According to a research report by 451 Market Monitor, the Cloud Computing marketplace will reach $16.7 billion in revenue this year, including the large and well-established SaaS category, compared to a revenue of $8.7 billion in 2010.
As for Big Data, the total Big Data market reached $11.4 billion in 2012 and is expected to reach $18.2 billion this year, according to a report published recently by Wikibon. IDC says Big Data will be $24B market by 2016.
Put simply, there’s a massive transformation under way from buying IT to IT being a broker for service providers and IT consumed on demand.
Then comes Software-Defined Networking. Like Big Data, SDN is a trend that is changing the landscape of the networking industry today. Enterprises are expecting more agility from their data center plumbing to properly accommodate innovation that’s going on in other departments.
Monthly Archives: April 2013
Ignoring the Harmless Looking “Force Majeure” Clause in a Cloud Agreement?
The “Force Majeure” provision, a Latin term roughly meaning an “Act of God” is commonly found in most services agreements. But should it be included in your cloud services contract?
This nugget is a common clause in contracts that essentially frees both parties from liability or obligation when an extraordinary event or circumstance beyond the control of the parties, such as a war, strike, riot, crime, or an event described by the legal term “act of God” (such as hurricane, flooding, earthquake, volcanic eruption, etc.), prevents one or both parties from fulfilling their obligations under the contract.
Having a landscaper or electrician be excused from performing his services due to a hurricane is reasonable, and not an objectionable use of a force majeure clause in a contract with one of these types of service providers. Many cloud service providers would also want you to believe that it’s reasonable for them too, along with their uptime service level guarantees. Should you?
From Rent to Buy with Cloud? Wait a Minute
Piston CTO Josh McKenty predicts a radical shift in the cloud computing space. Building off of his firm’s recent product launch, McKenty — who cofounded Piston in January 2011 — tells IT World that he expects to see a “giant explosion of businesses moving off Amazon Web Services.” Going forward, McKenty says many companies will opt to build their own OpenStack clouds, for example, rather than purchase cloud services.
But as IT World’s Nancy Gohring (rightly) notes, that scenario is unlikely to be the case — or is, at the very least, an over-exaggeration. “McKenty obviously has reason to hope that businesses are moving away from AWS since it could mean more customers for Piston,” Gohring writes.
Shadow IT Management – Which Pill Morpheus?
By Geoff Smith, Sr. Solutions Architect
The term “Shadow IT” has gotten more and more people thinking about the challenges we all face as we try to reign in our IT management and operations. Recently, I caught a few minutes of the movie The Matrix…now, that movie is a bit of a visual trip, but once you get past the effects, the underlying dilemma it presents is intriguing.
It seems to me that if you accept the notion that people will gravitate towards the easiest ways to get their jobs done, than you have to wonder if the tools and procedures you have in place are likely to encourage compliance, or force rebellion. As in the Matrix movies, what appears to be happening under the surface may actually be something completely different once you have peeled back the false construct you assume is reality.
It has long been known that IT people are an innovative and, well, curious lot. We will try just about anything once, and if we find something that allows us to “better” manage our environments then we may cross over from the fringe into the shadowy world of the truly obscure in search of the truly arcane. It’s almost a badge of honor to demonstrate how to solve IT challenges without relying on the industry best practices or accepted solutions.
The real question is, is this really a bad thing? If you think back to The Matrix, the false construct did have its advantages. Sure, you were effectively enslaved by machines, but at least they gave you a good fantasy to operate within. You had juicy steak and cool clothes and the slickest cars (BTW that is a 1965 Lincoln Continental with the “suicide doors” in the movie). And as far as anyone else in that reality was concerned you were as legitimate as they were. So what’s wrong with that, especially considering everyone else is in the same boat?
Shadow IT, especially as it applied to IT Management, may have its benefits, but it also carries a lot of risk. For every off-the-grid tool that performs a function within IT, or for every service you rely on that may not be fully vetted, you may have exposed your organization to potential abuses, both internal and external. Where do these tools come from? How reputable an organization was it that developed them? Does their use create security vulnerabilities? Do they violate standing policies or put at risk compliance? And is the information you’re getting reliable? How critical are they to the underlying functionality of your business systems? Who on your team really understands their purpose and use?
So if we have accepted the fact that these tools and services exist, and that in all likelihood their use is prevalent in our industry, what do we do about it? To blunt their use is to shut the door on creative innovation within our teams. And frankly it’s not that easy to stop. To lower our standards and policies and embrace their use could lead us into situations where our lack of control and enforcement results in bad things happening.
Red pill or blue pill? Do we accept the risks, and tell ourselves that those bad things are so unlikely to happen that the benefits outweigh the risks (or – hey I might just be the equivalent of a Duracell battery but since I don’t know it I’m happy)? Or do we drop into a harsh reality where getting things accomplished might be more difficult and frankly less visibly rewarding (or – I’ve traded steak for Tastee Wheat but at least I know what I’m really eating). What if there were a “purple” pill available? An alternative to the options of pure fantasy or brutal reality?
There is a purple pill, and it’s not an answer but a question. That question is why? Why does my team feel they need to “jack-in” in order to accomplish anything in our environment? Why can’t they get done what they need to with the approved tools and service already at their disposal? Why do these policies and restrictions exist in the first place, and are those reasons still legitimate?
It’s about structured enablement and inclusive decision-making. Gather your teams and work from the inside out. Start with what they feel needs to be accomplished to meet the organizational needs. Understand the gaps between how they work and the policies and procedures that are in place today. Are there areas of consolidation or elimination of steps that can be taken to improve efficiencies and render some of the shadow services useless?
As you re-architect your approaches, also look for ways to improve the working environment for your teams. Are there tasks they are required to perform that have become so rote and uninteresting that they have fallen into the shadows? If so, rather than re-populate your teams with these tasks, look to move them into a more tightly controlled environment. This may be accomplished by automation or even by out-tasking to a provider (under a strictly defined and controlled contract with full auditing and reporting). And don’t forget that these “basic” functions are the foundation of a well-oiled IT machine.
In all transparency, I have watched The Matrix a number of times, and while my attempt to tie this concept of Shadow IT Management into the movie may have fallen short, I do think it’s not whether you choose the red pill or the blue one, but it’s the fact that you have the ability to make that choice at all. There is a difference, after all, in knowing the path and walking the path. Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony.
Putting 5 cloud myths and misunderstandings to bed
The promise of cloud computing as a way to reduce costs, manage expansion and make the creation of new services easier is very real, but we’re still in the early days of adoption.
Organisations and governments are still largely digesting what they’ve heard, sifting through the benefits, and weighing up the “fear, uncertainty and doubt” concerning its impact on businesses and services.
What is true and very real is the impact it’s having on how services are being created and how seriously corporate IT is taking it.
For those wanting to build the next Facebook it’s a no-brainer. Pinterest, the fanatically followed online pin board is the fastest growing site in history, (17m users in just 9 months), and to date it’s pure cloud.
However, for the corporate IT manager there’s the issue of trust to be addressed. The goal is alluring; moving infrastructure …
Cloud Computing Is Smart
“The open development business model positively impacts the cloud ecosystem by fostering much-needed cloud standards and removing the fear of “lock-in” for cloud customers,” stated Joan Rothman, CMO at CoreMatrix Systems LLC, in this exclusive Q&A with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan. “The open model also creates a cross-cloud environment where innovative development can occur at a speed and cost that only a few companies can do on their own today.”
Cloud Computing Journal: The move to cloud isn’t about saving money, it’s about saving time – agree or disagree?
Joan Rothman: Disagree. The move to the cloud is about saving time and saving money – along with gaining an opportunity to immediately improve processes. We’ve helped companies in several industries move their systems to the cloud in just a few weeks. Of course, for complex and global implementations, it takes longer due to the number of requirements, different groups, disparate databases and existing systems involved in the design, build and deploy process. But the time and cost savings are there for organizations of any size.
Rackspace Planning a ‘Networked Cloud of Clouds’
Rackspace said Monday that it’s going to build and run a global cloud network for service providers like telcos.
It blogged that “This cloud network will run the Rackspace public cloud – the largest OpenStack-based public cloud in the world – at global scale, creating a networked cloud of clouds through which service providers are linked together behind the scenes.”
It figures that as the founder of OpenStack, it’s “perfectly positioned to help speed a partner’s successful entry as a cloud provider in the OpenStack ecosystem with proven Rackspace technology, operations and go to market expertise.”
cPanel is Built for Speed?
cPanel claims big victory, announces it is now only 3x slower than Parallels Plesk Panel
cPanel recently revealed they cut their product install time by an average of 30% and are now able to achieve install times of 50 minutes. This is still more than 3x slower than Parallels Plesk Panel. This less than impressive claim is promoted as the reason one might choose cPanel. If you use install time as a main criteria for choosing a panel you have a clear winner: Parallels Plesk Panel with 15 minutes install time.
I’ve talked to a number of hosters running both Parallels Plesk Panel and cPanel and their non-lab experience confirms these results. They are reporting cPanel 11.36 default installations taking over 2 hours and Parallels Plesk Panel 11 installations less than 18 minutes. With mirror Parallels Plesk Panel repository, local install source, they are installing Parallels Plesk Panel in under 6 minutes.
Let me know how this compares with your experience.
Adam Bogobowicz, Sr. Director of Product Marketing for Service Providers at Parallels
The Growing Cloud Ecosystem
“Trusted infrastructure providers are transparent and comply with industry security standards and practices,” observed Sheji Jacob-Brettle, Head of Marketing at TelecityGroup, in this exclusive Q&A with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan. “As an end user you want to know that your cloud provider’s own infrastructure is robust, resilient and secure,” concluded Jacob-Brettle.
Cloud Computing Journal: The move to cloud isn’t about saving money, it is about saving time – Agree or disagree?
Sheji Jacob-Brettle: It’s about both – the cloud saves money because you use what you need and time because you can provision and deploy services fast.
Cloud Expo New York: Utilizing a Pod Architecture to Scale
Building solutions that process Big Data are complex in general, particularly when dealing with a constant stream of data – not data resulting from interactive sessions, but a continuous stream of data. Design for infinite scale is a huge struggle. Given a design that functions well with a given load, will it function with 10x or 100x that load?
In his session at the 12th International Cloud Expo, Donn Rochette, CTO at AppFirst, will discuss a pod architecture solution for scale – a design approach that allows you to scale to very large numbers with predictable results.