Can Cloud Computing Scale At Amazon And Elsewhere?

August 4, 2009

At the heart of the cloud computing debate is the assumption that the cloud can scale to significant heights. But can it?

Some Amazon customers complain they cant get all the computers they want (and need)

Some Amazon customers complain they can't get all the computers they want (and need)

Some customers say services, such as Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud, or EC2, are already bumping up against capacity limits – even at this early stage.

The three-year-old Internet-based service from Amazon allows customers to rent computers in the Amazon cloud, or data center, to install and run their applications.

Need more computer power? Pay for the extra CPU time by the hour. But some customers say it isn’t as easy as that. That’s because Amazon can’t install new equipment fast enough. The consequence is customers say they have difficulty getting the full number of machines they want, when they want them.

The customers asked not to be named for fear of endangering their relationship with Amazon.

But one entrepreneur said he asked for 1,000 additional servers and got only 500. Another recently requested an expansion of his compute farm by an additional 1,000 servers and couldn’t get the extra power.

The explanation appears to be that Amazon is unable to handle the spike in traffic that would occur if the new facilities were required simultaneously. In fact, the company appears to be working on a scheduling application that would allow it to better plan for spikes in customer needs.

The application would let customers schedule their workloads.

So will the cloud ultimately deliver the ease of use and flexibility advocate say it should? Only if it is big enough to replicate the in-house computers companies rely on to run their businesses.

That would make it one awfully large cloud.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

Zetta Sees No Commoditization Of Cloud Storage

July 31, 2009

One of the big unknowns facing cloud computing is whether this business supplying computing services to companies will become commoditized.

Companies are looking for more than a raw disk, says Zettas Jeff Treuhaft

Companies are looking for more than a raw disk, says Zetta's Jeff Treuhaft

This is especially true of cloud storage, where the differentiation among vendors is less dramatic than it is delivering computing power or application management over the Internet.

Data is either available or it isn’t, and access time can be measure quite easily.

So with new vendors entering the market, such as Microsoft (which is charging only 15 cents per gigabyte of storage), should an startup such as Zetta be concerned?

CEO Jeff Treuhaft says no. Cloud storage may get commoditized in the consumer market place, but not when it is offered to the enterprise, he says. “They are looking for something other than a raw disk,” Treuhaft explained this week during an interview at the Always On Summit.

Zetta says its infrastructure is a competitive advantage and that its 25 cents per gigabyte per month charge is attractive to customers. The company buys disks from third-party suppliers, but builds its own hardware and writes its own software for backup, or replication, management and encryption. The system makes extensive use of virtualization to spread data among machines and ensure it is available should one machine crash.

“We took the position you really have to build this as a multi-tenant service from day one,” he said. Multi-tenancy also translates into greater efficiency because it allows several customers to share the same piece of hardware.

Zettta is technically still in beta, but it says demand is healthy. “We have companies now that are not starting with one application but with three,” he said at the Stanford University gathering.

Still, with the market getting more crowded and competitors such as Amazon with its S3 service well established, commoditization over time is a danger.

Zetta doesn’t release its revenue figures and isn’t yet profitable. Monitoring these numbers over the next couple year will be an important market telltale – if the company is brave enough to report them.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

Public Computing Clouds Could Be More Secure That Private Ones

June 26, 2009

At the top of the list of corporate concerns about cloud computing is security.

But before long companies debating whether to migrate their applications into a hosted cloud may find public networks are safer than their own.

Not all private companies maintain the same discipline, says Suns Greg Papadopoulos

Not all private companies maintain the same discipline, says Sun's Greg Papadopoulos

Most public clouds are run in a more secure manner than the networks enterprises maintain on their own, says Sun Microsystems CTO Greg Papadopoulos.

Not all private companies maintain the same discipline, he said Thursday at the Structure 09 conference in San Francisco.

Cloud computing is among the most talked about trends in modern computing – especially today when its promise of lower costs turns heads in corporate suites. Many IT managers are said to be looking closely at moving applications into hosted clouds as they seek to free up technology budgets for new projects and hope to add flexibility to their computing infrastructures.

But the most significant drawback is security. Companies rightly fear that their important customer data could be compromised or stolen if it is hosted in a public cloud.

During a panel discussion at the conference, Papadopoulos turned that thinking on its ear.  The incentive for an employee at a public data center to rifle a company’s data is arguably less than an employee at the company itself, who knows its value, he said.

It could end up that public centers are the more compliant places to be, he said.

Papadoploulos’ thinking could be right. But it will take time for enterprise customers to swallow this counter intuitive pill.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

Microsoft Still Appears Hesitant On Cloud Computing

June 25, 2009

Microsoft has put significant development efforts behind Azure, its operating system for cloud computing.

And the company acknowledges that most corporate customers are looking closely at this latest trend sweeping the world of data-center computing.

But the software giant appears hesitant to embrace the transformation and its potential for upending the buy-and-install software business that has fueled its fortunes for more than a decade.

Not everything will move to the cloud, at least not right away, says Microsofts Yousef Khalidi

Not everything will move to the cloud, at least not right away, says Microsoft's Yousef Khalidi

On-premise systems will be here for a long time,” Distinguished Engineer Yousef Khalidi argued on Thursday.

Speaking at the Structure 09 conference in San Francisco, Khalidi said that he wanted to “anchor” the industry’s discussion of cloud.

In general, software applications have to become more cloud-like, he said. But cloud is in its early stages.

“We will see co-existence,” he said. “Not everything will move to the cloud. At least not right away.”

He also suggested options for customers might be limited. Cloud could shakeup the hosting industry, with only a small number of big vendors surviving to operate big public clouds because of the capital cost, he said.

Smaller vendors will offer differentiated services around them.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

Cloud Computing Is More Than Automating Business Processes

June 25, 2009

That cloud computing is a mechanism for fostering communications and collaboration is not a new message from Hewlett-Packard.

But it is seemingly more relevant as the industry toils to make sense of this latest high-tech trend.

The cloud is about communications and collaboration, says H-Ps Russ Daniels

The cloud is about communications and collaboration, says H-P's Russ Daniels

Cloud computing is clearly capturing the attention of data-center managers at corporations large and small. Most still wonder, however, when to migrate their applications and how the cloud differs from the traditional hosting options they have long considered

Company CTO Russ Daniels argues that viewing cloud computing simply as a mechanism for business process outsourcing is a mistake.

The difference, he said Thursday at the Structure 09 conference in San Francisco, is its ability to capture a huge amount of data at a low cost. This enables cloud to be “more about communicating and collaborating than automating business processes,” he said.

It isn’t a brand new marketing pitch from H-P. The company has long linked its cloud effort with the slogan: “everything as a service.”

But the emphasis is an interesting turn of the screw as the industry tries to hone its understand of the benefits and challenges of this new paradigm. If the emphasis can be shifted to cost and collaboration, the possibilities might be better understood.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

Cloud Computing Wil Spawn IT Experimentation

June 19, 2009

Of course cloud computing promises to save businesses money.

But its simplicity and ease of use also may spawn an unprecedented increase in business experimentation.

Cloud computing will also face IT with decentralization and less control

Cloud computing will also face IT with decentralization and less control

This compelling thesis comes from analyst Charles Burns, a research vice president at Saugatuck Technology, and it just might prove itself out.

With cloud’s lower cost, “you can afford to have a lot of (project) failures” without the bottom line suffering, Burns said Thursday at Navigating the Cloud, a discussion sponsored by IBM.

Burns argues that cloud computing is likely to change every company’s business – dismissing the deep-seated debate around the veracity and historical roots of the emerging computing scheme.

He calls cloud computing pragmatic, whether or not it is a follow-on to the autocratic computing structure of the mainframe era.
In a sense, it doesn’t matter. It can save companies money, shorten the development time of new applications, allow small business to better meet Sarbanes-Oxley requirements and shift capital expenses to operating expenses with software as a service.

Its ease of use is still evolving (there are no standards in place for interoperability so every cloud implementation is different.) But as simplicity improves, business department experimentation will take place on the cheap, says Burns.

At first this will seem like a threat to IT managers fearing a loss of control. But they too will see a bright light.

Overtime, they will be able to shift staff from server and disk array maintenance to high-level business support.

That should make everyone happy. But don’t hold your breath. Standards are nowhere in sight and the ease of use necessary for widespread experimentation is a work in progress.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

Online Apps See A Boost From Recession Frugality

March 27, 2009

Companies eager to save money are the primary catalyst for what appears to be a lift in the use of low cost or no cost online applications, including Google’s personal productivity Docs.

Box.net says sales are ahead of quota this year

Box.net says sales are ahead of quota this year

While sales of computers, servers and new business software continue to feel the pinch of the economic downturn, online applications seem to be dodging the the worst of the malaise.

At vendor Box.net, for instance, growth has accelerated from last year’s roughly 250 percent growth pace.

The company is beating its quotas, says Jen Grant, vice president of marketing. “People are looking (at online products) more closely.”

Grant says business people are seeking less costly ways to get their work done at the same time as they need document services outside the corporate firewall that can be used by customers and partners.

Box.net, which is an online service for document collaboration, says it fits the bill.

Despite the sour economy, the migration to the cloud continues.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

Wyse Plans Cloud Computing App For IPhone

March 17, 2009

Thin-client computer maker Wyse Technology plans to release a cloud computing business application for the iPhone.

The application is intended to let employees tap into their virtualized computing environments at work, such as those running virtualization software from VMware, Microsoft or Citrix Systems.

Thsi is an enterprise app, says Jeff McNaught

Thsi is an enterprise app, says Jeff McNaught

It is another sign that Apple’s popular smartphone is finding a place in the business market – a goal its Macintosh computers have never achieved.

The software, called Project Renaissance – is scheduled for release by mid year, says Jeff McNaught, chief marketing and strategy officer at the company.

Similar applications are slated for the Blackberry and Palm Pre later this year.

“This is an enterprise app” that provides access to a virtualized environment in a computing cloud, says McNaught. “It is painfully boring.”

But it will have the quality business people expect in software, he says.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

Google Says It Is Not Following Amazon Into The Cloud (Business)

February 26, 2009

A day after announcing that its fledgling cloud computing initiative – Google App Engine – would begin charging high-volume customers, Google said it doesn’t see itself following in Amazon’s footsteps.

“It’s a different approach,” Alan Eustace, senior vice president of engineering and research said Wednesday. “I don’t think there will be one answer” in the market place.

Google App Engine takes a different approach, says Alan Eustace

Google App Engine takes a different approach, says Alan Eustace

Google said Tuesday that starting in May, users of its App Engine could pay to exceed the online product’s free quota.  That free quota is about 5 million page views a month (or a gigabyte of data transferred in and out of an application per day).

Beyond that a user pays 10 cents per GB of bandwidth coming in and 12 cents per GB of bandwidth going out.

Eustace said there are significant differences between the App Engine and Amazon’s EC2 web service.

Amazon’s service is built from the hardware up, giving it flexibility but requiring band of programmers to get web site properly up and running.

Google’s App Engine is quicker to ready because it takes a smaller amount of effort, he said. But a fewer number of applications will fit into this model.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

Salesforce Claims Win Over Oracle As Customers Surrender To Cloud Computing

February 25, 2009

Business customers are rethinking the large software “maintenance” payments they make to vendors such as Oracle and SAP, Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff says.

Salesforce winning in every industry, says Marc Benioff

Salesforce winning in every industry, says Marc Benioff

Benioff, whose company posted a 34 percent fourth quarter sales increase, said the downturn is causing many companies to watch cash like hawks.

“Now that credit is as tight as it has been in generations, customers are surrendering to the more predictable costs of cloud computing,” he said Wednesday on a conference call.

“We’re winning deals of all sizes in virtually every industry,” he said.

The company’s solid financial report, with profits that almost doubled and an upbeat first-quarter outlook, bucks the trend of recently quarterly reports with sales declines and falling profits.

Benioff said the sour economic environment is leading customers to the lower monthly payments of renting software as a service.

He pointed to a key contract win with EMC, where he claimed the company is replacing Oracle’s Siebel customer software.

“This was a great win against Oracle and replaces their Siebel infrastructure,” Benioff said.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

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