Development and Operational Aspects of Clouds

David M. Sherr

Ive looked at clouds from both sides now, From up and down, but still somehow, Its clouds illusions I recall, I really dont know clouds at all. Both Sides Now, Joni Mitchell, 1967

Executive Summary
This paper is for those decision makers who relate to this song where the current IT concept of Clouds is concerned. The purpose here is by the end of a reading, one can know IT Clouds a bit better to make informed, effective decisions about allocation of IT budgets to improve Enterprise Agility and Efficiency. To an Enterprise, the key benefit conveyed by Clouds is agility in applying IT processes and resources to changing market demands. A second, but no less, benefit is lower start up capital costs and scaling capabilities which change the competitive landscape both among established players and how they cope with new entrants. Various Cloud characterisitics are differentiated: Anything (Software, Platform, Infrastructure) as a Service, data storage, virtualization, security and elastic computing.

Overview
There are significant development and operational implications between Clouds and traditional IT processing, particularly with the economic profiles and skill requirements to develop and manage each approach. First, IT Clouds are the next conceptual generation of providing IT capabilities. capabilities with enhanced functionalities that enable agility and efficiency. They are just the present

Clouds embody a services approach to providing functionality. Apps on a smartphone are a prime example. Google mail is yet another example. Conveniently, gmail integrates with all the other Google Cloud Services like Google+, YouTube, and now, for content, Google Driveall through the Chrome OS and browser. Storage and distribution of data are the limiting factors of Clouds. Clouds are virtual data centers. But of course, there must be at least one real data center somewhere that implements the services and stores increasingly larger and larger data sets. Principle 1: Centralize data storage and transactional updates while distributing the work for operational ease with Clouds. Move processes to data, not vice versa. This style IT resource organization is better from a security and an efficiency standpoint. Principle 2: Data distribution impedes processing, and so, must be used sparingly. Although networks have acquired huge bandwidth capabilities, servers and user devices have become even more capable, relatively. Machines can overwhelm the network pipes capacity which adds extreme latency.

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Copyright 2012, David M. Sherr

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Development and Operational Aspects of Clouds

David M. Sherr

Detailed Distinctions
Legend As discussed above there are five important categories to distinguish Traditional IT Approach from the new Cloud Approach. The Legend below summarizes the categories.

Anything as a Service
This Settember 2011 Mell and Grance NIST document definitively lays out the characteristics of Clouds (Public, Private, Community, Hybrid). It is all done in three pages.

Storage
Data at Rest is a big concern of Traditional IT and Clouds alike. Clouds focus on moving processes to data to optimize performance. Traditional IT focuses on replication and distribution strategies only. Data in Motion and Persistence fit both approaches.

Virtualization
Virtualization is an efficiency approach for Tradition IT configuration of Data Centers and Edge Devices. For Cloud extension, it is essential to the effectiveness of deployment of images.

Elastic Computing
This is movement towards commodification of computing resources. Pay for what you use when you use it. Grow and shrink as need be.

Security
For Cloud approach the Cloud Security Alliance has all one needs to be au courant.

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Development and Operational Aspects of Clouds

Charts

David M. Sherr

The Four Box Chart below is the One Page Discussion driver. Each of the 32 color coded bullet points is an important topic of discussion. Just 10 minutes on each implies 5 hour 20 minutes of discussion. This would translate into 3 half-days of meeting. Each half-day would be a 2-hour discussion plus a 1hour summary.

Skills Required

Commentary The color of the text in the above table refers to the distinction categories:

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Development and Operational Aspects of Clouds Anything as a Service

David M. Sherr

Skill requirements to distinguish Traditional IT from Cloud extensions are characterized in that Traditional IT focuses on Process (Delivery) while Cloud extends focus to Output (Service). Both talk of Service Delivery with its respective focus. In the end both are required. For Traditional IT, the strategy is Operational Excellence (continuous improvement). For Cloud it is Product Superiority (continuous adaptation). For the business however, it is Customer Intimacy. The Cloud approach is more opportunistic and makes it easier to form IT Capabilities to address market demands in a timely fashion.

Storage
Storage remains top of mind for CIOs (released week of November 12, 2012): http://www.idevnews.com/stories/5339/Survey-CIOs-Bullish-on-Cloud-Benefits-But-Worry-About-SaaSData-Silos. Privacy and Inaccessibility are top concerns for CIOs. Moving, storing, identifying and accessing data are issues for both Traditional IT and Cloud approaches alike.

Virtualization
Virtualization first appeared in the 60s as a memory management technique to simplify thinking on how to structure programs without worrying about memory limitations. It enhanced programming efficiency as complexity of coding was greatly reduced. Server virtualization is about improving utilization in a world of servers where 10-15% utilization is considered average. Virtualize by managing Server Load Images to boot at will. Five images on a server on average would improve utilization to 50-75%!

Elastic Computing
This is the Amazon Web Services central strategy and a category that they own with Rackspace a distant second place. The economics are knowable and become compelling: http://gigaom.com/cloud/cloudability-says-it-can-give-you-a-clearer-picture-of-your-amazon-cloudspending Typical server boot times: unix, 2-3 minutes; Windows, 3-5 minutes. This all means a Development Environments can be stood up in days, possibly less than a day. Compare that to Traditional IT which requires weeks and many times months. For Operational Environments, it is even more compelling. Increasing capacity is problematic with Traditional IT: long planning cycles, multi-year projects. Retirement of old depleted assets is difficult and fear of unknown user dependencies keeps low performing IT assets operating with high overhead and high complexity in operating environments. Dynamic resizing both up and down on an operational cloud platform makes IT Asset optimization possible on a near continuous basis.

Security
Security is at the center of Clouds being ready for enterprise prime time. A study from three years ago put it in the context of seven proofs of concept at a global financial institution: http://www.newglobalenterprises.net/docs/Considering%20Clouds%20for%20Enterprise%20Use-v1.4.pdf Operational feasibility by 2011 was the conclusion. It is almost 2013, past that and into diffusion because the security issues have been adequately addressed. In some cases, Clouds are better security if they shield corporate DDOS attacks by putting DMZs in Clouds.

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Development and Operational Aspects of Clouds

David M. Sherr

Deeper dive on Anything as a Service The three Service Model ways of delivering Cloud functionality are new terminology drawn from the Mell and Nance NIST Document referencedocument above. SalesForce or Gmail is Software as a Service (SaaS). Force.com or Chrome OS is Platform as a Service (PaaS). Amazon Web Services or Rackspace is Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). It is important to note that the Cloud Approach embodies the Capabilities of Traditional IT for each as a Service model. The reverse is not the case. That is what makes Clouds an extension to Traditional IT.

Capabilities Required

Commentary

Both Traditional IT and Cloud can deliver IT Resources in any as a Service model. The Chart above details the specific IT Capabilities required in order to operate any as a Service modeled environment. The three models build upon each other: SaaS is built on a Platform. A PaaS is implemented within an Infrastructure. An IaaS is delivered with a specific set of Server, Data and Network Resources located within a Data Center connected with Communication Pipes with a set of prescribed processes to configure and deploy combinations of those physical and virtual resources. 2012Q4 Copyright 2012, David M. Sherr Page |5