Note: This is a play written from tweets. I’ve combined them occasionally for flow, and polished the random rough edge caused by the 140-character Twitter limit.

Dramatis Personae
Roger Strukhoff (me, aka @taudir). Executive Director, Tau Institute and Conference Chair of the upcoming @thingsexpo at Cloud Expo in New York. Based in Illinois and Manila.

Rene Buest (@ReneBuest). Gigaom Research Analyst and Chief Analyst, New Age Disruption. Based in Kiel, Germany.

Tim Crawford (@tcrawford). CIO Strategic Advisor, AVOA. Based in the Los Angeles area.

Krishnan Subramanian (@krishnan). (Director of Open Shift Strategy, Red Hat. Based in Seattle.

Tal Klein (@VirtualTal). VP of Unicorns, Adallom. Based in Silicon Valley.
Rodney Rogers (@rjrogers87). CEO, Virtustream. Company based in Maryland. Rodney based in Miami.

George Reese (@georgereese). Senior Distinguished Engineer and Executive Director of Cloud Computing, Dell. Based in Minneapolis.

Prologue – Renee and I
[It started out innocently enough. I asked a simple question about a geeky tweet. Then all heck broke loose.]

[The adventure starts with a tweet from Rene.]

[enter] Renee: Is the PaaS market as we know it dying?”

[Rene was referring to an article that referenced a report from 451 Group, which stated that PaaS some day “will be consolidated into the two other major cloud models, IaaS and SaaS.”]

[enter] Me: Companies come and go, but PaaS remains, right?

[My mild consternation stems from our use of a PaaS program to create back-end forms in a start-up for which I serve as CIO. For us, there are distinct borders between PaaS and IaaS (which we provision separately from one of the major vendors), and PaaS and SaaS (which we use separately from another major vendor). My thinking is I like the distinction, and would hate to see it fade away.]

[Of course, the far more important question is whether our PaaS platform and company will stand the test of time, be acquired, or whatever. I don’t want to be halfway up this creek, then lose my paddle.]

[But just for fun, I thought I’d pose that theoretical question above: the question of whether PaaS will remain or not. Thus, the play begins. Sit back and enjoy.]

Act I – Tim Joins the Party
[The real fun began almost immediately. Tim Crawford quickly weighed in, chiding me…]

[enter] Tim: No, it evolves into v2 of what we know as IaaS & SaaS today.

Me: (sputtering): (But..but..but..) don’t we need to keep the term (PaaS) alive for developers?

Tim: It will take time to evolve; three to five years.The end-state is one with limited middle-ground from a demand standpoint.

Rene (in seeming agreement): Well, the problem with PaaS is its level of control were IaaS gives even developers more liberty using resources.

Tim (nodding head): PaaS helps developers move up the stack. Great for most as they move along the maturity path.

Rene: But from an enterprise POV it makes sense to setup a standardized PaaS for internal developers to deliver resources quickly.

[Why yes, I thought. Even our modest little enterprise benefits from this approach, if for no other reason than all of our developers are not in the same place.]

Tim: As I mentioned in (an) article, Private PaaS has value for some time (editor’s note: italics mine) to enterprises. Eventually that will change though.

Rene (seemingly concluding things in a very civilized way): Enterprises should offer their developers both IaaS and PaaS to satisfy the individual project needs.

Act II – Krish Arrives
[As with all Internet-based conversations dating back to the original flame wars of the 70s and 80s, it was too good to last. A few seconds after Rene’s apparent book-end to the discussion, Krish weighed in.]

[enter] Krish: I disagree.

[beat] [gasping all around]

Krish: A well-architected PaaS can give the abstraction of PaaS with flexibility of IaaS.

Rene: In detail?

Krish: I have scheduled in mid-February about this. Will share once it is done. Crux is that PaaS=Blackbox for Devs to push apps.It can also offer a certain level of flexibility with an open architecture.

Rene: So, it should basically have the same level of control like an IaaS?

Krish: Not exactly the same level of control as IaaS but flexibility needed for most workloads. There could be some workloads that needs infrastructure level controls. A well-architected PaaS offers most of the flexibility as today’s IaaS with an abstraction for Devs

Rene: Interesting, looking forward to read more on that!

Act III – Tim Re-Joins, Hijinx Ensue
Krish: Such platforms helps keep the roles of Devs and Ops separate while making their collaboration seamless.

Tim: Are you referring to general enterprise, corner cases and over what time period? All of these matter.

Krish: Majority of modern workloads that fit the IaaS plate fit PaaS.

Tim: Disagree. Too general.

Krish: Arguments against PaaS are too general, too. Specific cases may or may not fit. But generally, not different. Some PaaS vendors add restrictions that makes it tough for most workloads to fit in. That’s why I specifically used well-architected platforms where restrictions are almost none

Tim: My comments were specific to timeframe, class of apps, etc. Must appreciate current enterprise challenges.

Krish: If you are talking about legacy workloads, even IaaS is a wrong place to host. I am talking about modern workloads in the context of applicability between IaaS and PaaS.

Tim: FTR PaaS=PaaS=PaaS. Very different implementations and useful applicability scenarios. I’m referring to more than Legacy. But Legacy can’t be ignored. It is a major reality for today’s enterprise.

Krish: You could build specific platforms for specific usecases or use a general abstraction that fits most scenarios.

[enter] Tal: Isn’t that “SaaS” then?

Krish: As I said I am talking specifically about modern distributed apps. If it fits IaaS, most of them also fit PaaS

Tim: If by “modern” you mean “greenfield,” that opens up many options. [Takes phone call.]

[enter] Rodney: That may be true for *most* cloud IaaS platforms.. 😉

Krish: 🙂

[beat]

Krish: (But) yeah. Greenfield. My point is that PaaS helps run most of the greenfield apps. I am only pushing back against the notion that PaaS is limited compared to IaaS. Not necessarily but comes close to SaaS.

Rodney: This is what happens when I troll midway through a conversation..

Act IV – Rene Re-Enters
Rene: So aren’t you talking about something like a convenient IaaS an IaaS+?

Krish: I am saying that for greenfield apps PaaS is good enough. IaaS+ handy for web scale in niche cases.

Act V – George
[enter] George: Wrong

Krish: As good as me saying you are wrong.

George: I trust my opinion over yours 🙂

Krish: Well, it means nothing. There is a problem if you don’t trust yours. [Refers to his blog to make a higher-level point.]

Rene: IaaS is also good for greenfield apps but it’s too complicated today. Therefore IaaS+.

Krish: I never said they’re not. I am saying why complicate life when you can have it simple. There are some workloads where IaaS+ might be needed. Otherwise, an abstraction above.

Tim: Wow! Jump on a quick call and now IaaS is thrown under the bus? Never said that.

[To be continued?…]

read more

Note: This is a play written from tweets. I’ve combined them occasionally for flow, and polished the occaionsal rough edge caused by the 140-character Twitter limit.

Dramatis Personae
Roger Strukhoff (me, aka @taudir). Executive Director, Tau Institute and Conference Chair of the upcoming @thingsexpo at Cloud Expo in New York. Based in Illinois and Manila.

Rene Buest (@ReneBuest). Gigaom Research Analyst and Chief Analyst, New Age Disruption. Based in Kiel, Germany.

Tim Crawford (@tcrawford). CIO Strategic Advisor, AVOA. Based in the Los Angeles area.

Krishnan Subramanian (@krishnan). (Director of Open Shift Strategy, Red Hat. Based in Seattle.

Tal Klein (@VirtualTal). VP of Unicorns, Adallom. Based in Silicon Valley.
Rodney Rogers (@rjrogers87). CEO, Virtustream. Company based in Maryland. Rodney based in Miami.

George Reese (@georgereese). Senior Distinguished Engineer and Executive Director of Cloud Computing, Dell. Based in Minneapolis.

Prologue – Renee and I
[It started out innocently enough. I asked a simple question about a geeky tweet. Then all heck broke loose.]

[The adventure starts with a tweet from Rene.]

[enter] Renee: Is the PaaS market as we know it dying?”

[Rene was referring to an article that referenced a report from 451 Group, which stated that PaaS some day “will be consolidated into the two other major cloud models, IaaS and SaaS.”]

[enter] Me: Companies come and go, but PaaS remains, right?

[My mild consternation stems from our use of a PaaS program to create back-end forms in a start-up for which I serve as CIO. For us, there are distinct borders between PaaS and IaaS (which we provision separately from one of the major vendors), and PaaS and SaaS (which we use separately from another major vendor). My thinking is I like the distinction, and would hate to see it fade away.]

[Of course, the far more important question is whether our PaaS platform and company will stand the test of time, be acquired, or whatever. I don’t want to be halfway up this creek, then lose my paddle.]

[But just for fun, I thought I’d pose that theoretical question above: the question of whether PaaS will remain or not. Thus, the play begins. Sit back and enjoy.]

Act I – Tim Joins the Party
[The real fun began almost immediately. Tim Crawford quickly weighed in, chiding me…]

[enter] Tim: No, it evolves into v2 of what we know as IaaS & SaaS today.

Me: (sputtering): (But..but..but..) don’t we need to keep the term (PaaS) alive for developers?

Tim: It will take time to evolve; three to five years.The end-state is one with limited middle-ground from a demand standpoint.

Rene (in seeming agreement): Well, the problem with PaaS is its level of control were IaaS gives even developers more liberty using resources.

Tim (nodding head): PaaS helps developers move up the stack. Great for most as they move along the maturity path.

Rene: But from an enterprise POV it makes sense to setup a standardized PaaS for internal developers to deliver resources quickly.

[Why yes, I thought. Even our modest little enterprise benefits from this approach, if for no other reason than all of our developers are not in the same place.]

Tim: As I mentioned in (an) article, Private PaaS has value for some time (editor’s note: italics mine) to enterprises. Eventually that will change though.

Rene (seemingly concluding things in a very civilized way): Enterprises should offer their developers both IaaS and PaaS to satisfy the individual project needs.

Act II – Krish Arrives
[As with all Internet-based conversations dating back to the original flame wars of the 70s and 80s, it was too good to last. A few seconds after Rene’s apparent book-end to the discussion, Krish weighed in.]

[enter] Krish: I disagree.

[beat] [gasping all around]

Krish: A well-architected PaaS can give the abstraction of PaaS with flexibility of IaaS.

Rene: In detail?

Krish: I have scheduled in mid-February about this. Will share once it is done. Crux is that PaaS=Blackbox for Devs to push apps.It can also offer a certain level of flexibility with an open architecture.

Rene: So, it should basically have the same level of control like an IaaS?

Krish: Not exactly the same level of control as IaaS but flexibility needed for most workloads. There could be some workloads that needs infrastructure level controls. A well-architected PaaS offers most of the flexibility as today’s IaaS with an abstraction for Devs

Rene: Interesting, looking forward to read more on that!

Act III – Tim Re-Joins, Hijinx Ensue
Krish: Such platforms helps keep the roles of Devs and Ops separate while making their collaboration seamless.

Tim: Are you referring to general enterprise, corner cases and over what time period? All of these matter.

Krish: Majority of modern workloads that fit the IaaS plate fit PaaS.

Tim: Disagree. Too general.

Krish: Arguments against PaaS are too general, too. Specific cases may or may not fit. But generally, not different. Some PaaS vendors add restrictions that makes it tough for most workloads to fit in. That’s why I specifically used well-architected platforms where restrictions are almost none

Tim: My comments were specific to timeframe, class of apps, etc. Must appreciate current enterprise challenges.

Krish: If you are talking about legacy workloads, even IaaS is a wrong place to host. I am talking about modern workloads in the context of applicability between IaaS and PaaS.

Tim: FTR PaaS=PaaS=PaaS. Very different implementations and useful applicability scenarios. I’m referring to more than Legacy. But Legacy can’t be ignored. It is a major reality for today’s enterprise.

Krish: You could build specific platforms for specific usecases or use a general abstraction that fits most scenarios.

[enter] Tal: Isn’t that “SaaS” then?

Krish: As I said I am talking specifically about modern distributed apps. If it fits IaaS, most of them also fit PaaS

Tim: If by “modern” you mean “greenfield,” that opens up many options. [Takes phone call.]

[enter] Rodney: That may be true for *most* cloud IaaS platforms.. 😉

Krish: 🙂

[beat]

Krish: (But) yeah. Greenfield. My point is that PaaS helps run most of the greenfield apps. I am only pushing back against the notion that PaaS is limited compared to IaaS. Not necessarily but comes close to SaaS.

Rodney: This is what happens when I troll midway through a conversation..

Act IV – Rene Re-Enters
Rene: So aren’t you talking about something like a convenient IaaS an IaaS+?

Krish: I am saying that for greenfield apps PaaS is good enough. IaaS+ handy for web scale in niche cases.

Act V – George
[enter] George: Wrong

Krish: As good as me saying you are wrong.

George: I trust my opinion over yours 🙂

Krish: Well, it means nothing. There is a problem if you don’t trust yours. [Refers to his blog to make a higher-level point.]

Rene: IaaS is also good for greenfield apps but it’s too complicated today. Therefore IaaS+.

Krish: I never said they’re not. I am saying why complicate life when you can have it simple. There are some workloads where IaaS+ might be needed. Otherwise, an abstraction above.

Tim: Wow! Jump on a quick call and now IaaS is thrown under the bus? Never said that.

[To be continued?…]

read more

IT organizations face the constant challenge of juggling two almost opposing priorities: continuously delivering business-critical application services while keeping IT expenses in line with budget constraints. The primary function of IT departments is to supply core infrastructure and applications to attract new business, generate revenue, and facilitate profitability – and IT managers strive to meet this goal in spite of flat or shrinking IT budgets.
According to an article in Computer Weekly, approximately 80% of IT expenses are spent on maintenance and support for the existing infrastructure.1 Beyond maintaining current platforms and mission-critical applications, IT must also address new mandates, such as reporting requirements for regulatory compliance or corporate “green” IT initiatives. In addition, IT managers must allocate budget to tackle emerging strategic initiatives that are needed for future success.
By decreasing the total cost of ownership (TCO) for infrastructure systems, IT managers can potentially free budget dollars, re-allocating them to other essential or more pressing projects. The challenge lies in figuring out how to reduce TCO by increasing IT efficiency and driving down operational costs – or, to put it simply, how to do more with less.

read more

IT organizations face the constant challenge of juggling two almost opposing priorities: continuously delivering business-critical application services while keeping IT expenses in line with budget constraints. The primary function of IT departments is to supply core infrastructure and applications to attract new business, generate revenue, and facilitate profitability – and IT managers strive to meet this goal in spite of flat or shrinking IT budgets.
According to an article in Computer Weekly, approximately 80% of IT expenses are spent on maintenance and support for the existing infrastructure.1 Beyond maintaining current platforms and mission-critical applications, IT must also address new mandates, such as reporting requirements for regulatory compliance or corporate “green” IT initiatives. In addition, IT managers must allocate budget to tackle emerging strategic initiatives that are needed for future success.
By decreasing the total cost of ownership (TCO) for infrastructure systems, IT managers can potentially free budget dollars, re-allocating them to other essential or more pressing projects. The challenge lies in figuring out how to reduce TCO by increasing IT efficiency and driving down operational costs – or, to put it simply, how to do more with less.

read more

Recent reports of a massive data breach affecting popular sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google and Yahoo have many companies rethinking security practices and wondering how to protect vital data. If your company uses cloud services to conduct business and manage data or is contemplating a hosting partnership, it’s natural to wonder if your service provider is taking all the steps necessary to keep your confidential information secure.
It’s an important issue: Cloud resources are becoming a must-have service for businesses since they offer scalability without requiring a massive investment in hardware. But before choosing a cloud service provider, it’s crucial to make sure the company can deliver the security your business needs. Here are some questions to keep in mind when making an evaluation.

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Coalfire has launched HIPAAcentral, a new compliance exchange that provides a comprehensive suite of services for covered entities and business associates and their subcontractors to manage, maintain and exchange healthcare regulatory compliance data.
“The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is now actively monitoring and enforcing the HIPAA Omnibus Rule, and too many healthcare firms aren’t prepared,” said Rick Dakin, CEO and co-founder of Coalfire. “HIPAAcentral is closing that gap by enabling subscribers to securely exchange and verify compliance status.”

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I’m reading a McKinsey report from May 2013 that talks about 12 disruptive technologies, including cloud computing and the Internet of Things (Iot). I’ll focus on the IoT here.

The report estimates the (Iot) Internet to be worth between $2.7 and $6.2 trillion by the year 2025.(The world’s combined GDP is about $72 trillion today.) When it comes to the IoT, the report says there could be 50 billion new devices connected to the Internet by 2025, or maybe a trillion. Give or take.

With all due respect, these numbers are nonsense, perhaps, and irrelvant, doubtlessly. It does no one any good to estimate things within a few trillion dollars or a factor of 20X.

We also have no idea what the world will look like politically more than a decade from now. Will the year 2025 harken the beginning of Hillary Clinton’s third term as President of the United States? Or perhaps the Cruz/Paul administration’s first? Will China be the world’s economic collosus, and/or perhaps the world’s largest democracy?

Over the past two decades, no one expected the fall of the Soviet Union or the Arab Spring; the dot-com meltdown came as a catastropic shock to many (and removed $7 trillion in wealth), and our favorite uncle Alan Greenspan now admits he had no idea that the Great Recession was looming. We humans are terrible at predicting the future.

But we live with the certainty that technology evolves and has great potential to improve the fate of nations and people. Technology is apolitical, agnostic, and indefatigable in the face of geo-political pettiness and conflict. We all know this. “Learning” that the cloud or IoT might add a trillion here and there, or several trillion, adds no value to any discussion.

McKinsey did its due diligence in rounding up a passel of big names (eg, Eric Schmidt, And it gives the usual, clichéd nod to Schumpeter’s idea of creative destruction in touting the 12 disruptions.

Let’s Get Specific
But those of us working in the industry need to be a little more specific. The IoT encompasses an enormous range of devices, uses, and industries.

I first led discussions of it at an event in Beijing in 2011. McKinsey, to its credit, issued a nice report sans numbers in 2010. One company tweeted me yesterday that they’ve been doing IoT stuff since 2007.

OK, got it. The IoT is not a brand-new idea. But it is now gaining big traction. It is already throwing datacenter developers into a tizzy as they grapple with delivering a magnitude more processing in a short time. Industrial design is moving to the fore, not just the province of Apple anymore. Google just bought a company for $3.2 billion, a harbinger of an IoT spring.

The IoT generates Big Data, which in turn is best handled by virtualized resources and Cloud Computing, which in turn are begetting the Software-Defined Networks (SDN) and Software-Defined Datacenter (SDDC). Emerging DevOps culture also fits in here, as a function of the speed required to bring ideas to fruition.

For my part, I spend a lot of my time working within a start-up that aims to deliver personal websites, photos, and video to as many people as possible, worldwide, some day. We virtualize, we use the cloud, and we will be encountering bigger datasets as we encounter mobile devices on our grid, and the telemetry that goes with them.

It’s a big development challenge, and one in which we operate in blissful ignorance of whether we’re operating within a $1.7 or $6.2 trillion opportunity.

In summary, as a writer and as Conference Chair of @thingsexpo, I have a simple question: what are you doing? Please let me know!

Contact Me on Twitter

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The ‘platform’ tier in the middle of cloud computing’s architecture is being squeezed, folded and reshaped beyond recognition. Even with continued investment, can it survive the transformative pressures forcing down upon it from the software/application layer above, or the apparently inexorable upward movement from the infrastructure layer upon which it rests? To look at recent investments and enthusiastic headlines, it would be easy to assume that Platform as a Service (or PaaS) is on the up. RedHat recently trumpeted the launch of OpenShift Enterprise — a ‘private PaaS,’ whatever that might be. Eagerly tracked super-startup Pivotal pushed PivotalOne out to the world, strengthening the position of the Cloud Foundry PaaS offering upon which it sits. Apprenda, a PaaS that almost predates wider recognition of the term, secured an additional $16 million to continue expanding. And, more tightly integrated into Salesforce’s latest vision for world domination, Heroku continues to attract enthusiasts. And yet, the role of rich PaaS ‘solutions’ is under increasing pressure. More lightweight approaches such as Docker are attracting attention and, perhaps more importantly, the other layers of the cloud architecture are adding capabilities that look increasingly PaaS-like. The orchestration capabilities of Amazon’s Elastic Beanstalk, for example, mean that many (but […]

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Appcore has released its latest product, Appcore AMP Service Manager, a hosted private cloud solution for service providers.
Based on customer demand, Appcore is releasing Appcore AMP Service Manager, allowing service providers to now sell hosted private cloud. “It is paramount for service providers to differentiate their product offering to compete in today’s environment. Our hosted private cloud solution now allows service providers to further leverage their existing network and infrastructure to provide a secure environment for their enterprise customers,” said Jeff Tegethoff, Appcore CEO.

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SoftLayer, an IBM Company, on Wednesday announced that game development studio KUULUU and online game servers provider Multiplay are using IBM SoftLayer’s cloud capabilities to power popular games such as Battlefield 4 and RECHARGE. KUULUU tapped into SoftLayer’s cloud for higher performance and scale for their newest game created with Linkin Park, the most popular band on Facebook with 55 million followers, called RECHARGE, while Multiplay utilizes SoftLayer cloud to support the mega title Battlefield 4.
The global gaming market is estimated to total $111 billion by 2015 – driven largely by the increasing popularity of cloud gaming (online, streamed and downloaded games are estimated to represent as much as $38B in revenue in 2012). By leveraging the cloud built on open standards to host and stream games, developers are able to provide users with uninterrupted, instant access to games across any devices that will provide higher performance and easily scale based. This allows games to be streamed directly from the cloud, rather than downloaded locally, freeing up storage space on user devices and making access to updates easier and more efficient.

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