TDWI Cloud BI Solution Summit Roundup

Last week, I attended the TDWI Cloud BI Solution Summit as a speaker. I was fortunate enough to sit through some of the other presentations and I learned something interesting about the market place for Big Data and Cloud: not everyone is ready for it. This may sound like a given; American organisations are way ahead of Canadian organisations, but I found that there are still some fairly big fish out there that are still grappling with these concepts in the US.

Initially, I figured that the audience, composed mainly of senior IT people, middle managers, and executives, was up to speed with cloud computing and that its use was a forgone conclusion. This was clearly not the case.

There were questions from attendees such as:

"What is cloud BI?"
"Where is the data?"

And, a response to informal polls showed that:

• The majority of organisations represented did not have a "cloud BI solution".
• Few were considering moving their BI to the cloud.
• Licensing is still a concern.
• Performance is a concern.
• Data lifecycle management in the cloud is a concern.

So, it would seem that, while Cloud Computing (well, at least IaaS and SaaS; PaaS is coming into its own) has entered the vernacular of IT departments and some executive level suites, Big Data is still not there. Gartner has Big Data *just* entering the phase they call the "Peak of Inflated Expectations" which means that we are now looking to Big Data as a means of increasing our competitiveness without necessarily having the skills and knowledge of how to do so.

This leaves us in an interesting situation: if we can't do it ourselves, we have to subcontract to those who can. What are the costs? How is this agreement governed? If there are no stellar insights, whose fault is it? Is it even someone's fault? The fact that these questions exist is interesting because we're at the same stage we were at when the web came to prominence, when e-commerce was new, when the concept of outsourcing caught on, and more recently, as Cloud Computing became a new IT service delivery model.

The evolution of Big Data and its adoption will be interesting to follow. But one thing is for sure: look for Big Data to leverage public, low cost, commodity compute resources, and for more and more public cloud service providers to offer such services. After all, AWS has already launched such a service...

NYSE Euronext's Capital Markets Community Platform: Public or Community Cloud?

Last year, NYSE Euronext (NYSE) launched their Capital Markets Community Platform (Community Platform, as abbreviated by NYSE) for financial institutions doing business with and on the exchange. This week, VMware announced on its blog that the platform was rolled out in a data centre located near London to service customers in Europe. VMware has dubbed this a public cloud, but it seems that the characteristics of this deployment more closely resemble those of a community cloud.

Let's ignore, for the moment, that the service's name also includes the word "platform" and focus on VMware's assertion that the Capital Markets Community Platform is a public cloud.

A review of the features of the offering on NYSE's website indicates that its characteristics are more closely aligned to a community cloud as they address specific requirements of a subset of cloud computing customers, let's call them a "community", and are not suitable for consumption by the general public.

Recall that, according to the NIST, a public cloud is "...provisioned for open use by the general public. It may be owned, managed, and operated by a business, academic, or government organization, or some combination of them. It exists on the premises of the cloud provider," whereas a community cloud is "provisioned for exclusive use by a specific community of consumers from organizations that have shared concerns... It may be owned, managed, and operated by one or more of the organizations in the community, a third party, or some combination of them, and it may exist on or off premises."

Clearly, both definitions apply. However, because a public cloud is for use by the public at large and a community cloud is specifically designed for use by users with similar needs, such as security or some other concern, the Capital Markets Community Platform is definitely a community cloud, and not a public cloud. The product information page also goes so far as to specify target customers (Agency Broker, Investment bank, Low-latency Hedge Fund, All sizes of Financial Services Firms), their specific needs, and how the Community Platform addresses them.

NYSE Euronext is right to bet on a community cloud because its importance will only grow in the coming years. Government and the healthcare verticals represent other important sectors that can benefit from a community cloud as they have multiple users with specific legal and regulatory requirements that must be met.

More generally, community clouds are not only for verticals with rigid requirements. Rather, the private sector can benefit from integrating vertical operations into a community cloud environment as this would open up many opportunities for investment and innovation. For example, the retail sector's value chain is interesting. It includes manufacturers, logistics companies, distributors, and retail outlets, all of which could cooperate to improve just-in-time stocking or manage returns more efficiently, just to pick a couple of possible opportunities.

Live Blog -- Cloud Launch: Val Bercovici

Netapp's Val Bercovici, AKA Big Data Czar, says that, in the cloud hierarchy, data is foundational and most valuable and that we can reach it and share more easily than ever before. It is because of this that we are able to use it in ever more creative ways such as Big Data (yes, big B, big D) to create value for our organisations.

He also said that the amount of data stored tends to exceed the capability of the network to carry it and why analytics and Big Data are done locally to the data rather than remotely. Cisco and telecom companies will be happy to note that uploading and downloading data is not simple and subject to the contraints of the network forcing any organisation or person who wants to move these quantities of data to buy more bandwidth.

Ultimately, the infrastructure planning and architecture should depend on where data will be stored, your governance, minimizing data movement, and maximizing data use.

Live Blog -- Cloud Launch: Jeff Seifert

Cisco's John Seifert discussed their cloud strategy and the rationale behind building a pool of compute and storage resources that is embodied in the UCS and how workloads and storage can be moved dynamically from data centre to data centre using the fabric.

Seifert pointed out that Cisco has been developing flexible IT for some time now and has reduced the time to deliver from 6-8 weeks to 2-3 weeks to around 15 minutes.

The cloud is not just one thing, according to Seifert, because of regulatory environments, the needs for security, connectivity, cost structure etc. And all of this over a public-->private continuum. So true.

Live Blog -- Cloud Launch: Peter Coffee

Peter Coffee kicking off this afternoon by NOT talking about cloud directly... And talking about social media and email. More importantly, Coffee said that Canadian brands can be global brands today because of social media. As a measure of this theory, Facebook traffic has exploded whereas coporate website traffic has declined markedly. Google "Yourfavoritedomainname + sucks" and you'll find out exactly how much customers don't like an organisation.

A few thoughts from Coffee on social customers:

• Prospective service providers seek public feedback
• Buyers collaborate on competitor research
• Customers tell the world when they're not happy

Companies need to react and adapt to this new competitive environment and push the customer satisfaction metric to the lowest possible level in the organisation.

Coffee also peered into the future by using a healthcare model that used event driven demand to shape the dlivery of services. He gave another example of using educational modeling by using instantaneous quizzing of students to determine whether the content is effective. This could be interesting because the nature of our demand for services has changed: service providers are being asked to provide services when desired. This is important for healthcare because on-demand healthcare is causing the congestion we see in emergency rooms and walk-in clinics.

IT departments, according to Coffee, do not adhere to the concept of social customers and are basically the opposite of social. Of course, this is the ultimate reason why cloud computing still faces adoption challenges in Canada and continues to do so, albeit to a lesser extent, in the US. How does IT adapt to this in order to become a purveyor of value instead of a consumer of capital?

Even though we haven't heard much about community clouds recently, Coffee brought up the concept of securing environments to the highest common level as a way of showing value to a given market segment and quoted Forrester as stating that multi-tennant architectures can be more secure than individual VMs. Luckily, he qualified this by saying transparency is the key to earning trust from customers. Trust is an important concept because cloud + security are not commonly understood yet even though AAA and the CIA triad are basic concepts that can be applied to cloud computing. Shock! Horror!

Live Blog -- CLoud Launch: Morning Panel

Reuven Cohen made an empassioned point about how there is no such thing as a "Canadian cloud" and put Canadian telecom providers on the spot for their lack of flexibility in offerings and mobile plans. Apparently, Reuven maxed out his mobile data plan pretty quickly...

Also according to Cohen, the NIST definition was created as a way for the US FedGov to procure the typical cloud based services as a direct result of a mandate from Vivek Kundra, first Federal CIO. According to one audience member, this has only helped bigger companies sell into the government and has excluded SMBs.

Misha Nossik added that risk aversion has prevented Canadian governments from adopting cloud computing even though they are trying desperately to hang onto their empires. Competition and efficiency is a major driver for cloud adoption in the US whereas Canada might not be facing this same pressure (yet?).

It seems that, with respect to government, maybe we should be discussing the need to consolidate services and share them on the whole rather than just outsource everything in an effort to use cloud computing. Here, there is a distinct lack of a cloud computing roadmap and maturity model to judge progress. Is it possible that, if we were to show the way to move forward and show the current state at various stages, adoption would be greater and simpler to promote?

Audience member invoked the Patriot Act in his point about how our legislation and regulations can help Canada's ability to become "data Switzerland". Cohen pointed out that this has been done before and that it was a failure because no one wanted it. With respect to Canada, he said, the cost structure is simply not competitive while Andrew Fisher added that the scale is simply not there (yet?).

It boils down to how Canadian companies can add value to cloud computing and an audience member agreed by adding that when [we] created the Canadarm, [we] decided we would not be NASA but would add value in a different way. Shahab showed how the Province of New Brunswick has become the call centre capital of Canada in this same way. Rough consensus, either by active advocacy or by passive non-opposition, seems to be that SaaS is where Canada can excel and add the value we're so desperately looking for.

Let's get some clarity and focus on our capabilities, first, I say. Then we can talk about where to add value. We can't get anywhere without first knowing where we start from and then knowing where we're going.

Thanks to Nossik for stopping the self/Canadian bashing.

Live Blog -- Cloud Launch: Ian Rae

Ian Rae put up a slide with a less than glowing endorsement on Canadian capabilities and self-worth (along with those of Australians, no judgement)... Can the cloud help fix that?

Rae's working to build Canada's cloud ecosystem by contributing to it directly with CloudOps and "...building long term supportable solutions for just in time, right-sized IT solutions."

CloudOps' goal is to provide Canadian organisations with a home grown alternative to cloud services based in other countries. It's up to Canadians to provide decent cloud based services otherwise the $$$ will just go elsewhere.

Live Blog -- Cloud Launch: Shahab Khan

Shahab Khan is working to help promote cloud computing in Canada with Startup Canada.

Despite everything discussed this morning, Khan says that many startups are not aware of which cloud based services are available to them, or even that they exist. As he suggests, this is because of the lack of consistent nomenclature and cloudwashing. Hopefully, this is not the case for tech based startups...

Cash is king. Truer words have never been spoken. Most small businesses are cash based operations that don't employ many service providers beyond their accountant and lawyer (if that).

Live Blog -- CLoud Launch: Martin Kratz

One of the perennial questions around cloud computing is how tio protect intellectual property in a world where everything is offered as a service and scalable.

Martin Kratz, of Bennet Jones LLP, is pointing out that contracts for cloud based services are not the same as traditional outsourcing or service contracts because the cloud vendor you deal with is probably relying on other cloud vendors as well to keep their own costs down by treating every customer the same.

Kratz contradicts Fisher by saying that risk should not necessarily be embraced without appropriate mitigation and that customization is not necessarily de rigueur: "terms of service are often non-negotiable and tend to favour the service provider".

Kratz outlines some legal issues to consider when contracting with cloud service providers:

• Service security
• Trade secret protection information confidentiality
• Data integrity
• Compliance with privacy laws and regs
• Assurance of data segregation

Having presented with IP lawyers and discussed many issues around cloud computing with them over the past few years, it seems that there are three overarching issues (according to them): data integrity and protection of intellectual property; management of risk via contractual vehicles; and how the two previous issues are different for traditional services vs. cloud based services.

One of the most common issues related to those Kratz mentioned has to do with information lifecycle management.

1. Does the organisation have an ILM policy?
2. How is it managed?
3. Is it enforced?
4. How is data stored in the cloud impacted by this policy?
5. Is the cloud service provider adhereing to their customers' ILM requirements?
6. Who has ultimate control over the data?

Deep questions for any organisation that wants to take advantage of cloud computing.

Live Blog -- Cloud Launch: Andrew Fisher

Andrew Fisher of Wesley Clover pointed out that "Personalisation is a major driver of cloud...I can pick and choose exactly what I want...[and pay for on a] per user or feature basis." [This] "...drives a lot of the cloud services available today."

Fisher echoes Matthews' statement that barriers to entry are dropping but, in Canada, our investment tends to be more angel driven than VC driven. Clearly, the time is right to invest in startups that make use of cloud computing as well as those who are innovating in cloud in Canada. Smaller teams, as Fisher says, are easier to deal with and are more focused and dedicated, but the risk is that they aren't able to scale as rapidly as they are needed to.

Point taken. Investment can take the form of procurement from a startup as well as outright acquisition. This is probably more likely to promote growth in the industry in Canada.

Live Blog -- Cloud Launch: Reuven Cohen, International Man of Mystery

Reuven Cohen pointed out that China is the "...largest base of net users in the world."

Facts:

• 513M internet user; milestone in 2011 (factually correct but does not include mobile users which would add up to 900M total)
• 718M by 2013 (not including mobile users)
• 52.7% of total population

Power consumption of one venture in central China includes power generated from 3 coal power plants and the Three Gorges power dam. The CO2 emissions from this one venture alone must be staggering.

Cohen pointed out that Canada does not have a 30% ownership stake requirement for foreign investment nor does it staff its resident companies with military personnel.

So why then, is investment in tech so low in Canada? The US notwithstanding, we've heard that we have more highly educated and dedicated people here in Canada, and a more favorable environment for investment and startups that should promote a healthy and innovative startup environment.

Live Blog -- Cloud Launch: Shane Shick of ITWorldCanada

Shane Schick from ITWorldCanada gave an interesting overview of the state of cloud computing in Canada. This is a refreshing take on the Canadian perspective and doesn't show the stereotypical 'security is our biggest concern'; rather, legacy IT is becoming more and more inportant.

Interestingly, Shick said CIOs don't see cloud computing as a way to cut costs but rather see it as being a way to increase their organisation's flexibility. The real challenge is how to redeploy human resources to help increase the value of the organisation.

It seems that our slow pace of adopting cloud computing is related to the perception that Canadians are cautious. This sentiment is pervasive and was even the target of a recent article in Canadian Business. Basically, Canadians don't accept unfettered capitalism and have a lower tolerance to risk; but this translates into more stable and long lasting enterprises.

Live blog: Cloud Launch -- Driving the Cloud

One last thought from Terry Matthews about cloud computing: "Opportunities around the world with cloud and mobile are just unbelievable. More than I can talk about today because it's everywhere..." He discussed how mobile has evolved and become so important in day-to-day life.

Mobile is clearly a major driver of innovation for cloud computing. The requirements for platforms, instant scalability, and innovation are high while barriers are dropping. The challenge is for us to promote adoption and facilitate the innovation.

Live Blog: Cloud Launch -- Canada's National Cloud Conference

The Canadian Cloud Council's 2nd national conference justy kicked off with Sir Terry Matthews sharing his experiences creating businesses (91 including the hotel in which we are meeting today) and innovation. The quality and calibre of speakers at this event promises to make it very interesting.

In Matthews opener, he suggested that cloud computing can impact every level of the value chain: from electricity generation (everything uses power) all the way through to the hardware [and end user]. He went on to say that "The opportunities...for new companies out there are good," and, "New companies create new jobs." Despite the ongoing economic concerns, this stands as a compelling endorsement for job creation, innovation, and investment in Canada.

Strong start to Cloud Launch. The conversation these next two days is going to be extraordinary.

Open Letter to the Cloud Community

Over the past few years, there have been many advances in cloud computing and much effort is being made by consumers and vendors alike to make the best of what is widely considered to be the next step in e-business. However, like with every good thing, there are challenges to advancing the general knowledge and confusion largely due to misconceptions about cloud computing in Canada in general. 

There is a growing number of organizations that make use of the general lack of knowledge about cloud computing in Canada in an effort to enter the cloud computing market. The term cloudwashing has been bandied about to describe what these organizations do in their efforts to gain a share of mind with Canadian consumers. Some organizations have even taken the moniker "cloud provider" in order to describe the products and services they provide as being cloud computing; they typically offer some sort of product “as a service”. The litmus test here is whether these products and services adhere to the basic characteristics of cloud computing such as those published by the NIST. Making data available to citizens or allowing them to use that data to write an app under an open government initiative is a great idea. But those two things in and of themselves do not constitute cloud computing. Part of the blame lies with the industry at large. That said, we should concede that there are such things as "cloud based services" that have cloud computing-like properties but are not, strictly speaking, IaaS, PaaS, or SaaS. 

One thing to note, is that much of the content generated by these organizations borrows from cloud computing to justify how their offering really is cloud computing (hence the cloudwashing). This is not a problem, in and of itself, but when competing vendors approach the same customer with different definitions of cloud computing, there can be confusion resulting in a delay in the adoption of cloud computing. This, I submit is one reason (maybe low on the list behind security, GRC, vendor lock-in, and standards concerns) why adoption has lagged in Canada, economic issues notwithstanding.

Everyone is trying to move cloud computing forward in Canada. There is little doubt about its benefits, at this point. However, cloudwashing does not help the cause and results in confusion in the minds of consumers. It is this confusion that is causing the hesitation in the marketplace and hindering educational efforts. There has to be some consensus in the market about what cloud computing is, what a cloud based service is, and what is simply not within the realm.

The Great Cloud Divide

It has been interesting to watch the evolution of cloud computing over the past few years. It has morphed from the X-as-a-service model to include "cloud based services", those services that are offered in a hosted model; it has been extended, to cloudwash those services that don't even remotely qualify; and now it is showing signs of speciation in that major players are aligning to one flavour or another.

We are speaking, of course, about alignment on open source vs. proprietary software, one vendor vs. another and the alliances that interconnect or separate them.

Open sourcing one's software suite has been a proven method to increase the use of software and generate revenue through services. Typically, this has been done by offering a pared down version of the software and holding back some features for a paid premium version. Red Hat showed that this is a feasible business model and has come a long way since its early days to offer a free version and a supported version.

Interestingly, Citrix open sourced CloudStack and committed to continue development of CloudStack with the community on the open source version. The only supposed difference between CloudStack and CloudPlatform? The logo.

Citrix also partnered with AWS to "...seamlessly connect corporate data centres to Amazon Web Services..." and, given the fact that AWS also partnered with Eucalyptus, this is a safe bet that AWS is building a community around hybrid cloud deployments.

Now VMware has acquired Nicira, a virtual network infrastructure software vendor, who has strong ties to OpenStack. Is this VMware's response to Citrix's moves in cloud computing? VMware certainly does not appear to be making moves to open source vCloud Director so it would stand to reason that they would lean towards an open source competitor of CloudStack's to counter Citrix. It certainly seem that lines have been drawn in the sand.

In all of this kerfuffle, there have been questions about what AWS plans to do. As mentioned, AWS is banking on growing its business by reaching out to private cloud customers and integration of their provider's products. This much is obvious from the Eucalyptus and Citrix partnerships. Therefore the likely outcome is the status quo, one that would be favored by most. The other possible outcome is that AWS open sources its products. I don't pretend to know what outcome could possible look like but I suspect that the likelihood is fairly low given the revenue streams AWS has built over the years.

So, it appears we have serious competition between VMware and Citrix for all things cloud. At first blush, it appears that Citrix may have the upper hand by aligning itself with AWS "early on". It is probably only a matter of time before VMware makes similar moves.

Adding to this complexity, Microsoft and Cisco are in the wings looking to make a mark with their own products. Of the two Microsoft may be better positioned to gain market share against all comers due to the fact that it has a full suite of market leading products that are already offered in a SaaS model and that may be deliverable in a SaaS model in a private environment in the near future as well.

Carriers, Performance, and Connections

There are three things that I've been thinking about lately:

1. Performance management for cloud computing,
2. Cloud computing and carriers (i.e., telecom companies such as telephony and cable), and
3. The connection between the two.

The level of interest in what carriers are doing has been sufficient to warrant the attention of industry analysts and entire conference tracks devoted to discussion of the impact carriers are having on cloud computing. Depending on your perspective, you're probably in one of two camps: those who think carriers are too large, slow, and generally old school to offer cloud computing solutions, and those who think carriers are well placed to run them. For simplicity, let's call them cloud carriers. I know, a bit cheesy.

Carriers are typically thought of as large organizations that are not as agile as smaller organizations. The common analogy is that of trying to turn the Titanic on a dime: not so easy. Yet, here are organizations that have a wide ranging clientele that includes the likes of governments (federal, state, provincial, municipal), educational institutions and large enterprise, as well customers in the the mid and mass market segments. Not to mention that they have the scale available to fund and staff product development projects of the scale required to develop and launch cloud based services. This puts them in a unique situation with respect to offering end-to-end services ranging from customer premise equipment, connectivity, data centre, hosted servers, and all manner of cloud based services. Cloud computing, is not a huge stretch when taking this into consideration.

For many organizations, performance management forms a core part of their service delivery strategy. However, these same organizations don't typically control much of the infrastructure that is used to deliver their services beyond the edge of their network; non-core services are offered by various vendors such as ISPs, data centre providers, etc., which makes resolving problems more challenging because there are more intermediaries that affect the service. Throw in the various SLAs that are contracted, and the effective SLA drops to below the lowest contracted SLA.

Since carriers are able to offer a range of services, they are in the unique position of being able to address performance problems globally making it easier for customers to obtain assistance and becoming the proverbial "one throat to choke". Several carriers have already made bets that their customers will buy cloud based services from them and have either acquired smaller service providers or invested in the technologies and infrastructure required to deliver those services.

Despite the fact that AWS has clearly claimed the lead in the cloud service provider market, it is too early to count out carriers: they have the hallmarks of an integrated service provider as well as the means to deploy services and support them. Look to carriers to make an even bigger push into cloud services in the next few years.

The Need for a National Cloud Interest Group in Canada

It's been a while coming. Many people with whom I have spoken have been saying that there is little in the way of direction in Canada with respect to cloud computing. Such an organization would help to shape Canada's nascent cloud market and would help the Government of Canada develop its national strategy for cloud computing including how legislation would fit into the picture.

Over the past few years, several events that are focused on cloud computing or that have dedicated tracks related to cloud computing have cropped up in the US (see Cloud Connect, Interop, etc.). However, there have been few, if any, national non-partisan conferences aimed at helping Canadian organizations make decisions about cloud computing, whether these organizations are consumers or service providers, for profit or not for profit, government, of private sector.

It is pretty well known that Canada lags behind the United States in terms of IT innovation and adoption rates and cloud computing innovation and adoption is no different. At this point, it is fair to say that we are anywhere between 1-3 years behind. Suffice it to say, Canada needs to catch up. And, as long as there is no unifying organization that can provide some direction and cohesion in the market, it will remain behind with a fractured market and consumers who are confused as to offerings in the market place. Shaping the market and guiding users should be an overarching goal for any national organization.

Another way a national cloud interest group would help advance cloud computing in Canada is by advocating it with the Canadian Government, both from its position as a potential user and its position as legislator and regulator. Relatively speaking, we are still in the early days of cloud computing, but it is not the wild west. Governments are trying to make sense of this new business model. What are the impacts on privacy? What is the impact on e-commerce? What is the impact on the economy? What about jobs? For example, Microsoft recently commissioned a study that examined the question of jobs: the implication is that cloud computing will create 70,000 jobs in Canada by 2015. A national interest group would be in a position to accumulate relevant information and prepare briefs for government officials who are responsible for the day-to-day management of the country and its laws and regulations.

Lastly, it is of paramount importance that any emergent national cloud interest group remains impartial with respect to service providers and not promote one's services over another's; transparency will be key in maintaining impartiality so as to avoid any perception of conflict of interest. This impartiality will be important to maintain the thought leadership that it will inevitably generate through its activities and exposure to the cloud community in Canada and the United States.