“I believe it is incumbent on the Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) and/or System Integrators (SIs) to understand the regulatory and compliance-related issues that their customers face,” noted Manjula Talreja, VP of Global Cloud Business Development at Cisco, in this exclusive Q&A with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan. “Of course these issues are different in each industry and in each country.”
Cloud Computing Journal: The move to cloud isn't about saving money, it is about saving time - ...| By Randy Bias | Article Rating: |
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| January 14, 2009 06:49 AM EST | Reads: |
27,531 |
Cloudcenters provide the same kinds of tools that all datacenter and server operators are already accustomed to, but with all the traditional advantages of cloud (i.e. self-service, pay-as-you-go, and scalability). Instead of creating completely new paradigms, cloudcenters are a methodology by which the customer can have a virtual datacenter hosted ‘in the sky.’
Amazon’s Web Services (AWS) is not the only way to build scalable Cloud Infrastructures. There are two emerging methodologies for constructing Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) AKA “Cloud Infrastructure Services”. The first is what we call “cloudcenters”, which are essentially datacenters in the sky. The second is what we call an “Infrastructure Web Service”. GoGrid was one of the pioneers for cloudcenters, while AWS largely created the second model.
Understanding IaaS means looking closely at these two approaches. Clearly the notion of cloudcenters embodied by AWS competitors such as ourselves, FlexiScale, ElasticHosts, AppNexus, and others is important. My colleague, Michael Sheehan, will go into more depth on how we think this distinction modifies his earlier Cloud Pyramid (above left) in a follow-on article to this one.
Infrastructure Cloud Models
Understanding these two approaches is important because it directly affects your selection of a Cloud Infrastructure provider. These two models highlight a difference in core infrastructure and in target markets. Cloudcenters provide a direct equivalent to traditional datacenters and hence are usually more desirable for IT staff, systems operators, and other datacenter savvy folks. Infrastructure Web Services on the other hand are more analogous to Service-Oriented-Architectures (SOA), require significant programming skills, and are much more comfortable for software developers.
Infrastructure Web Services
I’m going to assume for this article that you are somewhat familiar with Amazon Web Services (AWS), but I’ll briefly re-cap. AWS provides a number of different ‘Web Services’ that can consumed individually or put together to support different kinds of applications, usually a batch processing or web application of some kind. These services include:
- Object-based file storage via Simple Storage Service (S3)
- Servers on demand via Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
- Block storage on demand via Elastic Block Storage (a part of EC2)
- Distributed database functionality via SimpleDB (SDB)
- Content distribution and edge-caching via CloudFront
- Messaging & queuing via Simple Queuing Service (SQS)
- Payment processing via Flexible Payment Services (FPS)
- Billing & re-packaging of the above services via Amazon Dev Pay
This is a robust ecosystem of services form which you can use any or all of in order to build your application, getting the traditional benefits of Cloud Computing such as self-service, pay-as-you-go, and massive scalability.
Unfortunately, every service above is based on an Amazon standard, not an industry standard. S3 is not accessible via CIFS or NFS. EC2 provides Xen hosting, but image management and storage is completely custom. SQS does not use any standard queuing or messaging protocols such as JMS or STOMP. SimpleDB now has an ‘SQL-like’ interface, but is essentially a 100% ground up creation of Amazon.
A major advantage of using the Amazon approach however is that greenfield applications developed from scratch have a very powerful set of vetted, scalable services, that can be used to build that application. This means avoiding the intrinsic and extrinsic costs associated with deploying a separate queuing or database system.
The alternative, of course, is to use the same tools, paradigms and standards that you deploy in an industry standard Enterprise datacenter today.
Published January 14, 2009 Reads 27,531
Copyright © 2009 SYS-CON Media, Inc. — All Rights Reserved.
Syndicated stories and blog feeds, all rights reserved by the author.
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Randy Bias has been deeply involved with IT, Operations, and 24×7 service delivery since 1990. He currently serves on the executive team of GoGrid, an early cloud computing pioneer, as VP Technology Strategy. Bias specializes in highly available, secure, and scalable datacenter, storage, systems and network design. His earliest extreme uptime, high scalability involvement was with InterNex Information Services, a Bay Area ISP pioneer and eventually the XO Communications backbone. More recently, he provided the vision and direction behind the CloudScale Project, which was focused on building next generation scalable operations tools for clouds and datacenters.
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“Regulations and compliance are key trust topics with regards to cloud solutions and technology,” noted Sven Denecken, Vice President, Strategy and Co-Innovation Cloud Solutions, SAP AG, in this exclusive Q&A with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan. “But it is also more than security of access – it is portability of data and a clear definition of where the data resides.”
Cloud Computing Journal: The move to cloud isn't about saving money, it is about saving time – agree or disagree?
Sve...
Many organizations want to expand upon the IaaS foundation to deliver cloud services in all forms – software, mobility, infrastructure and IT. Understanding the strategy, planning process and tools for this transformation will help catalyze changes in the way the business operates and deliver real value.
IT has more opportunities than ever before with the growth in users, devices, data and secure cloud services. This creates not only a more enriching experience for users, but more opportunities for businesses. The key to capitalizing on these opportunities is to have the right tools in place to help scale operations. In his Day 3 Keynote at 12th Cloud Expo | Cloud Expo New York [June 10-13, 2013], Intel's Rob Crooke will describe the range of products that Intel provides to support different usa...
One of the cloud’s biggest draws is the capability to virtualize computing resources, allowing it to be consumed with the click of a mouse. But behind that simple click is an enormous infrastructure challenge that has recently been cited as a major cause for slower enterprise adoption. Enterprises can better prepare for this shift and take full advantage of future computing benefits. Between architecture design and migration planning, the road can be long, so what do you do with your talent?
I...
In the old world of IT, if you didn't have hardware capacity or the budget to buy more, your project was dead in the water. Budget constraints can leave some of the best, most creative and most ingenious innovations on the cutting room floor. It’s a true dilemma for developers and innovators – why spend the time creating, when a project could be abandoned in a blink? That was the old world. In the new world of IT, developers rule. They have access to resources they can spin up instantly.
A hyb...
INetU, the industry's experts in complex hosting and a global provider of business-centric managed cloud and application hosting, has announced that Cloud Architect Rich Hand will be presenting "Private Cloud, Public Cloud - Is There a Third Option?" at the 12th International Cloud Expo taking place June 10-13, 2013 in New York City.
As more enterprise IT departments move into the cloud, many executives are evaluating whether to adopt a Public or Private cloud. The cost benefits of the Public ...
“I’m careful when using terms like Big Data, because it can mean so many things to different people,” explained Eric Hanselman, Chief Analyst at 451 Research, in this exclusive Q&A with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan. “There is huge value in analytics that companies can use to pull intelligence from a collection of data sources that are available in their businesses. The inexpensive storage that cloud services can offer make a great environment to pull together siloed data.”
Cloud Co...
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Short of scrapping millions of dollars of worth of investments, something needs to be done with these apps, especially when cloud adoption is altering the effic...












