David Vellante with David Floyer

The industry is abuzz with the concept of cloud computing, which is being positioned as a next generation computing model that allows organizations small to large to tap into a network of compute power, storage and bandwidth, and ‘dial up’ resources as needed to suit their businesses. In reality, the concept of cloud computing as applied to storage is not new, as the fundamental underpinning of cloud storage is the ability to store, access, share, and protect information over public IP-based networks. What is new is the maturity levels of IP-based storage, combined with service business models that enable support of more applications. The Wikibon community sees three main business drivers for this trend:

1. Increasing pressure on CIO’s to get lean and outsource non-core activities;
2. A younger buying demographic that is increasingly comfortable with Web 2.0 tools and business models;
3. The nature of emerging applications relying on mashups and interactions between multiple discrete components.

Inherent constraints and barriers to cloud approaches exist, including the fact that the cloud doesn’t offer the bandwidth and low latency needed for many applications, especially those with a high number of user interactions (e.g. desktop publishing) and high write-to-read ratios (e.g. transactional systems). Also, many organizations are still uncomfortable bearing the risks associated with consumer-like service models that involve turning over security, privacy, and data protection to an external service provider.

What will the architecture of cloud storage look like? Many examples of cloud computing and cloud storage exist today including user-direct services such as Hotmail, Gmail, search, Google Apps and Picassa; and software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications such as Salesforce.com and 37Signal’s Basecamp, and infrastructure services including Amazon’s Elastic Cloud Computing (EC2), Simple Storage Service (S3), Mozy’s online backup and YouSendIt’s file transfer services, and many others. These first generation cloud services provide a glimpse of what’s to come and what could change significantly in computing architectures. Specifically, today’s systems are typified by:

• A set of standard servers running high function OSes including Windows, Linux, or Unix;
• Databases and Middleware (e.g. SQL, Oracle) underpinning applications;
• Modular or monolithic storage with expensive software content performing necessary data management services including placement, redundancy, and recovery;
• An expensive and hopefully reliable network of IP devices, SANs, and related infrastructure.

What’s different about cloud computing? Google File System and UC Berkley’s Oceanstore Project point the way to next generation application and data architectures. These systems can be described as global and persistent, meaning they scale to support billions of users and are geared for information that must be perpetually protected (e.g. Web data or archives). The attributes of these systems include:

• Storage is placed in close proximity to the access point, storing the data in the best location to optimize network performance;
• Storage is protected in several ways, making it private, indestructible, resistant to denial of service, and able to withstand wide-scale disasters;
• The storage is auto-managed, meaning diagnosis and repair must be completely automated and simultaneous with operations (i.e. self-healing and non-disruptive);
• The system is able to ingest new hardware and software technologies as they become available;
• Coherence of data is compulsory, i.e. copies of data that are spread throughout the network are consistent;
• The underlying storage is dirt cheap to support this type of scale.

What are the benefits of this approach? To understand the benefits of cloud infrastructure it’s useful to look at two constituencies, users and IT/service providers.

Users:

• Anywhere/anytime access to data;
• Improved reliability and security of data (relative to laptop storage);
• Wider access to free software supported by advertising;
• Software that’s up-to-date with less malware.

IT/Service Providers:

• Lower costs for proof-of-concept and one-offs;
• Shared infrastructure costs (e.g. electricity and real estate);
• Lower CAPEX;
• Improved utilization and peak management;
• Outsourcing of infrastructure maintenance;
• Separation of application code from physical resources.

What are the drawbacks and risks of this approach? Wikibon members see several downsides to cloud computing that users should consider, specifically:

• Technology risk, security and privacy concerns – most computer crime is internal or from negligent and unintentional acts;
• Visibility, separation, and control - visibility into the operations and performance of shared services, logical and physical separation of data and services across subscribers, and control performance to meet audit and compliance requirements;
• Difficulty of separating applications from storage;
• Concerns about loss of control and exit strategies, especially when writing applications to proprietary APIs;
• Subscription OPEX, which over time can be more expensive on a TCO basis;
• Risks of service provider viability;
• Risk that management, performance, and reliability will not be as controllable as today’s computing models.

What does cloud storage mean for IT organizations? Wikibon members discussed the question: “Is there any doubt that cloud storage represents the future model?”

While the consensus was that yes, there are some doubts, the conclusion from Wikibon members is that the groundswell of interest in the consumerization of IT and the strong desire to outsource non-core activities will override security concerns. And a younger decision-making demographic is clearly supportive of new computing models, including the cloud.

Moreover, while cloud storage is still in its infancy, it represents an opportunity for organizations to get rid of stuff that can be placed in the cloud. Candidates include backup of remote desktops, file services, certain user application licenses, email most importantly, and a growing list of social networking and Web 2.0 applications.

While there is a tendency to run from the hype of such a topic, experimentation with this concept will probably yield positive outcomes at least with respect to defining solutions around this type of computing infrastructure. Importantly, organizations must be cognizant of exit strategies (for data and applications) when investing in the cloud and its associated APIs.

Action Item: Users should look at the backlog of opportunities and choose an area where cloud computing is potentially appropriate (e.g. archiving, remote backup and certain software development projects). Choose a low risk initiative and experiment with the objective of gaining knowledge, confidence, and an understanding of the critical metrics involved in moving applications into the cloud.

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