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January 2012 - Posts

Which is more complex: a jet airplane or a cloud data center?

Published: January 31 2012, 09:50 AM | no comments
by Marvin Waschke

I am in the midst of writing a book on Cloud Standards (expected to be available on or about June 20, 2012). There are only a handful of standards that apply directly to clouds, but the number of standards that cloud computing inherently relies upon is enormous. I have lots of leeway in writing about standards in the book, mainly because it is hard to think of a computing standard that does not apply to cloud in some way.

There is a reason for that: cloud is the culmination of almost everything in computing up to now. Of course, that means that there is very little in cloud that is new (yes, I did just suggest cloud is old, too). The components and technologies that make up a cloud implementation are the same technologies that have been used for decades. So, why all the talk about cloud today? What's new are the ways all the technology fits together, the scale of its application, and its wide variety of uses.

Look at the giant data centers built by providers like Google and Amazon. They have racks and racks of perfectly ordinary computers with processors and memory that are faster and more compact than those of twenty years ago, but otherwise, not very different. Most storage is still spinning disks. Cloud data centers communicate with their consumers via networks that follow standards that have been around for twenty years. Yet they do things that have never been done before. And their cumulative complexity is truly amazing.

I did some Google research and back of the envelope calculation the other day, and promptly gave up. I tried to compare the complexity of a 737 airliner (which I happen to have been slightly involved with designing) and a cloud data center. Boeing says that a 737 has 367,000 parts. Google says that one of its data centers has 650,000 cores. Is it fair to compare airplane parts to cores? That is the point where I gave up, but think about this: which is harder? To rivet, bolt, and glue together 367,000 parts and make them fly? Or wire up 650,000 processors and make them tell me that there are 367,000 parts in a 737? Both are staggering tasks and command tremendous respect, but the data center has the numbers.

This brings me back to standards, which occupy quite a few of my thoughts lately - makes sense for someone writing a book on the subject. How is it possible to make these absurdly complex clouds work? Aside from the impressive effort of the engineers who put them together and keep them working, it is also because they are built on experience that has been accumulating for the last half century. And much of that experience is embodied in the standards that hold clouds together. For example, the interconnection between processors in a data center is often Ethernet, the standard for the data link layer in networking since the ‘80s. Why does it work in this extreme application? Because experience has tuned it and streamlined it, and made it efficient enough to do a job that far exceeds its original intent.

It is precisely because of this experience that clouds can be both complex and reliable and why I am enjoying writing my book. Over the next few months, I will share with you some of the random thoughts that come up as I'm writing. I hope you enjoy the posts, and I look forward to sharing the final book with you this summer.

*Image courtesy of stock.xchang.

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By: Marvin Waschke
Marv Waschke is a senior principal architect at CA Technologies. He has represented CA Technologies in several standards groups including the Cloud Management Working Group and Configuration Management Database Federation working groups of the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF). He is also a member...
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Cloud as "Icon": The evolution of a puffy little orb

Published: January 27 2012, 09:02 AM | no comments
by Jeffrey Abbott

Circa 1993, when only the senior executives were lucky enough to have 17-inch monitors, businesses would buy floppy disks full of imagery called clip art. One of those images was a bubbly cloud. Originally, this represented the telephone network. Then it came to represent the Internet, and now the cloud represents a cloud - well, not really. Let's take a look at what's happened to this puffy little orb.

For most people, the ‘90s cloud icon represented everything that was the responsibility of a utility company. Nobody questioned the size, shape, or color. And then, as the Internet slowly became valuable, the icon grew more relevant and it rose from the sea of PowerPoint obscurity to represent the world wide interwebopsherenets. Soon, Super Bowl ads were pushing more routers than beer. Meanwhile, terms like ‘application service provider' (ASP) and ‘Internet service provider' (ISP) reigned as our favorite tech acronyms (actually initialisms) - until February 2001 when all the ASPs and ISPs went out of business (or so it seemed...).

Then, from the ashes of the dot.com era, as business realized that they needed to sell something of value, and "pre-IPO" became a bad thing, comes the "rise of the services." Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS). Was there no limit to where AAS could take us? (Queue scratching record sound). Hmm, that won't work. Sorry Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - I can't say you without laughing.

Now just when you thought it was safe to go back into hi-tech, from nowhere, someone brilliantly resurrected "cloud," and in doing so, found another way to confuse people by re-assigning a definition to an even less intuitive term. And here we are. It caught on and people understand it (remarkably). Cloud is everywhere and it's hard to believe that it will clear out anytime soon. Will "cloud" be replaced by a new word? Maybe. But more importantly, will the model for cloud computing continue to be relevant 10-20 years into the future? I venture to say "yes." In fact, I think it will be so relevant, so widespread, so quickly, that we will soon no longer need to call attention to it and the beloved little cloud icon will fade back into obscurity.

Check back for my insightful review of what will come to be known as the ampersand dynasty as we explore whether or not "@" has finally earned a dedicated key on your keyboard.

*Cloud clip art courtesy of Microsoft clip art gallery.

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By: Jeffrey Abbott
Jeffrey Abbott ( @JeffreyAbbott ) is a Senior Product Marketing Manager for Cloud Commons at CA Technologies. In this role, Jeff focuses on industry trends and IT management challenges to position the company’s cloud solutions to viable market segments. When he’s not thinking about clouds, Jeff is often...
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Virtual business service optimisation is the holy grail of the cloud

Published: January 23 2012, 03:56 PM | no comments
by Chris Rae

The adoption of cloud computing in whatever form has long promised to bring small, medium and large businesses benefits beyond their wildest dreams: lower costs, increased agility, capacity, etc. Those of us who've been in the industry for any length of time, knew enough to understand that this wouldn't be an overnight miracle and that cloud itself, just like many other ‘saviour' technologies, would have its own issues that would need to be ironed out - before mass adoption and deliverance of the hotly anticipated benefits.

If a business is looking at consuming services from the cloud rather than from its own data centre, they would need to define the business services, and the resources to support that service and move the service to the cloud provider of choice. This is what we call a virtualised business service, a containerised business service abstracted from the supporting cloud infrastructure.

However containerizing just the virtual business service itself is not enough; along with the business service there would be policies and procedures for the correct security, compliance and governance rules to be applied. All of this makes portability of the service itself very difficult. The entire virtual business service needs to be containerized itself, something CA Technologies calls virtual business service optimisation. This process would allow businesses to move business services around and consume them from different cloud providers - private, public or hybrid more easily without vendor lock in, compliance, security or governance issues arising. There may be other drivers for optimizing the virtual business service such as performance issues, resilience issues, and sound commercial reasons (for example, if one provider is simply more expensive than an alternative supplier).

Let's look at a really common scenario: the launching of a website, where the business service itself is being delivered from a public IaaS provider. If a business were to decide that the governance provided by that provider wasn't robust enough, they may wish to move that business service by defining it and moving it where they wish.

Whilst data security in the cloud has been and still is to some extent a concern for many IT decision makers, vendor lock-in has become one of the key barriers to cloud adoption. Portability is a key issue for businesses today, regardless of environment and infrastructure - agility is key to staying competitive and if that is compromised, the results could be catastrophic to the business. The true value and idea behind a virtual business service and optimizing it is that a business need not worry about the infrastructure. Once a business service policy is defined, it will be automated and then the virtual business service will move between clouds as appropriate according to the policy. This is policy-based virtual business service optimization, and it is one of the key ingredients that will help companies achieve the many benefits cloud computing has to offer.

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By: Chris Rae
Chris Rae is Vice President of Solution sales for EMEA within CA. He has spent over 25 years in IT beginning his career as a lecturer in Mainframe computer programming techniques and migrating to a sales strategist role and then on to sales management. He has experience in the IT sales arena for Application...
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Cloud Luminaries: Strategies for reigning in rogue IT from Qualcomm

Published: January 20 2012, 09:20 AM | no comments
by Katherine Demacopoulos

Much has been written about how cloud computing enables business units to bypass the IT organization and work directly with cloud service providers to meet their short-term needs... (never mind the potential security risks, inefficiencies and unpredictable costs this type of behavior can expose the company to).

What I found most interesting about my Cloud Luminaries interview with Matt Clark, senior director of IT at Qualcomm, was the proactive approach the company has taken in order to circumvent this type of behavior. Qualcomm's IT organization offers its internal employees three different levels of cloud services. If those services don't meet a specific business need, the IT team will consult with the business unit and research external service providers, as well. They've also done analysis to prove that their in-house cloud services are actually less expensive (and higher performance) than what external cloud service providers offer.

Watch this Cloud Luminaries interview with Matt Clark to hear more practical strategies for getting the most business value out of cloud computing - including time-to-market benefits and more.

Want a preview? Check out this short YouTube version:

 

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By: Katherine Demacopoulos
Katherine Demacopoulos is senior advisor, cloud computing, at CA Technologies. She has more than 15 years experience in marketing and communications for innovative enterprise software companies. She was one of the earliest employees in several start-ups, including NetEdge Systems (acquired by Larscom...
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6 Core Competencies to Use and Provide Enterprise Cloud Services

Published: January 17 2012, 07:10 AM | no comments
by Andi Mann

There is a persistent (mainly vendor-driven) meme going around the world of IT that building and running a responsible, secure, available, enterprise-quality cloud is simple. The theory seems to be that it just needs some server virtualization, adding automation, maybe dropping in some change control, and calling it done. Or that all you need to do is to logon to a public cloud provider, give them a credit card number, then click a button to migrate your workloads to the cloud.

You see it virtually everywhere you turn. It shows up in myopic discussions of ‘cloud lifecycle' that conveniently ignore pre- and post-deployment activity like service planning, application design, security and compliance, and facilities management. It is the basis of posts that gush over benefits of cloud that only apply to new applications on mono-platform ecosystems. It is the premise for speeches advising you to ‘ring-fence' any platform, technology, or application that does not fit the new cloudy ways.

So I thought it might be useful to review the CA Technologies approach to cloud. This is a more complete approach that outlines six essential capabilities required to address more than just the virtualization and automation of component infrastructures, more than just migration to a public cloud provider, and more than just a single-platform ‘ecosystem.'

6 Core Competencies to Use and Provide Enterprise Cloud Services

The CA Technologies approach is based on our Business Service Innovation (BSI) roadmap - a common set of guiding principles and disciplines that CA Technologies advocates to deliver any innovative business service. When applied to cloud computing, the BSI roadmap outlines six core competencies that enterprises and service providers alike should adopt to responsibly use or provide enterprise-grade cloud services.

Of course, it includes the core basics of delivering a cloud - such as virtualization and automation. However, it (appropriately) starts earlier in the process with essential elements of planning, modeling, and assembly of complex hybrid IT services before they are delivered. It also progresses forward to encompass ongoing security, assurance, and management for complex services after they are delivered.

As such, this approach forms the basis of a much more realistic cloud computing strategy than the idealistic and tactical ‘imagineeering' that seems increasingly common elsewhere.

The six core competencies include:

  • Model and simulate cloud services before you invest. It is not enough to proclaim "To the cloud!" and declare victory. You need insight into your current service portfolio and your upcoming development projects. You need to know what cloud options you have, and what will actually help solve your problems. You need to know whether SaaS, PaaS, IaaS, private, public, or hybrid is the answer for any given service. You need to model, simulate, and test before you invest to ensure a smooth and cost-effective transition. Only then can you make objective and effective decisions on how, when, what, and why to move to cloud - the right services, the right way, the first time.
  • Assemble cloud services from internal & external sources. Cloud choice is often haphazard and ad hoc, resulting in unproductive, costly, insecure, duplicated, and non-compliant ‘rogue cloud.' Instead, you should intentionally assemble the right cloud choices to create a functional hybrid service environment. This too must start with objective insight into current service definitions and requirements, available service offerings, and possible service providers. Only then can you evaluate cloud options and assemble the right combination of infrastructure resources and/or pre-built services, to deliver the complete cloud service that business needs.
  • Automate manual activity across diverse systems. Cloud computing assumes ‘on-demand self-service,' so automation is essential to accelerate the complex interactions of virtualization, self-service, resource measurement, chargeback, and service delivery. Large enterprises especially must consider how to orchestrate complex services across cloud and traditional platforms; how to automate processes and workloads across public and private clouds, whether IaaS, PaaS, or SaaS; how to integrate element managers and fabrics like VCE Vblock, NetApp FlexPod, or Cisco UCS; and how to automatically manage non-IT resources like power, cooling, and facilities. Enterprise cloud needs unified orchestration capabilities that can automate manual activity across all these environments as one, not just one or two proprietary platforms.
  • Assure service performance across the IT value chain. It is not enough to build a cloud - the complete cloud lifecycle includes running cloud services to assure the availability, compliance, and experience that the business requires. This starts with the alignment of service levels and business service priorities, and extends to real-time, 24x7, service-aware performance monitoring for the entire business service. Moreover, in a complex world of hybrid IT, you need assurance across multiple service tiers; across physical infrastructure and non-x86 components; across elements of SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS; as well as across virtual, private, and public cloud boundaries.
  • Secure cloud with content-aware identity & access controls. Any cloud lifecycle ‘solution' that does not include security is risky at best, downright dangerous at worst. Shifting boundaries of cloud make traditional perimeter protection less effective, so you need to adopt agile identity- and content-aware security, alongside traditional technologies such as data loss prevention and event monitoring. Automated controls will help to reduce risk by ensuring functional isolation and strict audit for data access, system provisioning, configuration changes, and other sensitive activities. And this security should not only support all your cloud services - on-premise, off-premise, public, private, IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, etc. - but should also integrate with traditional IT systems to ensure there are no gaps for the bad guys to walk through.
  • Manage hybrid cloud service according to business needs. It is not enough to build, buy, or use a cloud and call it good; it is not even enough to go just one level higher than the element infrastructure, and look at so-called ‘IT services' in isolation. Instead, you need a top-down approach that values and manages business service outcomes - user productivity, return on assets, carbon production, legal and contractual compliance, energy utilization, resourcing costs, innovation and ideation, cycle time acceleration, performance, and more. You must also continually revisit IT and business service delivery, automating and orchestrating as much as possible to keep removing inefficiencies and manual intervention.

Make no mistake. If all you are doing is virtualizing and automating a corner of your data center with one proprietary platform, then you are destined to create yet another costly and complex silo of duplicated resources and wasted money. If all you are doing is taking existing infrastructure tools and equipping them with people, you are destined to suffer the ever-increasing cost of an army of consultants. If all you are doing is collecting data from an uncontrolled and unplanned ‘cloud of clouds,' then you aren't fixing the problem, you are making it worse.

And if you are adopting cloud computing without planning, without security, without assurance, then your cloud - and perhaps your business - is destined to fail spectacularly.

Because ‘the cloud' is complex, overly simple approaches will not work. IT needs to manage the entire cloud, from end to end - starting with initial service analysis, planning and modeling; through intentional assembly of components and services; automation and orchestration of complex processes; assurance for performance and reliability; security and compliance for data and identity; to business-focused management of the whole business service.

Hopefully this helps give an idea of the reality of how to get to cloud computing - and how CA Technologies can help with everything from modeling to securing and managing your cloud.

At CA Technologies, we have a lot of best practice advice and material on using and providing cloud computing services, across the entire BSI value roadmap - including brochures, presentations, whitepapers, etc., from both CA employees (like myself) and from independent industry experts including research analysts, journalists, and independent consultants. If you want to find more in-depth content on this topic, check out CA.com/cloud for a wealth of detailed material. We can always connect directly with our strategy and technology experts for a great in-depth conversation, too.

Finally, as always, I would love to hear your thoughts on this practical model for cloud. Please go ahead and hit me up, either in the comments below, or on Twitter!

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By: Andi Mann
Andi Mann is vice president of Strategic Solutions at CA Technologies. With over 20 years’ experience across four continents, Andi has deep expertise of enterprise software on cloud, mainframe, midrange, server and desktop systems. Andi has worked within IT departments for governments and corporations...
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