2011 was a great year for technology innovation. The science of data center design and operations continued to improve, the move away from mixed-use buildings used as data centers continued, the watts/sqft metric took a second seat to overall kilowatts available to a facility or customer, and the idea of compute capacity and broadband as a utility began to take its place as a basic right of citizens.
However, there are 5 areas where we will see additional significant advances in 2012.
1. Data Center Consolidation. The US Government admits it is using only 27% of its overall available compute power. With 2094 data centers supporting the federal government (from the CIO’s 25 Point Plan to Reform Fed IT Mgt), the government is required to close at least 800 of those data centers by 2015.
The lesson is not lost on state and local governments, private industry, or even internet content providers. The economics of operating a data center or server closet, whether in costs of real estate, power, hardware, in addition to service and licensing agreements, are compelling enough to make even the most fervent server-hugger reconsider their religion.
2. Cloud Computing. Who doesn’t believe cloud computing will eventually replace the need for a server closets, cabinets, or even small cages in data centers? The move to cloud computing is as certain as the move to email was in the 1980s.
Some IT managers and data owners hate the idea of cloud computing, enterprise service busses, and consolidated data. Not so much an issue of losing control, but in many cases because it brings transparency to their operation. If you are the owner of data in a developing country, and suddenly everything you do can be audited by a central authority – well it might make you uncomfortable…
A lesson learned while attending a fast pitch contest during late 2009 in Irvine, CA… An enterprising entrepreneur gave his “pitch” to a panel of investment bankers and venture capital representatives. He stated he was looking for a $5 million investment in his startup company.
A panelist asked what the money was for, and the entrepreneur stated “.. and $2 million to build out a data center…” The panelist responded that 90% of new companies fail within 2 years. Why would he want to be stuck with the liability of a data center and hardware if the company failed? The gentleman further stated, “don’t waste my money on a data center – do the smart thing, use the Amazon cloud.”
3. Virtual Desktops and Hosted Office Automation. How many times have we lost data and files due to a failed hard drive, stolen laptop, or virus disrupting our computer? What is the cost or burden of keeping licenses updated, versions updated, and security patches current in an organization with potentially hundreds of users? What is the lead time when a user needs a new application loaded on a computer?
From applications as simple as Google Docs, to Microsoft 365, and other desktop replacement applications suites, users will become free from the burden of carrying a heavy laptop computer everywhere they travel. Imagine being able to connect your 4G/LTE phone’s HDMI port to a hotel widescreen television monitor, and be able to access all the applications normally used at a desktop. You can give a presentation off your phone, update company documents, or nearly any other IT function with the only limitation being a requirement to access broadband Internet connections (See # 5 below).
Your phone can already connect to Google Docs and Microsoft Live Office, and the flexibility of access will only improve as iPads and other mobile devices mature.
The other obvious benefit is files will be maintained on servers, much more likely to be backed up and included in a disaster recovery plan.
4. The Science of Data Centers. It has only been a few years since small hosting companies were satisfied to go into a data center carved out of a mixed-use building, happy to have access to electricity, cooling, and a menu of available Internet network providers. Most rooms were 
designed to accommodate 2~3kW per cabinet, and users installed servers, switches, NAS boxes, and routers without regard to alignment or power usage.
That has changed. No business or organization can survive without a 24x7x265 presence on the Internet, and most small enterprises – and large enterprises, are either consolidating their IT into professionally managed data centers, or have already washed their hands of servers and other IT infrastructure.
The Uptime Institute, BICSI, TIA, and government agencies have begun publishing guidelines on data center construction providing best practices, quality standards, design standards, and even standards for evaluation. Power efficiency using metrics such as the PUE/DCiE provide additional guidance on power management, data center management, and design.
The days of small business technicians running into a data center at 2 a.m. to install new servers, repair broken servers, and pile their empty boxes or garbage in their cabinet or cage on the way out are gone. The new data center religion is discipline, standards, discipline, and security. Electricity is as valuable as platinum, just as cooling and heat are managed more closely than inmates at San Quentin. While every other standards organization is now offering certification in cabling, data center design, and data center management, we can soon expect universities to offer an MS or Ph.D in data center sciences.
5. The 4th Utility Gains Traction. Orwell’s “1984” painted a picture of pervasive government surveillance, and incessant public mind control (Wikipedia). Many people believe the Internet is the source of all evil, including identity theft, pornography, crime, over-socialization of cultures and thoughts, and a huge intellectual time sink that sucks us into the need to be wired or connected 24 hours a day.
Yes, that is pretty much true, and if we do not consider the 1000 good things about the Internet vs. each 1 negative aspect, it might be a pretty scary place to consider all future generations being exposed and indoctrinated. The alternative is to live in a intellectual Brazilian or Papuan rain forest, one step out of the evolutionary stone age.
The Internet is not going away, unless some global repressive government, fundamentalist religion, or dictator manages to dismantle civilization as we know it.
The 4th utility identifies broadband access to the ‘net as a basic right of all citizens, with the same status as roads, water, and electricity. All governments with a desire to have their nation survive and thrive in the next millennium will find a way to cooperate with network infrastructure providers to build out their national information infrastructure (haven’t heard that term since Al Gore, eh?).
Without a robust 4th utility, our children and their children will produce a global generation of intellectual migrant workers, intellectual refugees from a failed national information sciences vision and policy.
2012 should be a great year. All the above predictions are positive, and if proved true, will leave the United States and other countries with stronger capacities to improve their national quality of life, and bring us all another step closer.
Happy New Year!
With dozens of public cloud service providers on the market, offering a wide variety of services, standards, SLAs, and options, how does an IT manager make an informed decision on which provider to use? Is it time in business? Location? Cost? Performance?
Pacific-Tier Communications met up with Jason Read, owner of CloudHarmony, a company specializing in benchmarking the cloud, at Studio City, California, on 25 October. Read understands how confusing and difficult it is to evaluate different service providers without an industry-standard benchmark. In fact, Read started CloudHarmony based on his own frustrations as a consultant helping a client choose a public cloud service provider, while attempting to sort through vague cloud resource and service terms used by industry vendors.
“Cloud is so different. Vendors describe resources using vague terminology like 1 virtual CPU, 50 GB storage. I think cloud makes it much easier for providers to mislead. Not all virtual CPUs and 50 GB storage volumes are equal, not by a long shot, but providers often talk and compare as if they are. It was this frustration that led me to create CloudHarmony” explained Read.
So, Read went to work creating a platform for not only his client, but also other consultants and IT managers that would give a single point of testing public cloud services not only within the US, but around the world. Input to the testing platform came from aggregating more than 100 testing benchmarks and methodologies available to the public. However CloudHarmony standardized on CentOS/RHEL Linux as an operating system which all cloud vendors support, “to provide as close to an apples to apples comparison as possible” said Read.
Customizing a CloudHarmony Benchmark Test
Setting up a test is simple. You go to the CloudHarmony Benchmarks page, select the benchmarks you would like to run, the service providers you would like to test, configurations of virtual options within those service providers, geographic location, and the format of your report.
Figure 1. Benchmark Configuration shows a sample report setup.
“CloudHarmony is a starting point for narrowing the search for a public cloud provider” advised Read. “We provide data that can facilitate and narrow the selection process. We don’t have all of the data necessary to make a decision related to vendor selection, but I think it is a really good starting point.
Read continued “for example, if a company is considering cloud for a very CPU intensive application, using the CPU performance metrics we provide, they’d quickly be able to eliminate vendors that utilize homogenous infrastructure with very little CPU scaling capabilities from small to larger sized instance.”
Cloud vendors listed in the benchmark directory are surprisingly open to CoudHarmony testing. “We don’t require or accept payment from vendors to be listed on the site and included in the performance analysis” mentioned Read. “We do, however, ask that vendors provide resources to allow us to conduct periodic compute benchmarking, continual uptime monitoring, and network testing.”
When asked if cloud service providers contest or object to CloudHarmony’s methodology or reports, Read replied “not frequently. We try to be open and fair about the performance analysis. We don’t recommend one vendor over another. I’d like CloudHarmony to simply be a source of reliable, objective data. The CloudHarmony performance analysis is just a piece of the puzzle, users should also consider other factors such as pricing, support, scalability, etc.”
During an independent trial of CloudHarmony’s testing tool, Pacific-Tier Communications selected the following parameters to complete a sample CPU benchmark:
- CPU Benchmark (Single Threaded CPU)
- GMPbench math library
- Cloud Vendor – AirVM (MO/USA)
- Cloud Vendor – Amazon EC2 (CA/USA)
- Cloud Vendor – Bit Refinery Cloud Hosting (CO/USA)
- 1/2/4 CPUs
- Small/Medium/Large configs
- Bar Chart and Sortable Table report
The result, shown above in Figure 2., shows a test result including performance measured against each of the above parameters. Individual tests for each parameter are available, allowing a deeper look into the resources used and test results based on those resources.
In addition, as shown in Figure 3., CloudHarmony provides a view providing uptime statistics of dozens of cloud service providers over a period of one year. Uptime statistics showed a range (at the time of this article) between 98.678% availability to 100% availability, with 100% current uptime (27 October).
Who Uses CloudHarmony Benchmark Testing?
While the average user today may be in the cloud computing industry, likely vendors eager to see how their product compares against competitors, Read targets CloudHarmony’s product to “persons responsible for making decisions related to cloud adoption.” Although he admits that today most users of the site lean towards the technical side of the cloud service provider industry.
Running test reports on cloud harmony is based on a system of purchasing credits. Read explained “we have a system in place now where the data we provide is accessible via the website or web services – both of which rely on web service credits to provide the data. Currently, the system is set up to allow 5 free requests daily. For additional requests, we sell web service credits where we provide a token that authorizes you to access the data in addition to the 5 free daily requests.”
The Bottom Line
“Cloud is in many ways a black box” noted Read. “Vendors describe the resources they sell using sometimes similar and sometimes very different terminology. It is very difficult to compare providers and to determine performance expectations. Virtualization and multi-tenancy further complicates this issue by introducing performance variability. I decided to build CloudHarmony to provide greater transparency to the cloud.”
And to both vendors and potential cloud service customers, provide an objective, honest, transparent analysis of commercially available public cloud services.
Check out CloudHarmony and their directory of services at cloudharmony.com.
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In an online “blogger” press conference on 5 August, Erik Bansleben, Ph. D., Program Development Director, Academic Programs at the University of Washington outlined a new certificate program offered by the university in Cloud Computing. The program is directed towards “college level and career professionals” said Bansleben, adding “all courses are practical in approach.”
Using a combination of classroom and online instruction, the certificate program will allow flexibility accommodating remote students in a virtual extension of the residence program. While not offering formal academic credit for the program, the certificates are “well respected locally by employers, and really tend to help students a fair amount in getting internships, getting new jobs, or advancing in their current jobs.”
The Certificate in Cloud Computing is broken into three courses, including:
- Introduction to Cloud Computing
- Cloud Computing in Action
- Scalable & Data-Intensive Computing in the Cloud
The courses are taught by instructors from both the business community and the University’s Department of Computer Science & Engineering. Topics within each course are designed to provide not only an overview of the concepts and value of cloud computing in a business sense, but also includes project work and assignments.
To bring more relevance to students, Bansleben noted “part of the courses will be based on student backgrounds and student interests.” Dr. Bill Howe, instructor for the “Scalable & Data-Intensive Computing in the Cloud” course added “nobody is starting a company without being in the clouds.” With the program covering topical areas such as:
- Cloud computing models: software as a service (SaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), infrastructure as a service (laaS) and database as a service
- Market overview of cloud providers
- Strategic technology choices and development tools for basic cloud application building
- Web-scale analytics and frameworks for processing large data sets
- Database query optimization
- Fault tolerance and disaster recovery
Students will walk away with a solid background of cloud computing and how it will impact future planning for IT infrastructure. In addition, each course will invite guest speakers from cloud computing vendors and industry leaders to present actual case studies to further apply context to course theory. Bansleben reinforced the plan to provide students with specific “use cases for or against using cloud services vs. using your own hosted services.”
Not designed as a simple high level overview of cloud computing concepts, the program does require students to have a background in IT networks and protocols, as well as familiarity with file manipulation in system environments such as Linux. Bansleben stated that “some level of programming experience is required” as a prerequisite to participate in the certificate program.
The Certificate in Cloud Computing program starts on 10 October, and will cost students around $2,577 for the entire program. The program is limited to 40 students, including both resident and online. For more information on University of Washington certificate programs or the Certificate in Cloud Computing contact:
Erik Bansleben, Program Development Director
ebansleben@pce.uw.edu
Every week a new data center hits the news with claims of greater than 100,000 square feet at >300 watts/square foot, and levels of security rivaling that of the NSA. Hot and cold aisle containment, marketing people slinging terms such as PUE (Power Utilization Efficiency), modular data centers, containers, computational fluid dynamics, and outsourcing with such smoothness and velocity that even used car salesmen regard them in complete awe.
Don’t get me wrong, outsourcing your enterprise data center or Internet site into a commercial data center (colocation), or cloud computing-supported virtual data center, is not a bad thing. As interconnections between cities are reinforced, and sufficient levels of broadband access continues to find its way to both business and residences throughout the country – not to mention all the economic drivers such as OPEX, CAPEX, and flexibility in cloud environments, the need or requirement to maintain an internal data center or server closet makes little sense.
Small Data Centers Feel Pain
In the late 1990s data center colocation started to develop roots. The Internet was becoming mature, and eCommerce, entertainment, business-to-business, academic, government IT operations found proximity to networks a necessity, and the colocation industry formed to meet the opportunity stimulated by Internet adoption.
Many of these data centers were built in “mixed use” buildings, or existing properties in city centers which were close to existing telecommunication infrastructure. In cities such as Los Angeles, the commercial property absorption in city centers was at a low, providing very available and affordable space for the emerging colocation industry.
The power densities in those early days was minimal, averaging somewhere around 70 watts/square foot. Thus, equipment installed in colocation space carved out of office buildings was manageable through over-subscribing air conditioning within the space. The main limitation in the early colocation days was floor loading within an office space, as batteries and equipment cabinets within colocation areas would stretch building structures to their limits.
As the data center industry, and Internet content hosting continued to grow, the amount of equipment being placed in mixed-use building colocation centers finally started reaching a breaking point in ~2005. The buildings simply could not support the requirement for additional power, cooling, backup generators needed to support the rapidly developing data center market.
Around that time a new generation of custom-built data center properties began construction, with very little limitation on either weight, power consumption, cooling requirements, or creativity in custom designs of space to gain greatest PUE factors and move towards “green” designs.
The “boom town” inner-city data centers then began experiencing difficulty attracting new customers and retaining their existing customer base. Many of the “dot com” customers ran out of steam during this period, going bankrupt or abandoning their cabinets and cages, while new data center customers fit into a few categories:
- High end hosting and content delivery networks (CDNs), including cloud computing
- Enterprise outsourcing
- Telecom companies, Internet Service Providers, Network Service Providers
With few exceptions these customers demanded much higher power densities, physical security, redundancy, reliability, and access to large numbers of communication providers. Small data centers operating out of office building space find it very difficult to meet demands of high end users, and thus the colocation community began a migration the larger data centers. In addition, the loss of cash flow from “dot com” churn forced many data centers to shut down, leaving much of the small data center industry in ruins.
Data Center Consolidation and Cloud Computing Compounds the Problem
New companies are finding it very difficult to justify spending money on physical servers and basic software licenses. if you are able to spool up servers and storage on demand through a cloud service provider – why waste the time and money trying to build your own infrastructure – even infrastructure outsourced or colocated in a small data center? It is simply a bad investment for most companies to build data centers – particularly if the cloud service provider has inherent disaster recovery and backup utility.
Even existing small eCommerce sites hitting refresh cycles for their hardware and software find it difficult to continue one or two cabinet installations within small data centers when they can accomplish the same thing, for a lower cost, and receive higher performance refreshing in a cloud service provider.
Even the US Government, as the world’s largest IT user has turned its back on small data center installations throughout federal government agencies.
The goals of the Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative are to assist agencies in identifying their existing data center assets and to formulate consolidation plans that include a technical roadmap and consolidation targets. The Initiative aims to address the growth of data centers and assist agencies in leveraging best practices from the public and private sector to:
- Promote the use of Green IT by reducing the overall energy and real estate footprint of government data centers;
- Reduce the cost of data center hardware, software and operations;
- Increase the overall IT security posture of the government; and,
- Shift IT investments to more efficient computing platforms and technologies.
To harness the benefits of cloud computing, we have instituted a Cloud First policy. This policy is intended to accelerate the pace at which the government will realize the value of cloud computing by requiring agencies to evaluate safe, secure cloud computing options before making any new investments. (Federal Cloud Computing Strategy)
Adding similar initiatives in the UK, Australia, Japan, Canada, and other countries to eliminate inefficient data center programs, and the level of attention being given to these initiatives in the private sector, it is a clear message that inefficient data center installations may become an exception.
Hope for Small Data Centers?
Absolutely! There will always be a compelling argument for proximity of data and applications to end users. Whether this be enterprise data, entertainment, or disaster recovery and business continuity, there is a need for well built and managed data centers outside of the “Tier 1” data center industry.
However, this also means data center operators will need to upgrade their existing facilities to meet the quality and availability standard/requirements of a wired global network-enabled community.
Internet and applications/data access is no longer a value-added service, it is critical infrastructure. Even the most “shoestring” budget facility will need to meet basic standards published by BICSI (Ex BICSI 2010-002), the Telecom Industry Association (TIA-942), or even private organizations such as the Uptime Institute.
With the integration of network-enabled everything into business and social activities, investors and insurance companies are demanding audits of data centers, using audit standards such as SAS70 to provide confidence their investments are protected with satisfactory operational process and construction.
Even if a data center cannot provide 100,000 square feet of 300 watt space, but can provide the local market with adequate space and quality to meet customer needs, there will be a market.
This is particularly true for customers who require flexibility in service agreements, custom support, a large selection of telecommunications companies available within the site, and have a need for local business continuity options. Hosting a local Internet exchange point or carrier Ethernet exchange within the facility would also make the space much more attractive.
The Road Ahead
Large data centers and cloud service providers are continuing to expand, developing their options and services to meet the growing data center consolidation and virtualization trend within both enterprise and global Internet-facing community. This makes sense, and will provide a very valuable service for a large percentage of the industry.
Small data centers in Tier 1 cities (in the US that would include Los Angeles, the Northern California Bay Area, New York, Northern Virginia/DC/MD) are likely to find difficulty competing with extremely large data centers – unless they are able to provide a very compelling service such as hosting a large carrier hotel (network interconnection point), Internet Exchange Point, or Cloud Exchange.
However, there will always be a need for local content delivery, application (and storage) hosting, disaster recovery, and network interconnection. Small data centers will need to bring their facilities up to international standards to remain competitive, as their competition is not local, but large data centers in Tier 1 cities.
- ESBaaS Will Emerge in Enterprise Clouds. Enterprise service bus as a service will begin to emerge within enterprise clouds to allow common messaging within applications among different organizational units. This will further support standardization within an enterprise, as well as reduce lead times for applications development.
Enterprise Cloud Computing will Accelerate Data Center Consolidation. As enterprises and governments continue to deal with the cost of operating individual data centers, consolidation will become a much more important topic. As the consolidation process is planned, further migration to cloud computing and virtualized environments will become very attractive – if not critical – to all organizations.- Desktop Virtualization. As we become more comfortable with Google Apps, Microsoft Office 365, and other desktop replacement environments, the need for high-powered desktop workstations will be reduced to power users. In addition to the obvious attraction for better data protection and disaster recovery, the cost of expensive workstations and local application licenses makes little sense. The first migration will be for those who are primarily connected via an organizational LAN, with road warriors and mobile users following as broadband becomes more ubiquitous.
- SME Data Center Outsourcing into Public Clouds. Small companies requiring routine data center support, including office automation, servers, finance applications, and web presence, will find it difficult to justify installing their own equipment in a private or public colocation center. In fact, it is unlikely savvy investors will support start up companies planning to operate their own data center, unless they are in an industry considered a very clear exception to normal IT requirements.
- Cloud Computing and Cloud Storage will Look to PODs and Containers. Microsoft and Google have proven the concept on a large scale, now the rest of the cloud computing and data center industry will take notice and begin to consider compute and storage capacity as a utility. As a utility the compute, storage, switching, and communications components will take advantage of greater efficiencies and design flexibility of moving beyond the traditional data center concrete. This will further support the idea of distributed cloud computing, portability, cloud exchanges, and cloud spot markets in 2012…
2010 was a great year for cloud computing. The hype phase of cloud computing is closing in on maturity, as the message has finally hit awareness of nearly all in the Cxx tier. And for good reason. The diffusion of IT-everything into nearly every aspect of our lives needs a lot of compute, storage, and network horsepower.
And,… we are finally getting to the point cloud computing is no longer explained with exotic diagrams on a white board or Powerpoint presentation, but actually something we can start knitting together into a useful tool.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the United States takes cloud computing seriously, and is well on the way to setting standards for cloud computing, at least in the US. The NIST definitions of cloud computing are already an international reference, and as that taxonomy continues to baseline vendor cloud solutions, it is a good sign we are on the way to product maturity.
Now is the Time to Build Confidence
Unless you are an IY manager in a bleeding-edge technology company, there is rarely any incentive to be in the first-mover quadrant of technology implementation. The intent of IT managers is to keep the company’s information secure, and provide the utilities needed to meet company objectives. Putting a company at risk by implementing “cool stuff” is not the best career choice.
However, as cloud computing continues to mature, and the cost of operating an internal data center continues to rise (due to the cost of electricity, real estate, and equipment maintenance), IT managers really have no choice – they have to at least learn the cloud computing technology and operations environment. If for no other reason than their Cxx team will eventually ask the question of “what does this mean to our company?”
An IT manager will need to prepare an educated response to the Cxx team, and be able to clearly articulate the following:
- Why cloud computing would bring operational or competitive advantage to the company
- Why it might not bring advantage to the company
- The cost of operating in a cloud environment versus a traditional data center environment
- The relationship between data center consolidation and cloud computing
- The advantage or disadvantage of data center outsourcing and consolidation
- The differences between enterprise clouds, public clouds, and hybrid clouds
- The OPEX/CAPEX comparisons of running individual servers versus virtualization, or virtualization within a cloud environment
- Graphically present and describe cloud computing models compared to traditional models, including the cost of capacity
Wish List Priority 1 – Cloud Computing Interoperability
It is not just about vendor lock-in. it is not just about building a competitive environment. it is about having the opportunity to use local, national, and international cloud computing resources when it is in the interest of your organization.
Hybrid clouds are defined by NIST, but in reality are still simply a great idea. The idea of being able to overflow processing from an enterprise cloud to a public cloud is well-founded, and in fact represents one of the basic visions of cloud computing. Processing capacity on demand.
But let’s take this one step further. The cloud exchange. We’ve discussed this for a couple of years, and now the technology needs to catch up with the concept.
If we can have an Internet Exchange, a Carrier Ethernet Exchange, and a telephone exchange – why can’t we have a Cloud Exchange? or a single one-stop-shop for cloud compute capacity consumers to go to access a spot market for on-demand cloud compute resources?
Here is one idea. Take your average Internet Exchange Point, like Amsterdam (AMS-IX), Frankfurt (DE-CIX), Any2, or London (LINX) where hundreds of Internet networks, content delivery networks, and enterprise networks come together to interconnect at a single point. This is the place where the only restriction you have for interconnection of networks and resources is the capacity of your port/s connecting you to the exchange point.
Most Internet Exchange Points are colocated with large data centers, or are in very close proximity to large data centers (with a lot of dark fiber connecting the facilities). The data centers manage most of the large content delivery networks (CDNs) facing the Internet. Many of those CDNs have irregular capacity requirements based on event-driven, seasonal, or other activities.
The CDN can either build their colocation capacity to meet the maximum forecast requirements of their product, or they could potentially interconnect with a colocated cloud computing company for overflow capacity – at the point of Internet exchange.
The cloud computing companies (with the exception of the “Big 3”), are also – yes, in the same data centers as the CDNs. Ditto for the enterprise networks choosing to either outsource their operations into a data center – or outsource into a public cloud provider.
Wish List – Develop a cloud computing exchange colocated, or part of large Internet Exchange Points.
Wish List Extra Credit – Switch vendors develop high capacity SSDs that fit into switch slots, making storage part of the switch back plane.
Simple and Secure Disaster Recovery Models
Along with the idea of distributed cloud processing, interoperability, and on-demand resources comes the most simple of all cloud visions – disaster recovery.
One of the reasons we all talk cloud computing is the potential for data center consolidation and recovery of CAPEX/OPEX for reallocation into development and revenue-producing activities.
However, with data center consolidation comes the equally important task of developing strong disaster recovery and business continuity models. Whether it be through producing hot standby images of applications and data, simply backing up data into a remote (secure) location, or both, disaster recovery still takes on a high priority for 2011.
You might state “disaster recovery has been around since the beginning of computing, with 9 track tapes copies and punch cards – what’s new?”
What’s new is the reality of disaster recovery is most companies and organizations still have no meaningful disaster recovery plan. There may be a weekly backup to tape or disk, there may even be the odd company or organization with a standby capability that limits recovery time and recovery point objectives to a day or two. But let’s be honest – those are the exceptions.
Having surveyed enterprise and government users over the past two years, we have noticed that very, very few organizations with paper disaster recovery plans actually implement their plans in practice. This includes many local and state governments within the US (check out some of the reports published by the National Association of State CIOs/NASCIO if you don’t believe this statement!).
Wish List Item 2 – Develop a simple, really simple and cost effective disaster recovery model within the cloud computing industry. Make it an inherent part of all cloud computing products and services. Make it so simple no IT manager can ever again come up with an excuse why their recovery point and time objectives are not ZERO.
Moving Towards the Virtual Desktop
Makes sense. If cloud computing brings applications back to the SaaS model, and communications capacity and bandwidth are bringing delays –even on long distance connections, to the point us humans cannot tell if we are on a LAN or a WAN, then let’s start dumping high cost works stations.
Sure, that 1% of the IT world using CAD, graphics design, and other funky stuff will still need the most powerful computer available on the market, but the rest of us can certainly live with hosted email, other unified communications, and office automation applications. You start your dumb terminal with the 30” screen at 0800, and log off at 1730.
If you really need to check email at night or on the road, your 3G->4G smart phone or netbook connection will provide more than adequate bandwidth to connect to your host email application or files.
This supports disaster recovery objectives, lowers the cost of expensive workstations, and allows organizations to regain control of their intellectual property.
With applications portability, at this point it makes no difference if you are using Google Apps, Microsoft 365, or some other emerging hosted environment.
Wish List Item 3 – IT Managers, please consider dumping the high end desktop workstation, gain control over your intellectual property, recover the cost of IT equipment, and standardize your organizational environment.
More Wish List Items
Yes, there are many more. But those start edging towards “cool.” We want to concentrate on those items really needed to continue pushing the global IT community towards virtualization.
On December 9th Vivek Kundra, the U.S.Chief Information Officer (USCIO), released a “25 Point Plan to Reform Federal Information Technology Management.” Kundra acknowledges the cost of IT systems to the American people (~~$600billion during the past decade), and the reality that even with this investment the federal government lags behind private industry in both functionality and governance.
Highlights of the plan include a push towards data center consolidation, a “cloud first” policy for new IT projects (as well as IT refresh),a search and destroy mission looking for deadbeat and under-performing projects, as well as using professional program managers and acquisition specialists to streamline the purchase and implementation of IT systems.
Sounds Good, But is it Real?
It is very possible the document was impressive and quite encouraging due to the talents of writers assigned to spin Kundra’s message. On the other hand, it all makes a lot of, well, plain good sense.
For example, on the topic of public private partnerships, and engaging industry early in the planning process.
Given the pace of technology change, the lag between when the government defines its requirements and when the contractor begins to deliver is enough time for the technology to fundamentally change, which means that the program may be outdated on the day it starts …
…In addition, requirements are often developed without adequate input from industry, and without enough communication between an agency’s IT staff and the program employees who will actually be using the hardware and software…
…As a result, requirements are too often unrealistic (as to performance, schedule, and cost estimates), or the requirements that the IT professionals develop may not provide what the program staff expect – or both.
This makes a lot of sense. Face it, the government does not develop innovation or technology, private industry develops innovation and government, as the world’s largest IT users, consumes that technology.
And since the government is often so large, it is near impossible to for the government to collect and disseminate best practices and operational “lessons learned” at the same pace possible within private industry. In private industry aggressive governance and cooperation with vendors are essential to survival and ultimate success as a company.
On Innovation
Small businesses in the technology space drive enormous innovation throughout the economy . However, the Federal Government does not fully tap into the new ideas created by small businesses…
…smaller firms are more likely to produce the most disruptive and creative innovations. In addition, with closer ties to cutting edge, ground-breaking research, smaller firms often have the best answers for the Federal Government
Kundra goes on to acknowledge the fact small companies are where innovation happens within any industry or market. While Cisco, Microsoft, Google, and others such as Computer Associates have a wide range of innovative products and solutions, a large percentage of those ideas are from acquisitions absorbed in an effort to reinforce the large company’s market strategy.
Small, innovative companies produce disruptive ideas and technologies, and the federal government should not be prevented from exposure and potential purchase of products being developed outside of the Fortune 500. Makes sense for the government, makes sense for the small business community.
Technology Fellows
Within 12 months, the office of the Federal CIO will create a technology fellows program and the accompanying recruiting infrastructure. By partnering directly with universities with well-recognized technology programs, the Federal Government will tap into the emerging talent pool and begin to build a sustainable pipeline of talent.
While projects sponsored by the National Science Foundation and Defense Advanced Project Research Agency (DARPA) have been around for a while, this is still a very refreshing attitude towards motivating both students and those who lead our students.
The American technology industry, while still the best in the world, works kind of like Cisco or Google. With a few exceptions, the skills and talent those companies need to maintain the competitive dominance in their market must be imported from other countries. if you do not believe this, take a drive through Palo Alto, Milpitas, or stop for lunch on Tasman Drive in Santa Clara. English is not always the dominant language.
However, that does not need to be the case, nor does the US tech brain pool need to revolve around Silicon Valley. if the US Government and Kundra are true to this idea, then partnering with all levels of education throughout the United States to develop either high level technologies, or even small components of those technologies can only serve to increase the intellectual and subsequent technology capacity of our country.
People and companies rarely lose motivation when faced with attainable challenges or success – by nature they will gain additional and higher thresholds for additional successes.
Cloud Computing is the Next Cyclone of Technology
Overall, everything in the 25 point plan eventually points back to cloud computing. Like a low pressure system sucking in hot air and developing circulation, the CIO’s cloud computing strategy will continue to attract additional ideas and success for making Information and Communications Technology (ICT) efficient, and an enabling tool for our future growth.
Cloud Computing, within the context of the 25 point plan, enables data center consolidation, software innovation, public private partnerships, efficiency, transparency, “green” everything,
We need to replace these “stovepiped” efforts, which too often push in inconsistent directions, with an approach that brings together the stakeholders and integrates their efforts…
The cloud computing cyclone will not stop with the federal government. Once the low begins to strengthen and develop circulation, it will continue sucking state government initiatives, local governments, the academic community, and industry into the “eye.”
The financial benefits of converting wasted operational and capital budgets currently spent on building and maintaining inefficient systems into innovation and product development, or better program management for government and educational programs are essential in promoting economic growth, not to mention reducing a nightmare national deficit.
Hopping on the “Kundra Vision” Bandwagon
As Americans we need to expose ourselves to Kundra’s programs and strategy. No strategy is perfect, and can benefit from the synergies of a country with 300 million citizens who have ideas, visions, and strong desires to contribute to a better America. We need to push our ideas to both local and federal thought leaders, including the US CIO’s office. Push through your representatives, through blogs, through your technology vendors.
If Kundra is good for his word, and this is the new vision for an American ICT-enabled future, your efforts will not be wasted.
Recent discussions with government ICT leadership related to cloud computing strategies have all brought the concept of Enterprise Service Bus as a Service into the conversation.
Now ESBs are not entirely new, but in the context of governments they make a lot of sense. In the context of cloud computing strategies in governments they make a heck of a lot of sense.
Wikipedia defines an ESB as:
In computing, an enterprise service bus (ESB) is a software architecture construct which provides fundamental services for complex architectures via an event-driven and standards-based messaging engine (the bus). Developers typically implement an ESB using technologies found in a category of middleware infrastructure products, usually based on recognized standards.
Now if you actually understand that – then you are no doubt a software developer. For the rest of us, this means that with the ESB pattern, participants engaging in service interaction communicate through a services or application “bus.” This bus could be a database, virtual desktop environment, billing/payments system, email, or other services common to one or more agencies. The ESB is designed to handle relationships between users with a common services and standardized data format.
New services can be plugged into the bus and integrated with existing services without any changes to the core bus service. Cloud users and applications developers will simply add or modify the integration logic.
Participants in a cross-organizational service interaction are connected to the Cloud ESB, rather than directly to one another, including: government-to-government, citizen-to-government, and business-to-government. Rules-based administration support will make it easier to manage ESB deployments through a simplified template allowing a better user experience for solution administrators.
The Benefits to Government Clouds
In addition to fully supporting a logical service-oriented architecture (SOA), the ESBaaS will enhance or provide:
- Open and published solutions for managing Web services connectivity, interactions, services hosting, and services mediation environment
- From development and maintenance perspective, the Government Cloud ESB allows agencies and users to securely and reliably share information between applications in a logical, cost effective manner
- Government Cloud ESBs will simplify adding new services, or changing existing services, with minimal impact to the bus or other interfacing applications within the IT environment
- Improvements in system performance and availability by offloading message processing and isolating complex mediation tasks in a dedicated ESB integration server
Again, possibly a mouthful, but if you can grasp the idea of a common bus providing services to a lot of different applications or agencies, allowing sharing of data and and interfaces without complex relationships between each participating agency, then the value becomes much more clear.
Why the Government Cloud?
While there are many parallels to large companies, governments are unique in the number of separate ministries, agencies, departments, and organizations within the framework of government. Governments normally share a tremendous amount of in the past this data between each agency, and in the past this was extremely difficult due to organizational differences, lack of IT support, or individuals who simply did not want to share data with other agencies.
The result of course was many agencies built their own stand alone data systems, without central coordination, resulting in a lot of duplicate data items (such as an individual’s personal profile and information, business information, and land management information, and other similar data). Most often, there were small differences in the data elements each agency developed and maintained, resulting in either corrupt or conflicting data.
The ESB helps identify a method of connecting applications and users to common data elements, allowing the sharing of both application format and in many cases database data sets. This allows not only efficiency in software/applications development, but also a much higher level of standardization an common data sharing.
While this may be uncomfortable for some agencies, most likely those which do not want to share their data with the central government, or use applications that are standardized with the rest of government, this also does support a very high level of government transparency. A controversial, but essential goal of all developing (and developed) governments.
As governments continue to focus on data center consolidation and the great economical, environmental, and enabling qualities of virtualization and on-demand compute resources, integration of the ESBaaS makes a lot of sense.
There are some very nice articles related to ESBs on the net, including:
- Progress Software – ESB Architecture and Lifecycle Definition
- The Enterprise Service Bus- Making Web Services Safe for Application Integration
- Driving the Enterprise Service Bus
- Best of Breed ESBs
Which may help you better understand the concept, or give some additional ideas.
Let us know your opinion or ideas on ESBaaS
