Consoles, Management Tools and Brokers

The web interfaces of cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) have consistently lagged behind third-party consoles in both user experience and functionality. Third party consoles supported rich meta-data around AWS resources in addition to  integrating CloudWatch and CloudFront support long before the AWS console.

The initial lack of capabilities in the provider interfaces created the market for cloud consoles. The initial crop of cloud consoles, however, has grown beyond simply providing a better interface into the cloud. This market has evolved into cloud brokers that act as the trust layer between the customer and their cloud infrastructures. The evolution from cloud console to cloud broker occurred in less than a year. In 2008, the only way to access Amazon Web Services was a command-line tool or writing your own code. As a result, a number of people built their own custom web interfaces for accessing AWS and a number of third-party tools like enStratus appeared in the market to simplify the job.

As the market changed, the role of a pure console became obsolete. Amazon added a graphical console for AWS. Today, all cloud providers have some form of basic web interface into their services. Though most third-parties still provide better front-ends with more features than the provider consoles, the third-parties have become something much more significant: cloud management tools and cloud brokers.

A cloud management tool adds functionality beyond the simple management of raw cloud assets. RightScale, for example, provides robust auto-scaling beyond what AWS auto-scaling allows. enStratus, on the other hand, provides key management that enables complete encryption of data at rest and in transit in the public cloud without the cloud provider being able to gain access to your keys.

Cloud brokers offer yet another layer of functionality on top of cloud management tools. A cloud broker provides a single interface through which you can manage multiple clouds and share resources across clouds. A cloud broker provides the following capabilities:

• It provides a single interface for interacting with multiple clouds
• It operates outside of the clouds it controls and monitors those clouds
• It detects cloud failures and reacts in some appropriate way to those failures
• It can move infrastructure elements from one cloud (public or private) to another

A cloud broker is a critical piece of your public cloud infrastructure. Minimally, a cloud broker provides a solid business continuity strategy. Without a cloud broker, your infrastructure is at risk against failures in your cloud provider.

The ultimate failure is, of course, the cloud provider going out of business. Outside the cloud, you are somewhat isolated from vendors going out of business. For example, if your non-cloud infrastructure is built entirely on Windows, your Windows desktops and servers will still start up if Microsoft were to declare bankruptcy. If, on the other hand, your infrastructure is running entirely in Azure and you have no cloud broker, you go out of business along with Microsoft. If you are a public company, the argument that “Microsoft will never go out of business” is not sufficient for SOX compliance. Even if it were (or if you are a private company), you should keep in mind that no one ever thought Enron would go out of business or that GM would declare bankruptcy.

A cloud broker can spread your operations across multiple cloud infrastructures and enable real-time disaster recovery into a secondary cloud. If Amazon were to suddenly disappear for some arbitrary reason, enStratus can enable you to bring that infrastructure back up in Rackspace; for example, with little (or even no) data loss.

In the future, cloud brokers should evolve into brokers in the truest sense of the word “broker”. The Holy Grail in the cloud broker world is the ability to automatically decide the least expensive cloud components for efficiently operating your systems and move those components around different public clouds based on pricing and quality of service. Though we’re still a long way from that vision, cloud brokers are creating the building blocks that will make the vision possible.

George Reese is the CTO of enStratus™, the provider of the leading cloud management platform for enterprise applications. George is also the author of the #1 selling cloud computing book “Cloud Applications Architecture“. To learn more about enStratus visit www.enstratus.com

European Enterprise 2.0 Adoption Trends

There are a number of great insights about Web 2.0 tools and technologies in the enterprise space that are provided by the top analyst firms and dedicated to executives & IT professionals.  Since my day-to-day experience at Yooplus is working with the Italian and European markets, I may be able to add some additional insights on Enterprise 2.0 adoption across Europe.

IDC’s View:

“The adoption rate for Enterprise 2.0 will nearly double in Europe in the next 18 months, and nearly half will use Web 2.0 to enhance internal collaboration,” according to a survey conducted by IDC that has been presented in September 2007 at the European ICT Forum in Berlin.  “Surprisingly, Spain, Denmark, and Italy are the early-adopting nations of Europe and will continue to show the highest adoption rates over the next 18 months, even ahead of the UK and Germany,” said Pim Bilderbeek, vice president of European telecommunications and networking consulting for IDC.

McKinsey’s View:

“July 2008. This year’s worldwide survey reveals continuing investments in Web 2.0. Companies that are deriving business value from these tools are now shifting from using them experimentally to adopting them as part of a broader business practice.   Fundamental changes are beginning to take place among the satisfied companies as a result of their ambitious use of Web 2.0. These companies are not only using more technologies but also leveraging them to change management practices and organizational structures. Some are taking steps to open their corporate “ecosystems” by encouraging customers to join them in developing products and by using new tools to tap distributed knowledge. Overall satisfaction of Web 2.0 adoption, in Europe, was split with 22% reporting the lowest dissatisfaction and 20% reporting highest satisfaction, leaving 58% somewhere in the middle.”

What I See:

• Managers and professionals don’t want to wait for IT or consultants to get around to implementing their social enterprise solutions: they are looking for rapid adoption and deployment. They want to test and determine the value, benefits and competitive advantages quickly
• They want to pick, choose and customize their social enterprise environments, they want the flexibility of all the tools (blogs, wikis, rss, tags, search, im, voip, etc) integrated in one social platform
• They want to empower their teams to collaborate and share information, ideas, knowledge, communications and productivity not just internally, but also externally with partners, vendors and customers
• The social enterprise paradigm is not just for the big corporations but for all sizes and industries, from start-ups to non-profits, from waste managements to financial services as it is for every department within companies, from marketing to human resources.

Adoption of Enterprise 2.0 or the “social enterprise” is happening across Europe, some countries more aggressively than others, but now I am beginning to see return on the investment and real business benefits for all sizes of companies.  There are also a volume of tools and technologies available from high-end consultant assisted solutions to rapid adoption and deployment of social enterprise platforms. Because after all “sharing is better!”

Thomas Christel  is co-founder and VP of marketing at Yooplus srl, a social enterprise company, providing the we+ workspace, a team collaboration and social software platform with all the Web 2.0 tools built-in (blogs, wiki, rss and tags). The we+ workspace provides the ability to capture and share knowledge, provide project/activity transparency and improve team communications, collaboration and productivity. To learn more visit, www.yooplus.com or contact Thomas at t.christel {at} yooplus(.)com

CloudCamp San Francisco Wrap Up

Nestled between the the high-gloss conferences that were Structure 08 and Velocity 2008 In San Francisco last month; was the “little unconference that could,” CloudCamp!

When I say that CloudCamp was my favorite event of the three, it’s not just because I helped organize it. What made CloudCamp so cool was that it was totally participant driven, and boy did the 300+ participants “bring the funk.” CloudCamp was pure grassroots energy — the enthusiasm about the topic was palpable.

Unlike the other events with their set agendas, at CloudCamp the participants both created and facilitated the sessions. After some opening remarks, attendees were invited to volunteer to present or facilitate a discussion on a topic. We had 27 volunteers step up to run a session (without any prodding!) and easily filled the 30 available slots (10 rooms, compliments Microsoft x 3 one-hour-long sessions).

The list of presentation/discussion topics ran the gamut. A few were:

• What is Cloud Computing?
• 1 Billion Page Views: Hacks to Scale Big on the Cloud
• Cloud Storage; Unifying Cloud Storage APIs
• SQL Database Clusters in the Cloud
• Simple DB or SQL: Which Will Dominate the Cloud?
• Connect the Clouds: Integration Between Clouds and Local Applications
• No Cure for Cancer: Managing the Expectations of Cloud Computing Today and Tomorrow

Here’s the entire session board:

I held a session entitled “How Cloud Impacts Enterprise Computing.” I was joined by about 20 other CloudCampers to explore a range of topics including the emergence of Private Clouds, standardization of Cloud Computing environments, Cloud security issues, and more. One of the most interesting quotes of the evening came from Geoffrey Routledge in my session when he asked “After all, what is the difference between a really well run virtualized environment and a Cloud?”

CloudCamp managed to attract its share of Cloud heavy hitters; many of the folks that attended also presented at both Velocity 2008 and Structure 08. After the sessions, folks hung around networking, chatting and catching up for quite some time.

What the Future Holds

The energy level was extremely high at each of these events, and I was left with the distinct impression that we as attendees were witnessing a decisive turning point for Cloud Computing as a market — a coming-out party of sorts.

I expect each of these first-time events will continue long into the future., and I’ve already learned about three new Cloud-focused events just since June! For our part, we certainly hope to make CloudCamp an ongoing tradition. The next CloudCamp, CloudCamp London, will take place on July 16th, and additional dates/locations are in the works. If you’re interested in bringing CloudCamp to your area, please do get in touch.

 Sam Charrington is VP of Product Management & Marketing at Appistry. Sam is responsible for Appistry’s overall marketing efforts, including marketing & brand strategy, product marketing and product management. Appistry is the pioneer and leading provider of application fabric software. Sam blog’s about Cloud and Grid Computing at In The Loop