Showing posts with label community cloud computing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label community cloud computing. Show all posts

Oct 18, 2012

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.

Nov 22, 2011

Innovation & Community Clouds--Part 2: Benefits of community clouds

So far, we've discussed what a community cloud looks like at a high level. In this post, we'll see a few of the benefits and take a look at a real-life example.

A community cloud, like any communal resource, is shared among stakeholders that have something in common such as regulatory requirements. This means that the cost of standing up a communal cloud versus individual private clouds can be significantly cheaper due to the division of costs among all participants. Think of it this way:
  • If organizations A, B, and C each implement their own cloud computing environment to meet regulatory requirements, and assuming that these costs are roughly the same, we have $A + $B + $C = 3x the cost.
  • However, if these organizations represent a community with common interests, then they can deploy a single cloud computing environment that meets all of their needs at some reduced cost; thus $(A, B, C) = 2x the cost of individual cloud environments (instead of 3x).
For this to work, the community needs to have some interest in its success, some skin in the game, so to speak. Joint ventures are a good example of such an arrangement. Each participant in the community contributes some consideration such as resources, funds, other assets, or some combination thereof, and ideally in equal proportions.

Another acceptable arrangement could be to outsource the management of the community cloud to a cloud provider. The advantage here is that the provider would be an impartial third party that is bound by contract and that has no preference to any of the customers involved other than what is contractually mandated.

Yet another arrangement would be for one of the participants to provide the cloud based services to its peers as a service provider. We already mentioned that the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) is doing just that and will begin billing in a utility based billing model sometime in the near future.

One last thing that bears mention in this posting is the fact that community clouds can foster innovation. Typically, we think of community clouds as being horizontal in nature and encompassing similar organizations such as hospitals or government, for example. In fact, community clouds are not limited to horizontal integration, they can be vertically integrated like supply chains.

For example, a manufacturer produces a widget that is transported to a warehouse and distributed to retailers who then sell it to consumers. Tools residing in the community cloud can be used to leverage the information stored to serve customers and the supply chain, such as return tracking and just-in-time production and distribution. It is at this intersection of big data and tools that community clouds can really contribute to innovation.

Oct 16, 2011

Innovation & Community Clouds--Part 1: What is a Community Cloud?

In this three part series, I will provide an overview about what community cloud computing is, its benefits, and its disadvantages, and how it applies to real life examples.

We've all heard the term in passing, but, just what is community cloud computing? The NIST defines it as:
"...infrastructure [that] is shared by several organizations and [that] supports a specific community that has shared concerns (e.g., mission, security requirements, policy, and compliance considerations). It may be managed by the organizations or a third party and may exist on premise or off premise."

Put simply, it's a shared service among a group of organizations that have similar needs or regulatory concerns. The shared service can be infrastructure (IaaS), platform (PaaS), or software (SaaS) and can be deployed in a private or hybrid model depending on the requirements and restrictions. These services are subject to the same criteria applied to cloud computing in general: broad network access to elastic pooled resources on-demand (self-service) in a utility based pricing model.

A community cloud can be created within a horizontal, in which a number of similar organizations participate (such as hospitals), or within a vertical, in which related but dissimilar organizations participate (manufacturer, transportation, wholesaler, retailer, end consumer, etc.).

Naturally, in any case where resources are shared among partners, an agreement must necessarily be in place to regulate and manage its usage. In either of the cases above, all participating organizations must agree on the nature of the services (including adherence to the strictest - often regulatory - requirements applicable to the partner organizations), how they will be shared, and on the procurement method for payment purposes.

As an example, the NYSE announced in a recent press release that it had built a cloud computing environment called the "Capital Markets Community Platform" through which they could "...enable customers to easily purchase the computing power required at a given time so they can focus on their core business strategy rather than complex IT infrastructure design and maintenance. It provides direct, on-demand access to the entire NYSE Technologies portfolio of high-performance, low-latency services..." Clearly, the NYSE and its partners and customers are constrained by security and regulatory requirements common to each of them and the service meets the NIST criteria for community cloud computing mentioned above.

In the next post, we will discuss the benefits of community clouds.