“Big data represents a sea change of capabilities in IT” notes Matt McLarty, Vice President, Client Solutions at Layer 7, in this exclusive Q&A with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan. McLarty continued: “In conjunction with mobile and cloud, I think Big Data will provide a technological makeover to the typical enterprise infrastructure, drawing a hard API border in front of core business services while blurring the line between logic and data services.”
Cloud Computing Journal: Agree or...| By Dustin Amrhein | Article Rating: |
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| January 24, 2012 08:15 AM EST | Reads: |
1,377 |
"It is what is on the inside that counts." How many times have we all been told that? Personally, I can't even remember. However, just because it is perhaps overused and undoubtedly cliché, does not make it any less true. In fact, I rank it right up there with the golden rule as mantras that one should try to live by. But this is ostensibly a cloud computing blog, so what am I rambling on about? Well, it turns out that it's what is on the inside that counts in cloud computing as well!
To explain this, let's take a look at the process for deploying applications on the cloud today by looking at an example. Consider that I have a basic Java web application that provides an enterprise resource scheduling service. In the normal course of operation, the web application connects to both message queues and databases to service requests. Additionally, a web server usually sits in front of this application and directs incoming requests from clients.

If I want to deploy an application like the above on a cloud, I need a good deal of knowledge about the application. First, I have to know that in order for the application to work I need far more than just an application container. I need a way to deploy or integrate with a web server, message queue, and database. I also need to know how each of the components should be integrated in order to support the needs of the application. Moreover, I need to know quite a bit about the non-functional requirements of the application (security, availability, scalability, etc.), so that I can configure each of the supporting components as appropriate.
While this may not sound like too much to expect, it can be challenging considering that the deployer of an application is unlikely to have insight into each of these needs. In fact, there is no one person in the organization that is likely to have all of these answers. Application deployments are typically the result of significant collaboration that can stretch project timelines beyond what anyone expected. But given the push towards autonomics and automation that cloud is a large part of driving, I have to ask if such intimate knowledge of an application is really required to deploy it?
My honest, yet cautious answer to this has to be no. I mean, why should I have to locate all of the required components for my application before being able to successfully deploying it? Ideally, if I am using an application-oriented cloud management system like I would expect to find in PaaS, it should be capable of application introspection to make many of these decisions for me. If you go back to my earlier example, the PaaS solution should be able to look into my web application and determine via application metadata, or even source code, that there is a dependency on both a database and a message queue. Additionally, if it notices that there is service addressable via HTTP, I would expect to at least be prompted to see if I wanted to include a web server in the application deployment. Ultimately, the introspection of the application should result in a proposed deployment architecture for my application that includes both the necessary components and the required integration between those components.
On top of all of this, I would expect that a number of non-functional configuration items could be determined via application introspection as well. If metadata in my web application indicates that I am using basic authentication to protect my enterprise scheduling service, the PaaS solution should be able to configure the application container environment appropriately. Even more interesting would be the ability to specify metadata in my web application that indicated scaling requirements and have the cloud management system automatically act on that!
Is this really too much to expect? I do not believe so. Many talk about the very nature of PaaS being one rooted in application orientation. Well, I think you can only get so far down that road without putting forth solutions that possess an inherent awareness of the applications that are being deployed. In other words, it is what is on the inside of the application that counts and PaaS solutions need to know that!
Published January 24, 2012 Reads 1,377
Copyright © 2012 SYS-CON Media, Inc. — All Rights Reserved.
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More Stories By Dustin Amrhein
Dustin Amrhein joined IBM as a member of the development team for WebSphere Application Server. While in that position, he worked on the development of Web services infrastructure and Web services programming models. In his current role, Amrhein is a technical evangelist for cloud technologies in IBM's WebSphere portfolio. He blogs at http://dustinamrhein.ulitzer.com. You can follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/damrhein.
“Big data represents a sea change of capabilities in IT” notes Matt McLarty, Vice President, Client Solutions at Layer 7, in this exclusive Q&A with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan. McLarty continued: “In conjunction with mobile and cloud, I think Big Data will provide a technological makeover to the typical enterprise infrastructure, drawing a hard API border in front of core business services while blurring the line between logic and data services.”
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As more enterprises are adopting clouds, the nature of cloud computing is changing. Previously, clouds were used to test applications or for non-mission critical applications. Today, enterprises are using clouds for cost-saving advantages and launching more mission critical applications that have defined performance needs.
In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Eric Shepcaro, CEO and Chairman of the Board of Telx, will discuss how distributed computing has many advantages. It wou...
Virtualization and private cloud are good for server consolidation, creating flexible environments, and saving IT budget dollars. A recent survey of 1200 companies with 500+ employees showed that 59% had server virtualization in production or pilot. But that doesn’t tell the whole story.
In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Dave Asprey, VP of Cloud Security at Trend Micro, will explain the types of situations when you should consider not virtualizing some of your applications. ...
Hardware and chemistry improvements will make the $1,000 human genome a reality soon. While the massive amount of genomics data that will be generated represents a huge opportunity to advance personal medicine, it also presents an enormous big data challenge.
In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Dr Andreas Sundquist, CEO of DNAnexus, will discuss how the cloud will address these issues by enabling the management, storage, sharing and analysis of the world’s DNA data and how it ...
The Platform as a Service (PaaS) market grew out of the fact that no other cloud solution addressed the ever-increasing complexity of managing and writing modern applications: no frameworks, libraries or APIs alone could tackle the sticky application engineering challenges. Unfortunately, PaaS 1.0 is what people are now seeing as strictly a “tool” to easily deploy apps to the infrastructure in a self-service way with little or no differentiation among offerings. However, in order for PaaS to rea...
Hadoop, MapReduce, Hive, Hbase, Lucene, Solr? The only thing growing faster than enterprise data these days is the landscape of big data tools. These tools, which are designed to help organizations turn big data into opportunities, are gaining deeper insight into massive volumes of information. A recent Gartner report predicts that enterprise data will increase by 650% over the next five years, which means that the time is now for IT decision makers to determine which big data tools are the best...
With Cloud Expo 2012 New York (10th Cloud Expo) now under four months away, what better time to start introducing you in greater detail to the distinguished individuals in our incredible Speaker Faculty for the technical and strategy sessions at the conference...
We have technical and strategy sessions for you every day from June 11 through June 14 dealing with every nook and cranny of Cloud Computing and Big Data, but what of those who are presenting? Who are they, where do they work, what e...
With Cloud Expo 2012 New York (10th Cloud Expo) now under four months away, what better time to start introducing you in greater detail to the distinguished individuals in our incredible Speaker Faculty for the technical and strategy sessions at the conference...
We have technical and strategy sessions for you every day from June 11 through June 14 dealing with every nook and cranny of Cloud Computing and Big Data, but what of those who are presenting? Who are they, where do they work, what e...
The proliferation of device connectivity is redefining the functionality requirements and capabilities of many embedded systems as more and more of these devices look to leverage the “Cloud.” While many commercial software and hardware component vendors have begun to realign their value propositions to satisfy growing demand, commercial-off-the-shelf products (COTS) alone cannot meet every OEM’s needs. As a result, the Embedded Cloud has injected a new level of uncertainty and a new competitive ...
Building a cloud computing environment with on-demand access to compute, network, and storage resources requires an elastic infrastructure at multiple levels. Virtualization combined with x86 servers has transformed the way we scale out compute resources. Unfortunately, legacy Fibre Channel and iSCSI storage architectures are rooted in rigid mainframe-era designs, and are fundamentally mismatched with the dynamic, shared modern data center.
In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, ...
While the notion of Bring Your Own Cloud (BYOC) may seem a bit far-fetched, Shadow IT, where users essentially bring unauthorized cloud services into business environments, has become an increasing corporate concern as highlighted in a recent CFO.com article. The risk of Shadow IT is that it comprom...
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For many of the same reasons IPv6 migration is moving slower than perhaps it should given the urgent need for more IP addresses (to support all those cows connecting to the Internet) is the sheer magnitude of such an effort. Without the ability for IPv6-only nodes to talk to IPv4-only nodes, there’s...
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Why? Because of platform proliferation. Because of quick technology obsolescence. (See this)
Management perception compounds the problem.
Anybody, not intimately familiar with this...
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Our first profile is Kevin Crowe, Director Cloud Services for Long View, and this is a perfect start because within our over...
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Is Big Data destined for only the top 3,000 companies worldwide? What about medium or small companies who are equally as data-driven? Is there a place for Big Data in SMB markets? When I talk to SMB companies about their use of public cloud services, it’s a no-brainer. Pay as you go, lower costs up...








