Author Archive for Olafur Ingthorsson

Will virtualization become less important in cloud computing?

By Olafur Ingthorsson on August 30, 2010 in Cloud Computing and Virtualization. 0 Comments

It’ generally acknowledged that VMware are the leaders in virtualization technology. Products like the the vSpere has probably been installed in more data centers than any ofther virtualization platform. Not to minimize the importance of other platforms, like the Citrix XenServer and Linux KVM, the vSphere is the market leading virtualization platform that together with its strong installed base and head-start set VMware in a comfortable position for developing its cloud computing strategy. And then the question emerges – how is VMware cloud computing strategy actually playing out?

Well, first of all we know that by enabling multiple logical server instances on a single physical server, virtualization is usually seen as one of the fundamental enablers of cloud computing. But exactly how important is virtualization as a cloud computing enabler? By many, the importance of virtualization is considered to become less significant when cloud-based application platforms mature to the point where applications are built and deployed without any reference to current notions of servers and operating systems. Developers using Plaform-as-Services, like Google App Engine and Microsoft Azure, are never going to have to think about virtualized infrastructure. The same goes with Software-as-a-Service. So as companies migrate services to the cloud, they are less likely to purchase VMware’s vSphere virtualization platform, unless they are going to establish their own cloud computing environment.

VMware has unofficially acknowledged this transformation. Their CEO, Paul Maritz, speaking on the 2010 GigaOM Structure conference, said that “the cloud at the infrastructure level is the new hardware”. What Mr. Maritz means is that “as the cloud infrastructure becomes more complex, or hardened, there is a point where we will stop seeing the details behind the infrastructure making it agnostic” and, hopefully, interconnected clouds from multiple cloud providers (federated clouds). All this of course is heavily dependent upon standardization work. Several bodies are now working on cloud standards, including the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) which have formed a Focus Group for that purpose

So where does all this leave VMware when it comes to their cloud initiative, especially if virtualization is to be a given thing – and ultimately more restricted to cloud provider and large company data centers? Well, VMware is already offering cloud platforms for various needs, both for public and private clouds. Their cloud vCloud Express platform was built for IaaS providers in particular, to offer services to end-users and to create PaaS services.  Already, it seems that VMware, e.g. through its partnership with SalesForce around VMforce, is moving more into the realm of PaaS by its Java Cloud enterprise offering. In the longer term, it is likely that virtualization will become less important when it comes to PaaS offerings and public clouds, while it probably will last longer in private cloud environments.

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Are telcos not finding their cloud computing niche?

By Olafur Ingthorsson on August 20, 2010 in Cloud Computing. 0 Comments

Are telcos loosing in the race of becoming viable cloud computing service providers? At least it seems that many telcos have had a difficult time in positioning themselves in the cloud ecosphere or even decide what cloud services to offer. Obviously, this does not equally apply to all telcos. Verizon, for example, seem to have already come a long way in providing a robust IaaS services through their Communication-as-a-service (CaaS) offering, stressing in particular data security, bandwidth guarantees and SLAs, and BT in the UK are providing, or reselling, a bundle of third-party applications as SaaS services enhanced by value-added services like billing, security and more.

However, some analysts maintain that telcos have a difficult time in becoming a dominant cloud computing player or even identifying their particular niche. Analyst Jeff Kaplan, points out that telcos are still struggling to figure out managed services that already have been around for a decade, and SaaS is still far from their reach. Telcos are also not exactly known for their innovation pace and therefore are in danger of being bypassed by more agile service providers.

While this may have some truth in it, I tend to see a number of inherent strengths that telcos are in a particularly good position to capitalize upon. For one thing, telcos in general have a good reputation for reliability and security, based on their legacy of running mission critical systems (voice and networks).  People expect telcos to deliver services with high uptime and reliability. The five-nines, representing 99.999% uptime is a famous reference to the expectations and benchmark that telcos have traditionally placed on their services.

Telcos are in a good position to deliver better than “best-effort” service delivery on the Internet. They can for example provide guaranteed bandwidth in their networks, including MPLS and VPN connections and, through their traditional association with multiple peering- and exchange points, capable of establishing multi-carrier guaranteed bandwidth for business customers that require high-quality services.

Through their extensive communication services, telcos can provide value-added and bundled services with third-party application providers, e.g. SaaS providers. This can include networking and phone services. Another interesting aspect is the concept of  “mash-up” services with a vast range of applications available through the cloud. Telcos can provide and integrate various services and data, including identity management, location information and billing capabilities with other applications and thereby provide cloud services with added value to their customers.

Certainly there are many more opportunities available for telcos to capitalise upon in the cloud that will become more visible in the coming months and years. Let’s not forget that cloud computing is still in its infancy and a lot may still change before cloud computing becomes a mainstream and the primary IT provisioning and service delivery channel for businesses.

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Mobile Cloud Computing and Cloud Phones!

By Olafur Ingthorsson on August 10, 2010 in Cloud Computing and Mobile Cloud Computing. 2 Comments

I recently started leading a new multi-national research project about Mobile Cloud Computing, it’s development, impact and potential opportunities for communication providers (telecoms). It seems to me that Mobile Cloud Computing is going to become increasingly important in the the near future in terms of providing browser based access to more and more cloud-based applications and services. Instead of downloading and installing applications on the mobile handsets (smartphones, tablets, etc.) users will access them directly in the cloud and display through the mobile browser, i.e. analogous to Software-as-a-Service provisioning. Some predictions include:

In Gartner’s 2010 key IT predictions for organizations, mobiles phones are expected to overtake PCs as the most common Web access device worldwide by 2013.

ABI Research predicts that there will be nearly one billion end users accessing the “mobile cloud” by 2014. Smartphone applications will move from the handset itself to the cloud – creating a ecosystem for new kind of smartphones – sometime termed “Mobile Cloud Phones”.

There are many reasons for this to materialize. For example, developers are increasingly discontent by being forced to develop and maintain applications that are exclusive for certain mobile phone platforms, e.g. iPhone, Android. This is both costly and limits developers to adhering to the rules of the platform owner – and, sometimes a limited market segment. Many users are also frustrated to have no choice but purchasing a powerful, and more often expensive, smartphone to have the possibility of running mobile apps.

It is clear that with the emergence of the iPhone and the App store, there is already a huge supply of applications avilable. However, most of these applications require users to download them to the handset, install them and run on the handset. Concequenlty, smartphones are becoming increasingly advanced and powerful, embodying sophisticated computing architecture and operating systems. The best analogy could perhaps be the Wintel cooperation – whereas a new version of Windows OS required the user to upgrade to a more powerful Intel processor.

Instead of handset-centric installation, new Cloud Phones will be able to utilize 4G, LTE networks to their fullest and perhaps adapt specifically to certain cloud provider applications or infrastructure. This will be a very interesting segment to investigate and there are many questions that arise. For example, will some of the current smartphone platforms, e.g. the Symbian, MeeGo, Apple’s iOS or Android be dominant in new “Mobile Cloud Phones” – or will there be a completely new platform that has still to be developed!

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What to put into the Cloud – and what not!

By Olafur Ingthorsson on August 3, 2010 in Cloud Computing. 4 Comments

There is an endless discussion and debate taking place on what services and applications should typically be moved into into the Cloud – supporting the benefits of Cloud Computing in general, and also what services are less appropriate in the Cloud.

The TM Forum has put together an interesting and simple list of those primary services, that should not come as asurprise for the veteran Cloud Computing user or Service Provider. Still they are important to keep in mind when determining the appropriateness of when to consider migration to the Cloud – and when not:

Promising Cloud services:

  • Compute, storage services
  • Development and test environments
  • Audio, video and web-style collaboration
  • Select industry applications (e.g. SalesForce)
  • Analytics
  • Contact center services
  • Data storage and archiving
  • Business continuity and disaster recovery
  • Desktop virtualization

However, not all is rosy – there are some challenging services and applications that should perhaps be avoided to be migrated to the Cloud, e.g.:

  • Sensitive data (e.g. moving offshore)
  • Highly customized applications
  • Complex transactions
  • Applications and data with regulatory restructions
  • Legacy batch applications

This is certainly not a complete list of all potential Cloud Computing services and applications, but gives the indication, not surprisingly, that the benefits of Cloud Computing are largely restricted to standardized provisioning of services and applications. In the long run, however, Cloud Computing can also become increasingly applicable to more customizable environments and with more comprehensive international legal frameworks, less sensitive towards data location.

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Cloud computing and CDNs

By Olafur Ingthorsson on June 22, 2010 in Cloud Computing and Cloud Networking. 0 Comments

Normally, cloud computing services and applications are delivered to users through an Internet connection. This is one of the pillars of cloud computing, making it distributed, accessible and affordable from wherever and, increasingly, via various wireless devices. But what about organizations that want something more than a “best effort” service delivery through the Internet?

Well, obviously there are several alternatives, including managed networks, e.g. MPLS, ATM and, in the future, many other types of virtual networks that run across  multiple physical networks or substrates.

But then there is the possibility of Content Delivery Network or CDNs like Akamai and Limelight Networks, which promise a better than best effort service or content delivery. Although the CDNs use in fact the Internet as the mechanism for carrying traffic, they strategically distribute replication servers (sometimes called Surrogates) in the network that replicated content stored on a origin server or servers farms.  Users accessing content from a particular server are directed to the most appropriate “surrogate” based on multiple criteria, including distance, network congestion, etc., determined by a load balancer in the network that calculates the most efficient delivery route. CDN providers use a combination of technologies to provide better than best effort service delivery, including the distributed surrogates, or caching servers, mention, but also by using different proprietary protocols/algorithms than the native Internet uses for inter-network communications, i.e. the Border Gateway Protocol, and by reducing drag caused by TCP multiple round trips to set up and tear down connections.

It is interesting to note that already some cloud providers have started to integrate CDNs into their products offering. This includes for example Rackspace that offers a storage solution called CloudFiles that is integrated with the Limelight CDN. Through the CDN, content can be distributed, cached and shared in edge locations throughout the world – so that users gain access to content from a nearby surrogate.

It will be interesting to follow this trend as see if and how more and more cloud service providers will integrate CDNs to their service offerings.

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Networking technologies in Cloud Computing

By Olafur Ingthorsson on April 30, 2010 in Cloud Networking. 1 Comment

Recently, I participated in a research study under the auspices of Eurescom, working with research colleagues from Telenor, PT Inovacao (Portugal Telecom – Innovation) and Orange Labs (France Telecom). Our objective was to analyse Cloud Computing as both a technology concept and service delivery model, especially from its networking perspective, and its implications for telcos in general. We studied the current and promising networking technologies used in the Cloud, internally and externally, including WAN technologies and Data Center interconnections.

Long-distance interconnections (WAN and MAN) between data centers are obviously based on IP standards (over ATM, Ethernet, SONET/SDH) and, more recently, on MPLS with QoS and native interconnection capabilities. For high bandwidth and ultra-low latency, DWDM (Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing) appears to be very promising as a future high-performance WAN transport technology – mainly due to its capabilities of multiplexing multiple optical signals and being protocol and bit-rate independent (agnostic). Further on the horizon, new WAN networking technologies are still on the research stage, including the concept of Lambda networking that promises low-cost, high-capacity circuits in long-haul and metro systems.

Inside data centers , however, where network servers, storage systems and network nodes/elements are interconnected, three LAN networking technologies are prevailing:

Where, currently, Ethernet is the most frequently used. An important trend today is to deploy 10 Gb Ethernet (10GBE) equipment and networks – extending Ethernet’s capacity and support for more traffic patterns. FiberChannel is mostly used in scientific computing and storage area networks (SAN) whereas InifiBand is almost exclusively deployed in scientific and engineering simulation networks, e.g. using clustered servers.

Obviously, there are even more networking technologies and protocols available for supporting the delivery of Cloud services. This is an ever-emerging ecosystem of new innovations and improvements that will continue to evolve in multiple directions. For the Cloud vendor or service provider, it is, however, necessary to understand the strengths and weaknesses of individual networking technologies and how they most effectively can be applied in their current surroundings or technical infrastructure, whether that is inside a data center or in the transport sphere.

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Network bottlenecks in Cloud Computing

By Olafur Ingthorsson on April 26, 2010 in Cloud Networking. 0 Comments

Many enterprises are understandably reluctant in moving their core applications to the cloud, primarily due to security issues but also due, perhaps equally, to concerns of poor network performance. According to a recent report from the Yankee Group, many thought leaders, including Trend Micro, Cisco and CSL, say the issue of latency and poor performance is, at least temporarily, hindering the adoption of cloud computing.

This is not surprising. Quality of service delivery in the Cloud is intrinsically integrated with the network, its infrastructure and capacity. As migration to the Cloud continues, network operators face increasing challenges of upgrading the network infrastructure. This includes fixed infrastructure, including last-mile and first-mile as well as mobile networks like 3G and 4G. Many operators are already challenged with current unsatisfactory ROI – mainly due to flat pricing structures and “all-you-can-eat” data packages. How operators can justify increased investments in network infrastructure without changing pricing models remains difficult to see – unless they are, perhaps, also the Cloud provider themselves.

This is in fact the strategy Google seems to be pursuing by gradually increasing their network infrastructure possession. The latest example is their intention to connect up to 500.000 homes with 100Mbps fiber optic broadband connections (fiber-to-the-home), directly competing with the traditional telecom networks providers like Verizon. AT&T and Comcast. Google wants to provide rich Internet applications directly to the user – from the Cloud – eliminating network latency bottlenecks as much as possible. This probably includes bandwidth hungry high-def video applications, VoIP (Voice-Over-IP) and, of course, virtualized desktops a.l.a Google Chrome OS, where the desktop is actually being transferred to the Cloud and run from a lightweight network operating system (e.g. Chome OS). Google clearly foresees that all, or most, application will be run from the Cloud. Most likely, in my opinion, their vision will materialize in the coming years.

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Cloud computing – top threats

By Olafur Ingthorsson on April 14, 2010 in Cloud Security. 0 Comments

Last month, The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) published a short security guidance paper with an interesting overview of the top 7 threats to Cloud Computing (version 1.0) – according to their analysis. The paper can be used as a simple guideline for addressing, and perhaps checking off, all the major security concerns associated with implementing cloud computing and its different service modes.

Cloud Computing: Security Threats

This is important especially as people often lack an overview of all the potential security vulnerabilities associated with cloud computing. As pointed out in the paper, it is seen as a companion to the much more detailed “Security Guidance for Critical Areas in Cloud Computing” from the SCA (version 2.1 issued in Dec. 2009). The paper includes the top 7 following threats that need to be addressed – in accordance with the type of cloud computing adoption, i.e. “IaaS”, “PaaS”, “SaaS”:

#1: Abuse and Nefarious Use of Cloud Computing (IaaS, PaaS)
#2: Insecure Interfaces and APIs (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS)
#3: Malicious insiders (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS)
#4: Shared Technology Issues (IaaS)
#5: Data Loss or Leakage (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS)
#6: Account or Service Hijacking (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS)
#7: Unknown Risk Profile (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS)

The threats are equally important – and should reflect the critical threat concerns in Cloud Computing that organizations experience during their adoption processes. The CSA short paper was influenced by a more detailed European research paper produced by ENISA (European Network and Information Security Agency) called “Cloud Computing: Benefits, Risks and Recommendations for Information Society“, published in Nov. 2009.

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Cloud computing – data privacy and compliance

By Olafur Ingthorsson on March 25, 2010 in Cloud Security. 5 Comments

Often, when the cloud computing discussion takes off, especially in relation to public clouds, one recurring issue soon emerges, namely, the the issue of data privacy and responsibility. It seems clear that different legislations related to data privacy and, especially, cross-border transfer of data is causing a lot of uncertainty and retention by many IT managers considering cloud services. Especially does this relate to certain type of data, e.g. financial information, health records and personal identifiable information. With the global distribution of data centers and the opaquenature of data location in many cloud services – e.g. do you actually now where your Google Apps information is physically stored? – complicates matters further. Compliance with local regulatory issues can be a thorny and sensitive issue, especially for organizations. There are many questions that arise concerning data privacy, accessibility and administration, such as:

  • Data seizure due to legal investigation – organizations need to adhere to local legislation
  • What is the accessibility of local authorities to data under investigation residing in a different jurisdiction
  • Fear of infringement of data protection rights due to seizure of a server in the host jurisdiction
  • Data losses caused by cloud provider and unauthorized disclosures in the cloud
  • The cloud provider goes bankrupt – what happens to my data

If an organization migrates data, application or processes to a cloud provider in another jurisdiction it is still fully responsible for that data and needs to apply to local data protection legislation and regulations when handling personal data. In a public cloud environment this can be difficult as the organization is unlikely to know if and when data is moved, where and how it is stored and, sometimes, who has access to it and what particular security measures are in place. Therefore, it is quite possible that a dispute can arise about who is actually responsible for data protection compliance. Organizations need to be particularly careful when selecting a third-party cloud provider with this in mind and should in all circumstances require a written declaration describing how the provider will address compliance with local legislation and provide assurance in the event of data losses or unauthorized disclosures. Even better, requesting SLAs and certifications of quality and operational control, e.g. equivalent to a SAS 70 Report – Type II (Statement on Auditing Standard 70).

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The emergence of mobile cloud computing

By Olafur Ingthorsson on March 19, 2010 in Mobile Cloud Computing. 10 Comments

Did yo know that digital media entertainment (DME) traffic currently represented by the iPhone is already 35 times higher than that created by traditional handsets? Many analysts believe that most mobile apps will move from being handset-centric (thick-clients) to the cloud so that mobile terminals will run applications directly from the cloud – especially as apps become larger and feature rich. Today, this is not necessarily the case.

Take iPhone for example – where users purchase and download apps from iTunes AppStore for running them on the phone, although some apps may support back-end processing and data storage as well. Evidently this will change – and why shouldn’t it? Mobile cloud computing is certainly just another method of delivering software applications in a service fashion over the network – in this case wirelessly, e.g. via WiFi and mobile broadband networks such as 3G and WiMax. Mobile network equipment manufacturers and providers are promising that their future Long-Term-Evolution (LTE) platforms will support approximately 170Mbit/s data rate speed (uplink and downlink) in each cell – although in reality the throughput is probably going to be somewhat lower. Obviously the available speed will be dynamically distributed between users within each cell – the more users the less bandwidth for each user.

Users will be able to seamlessly transfer from WiFi networks to mobile operator broadband networks, and vice versa, without necessarily knowing what network he or she is accessing at any particular time. The handset, e.g. smartphone, will make sure that it is selecting and using the most beneficial connection in terms of cost and quality.

Mobile cloud computing

Clearly, this will improve user experience and flexibility and enhance service delivery. Users can access SaaS apps irrelevant of their device, fixed or wireless, PC or smartphone. It should be noted that many analysts, including ABI Research, assert that cloud computing will soon become a disruptive force in the mobile world and, eventually, becoming the dominant way in which mobile applications operate and are delivered.
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