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EVERY SILVER LINING HAS A CLOUD

From STORAGE Magazine Vol 9, Issue 2 - August 2009

WHETHER EVERYONE IN THE STORAGE INDUSTRY CAN BE SAID TO BE ON 'CLOUD NINE' RIGHT NOW, AS THE RECESSION CONTINUES TO BITE HARD, IS REALLY A MOOT POINT. BUT CERTAINLY CLOUD COMPUTING HAS BEEN ON EVERYONE'S LIPS OF LATE AS A KEY TECHNOLOGY, WITH A SKY-HIGH FUTURE. BRIAN WALL REPORTS

According to analyst firm IDC, worldwide IT cloud services spending is projected to grow by a factor of three - from $16.2 billion in 2008 to $42.3 billion in 2012 - as enterprise IT shifts away from the use of dedicated infrastructures toward a shared, virtualised utility service model. Within this market, storage-related cloud services are predicted to account for 5% of 2008 spending - a figure projected to grow to 13% of overall IT cloud services spending by 2012, representing anticipated growth of nearly sevenfold.

And, according to that other leading analyst Gartner, cloud computing heralds an evolution of business no less influential than e-business. Gartner maintains that the very confusion and contradiction that surrounds the term 'cloud computing' signifies its potential to change the status quo in the IT market.

Gartner defines cloud computing as a style of computing where massively scalable ITrelated capabilities are provided 'as a service', using Internet technologies to multiple external customers - which sums it up quite nicely.

"During the past 15 years, a continuing trend toward IT industrialisation has grown in popularity, as IT services delivered via hardware, software and people are becoming repeatable and usable by a wide range of customers and service providers," says Daryl Plummer, managing vice president and Gartner Fellow. "This is due, in part, to the commoditisation and standardisation of technologies; in part to virtualisation and the rise of service-oriented software architectures; and, most importantly, to the dramatic growth in popularity of the Internet."

Plummer says that taken together, these three major trends constitute the basis of a discontinuity that will create a new opportunity to shape the relationship between those who use IT services and those who sell them. Essentially, it will mean that users of IT-related services will be able to focus on what the service provides them, rather than how the services are implemented or hosted. Gartner maintains that, although names for this type of operation have come into vogue at different times - utility computing, software as a service (SaaS) and application service providers, etc - none has garnered widespread acceptance as the central theme for how IT-related services can be delivered globally.

The types of IT services that can be provided through a cloud are wide-reaching. Compute facilities provide computational services, so that users can use central processing unit (CPU) cycles without buying computers. Storage services provide a way to store data and documents without having to continually grow farms of storage networks and servers. SaaS companies offer CRM services through their multi-tenant shared facilities, so clients can manage their customers without buying software. These represent only the beginning of options for delivering all kinds of complex capabilities to both businesses and individuals.

"The focus has moved up from the infrastructure implementations and on to the services that allow for access to the capabilities provided," states David Mitchell Smith, vice president and Gartner Fellow. "Although many companies will argue how the cloud services are implemented, the ultimate measure of success will be how the services are consumed and whether that leads to new business opportunities."

Gartner predicts that the impact of cloud computing on IT vendors will be huge. Established vendors have a great presence in traditional software markets and, as new Web 2.0 and cloud business models evolve and expand outside of consumer markets, a great deal could change. "The vendors are at very different levels of maturity," points out David Cearley, vice president and Gartner Fellow. "The consumer-focused vendors are the most mature in delivering what Gartner calls a 'cloud/Web platform', from technology and community perspectives, but the businessfocused vendors have rich business services and, at times, are very adept at selling business services."

Gartner maintains that cloud computing is very much an evolving concept that will take many years to mature fully. It also underlines the fact that the cloud-computing model is not simply the next generation of the Internet. "When organisations cross the threshold between the Internet as a communications channel and the deliberate delivery of service over the Internet," adds Plummer, "then we truly start to head for an economy based on consumption of everything from storage to computation to video to finance deduction management."

HYPE AND MISCONCEPTION

Of course, anything so hyped as 'cloud' is bound to provoke extreme reactions and hyperbole. For example, Phil Worms, director marketing, iomart Hosting, recounts how a participant at a recent technology seminar stood up and boldly stated that cloud computing signalled the end of the data centre industry and the need for data centres, as "we would all now simply plug into the cloud". When asked to elaborate, he gave the impression that he genuinely believed that cloud computing would result in the abolition of data centres - all data centres. Worms uses this as a real example of the confusion and hype that appears to have set in around all things cloud. "Whilst the delegate's point about 'plugging into the cloud' has factual basis, the assumption that data centres will no longer exist is quite obviously a work of fiction," he points out. "Of course they will exist! Where is the cloud hosted?" His take on cloud computing? "A resilient, high availability 'infrastructure as a service' solution for organisations, which offers selected outsourcing at lower cost than in-house.

For many of today's businesses, the benefits of cloud computing, of a centralised computing infrastructure that can be easily accessed via the internet, are just too compelling to ignore, he continues. "Server virtualisation, storage, 'play and pay as you go' web hosting, integrated communications are a sample of the current services that are delivered as cloud offerings and all of them, if utilised properly, should deliver substantial operation and financial savings." Industry figures indicate hardware and operating costs are reduced by as much as 50% and energy costs by 80%, saving more than £2,500 per year for every server workload virtualised. "When you add this to the fact that IT services can be delivered on demand, and that server utilisation can be improved by a ratio of 10:1 or better, the benefits are hugely attractive." But as with the anything that 'appears too good to be true', there is a catch, he warns. "And the catch, quite simply with cloud hosting, is that you lose control. When you are dependent on someone else for the technology, you are effectively placing your business in the hands of a third party. The recent spate of well publicised data centre outages has really highlighted this fact and caused pain for many businesses."

But can outages be avoided? "The simple and truthful argument is 'no'," he contends. "Whilst cloud service providers can take every practical measure possible to prevent downtime, there is always a chance, no matter how slim, that an event might occur that is totally outside of their control. In my opinion, If cloud computing is to succeed and deliver the benefits that it so obviously promises, then the market must accept that trust and understanding will be the keys that unlock its potential."

BURDEN OF RESPONSIBILITY

Cloud service providers must be totally honest about the underlying infrastructure that they operate - eg, the data centres, the power and network supplies, the failover options and, perhaps more importantly, outline what happens should things go wrong. "Likewise, customers must understand about redundancy and, more importantly, the costs associated with the provision of a fully redundant solution," he adds. "The burden of responsibility for uptime lies not only in the cloud providers' hands, but also in the customers' hands as well, since they themselves provide services to their clients. If we assume that cloud computing is basically a 'sexier 'term for a form of outsourcing, then, at the end of the day, it all comes down to the agreed levels of service that you can expect from the supplier for the money you are willing to pay."

For IBM, this much is clear: cloud computing represents a true paradigm shift in the way IT and IT-enabled services are delivered and consumed by businesses. Cloud computing is an emerging computing model by which users can gain access to their applications from anywhere, through any connected device. A user-centric interface makes the cloud infrastructure supporting the applications transparent to users.

ECONOMIES OF SCALE

The applications reside in massively scalable data centres where computational resources can be dynamically provisioned and shared to achieve significant economies of scale. Thanks to a strong service management platform, the management costs of adding more IT resources to the cloud can be significantly lower than those associated with alternate infrastructures.

What, then, is driving the adoption of cloud computing? Many factors, including the proliferation of smart mobile devices, high-speed connectivity, higher density computing and data-intensive Web 2.0 applications. As a result, vendors across the IT industry have announced cloud computing efforts of varying capabilities and among corporate clients there is an increasing interest in aspects of the cloud, such as infrastructure outsourcing, software as a service key processes as a service and next-generation distributed computing.

IBM seeks to help these clients adopt cloud computing technologies and management techniques to improve the efficiency and flexibility of their data centres. With proven expertise dating back to its pioneering position in the virtualisation space during the 1960s, BM has recently introduced its vision of a data centre that supports a dynamic infrastructure.

THE CHALLENGE AHEAD

This brings together the strengths of the webcentric cloud computing model and today's enterprise data centre. It provides request-driven, dynamic allocation of computing resources for a mix of workloads on a massively scalable, heterogeneous and virtualised infrastructure. Furthermore, it is optimised for security, data integrity, resiliency and transaction processing. Ultimately, the challenge of making cloud a winner is now very much on the shoulders of businesses looking to embrace the best of the available technology out there, in order to cut their costs, and become more agile and flexible, particularly in a 'down' economy. In reaching that goal, they are faced with many hard choices, not least identifying the possible risks cloud can also bring (see box). We are entering waters that are part chartered, part wild and mostly unknown. Meanwhile, there’s clear evidence of clouds that are starting to roll back, delivering much sunshine for those who are bold - and shrewd - enough to see where the rainbow and pot of gold may be found.