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I stepped off a plane after spending a week vacationing in Tucson and twelve hours later I found myself at CloudCamp Minneapolis. The unconference, held at the University of Minnesota, attracted about 100 attendees — vendors, developers, marketers, and job hunters. Most of the attendees were cloud consumers (users) that use the cloud to build and support applications.
My good friend Graeme Thickens posted flickr pictures from the event. Here’s some pics from Jeremy Mooney and some pics from Jared Volkl.
And here’s a good blog recap of the event provided by Jason Boche from the local Vmware Users Group.
I was pleased with the overall tone and tempo of the CloudCamp. People were genuinely interested in discussing the cloud and cloud computing from multiple perspectives. We had an interesting philosophical discussion moderated by George Reese regarding whether or not private clouds can be considered true clouds. George’s position was that if an organization owns the infrastructure they cannot claim to be using a cloud. Infrastructure is always someone else’s problem in this purist view. That begs the question can Microsoft claim to be using cloud computing if they leverage their own Azure platform to deliver SaaS. My belief is that cloud computing is a combination of infrastructure and business processes. The cloud computing infrastructure builder and user could be one and the same.
I had to laugh out loud when I saw this diagram today. So true!
I hear about vendors and service providers talking about virtualization, cloud computing, grid computing, and utility computing on a daily basis. Now throw in terms like unified computing from vendors like Cisco and you have a recipe for confusion in the marketplace. Staff members at my own company sometimes mix up terms like grid computing and cloud computing. And many marketing departments from traditional service providers take great liberties with these terms.
Virtualization is not cloud computing.
I hate to break it to ya but virtualization isn’t cloud computing. Virtualization is nothing more than a brick in the cloud computing house. It’s purely an infrastructure component. I don’t think it is necessarily even a requirement for a cloud computing infrastructure. Cloud computing abstracts computing resources from hardware from the perspective of the end user. You can’t just stand up a couple vmware servers and claim that you now have a cloud. I know vmware and some service providers would like you to believe that.
Grid computing is not cloud computing.
I’m probably going to upset some of the “grid hosting” providers out there when I say that their notion of a grid is marketechture at best. You can find true grid computing in academic circles and high-performance computing environments. Grid computing requires specialized architectures and purposefully written software applications that can run on distributed systems. You can’t run your Windows application on a grid. Think Beowulf clusters. Grid hosting marketechture is nothing more than a group of individual servers running hypervisors that are on the same vlan. These servers, and the computing resources they represent, are effectively silos.
ASP (application service provider) is not cloud computing.
Some vendors have related cloud computing to the ASP-model over the past year — usually in a dismissive tone. Their belief is that cloud computing is just another name for ASP 2.0. The big difference between cloud computing and the ASP model is that the cloud is designed to host a generic class of applications whereas the ASP model is purposely designed to handle specific applications. For example, the Amazon or Rackspace clouds can host an infinite set of applications. Whereas Microsoft Hosted Services are designed to provide rental of specific applications like Microsoft Exchange. You could say that Microsoft’s hosted services live in the “cloud”. But you would be hard pressed to say that this type of service makes Microsoft a cloud computing provider.
The Internet is not cloud computing.
I’ve seen this analogy creep into vendor-speak over the past year. Technical people traditionally referred to the Internet as the “cloud”. In fact many of us would literally draw a cloud when sketching out a network infrastructure connected to the Internet. So the thinking goes that if you connect a computer server to the Internet you now offer computing in the cloud — or cloud computing. This analogy ignores the business model and processes offered by cloud computing and focuses solely on infrastructure. See the “virtualization is not cloud computing” rant above. It is absolutely possible to build a cloud computing environment that is not connected to the Internet.
Utility computing could be cloud computing.
Utility computing is probably the closest traditional definition to what we call cloud computing today. Utility computing is defined as the packaging of computing resources as a metered service similar to a public utility. Utility computing allows the customer to rent resources versus paying for the acquisition of computing servers. This definition sounds awfully close to cloud computing. Cloud computing could be called utility computing 2.0. I’ll cover this more in the future.
My head has been in the clouds a lot lately. I’ve made a strategic decision going forward to focus my blog on cloud computing along with the commercial and political forces shaping the industry. I believe that cloud computing is dramatically reshaping my industry and transforming server management architecture within enterprises. We are living in interesting times where new business models will arise while others will fail.
I’ve re-branded the blog as the “Cloud CTO” blog paying homage to my previous blog name the “Unofficial CTO” blog. I will continue to provide an inside “unofficial” perspective on the hsoting industry with a greater emphasis on the disruptive force known as cloud computing.
Just a reminder that CloudCamp Minneapolis is happening next week at the University of Minnesota campus. My company is the platinum sponsor for the event and I’m giving one of the quick intro speeches. Stop by and check it out!
I read the latest Daily T1R newsletter sent out by Tier1Research with interest this morning. Basically they were saying that traditional hosting companies need to carefully manage customer relationships and expectations as businesses become more aware of cloud computing.
I’ve talked about how utility pricing is a key advantage of cloud computing architectures. The challenge traditional hosters face is that as customers begin to understand the significant advantages of utility pricing they may seek new hosting vendors.
As an owner of a traditional hosting company I find myself in a tough position. I’ve had to build an infrastructure to service a diverse group of customers with ever changing needs. I know that many customers pay for resources they are not using. I’ve been able to lock in customer relationships for long periods of time using contracts. But customers have come to accept these constraints as part of the cost of doing business. Internet and telecommunications companies have relied on the oversubscription model and service contracts to propel growth for decades.
Now cloud computing is forcing service providers to reevaluate not only technology architectures but business models. At the same time we are dealing with increasingly savy business users that understand the cloud. How do we successfully transition from the old model of hosting to the new? How do we maintain margin much less propel growth in a world where the customer only pays for resources they are consuming?
I think part of the answer lies in the efficiency gains provided by a cloud computing architecture. Service providers will be able to leverage the computing resources of a cloud architecture more efficiently than racks of individual servers. Providers will also be able to provision and manage services more efficiently leading to labor cost savings.
