Archive for the 'Cloud Computing' Category

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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Improving service delivery in cloud computing

By Olafur Ingthorsson on February 3, 2010 in Cloud Computing. 8 Comments
Internet congestion

It’s obvious that one of the primary reason enterprises are reluctant to move resources to the cloud, and cloud computing, is the inherent bottlenecks and unreliability of the Internet – as the primary networking mode service delivery channel. The Internet possesses several critical problems that expose its weaknesses in providing adequate network performance and quality levels. These include:

  • Peering point problems. Peering points separate Internet networks for the purpose of exchanging traffic between customers of each network. Peering is normally a settlement-free “swapping” (exchange) of data from one network provider to the other – forming the backbone of the Internet. Unfortunately, perhaps largely due to the settlement-free nature, there has been lack of economical incentives for network operators in sufficiently upgrading their peering routers to handle increasing network traffic. (Depeering is another process that I will not go into). While the “first mile” (from data center to the Internet/WAN) and the “last mile” (from end-user to the Internet/WAN) have received significant investments, the “middle mile” (i.e. the Internet) has lagged behind.
  • Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), the Internet’s inter-network routing protocol determines how data packets travel from one network to another in the cloud. The problem with BGP lies in its slow routing capabilities, especially when making fine distinctions between the traffic on multiple routes. This results in lack of performance and reliability of service delivery in the cloud.
  • TCP bottlenecks. TCP is the Internet’s primary communication protocol – providing reliable, ordered delivery of a stream of bytes from a program on one computer to another program on another computer. However, TCP was designed for reliability rather than efficiency and often causes drag (delay) in packet delivery due to its multiple round-trips to set up and tear down connections. This is a overhead that can be especially detrimental to the performance of SaaS and PaaS-based enterprise applications.

So, if these are the main concerns for good network performance and reliable service delivery on the Internet, what can be done to mitigate these? Well, there are probably several different measures that can be taken, and depends on both the cloud service provider, network provider(s) and the enterprise using the cloud computing services and include:

  • Using a overlay network, e.g. from CDN providers like Akamai or Limelight Networks. These providers use edge servers and multiple (proprietary) optimization schemes to improve network performance and quality levels of content delivery.
  • Use managed IP network services. Many network providers offer private IP connections, e.g. from a particular data center (cloud provider) to an enterprise, promising quality of service and much better performances than over the public Internet. Today, the MPLS (Multi-Protocol-Layer-Switching) data-carrying mechanism is becoming prevalent in modern networks for high-performance delivery.
  • Consider the new FASP (Fast and Secure Protocol), originally designed by Aspera, for improving efficiency and throughput. Amazon AWS plan to offer FASP in its services.

Having said this, it becomes obvious that companies do not have to rely completely on the Internet for service delivery if they aspire to use public cloud computing services. There are several ways to improve network performances and reliability as I have pointed out – and there are probably even more ways available!

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The rise of hybrid clouds

By Olafur Ingthorsson on January 7, 2010 in Cloud Computing. 2 Comments

It seems that many analysts, e.g. at the Cloud Computing Journal, are proclaiming that private and hybrid clouds will see a real proliferation in 2010. Security concerns of public clouds are still prevailing and many IT professionals and managers are still very reluctant to the idea of migrating private enterprise data and operations to a public cloud provider. Deploying cloud computing on-premise, in a private cloud fashion, is seen as a way to exploit many of the benefits from cloud computing, i.e. automation, centralization and elasticity, without the security risks still lurking around in public clouds. In private clouds, organizations maintain closer security and compliance controls over their applications and data. In the longer term though, together with increased cloud adoption, managers will probably compare more seriously the cost/benefit analysis of private versus public clouds.

Alternatively, hybrid clouds, seem as a sensible intermediary step between public and private clouds, enabling organizations to leverage  upon both worlds – combining on-demand capacity with in-house compliance.
Implementing a hybrid cloud strategy is simply an attempt to augment a private cloud with the resources of a public cloud in order to maintain acceptable service levels despite spikes in demand, i.e. to address and prevent the so called Cloudbursting (“the failure of a cloud computing environment due to the inability to handle spike in demand”).
Hybrid clouds seem a natural step for enterprises not interested or willing to migrate resources to the public cloud due to security vulnerabilities or otherwise. Getting their feet wet in the cloud without risking too much, hybrids clouds may offer a beneficial alternative for dealing with temporary spikes in demand, lowering capital costs and offer the elasticity desired.
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2010 – the year of cloud computing catastrophes?

By Olafur Ingthorsson on January 3, 2010 in Cloud Computing. 8 Comments

As more companies offer cloud computing services and the number of users increase, statistics tell us that the likelihood of a serious problem occurring, for example, somewhere in the  transfer network or in different security segments, increases. We have already seen some serious ‘outages’ in the past, such at Magnolia, the social bookmarking site that crashed and lost all its data earlier this year. Will 2010 be the year of some disastrous encounters for cloud computing?

Some analysts are predicting 2010 to be the year of catastrophes for cloud computing, including the CEO of Strategic News Service, Mark Anderson, in an interview with BusinessWeek. He believes that the increasing reliability toward cloud services could actually backfire in the form of a serious service outage or security based catastrophe. And, the disaster could be big enough to question the dependability of cloud services by corporations in particular.

My believe it that although we might possibly see some serious outages or security breaches encounter, the long-term benefit of network delivered services will outweigh the risks of organisations continue to deploy and migrate to cloud based services. Clearly, organisations and IT managers must carefully select the right type of resources or applications to transfer to the cloud with regard to their mission-critical nature and sensitivity. If using a public cloud provider seems too risky in terms of security or availability, another option would be to migrate to a private (or hybrid) cloud.

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Cloud computing characteristics

By Olafur Ingthorsson on December 30, 2009 in Cloud Computing. 1 Comment

There is a great deal of ambiguity around cloud computing and no agreed definition still exists, although many have provided their Cloud computing question markown understanding of cloud based services and technologies.  A recent, and very readable, webtutorial report (Nov. 2009) called “A Guide For Understanding Cloud Computing” by Dr. Jim Metzler makes a clear attempt to define the  characteristics of cloud computing and its boundaries. Firstly, it answers the question of cloud computing primary objective as “to make a dramatic improvement in the cost effective elastic provisioning of IT services”. Secondly, it identifies eleven (or twelve) primary characteristics of a cloud computing solution:

  • Centralization – applications, servers, storage
  • Virtualization – including servers, storage, networks, desktops, etc
  • Automation – provisioning, troubleshooting, configuration
  • Dynamic movement of resources – such as virtual machines and storage
  • Internet reliance – extensive use of the internet for deployment and service provisioning
  • Self-service – users can select, configure and modify resources and services themselves online
  • Pay-as-you-go – user pay for consuming the service, no or minimum up-front fees
  • Simplification – fewer versions running, less IT resource complexity for organizations
  • Standardization – users gain access to standardized applications and hardware resources, fewer vendors
  • Technology convergence – enabling convergence of multiple technologies such as servers, networks, storage, etc.
  • Federation through standardization – with standardization comes the federation of disparate cloud computing infrastructures
This is an interesting list that provide a comprehensive picture of what characterizes cloud computing. Some of the characteristics are obviously more developed than others. Centralization and virtualization, for example, are already becoming mature and established technologies for enabling economical cloud computing services, while standards are largely still missing and federation of cloud computing infrastructures is still somewhat further ahead and is, of course, strongly linked to and dependent upon available standards. Still it’s a good idea to keep these in mind when you need to identify whether a service is cloud computing, or not.
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Status of the cloud computing hype!

By Olafur Ingthorsson on December 17, 2009 in Cloud Computing. 2 Comments

It seems that cloud computing is nearing the top of the hype-cycle according to “Gartner’s Hype Cycle Special Report for 2009“. Gartner claims that within the next 5 years, most enterprises will utilize cloud computing as a more economical alternative for running their IT resources, compared to on-premise resource management. Not only does this apply to migrating IT resources like network servers, databases and storage to the public cloud utilizing “Infrastructure-as-a-Service” (IaaS) services, but also private clouds and hybrid clouds. Equally, enterprises will increasingly adopt “Software-as-a-Service” (SaaS) services instead of running business applications locally. We’ve already seen successes in this direction – Salesforce CRM of course being the foremost example.

Another report from The Economist, Let It Rise – A special report on corporate IT, points to a similar direction. Public cloud providers are improving their offerings. IaaS providers like Amazon AWS and Go-Grid are continuously announcing new corporate-class services and addressing many of the security vulnerabilities associated with public cloud computing. Not only are public cloud providers improving their services, but are also adding new services extending corporate networks into the cloud through Virtual Private Network (VPN) connections or even through MPLS. A good example of the former is the Amazon Virtual Private Cloud and Verizon has started offering cloud services, termed Verizon Computing-as-a-Service (CaaS), over their private IP network (MPLS network) in selected areas.

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