Mar 25, 2011

Takeaway #4 from Cloud Connect 2011 - eBay and Cost Savings

By now, everyone has looked at Neal Sample's presentation from Cloud Connect 2011 (arguably the most important keynote as far as I am concerned) of how eBay makes use of the public cloud. I dare say, that they have shown significant and very real cost savings.

Up until early March, the best we could do was theorize and sort of guesstimate at how much could be saved on costs by making use of a cloud based architecture; how much were servers costing, what was their utilization, how many person hours were spent managing them, etc. vs. spinning up AWS instances and shunting excess or unplanned workload into the public cloud. Many vendors offer their own version of cost/benefit calculators and "financial checklists" but they mostly miss the point: consumers of cloud based services need to be honest with themselves about how they consume IT assets and services before they can really estimate their cost savings. eBay did that. They looked at the whole enchilada, discovered where their efficiencies or inefficiencies lie and showed huge cost savings.

I have no doubt that eBay's model has inspired at least a few organizations to look at their utilization. The trick is for them to decide what is right for the organization. eBay's model certainly isn't a one-size-fits-all. It is up to individual organizations to understand their asset utilization profile, their tolerance to risk, and to see how cloud based services fit into their governance model before making such a leap, however compelling it may be.

Mar 19, 2011

Takeaway #3 from Cloud Connect 2011-Vendor Lock-in

A major concern about migrating to the cloud is vendor lock-in. The chief complaint is that, once a vendor is chosen, it is difficult to switch to another vendor without incurring additional switching costs. This has spurred discussion around standards.

Essentially, consumers want their cake and to eat it too; they want vendors to compete for their business but also want the ability to easily switch vendors should they see fit. From a vendor's perspective, making proprietary APIs available to customers helps reduce the likelihood that they will go to a competitor because of the cost to re-architect their application. Similarly, storing large quantities of data in the cloud ensures higher customer retention because of the high(er) cost of transmitting data from one vendor to another (it is significantly cheaper to get data in than out). And, "Data doesn't like to move". (Quote attributed to an unknown attendee at Cloud Connect.)

From a purely hypothetical and selfish perspective, it is not impossible that vendors would prefer a situation where APIs remain proprietary eliminating portability of applications much like the situation with data storage. It seems that, assuming that standardization is inevitable, storage will be the game winner for many cloud vendors.

Mar 15, 2011

Takeaway #2 from Cloud Connect 2011

On our pre-panel and panel discussion at Cloud Connect, Krishnan Subramanian of CloudAve brought up an interesting point about cloud adoption in Africa and India and even discusses it in his blog. To these I would also add China. Given their populations, there is a massive business opportunity there that may yet be untapped.

Essentially, the masses in Africa, China, and India are well versed in mobile communication due to its relative affordability and even prefer mobile phones over personal computers and laptops. As Krishnan points out, this platform is well suited to the delivery of cloud based services.

However, it is not the mobile end user that will increase adoption/utilization of cloud based services; it is the startups and innovators that recognize the opportunity to deliver mobile applications, and who will leverage cloud based services themselves in such delivery, who will do so.

That said, there is still a major barrier on the path to widespread use of cloud based services in Africa and India: latency (see Cedexis' analysis of cloud latency presented at Cloud Connect 2011 for details). Internet access to the African continent, Chine, and India is generally slow (in the 400ms+ range) due to the high costs of provisioning bandwidth and delivering telecommunications infrastructure, especially in the interior of Africa. This, in effect, is one of the reasons that mobile devices have proliferated: transmission towers only require power and line of sight to transmit data over long distances.

There were over 850 million mobile phones in China and 771 million mobile phones in India in January, 2011, and another 250 million more in Africa at the end of 2008. This should give some idea as to the size of the opportunity.

Mar 11, 2011

Takeaway #1 from Cloud Connect 2011

Cloud Connect this year was excellent and brought with it some maturity to cloud computing.

It seems that there was some consensus about whether it's all about public or private clouds with proponents at both ends of the spectrum. To paraphrase, it's not really about the hardware any more.
  • A purely public cloud is somewhat of a holy grail - a "cloudtopia", to coin a term - and can only occur once all regulatory hurdles, such as privacy concerns, have been overcome. Will this ever happen? No one knows for sure.
  • Private cloud seems to be the solution for those organizations and industries that have a low tolerance to risk and prefer to control their environment. How can these organizations relax their governance?
In my opinion, cloud will converge on a hybrid model due to regulatory and confidentiality requirements. Consumers of cloud based services will make them what they need them to be with a mix of public and private as they see fit.

There is no doubt that adoption is gaining momentum (double and triple digit rates for the current leaders); regulatory authorities and industry must now engage each other to further advance the agenda instead of staring at each other and wondering who will blink first.

Mar 9, 2011

Changing Concepts of Privacy and Self

Larry Clinton, President and CEO of the Internet Security Alliance, brought up an interesting point regarding privacy during his session at Cloud Connect: subsequent generations will think differently about privacy. This may or may not force law makers to reconsider the definition of privacy and their related laws.

To illustrate this, and I'm paraphrasing this next bit, he gave an example of teens using Facebook and the future risk of employers finding unacceptable content during a hypothetical interview process. "By that time, the interviewer will have had their own Facebook page and won't care what's on mine." It is interesting to think that the concept of self, also changed by the Internet, has been redefined to include a digital self or reasonable facsimile (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.) and has blurred personal boundaries.

Privacy law and regulation may need to change. Current privacy laws in Canada, the US, and more extensively in the EU, protect private information. It is not unreasonable to think that, at some point, it will be up to the individual to opt to disclose information of their choosing. That said, the cost of retooling the laws and implementing processes capable of permitting such freedom might be prohibitive.

Mar 7, 2011

Great examples

Great examples, use cases, and scenarios in Jinesh's session on migrating to the cloud. Helps to reinforce the idea that migrating operations to the cloud is a multi-step process and not something that can be done on a whim.

GRC/security in cloud computing

Jinesh just echoed some thoughts I've been incubating regarding security and risk: GRC/security boils down to risk tolerance. If you have a high tolerance to risk, then there is no problem using AWS; if you have low tolerance to risk, involve your security team early and often and make them a part of the decision making process.

Comment from the audience: "My legal wants to redline the AWS contract but I don't think Amazon would go for that." According to Jinesh, Amazon has a legal team that is available to address legal concerns. I will have to look into this given the work that the team at QMUL did on cloud based services contracts.

Basic strategy for moving to the cloud

Flexibility is key. Spinning up instances, regardless of whether they are with AWS or not, needs to be easy, scalable, and allow for various operating systems, development environments/programming languages, and databases.

There are 2 basic strategies that are common to Startups, SMBs, and Enterprises: create new services/apps; migrate existing services/apps.

Justification for the business depends on TCO and must balance the cost of capital to acquire infrastructure vs. the expense of leasing temporary infrastructure.

Going to take a closer look at the AWS "economics" later.

Breakdown of Amazon's cloud based services

Good basic overview of Amazon's cloud based services and how they interrelate. Graphical representation of:
  1. Infrastructure (compute, storage, network, database); includes global physical infrastructure
  2. Platform (parallel processing, payments, content delivery, workforce, messaing, email)
  3. Cross service features (authetication and autorization, monitoring, deployment and automation)
Jinesh also explained how ISPs can resell AWS instances with margin using DevPay. Wondering what the developer/channel/spot market dynamics will be.

Wonder how many of the services are home grown vs. COTS white labeled. Anyone know?

$25 credits for everyone!

Starting off well. Jinesh gave out $25 credits to AWS to all participants.

Goals:
  1. What to move to the cloud?
  2. What services to use, when, and how?
  3. How to build applications to leverage AWS
Morning session is a  lab portion to help participants learn how to set up AWS. Afternoon is devoted to more conceptual topics such as architecture and migration.

Liveblogging @ Cloud Connect

This morning I am attending Jinesh Varia's session on "Moving to the Cloud Step by Step" at Cloud Connect.

I'll try to live blog as best I can.

Mar 3, 2011

Meet the BoD of the CSA, Canada Chapter

After a long nomination period for election to the Board of Directors, it all came down to one candidate per position after a few withdrawals.

The BoD for the CSA, Canada Chapter is:
Chairperson--Brian Baird
Vice Chairperson--Tyson Macaulay
PR/Communications--Pano Xinos
Secretary/Membership--Ron Boulanger
Education--Jon Whittington
Treasurer--Geofferey Chen


Membership is also growing steadily. The CSA, Canada Chapter LinkedIn subgroup is now up to 50 members up from the 23 we had at the time of our kickoff call in mid January.

Cloud Connect

Just a quick note to say that I will be participating in a panel at Cloud Connect on Thursday, March 10th, 2011. The panel is entitled, "A Global View of Connected Computing." The panel is moderated by Chad A. Fentress, Director of Compliance at Accenture. My co-panelists are: Krishnan Subramanian, Analyst at Cloud Ave; Ditlev Bredahl, CEO of OnApp.com; Carlos Viniegra, Head of the Digital Government Unit, Ministry of Public Administration, Government of Mexico; and Jeroen Tjepkema, CEO of MeasureWorks.

Cloud Connect is the one event that brings together cloud customers and cloud operators who are looking to accelerate their cloud strategy while driving growth and innovation. See the latest cloud technologies and learn from thought leaders in Cloud Connect’s comprehensive conference and expo.

Follow my tweets (@pmxinos) from Cloud Connect and other tweets using hashtag #ccevent.