Category Archives: Cloud computing

Cloud computing, Featured, XaaS

X as a Service (XaaS): What the Future of Cloud Computing Will Bring

By John Dixon, Consulting Architect

 

Last week, Chris Ward and I hosted a breakout session at Cloudscape 2014, GreenPages’ annual customer Summit. We spoke about cloud service models today (IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS), as well as tomorrow’s models — loosely defined as XaaS, or Anything-as-a-Service. In this post, I’ll discuss XaaS: what it is and why you might want to consider using it.

First, what is XaaS? Is this just more marketing fluff? Why do we need to define yet another model to fully describe cloud services? I contest that XaaS is a legitimate term, and that it is useful to describe a new type of cloud services — those that make use of IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS all neatly delivered in one package. Such packages are intended to fully displace the delivery of a commodity IT service. My favorite example of XaaS is desktop as a service, or DaaS. In a DaaS product, a service provider might assemble it with the following:

  • Servers to run Virtual Desktop Infrastructure from a provider such as Terremark (IaaS)
  • An office suite such as Microsoft Office365 (SaaS)
  • Patching and maintenance services
  • A physical endpoint such as a Chromebook or thin client device

The organization providing DaaS would design, assemble, and manage the product out of best-of-breed offerings in this case. The customer would pay one fee for the use of the product and have the all-important “one throat to choke” for the delivery of the product. At GreenPages, we see the emergence of XaaS (such as DaaS) as a natural evolution of the market for cloud services. This sort of market behavior is nothing new for other industries in a competitive market. Take a look at the auto industry (another one of my favorite examples). When you purchase a car, you are buying a single product from one manufacturer. That product is assembled from pieces provided by many other companies — from the paint, to the brake system, to the interior, to the tires, to the navigation system, to name a few. GM or Ford, for example, doesn’t manufacture any of those items themselves (they did in days past). They source those parts to specialist providers. The brakes come from Brembo. The interior is provided by Lear Corp. The Tires are from Goodyear. The navigation system is produced by Harman. The auto manufacturer specializes in the design, marketing, assembly, and maintenance of the end product, just as a service provider does in the case of XaaS. When you buy an XaaS product from a provider, you are purchasing a single product, with guaranteed performance, and one price. You have one bill to pay. And you often purchase XaaS on a subscription basis, sometimes with $0 of capital investment.

You can download John’s “The Evolution of Your Corporate IT Department” eBook here

So, secondly, why would you want to use XaaS? Let’s go back to our DaaS example. At GreenPages, we think of XaaS as one of those products that can completely displace a commodity service that is delivered by corporate IT today. What are commodity services? I like to think of them as the set of services that every IT department delivers to its internal customers. In my mind, commodity IT services deliver little or no value to the top line (revenue) or bottom line (profit) of the business. Desktops and email are my favorite commodity services. Increased investment in email or the desktop environment does not translate into increases in top-line revenue or bottom-line profit for the business. Consider that investment includes financial and time investments. So, why have an employee spend time maintaining an email system if it doesn’t provide any value to the business? Two key questions:

  1. Does investment in the service return measurable value to the business?
  2. In the market for cloud services, can your IT department compete with a specialist in delivering the service?

When looking at a particular service, if you answer is “No” to both questions, then you are likely dealing with a commodity service. Email and desktops are two of my favorite examples. Coming back to the original question… you may want to source commodity services to specialist providers in order to increase investment (time and money) on services that do return value to the business.

We’ll expand this discussion into the role of corporate IT in a future post. For now though, what do you think of XaaS? Would you use it to replace one of your commodity services? Maybe you already do. I’m interested to hear from you about which services you have chosen to source to specialist providers.

cloud brokerage, Cloud computing, Featured, hybrid cloud, Private Cloud, Public Cloud, Shadow IT

Managing Resources in the Cloud: How to Control Shadow IT & Enable Business Agility

 

In this video, GreenPages CTO Chris Ward discusses the importance of gaining visibility into Shadow IT and how IT Departments need to offer the same agility to its users that public cloud offerings like Amazon can provide.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AELrS51sYFY

 

 

If you would like to hear more from Chris, download his on-demand webinar, “What’s Missing in Today’s Hybrid Cloud Management – Leveraging Cloud Brokerage”

You can also download this ebook to learn more about the evolution of the corporate IT department & changes you need to make to avoid being left behind.

 

 

 

App Dev, Big Data, Cloud computing, Featured, PaaS, SDN, Storage

Top 25 Findings from Giagom’s 4th Annual “Future of Cloud Computing” Survey

By Ben Stephenson, Journey to the Cloud

 

Giagom Research and North Bridge Partners recently released their 4th annual “Future of Cloud Computing” study. There was some great data gathered from the 1,358 respondents surveyed. In case you don’t have time to click through the entire 124 slideshare deck, I’ve pulled out what I think are the 25 most interesting statistics from the study. Here’s the complete deck if you would like to review in more detail.

 

  • 49% using the cloud for revenue generating or product development activities (Slide 9)
  • 80% of IT budget is used to maintain current systems (Slide 20) <–> GreenPages actually held a webinar recently explaining how organizations can avoid spending the majority of their IT budgets on “keeping the lights on“
  • For IT across all functions tested in the survey, 60-85% of respondents will move some or significant processing to the cloud in the next 12-24 months (Slide 21)
  • Shifting CapEx to OpEx is more important for companies with over 5,000 employees (Slide 27)
  • For respondents moving workloads to the cloud today, 27% said they are motivated to do so because they believe using a cloud platform service will help them lower their capital expenditures (Slide 28)
  • Top Inhibitor: Security, remains the biggest concern, despite declining slightly last year, it rose again as an issue in 2014 and was cited by 49% of respondents (Slide 55)
  • Privacy is of growing importance. As an inhibitor, Privacy grew from 25% in 2011 to 31% (Slide 57)
  • Over 1/3 see regulatory/compliance as an inhibitor to moving to the cloud (Slide 60)
  • Interoperability concerns dropped by 45%, relatively, over the past two years…but 29% are still concerned about lock in (Slide 62)
  • Nearly ¼ people still think network bandwidth is an inhibitor (Slide 64)
  • Reliability concerns dropped by half since 2011 (Slide 66)
  • Amazon S3 holds trillions of objects and regularly peaks at 1.5 million requests per second (Slide 71)
  • 90% of world’s data was created in past two years…80% of it is unstructured (Slide 73) <–> Here’s a video blog where Journey to the Cloud blogger Randy Weis talks about big data in more detail
  • Approximately 66% of data is in the cloud today (Slide 74)
  • The number above is expected to grow 73% in two years (Slide 75)
  • 50% of enterprise customers will purchase as much storage in 2014 as they have accumulated in their ENTIRE history (slide 77)
  • IaaS use has jumped from 11% in 2011 to 56% in 2014 & SaaS has increased from 13% in 2011 to 72% in 2014 (Slide 81)
  • Applications Development growing 50% (Slide 84) <–> with the growth of app dev, we’re also seeing the growth of shadow IT. Check out this on-demand webinar “The Rise of Unauthorized AWS Use. How to Address Risks Created by Shadow IT.”
  • PaaS approaching the tipping point! PaaS has increased from 7% in 20111 to 41% in 2014. (Slide 85) <–> See what one of our bloggers, John Dixon, predicted in regards to the rise of PaaS at the beginning of the year.
  • Database as a Service expected to nearly double, from 23% to 44% among users (Slide 86)
  • By 2017, nearly 2/3rds of all workloads will be processed in cloud data centers. Growth of workloads in cloud data centers is expected to be five times the growth in traditional workloads between 2012 and 2017. (Slide 87)
  • SDN usage will grow among business users almost threefold…from 11% to 30%  (Slide 89) <–> Check out this video blog where Nick Phelps talks about the business drivers behind SDN.
  • 42% use hybrid cloud now (Slide 93)
  • That 42% will grow to 55% in 2 years (Slide 94) <–> This whitepaper gives a nice breakdown of the future of hybrid cloud management.
  • “This second cloud front will be an order of magnitude bigger than the first cloud front.” (Slide 117). <–> hmmm, where have I heard this one before? Oh, that’s right, GreenPages’ CEO Ron Dupler has been saying it for about two years now.

Definitely some pretty interesting takeaways from this study. What are your thoughts? Did certain findings surprise you?

 

 

 

Cloud & IT Management, Cloud computing, Free, Google, Google App Engine, Kubernetes, LXC, Open Source, Tools

Google Adds Docker Image Support to App Engine, Announces Kubernetes Container Manager

Google continues to up the cloud ante by adding a set of extensions that allow Google App Engine developers to build and deploy Docker images in Managed VMs. Developers can use these extensions to easily access the large and growing library of Docker images, and the Docker community can easily deploy containers into a completely managed environment with access to services such as Cloud Datastore.

From the Google Cloud Platform Blog:

“Based on our experience running Linux containers within Google, we know how important it is to be able to efficiently schedule containers at Internet scale. To that end, we’re announcing Kubernetes, a lean yet powerful open-source container manager that deploys containers into a fleet of machines, provides health management and replication capabilities, and makes it easy for containers to connect to one another and the outside world. We’ll continue to build out the feature set, while collaborating with the Docker community to incorporate the best ideas from Kubernetes into Docker.”

 

Full details here.

Cloud & IT Management, Cloud computing, Docker, Free, Google, Google App Engine, Kubernetes, LXC, Open Source, Tools

Google Adds Docker Image Support to App Engine, Announces Kubernetes Container Manager

Google continues to up the cloud ante by adding a set of extensions that allow Google App Engine developers to build and deploy Docker images in Managed VMs. Developers can use these extensions to easily access the large and growing library of Docker images, and the Docker community can easily deploy containers into a completely managed environment with access to services such as Cloud Datastore.

From the Google Cloud Platform Blog:

“Based on our experience running Linux containers within Google, we know how important it is to be able to efficiently schedule containers at Internet scale. To that end, we’re announcing Kubernetes, a lean yet powerful open-source container manager that deploys containers into a fleet of machines, provides health management and replication capabilities, and makes it easy for containers to connect to one another and the outside world. We’ll continue to build out the feature set, while collaborating with the Docker community to incorporate the best ideas from Kubernetes into Docker.”

 

Full details here.

Cloud computing, Featured, hybrid cloud, Public Cloud, Shadow IT

Have You Met My Friend, Cloud Sprawl?

By John Dixon, Consulting Architect

 

With the acceptance of cloud computing gaining steam, more specific issues related to adoption are emerging. Beyond the big-show topics of self-service, security, and automation, cloud sprawl is one of the specific problems that organizations face when implementing cloud computing. In this post, I’ll take a deep dive into this topic, what it means, how it’s caused, and some options for dealing with it now and in the future.

Cloud Sprawl and VM Sprawl

First, what is cloud sprawl? Simply put, cloud sprawl is the proliferation of IT resources – that provide little or no value – in the cloud. For the purposes of this discussion, we’ll consider cloud to be IaaS, and the resources to be individual server VMs. VM sprawl is a similar concept that happens when a virtual environment goes unchecked. In that case, it was common for an administrator, or someone with access to vCenter, to spin up a VM for testing, perform some test or development activity, and then forget about it. The VM stayed running, consuming resources, until someone or something identified it, determined that it was no longer being used, and shut it down. It was a good thing that most midsize organizations limited vCenter or console access to perhaps 10 individuals.  So, we solved VM sprawl by limiting access to vCenter, and by maybe installing some tools to identify little-used VMs.

So, what are the top causes of cloud sprawl? In IT operations terms, we have the following:

  • Self-service is a central advantage of cloud computing, and essentially cloud means opening up a request system to many users
  • Traditional IT service management (a.k.a. ITIL) is somewhat limited in dealing with cloud, specifically configuration management and change management processes
  • There remains limited visibility into the costs of IT resources, though cloud improves this since resource consumption ends up as a dollar amount on a bill…somewhere

How is Cloud Sprawl Different?

One of the main ideas behind cloud computing – and a differentiator between plain old virtualization and centralization – is the notion of self-service. In the language of VMware, self-service IaaS might be interpreted as handing out vCenter admin access to everyone in the company. Well, in a sense, cloud computing is kind of like that – anyone who wants to provision IaaS can go out to AWS and do just that. What’s more? They can request all sorts of things, aside from individual VMs. Entire platform stacks can be provisioned with a few clicks of the mouse. In short, users can provision a lot more resources, spend a lot more money, and cause a lot of problems in the cloud.

We have seen one of our clients estimate their cloud usage at a certain amount, only to discover that actual usage was over 10 times their original estimate!

In addition, cloud sprawl can go in different directions than plain old VM sprawl. Since there are different cloud providers out there, the proliferation of processes and automation becomes something to watch out for. A process to deal with your internal private cloud may need to be tweaked to deal with AWS. And it may need to be tweaked again to deal with another cloud provider. In the end, you may end up with a different process to deal with each provider (including your own datacenter). That means more processes to audit and bring under compliance. The same goes for tools – tools that were good for your internal private cloud may be completely worthless for AWS. I’ve already seen some of my clients filling their toolboxes with point solutions that are specific to one cloud provider. So, bottom line is that cloud sprawl has the potential to drag on resources in the following ways:

  1. Orphaned VMs – a lot like traditional VM sprawl, resulting in increased spend that is completely avoidable
  2. Proliferation of processes – increased overhead for IT operations to stay compliant with various regulations
  3. Proliferation of tools – financial and maintenance overhead for IT operations

 

Download John’s ebook “The Evolution of Your Corporate IT Department” to learn more

 

How Can You Deal with Cloud Sprawl?

One way to deal with cloud sprawl is to apply the same treatment that worked for VM sprawl: limit access to the console, and install some tools to identify little-used VMs. At GreenPages, we don’t think that’s a very realistic option in this day and age. So, we’ve conceptualized two new approaches:

  1. Adopt request management and funnel all IaaS requests through a central portalThis means using the accepted request-approve-fulfill paradigm that is a familiar concept from IT service management.
  2. Sync and discoverGive users the freedom to obtain resources from the supplier of their choosing, whenever and wherever they want. IT operations then discovers what has been done, and runs their usual governance processes (e.g., chargeback, showback) on the transactions.

Both options have been built in to our Cloud Management and a Service (CMaaS) platform. I see the options less as an “either/or” decision, and more of a progression of maturity within an organization. Begin with Option 2 – Sync and Discover, and move toward Option 1 – Request Management.

As I’ve written before, and I’ll highlight here again, IT service management practices become even more important in cloud. Defining services, using proper configuration management, change management, and financial management is crucial to operating cloud computing in a modern IT environment. The important thing to do now is to automate configuration and change management to prevent impeding the speed and agility that comes with cloud computing. Just how do you automate configuration and change management? I’ll explore that in an upcoming post.

See both options in action in our upcoming webinar on cloud brokerage and governance. Our CTO Chris Ward will cover:

  • Govern cloud without locking it down: see how AWS transactions can be automatically discovered by IT operations
  • Influence user behavior: see how showback reports can influence user behavior and conserve resources, regardless of cloud provider
  • Gain visibility into costs: see how IaaS costs can be estimated before provisioning an entire bill of materials

 

Register for our upcoming webinar being held on May 22nd @ 11:00 am EST. “The Rise of Unauthorized AWS Use. How to Address Risks Created by Shadow IT.

 

 

Cloud computing, cloud management, CMaaS, Featured

Modernizing IT by Killing the Transactional Treadmill

By Geoff Smith, Senior Manager, Managed Services, GreenPages-LogicsOne

Many IT departments today are unable to get off the transactional treadmill. You may have some serious talent in your IT department, but valuable, strategic IT assets are becoming bogged down with tactical actions. When this happens, IT cannot fulfill its true purpose: applying technology to enable business success. As an IT decision maker, you need to be providing IT with an effective, efficient, and modern way of addressing every day responsibilities so that internal focus can shift back to supporting crucial business objectives. I consistently see this issue when I’m out in the field speaking with customers. For this reason, I’m hosting a webinar on May 8th to go over some strategies your IT department can implement.

In this webinar you will learn ways to modernize IT operations and combine advanced management tools, mature operating procedures, and a skilled workforce to:

  • Build an Enterprise Command Center to effectively address and monitor the health and status of critical infrastructure systems
  • Leverage run books and Standard Operating Procedures to complete required actions and create consistency in approach
  • Establish a transparent co-sourced operational structure that promotes a culture of collaboration and joint responsibility for success
  • Create visibility and analytics that maximize availability and functionality of technology investments

If you’re interested in learning more, register here & bring your questions May 8th at 11 am EST.

 

 

Amazon AWS, Amazon Web Services, Cloud computing, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Microsoft, OpenStack, Research

Cloud Computing Entering Hypergrowth Phase

Cloud services and cloud platforms are now an undeniable part of the IT landscape. Forrester research indicates the shift has begun from exploration of cloud as a potential option, to rationalization of cloud services within the overall IT portfolio.

Cloud platforms, most notably Amazon Web Services, were only collectively $4.7 billion last year but are maturing quickly thanks to stronger recent solutions from traditional IT partners IBM, HP and Microsoft. The growth in use, maturity, and financial viability of public cloud platforms are proving their longstanding value as legitimate deployment options for enterprise applications. While not a one-for-one replacement for on-premise, hosting, or colocation, cloud platforms fit well as ideal deployment options for elastic and transient workloads built in modern application architectures.

For applications and services built in an agile mode with modern architectures, discrete cloud services, such as database, storage, integration and other standalone cloud middleware components, will empower developers by freeing them from the management and maintenance of these components and reduce overall deployment footprint and cost. They are also managed and enhanced by vendors as often as daily delivering new capabilities that can help a company maintain pace with the changing desires of an empowered customer base

As the largest clouds continue to invest in efficiencies that can only be achieved at their massive scales, the gulf between the cost efficiencies that can be had from the cloud and what is possible on-premise or through other outsourcing and hosting options will widen dramatically.

How Forrester came to these conclusions.

Aereo, Cloud computing, DropBox, Electronic Frontier Foundation, File Sharing, Internet television, Legal, Supreme Court, Video

Aereo Decision: the Cloud at a Crossroad?

Broadcasters’ latest legal target is 2-year-old upstart Aereo—which retransmits over-the-air broadcast television using dime-sized antennas to paying consumers, who can watch TV online or record it for later viewing. The case, before the Supreme Court, may have impact on cloud computing generally, not just on Aereo’s business. A federal appeals court said that Aereo’s service is akin to a consumer putting a broadcast antenna atop their dwelling. Aereo, the appeals court ruled, “provides the functionality of three devices: a standard TV antenna, a DVR, and a Slingbox”

Companies like Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, Yahoo, and others are worried that a victory for the broadcasters could upend the cloud. The companies, in trade association briefs, told the justices in a recent filing that the “dramatic expansion of the cloud computing sector, bringing with it real benefits previously only imagined in science fiction, depends upon an interpretation of the Copyright Act that allows adequate breathing room for transmissions of content.”

Consider any file-hosting service that allows people to store their own material, such as Dropbox. What if it can be shown they are storing copyrighted work. Do they need a license?

Mitch Stoltz, an Electronic Frontier Foundation attorney, said in a telephone interview that, “If the Supreme Court rules in favor of the broadcasters, their opinion might create liability for various types of cloud computing, especially cloud storage.”

But, in urging the high court to kill Aereo, the broadcasters said that “The disruption threatened by Aereo will produce changes that will be difficult, if not impossible, to reverse.”

More detail and analysis.

Amazon, Amazon AWS, Cloud computing, Data center, Google

Amazon, Google: a Battle to Dominate the Cloud

The cloud is just a vast mass of computers connected to the internet, on which people or companies can rent processing power or data storage as they need it.

All the warehouses of servers that run the whole of the internet, all the software used by companies the world over, and all the other IT services companies hire others to provide, or which they provide internally, will be worth some $1.4 trillion in 2014, according to Gartner Research—some six times Google and Amazon’s combined annual revenue last year.

When that time comes, all the world’s business IT needs will be delivered as a service, like electricity; you won’t much care where it was generated, as long as the supply is reliable.

Way back in 2006, Amazon had the foresight to start renting out portions of its own, already substantial cloud—the data centers on which it was running Amazon.com—to startups that wanted to pay for servers by the hour, instead of renting them individually, as was typical at the time. Because Amazon was so early, and so aggressive—it has lowered prices for its cloud services 42 times since first unveiling them, according to the company—it first defined and then swallowed whole the market for cloud computing and storage.

Even though Amazon’s external cloud business is much bigger than Google’s, Google still has the biggest total cloud infrastructure—the most servers and data centers. Tests of Amazon’s and Google’s clouds show that by one measure at least—how fast data is transferred from one virtual computer to another inside the cloud—Google’s cloud is seven to nine times faster than Amazon’s.

The question is, is Amazon’s lead insurmountable?