Cloud Management

One of my concerns about the use of public cloud computing services is the tradeoff that IT organizations typically have had to make. On the positive side of the tradeoff, by using a public cloud service companies lower their cost and gain access to functionality that they normally would not have access to. Those are both compelling reasons to use public cloud services. However, on the negative side of the tradeoff, IT organizations typically loose all visibility into the availability and performance of the service that they get from a public cloud provider. I shiver when industry pundits show graphs and charts of some of the major cloud providers to demonstrate that they usually have high availability and totally gloss over the issue of performance. This line of reasoning reminds me of the refrain in that old song that went “don’t worry, be happy”.

I don’t dispute the fact that a best effort approach is totally appropriate for many applications and workloads. That said, I strongly believe that there is a large and growing set of applications and workloads for which a best effort level of support is not appropriate. The successful support of these applications and workloads requires that IT organizations have detailed management insight into their availability and performance.

IT organizations are beginning to demand better management insight from cloud computing service providers (CCSPs). Fortunately, many CCSPs are scrambling to find ways to differentiate themselves in the market. One clear way that CCSPs can differentiate themselves is by offering a performance-based SLA and by making it easier for their customers to monitor the end-to-end availability and performance of the services that they provide. Given that, there is reason to hope that CCSPs will begin to provide more management insight.

One company that is addressing this challenge is AppNeta. AppNeta was recently launched by the team and technology of Apparent Networks. AppNeta’s PathView Cloud Network Performance Management solutions performs non-invasive, end-to-end performance monitoring of bandwidth utilization, delay, jitter, QoS and packet loss on a hop-by-hop basis. AppNeta is supplementing that active network monitoring capability with the capability to perform active performance analysis of applications such as VoIP, video, IP storage and VDI. AppNeta also offers the capabilities to perform packet and traffic capture at remote sites using the PathView appliances, a zero-administration device.

One of the things that I find most appealing about the AppNeta solutions is that they are cloud based and hence bring to the market all of the benefits of cloud based services. This means that whether you want to manage the performance of a cloud based service or of a more traditional service, you can turn on that functionality virtually instantaneously, start getting detailed management data immediately and do all that without a capital expenditure. A big step forward.

Why Cloud Computing Matters In Spite of the Hype

The hyperbole to reality ratio that surrounds cloud computing is higher than anything I have seen since ATM. If you remember ATM, industry pundits told us that ATM would be our next and last networking technology. It wasn't.

One of the big differences, however, between cloud computing and ATM is that there were well agreed to specifications that defined ATM; e.g., constant bit rate, variable bit rate, etc.. Unfortunately, there is relatively little agreement in the industry, particularly on the part of IT organizations, as to what is meant by cloud computing.

A lot of my interest in cloud computing was driven by a very important article in Network World (http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/102908-bechtel.html?page=2). In that article Carolyn Duffy Marsan interviewed Geir Ramleth, the CIO of Bechtel. Marsan described how Ramleth had benchmarked Bechtel's IT operation against leading Internet companies such as Amazon.com, Google, Salesforce.com and YouTube. I believe that the results of that benchmarking laid down a gauntlet for other IT organizations. Relative to WAN bandwidth, Bechtel estimated that YouTube spends between $10 and $15 per megabit/second/month for bandwidth, while Bechtel spends $500 per megabit/second/month for its Internet-based VPN. Relative to storage, Bechtel identified the fact that Amazon.com was offering storage for 10 cents per gigabyte per month while Bechtel's internal U.S. rate was $3.75 per gigabyte per month. In round numbers, Bechtel was paying roughly forty times more for a unit of WAN bandwidth or a unit of storage that the Internet companies were paying.  

I have been involved in a number of benchmarking projects. As such, I realize that the results can sometimes lack precision. However, a factor of forty in terms of cost savings is indeed compelling. It says to me that there is something here that is important for IT organizations to understand and apply judiciously in their organization. We just have to cut through the myriad layers of hype to find exactly what the reality is.

Is Five 9s the Right Goal in a Cloud Computing World?

I used to be involved running the network for Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). Before its demise, DEC has a wonderful network and a great network organization. We prided ourselves on keeping an expansive international network up and running back in the 1980s when networks broke a whole lot more than they do currently.

As part of DEC culture, the network organization went to Total Quality Management (TQM) training. I remember developing a six sigma plan for the network. The goal of the plan was to define what a network defect was and then to eliminate virtually all instances of those defects. IT professionals don’t use the phrase six sigma today as much as we once did. However, the phrase five 9s is extremely common and at one level the two phrases reflect the same concept. That concept is that IT is to be as available as possible. When I worked at DEC, nobody ever questioned that concept.

Earlier this week I was at Network World’s IT Roadmap conference in Philadelphia. The keynote speaker was Peter Whatnell. Whatnell is the Chief Information Officer at Sunoco. Peter stated that like most IT organizations they are under great pressure to reduce cost. One of the steps that they are taking to save money is to actually reduce the availability of some of their services. The example that Whatnell gave was that in order to provide 99.99% server availability they had to deploy clustering and other technologies that drove up the cost. While they still do that for the servers the support certain applications, have cut back this approach and now a lot more of their servers are designed to run at something closer to 99% availability.

As we enter the world of cloud computing, we need to acknowledge that we are not going to have the same levels of availability and performance that we have in the current environment. For example, one of my clients showed me the SLA that they have with the Software as a Service (SaaS) vendor salesforce.com. It read “We will take all reasonable actions to ensure that the service is available 7 x 24.” When I first read the SLA I was amazed at how vacuous it was. My amazement has since lessened. Clearly the Fortune 500 are not going to run certain critical business processes using SaaS nor are they going to store their most critical data at Amazon. However, it will be curious to see how many IT organizations go down the path suggested by Whatnell. That path being that it is ok to accept lower availability and performance if the cost savings are great enough.

The Need for an Effective IT Architecture

Last week I moderated two tracks at Network World’s IT Roadmap conference in Atlanta. One of the speakers at the conference was Kevin Fuller who is a global network architect at Coca-Cola. Kevin gave a great presentation and caused me to muse about effective IT architecture – how important it is and how rare it is to find one.  

To put my musings into context, about two years ago, I was hired by the IT organization of a Fortune 200 company. The goal of the project was to have me review their network architecture. I requested the IT organization send me a copy of their architecture documents and I was only somewhat surprised to find out that they did not have any. After spending a day with the organization it became quite clear that not only did they not have any network architecture documents, they did not have a well-understood architecture for any part of their network.  

More recently I was hired by a Fortune 100 company for a project to help make their architecture more impactful. As it turns out, the company had developed a very sophisticated IT architecture. There was little that I could do to add to the architecture. The problem, however, had little to do with the architecture itself. The basic problem was that nobody in the IT organization had to follow the architecture, and as a result, few did. If that sounds a bit odd to you, it did not sound that odd to me. I had experienced that phenomenon before. A number of years ago I was responsible for transmission, switching and routing for Digital Equipment Corporation’s (DEC’s) network. Every year, DEC’s global IT organization would create an architecture that focused on many aspects of DEC’s IT Infrastructure. Unfortunately, there was no pressure on any of the various IT groups within DEC to follow the architecture.  

Whether you think about virtualization or cloud computing, IT organizations are making some major changes and these changes cut across technology domains. To be successful, IT organizations need an effective architecture. By effective I mean that the architecture drives decision around technologies, designs, and vendors.

Can We Talk About Cloud Computing as Rational Adults?

I participate on a lot of seminars. A year or two ago I was doing seminar on wide area networking and part of my presentation included a discussion of some emerging trends that would impact the WAN. One of the trends that I mentioned in my presentation was Services Oriented Architectures (SOA). One of the other panelists was the VP of marketing for a mid sized WAN service provider. He loved the fact that I talked about SOA and its impact on the WAN and encouraged me to spend a lot more time on that topic in order to “really hype the impact of SOA”. I tried to politely decline saying that I was not sure that SOA would have that much of an impact in the short term and I did not want to over-hype it. This thoroughly confused the VP of marketing who in a loud voice repeatedly tried to convince me that “it is impossible to over hype a technology”.

My feelings are just the opposite. I strongly believe that not only is it possible to over hype a technology but that over hyping a technology is the normal mode of operation in our industry. The problem as I see it is that some marketers really believe that IT organizations make decisions based on PowerPoint slides, analyst reports, and general hysteria. Having run networking groups in two Fortune 500 companies I can say that in my experience IT organizations make decisions based on facts.

That brings me to cloud computing. Before I go on, I want to emphasize that I am somewhat bullish on the potential of cloud computing. I am not going to use this blog to bash cloud computing. I am, however, going to use this blog to bash the zealous over hyping of cloud computing. I just finished a phone call with a VP at a company that offers cloud computing services. I was hoping to discuss with him what IT organizations need in their own environment as well as from their service providers in order to realize the potential benefits of cloud computing. Instead of an intelligent discussion, all that I got was hype. According to the person that I was talking with, there are no fundamental impediments to cloud computing and IT organizations are really anxious to use cloud computing services because of their supposed revulsion to ever buying another server.

As I stated, I am somewhat bullish on the potential of cloud computing. However, I think that IT organizations will realize that potential a lot sooner if we can talk about cloud computing as rational adults. In particular, we need to have an intelligent discussion about what has to be in place for IT organizations to make a very fundamental shift in terms of how they offer services. I tried to explain to the gentleman that I was talking to today, that IT organizations do not make fundamental shifts in a matter of months. He didn’t understand the concept.

OK, it is 5:00 somewhere. I am gong to get a glass of wine and go into the pool. Yes, I will look up at the clouds as I sip (gulp?) my chardonnay.

Nicholas Carr's Simplistic View of Cloud Computing

Nicholas Carr is at it again.  After the dot com implosion, Carr wrote an article in the Harvard Business review entitled "IT Doesn't Matter".   In the article, Carr aruges that since information technology is generally available to all organizations, it does not provide a permanent strategic advantage to any company.  One of the reasons that I find Carr's argument to be simplistic is that it assumes that all company's are equally adept at utilizing IT to their advantage.  This is clearly not the case.  Another reason is that he seems to dismiss the idea of using IT to get a strategic advantage that while not permanent, will be in affect for years.  The IT organizations that I deal with are quite pleased if they can help their company get a two year advantage over their competitors.

Carr recently authored "The Big Switch" and again his arguments are simplistic.  The book begins with a thorough description of how the electric utilities developed in the US.  He then argues by analogy that Cloud Computing is the future of IT.  The analogy being that the provision of IT services will evolve exactly the same way as the provision of electicity did.  

I have two primary concerns with Carr's argument.  The first is the fact that any argument by analogy is necessarily week.  The generation of electricity and the provision of IT services may well have some similarities, but they are not the same thing.  My second concern is that the way the book reads, Carr has already determined that the future of IT is Cloud Computing and is out to convince the reader of that.  There is no real discussion in the book of the pros and cons of Cloud Computing merely the repeated assertion that the future is Cloud Computing.   Perhaps the closest that Carr comes to discussing the pros of Cloud Computing is when he quotes some anonymous industry analyst as saying that Amazon's cost of providing Cloud Computing services is one tenth of what it would cost the traditional IT organization.  There is, however, no citation or backup of any kind to allow us to better understand that assertion.

More important, there is no discussion in the book of what has to happen from a technology perspective to make Cloud Computing viable.  Cloud Computing might well be a dominant force in the provision of IT services some time in the future.   Cloud Computing, however, involves the sophisticated interaction of numerous complex technologies.  Carr would have better served the industry if he had spent some attention identifying the impediments that inhibit Cloud Computing and provided his insight into when those impediments will be overcome.

Jim Metzler