than by individual agencies, the system is always current and any compatibility issues that otherwise could occur are averted. "This is a model for rural America," Allen says.

Disruptive Technology

"The idea of owning one's own data center is transitioning to one of using remote data centers," according to Chuck Hollis, chief technology officer for cloud marketing at EMC "That's a very disruptive concept." Trusting others with your information and infrastructure is contrary to the traditional IT paradigm. And, he adds, there's the fear of automating one's job out of existence.

Under cloud computing, Armijo explains, "one system administrator can run hundreds of computers." That can reduce labor by 50 to 80 percent. Consultants admit that cloud computing could eliminate jobs out of corporate data centers, but say they would shift to third party data centers. Furthermore, they say, opportunities will emerge elsewhere in the value chain, among cloud computing centers, hosting services and applications developers. Hollis likens this to what has happened elsewhere in corporations -- in human resources and accounting departments, for example. Although some operations were outsourced, the fields have continued to grow. "The job doesn't change," Hollis says. "How you do it changes."

Industry is gravitating towards cloud computing, initially, because it's a less expensive solution. "The real value, though, is that it's flexible and offers fast reaction times when situations change," Hollis says. The other benefit is that it unleashes creativity. "That is core to the value proposition. It gets you out of thinking about hardware, and frees staff for more creative endeavors." Right now, "Lots of creative people are tied up in mundane tasks," he adds.

Cloud computing, clearly, is a paradigm shift. "Till now, we've taken it for granted that to own the data you needed to own the computer," Armijo says. Under cloud computing, you own the data, but it and the computing cycles may reside elsewhere. "So, how can you take advantage of this and let people focus on the applications, security, customer satisfaction, new product development," and other aspects of operations that are central to the business?

"At EMC, we believe cloud computing needs to be wrapped with other value-added services, like security, backup integration with existing services, a help desk, etc." Hollis continues. He, therefore, sees close ties with hosting systems that provide software as a service (SaaS) in a cloud environment. "Service -oriented architecture (SOA) is another way," he says. Hollis' advice? "Focus on the core business, and if somebody else can do (ancillary operations) better, faster, and cheaper, let them."