Cloud services provide on-demand access to IT resources and applications over the Internet. There are three layers of cloud services: infrastructure (e.g. servers), platform (tools to build apps), and applications (SaaS). SaaS is growing rapidly among SMBs as it allows outsourcing functionality at lower costs. Infrastructure services provide flexibility but don't address scaling or management costs. Platform services abstract infrastructure, allow scaling, and significantly reduce development and operational costs. Concerns around data governance, availability, and security are impacting adoption, driving growth of private clouds which provide more control. Ultimately, both vendors and customers share accountability for security and data ownership.
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Laurel Group Thought Leaders Print 0213
1. Good people are at the core of what we do.
Living in the
Cloud -
Meaning,
Myths and
Opportunities
2. Why does the Laurel Group author publications like these?
The Laurel Group provides guidance and counsel to companies across the nation with senior leadership needs. As advisors and
builders of these companies, not only are we experts in talent evaluation and acquisition, we provide guidance around emerging
trends that may change the landscape of a given market.
As the pace of change accelerates, the number of clients recently asking us about “cloud services/computing” has been rapidly
increasing. However,with all the books,blogs,articles,wikis and other commentary addressing the trend,it has become difficult
to discern myth from truth. Our approach has always been to go direct to the source. We felt that the best way to address
the questions and inquiries surrounding this market was to bring together a world-class group of thought leaders who are
driving this market shift and get their candid input on the meaning of “Cloud Services/Computing”, and the challenges and
opportunities ahead. What you will read in the following pages are their thoughts regarding the following questions:
1. From your perch, what is the meaning of “Cloud Services/Computing”, and what are the most important benefits
emerging from cloud services that will transform the economics of IT?
2. How will concerns around data governance, availability and security impact the adoption of cloud services?
3. How are cloud services testing traditional thinking around “control of data” and “guarantees of safety”; to include
ownership, access and rights that supersede failure of the provider? Ultimately, who should be accountable; vendor or service
provider?
4. What are the SME (Small-Medium Enterprise) benefits that would work well in a departmental setting? What are the
key adoption barriers?
5. Is dominance among a few industry giants a good thing for cloud computing? What are the implications for the rest?
About the Laurel Group
We are retained executive search consultants who specialize in working with high growth technology companies, both private
and public. We are a firm that strongly believes we must entrench ourselves in the markets we serve in order to provide the
best service possible to our clients. As advocates of change and messengers of emerging technology paradigms, we offer these
publications as a form of consumable intelligence we hope is both relevant and useful to your business.
We hope you enjoy the read.
Message to our participants:
We would like to sincerely thank each of you for your involvement in this publication, your efforts and candid thoughts are
greatly appreciated. We wish you, and your business, continued success in 2009.
All the best,
Steve O’Deegan (editor)
Managing Partner, Laurel Group
steve@laurel-group.com
3. IT Lifts Off – Heading for the Cloud
The one thing all of the participants of this piece agreed upon - the future of IT lives in the Cloud. Most acknowledge that the
“Cloud”is early in its evolution, but given the low barriers to entry, innovation will be pervasive and will happen quickly. As the
industry and technologies mature, there will be increasing adoption across a growing base of customers.
Despite each company coming at the issues from a slightly different perspective, there is a broad mix of highly committed
companies who are driving the industry at a rapid pace as the definition of Cloud Computing becomes clearer in people’s
minds.
Our definition:
Cloud Computing is a multi-tier architecture with the “standard IT stack” components re-arranged into three basic categories:
• Basic Infrastructure - mostly hardware and the network
• Platform - foundational software and tools to build applications in a standard environment
• SaaS - the end-user facing Software as a Service that is most commonly understood and recognized by the end-user
community (the application layer).
Also important is the ability to dynamically provision these services,and scale them in a very elastic manner,while charging only
for the services that are actually used by the customer.
The economic benefits of Cloud Computing were covered in our first publication, but there seems to be a more concise
justification emerging which involves more cash flow (which can be re-directed to differentiated activities rather than commodity
infrastructure), more focus on core activities, and a faster time to value.
What should live in the Cloud?
There was general agreement that the most significant challenge to broad acceptance of Cloud Computing is the inherent risk
in having mission critical systems and sensitive data residing in the (public) cloud. The different approaches to addressing this
challenge ranged from recommending private cloud architecture for all core systems, to a separation based on internal/public
facing applications, to migrating in a controlled manner from existing hosted hardware/platform combinations.
Ultimately, all responded that the Service Provider should be responsible for security, but also emphasized that it will be
imperative for the customer to understand the risks and limitations of the architecture and truly investigate the capabilities
of the provider and implications of SLAs in order to make informed decisions regarding the risks and trade-offs. Several
respondents mentioned the fact that the whole ecosystem by its nature, is very interdependent, making agreements between
suppliers a very important part of the equation as well.
4. In addition to the above, there was general consensus around three other themes that will be important for all providers as the
industry matures: Security and Data Governance; the roles of Large and Small Industry Players; and the rapid trajectory of the
Cloud Computing movement.
As with previous waves in the IT industry, both large and small players will help shape the industry by contributing synergistic
components. Large players will make the big infrastructure investments and scale to drive a foundation for others to build upon
by bringing the most demanding and important customers into the market. Emerging growth players will be innovating from
a technology standpoint, exploring new frontiers and filling vertical and technical gaps in the market. Additionally, they will
become acquisition targets for larger players who are looking to round out technology portfolios, product lines, customer bases
and talent pools. As with any market, competition and natural selection will play a part as the market evolves.
In summary, Cloud Computing has become a driving force in the industry and continues to gain significant momentum. It will
be the next important standard in Information Technology with large implications for years to come. In the past six months,
we have witnessed unprecedented economic and market upheaval, so it is difficult to forecast anything with certainty. However,
barring global force majeure events that derail more than the IT industry, it seems safe to say adoption will move beyond the
small and medium business world and into the enterprise within the next few years, potentially changing not only how IT is
applied, but determining who leads in the market.
This summary was developed by Steve O’Deegan & Mike Taft, Managing Partners, Laurel Group Silicon Valley, with support from Davis
Blair, Principal at Alliancesphere, a strategic alliances consultancy, and Co-Founder of Techaisle, LLC a high tech market research firm and
consultancy. A complementary in-depth analysis of this study with supporting user research is available at: www.techaisle.com/cloudwhitepaper.
html.
Security, Governance and
Compliance
• Service Provider is responsible
• User plays critcal role
Industry Consolidation is
Inevitable
• Large companies build
infrastructure
• Small companies innovate and
open frontiers
Cloud Computing is the
Future
• Next Wave of IT Industry
• All signs point to rapid growth
5. Werner Vogels 6
CTO, Amazon
Kevin Haar 8
CEO, Appistry
Ken Comée 11
CEO, Cast Iron Systems
David Bernstein 14
VP/GM, Office of the CTO,
Cloud Computing Project, Cisco
Simon Crosby 18
CTO, Virtualization, Citrix
John Keagy 21
CEO, GoGrid
Alan Ganek 23
CTO Software Group, IBM
John Connors 27
Partner, Ignition Partners
Bruce Cleveland 29
Partner, Interwest Partners
David Young 32
CEO, Joyent
Serguei Beloussov 34
Chairman and CEO, Parallels
Brian Stevens 36
CTO, RedHat
Michael Crandell 38
CEO, Rightscale
Evangelos Simoudis 41
Managing Director, Trident Capital
Steve Herrod 43
CTO, VMWare
Featured Thought Leaders
6. 6
Werner Vogels
CTO, Amazon
From your perch, what is the meaning of “Cloud Services”, and
what are the most important benefits emerging from cloud
services that will transform the economics of IT?
“I don’t think there is a one size fits all answer but I can talk about Amazon Web Services
(AWS). AWS provides users with access to IT capabilities that are scalable, highly reliable and
very cost-efficient in a manner that can normally only be acquired through deep specialism and
experience. AWS is extremely flexible because users can requisition the services on a moment’s
notice without prior reservations. Finally, there is no up-front investment required to gain
access. We are finding that this is allowing new products and business to be created with far less
financial risk than previously possible.”
How will concerns around data governance, availability and
security impact the adoption of cloud services?
“Amazon.com takes security very seriously and follows a 3 tier security model (physical security,
operational security, and programmatic security). The physical security deals with the physical
location of our data centers. Our data centers are well protected against any type of intrusion.
Operational security deals with people who have access to our data center.Only a limited number
of Amazon.com employees have access to our data centers and interact with our infrastructure.
As for programmatic security, we give you control of your virtual instances at a root level and
do not delve into what you do inside them as a matter of policy. AWS provides developers with
extensive capabilities to control access and protect their data. From object level access control
to firewalls, using these tools enables customers to build applications that can meet various
certifications important in a given industry.”
Howarecloudservicestestingtraditionalthinkingaround“control
of data” and “guarantees of safety”; to include ownership, access
and rights that supersede failure of the provider?
“Ultimately, who should be accountable; vendor or service provider? In the case of Amazon
Web Services ownership and access are straight-forward: the customers under whose credentials
the data is stored, is the owner and has all the access and right management controls.”
WhataretheSMEbenefitsthatwouldworkwellinadepartmental
setting? What are the key adoption barriers?
“What I hear from many of the businesses that I speak with is that utilizing AWS enables
higher reliability and greater scale than they can achieve on their own. The cost is also usually
far less because these companies can utilize only what is needed. In many cases the migration
into the cloud is straight forward. AWS also has a rapidly growing group of partners to help
https://aws.amazon.com
Amazon Web Services
provides Amazon’s developer
customers with access to
in-the-cloud infrastructure
services based on Amazon’s
own back-end technology
platform, which developers
can use to enable virtually
any type of business.
Examples of the services
offered by Amazon Web
Services are Amazon Elastic
Compute Cloud (Amazon
EC2), Amazon Simple
Storage Service (Amazon
S3), Amazon SimpleDB,
Amazon Simple Queue
Service (Amazon SQS),
Amazon Flexible Payments
Service (Amazon FPS),
and Amazon Mechanical
Turk.
“I don’t think there is a
one size fits all answer
for Cloud Services.”
-Werner Vogels
7. 7
with migration.”
Is dominance among a few industry giants a good thing for cloud
computing? What are the implications for the rest?
“We always thought that there would multiple companies pursuing this space. It’s too good of
a value proposition for developers and businesses for there not to be. We have a longstanding
policy of not talking about other companies,but generally,it’s important to note that we’ve been
at this for two years with a significant team and we’ve been heads down focused on providing
outstanding service to our customers. In fact, we think we are much better at this today than
we were three years ago. We’ve learned a lot about what it takes to operate these services,
what kind of features and enhancements customers want, and how these services need to fit
together to create an integrated platform. Our customers tell us that they want the flexibility
to build their applications the way they want to—they don’t want to be locked into a particular
programming model, language, or operating system—so flexibility with building applications
on our Infrastructure Services is an area where we are going to continue to focus.”
8. 8
Kevin Haar
CEO, Appistry
From your perch, what is the meaning of “Cloud Services”, and
what are the most important benefits emerging from cloud
services that will transform the economics of IT?
““Cloud Services”is a heavily overloaded term.Current cloud computing offerings can be roughly
divided into three “layers”—infrastructure,platform and application—and the transformational
impact on IT is a little different at each layer.
Cloud services at the application layer are probably the most familiar, and correspond to the
software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications offered by many companies.SaaS adoption is growing
very rapidly,particularly among small and medium sized businesses (SMBs),as they are replacing
traditional office automation functionality such as mail, and business applications, such as
customer relationship management (CRM), with applications delivered via the Internet and
compute clouds.The economic impact of SaaS can be significant,because it allows organizations
to outsource an entire set of functionality, but therein lies the rub: in many cases you must be
willing to make sacrifices in your business processes to conform to those supported by your
application provider.
On the other end of the spectrum are infrastructure-oriented cloud services. These give
organizations the ability to provision and manage virtual infrastructure via Web interfaces and
APIs. The advantage of infrastructure-oriented cloud services is in their flexibility. You can
create new virtual machines on the fly, and dispose of them when they’re no longer needed. If
your application runs on a single Linux server in the data center, it will likely run without too
much change on a single Linux virtual machine running in the cloud.
Infrastructure alone, however, cannot fully deliver on the promise of cloud computing. Just
because your application runs on a single virtual server in the clouds, does not mean it can
scale out across many. More importantly, because the majority of your costs are development,
management and software-related operational costs and not the hardware-related costs attacked
by cloud infrastructure,an infrastructure-centric approach misses out on the truly transformative
economic impact possible through cloud computing.
Platform-oriented cloud services provide the best of both of these worlds, and then some.
Platform cloud services abstract the underlying infrastructure and allow organizations to focus
on the applications they want to deploy to the cloud,which is,in the end,where the true business
value comes from. Applications delivered via cloud platforms can readily scale to meet demand
at any given time. And because cloud platforms virtualize the applications and manage the
underlying software stack, organizations are able to dramatically drive down the development,
deployment and operational and management costs which make up the lion’s share of the real-
world costs faced by IT organizations.”
How will concerns around data governance, availability and
security impact the adoption of cloud services?
“In the enterprise these are real issues, but they aren’t binary yes or no drivers. In most cases,
www.appistry.com
Appistry simplifies cloud
computing for the enterprise,
opening the door to a
more agile and scalable IT
environment. Appistry’s
cloud application platform
addresses the complex
challenges of building,
deploying and managing a
wide variety of applications
and services for both
public and private clouds.
Appistry’s products are
designed specifically for cloud
environments, delivering
transparent scalability,
application-level fault
tolerance, and automated
management to new and
existing applications.
Appistry customers include
FedEx, GeoEye, Lockheed
Martin and Northrop
Grumman.
“Cloud is as big as the
move to the Internet
was, or bigger.”
-Kevin Haar
9. 9
solutions to these issues are not a pre-condition to progress. We’ve seen a dramatic shift to
organizations building private clouds. While the big broad vision of cloud computing is for
everything to be delivered via utility-like services, the fact is enterprises have real constraints
around things like privacy and security. We think this will continue to drive the creation and
adoption of private cloud environments as enterprises use private cloud implementations as a
more thoughtful and controlled path to the full vision of cloud computing.”
Howarecloudservicestestingtraditionalthinkingaround“control
of data” and “guarantees of safety”; to include ownership, access
and rights that supersede failure of the provider? Ultimately, who
should be accountable; vendor or service provider?
“Organizations are trying to take advantage of cloud platforms-as-a-service as a way to get
all the benefits of cloud computing but accelerate the delivery of new applications. The most
common way of delivering PaaS is through an integrated bundle of platform and hosting.Lock-
in, particularly when it comes to data and the ability to migrate data from one environment
to another, is a legitimate concern and limitation of a PaaS environment. Cloud application
platforms, like Appistry’s, allow organizations to get all of the advantages of PaaS –on their
own infrastructure or public infrastructure provider that they choose. What’s more, they can
use traditional databases and data management systems that allow them to easily get their data
to and from the cloud.
When it comes to security, many cloud computing providers can provide as good as, or better
security than what some enterprise are able to provide on their own.But there are much broader
issues than security.Cloud computing still presents some limitations when it comes to guarantees
of privacy and access by third-party entities. We think this limitation is further validation of
the private cloud market. Enterprises can mitigate their risk while still reaping the benefit of a
cloud environment.”
WhataretheSMEbenefitsthatwouldworkwellinadepartmental
setting? What are the key adoption barriers?
“SMEs are primarily focused on the application layer of the cloud computing stack. SaaS
offerings give SMEs easy access to applications that don’t require teams of IT support.Therefore,
they benefit from cloud computing in several major ways.
First and most importantly,SMEs turning to cloud applications can avoid owning and managing
infrastructure for a broader assortment of applications.In addition,cloud computing is all about
pay for what you use and substantially lowers the pain and cost of adopting new technologies.
There are clearly some adoption barriers, but in our experience, we have seen the benefits far
outweigh the barriers especially when compared with building and managing and maintaining
infrastructure as a small to medium size enterprise.
We also see a trend emerging for this market: Cloud computing will eventually make it easier
for SMEs to build custom capabilities that enhance their ability to compete. Cloud computing
offers a path to a much simpler world of software enablement where more “software services”
will be available in the cloud and SMEs will have the ability to build or leverage these services in
a much more comprehensive and unique way.Salesforce.com is a great example of this,allowing
10. 10
SMEs to quickly develop simple applications using just a Web browser.”
Is dominance among a few industry giants a good thing for cloud
computing? What are the implications for the rest?
“Cloud computing is just getting started and although there have been a number of major
players that have jumped into the fray, the reality is that we’re still in the early stages of the
evolution of this market.
Cloud is as big as the move to the Internet was, or bigger. Assuming that these large companies
will dominate is akin to the assumption that Microsoft or IBM would control all things Internet.
They have certainly benefited from the transition, but in the process new industry leaders have
been created, including Google.
The possibilities around cloud computing are more likely to be pioneered by start-ups and new
entrants to the market.This is especially true since cloud marks the first major disruption in the
approach to application offerings, software infrastructure and hardware infrastructure in a very
long time.
The industry is experiencing a sea change in how it thinks of computing. At the end of the day,
cloud computing represents tremendous opportunity for new entrants.”
11. 11
Ken Comée
CEO, Cast Iron Systems
What is the meaning of Cloud Services from your perch, and
what are the most important benefits emerging from Cloud
Services that will transform the economics of IT ?
“The promise of cloud computing is becoming less and less‘nebulous’as the technology continues
to address the two main challenges facing IT today -- cutting costs and supporting innovation,
issues that are often at odds with each other.
While there is no doubt that there is a lot of hype around the benefits of cloud computing,in this
case,you can believe the hype.Why? Because the technology delivers what every IT department
needs -- increased capacity and capabilities, without investing in new infrastructure, personnel,
or software.
Still, every organization must carefully determine which services should be in the cloud. For
example, while the US Defense Department may benefit from having its recruiting enrollment
system in the cloud, they wouldn’t want their missile guidance system in the cloud.
While cloud computing may be appropriate for some components, it’s important to preserve
the underlying end-to-end business processes. As a result, the benefits will not be achieved
through stand-alone solutions, but will only be realized through seamless integration and
interoperability.”
How will concerns around data governance, availability, and
security impact the adoption of Cloud Services?
“Governance, availability, and security combine to determine whether a service should be in
the cloud or not. Requirements differ for each organization and for each type of data, and will
impact adoption until the requisite technologies and solutions are mature enough to push into
the cloud.
With a 911 system, for example, availability is all-important; governance and security are not.
An SEC filing system, on the other hand, has extreme governance and security requirements,
while availability is not as critical. As a result, Fortune 500 companies -- who must abide by
strict governance and security requirements -- may take longer to adopt cloud services.To move
into the mainstream, vendors and service providers have to tackle these issues now.
We’ve made a lot of progress in security; many people feel comfortable shopping online,banking
online, or, to a lesser extent, accessing personal medical records online. Governance however, is
another issue altogether. Internationally, Fortune 500 companies may want to put a service in
the cloud, but in some cases, won’t be allowed to do so. Europe, for example, has stringent laws
regarding the movement of employee data across borders. These concerns will cause certain
solutions for certain organizations to remain on premise until the services mature. Once these
www.castiron.com
Founded in 2001, Cast
Iron Systems is The #1 SaaS
Integration Company™.
The company provides
the simplest and most
widely used integration
solutions for integrating
SaaS applications with the
enterprise in days. The Cast
Iron solution also enables
SaaS providers to offer
rapid integration to their
customers.
“Consolidation is
essential for cloud
services to become
truly mainstream.”
-Ken Comée
12. 12
issues are resolved, then the sky is the limit (so to speak).
Still, there are some services that will forever remain on premise. Again, a case in point is
nuclear power plant monitoring -- while it’s technically possible to put it in the cloud, should
we? At least for the foreseeable future, we can acknowledge that some services, for security
reasons, won’t go in the cloud. In other words, we shouldn’t let the enthusiasm surrounding
cloud services obscure our better judgment.”
HowareCloudServicestestingtraditionalthinkingaroundcontrol
of data and guarantees of safety to include ownership, access,
and rights that supersede failure of the provider? Ultimately,
who should be accountable: vendor or service provider?
“Accountability is a loaded gun. The current state of the industry is that no one is responsible.
Neither vendor nor service provider wants to assume responsibility. In fact, there’s no track
record on which to base Service Level Agreements, so no one offers a service agreement with a
100% guarantee.The most trusted and reliable of services can and do fail from time to time.
Although currently service providers offer no guarantee, they should. Accountability has to
lie with the service provider because their services utilize multiple vendors, applications, and
technologies. But they’re not going to accept this responsibility until there’s maturity, and then
they’ll charge a premium for it.This is a real-world problem that we see every day.It is one of the
reasons customers want flexibility. They realize that there are services that can be in the cloud
and others that should remain on premise, but they need the interaction between them to be
seamless, so again integration is critical.
The bottom line is that with the risk and the onus on the customer, it is the responsibility of
every organization to determine which services belong in the cloud and which do not. So for
now, my advice is: when in doubt, don’t put it in the cloud.”
WhataretheSMEbenefitsthatwouldworkwellinadepartmental
setting? What are the key adoption barriers?
“The benefits of cloud services -- fast deployment, lower costs, less IT burden -- are the same
for departments in the enterprise as for SMEs, but the barriers are different. What works well
for small companies often takes a little longer for big companies due to legal and regulatory
constraints. Cloud services can be beneficial, but large organizations can’t always immediately
take advantage of the benefits due to governance and security requirements. A Fortune 500
company is not going to just switch on a cloud service for 50,000 people overnight, rather
department after department will start using these services, which is how we’re seeing them
being adopted.”
13. 13
Is dominance among a few industry giants a good thing for
cloud computing? What are the implications for the rest?
“Consolidation is essential for cloud services to become truly mainstream.This happens in every
new market. Innovators invent, develop and prove that there’s a market -- that there’s money
to be made -- and then the industry giants complete it by building on the groundwork of the
innovators.
Consolidation is good if it starts to resolve the issues that will otherwise delay the adoption
of full-on cloud-based services. The big players put the resources into standards, security and
governance -- areas in which the strengths of these companies have already been demonstrated.
For example, storage moved to the cloud very quickly. As larger players entered this arena, they
brought with them the expertise to resolve the security concerns. Who wins at the end of the
day? The customer wins.
Without the power and influence of industry leaders, you can’t change the economic landscape
of IT-- especially in a fragmented market.And while some start-ups will be acquired,innovators
will continue to push the boundaries. Other start-ups will become industry giants themselves
like Amazon and Salesforce.com, while established giants like Cisco will reinvent themselves to
continue to lead the market.
So while the concept of cloud services has already captured the industry’s imagination,
consolidation will help the technology achieve mainstream adoption.”
14. 14
David Bernstein
VP/GM, Office of the CTO, Cloud Computing Project, Cisco
From your perch, what is the meaning of “Cloud Services”, and
what are the most important benefits emerging from cloud ser-
vices that will transform the economics of IT?
“Cloud Computing, as we prefer to call it, is nothing short of the emergence of a new kind of
computer. We’ve seen the development of the personal computer change drastically over time,
and it continues to change, into a mobility-capable device somewhere between a smart phone
and a laptop. We’ve seen the server mature into a pretty standard, affordable, shareable unit of
computing and storage. Now we see the emergence of the Cloud Computer.
The Cloud Computer can look like lots of servers, if that’s what you want to see. This is Phase
1 of Cloud Computing. The economic impact of this capability is calculable by considering
the trade-off of CAPEX for OPEX in the usage model, and the efficiencies that density and
automation give you in energy, resource, and space utilization. Those are quite transformative
and will power and solidify the adoption of the Cloud Computing model. We see this as a
linear continuation of the increasing cost effectiveness of computing infrastructure driven by
the various laws of improvement rates in networks, computing, and storage. This is huge but it
is not new.
But look harder, the way Microsoft, Google, Amazon and some of the social sites are, and you’ll
see that the Cloud Computer runs a different kind of software. It supports a paradigm which
has more communication,more data,more connections,more media,more insight,more people
and more things than server software can ever have.This software does not run on a server.That
is Phase 2 of Cloud Computing. This new generation of software, enabled by Phase 2 Cloud
Computing, will have as much an impact on IT as client/server did or as the Internet / Intranet
did. Employees will be able to search in their company as fast as they can search on the Internet
today. Globalization will be enabled much more easily as the IT infrastructure is naturally
distributed. Communications will be streaming media enabled and the Cloud will intermediate
mix and match endpoint capability amongst vast numbers of people.The next generation of the
workforce, who grew up never knowing life before the Internet, will use Cloud Computing to
power their norms of multitasking, constant interruption, expectations of immediacy, velocity
over precision, and constant connectivity expectations. Cloud Computing will serve the next
generation of IT customers.
By then, IT will no longer have to create specialized physical or low level system software to
support a diversity of applications; applications will run on the standardized Cloud Computer
and IT will concentrate more on strategy and results.This shift will not take the pressure off of
IT, however. Scale and velocity constraints are largely lifted by Cloud Computing; now speed
of development and execution will finally be directly tied to competitive success. The IT job
will be to work with the business units to leverage this new computing model, at a logical and
results level, not at an infrastructure and provisioning level. IT will change from an allocations
based funding model to a partner in the business.That will indeed be a huge transformation in
the economics of IT.”
www.cisco.com
About Cisco Systems: Cisco,
(NASDAQ: CSCO), is
the worldwide leader
in networking that
transforms how people
connect, communicate and
collaborate.
“Cloud Computing,
as we like to call it, is
nothing short of the
emergence of a new
kind of computer.”
-David Bernstein
15. 15
How will concerns around data governance, availability and
security impact the adoption of cloud services?
“In software which runs on servers in the past two generations of Client / Server and Web style,
assumptions were made about governance, availability, and security. When you move these into
the Phase 1 of Cloud Computing, you break these assumptions. Data is no longer where you
thoughtitwouldbe. Processeswhichweretransparentmaynowbecompletelyopaque.Resilience
and Continuous Operation strategies don’t translate to the new infrastructure, certainly not at
the same cost model. So these concerns are real. If one goes into this with eyes open, many of
these issues can be addressed. Cloud Computing vendors offering network-based encryption
for all data at rest are emerging, as are ones who will use network-based domain isolation while
still in the shared infrastructure. Secure connections from the enterprise to the Cloud can be
implemented. Cloud-appropriate Continuous Operation technologies can be substituted for
the server-based ones. And transparency, auditing, and logging facilities are becoming available
either in selected Cloud Computing platforms or as third party add-ons.
These challenges are analogous to the challenges faced by application developers when asked to
switch from thick client,highly interactive software based on dedicated servers,to a web browser
and shared web server platforms.Those who tried to move the same look and feel right into the
browser failed.The network, transactional, and session model of an Internet web application is
different from the LAN Database model. Software had to change for this platform shift. The
Cloud Computing Model is no different.
In the Cloud, one adopts an availability strategy which assumes regular failures in the Cloud.
Data is automatically replicated, not only to multiple systems but to multiple actual locations.
Aggregate network utilization is assumed to vary widely and so both Cloud-level and Application
level congestion management is utilized. Applications are designed to ask the Cloud to shift
up and shift down various resources and capabilities to account for variability. For example,
in a multi-way video collaboration application, different endpoints will shift up and down in
video resolution based on the availability of resources in the Cloud and the Network. In Cloud
Computing, deployment and provisioning is the job of the Cloud, not the system administrator.
And things change mid-stream. Therefore, the Cloud infrastructure, from the Network to
Storage to Computing, to the System Software, will provide instrumentation and transparency
which was never needed before, such as the ability to ask the question, “where are all the parts
of this application running?”.
The analogous concern used to be, how can my Web application scale beyond how I’ve gotten
my huge database application to get to. Well, load balancers and application server based Web
architecture more than addressed application scalability, well beyond the database architecture.
The mature infrastructure and the software written for Phase 2 of Cloud Computing will have
addressed data governance, availability and security concerns beyond what we have been able to
accomplish today.”
Howarecloudservicestestingtraditionalthinkingaround“control
of data” and “guarantees of safety”; to include ownership, access
and rights that supersede failure of the provider? Ultimately, who
should be accountable; vendor or service provider?
“In our view,there is little new here. Consumers of public network services - like,everyone who
16. 16
uses networks - knows that contractual guarantees are no substitute for contingency planning.
Utilities of any kind have faced this issue for years. They provide as much transparency as they
can, and the rest is statistical. Have a mission critical application which can’t stand a single
power failure? Get an emergency power solution. Have a situation where you can’t tolerate
Cloud downtime? Architect your application to spread across multiple clouds. Need to know
exactly where your data is? Hire a Cloud provider who will tell you. We believe that smart
system design and vendor selection are key to not having surprises down the road.Any customer
of any IT service who expects to take no responsibility for the overall integrity of their situation
is not thinking clearly. On the other hand, bast practice in network and datacenter construction
already includes these concepts.Clouds are utilities,you just have to think of them that way,and
be a “smart user”.”
What are the SME benefits that would work well in a depart-
mental setting? What are the key adoption barriers?
“Cloud Computing is a terrific enabler for the small and medium business. We’ve all seen what
Software as a Service has done for the SME segment. Cloud Computing is the ultimate SaaS
platform, and we expect an explosion in SaaS innovation as Clouds become more and more
capable and pervasive.
As clouds begin to include new capabilities,SME will be the first benefactor of SaaS applications
using these new features. For example, lets envision what will happen when Cloud Computing
supports streaming media capabilities, including many of the varieties of technologies for voice
and video such as multipoint conferencing, network based line speed transcoding, location
based services, and so on. SME companies who needed to buy special infrastructure for media
based applications such as digital signage, video surveillance, video conferencing, and so on, will
now be able to take advantage of SaaS applications and services, who have implemented those
capabilities on Clouds.
Additionally,Infrastructure as a Service and Platform as a Service,or IaaS and PaaS respectively,
will become available to the SME company. These are cloud based “raw” computing/storage,
and programming/mashup services, that would normally be too complicated or too expensive
for the SME company to use. Cloud access to these will allow SME companies essentially
limitless computing, storage, databases, application server, mashup tools, and other “horizontal”
capabilities which they might never have been able to utilize if they needed to purchase and
operate their own datacenters.
These translate right into the department of the large enterprise. While we don’t envision an
enterprise installing their own Cloud-based video surveillance system, we see them using video
and voice based applications in a department setting, just the way that sales and marketing
automation solutions like CRM, aimed at SME companies, were used just as often by
departments in large enterprises.
For software to really proliferate at the SME segment, standard Cloud platforms have to exist.
Just like SQL sparked the fire for the departmental and SME database applications, standard
ways to write applications for Phase 2 of Cloud Computing which run on many vendors’Clouds
will need to emerge.”
17. 17
Is dominance among a few industry giants a good thing for cloud
computing? What are the implications for the rest?
“The dynamics of the Cloud Computing vendor landscape will be no different than the
previous phases of computing. Building and running planet size infrastructures is an expensive
proposition which only the larger IT companies can afford to venture into. Likewise building
the equipment and software out of which you build a cloud requires significant R&D expertise
and expense. This is no different from the investment level required to build a microprocessor
for example.There is, and there will always be, plenty of room for innovation all around, on top
of, and underneath what these vendors produce.
Let us also realize that Cloud Computing is brand new. There are so many fundamental
innovations still to be pioneered to make Phase 1 of Cloud Computing a pervasive,interoperable
reality.Many of the key elements to build a Phase 2 of Cloud Computing,have yet to emerge on
the open market. Add to this the wide open opportunity around the programming model, and
the stage has been set for innovation in large companies and in start-ups alike.
Large and small companies have been scrambling to enter this market, in a way reminiscent of
the early days of similar paradigm shifts such as IP networking, departmental servers, and Web
application servers and programming languages. Companies large and small, who understand
that this is a 4th wave of computing infrastructure, and not just a new kind of server, will do
well.The key we have realized is that Cloud Computing amplifies the need to intimately relate
networking, storage, computing, and software into a holistic, virtualized, automated system.
The existing model of applications infrastructure allows the model of a physically separate
view of these parts, which then runs on physically separated infrastructure. In Phase 1 of
Cloud Computing, one can still support the application model of a physically separate view
of these parts, but the actual physical infrastructure is hidden beneath a layer of automation
and virtualization, This requires complete flexibility amongst the parts. In Phase 2 of Cloud
Computing, the application model of a physically separate view of these parts disappears, the
software is completely abstracted from the physical. Our company for example, are now making
infrastructure, which can be used in this way, that is completely virtualized, with intimately
related networking, storage, computing, and software. This kind of realization, and this kind of
technology investment,is exactly what we think customers will need.It will enable cost effective
construction of Cloud Computing, further accelerating this trend.
It’s a great time to be a part of this!”
18. 18
Simon Crosby
CTO, Virtualization, Citrix
From your perch, what is the meaning of “Cloud Services”, and
what are the most important benefits emerging from cloud
services that will transform the economics of IT?
“The IT industry is maturing. Today every company has an IT staff who keep apps, servers,
desktops running. In the early days of autos,every company probably had a bunch of mechanics
for their fleet. Now it’s outsourced. In IT we’re beginning to see the same trend: Service
providers with specialized knowledge of IT needs (perhaps just IT guys with a passion for
business) figure out how to offer IT functions as services, delivered to enterprise customers
over the Internet. Scale, automation and a built-in need to surface metrics to allow costs and
therefore prices to be calculated, provide all the incentives to drive toward a more efficient,
highly replicated, massively scaled architecture. It’s more agile, a lot cheaper. It has a long way
to go. But it’s an IT infrastructure cloud. Soon, enterprise CIOs begin to demand “cloud like”
capabilities and price points from their vendors – who respond with consumption based pricing,
new resource scheduling and consumption models, cheaper ways to deliver key capabilities such
as business continuity, DR and desktop delivery. Suddenly IT finds itself exposing internally
visible, automated “self service” management interfaces for lights-out IT resources, and realizes
it has built an internal cloud…”
How will concerns around data governance, availability and
security impact the adoption of cloud services?
“Very significantly. Having brokered numerous conversations between federal would-be cloud
users and major 3rd party clouds, I have witnessed first hand the key reasons why clouds will
remain appropriate for non mission-critical workloads and workloads that are not subject to
security or regulatory oversight. The Web/App server tier, but not the mission critical data.
There is no enterprise that I am aware of that has decided to trust its mission critical information
to a major third party cloud. There are, however numerous enterprises that have adopted the
co-lo model where the provider offers “servers, pipes, cages and storage”, and under the auspices
of renting a “whole machine in a cage”the enterprise takes the big next step to trust the provider
with its mission critical data. I am confident that in 2009, the “Cloud as DR provider” will
emerge as a very economically attractive option for mid market customers. Also we will see
larger adoption of 3rd party clouds for stateless workloads.”
Howarecloudservicestestingtraditionalthinkingaround“control
of data” and “guarantees of safety”; to include ownership, access
and rights that supersede failure of the provider? Ultimately, who
should be accountable; vendor or service provider?
“Accountability is a murky area – the more so when money paid by a customer to a service
provider is involved. I believe that by exposing the raw units of provisioning (VM CPU/memory
per hour,storage per GB,concurrent users perhaps),the provider clearly defines the boundary of
www.citrix.com
Citrix Systems, Inc. is the
global leader and the most
trusted name in application
delivery infrastructure.
More than 215,000
organizations worldwide
rely on Citrix to deliver
any application to users
anywhere with the best
performance, highest security
and lowest cost.
“Clouds are not
interoperable today
and customers are
scared of walking
down a one way
street.”
-Simon Crosby
19. 19
their intentional management of and responsibility for the app/user boundary and IT admin/
offered resource management. If the provider sells VM hours, and an attack on an application
specific workload in a VM occurs, how can the provider be held responsible? This is by no
means clear though, in the legal world, and I would caution any user to very clearly identify
responsibility and onus in their cloud based world. My recommendation is to start simply: You
operate your own “cloud” today: what requirements do you place on your IT team who deliver
resources to lines of business? What additional assurances do you need in the form of SLAs for
your workloads if they are moved beyond enterprise boundaries? You’ll pretty quickly realize
which workloads are mission critical or subject to regulatory or other controls. Those are not
candidates for today’s public clouds. You can however achieve many of the advantages of cloud
costs and scale,by adopting a different way of thinking about how to provision resources,how to
interconnect data centers, and how to service users. This way is essentially to mirror the highly
automated, scaled out architectures of the cloud providers with built in metrics that permit
accountability by user/line of business, per resource. This alone turns IT into a responsive,
metered,automated and service-oriented function – a key step in which IT departments deliver
internal cloud services rather than 3rd party service providers.”
What are the SME (i.e. Small, Medium, Enterprise) benefits that
would work well in a departmental setting? What are the key
adoption barriers?
“The adoption barriers in the near term are all safety, manageability and control related. In
today’s climate, can you be sure that your cloud vendor will still be running in a year? Even if
you adopt cloud services, how can you be protected from consolidation in the business arena,
and are you vulnerable to a fast-changing technology faddism that repeatedly surfaces in tech?
The mid market stands to benefit significantly from clouds because it is typically stretched from
an IT admin expertise perspective, and SMEs typically have grown their businesses somewhat
haphazardly without attention to developing a highly automated and efficient IT infrastructure.
Key functions such as disaster recovery, automated backup and CDP will be the initial hits,
followed by “cloud bursting” in which stateless web/app front ends and test/dev server needs
move to rented service provider based resources. A key segment of “cloud” provider in this
category will be the Managed Service Provider (MSP) who today offers trusted IT consultancy/
support/resale services to SME. These folks will make clouds ultimately viable by offering
hosted enterprise IT as a service “just around the corner, and run by I guy I trust”.”
Is dominance among a few industry giants a good thing for cloud
computing? What are the implications for the rest?
“Dominance is a state of public perception. Does Amazon EC2 make any money, or is it
simply paying some of the bills for servers that aren’t currently being used by Amazon’s primary
online sales business? Probably it is making money, but not a lot. Moreover, the cloud era is
just beginning and the concept of an industry giant is somewhat misleading. Ultimately, the
adoption of a service-based, 3rd party IT resource will succeed only on the basis of sufficient
customer trust (requiring security,accountability etc on the part of the provider) and on the value-
added services offered. In the initial phase, a key value-add is the human interaction between
a customer and a reseller-turned-service-provider in the form of a MSP. Once customers are
happy with MSPs that they trust and who offer superb personalized service with the right
assurances, they may move to adopting impersonal entirely automated, pay –by-card services
20. 20
such as EC2. If they do, it will be based solely on customers’ perceived risk, the provider’s
perceived security/reliability and contractual commitments to that effect. However customers
will also be leery of becoming trapped by their cloud providers, and stuck with an inability to
move key apps/resources when needed. Clouds are not interoperable today and customers are
scared of walking down a one way street. Big brands (HP, Microsoft, IBM etc) may help,
and they may hinder. Ultimately customers will settle with a service provider that meets their
business objectives and specific needs. Starting small with key workloads, and leveraging the
public clouds only for non-mission critical, stateless web/app server and compute intensive
simulation applications.”
21. 21
John Keagy
CEO & Co-Founder GoGrid / ServePath LLC
From your perch, what is the meaning of “Cloud Services”, and
what are the most important benefits emerging from cloud
services that will transform the economics of IT?
“Cloud Computing is all manner of Internet infrastructure delivered by a service provider in the
Cloud. Another way of considering it, is that everything in the datacenter is now available from
the ‘cloudcenter’ with strong benefits in IT flexibility, cost and capabilities.
The economies enabled by cloudservices are fantastically compelling. As much a 95% of a typical
‘dedicated’ infrastructure sits unused. This means that a 20X improvement can be had in the
cost/value computing equation. Cloud Computing delivers on that and more. Service delivery
from the ‘Cloud’enables providers to profit from putting customers onto shared platforms while
at the same time passing great savings/value to the cloud customers. Other customer benefits
include ease of use, tighter security, greater reliability, lower risk, human support, and scaling
capacity when a success event drives demand surges.
In short, Cloud Computing is more profitable for the service provider, while delivering 20X
improvements in the economics of IT and accessibility of the latest technologies.”
How will concerns around data governance, availability and
security impact the adoption of cloud services?
“The ease of implementation coupled with on-demand pricing of Cloud Computing enables
enterprises to take baby steps in transitioning to the cloud. This makes adoption faster,easier and
lower risk than previous new waves of server technology and overcomes our natural tendency to
resist change and raise objections.
The concept of ‘shared datacenters’ is not new; it was previously pioneered by the likes of
EDS or IBM. Despite this, shared platforms may still sound risky; done right, they can
be built and administered with security, scaling reliability and capabilities that few individual
enterprises would have the resources and the skills to accomplish.The resources that the Cloud
Computing provider pools, enables more and better trained technicians for more hours with
better equipment, tools and backups.
We are confident that required compliance for financial and other ‘high risk’ applications will
soon be easier for the middle market to achieve ‘in the cloud’ than on their own. We are likely
to see mandates for enterprises to engage in Cloud Computing in order to be achieve best
practices, including best security.
Right now, some Cloud Computing providers are offering ‘hybrid’ solutions that enable
specialized secure databases in dedicated environments that cross-connect to a flexible cloud
environment.”
www.gogrid.com
GoGrid offers Windows
and Linux cloud servers
preconfigured with familiar
images. You can deploy a full
LAMP stack or Microsoft
SQL Server in minutes. You
can deploy a full LAMP
stack in minutes (or see if
PHP really does run faster
on Windows). You can
create and manage complex
server networks in just
minutes - f5 load balancing
included free. Run complex
databases on custom servers
connected to efficient cloud
servers. Simplify with
Cloud Storage. And do all
of this from your browser.
GoGrid was the winner
of LinuxWorld 2008 Best
Of Show and is the official
Cloud Hosting Provider of
Windows Server 2008 and
SQL Server.
“We estimate that less
than 1% of the Internet
infrastructure that
is a candidate to be
put into the ‘cloud’ is
actually in the cloud.”
-John Keagy
22. 22
Howarecloudservicestestingtraditionalthinkingaround“control
of data” and “guarantees of safety”; to include ownership, access
and rights that supersede failure of the provider? Ultimately, who
should be accountable; vendor or service provider?
“By definition, tradition and common sense, service providers do not and should not own the
data on the servers delivered to their customers. In fact,right now most service providers deliver
greater data center robustness than most companies can achieve on their own. Furthermore,
service providers enable their customers to architect significant geographical diversity into their
data repositories and backups.”
WhataretheSMEbenefitsthatwouldworkwellinadepartmental
setting? What are the key adoption barriers?
“Department size groups that need server networks frequently encounter procurement delays
and other overhead when working through their IT departments. Cloud Computing is available
‘and disposable’ instantly in multiple standard and optimized configurations, and with good
capability for scaling ‘up and down’. Cloud Computing is easy to explore. Most vendors offer
self-help systems and some give away free trial periods. Cloud Computing is right now perfect
for development, testing, temporary needs and public facing applications.”
Is dominance among a few industry giants a good thing for cloud
computing? What are the implications for the rest?
“Yes, we need strong, highly credible giants to lead the industry. We estimate that less than 1%
of the Internet infrastructure that is a candidate to be put into the ‘cloud’is actually in the cloud.
There is plenty of business to be had by all and the most important thing for the growth of
Cloud Computing is credibility. That being said,we will see the smaller players be more nimble,
innovative and perhaps niche oriented than the giants. As yet we do not believe that there are
dominant incumbents in Cloud Computing. Some of the giants are close, but they exemplify
closed standards in cloud computing architecture.To build and then to maintain leadership, all
cloud service providers will need to embrace open standards.”
23. 23
www.ibm.com
IBM has been a leader
in the evolution of cloud-
delivered technology through
numerous hardware,
software and services
offerings. Thirteen cloud
computing centers have
been established worldwide,
representing collaborations
with business, government,
academia, and other leading
vendors. In addition,
IBM is investing in more
than 200 full time cloud
researchers as well as
building new data centers
leveraging cloud and energy
efficient technologies.
“Cloud computing
does not need to
be an all-or-nothing
decision.”
-Alan Ganek
Alan Ganek
CTO Software Group, IBM
From your perch, what is the meaning of “Cloud Services”, and
what are the most important benefits emerging from cloud
services that will transform the economics of IT?
““Cloud Services” relate to a broad range of computing services delivered simplified way,
providing massive scalability and differentiated quality of service to foster rapid innovation and
decision making. Cloud services may range from elemental or transactional services to more
elaborate services involving human interaction.Services must be flexible,separating the concerns
between those who use the services and those who provide them,while supporting optimization
strategies to achieve economies of scale. Typically, such services are thought to fall into three
main categories: infrastructure,platform,and software,“as a service.” Infrastructure as a service
relates to providing the basic elements of computing, such as servers, storage, networking,
and operating systems, enabling users to construct computing environments without building
the infrastructure themselves. Platform services add to the infrastructure a richer software
environment with a variety of built-in capabilities and tools such as database, transaction
management, and development tools. Software as a service provides applications and business
processes, such as customer relationship management or enterprise resource management.
Cloud computing results from the trend to industrialize the delivery of IT services with far more
repeatable and reusable elements. It builds upon Service Oriented Architecture, Virtualization,
and Standardization, and requires a dynamic infrastructure with rich service management to
successfully deliver upon its promise.
The benefits of Cloud Services and Cloud Computing environments are many, but are rooted in
flexibility, scale, reduced time to value, and variable costs that match business needs dynamically
instead of via fixed capital and operational expenditures. In a world where almost anyone and
anything can connect to the internet, the exponential increase in the volume of information and
connected devices creates a dilemma: IT complexity increases as does the demand for simplicity.
Organizations are facing accelerating business change,global and domestic competitive pressure,
and social responsibility demands, requiring a reduced IT barrier to innovation. The underlying
technologies associated with cloud computing are part of an innovative computing approach
focusing on the creation of a more dynamic enterprise, as applications and the services they
support are no longer locked to a fixed, underlying infrastructure and can adjust quickly to
change. Cloud computing can have a huge impact on a company’s financial performance. It
can radically alter how companies do business, enabling them to target new markets, streamline
their supply chain,scale their services on demand and dramatically lower total cost of ownership
(TCO).Being able to make transformational advances like these,rapidly and before competitors
do, can lead to increased market share and higher margins, especially as development budgets
are squeezed.This represents a more cost-efficient model for provisioning processes,applications
and services while making IT management simpler and increasing business responsiveness. In
a cost-benefit analysis, a properly implemented and used cloud computing model will drive
lower cost-of-ownership, responsive delivery of services, and higher service quality. Cloud
computing can enable rapid business innovation by delivering easy-to-use computing services
to users “on demand,”regardless of their location or the type of device they are using.The cloud-
based service can be “public,” “private”, or combination of the two, sometimes referred to as a
“hybrid cloud”. Such flexibility is essential, especially in an economic downturn. Public clouds,
for example will provide subscribing companies with access to enormous scale via externally
supported infrastructures that are highly virtualized, automated and service oriented. And they
24. 24
do without necessitating an additional capital investment. Private clouds operate similarly but
internally, enabling companies to leverage the scale inherent in their existing hardware, while
dramatically improving the way resources are utilized. Private cloud adoption will be the first
step for many organizations.Though driven by the short term need of data center consolidation
and efficiency, many IT managers will be soon realize that private clouds offer an attractive
approach for meeting long term business and regulatory requirements including audit, business
process controls and security with less cost and with far more flexibility than traditional IT
infrastructure.
By offering rapid, real-time access to vast computing power, storage and applications, both
cloud architectures make it easier for companies to add new services and tweak or change their
entire business model in response to evolving customer priorities and market challenges. And
it’s these kinds of business modifications that differentiate companies from their competitors.”
How will concerns around data governance, availability and
security impact the adoption of cloud services?
“Security continues to be a major stumbling block for public cloud services and may slow,but not
thwart cloud adoption.The loss of data governance and privacy can put a company’s intellectual
capital at risk. Needless to say, cloud security is only as good as the cloud service provider’s
security controls and practices. These concerns will also push some of the early emphasis on
Cloud adoption to the private Cloud based service,which offers many of the benefits of a public
cloud computing environment. The difference is that in a private cloud-based service, data and
processes are managed within the organization without the restrictions of network bandwidth,
security exposures and legal requirements that using public cloud services across open, public
networks might entail. In addition, private cloud services can offer the provider and the user
greater control, improving security and resiliency as user access and the networks are restricted
and designated.
Still, companies will take a practical approach in dealing with these issues. After all, there’s no
reason to subject a company’s core processes to public clouds. Much can be gained using the
public cloud exclusively for non-core, backend processes, which don’t pose the same security
risks. Today, there is definitely a significant tradeoff between security and availability risks and
the benefits of public cloud. However, over time, cloud computing will make leading security
and availability technologies infinitely more accessible, especially for enterprises that already
struggle to justify them. Ultimately, companies will be able to access security products as a
service, at a scale commensurate with their needs and the magnitude of impending threats,
enabling smarter, enterprise-caliber risk management, but with less expense. Cloud computing
does not need to be an all-or-nothing decision. Not every service is appropriate for the cloud,
and some may never be. A hybrid approach allows companies to use cloud computing for less
critical, fringe services and their own data center for the heavy-duty core applications that
define the business.The point is that cloud is evolving as a viable IT delivery alternative,and the
enterprise data center is sure to evolve with it—a good thing, by most any standards.”
Howarecloudservicestestingtraditionalthinkingaround“control
of data” and “guarantees of safety”; to include ownership, access
and rights that supersede failure of the provider? Ultimately, who
should be accountable; vendor or service provider?
25. 25
“The most prevalent view in the US courts today is that data stored at a cloud computing service
provider should clearly remain the property in all legal senses of the company that creates and
manages that data, just as they would if they were managing that data inside their own firewall;
however, there have been some US court cases in which the court has issued a subpoena to the
service provider for data “owned” by a customer of a provider of cloud services. In these cases,
the assumption of the court has been that the services provider controls the data and therefore
has the right to release it. Clearly, companies all over the world will strenuously object to their
data being viewed as owned or controlled by anyone other than themselves.
Cloud service providers typically provide access agreements that specify who controls the data,
guarantee access and retention safety of the data within the cloud and state customer rights in
case of vendor failure; however these agreements limit their responsibility as relates to any failure,
including any financial responsibility or liability from the loss or the unauthorized release of
data. Many users are willing to accept that limitation either out of naiveté or because their data
is adequately encrypted or backed up elsewhere. This lack of guaranteed accountability at the
service provider level is encouraging third party solutions to help manage availability, control,
access and survivability of data.There will also be companies offering services to audit and“certify”
a cloud service provider’s environment as meeting certain levels of data governance,security and
resiliency. However, it will always remain the responsibility of the data owner to understand the
limitations of the cloud provider’s systems, design applications or data management strategies
in providing an appropriate level of protection, accessibility and resiliency.
Ultimately, the vendor -- the business using the cloud -- is responsible for understanding the
capabilities and limitations of their service provider and making sound business decisions to
protect their data. However, these customers will be become increasingly demanding of cloud
providers to commit to higher standards in service level agreements with respect to security,data
protection, governance, and availability.”
WhataretheSMEbenefitsthatwouldworkwellinadepartmental
setting? What are the key adoption barriers?
“For a small and medium enterprise company, public cloud services can shift much of the
IT startup expense for business launch or expansion from capital expenditure to operational
expenses, thus keeping a focus on paying only for the resources actually needed and actually
consumed. Further, the client of a service provider can avoid much of the cost and effort of
managing the hardware and infrastructure, reducing the need for on-staff experts. Finally, for
those SME’s that experience sudden and explosive growth, the cloud model allows dynamic
scaling, unconstrained by the companies ability to grow and build out IT capability quickly on
their own.
Small and medium enterprise companies will find that their adoption barriers for public cloud
services are not unlike those of their larger brethren; data security, guaranteed availability levels,
controlling configuration and management of services, controlling service latencies, compliance
and compliance reporting under national privacy laws or regulatory guidelines. However,
larger enterprise companies are more likely to employ experts who can evaluate the capabilities
and limitations of the cloud service provider and weigh those risks and benefits against the
expectations, regulations, internal policies and business goals of their company. The challenge
will be ensuring that the applications are carefully selected to provide the levels of capability and
availability required.This may take a lot more effort up front to find the right solution from the
right cloud service provider.”
26. 26
Is dominance among a few industry giants a good thing for cloud
computing? What are the implications for the rest?
“The cloud services market is likely to follow a tradition cycle in which well funded and early
innovators will achieve some limited dominance in the market, followed by the proliferation of
literally hundreds of smaller and niche players (start-ups),followed by an inevitable consolidation.
It is impossible to predict at this time how accelerated or drawn out this market cycle will
be, but initial dominance by the “industry giants” will not impede the adoption of cloud as a
service delivery model. In fact, because there are at least ten “industry giant” companies that
are well poised to take advantage of this new opportunity with different core competencies,
cloud services adoption should accelerate. There are already a number of cloud service solutions
spanning the infrastructure, operating platform, and application levels. For example, IBM’s
LotusLive software-as-a-service offering enables social networking and online collaboration
designed for an intuitive set of business services for working within or across organizational
boundaries. This can be part of a powerful menu of options for cloud adopters. Major
technology leaders committed to open standards will evolve key interface standards which will
bolster interoperability and leverage of a wide range of existing and emerging technologies.
As the market matures, hundreds of smaller innovators will undoubtedly find niche areas
in which direct experience in an industry vertical or business model will create competitive
differentiation in service design, pricing models and client responsiveness. They will also serve
smaller market segments with less generic needs and lower revenue potential. That has always
been the role of these firms as they enter the competitive landscape. They force the fine tuning
and focus of the marketplace and often define which business models make the most sense.
The incumbent’s continued success hinges on two key factors; maintaining thought leadership
in the evolution and application of the cloud service delivery model,and demonstrating a proven
ability to achieve measurable successful results in solving their customer’s business challenges
with Cloud technology.”
27. 27
John Connors
Partner, Ignition Partners
From your perch, what is the meaning of “Cloud Services”, and
what are the most important benefits emerging from cloud
services that will transform the economics of IT?
“I think of “Cloud Services” as the next generation of technology enabling “all” business to
automate their processes. The initial phase of business automation was through mainframe
technologies, the next phase client server and the most recent is web enablement. Large
businesses have participated in and benefited disproportionately from each generation up to
the Cloud generation. The Cloud will allow businesses of every size to realize the benefits of
automation delivered as a software service at costs once only the largest most well capitalized
companies could afford.”
How will concerns around data governance, availability and
security impact the adoption of cloud services?
“Initially these risk factors will slow the adoption. I believe over time companies will come to
understand that Cloud providers are actually better equipped and more capable of managing
security and availability as it will be a core competence defined as an SLA. If a Cloud provider
can’t deliver a secure and highly available service they will cease to exist over time. Is that
true of anyone’s internal IT group? Further mid size to small organizations generally can’t
fund redundant and highly secure environments that Cloud providers will provide as base
level services. Data governance will be more complicated and will evolve over time. Cloud will
force companies to improve their data schema and architecture similar to the ERP and Sales
Automation wave of the 1990’s.”
Howarecloudservicestestingtraditionalthinkingaround“control
of data” and “guarantees of safety”; to include ownership, access
and rights that supersede failure of the provider?
“Ultimately, who should be accountable; vendor or service provider? Cloud decisions are a
natural evolution of decisions already being made: do I in source or outsource? What are my
core competencies? I think IT is evolving to be analogous to supply chain management in the
production of physical goods. Virtualization is allowing Cloud to be delivered cost effectively.
The question will be do I run Cloud services inside the firewall or outside.”
WhataretheSMEbenefitsthatwouldworkwellinadepartmental
setting? What are the key adoption barriers?
“SME and departmental groups are big beneficiaries of Cloud – principally because Cloud will
enable and accelerate a host of software services delivered as SaaS directed at business decision
makers.Today those decision makers in SME have limited options due to the cost and complexity
www.ignitionpartners.com
Ignition Partners, is a
premier private investment
group with offices in
Bellevue, Washington and
Shanghai, China. The
investment group’s three
categories of funds - early
stage venture, growth
capital and China ventures
-brings together an
unparalleled combination
of domain focus, functional
expertise and global
operational experience.
“Cloud will allow
businesses of every
size to realize the
benefits of automation
delivered as a
software service.”
-John Connors
28. 28
of in house solutions, and departmental decision makers are prioritized against other
IT initiatives. Cloud will enable a wide variety of software services designed for specific
business information and processes that are relatively low cost on a monthly basis and
a low burden to internal IT. “
Is dominance among a few industry giants a good thing for
cloud computing? What are the implications for the rest?
“Only the largest well capitalized and sophisticated players in IT can deliver the
infrastructure services at scale. IBM, Google, Amazon, Cisco, EMC and Microsoft will
lead this infrastructure business. Startups will have enormous opportunity delivering
the applications and information services as well as pieces of the enabling infrastructure
technology. Imagine all of the client server/DOS, vertical applications of the world
moving to SaaS. Imagine SaaS BI. Then imagine SaaS supply chain and ERP . There
will be tremendous innovation and opportunity.”
29. 29
Bruce Cleveland
Partner, InterWest Partners
What is the meaning of “Cloud Services” from your perch, and
what are the most important benefits emerging from Cloud
Services that will transform the economics of IT?
“I generally define“cloud services”as virtual development,application,computational and storage
services available over the Internet that can be automatically and instantaneously provisioned
and released as application requirements dictate. We aren’t quite there yet in reality but the
vision is well set.
The concept of replacing traditional computing resources with cloud services is gaining traction
because for most companies their data centers and application software are not competitive
differentiators.Consequently,everydollarinvestedinrunningthesesystemsisadollarunavailable
to invest in differentiation. Just as the mainframe to minicomputer business proposition and
the proprietary OS to Unix business proposition were simple, so is the business proposition
of cloud services: dramatically reduce the cost of developing, provisioning and managing non-
differentiating applications.
Cloud services will primarily use a variable expense pricing model based upon use.This pricing
model has the potential to significantly disrupt the status quo of the incumbent global market
application software and infrastructure leaders.As a result,I suspect that in 10 years,maybe less,
we could see a different set of brand names leading the technology markets.”
How will concerns around data governance, availability and
security impact the adoption of “Cloud Services”?
“Today, the cloud services market is nascent and constrained due to its immaturity. There are
various offerings that range from simple compute and storage services to higher level services
such as application, development, and management services but no single provider offers a
comprehensive and complete suite of services.
Service Level Agreements providing uptime and security guarantees, disaster recovery services
and/or financial remuneration for failure to deliver vary widely.There are no industry or de facto
standards in place. Current “brand name” cloud service providers don’t offer the enterprise-
class support and service that medium to large companies demand. Start-up cloud service
providers are too small for enterprises to fully trust. These impediments are temporary though
as competition will rectify most, if not all, of these issues.”
How are “Cloud Services” testing traditional thinking around
“controlofdata”and“guaranteesofsafety”;toincludeownership,
accessandrightsthatsupersedefailureoftheprovider?Ultimately,
who should be accountable; vendor or service provider?
“These are interesting issues that must be dealt with by both end-users and some cloud services
www.interwest.com
Investing since 1979,
InterWest Partners is a
leading diversified venture
capital firm currently
investing InterWest X, a
$650 million fund. With
more than $2.8B in capital
under management, we take
a long-term collaborative
approach to venture
funding, providing early-
stage and ongoing capital,
management development
and access to a broad
network of resources.
“The cloud services
market is by its very
nature conducive to
start-ups.”
-Bruce Cleveland
30. 30
vendors themselves – those who are in turn customers of Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS)
providers.
Ultimately, the vendor who contracts with a customer must be held responsible for providing
the service they promised to deliver. This means that the vendor must secure a comprehensive
Service Level Agreement with their PaaS provider and end users must demand a Service Level
Agreement with their provider that meets and/or exceeds their needs.
Issues such as disaster recovery,hot standby,and overall application performance – not normally
under the purview of“business users”– need to be considered and engineered into the contractual
agreements.End-users need to be very careful and ask a lot of questions before fully committing
to a provider.
That said, failure of the provider isn’t the only risk.
PaaS providers who also sell their own applications may have a potential downstream conflict
of interest with a company whose application they host. If they see their hosting customer
succeeding, they may find themselves tempted to compete with them by launching their own
application and possibly making life difficult for the original (now competing) application
that they host. In that case, the PaaS provider would know everything about their customer’s
customers (who they are,usage rates,adoption rates,etc.) making them a formidable,if unethical,
competitor.
End-users risk getting caught in the middle.”
WhataretheSMEbenefitsthatwouldworkwellinadepartmental
setting? What are the key adoption barriers?
“Due to their initially constrained feature sets,SaaS applications have tended to get their foothold
insmall-andmedium-sizebusinesses.AsSaaSprovidersintroducemorerobustfeaturesintotheir
offerings they can migrate into larger enterprises and give rise to “departmental applications.”
This has already happened with Salesforce.com as they are now moving up market.
The key benefits to the SME market is that the SaaS business model can give them access to
powerful applications they can use to run their business without most of the capital expense or
IT investment typically required with traditional software.
Even in larger companies, departments such as marketing seldom have access to capital dollars
or IT resources. SaaS uses a subscription model – a variable expense – and does not require IT
resources. Therefore, the Marketing Automation market, which never materialized under the
traditional enterprise software model, is now emerging and growing rapidly.
The key adoption barriers are consequently no longer tied to the size of a company. Instead,
adoption barriers will primarily be tied to ease of use and business benefit placing the onus
upon application developers to develop and deliver simple to use yet sophisticated application
software.”
31. 31
Is dominance among a few industry giants a good thing for cloud
computing? What are the implications for the rest?
“The cloud services market is by its very nature conducive to start-ups.The cost of entry and the
technical barriers are relatively low – and should stay that way for a long time to come.
That said,consolidation is inevitable and will allow the best providers (whether of an application
or of a platform for others to build on) to provide the stability and security that customers –
especially larger customers – will require.
The ease with which customers can change vendors will allow new entrants the opportunity to
challenge the giants and attempt to become giants themselves. More frequently, however, lower
technical barriers will make it relatively easy for successful start-ups to integrate with existing
giants through partnerships or acquisition.
Either way, new entrants will continue to bring new ideas, innovation and competition to the
cloud services space, challenging giants there and in traditional software.”
32. 32
David Young
CEO, Joyent
From your perch, what is the meaning of “Cloud Services”, and
what are the most important benefits emerging from cloud
services that will transform the economics of IT?
““Cloud Services”are a mixture of compute,networking,storage,management,and web services
that allow customers to own and operate applications without regard to the underlying physical
infrastructure.Typically these “cloud services” are sold in an on-demand model which provides
the chief benefit for the economics of IT: not cost, but flexibility and therefore the incentive to
innovate without long-term contracts increase risk.
Another important consideration in defining the cloud is how much effort does the operator
of an application need to invest to maintain that application. If the operator does nothing, the
infrastructure scales up and down without any effort, then the application is running on a true
cloud. However, if the operator has network administrator using a third party piece of software
to manage the servers that she has leased from a “cloud provider” then she is still running
in a traditional hosting environment. Joyent is moving everyday, through acquisitions like
Reasonably Smart and the addition of Zeus’s application delivery controller, ZXTM, towards
the vision of an auto-scaling cloud.”
How will concerns around data governance, availability and
security impact the adoption of cloud services?
“It depends. For departmental applications these concerns will be less important than the
benefits of getting on-demand infrastructure at a low price and without contracts. For more
central enterprise applications, clouds such as Joyent do provide secure solutions for customers,
but this is more a benefit of Joyent’s architecture rather than a business goal of Joyent to
provide customers with special secure solutions. It is in Joyent’s best-interest to provide secure,
separable solutions for customers. Service providers such as Joyent have much more experience
in providing secure solutions to customers than the customers themselves.”
Howarecloudservicestestingtraditionalthinkingaround“control
of data” and “guarantees of safety”; to include ownership, access
and rights that supersede failure of the provider? Ultimately, who
should be accountable; vendor or service provider?
“Some cloud services provide traditional infrastructure but virtualized. In this case there is
no real test of “traditional thinking”. Other cloud services require a rewrite of the application
to take advantage of auto-scale capabilities of the cloud platform (e.g. Google App Engine,
Joyent Smart Platform). It is important in both cases that customers can reconstruct the cloud
of the service provider privately. The question is only relevant if a cloud provider won’t sell the
technologies required for a customer to create a private cloud. Joyent does this for customers
today. Most cloud providers don’t.”
www.joyent.com
Joyent is a Cloud Computing
vendor of ‘Infrastructure as
a Service’ (IaaS). Joyent’s
main product is a line of
virtualized servers called
Joyent Accelerators. Joyent’s
clients use collections of
Accelerators to power large-
scale web sites and web
applications. We make it
possible for our clients to
quickly move from an idea
to a web application with
millions of users – without
the pain of large capital
outlays and long-term
vendor contracts. Joyent
provides a more flexible and
cost-effective alternative to
buying and running your
own IT infrastructure,
while still providing all
the security, cost stability,
and enterprise-grade
performance of a dedicated
private data center.
“Joyent doesn’t believe
there is a dominant
position held by the
industry giants in
the cloud computing
market today.”
-David Young
33. 33
WhataretheSMEbenefitsthatwouldworkwellinadepartmental
setting? What are the key adoption barriers?
“Since the company’s inception, Joyent has been focused on the SME customer as well as the
individual developer. The cloud offers this market some exceptional advantages and value. For
the SME operator,the individual developer and even departments within the enterprise,Clouds
allow each to innovate and try new ideas without committing to expensive contracts. If an
application is wildly successful, the cloud can help scale the application. If the departmental
application is not successful, the infrastructure is closed down without harm or foul.”
Is dominance among a few industry giants a good thing for cloud
computing? What are the implications for the rest?
“Imagine if the power grid was something that one could hook up to, supply it with power
and easily start generating revenue by doing that. This would mean that anyone who had the
ability, expertise and will could develop a new, more efficient way of generating power and make
a business of it. The Internet is the power grid for cloud computing and it is VERY easy to
hook up to. Add to this that the price of the power generation units (servers, software, etc.) is
consistently going down and the implementation of open source practices keeps spreading and
it becomes difficult to see how any one provider will become dominant.
Amazon is certainly in the lead, but it is, at the foremost, a retailer.Think of Nordstrom coming
out with a line of cash registers and you understand the position Amazon holds.The other large
system vendors are deeply conflicted between selling cloud solutions and either being arms
dealers to the cloud/customers and/or providing cloud solutions themselves.
Only Joyent provides solutions at all three layers of the cloud. We provide cloud primitives
(compute, storage, networking), cloud management software, and cloud services and are the
only company that provides solutions at all three levels. We think this shows that the cloud
market is very young and that agile, flexible providers such as Joyent have rich opportunities to
pursue.”
34. 34
Serguei Beloussov
Chairman and CEO, Parallels
What is the meaning of “Cloud Services” from your perch, and
what are the most important benefits emerging from Cloud
Services that will transform the economics of IT?
““Cloud services”is the latest buzz phrase for the provisioning of scalable computing resources“as
services” over the Internet. Cloud services include Applications (Software as a Service), Online
Storage (Storage as a Service), Computing Infrastructure (Virtual Computing environments as
a Service), Developer Services (such as Web Services), and Platform Services (build your own
cloud).
The main benefits are:
a) Low cost of entry – no need to invest in infrastructure for customer demand that has not
materialized yet
b) Easy to add value - build your own service(s) on top of other services
c) Flexible billing - pay per usage schemes
d) Burstability - scalability for high demand / spiky applications
d) Increased competition - services are not always the part of the platform, giving 3rd party
vendors a great opportunity here”
How will concerns around data governance, availability and
security impact the adoption of “Cloud Services”?
“This is clearly one of the biggest areas for the industry to overcome for widespread adoption
by enterprise IT. It is chiefly a question of trust.Technically, at this time, there are no unsolved
problems, though there might be some legislative issues in the future. However, adoption of
cloud services is a gradual process; just like moving from gold to paper money and now, to
plastic. The chief concern for most people though is safety and at present cloud services are
safe. Even the most sensitive data, such as medical histories, could be safely processed in the
cloud if done properly. As people use cloud services more and more over time and become more
comfortable with them, public trust will continue to build, resulting in greater adoption.”
How are “Cloud Services” testing traditional thinking around
“controlofdata”and“guaranteesofsafety”;toincludeownership,
accessandrightsthatsupersedefailureoftheprovider?Ultimately,
who should be accountable; vendor or service provider?
“It is always a vendor’s responsibility to make sure data remains under control and stays safe
from those who should have no access to it. In that sense, the Cloud’s existence does not change
much for customers, vendors and service providers. They must each work out agreements to
protect data and each other’s credibility and good business standing.Of course,this is impossible
without implicit trust.”
www.parallels.com
Parallels is a worldwide
leader in virtualization and
automation software that
optimizes computing for
consumers, businesses, and
service providers across all
major hardware, operating
systems, and virtualization
platforms. Founded in
1999, Parallels is a fast-
growing company with 800
employees in North America,
Europe, and Asia.
“The cloud computing
platform is a huge
new empty field of
innovation with a low
entry barrier.”
-Serguei Beloussov
35. 35
WhataretheSMEbenefitsthatwouldworkwellinadepartmental
setting? What are the key adoption barriers?
“Through market competition, cloud services give SMEs access to a wide variety of useful
services, removing the need to put an expensive physical infrastructure in place.The model also
gives SMEs the flexibility they need,enabling them to scale up or down depending on how may
“seats” are needed. The issue of trust is not such a barrier for SMEs, and in fact there are very
few barriers to adoption on the side of SMEs,rather it is a lack of SaaS or cloud-ready solutions
which is hindering adoption.”
Is dominance among a few industry giants a good thing for cloud
computing? What are the implications for the rest?
“Generally speaking, consolidating to a very small number of providers would only be good
for those large companies, not for the rest of the industry and its end-users, who will benefit
from competition and choice. The cloud computing platform is a huge new empty field of
innovation with a low entry barrier – lowered by the dominant giants heavily investing in
infrastructure.These large platforms are able to exploit economies of scale, so the only effective
way for smaller companies to compete is through establishing niches either through customer
intimacy in serving customer vertical niches (ie: music, real estate, etc..) or through innovating
technologies that achieve better user-per-server densities. This increases server utilization and
reduces management and administrative overheads to drive down the costs of running smaller
platforms.”
36. 36
Brian Stevens
CTO, Red Hat
From your perch, what is the meaning of “Cloud Services”, and
what are the most important benefits emerging from cloud
services that will transform the economics of IT?
“Cloud services in the most basic form have enabled the internet for many years. Without core
services which live within the cloud, such as domain name registries, the internet as we know
it would not exist. Over the years meaningful services, largely targeted at the individual, have
rapidly come online. Gmail, facebook, twitter, imdb ...
Cloud services are evolving, and with the advent of virtualization, ushering in perhaps the most
meaningful cloud service yet: IT as a service. Enabling businesses to host new applications
in realtime, scaling as they need, and paying for only what they consume. The net result is a
lowering of both CAPEX and OPEX for the business, while affording them increased agility.”
How will concerns around data governance, availability and
security impact the adoption of cloud services?
“We are only at the dawn of bringing business applications into the cloud, cloud 1.0 if you will.
Rather than judge cloud 1.0 by what it is not, the industry needs to take advantage of what it is.
Today, it fills a real void for putting near infinite compute capacity into the hands of researchers
and businesses. When and only when they need it. Cloud 2.0 will bring with it the reliability
and security needed for enterprises to trust replicating their data in the cloud, and with that a
new class of applications.”
Howarecloudservicestestingtraditionalthinkingaround“control
of data” and “guarantees of safety”; to include ownership, access
and rights that supersede failure of the provider? Ultimately, who
should be accountable; vendor or service provider?
“Today there has been little progress on data reliability and accountability in the cloud. Service
level agreements which claim great data reliability are typically limited to the cost of the service,
not the value of the data. As cloud technology evolves, so too will the security compliance
policies of the providers.Only when there is a match between those policies,and the governance
policies of the most discerning of enterprises, will cloud 2.0 be realized.”
WhataretheSMEbenefitsthatwouldworkwellinadepartmental
setting? What are the key adoption barriers?
“Smaller businesses are less likely to have large dedicated IT organizations, and cloud services
are attractive in that they can augment their resources using cloud providers whose sole
business is IT. Smaller organizations are also less likely to be able to amortize internal compute
infrastructure across a broad set of business applications, making it quite powerful for them to
www.redhat.com
Red Hat, the world’s
leading open source solutions
provider, is headquartered
in Raleigh, NC with over
65 offices spanning the
globe. Red Hat provides
high-quality, affordable
technology with its operating
system platform, Red
Hat Enterprise Linux,
together with applications,
management and Services
Oriented Architecture (SOA)
solutions, including JBoss
Enterprise Middleware.
“The goal should be to
drive great economics,
for producers and
consumers…”
-Brian Stevens
37. 37
tap into large grids of compute power that economically they could not justify owning.”
Is dominance among a few industry giants a good thing for cloud
computing? What are the implications for the rest?
“The best outcome for industry will be to have standardized cloud services with low barriers
for new providers and internal cloud hosting. In essence, to do for cloud services what Intel has
done for commodity computing. It is advantageous for users to leverage cloud services, while
having the flexibility to take advantage of more competitive providers in the future. They need
be wary of custom APIs and services which will lock them into any one particular cloud. The
goal should be to drive great economics, for producers and consumers, through the opening,
standardization, and subsequent commoditization of cloud infrastructure.”
38. 38
Michael Crandell
CEO and Founder, RightScale
What is the meaning of “Cloud Services” from your perch, and
what are the most important benefits emerging from Cloud
Services that will transform the economics of IT?
“Cloud services -- and by extension cloud computing -- comprise a new way of delivering IT
infrastructure that provides on-demand, pay-as-you-go resources from a virtually infinite pool
that exists somewhere “in the cloud” (i.e. on the Internet) -- you don’t know where and you
don’t care. What matters is that the resources are available whenever you need them, at a low
utility price, and can be relinquished whenever you don’t need them.
Software-in-the-cloud solutions sit at the top of the cloud services stack. These SaaS
applications have been available for some time, and continue to grow in breadth and
popularity rapidly. But what is really new in the last two years are the Infrastructure-in-the-
cloud offerings, the pioneer of which is Amazon Web Services. These API driven services,
based on virtualization and commoditization of both hardware and software components, are
driving new levels of cost efficiency and flexibility in the way IT resources are delivered and
consumed.
Anyone who has run a data center knows how expensive they are, both in terms of up front
capital investment as well as ongoing costs for power, maintenance, and human support.
Cloud infrastructure -- when properly managed and automated -- offers major savings both
in terms of CAPEX and in ongoing costs, and at the same time provides a level of immediacy
in provisioning, a kind of ‘agile deployment’, that is hard for companies to ignore.
That is why we believe cloud services are bringing a tidal shift in the way IT resources are
delivered and consumed. As one IT leader at a major biopharma enterprise said to me, “If we
can avoid buying another blade server ever, we will.”
How will concerns around data governance, availability and
security impact the adoption of “Cloud Services”?
“At the infrastructure level of the cloud, customers can now access a level of data center
redundancy that is really compelling compared to the traditional hosting world. Add to that
the entry into the market of multiple cloud providers, and with appropriate cloud portability
in place, you can achieve a level of availability that is unprecedented.
Security remains a complex issue, depending a lot on the type of application being deployed,
and the regulatory or compliance requirements. Many, many applications are not highly
security sensitive, and can be run in the cloud today. Others can be solved by hybrid solutions
using the right software architecture. For example, we currently power a HIPAA compliant
application for one customer. And of course there are still applications that just aren’t
appropriate to migrate to the cloud yet.
www.rightscale.com
RightScale is based in Santa
Barbara, California and
offers a fully automated
cloud management platform
that delivers the scalable,
cost-effective, on-demand
power of cloud computing,
while maintaining
complete IT control and
transparency.
“Cloud services are
bringing a tidal shift in
the way IT resources
are delivered and
consumed.”
-Michael Crandell