As we post a lot of articles about Cloud Computing recently, I want to get all readers on track and share a Youtube clip that explains the basics of the Cloud concept in a very graphic way.
If you have problems with the embedded video, watch it directly on Youtube.
In a survey with about 700 individuals, hosting.com determined the trends in the Cloud Computing industry.
Here are the key findings:
Cloud Computing is not only a topic for large international companies, but also for small and medium sized enterprises. The success of Cloud Computing will be dependent on cloud-based solutions that provide reduced costs, scalability, improved service level agreements, and increased flexibility for small companies.
It’s surprising to see the high importance of small enterprises for the future development of Cloud Computing Solutions. The message of the Cloud Report is clear: Don’t underestimate the force of small and medium sized enterprises when developing new Cloud Services!
I found this an interesting insight for all those who hear the Cloud buzz and think about large companies trying to cut the IT costs.
For more information, you can download the whole Cloud Computing Trend Report from the hosting.com web site.
Australian researchers conducted a stress test on the platforms of todays major providers of cloud computing ending in interesting results. Among the testees were Amazon, Google and Microsoft.
The following results are part of a presentation the team will give at the Australian Architecture Forum in Sydney on Monday, August 24.
Major findings
Interesting trivia:
Sobering facts or expected »rusty start« of a new technology?
In his article, Stephen Swoyer opens a new perspective on Cloud Computing to me. Quoting Stephen Elliot, vice-president of strategy with CA Inc.’s infrastructure management and automation practice, he figures out the importance of the cloud concept for enterprises.
For Elliot, Cloud Computing is basically a conceptual refinement of pervasive virtualization. He argues that the Enterprise Cloud model is an inevitable consequence of pervasive virtualization, a virtualization with a business-centric mindset.
Cloud Computing is is about making the IT accountable for the CIO and CEO, not about virtualizing the IT. Customers will not pay the IT to only host their applications or services. Customers purchase a clearly defined service. Therefore, the Enterprise Cloud should be seen as business-process-as-a-service, not so much as software-as-a-service.
In the business-process-as-a-service model, the value of the Enterprise Cloud can be measured with business metrics. If vendors spotlight the accountability as advantage of this model, the customers would be able to provide a proper calculation of the ROI of adapting Cloud Computing. On that condition Enterprise Clouds would become reality in organizations. As computational costs continue to move downward, the financial ROI of adapting Cloud Computing will become even better in future. It’s just a matter of time before it becomes a norm for organizations to take advantage of the Enterprise Cloud.
Via CloudBzz comes a neat visualization of the attributes of cloud computing as evangelized by Gartner.
The attributes are detailed here as follows:
Service-Based: Consumer concerns are abstracted from provider concerns through service interfaces that are well-defined. The interfaces hide the implementation details and enable a completely automated response by the provider of the service to the consumer of the service. The service could be considered “ready to use” or “off the shelf” because the service is designed to serve the specific needs of a set of consumers, and the technologies are tailored to that need rather than the service being tailored to how the technology works. The articulation of the service feature is based on service levels and IT outcomes (availability, response time, performance versus price, and clear and predefined operational processes), rather than technology and its capabilities. In other words, what the service needs to do is more important than how the technologies are used to implement the solution.
Scalable and Elastic: The service can scale capacity up or down as the consumer demands at the speed of full automation (which may be seconds for some services and hours for others). Elasticity is a trait of shared pools of resources. Scalability is a feature of the underlying infrastructure and software platforms. Elasticity is associated with not only scale but also an economic model that enables scaling in both directions in an automated fashion. This means that services scale on demand to add or remove resources as needed.
Shared: Services share a pool of resources to build economies of scale. IT resources are used with maximum efficiency. The underlying infrastructure, software or platforms are shared among the consumers of the service (usually unknown to the consumers). This enables unused resources to serve multiple needs for multiple consumers, all working at the same time.
Metered by Use: Services are tracked with usage metrics to enable multiple payment models. The service provider has a usage accounting model for measuring the use of the services, which could then be used to create different pricing plans and models. These may include pay-as-you go plans, subscriptions, fixed plans and even free plans. The implied payment plans will be based on usage, not on the cost of the equipment. These plans are based on the amount of the service used by the consumers, which may be in terms of hours, data transfers or other use-based attributes delivered.
Uses Internet Technologies: The service is delivered using Internet identifiers, formats and protocols, such as URLs, HTTP, IP and representational state transfer Web-oriented architecture. Many examples of Web technology exist as the foundation for Internet-based services. Google’s Gmail, Amazon.com’s book buying, eBay’s auctions and Lolcats’ picture sharing all exhibit the use of Internet and Web technologies and protocols.
I found a very useful model for the potential value of cloud computing, which distinguishes three value areas. As the cloud aligns the time and the size of investments with the value you receive, cloud computing delivers an economic value. You don’t need to spend millions of Euros for it-infrastructure today and receive the revenue years later! The architectural value of cloud computing is the simple and abstract environment, that hides the complexity. That makes it easier and faster to develop and deploy applications. The strategic value concentrates on the organization effectiveness. It helps your organization to differentiate from others and focus on the processes that really add value to your business.
Do you think this model can be useful? Do you see any other cloud values which should be captured by the model?
Found at: Mwdadvisors.com
One concept which goes with almost all discussions of PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service) is the application marketplace or app store.
The Promise…
The argument hype goes something like this: If you specify an platform standard, get more than one hoster to host it and finally convince people to develop little applications (or widgets) for it, everyone wins:
etc.
Reality sets in
Besides technical and cooperational problems the equation bases on the assumption that you get a lot of small or medium sized ISVs (Independent Software Vendors) to program against your platform specification. If you are aiming for business developers this means there has to be enough money in there for them to lock into the platform constraints. The promise now is that electronic marketplaces lower the barrier of entry for these developers enough to ensure profit for all.
Promise? Maybe you’ll say »Hey, I know this works! What about Apples app store?« Exactly my first thoughts but let’s look at the numbers provided in a recent blog post of an developer who has to know:
According to the developer of Zen Jar which ranked around position #30 when the article was written he earns as much as……20$ a day with his app. Considering that there are currently over 36.000 applications to choose from I personally had expected much more profit from entering the Top 50 in a popular category.
What are the reasons for this? For one it’s the standard pricing of .99$. To become really rich at this price you have to sell a lot. Looking at the numbers in the article at position #34 you can expect 30-35 downloads a day. If this is not enough for you you have to do marketing which cuts your profit even further.
As also is mentioned in the article this doesn’t mean the business model is wrong. It just shows that app stores aren’t the 1, 2, 3, PROFIT guarantee as some people suggest. There are still some problems to make the model work as »advertised«.
So what?
Just providing a platform to develop and run applications on is not enough. Providing a place to list this apps and provide services for licensing and billing is not enough, either. What is often missing in the discussion of the »application marketplace« is how to aid developers in marketing their product. If you leave the myriads of »little« business oriented developers alone with this task they won’t have enough resources to do it on their own and still be profitable enough.
One more challenge to overcome in the PaaS opportunity…
Two of the biggest concerns of IT stakeholders against choosing the cloud computing / SaaS option are
Far from having a tangible answer to these questions the Open Cloud Manifesto at least makes them explicit and tries to provide a first starting point towards a set of (not necessarily new) standards which could make the dream of a truly open cloud possible. It does so by stating the opportunities and risks of cloud computing and proposes a first set of principles all supporters of the manifesto have to obey.
Under the first subscribers are names like:
and many others who are (seemingly) willing to work towards the goal of an open cloud.
Drawback: Missing on the list are the current big names of cloud platforms like Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Salesforce which makes the whole effort tasting a bit stale to me.
It remains to be seen how things are going on with this. Without the support of the big platform vendors the whole thing is nothing more than a nice try. But if the originators do get them to participate it could be something big.
What do you think of the whole cloud computing thing? Does it bother you at all?
Feeling somewhat clouded when you have to explain the difference between of lets say »Software-as-a-Service« and »Platform-as-a-Service«?
Christofer Hoff tries to help you with his Cloud Computing Taxonomy. It’s in the 4th version now and still being discussed, reviewed and updated in his blog.
Give it a try and tell him (and me!) what you think about it.
The slides of our talk »SaaS Ecosystems« can finally be found on our homepage (zip).
As always it was a great experience for all of us. If you have any questions left please don’t hesitate to use the comments or contact us directly!
Hope to see all of you again at OOP 2010!