Oracle Buys Sun. Now does Larry buy into the cloud?

It’s the biggest news of the day, at least in the world of tech, if not business. Oracle has agreed to buy Sun Microsystems for $7.4 billion. You can read the press release from Sun to get the official details.

It is definitely an aggressive move by Oracle and one that sees them grab the crown jewels of Java, MySQL, and Solaris. It gives them many ways to play the game, with core assets to entice big enterprise customers, as well as, new ways to approach small and medium-sized businesses.

Although, Larry Ellison has scoffed at the definition of cloud computing, that’s not the same as dismissing the concept itself. If anything, he’s simply said, “Hey, wait, haven’t we been doing this all along?”

Well, not quite. But, clearly he gets that the technology and the thinking is here today. It’s a matter of evolving it a bit further, packaging it up right, and wrapping it in some standards. And, then, keeping it open. None of which will be easy. Yet, all of which is something the industry is moving towards and that customers, developers, and vendors appear to be quite interested in exploring and adopting.

Therefore, the move by Oracle may also be seen as a confirmation that cloud computing is the next legitimate wave of computing. By acquiring the core assets of Sun, it can now think about packaging the pieces and offering them as a true utility. As Larry said: “”Oracle will be the only company that can engineer an integrated system – applications to disk – where all the pieces fit and work together so customers do not have to do it themselves.”

What better way to offer that integrated systems than via the cloud?

Finally, Oracle has the resources to invest in such things, while they continue to print money from their database franchise. It’s a shrewd, timely move, from one of the best operators in the game. With this move, Larry Ellison has made it clear that he intends to lead the next wave of computing by fighting it out with all challengers. It looks like the oracle has spoken.

Hey, hey, You, you: Get off of my cloud

So, McKinsey & Company came out with a report, “Clearing the Air On Cloud Computing,” that throws–at first blush–cold water on the benefits of cloud computing. McKinsey is a world-class consulting firm and their analysts certainly have earned the right to be listened to. Of course, that doesn’t mean they’re always right. It just means they’ve done some thinking on the subject and have drawn some conclusions from it.

If anything, the biggest splash of cold water they toss is that there’s a heck of a lot of hype around cloud computing. So much so, that it’s all a bit of “irrational exuberance”. Therefore, we should proceed with caution. After that dose of reality (as if we needed reminding), they then report, essentially, that cloud computing is no replacement for your data center. That it’s simply not cost effective.

Gee, really? That conclusion, in its own way, is a kind of anti-hype. I’ve not come across anyone saying cloud computing will replace an enterprise’s data center. Far from it. But, cloud computing sure can augment IT, and thus, the business broadly speaking.

McKinsey seems to be countering the benefits of cloud computing with a straight line examination of the price of compute cycles via Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). Well, that tells a very small part of the story.

As John Foley states, in article, Cloud Computing Gets A Much-Needed Reality Check, “Here’s the flaw in McKinsey’s argument: Few if any major corporations are looking to replace their data centers with a cloud…The more likely scenario, and the one that’s playing out, is that companies of all sizes will use cloud computing to supplement their own IT infrastructures.”

Yeah, like I said: there’s hype on both sides of the argument. To  me,  it makes perfect sense for Fortune 500 companies, as well as, small and medium-sized businesses, to explore cloud computing rather than continuing to throw resources at existing problems and, or, struggle as they try to spin up resources for new projects. A balance is what’s needed. That’s all most of those on the pro-cloud side of the argument have been suggesting.

While, McKinsey’s report is great for debate and offers a counterpoint to all the positive news stories, it should be read just as critically–even if they’ve got a lot of brains and experience going for them. In the end, cloud computing is part of the business and IT equation. It doesn’t solve it completely. But, that was never really the intent.

Managing and Monitoring Cloud Services

An area of concern that comes up when talking about the merits of cloud computing has to do with monitoring and managing cloud services. There is a perception that doing so in the cloud is far more difficult than within the four walls of the data center.

Well, there are some real-world examples that turn that perception on its head. Robert Scheier, in his InfoWorld article, Can IT manage the cloud? These CTOs can, dissects the issues surrounding it by looking at how the choices one makes depends, in part, on the cloud model itself (i.e. software, infrastructure, platform), as well as, the availability of third-party tools (often open source), and the critical issue of data security.

For example, when it comes to software as a service, “you don’t have to trust the vendors’ reports to assess whether they deliver the service promised. IT pros can use anything from simple network-sniffing tools to open source monitoring software and enterprise-class management systems to see what they’re getting from the Web.”

On the other hand, when it comes to infrastructure as a service, where customers may have the greatest management needs, one “should ideally use “the same agents, the same tools, the same configuration, and management tools” as in their own datacenters to simplify and standardize administration, says Joseph Tobolski, a partner at Accenture Technology Labs. While there isn’t universal integration between such tools and the cloud service providers’ APIs, he expects such integration “pretty soon” because of the need for “some sort of control of the cloud.”

The following real-world examples show how IT pros are managing and monitoring their cloud services.

• OmniPresence, which sells videoconferencing and teleconferencing equipment and services, uses the Zenoss family of management software to monitor the equipment and services it provides to customers.

• For Agora Games, it was critical to have root-level access to the 60 to 70 virtual servers it runs at cloud provider Terremark Worldwide. Using Terremark’s cloud computing environment, Agora Games can just as easily manipulate their virtual servers as if they were in-house or at a collocation facility. A test environment for a new game can be built, then easily cloned for production, and then removed when the popularity of the game fades.

• Pathwork Diagnostics uses Amazon.com’s EC2 infrastructure to meet big spikes in demand for computing power whenever it acquires specimens of various types of tumors and must race competitors to create tests to detect those tumors. Pathwork only needs to monitor the virtual “compute units” it is using, as well as the amount of memory allocated to each, says Zoran Popovic, a senior software engineer. To do that, he uses Unix open source tools for both jobs.

• Dreambuilder Investments has built its key business applications on Salesforce.com’s Force.com platform, and it relies on cloud services from other vendors for its backup, accounting software, and even PBX, The company has built a few simple tools to monitor the quality of its Web connections, but it usually relies on the CRM giant to keep its applications running and provide updates on their health.

Of course, one of the biggest issues businesses face when considering cloud computing is data security. “For example, Agora could encrypt the data on each server but doesn’t, because of the likely drag on performance. The fact he has root-level control of each server means “we can prevent anyone else from getting access to the data,” says Brian Corrigan, CTO of Agora.

Moreover, “a number of other IT managers say that the use of virtualization and open source monitoring tools lets them do just as good a job, if not better, monitoring and managing virtual machines in the cloud as equipment in-house or in a collocation facility.”

So, what have we learned? Well, for one, you need to think strategically about what applications and services can be moved into the cloud. Secondly, you need to consider skill sets, whether it’s mission critical, and the needs of the business. Yet, the bottom line is that managing and monitoring cloud services can be done, often “easier than in a brick-and-mortar, in-house datacenter.” This is definitely evidence that, when done right, cloud computing can live up to its promise in terms of cost, flexibility, and speed.

The Case for Private Clouds

There has been a lot of recent discussion, debate, and, even some derision when it comes to private clouds — a way to create a cloud-like environment within the walls of the enterprise. The benefits of a private cloud are analogous to public ones (i.e. economic, scale, speed, portability, etc.) with an added level of control and security.

While a private cloud architecture, as Charles Babcock writes in his InformationWeek article, Why ‘Private Cloud’ Computing Is Real — And Worth Considering, “looks deceptively familiar…[it] represent[s] a convergence of tech trends holding great promise for enterprise computing.” He goes on to add: “Private clouds are a more powerful combination of modular commodity hardware that can be sliced and diced into many small pieces, with networking and storage that can be dynamically allocated through preset policies.”

Both he and James Urquhart have noted that we’ve seen this before. As Urquhart explains in his blog, The argument for private clouds, “The Internet itself had the intranet: the use of HTTP and TCP/IP protocols to deliver linked content to an audience through a browser. The result was a disruptive technology similar to its public counterpart but limited in scope to each individual enterprise.” Eventually, TCP/IP became the standard that replaced proprietary networks and the Internet began to function as an extension of corporate networks.

Most likely, Babcock goes on to say, data centers will be built to look and act like  public clouds such as Amazon EC2, based on standards which will then increase portability between public and private clouds. This gives rise to the term “hybrid-clouds” and that concept, in turn, provides another set of obstacles that need to be overcome. But, these can be overcome because of the ability to run a private cloud in conjunction with public ones.

In summary, according to Babcock,  the benefits of private clouds are:

• Better resource allocation and greater flexibility to match spikes in traffic with resources on-the-fly
• Reduced overhead due to commodity x86 servers and virtualization allow the data center to be managed as a unit
• Private clouds help IT teams get ready for private-public hybrid clouds in the future data center

In addition, you may want to check out the following articles and blogs:

GE Puts ‘Private’ Cloud Computing To The Test: It’s starting a three-year effort aimed at better efficiency and flexibility.

New Tools For Private Clouds: Startups offer intriguing options for building private clouds.

Private Clouds: Even A Blind Squirrel Finds A Nut Once In A While

The Importance of Infrastructure

When we talk about cloud computing we can define it across three levels: software as a service (SaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), and infrastructure as a service (IaaS). Each level has it’s own unique properties, value proposition, and implementation. Often the consumers of these services move between them. Each is critical in its own way. That is, the things that make up the service are relevant even if they are hidden or abstracted “in the cloud”.

So it is with the infrastructure components of the cloud. James Urquhart, writing for CNET in his blog, posed the (rehtorical) question: “The new cloud infrastructure: Do you care?” Well, according to James, you’d better. Here’s why: “What is happening in data center infrastructure is a complete rethinking of the architectures utilized to deliver online services, from the overall data center architectures all the way down to the very components that serve the “big four” elements of the data center: facilities, servers, storage, and networking.”

He then describes how Cisco’s Unified Computing System, Rackable Systems‘ CloudRack C2, and Google are changing the very fabric of infrastructure to meet the needs of services in the cloud. And, therefore, “whether you are a technologist or a business manager” you need to understand how infrastructure and the data center are changing because your service — your value and the revenue that goes with it — are dependent upon it. He also asks, “What I wonder is if (when?) the large cloud vendors will begin to fork their infrastructure designs as they gain more and more control over the data centers that host global IT.” Then he closes with a call for standards, as I have previously argued, to minimize risk and to ensure the evolution of the cloud.

I’d also like to point to Chris Hoff’s blog post, Does Cloud Infrastructure Matter? You Bet Your Ass(ets) It Does! because he’s written articles similar to James’ and because it give more evidence to the fact that infrastructure, while sometimes (usually?) not very sexy, it is still quite critical. You may want to check out Chris’ related blogs on this topic: The Cloud is a Fickcle Mistress and Cloud Catastrophes (Cloudtasophes?) Caused by Clueless Caretakers?

Amazon: Putting the Cloud to Work

Amazon just rolled out new features for Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS), which “is the quiet workhorse behind many of the highly scalable applications running on Amazon EC2. The new features, announced on the AWS blog, include availability within the EU region, control of access permissions, and more control over visibility timeout. So, instances of Amazon SQS can now be either based in Europe or they can span regions to provide geographic diversity. Then new permission features will now provide an even greater level of control at both the higher and lower levels of access. As Amazon states, “with this new permission system you can now use Amazon SQS queues to connect non-AWS applications to AWS applications and to connect AWS applications from different organizations.”

The Amazon Web Services team also released a new white paper: Creating HIPAA-Compliant Medical Data Applications with Amazon Web Services. The white paper explains on how to encrypt and protect data within the AWS cloud and focuses on The Privacy Rule and The Security Rule of HIPAA. You can download it from here.

Finally, AWS team also announced a new webinar on Amazon Flexible Payments Service (FPS). Amazon FPS allows “customers to complete payment transactions on your website or application using the information in their Amazon.com account.” It has API level access, giving the user greater flexibility in the monetization of their assets. The webinar takes place on Tuesday, April 14 and. Register here.

Google App Engine: Delivering a More Robust Platform

Google announced a new version of Google App Engine with “its goal of making Google’s scalable infrastructure available to all developers – from those in startups to those working in enterprise IT departments.” New features and benefits include:

• Cron support – developers gain the flexibility to run tasks on a regular basis, without the need for labor intensive monitoring and maintenance
• Database import and export – batch transfer gigabytes of data into App Engine using a new import tool; with export capabilities next month.
• Access to firewalled data – a new tool called Secure Data Connetor, that is targeted at enterprise developers, enabling centrally-managed access to on-premise data from Google Apps™, including App Engine- and gadget-based solutions.
• App Engine’s early look at Java language support includes a Java runtime, integration with the new Google Web Toolkit 1.6, and Google Plugin for Eclipse.

You can find out a little more by visiting the Google Blog. Or, better yet, you can get more detail on this announcement (and a look back at the past year) by checking out their Campfire One video.

Kicking the Week Off

James Urquhart has some interesting things to say about the different approaches that Amazon and Cloudera are taking with the Hadoop implementation of MapReduce and summarizes it as the “Internal cloud’s big test“. By comparing and contrasting the offerings, he thinks over time we’ll “finally have reasonable means of watching which directions enterprise IT prefers.”

David Linthicum recently presented “Winning with Cloud Computing…Step-by-Step” at the Cloud Computing Expo. As he says, “My larger concern is that there is so much hype in the cloud computing space that those looking to implement cloud computing ignore the fact that we’re in essence extending the architecture to outside platforms, nothing much more than that. Thus, architecture is still the focus.” Some live blogging was done as David gate his presentation and you can read it here.

In the hoopla over the Open Cloud Manifesto, let’s not forget that the Cloud Security Alliance was recently formed to promote best practices in cloud computing. However, as NetworkWorld reported “it will not seek to define standards”. The alliance, with fouding members eBay and ING, will be launched at the RSA conference later in the month.

Other news worth noting:

Deutsche Post Spin-Off to Bring Eclispse App Development to the Cloud

NetSuite talks up integration with Salesforce.com

Longjump puts SaaS inside IT shops: Provider says customers who are not yet ready to all-in with cloud computing can now control cloud functions themselves.

Big Data Gets a Boost from Amazon and Jaspersoft

Amazon Web Services has launched a public beta of Amazon Elastic MapReduce, a web service that enables the processing of vast amounts of data utilizing the Hadoop framework. It runs on Amazon EC2 and Amazon S3. The benefits of Amazon Elastic MapReduce include easier and less time-consuming set-up and affordability. MapReduce is a software framework created by Google to more efficiently handle large data sets. Hadoop is the open source version of it. (For more detail check out the Wikipedia entry on it.) Amazon Elastic MapReduce puts the technology in the hands of more organizations by lowering the barrier to entry. A company can now “instantly provision as much or as little capacity as you like to perform data-intensive tasks for distributed applications such as web indexing, data mining, log file analysis, machine learning, financial analysis, scientific simulation, and bioinformatics research.” It’s already being used by Netflix, among others.

Jaspersoft announced v3.5 of its business intelligence suite. It’s the industry’s first SaaS-enabled, multi-tenant BI platform. The new version promises “integrated data analysis for simple, powerful slicing and dicing of data” and “enhanced scalability for large deployments and data sets.” Jaspersoft says they have more than 50 customers, have incorporated their solution into their SaaS products. The company feels these new SaaS-enabled features make it far more easy for application vendors and enterprises to incorporate BI functionality into their solutions, rather than trying to “roll their own”.

New Kids on the Block

There’s a new Gartner Report, Cool Vendors in Cloud Computing, that highlights five start-ups in cloud computing management and professional services. They are:

• Appirio – which provide professional services and integration solutions based on salesforce.com for various web 2.0 services including Google Apps, Facebook, and Amazon. They are doing relatively well and their 2,000 customers include Japan Post Office, Qualcomm, Genentech, and Author.
• CohesiveFT – a cross-platform virtual appliance packaging solution for VMware, Xen, Parallels, and Amazon EC2. They also have a product called VPN-Cubed which allows companies to set up secure networking between their servers across the clouds.
• Hyperic – application and infrastructure monitoring solution for Amazon EC2 (I wrote about them in my notes from Cloud Computing Expo last year.)
• RightScale – cross-cloud automation engine and a set of application templates.
• Ylastic – browser-based Amazon-management interface for mobile phones and other devices.

Another interesting startup is rPath. As reported in TechCrunchIT, rPath is taking their technology and value proposition — reduced cost and complexity of application delivery — into the cloud, whether via Amazon’s EC2 or in private clouds. For example, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is using rPath to “manage and operate applications in a private cloud.”

Also, TechCrunchIT reported that another start-up, Sonoa Systems, inked a deal with MTV Networks (MTVN). “Sonoa’s product, ServiceNet, will help MTVN manage the delivery of video feeds as the they open their APIs to partners and consumers in the cloud.”

Finally, InfoWorld reported that storage start-up ParaScale announced the general availability of ParaScale’s Cloud Storage (PCS) software. PCS is being used and tested by customers including Sony Pictures Imageworks. “Target customers include cloud providers that need to offer storage over the Internet in a highly scalable manner, as well as enterprises attempting to improve the efficiency of storage operations inside the firewall.” The full release is available here.