Month: January 2013

A Cloudy Future: Hard Truths and How to Best Leverage Cloud

    Jim D

We are long into the marketing hype cycle on cloud. That means that clear criteria to assess and evaluate the different cloud options are critical. Given these complexities, what approach should the medium to large enterprise take to best leverage cloud and optimize their data center? What are the pitfalls as well? While cloud computing is often presented as homogenous, there are many different types of cloud computing from infrastructure as a service (IaaS) to software as a service (SaaS) and many flavors in between. Perhaps some of the best examples are Amazon’s infrastructure services (IaaS), Google’s Email and office productivity services (SaaS), and Salesforce.com’s customer relationship management or CRM services (SaaS). Typically, the cloud is envisioned as an accessible and low cost compute utility in the sky that is always available. Despite this lofty promise, companies will need to select and build their cloud environment carefully to avoid fracturing their computing capabilities, locking themselves into a single, higher cost environment or impacting their ability to differentiate and gain competitive advantage – or all three.

The chart below provides an overview of the different types of cloud computing:

Cloud Computing and Variants

 

Note the positioning of the two dominant types of cloud computing:

  • there is the specialized Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) where the entire stack from server to application (even version) are provided — with minimal variation
  • there is the very generic IaaS or PaaS where a set of server and OS version(s) is available with types of storage. Any compatible database, middleware, or application can be installed to then run.

Other types of cloud computing include private cloud – essentially IaaS that an enterprise builds for itself. The private cloud variant is the evolution of the current corporate virtualized server and storage farm to a more mature instance with clearly defined service configurations, offerings, billing as well as highly automated provisioning and management.

Another impacting technology in the data center is engineered stacks. These are a further evolution of the computer appliances that have been available for decades. Engineered stacks are tightly specified, designed and engineered components integrated to provide superior performance and cost. These devices have typically been in the network, security, database and specialized compute spaces. Firewalls and other security devices have long leveraged an this approach where generic technology (CPU, storage, OS) is closely integrated with additional special purpose software and sold and serviced as an packaged solution. There has been a steady increase in the number of appliance or engineered stack offerings moving further into data analytics, application servers, and  middleware.

With the landscape set it is important to understand the technology industry market forces and the customer economics that will drive the data center landscape over the next five years. First, the technology vendors will continue to invest and increase the SaaS and engineered stack offerings because they offer significantly better margin and more certain long term revenue. A SaaS offering gets a far higher Wall Street multiple than traditional software licenses — and for good reason — it can be viewed as a consistent ongoing revenue stream where the customer is heavily locked in. Similarly for engineered stacks, traditional hardware vendors are racing to integrate as far up the stack as possible to both create additional value but more importantly enable locked in advantage where upgrades, support and maintenance can be more assured and at higher margin than traditional commodity servers or storage. It is a higher hurdle to replace an engineered stack than commodity equipment.

The industry investment will be accelerated by customer spend. Both SaaS and engineered stacks provide appealing business value that will justify their selection. For SaaS, it is speed and ease of implementation as well as potentially variable cost. For engineered stacks, it is a performance uplift at potentially lower costs that often makes the sale. Both SaaS and engineered stacks should be selected where the business case makes sense but with the cautions of:

  • for SaaS:
    • be very careful if it is core business functionality or processes, you could be locking away your differentiation and ultimate competitiveness.
    • know how you will get your data back before you sign should you stop using the SaaS
    • make sure you have ensured integrity and security of your data in your vendor’s hands
  • for engineered stacks:
    • understand where the product is in its lifecycle before selecting
    • anticipate the eventual migration path as the product fades at the end of its cycle

For both, ensure you avoid integrating key business logic into the vendor’s product. Otherwise you will be faced with high migration costs at the end of the product life or when there is a better compelling product. There are multiple ways to ensure that your key functionality and business rules remain independent and modular outside of the vendor service package.

With these caveats in mind, and a critical eye to your contract to avoid onerous terms and lock-ins, you will be successful with the project level decisions. But you should drive optimization at the portfolio level as well. If you are a medium to large enterprise, you should be driving your internal infrastructure to mature their offering to an internal private cloud. Virtualization, already widespread in the industry,  is just the first step. You should move to eliminate or minimize your custom configurations (preferably less than 20% of your server population). Next, invest in the tools and process and engineering so you can heavily automate the provisioning and management of the data center. Doing  this will also improve the quality of service).

Make sure that you do not shift so much of your processing to SaaS that you ‘balkanize’ your own utility. Your data center utility would then operate subscale and inefficiently. Should you overreach, expect to incur heavy integration costs on subsequent initiatives (because your functionality will be spread across multiple SaaS vendors in many data centers). And you can expect to experience performance issues as your systems operate at WAN speeds versus LAN speeds across these centers. And expect to lose  negotiating position with SaaS providers because you have lost your ‘in-source’ strength.  

I would venture that over the next five year the a well-managed IT shop will see:

  • the most growth in its SaaS and engineered stack portfolio, 
  • a conversion from custom infrastructure to a robust private cloud with a small sliver of custom remaining for unconverted legacy systems
  • minimal growth in PaaS and IaaS (growth here is actually driven by small to medium firms)
This transition is represented symbolically in the chart below:
Data Center Transition Over the Next 5 Years

So, on the road to a cloud future, SaaS and engineered stacks will be a part of nearly every company’s portfolio. Vendor lock-in could be around every corner, but good IT shops will leverage these capabilities judiciously and develop their own private cloud capabilities as well as retain critical IP and avoid the lock-ins. We will see far greater efficiency in the data center as custom configurations are heavily reduced.  So while the prospects are indeed ‘cloudy’, the future is potentially bright for the thoughtful IT shop.

What changes or guidelines would you apply when considering cloud computing and the many offerings? I look forward to your perspective.

This post appeared in its original version at Information Week January 4. I have extended and revised it since then.

Best, Jim Ditmore

At the Start of 2013: Topics, Updates, and Predictions

    Jim D

Given it is the start of the year, I thought I would map out some of the topics I plan to cover this coming year in my posts. I also wish to relay some of the improvements that are planned for the reference page areas. As you know, the focus of Recipe for IT  is practical, workable techniques and advice that works in the real world and enables IT managers to be more successful. In 2012, we had a very successful year with over 34,000 views from over 100 countries, though most are from the US, UK, and Canada. And I wish to thank the many who have contributed comments and feedback — it has really helped me craft a better product. So with that in mind, please provide your perspective on the upcoming topics, especially if there are areas you would like to see covered that are not.

As you know, I have structured the site into two main areas: posts – which are short, timely essays on a particular topic and pages– which often take a post and provide a more structured and possibly deeper view of the topic. The pages are intended to be an ongoing reference of best practice for you leverage.

For posts, I will be continue the discussion on cloud and data centers. I will also delve more into production practices and how to achieve high availability. Some of you may have noticed some posts are placed first on InformationWeek and then subsequently here. This helps increase the exposure of Recipe for IT and also ensure good editing (!).

For the reference pages, I have recently refined and will continue to improve the project delivery and project managements sections. Look also for updates and improvements to efficiency and cost reductions in IT and well as the service desk.

What other topics would you like to see explored? Please comment and provide your feedback and input.

And now to the fun part, six predictions for Technology in 2013:

6. 2013 is the year of the ‘connected house’ as standards and ‘hub’ products achieve critical mass.

5. The IT job market will continue to tighten requiring companies to invest in growing talent as well as higher IT compensation.

4. Fragmentation will multiply in the mobile market, leaving significant advantage to Apple and Samsung being the only companies commanding premiums for their products.

3. HP will suffer further distress in the PC market both from tablet cannibalization and aggressive performance from Lenovo and Dell.

2. The corporate server market will continue to experience minimal increases in volume and flat or downward pressure on revenue.

1. Microsoft will do a Coke Classic on Windows 8.

As an IT manager, it is important to have strong, robust competition – so perhaps both Microsoft and HP will sort out their issues in the consumer device/OS space and come back stronger than ever.

What would you add or change on the predictions? I look forward to your take on 2013 and technology!

Best, Jim Ditmore

 

Smartphones and 2013: What we really want

    Jim D

With CES 2013 starting this week, we will see a number of new features and product introductions particularly in the Android space. Some of the new features are questionable (Do we really want our smartphones to be projectors?).  But the further fragmentation (just within Android but also with the advent of Tizen (the Linux-based OS)) will drive feature innovation and differentiation faster. And to help with that differentiation is an updated list of features that I’d like to see in 2013!

1. Multiple Personalities: It would be great to be able to use one device for personal and for business – but seamlessly. Consider a phone where your office or business mobile number ring to your phone as well as your personal number. And when your boss calls, the appropriate ring, screen background, contacts, and everything else aligns with the number calling. You can switch back and forth between your business world and your personal world on your phone, just as you do, but with one device not two (or if you are using one device today, you get both numbers, and no mixing). Some versions of these phones are available today, but not on the best smartphones, and not in a fully finished mode.

2. Multiple SIMs: Multiple SIM phones – where two or more SIM cards are active at the same time, have been available in some form since 2000. These enables you to leverage two networks at once (or have a business phone on one network, and a personal phone on another), or more easily handle different networks when traveling (e.g., one network for domestic, one for Europe and one for Asia). When you landed in a new country, you could keep your primary SIM in your phone, purchase a low cost local SIM and voila! you would still receive calls on your primary number but could make local calls inexpensively on the local SIM. Today, there are low end phones in developing markets or China where these features are available — so why not have this in the high end smartphones in the developed world? Samsung may be cracking this barrier – there are reports of a dual SIM Samsung high end smartphone. Perhaps Apple will follow? This would be much to the dismay of the carriers as it is then easy to switch carriers (call by call) and lower your costs.

3. Better, perhaps seamless voice: Siri can be good in some situations but like all other voice apps currently on the market, the limitations are real. And the limitations are particularly evident when you most need to be hands-free — like when you are driving. With the continued improvement in processor speed and voice recognition software, we should see next generation voice recognition capability that makes it an ease to use voice rather than a chore.

4. The nano-smartphone companion: How many times have you been either exercising or on a fishing trip or out for night out or an elegant evening, and the last thing you want to do is bring along a large, potentially bulky smartphone that you might lose (or drop in the lake)? Why can’t you have a nano iPod that has the same number and contacts as your iPhone that works as a passable phone? Then you can leave the iPhone at home bring your music and a nano cell phone, and not worry all evening about losing it! Again, the manufacturers must work with the carriers to enable two devices with the same number to be on the network and for you to chose to which one the calls ring. But think of the convenience and possibilities of having multiple orchestrated devices, each tuned precisely to what and when you want to use them. Isn’t this what Apple does best?

5. Better power management: Even with the continued advances in battery life, nearly everyone encounters each month times when their use or their apps have completely drained the battery. Today’s data intensive apps can chew up battery life quickly without the user being aware. Why not alert the user to high usage (rather than wait until the battery is almost dead to alert), and enable the option for power saving mode. when this mode is selected the phone OS switches apps to low power mode unless the user overrides. This will keep power hog apps from draining the battery doing unimportant tasks. It will avoid a late afternoon or evening travail when you discover your phone is dead and yet you need it to make a call.

6. Socially and physically aware: While there are plenty of apps that create social networks and provide some physical awareness and some phone plans that enable you to know where a family member is by their device location, you still require a precise device/app/option selected that minimizes the possibility of casual interaction with your known acquaintances. Consider your linked in network and when you are traveling for business, it would be excellent to be able to chose to let your links know that you are walking through O’Hare, and for those associates that chose similarly, you would know that your colleague John is at gate B5, which you happen to be walking by, and you can stop and chat before you have to catch your flight. You can chose to be anonymous, or just aware to your friends or links, or for extroverts, publicly aware. Unfortunately, this would require a common ‘awareness’ standard and security for devices and social sites, which at this stage of the social media ‘Oklahoma land rush’, it is doubtful that cooperation required would occur.

7. Better ‘offline’ capabilities: Far too many apps today still require a constant internet connection to work. Even for those apps where it is used when offline mode is likely, many apps still require an internet connection – translation apps and London tube apps come to mind. Why can’t you download 90% of the translation requirements to your app while on your home wi-fi, and then, when in Paris, bring up the app to suffice for faster translation offline instead of using international data rates? (At which point a paid translator would be cheaper and much faster). Again, I wonder how much collusion (or lack of common sense) goes on to encourage nonsensical data usage versus designing ‘data-lite’ apps.

These are the seven features I would like to see in 2013. And while I am sure that there are phones or apps that do some of the features, I think it would be an advance to have the features mainstreamed on the latest and best smartphones. (Though I am still looking for a great translation app with good ‘offline’ capability, if you know of one, please recommend it!). What features would you like to see in the next generation of smartphones in 2013?

Best, Jim Ditmore