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Category Archives: Cloud computing
Automation & Orchestration Part 1: What’s In A Name? That Which We Call a “Service”…
The phrases “service,” “abstraction,” & “automation & orchestration” are used a lot these days. Over the course of the next few blogs, I am going to describe what I think each phrase means and in the final blog I will describe how they all tie in together.
Let’s look at “service.” To me, when you trim off all the fat that word means, “Something (from whom) that provides a benefit to something (to whom).” The first thing that comes to mind when I think of who provides me a service is a bartender. I like wine. They have wine behind the bar. I will pay them the price of a glass + 20% for them to fill that glass & move it from behind the bar to in front of me. It’s all about services these days. Software-as-a-Service, Infrastructure-as-a-Service, and Platform-as-a-Service. Professional services. Service level agreement. No shirts, no shoes, no service.
Within a company, there are many people working together to deliver a service. Some to external people & some to internal people. I want to examine an internal service because those tend to be much more loosely defined & documented. If a company sells an external service to a customer, chances are that service is very well defined b/c that company needs to describe in very clear terms to the customer exactly what they are getting when the customer shells out money. If that service changes, careful consideration needs to be paid to what ways that service can add more benefit (i.e., make the company more money) and in what ways parts of that service will change or be removed. Think about how many “Terms of Service & Conditions” pamphlets you get from a credit card company and how many pages each one is.
It can take many, many hours as a consultant in order to understand a service as it exists in a company today. Typically, the “something” that provides a benefit are the many people who work together to deliver that service. In order to define the service and its scope, you need to break it down into manageable pieces…let’s call them “tasks.” And those tasks can be complex so you can break those down into “steps.” You will find that each task, with its one or more steps, which is part of a service, is usually performed by the same person over and over again. Or, if the task is performed a lot (many times per day) then that task can usually be executed by a member of a team and not just a single person. Having the capability internally for more than one person to perform a task also protects the company from when Bob in accounting takes a sick day or when Bob in accounting takes home a pink slip. I’ll throw in a teaser for when I cover automation and orchestration…it would be ideal that not only can Bob do a task, but a computer as well (automation). That also may play into Bob getting a pink slip…but, again, more on that later. For now Bob doesn’t need to update his resume.
A lot of companies have not documented many, if any, of the internal services they deliver. I’m sure there is someone who knows the service from soup to nuts, but it’s likely they don’t know how (can’t) to do every task—or—may not have the authority/permission (shouldn’t) to do the task. Determining who in a company performs what task(s) can be a big undertaking in and of itself. And then, once you find Bob (sorry to pick on you Bob), it takes a lot of time for him to describe all the steps he does to complete a task. And once you put it on paper & show Bob, he remembers that he missed a step. And once you’ve pieced it all together and Bob says, “Yup, that about covers it,” you ask Bob what happens when something goes wrong and he looks at you and says, “Oh man, where do I begin?”
That last part is key. When things go well I call it the “Happy Day Scenario.” But things don’t always go well (ask the Yankees after the 2004 season) and just as, if not more, important in understanding a service is to know what to do when the Bob hits the fan. This part is almost never documented. Documentation is boring to lots of people and it’s hard enough for people to capture what the service *should* do let alone what it *could* do if something goes awry. So it’s a challenge to get people to recall and also predict what could go wrong. Documenting and regurgitating the steps of a business service “back” to the company is a big undertaking and very valuable to that company. Without knowing what Bob does today, it’s extremely hard to tell him how he can do it better.
Why Are More and More Businesses Moving to the Cloud? (Infographic)
Has Cloud Computing Matured? (Infographic)
Fun with Neologism in the Cloud Era
Having spent the last several blog posts on more serious considerations about cloud computing and the new IT era, I decided to lighten things up a bit. The term “cloud” has bothered me from the first time I heard it uttered, as the concept and definition are as nebulous as, well a cloud. In the intervening years, when thoroughly boring my wife and friends with shop talk about the “cloud,” I came to realize that in order for cloud computing to become mainstream, “it” needs to have some way to translate to the masses.
Neologism is the process of creating new words using existing or combinations of existing words to form a more descriptive term. In our industry neologisms have been used extensively, although many of us do not realize how these terms got coined. For example, the word “blog” is a combination of web and log. “Blog” was formed over time as the lexicon was adopted. It began with a new form of communicating across the Internet, known as a web log. “Web log” become “we blog” simply by moving the space between words one to the left. Now, regardless of who you talk to, the term “blog” is pretty much a fully formed concept. Similarly, the term “Internet” is a combination of “inter” (between) and “network”, hence meaning between networks.
Today, the term “cloud” has become so overused that confusion reigns (get it?) over everyone.
Cloudable – meaning something that is conducive to leveraging cloud. As in: “My CRM application is cloudable “ or “We want to leverage data protection that includes cloudable capabilities”
Cloudiac – someone who is a huge proponent of cloud services. A combination of “Cloud” and “Maniac”, as in: “There were cloudiacs everywhere at Interop. “ In the not too distant future, we very well may see parallels to the “Trekkie” phenomena. Imagine a bunch of middle-aged IT professionals running around in costumes made of giant cotton-balls and cardboard lightning bolts.
Cloudologist – an expert in cloud solutions. Different from a Cloudiac, the Cloudologist actually has experience in developing and utilizing cloud based services. This will lead to master’s degree programs in Cloudology.
Cloutonomous – maintaining your autonomy over your systems and data in the cloud. “I may be in the Cloud but I make sure I’m cloutonomous.” Could refer to the consumer of the cloud services not being tied into long term services commitments that may inhibit their ability to move services in the event of a vendor failing to hit SLAs.
Cloud crawl – actions related to monitoring or reviewing your various cloud services. “I went cloud crawling today and everything was sweet.” Off-take of the common “pub crawl,” just not as fun and with no lingering after-effects.
Counter-cloud – a reference to the concept of “counter culture,” which dates back to hippie days of the 60s and 70s. In this application, it would describe a person or business that is against utilizing cloud services mainly because it is the new trend, or because they feel that it’s the latest government conspiracy to control the world.
Global Clouding – IT’s version of Global Warming, except in this case the world isn’t becoming uninhabitable, IT is just becoming a bit fuzzy around the edges. What will IT be like with the advent of Global Clouding?
Clackers – Cloud and Hacker. Clackers are those nefarious, shadowy figures that focus on disruption of cloud services. This “new” form of hacker will concentrate on capturing data in transit, traffic disruption/re-direction (i.e. DNS Changer anyone?), and platform incursion.
Because IT is so lexicon heavy, building up a stable of Cloud-based terminology is inevitable, and potentially beneficial in focusing the terminology further. Besides, as Cloudiacs will be fond of saying… “resistance is futile.”
Do you have any Neologisms of your own? I’d love to hear some!
Optimize Your Infrastructure; From Hand-built to Mass-production
If you’ve been reading this blog, you’ll know that I write a lot about cloud and cloud technologies, specifically around optimizing IT infrastructures and transitioning them from traditional management methodologies and ideals toward dynamic, cloud-based methodologies. Recently, in conversations with customers as well as my colleagues and peers within the industry, it is becoming increasingly clear that the public, at least the subset I deal with, are simply fed up with the massive amount of hype surrounding cloud. Everyone is using that as a selling point and have attached so many different meanings that it has become meaningless…white noise that just hums in the background and adds no value to the conversation. In order to try to cut through that background noise I’m going to cast the conversation in a way that is a lot less buzzy and a little more specific to what people know and are familiar with. Let’s talk about cars (haa ha, again)…and how Henry Ford revolutionized the automobile industry.
First, let’s be clear that Henry Ford did not invent the automobile, he invented a way to make automobiles affordable to the common man or as he put it, the “great multitude.” After the Model A, he realized he’d need a more efficient way to mass produce cars in order to lower the price while keeping them at the same level of quality they were known for. He looked at other industries and found four principles that would further his goal: interchangeable parts, continuous flow, division of labor, and reducing wasted effort. Ford put these principles into play gradually over five years, fine-tuning and testing as he went along. In 1913, they came together in the first moving assembly line ever used for large-scale manufacturing. Ford produced cars at a record-breaking rate…and each one that rolled off the production line was virtually identical to the one before and after.
Now let’s see how the same principles (of mass production) can revolutionize the IT Infrastructure as they did the automobile industry…and also let’s be clear that I am not calling this cloud, or dynamic datacenter or whatever the buzz-du-jour is, I am simply calling it an Optimized Infrastructure because that is what it is…an IT infrastructure that produces the highest quality IT products and services in the most efficient manner and at the lowest cost.
Interchangeable Parts
Henry Ford discovered significant efficiency by using interchangeable parts which meant making the individual pieces of the car the same every time. That way any valve would fit any engine, any steering wheel would fit any chassis. The efficiencies to be gained were proven in the assembly of standardized photography equipment pioneered by George Eastman in 1892. This meant improving the machinery and cutting tools used to make the parts. But once the machines were adjusted, a low-skilled laborer could operate them, replacing the skilled craftsperson that formerly made the parts by hand.
In a traditional “Hand-Built” IT infrastructure, skilled engineers are basically building servers—physical and virtual—and other IT assets from scratch and are typically reusing very little with each build. They may have a “golden image” for the OS, but they then build multiple images based on the purpose of the server, its language or the geographic location of the division or department it is meant to serve. They might layer on different software stacks with particularly configured applications or install each application one after another. These assets are then configured by hand using run books, build lists etc. Then tested by hand, etc. which means that it takes time and skilled effort and there are still unacceptable amounts of errors, failures and expensive rework.
By significantly updating and improving the tools used (i.e. virtualization, configuration and change management, software distribution, etc.), the final state of IT assets can be standardized, the way they are built can be standardized, and the processes used to build them can be standardized…such that building any asset becomes a clear and repeatable process of connecting different parts together; these interchangeable parts can be used over and over and over again to produce virtually identical copies of the assets at much lower costs.
Division of Labor
Once Ford standardized his parts and tools, he needed to divide up how things were done in order to be more efficient. He needed to figure out which process should be done first so he divided the labor by breaking the assembly of the Model T into 84 distinct steps. Each worker was trained to do just one of these steps but always in the exact same order.
The Optimized Infrastructure relies on the same principle of dividing up the effort (of defining, creating, managing and ultimately retiring each IT asset) so that only the most relevant technology, tool or sometimes, yes, human, does the work. As can be seen in later sections, these “tools” (people, process or technology components) are then aligned in the most efficient manner such that it dramatically lowers the cost of running the system as well as guarantees that each specific work effort can be optimized individually, irrespective of the system as a whole.
Continuous Flow
To improve efficiency even more, and lower the cost even further, Ford needed the assembly line to be arranged so that as one task was finished, another began, with minimum time spent in set-up (set-up is always a negative production value). Ford was inspired by the meat-packing houses of Chicago and a grain mill conveyor belt he had seen. If he brought the work to the workers, they spent less time moving about. He adopted the Chicago meat-packers overhead trolley to auto production by installing the first automatic conveyer belt.
In an Optimized Infrastructure, this conveyor belt (assembly line) consists of individual process steps (automation) that are “brought to the worker” (each specific technological component responsible for that process step….see; division of labor) in a well-defined pattern (workflow) and then each workflow arranged in a well-controlled manner (orchestration) because it is no longer human workers doing those commodity IT activities (well, in 99.99% of the cases) but the system itself, leveraging virtualization, fungible resource pools and high levels of standardization among other things. This is the infrastructure assembly line and is how IT assets are mass produced…each identical and of the same high quality at the same low cost.
Reducing Wasted Effort
As a final principle, Ford called in Frederick Winslow Taylor, the creator of “scientific management,” to do time and motion studies to determine the exact speed at which the work should proceed and the exact motions workers should use to accomplish their tasks, thereby reducing wasted effort. In an Optimized Infrastructure, this is done through understanding and using continuous process improvement (CPI), but CPI cannot be done correctly unless you are monitoring the performance details of all the processes and the performance of the system as a whole and then documenting the results on a constant basis. This requires an infrastructure-wide management and monitoring strategy which, as you’ve probably guessed, was what Fredrick Taylor was doing in the Ford plant in the early 1900s.
Whatever You Call It…
From the start, the Model T was less expensive than most other hand-built cars because of expert engineering practices, but it was still not attainable for the “great multitude” as Ford had promised the world. He realized he’d need a more efficient way to produce the car in order to lower the price, and by using the four principles of interchangeable parts, continuous flow, division of labor, and reducing wasted effort, in 1915 he was able to drop the price of the Model T from $850 to $290 and, in that year, he sold 1 million cars.
Whether you prefer to call it cloud, or dynamic datacenter, or the Great Spedini’s Presto-Chango Cave of Magic Data doesn’t really matter…the fact is that those four principles listed above can be used along with the tools, technologies and operational methodologies that exist today—which are not rocket science or bleeding edge—to revolutionize your IT Infrastructure and stop hand-building your IT assets (employing your smartest and best workers to do so) and start mass producing those assets to lower your cost, increase your quality and, ultimately, significantly increase the value of your infrastructure.
With an Optimized Infrastructure of automated tools and processes where standardized/interchangeable parts are constantly reused based on a well-designed and efficiently orchestrated workflow that is monitored end-to-end, you too can make IT affordable for the “great multitude” in your organization.
Arrow ECS EMEA Launches ArrowSphere Cloud Services Platform for IT Channel
Arrow Enterprise Computing Solutions, a business segment of Arrow Electronics Inc., today unveiled ArrowSphere, a cloud services aggregation and brokerage platform for the European solution provider community, system integrators, independent software vendors and service providers.
Through ArrowSphere, Arrow ECS is adding new growth opportunities for enterprise and midmarket business solutions for the channel. ArrowSphere will enable the Arrow ECS European channel network to resell aggregated cloud services, such as infrastructure-, platform-, storage- and software-as-a-service solutions, from industry leaders around the world. ArrowSphere brings new dimensions to cloud delivery by facilitating access to more than 60 leading-edge cloud services, in addition to adding flexibility with white-label webstores; increasing simplicity by centralizing billing and provisioning; and improving reliability through trusted single-sign-on solutions.
“By offering turnkey webstores that address the needs of today’s and future businesses, we bridge the gap between cloud service provider innovation and solution provider market reach,” said Laurent Sadoun, president of the Europe, Middle East and Africa region for Arrow ECS. “This approach represents the much-needed catalyst that can drive significant cloud adoption through the channel over the next five years.”
ArrowSphere is available to the IT community in the United Kingdom (beginning July 11) and will be available in September in Denmark, France, Germany and Spain, with other countries to follow.
“Migrating legacy IT systems to the cloud, connecting cloud solutions to existing on-premise infrastructure and supporting these hybrid solutions are complex undertakings for small and midsize enterprises. Solution providers are the trusted advisors that routinely help businesses integrate IT services securely and efficiently,” said Sadoun. “Arrow ECS is proud to offer the IT community a unique opportunity to enter into the cloud. This strategy of investments toward added value and the channel will guide innovation forward for our partners as well as the entire IT industry.”
“The ArrowSphere platform allows us to address new markets and new business in a fast and simple way, and it therefore represents a massive revenue opportunity for us,” said Shamus Kelly, managing director of Portal, an ISV working with Arrow ECS in the U.K. “Being able to leverage a turnkey webstore with our own solutions and the services portfolio developed by Arrow ECS puts us in a solid position to embrace the cloud. Also, it gives us the flexibility to adapt to our customers’ needs.”
More information about the ArrowSphere marketplace for cloud services, including details about the portfolio, is available online at http://sphere.arrow.com.
The Cloud is Dead! Long Live the Cloud! Twitter Chat Recap
Last week, Cloud Commons hosted a Twitter Chat on the end of Cloud Computing. If you’re not familiar with a tweetchat, they are discussions hosted on Twitter where people can join at a specific time by following a certain hashtag. The Cloud Commons tweetchats usually have around ten panelists and have been kicked off with a few thought-provoking questions. The participants then respond and share ideas in real time. The discussion is focused enough to be useful – 1 hour session, responses limited to 140 characters, but large enough to capture different perspectives.
This week’s tweetchat began with several questions:
- Adoption rates are rising for private cloud. Is this a stepping stone to hybrid/public cloud?
- What needs to happen before enterprises start to fully embrace cloud computing?
- What does the future model for enterprise cloud adoption look like?
- What should CSPs be doing more of to meet the needs of the enterprise?
- What needs to happen so that cloud becomes so ubiquitous that it’ll no longer be referred to as cloud? When will it happen?
The first question, “Is private cloud a stepping stone to hybrid/public cloud?” drew approximately 32 tweets. From the transcript, it appears as though participants in the marketplace are improving their understanding of cloud computing in terms of service and delivery models (private, public, hybrid, IaaS, PaaS, SaaS). The popular viewpoint was that private cloud is not exactly a stepping stone to hybrid/public cloud. A few tweets took the position that private cloud is seen as an alternate path to hybrid/public cloud. Many tweets indicated that IT departments want to retain tight control of their environment. Interesting tweet… “private cloud does not necessarily mean on-premises.” More on this later.
47 tweets in response to the second question, “What needs to happen before enterprises start to fully embrace cloud computing?” Overwhelmingly, the responses in this part of the chat were filled with terms like “services led,” “business value,” “SLA,” and “reduce FUD.” The responses to question 1 covered some territory here as well – enterprises will fully embrace cloud computing if and when they agree to give up some control of their infrastructure. There was an interesting tweet that mentioned transparency – “…it’s not always about control, as it is transparency.” We would argue that transparency is not needed here. To me, full transparency would require that the business is able to access minute detail about infrastructure, such as the amount of RAM installed on the application server that runs their slice of CRM at Salesforce.com. The business should be hidden from this kind of detail. Abstraction plays heavily here. So, we don’t need transparency as much as we need subtraction. What is an important concept that provides abstraction? You guessed it, Service Level Management. The GreenPages view is that processes need to improve before enterprises start to fully embrace cloud computing. See my earlier post, “What Should I Do about Cloud?” that goes in to much more detail on this topic.
I count about the same number of tweets in response to question 3 as I do question 2. Question 3 was a little more open-ended, so a critical mass of ideas never really took shape. The GreenPages’ view is that cloud computing will evolve to look like modern supply chains that can be seen in other industries, such as manufacturing. Enterprises may purchase IT Services from a SaaS provider, Salesforce.com for example. Salesforce.com may purchase its platform from another PaaS provider. That PaaS provider may purchase its basic infrastructure from an IaaS provider. Some value is added at each level, as the IaaS provider becomes more experienced in providing only infrastructure. The PaaS provider has an extremely robust platform for providing only a platform. The SaaS provider may ultimately become an expert at assembling and marketing these components into a service that provides value for the enterprise that ultimately consumes it. Compare this to the supply chain that auto manufacturers leverage to assemble a vehicle. In the early days of manufacturing, some companies produced every part of a vehicle, and assembled it into a finished product. I can think of one prominent example where the work to assemble a finished automobile took place in a single factory around the River Rouge in Detroit. Fast forward to present day, and you’ll be hard pressed to find an auto manufacturer who produces their own windshield glass. Or brake pads. Or smelts their own aluminum. The supply chain has specialized. Auto manufacturers design, assemble, and market finished vehicles. That’s about it. Cloud computing could bring the same specialization to IT.
Most tweets in response to question 4 were clearly around Service Level Management and SLAs, mitigating unknowns in security, and avoiding vendor lock-in. We agree, and think that a standard will emerge to define IT services in a single, consistent format. Kind of like OVF, the Open Virtual Machine Format, for virtualization. I can see an extension to OVF that defines a service’s uptime requirements, maximum ping time to a database server, etc. Such a standard would promote portability of IT Services.
Question 5 really went back to the topics discussed in question 3. When will enterprises embrace cloud? When will cloud computing become ubiquitous?
Right now, Corporate IT and The Business are two individuals living in a virtual “company town.” What I mean is that customers, (the business) are forced to purchase their services from the company store (corporate IT). GreenPages’ view is that there is a market for IT services and that emergence of cloud computing will serve to broaden this market. We recommend that organizations understand the value and costs of providing their own IT services in order to participate in the market – just like the business does. Overall, another insightful chat with some intelligent people!
The Private Cloud Strikes Back
Having read JP Rangaswami’s argument against private clouds (and the obvious promoting of his version of cloud) I have only to say that he’s looking for oranges in an apple tree. His entire premise is based on the idea that enterprises are wholly concerned with cost and sharing risk when that can’t be farther from the truth. Yes, cost is indeed a factor as is sharing risk but a bigger and more important factor facing the enterprise today is agility and flexibility…something that monolithic leviathan-like enterprise IT systems of today definitely are not. He then jumps from cost to social enterprise as if there is a causal relationship there when, in fact, they are two separate discussions. I don’t doubt that if you are a consumer (not just customer) facing organization, it’s best to get on that social enterprise bandwagon but if your main concern is how to better equip and provide the environment and tools necessary to innovate within your organization, the whole social thing is a red herring for selling you things that you don’t need.
Traditional status quo within IT is deeply encumbered by mostly manual processes—optimized for people carrying out commodity IT tasks such as provisioning servers and OSes—that cannot be optimized any further, therefore a different, much better way had to be found. That way is the private cloud which takes those commodity IT tasks and elevates them to automated and orchestrated, well defined workflows and then utilizes a policy-driven system to carry them out. Whether these workflows are initiated by a human or as a result of a specific set of monitored criteria, the system dynamically creates and recreates itself based on actual business and performance need—something that is almost impossible to translate into the public cloud scenario.
Not that public cloud cannot be leveraged where appropriate, but the enterprise’s requirement is much more granular and specific than any public cloud can or should allow…simply to JP’s point that they must share the risk among many players and that risk is generic by definition within the public cloud. Once you start creating one-off specific environments, the commonality is lost and it loses the cost benefits because now you are simply utilizing a private cloud whose assets are owned by someone else…sound like co-lo?
Finally, I wouldn’t expect someone whose main revenue source is based on the idea that a public cloud is better than a private cloud to say anything different than what JP has said, but I did expect some semblance of clarity as to where his loyalties lie…and it looks like it’s not with the best interests of the enterprise customer.
Cloud Infrastructure: People & Process — It’s Not Just the Technology
www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqUZPym-pak
It’s not just the technology! In this video, I discuss the importance of the people & processes involved in moving to a cloud infrastructure. This is something organizations often overlook and is key to your success on the Journey to the Cloud.