We are WoodApple UnikSolutionz, a quality driven unique technology and business consulting firm founded with the philosophy to bridge implementation gaps by delivering cost effective quality solutions to businesses in the SMB space through our innovative execution methodologies.
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Cloud Computing and Why Should I Care?
What is cloud computing, and why should I care? You won’t have to care. That is the great thing about cloud computing. You only have to have a computer, monitor, and a keyboard. The service will do the rest.
Cloud Computing: A New Name for known Method. Traditionally, a business has to buy and upgrade a high powered computer for each of its employees. In addition, licenses for the software needed by each worker to do his job would have to be obtained. Finally, adequate storage space for all of the business’s data, and back up for that data would have to be deployed. This is the way it has been done in traditional businesses for years. Now all of that is undergoing a big change.
Cloud computing is a more efficient use of computing resources. Rarely do servers use all of their capacity. Cloud computing takes advantage of that fact by assigning tasks to servers as their facilities become available. Each server can be divided into modules that function as separate entities, and can be used to perform tasks for different users at the same time. This is known as “server virtualization”.
The various servers can manage specific pieces of software, which, in turn, can be accessed by the end user on a “as needed” basis. The business no longer has to purchase individual computers with large disk drives to accommodate the data storage needs of each individual employee. In addition, there is no need to purchase individual licenses for each piece of software neded by each worker to do her job. The “cloud” manages and stores everything, and it is available instantly to anyone who has proper access.
There is no limit to the kinds of software that can be managed on a cloud system. Word processos, data storage systems, email applications and even computer games would not require separate storage. Instead, they would be stored on remote servers, and made available to the end user when he accesses the service.
The cloud computing services are not standardized. There are a number of interface choices available, which can be tailored to the needs of the individual client.
Businesses benefit because they only have to pay for the services they need, as they need it. It won’t be necessary to buy copies of and licenses for software that is needed badly, but only occasionally. Instead, cloud computing has the flexibility to meter the use of services as they are used. Thus, a business would receive a bill at the end of the month for the uses of the system it actually made. In addition, it would not have to constantly purchase upgrades, as the service would do that for all of its clients as newer and better applications become available.
In the end, businesses will have much to gain from this new generation of computing. They will be relieved of duplicate license purchases, and upgrade expenses. They would no longer have to worry about storage and back up. Finally, the computers they do purchase will not have to become more and more powerful as long as they have the capacity to log on to the cloud computing service. Replacing older machines would be necessary much less often.
The global market for cloud computing will grow from $40.7 billion in 2011 to more than $241 billion in 2020, say Stefan Ried, Ph.D. and Holger Kisker, Ph.D., Forrester (News - Alert) Research analysts. that includes revenues for public cloud, virtual private cloud and private cloud services.
The total size of the public cloud market will grow from $25.5 billion in 2011 to $159.3 billion in 2020. Generally, public cloud services refer to any applications or services that use the public Internet, in a shared environment.
But it will be hard to separate the cloud services markets from other markets that will evolve with cloud computing. When Apple CEO Steve Jobs (News - Alert) talks about the “post-PC” era, he doesn't necessarily mean that there will be no PCs. What he means is that computing services, devices and applications will be different, and will be used in different ways, primarily as devices that are Internet connected and able to use cloud services as a fundamental capability.
Basically, computing experiences become ubiquitous, casual, intimate, and physical (multiple ways to interact with the devices using sensors and other input methods). If you think about it, the connection between intimate, casual and ubiquitous computing appliances is obvious.
As computing becomes embedded, it will often become smaller, wearable or available in surfaces of other objects. If you think about the problems information technology managers have updating software just on user desktops, you can figure out why it will make sense to provision and update ubiquitous and small devices automatically, by storing and executing software remotely, so local updating is never necessary.
Such services typically are expected to be sold in standardized versions, billed on a pay-per-use plan and generally invoked by users. Generally speaking, the standardization implies little ability to customize features.
In the same way, there is a link between cloud technology and mobile technology. Cloud evolution is enabled by mobile devices such as smart phones and tablets that need easy-to-use connections to enterprise resources, as well as the latest versions of all data and documents.
The infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) generally refers to the rental of storage or computational resources. Think of Amazon Web Services (News - Alert) Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and Rackspace Cloud, for example.
A separate segment of the public cloud services market is access to software platforms (platform-as-a-service or PaaS). Salesforce.com is the preeminent example of a platform service.
Software as a service is the other popular cloud computing segment. Google Applications and Salesforce.com are good examples.
Some would say cloud services providing full business processes (BPaaS) also are a discrete segment of the market. Forrester Research, for example, defines a service as BPaaS if it includes staff to ensure end-to-end process delivery, as PayPal (News - Alert) does for its payment conflict resolution service.
Few areas of human endeavor can match the pace of change in IT. Even by IT standards, the change being driven by cloud computing sometimes seems surprising. To refer to a virtual environment that has only recently been deployed as "legacy," as some organizations are now doing, underscores the fact that the only thing constant in the data center is change. To deal with change of this magnitude, which can involve transforming the workload hosting model of an entire organization, some industrial-strength thinking is required.
In order to tackle this challenge, it's important to properly frame the cloud transformation problem. Many associate cloud with agility, flexibility, cost transparency and other end-user-oriented benefits. But many of these attributes are primarily associated with new infrastructure requests, and specifically, the use of self-service portals to "spin up" infrastructure to host new applications or host transient processing demands.
When it comes to migrating hundreds or thousands of existing workloads into cloud infrastructure, agility is not a benefit that is typically experienced. In fact the opposite is often the case: because clouds require a higher degree of standardization (i.e., a finite catalog of sizes and software options), migrating existing physical and virtual servers into cloud models can actually be quite difficult. In other words, the very features that make clouds agile for new workload deployments can actually make them less agile from a transformation perspective.
This is where the notion of a factory comes in. In industrial processes, factories are the epitome of scalability, repeatability and productivity. Although they may take some effort to "tool up," once they are up and running they can handle a higher flow of activity, efficiently processing inputs to provide consistent output. This notion is also key to large-scale transformation. By applying a common approach that has been properly engineered to give repeatable results, organizations can greatly reduce the time and effort required to migrate to cloud infrastructure.
Within this concept, it is important to expand on what is meant by "properly engineered." Many organizations tackle these kinds of problems from a grassroots perspective, using spreadsheets and smart people to determine action. The problem with this approach is it rarely evolves to the point where it can generate truly accurate answers, mainly because the problem is too complex. Migrating workloads into clouds requires processing volumes of historical data, analyzing configuration information on the servers and applications being migrated, modeling target instance sizes and software stacks, enforcing corporate and regulatory requirements, honoring SLA and data protection rules, etc. Spreadsheets are not well suited to this, in much the same way that they are ill suited for use as corporate accounting platforms. Even if they can be coaxed into giving a decent answer for simple environments, they will not generate the reports needed to satisfy stakeholders, management, engineering, operations, etc., all of whom need significant detail surrounding the decisions being made in order to ensure benefits are achieved and risk is minimized.
Buried in the list of migration analysis requirements is a key concept linking them all together. This is the notion of policy, which represents the ground rules on how workloads should be hosted, where they should and should not go, how much resources they should be allocated, etc. Without properly modeled policies, hosting decisions are left to the practitioner performing the migration, and it can be hit-or-miss whether they do the right thing (or even follow the same policy twice in a row). Planning and managing cloud infrastructure without proper policies is like trying to fill out a tax return without instructions - there are just too many variables to get it right.
With all of these concepts in mind, the exact nature of the cloud factory becomes clearer. It divides the problem into a series of logical steps that combine data, target models and cloud planning and management policies in order to automate the process of deciding exactly where things go and how big to make them. These steps that make up the factory are:
Candidate Qualification: This process determines whether a given set of workloads are suitable to be hosted in a given cloud environment. This is both qualitative and quantitative in nature and designed to separate true candidates from the workloads that are better suited to go elsewhere (more on this later in step Examples of quantitative criteria include maximum I/O rates, context switching limitations, maximum CPU and memory sizes, etc. Qualitative criteria include data sensitivity, SLA requirements, backup strategy and other considerations. By applying a policy capturing all of these factors, a rapid and accurate assessment can be made.
Sizing: This takes the qualified candidates and determines what cloud instances are best suited to host them given their historical levels and patterns of utilization. This again is subject to policy, which governs how much history is considered, target utilization levels, etc. The result is a detailed specification of the instance sizes needed and the projected utilization levels in the "to be" environment. Note the use of benchmarks is critical in this step, as the translation of CPU utilization from the current environment to the cloud depends on the relative speeds of the CPU employed in each.
Load Balancing: Also a sizing step, this is focused on the load balancers and clusters being migrated. Because cloud environments offer different sizing options, and can even offer more advanced "elasticity" features, it is not always desirable to do a straight one-to-one translation of these servers into cloud capacity. For example, an 8-way IIS cluster might translate onto 12 smalls, 6 mediums and 3 large instances. Of these options, the one that meets the policy criteria (e.g., size for yearly peak activity, allow for N+1 resiliency) at the lowest cost will be the winner. This result is combined with the general sizing results from the previous step to provide a complete sizing plan.
Software Stack Mapping: This step considers the OS and software configurations of the source servers and maps them onto the "closest" configuration available in the cloud. Because cloud catalogs only offer a finite set of software options, this is effectively a standardization analysis. For Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), this step is typically limited to the OS-level configuration and matches the OS attributes of the existing servers and VMs to the operating systems that are on offer in the cloud (which is typically a much shorter list). For Platform-as-a-Service this step also includes scrutiny of the actual software inventory and applications installed. The result may say "server X looks the most like an IIS v6 server, but differs from the standard image in the following ways..." This not only provides the optimal stack to deploy, but also generates a remediation list that is critical for reducing risk during implementation.
Placement: Once the final specification is arrived at (through sizing, balancing and software mapping), the next step for internal cloud environments is determining exactly where the workloads should be placed in the infrastructure actually hosting the cloud environment. Because most clouds are based on virtual environments, the key is to fit the new VMs into the environment in a way that optimally leverages server resources. This step looks somewhat similar to placement of workloads in virtual environments (which tends to resemble placing Tetris blocks in available server capacity), but the policy regarding overcommit has a large influence on the resulting placements. If the policy is to strictly reserve the capacity for each cloud instance, then the environment will be very safe but relatively inefficient, as the workload density will be quite low (think of playing Tetris with the blocks wrapped in bubbles). If the policy is to fully overcommit resources, then the end customer may have a higher risk of contention if they place unanticipated demands on the environment, but the higher density that results can result in significantly lower costs (think Tetris blocks packed tightly together, requiring far less capacity).
Exception Handling: Going back to step 1, there are typically components of an application or business service that may not be suitable for hosting in the cloud. For these systems, it is necessary to evaluate other hosting options in order to determine what to do with them. Because there is often an order of precedence with respect to the hosting options, this step involves the systematic qualification of the rejected workloads against an ordered set of hosting strategies. These strategies can include using cloud instances with customized allocations, using dedicated cloud servers, hosting in a virtual environment, using dedicated blades, using dedicated rack mount servers or leaving the workloads alone (a last resort). By passing the rejected candidates through this gauntlet of options, each will arrive at a viable outcome.
The result of applying these steps is a methodical, exhaustive and rapid process for planning cloud migrations. By taking a data-centric, policy-driven approach, fewer mistakes are made, less rework is required, and application owners and other stakeholders will have much higher confidence they will arrive on the other end unscathed. This transparency, combined with the detailed specifications and implementation details that emerge, can rapidly accelerate cloud initiatives. This not only reduces time-to-value, but also enables IT organizations to keep up with the pace of technology innovation, which shows no sign of letting up.
Community Cloud is the cloud infrastructure that is shared by several organizations and supports a specific community that has shared concerns (e.g., mission, security requirements, policy, and compliance considerations). It may be managed by the organizations or a third party and may exist on premise or off premise.
With that in mind, we are yet to see larger community clouds across industry verticals. However Community Cloud adoption will be a key success factor for many industries which are at cross roads worldwide.
Some of the reasons mentioned below will prove why Community Clouds are important in the current volatile global economy.
Cooperation Among Competitors in Specific Areas Is Not New
Automotive Composites Consortium (ACC) (a Partnership of DaimlerChrysler[formerly Chrysler], Ford and General Motors) is started with a Mission to conduct joint research programs on structural and semi-structural polymer composites in pre-competitive areas that leverage existing resources and enhance competitiveness.
The HR-XML Consortium isthe independent, non-profit, volunteer-ledorganization dedicated to the development and promotion of a standard suite of XML specifications to enable e-business and the automation of human resources-related data exchanges.
BEA Systems Inc., IBM Corp., Microsoft Corp. and TIBCO Software Inc. worked together on Web Services ReliableMessaging (WS-RM) specification, comprising both protocol and policy assertions, to the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) for further refinement and finalization as a Web services standard.
Health Level Seven International (HL7) is a not-for-profit, ANSI-accredited standards developing organization dedicated to providing a comprehensive framework and related standards for the exchange, integration, sharing, and retrieval of electronic health information that supports clinical practice and the management, delivery and evaluation of health services. HL7's 2,300+ members include approximately 500 corporate members who represent more than 90% of the information systems vendors serving healthcare.
Community Clouds in no way will hinder the healthy competition between various vendors, but rather facilitate better customer service, and innovation towards new products and services.
Global Issues Affect All the Competing Organizations and Not Just One
In a globalized economy certain natural disasters and other events like war affect every organization in a particular market segment and not just one specific organization. This emphasizes the need of community clouds so that these issues like disaster recovery, business continuity can be tackled together.
Recently all of the major global automobile industry OEMs, such as GM, Ford, and Toyota, have to slow down on their manufacturing operations due to earthquake in Japan.
Stringent Federal, EU and State Compliance
The USA's Environmental Protection agency and more specifically California Air Resources Board (CARB) have put very stringent vehicle emission standards which all the major automobile manufacturers have to comply with.
The GHS is a common and consistent approach to defining and classifying hazards, and communicating hazard information on labels and safety data sheets (SDS). The European Union has implemented the United Nations' GHS into EU law as the CLP Regulation.
HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) regulates the availability and breadth of group health plans and certain individual health insurance policies.
The above are few examples of compliance standards enforced by several Union, Federal and State agencies on the various industry verticals.
Over last couple of years, cloud computing has become one of the most promising IT solutions. The promise of cloud computing is quite clear, reduction of operational expenses by maximizing the utilization’s of IT infrastructure. The utilization rate going from single digit to 60-70% is not uncommon using carefully designed cloud solution.
In order to achieve such goal, what are the experiences and patterns that are emerging from the early adoption of cloud computing? The adoption of cloud computing can discussed from many perspectives. So even to discuss emerging trends, it makes sense to keep the same level of discussion.
Client side vs. Server Side Virtualization: The growth of cloud computing on server side has been a spectacular 1000% over last one year. On the other side, desktop virtualization seems quite negligible. This makes perfect sense as the server side infrastructure remains stable and is heavy on investment.
Core vs. Non-core Applications: Most of the applications that are moving to cloud computing in the first wave are non-core applications. Not that core applications cannot be or should not be hosted in virtual environment, it’s where you start with cloud computing. Most of the organizations are starting with non-cores applications first. Once they see value and become confident of cloud computing, even core applications get moved to cloud as concerns such as security, privacy and governance get resolved in early pilots.
Private vs. Public Cloud: What type of cloud one should select? This is a relatively complex decision as compared to previous two. There are many factors that play a part, core vs. non-core application, security & privacy concerns for the application, governance issues, size of organization, growth of company (and so supporting IT infrastructure). It has been observed that lot of companies are adopting a hybrid approach. The hybrid approach certainly provides lot more flexibility to an organization. In general, companies that are smaller in size tend to lean more towards public clouds as it provides them a low capital expenditure solution with options to grow rapidly. Companies that are sensitive towards security and privacy tend to adopt private clouds.
Approach towards Cloud Adoption: It has been observed that the approach towards adopting cloud cannot be piecemeal. An organization cannot look at one project and try to optimize it. By taking that approach, operational cost of that project might become lower but overall cost of the organization will become higher. It is critical that one looks at the portfolio of projects an organization is undertaking as a holistic program from cloud enablement perspective and then drives the execution plan from there.
Change in IT Department: All of these selections, different approaches are certainly changing the IT departments. IT departments are becoming heavier on skills like strategic planning, business analysis, project management and quality assurance.
There are several types of cloud computing deployment scenarios. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is emerging as the preferred provider of the de facto definition of cloud computing and the distribution models, seen here with some ESRI examples.
The public cloud is the most commonly referenced regarding the topic of cloud computing, where the infrastructure and applications are owned by the organization selling cloud services. However, since many traditional vendors and users are not quite ready to jump into public cloud computing or are restricted from doing so, the cloud service tiers are replicated within a private cloud environment, behind the firewall, and maintained within the parameters of the host organization. Many believe that the sweet spot for cost optimization in an organization will rely on a delicate balance of public, or community, and private clouds. However, since this hybrid cloud solution is commonly bound together by proprietary technology, it will only be embraced by enterprise computing in the future as standards are developed.
On-Demand GIS and Mapping: ESRI and the Cloud
ESRI considers cloud computing and technology important in the development and vision of the ArcGIS platform. Several options are available for companies that want to improve productivity and efficiency while reducing expenses and freeing up valuable IT resources to concentrate on newer business initiatives.
ArcGIS Server is a viable candidate in an on-demand architecture. Cached map tiles can be uploaded to cloud computing vendors, such as Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3), to create a data center in the cloud.
ESRI's current SaaS offering is ESRI Business Analyst Online, which allows the consumer to combine GIS technology with extensive demographic, consumer, and business data for the entire United States. This enables the delivery of on-demand analysis, boardroom-ready reports, and maps over the Web. Because ESRI hosts Business Analyst Online, consumers need not worry about managing data or technology updates. Furthermore, ESRI developers can leverage ESRI's PaaS offerings via the ArcGIS Web mapping APIs, such as JavaScript, Flex, and Silverlight/WPF, hosted by ESRI on ArcGIS Online.
ESRI has been providing software plus services (S+S) for some time, allowing customers to leverage their on-premises solutions with on-demand services. ESRI's ArcGIS Online map and GIS services provide S+S users immediate access to cartographically designed, seamless basemaps to which they can easily add their own data in an ESRI on-premises product. MapIt is another implementation of software plus services, allowing business information to be displayed and more accurately analyzed through access to online data, basemaps, and task services from ESRI and Bing Maps, as well as through support for the Windows Azure Platform and Microsoft's SQL Azure. As a community cloud, the ArcGIS Online Content Sharing Program enables users and organizations to contribute geographic data content. Leveraging Amazon's EC2 and S3 compute and storage services allows ESRI to host the content and provide access 24/7. ArcGIS Explorer users can consume ready-to-use basemaps and layers from ArcGIS Online Services in the S+S model. And ArcLogistics provides software and access to online services that help you create optimal vehicle routes and schedules.
As cloud computing continues to move farther into mainstream IT to become a convention in business, ESRI will continue to offer solutions to allow customers and prospects success in the cloud.
Despite a rising interest in cloud-based services and the benefits they offer, organizations have been adopting a cautious approach towards deploying these services. So where does India stand on the cloud computing map and what lies ahead for organizations looking to walk towards the clouds?
A Walk In The Cloud
Though Cloud Computing is one of the most discussed topics in the current IT implementations scenario, adoption levels are low globally and especially in India. While organizations across the country, such as Bharti, Ashok Leyland, Asian Paints, Infosys, Maruti, and Tata Elxsi, are tuning in to the cloud computing station, certain concerns prevent them from buying the basket of services that the cloud has to offer.
An organization in the country could essentially opt for any of the services provided by global cloud vendors such as Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Salesforce, IBM, Cisco, EMC, and others. However, due to certain challenges, the quality of these services within India are debatable. Also, it is only recently that companies such as Netmagic, CSC, and Wipro have looked at offering such services from within India.
There are customers in the country who have adopted cloud services by either global or local cloud providers, but very few are pro-actively talking about it. This nascent level of adoption coupled with the ‘emerging’ image of cloud services has made it difficult to gauge an addressable market in India, the success or failure of these services here, and the associated challenges.
Cloud: Value For Money?
The cost at which the vendor offers these services needs to justify the level of service that will be provided. If the cost of having data and applications on the cloud over a period of time surpasses the cost of having it on premise, it would not really make sense for a customer to adopt a cloud-based solution. Instead it would make better business sense to deploy the necessary infrastructure on the company’s premises and bear the additional investment costs.
The Power And Bandwidth Challenge
One of the primary issues in India continues to be bandwidth. In some cases, bandwidth availability and price is an issue; in others, the quality of the available bandwidth is an issue.
“Bandwidth is low in emerging countries such as India. User experience at a speed of 8-10 Mbps is not that great when offering a cloud-based solution. Providing an entire desktop experience to a client via the cloud, in a country like India, would require a high bandwidth pipe which can bring such an experience from the cloud to the user’s dumb client,” says Diptarup Chakraborty, Principal Research Analyst, Gartner.
“Most previous IT models are based on large internal networks and few Internet touch points. Cloud computing changes that model and often requires a much larger connection to the cloud to prevent latency issues,” says Tom Frazier, Strategic Account Director, Verizon Business.
Shoppers Stop’s decision to look at cloud-based services as a solution to some of its business challenges has been affected by bandwidth challenges. Arun Gupta, Customer Care Associate and Group CTO, Shoppers Stop, says, “One of the challenges we foresee is the pressure on connectivity and the associated costs with incremental bandwidth.”
Power availability is another issue that could hinder vendors from offering cloud services from within India. Many parts of the country, which are key business centers, face a power shortage. Areas around these towns or cities are plagued by power outages and load shedding to compensate for the higher power demand by locations having a chunk of industries and other commercial infrastructure.
How Secure Is The Cloud?
An issue which could impede cloud implementations for some time is security. This issue is not only applicable to cloud services in India but also to other countries globally. Since data will be stored outside the premises, the access to this data is a cause of concern for organizations looking to adopt cloud-based solutions. With data being stored remotely, the organization has no control over the security of this data since it is the cloud vendor who enforces the security and compliance measures.
The Interoperability Factor
Interoperability and vendor lock-in are key issues for organizations looking to offer cloud services and for those looking to adopt them. A cloud vendor may have proprietary file, application, and data formats defined for customers deploying its cloud services. On one hand, this requires the customer to rewrite his applications to port them on the cloud; on the other, this renders him dependent on the cloud for his data and applications. For instance, applications on Salesforce.com are written in Apex while those on Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud are written in Ruby; applications on Google App Engine are written in Python and Java.
Service Level Agreements
Service Level Agreement (SLA) in itself poses a challenge since customers already have apprehensions about the aforementioned risks when migrating to a cloud-based architecture. Having the infrastructure internal to the organization ensures that demands in terms of performance, security of applications and data, network speed and latency are met. However, if data and applications are stored in a third party data center, the vendor will be required to provide an additional level of assurance that requirements will be met, well within the costs.
The Case For Public Versus Private Cloud
In spite of the challenges surrounding the adoption of cloud services, it is not really the end of the road for organizations looking to adopt cloud services. To deploy services on a cloud, an organization needs to first decide whether it really needs to deploy cloud-based services. While the decision to deploy a cloud-based service is generally driven by the need to reduce the cost associated with growing storage or computing requirements, it is also necessary to decide whether cloud services are the best possible solution to an organization’s growing infrastructure demands.
‘Cloud’ Is The New Buzzword
Most analysts and vendors believe that India is still a nascent market for cloud-based services. However, with the large SME/SMB population and the emergence of many start-ups, the scope for growth is huge, provided the concerns over the adoption of these services are addressed. While there is a certain level of awareness about what services and benefits the cloud has to offer, organizations are taking a cautious approach and are still experimenting and testing both public and private cloud services.
Cloud computing and virtualization is changing the IT world in a way which is unprecedented in the last decades. The economy of scale and predicable performance is pushing cloud computing and virtualization across the enterprises. A significant part of the cloud computing and virtualization infrastructure available in world consists of reliable services delivered through data centers such as Amazon. In principle, cloud computing and virtualization customers do not own the physical infrastructure, instead avoiding capital expenditure by renting usage from a third-party provider.
Although cloud computing is a very promising paradigm, still not every company would want to use public clouds. Especially for core applications and applications with sensitive data, enterprises lean towards private clouds. However, the advancement in the so called virtual private cloud area are currently bringing private and public clouds closer together.
There are many technology options available today for cloud computing and virtualization.
VMware
VMware was and still is a pioneer in the Virtualization and Cloud Area. Most of the virtualization and cloud software running in Enterprises today comes from VMware, where they still have an enourmous market share. High availability, performance, reliability and the advanced management infrastructure are the key strength of VMware.
VMware brings unique characteristics to the table, designed to serve the needs of businesses that want production-level performance and reliability.
VMware vSphere: Leveraging key technology advancements found in VMware vSphere, users get the assurance that applications can be managed, moved and operated in the cloud both public and private clouds. VMware vSphere aggregates and holistically manages large pools of infrastructure—processors, storage and networking as a seamless, flexible and dynamic.
VMware ESXi and VMWare Server: Besides vSphere, VMware also offers VMware ESXi, which can be used as initial virtualization platform. Once a user is convinced of the value, he can move to more advanced VMware vSphere stack.
Both VMware vSphere and VMware ESXi / VMWare Server are players in the IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) area.
Microsoft
Microsoft's cloud offerings have the Hyper-V and the Windows Azure Platform
Hyper-V: Microsoft Hyper-V is a traditional hypervisor based virtualization system that can be used for computers on an Intel basis (x86). Hyper-V can be used to enable a very cost effective virtualization solution. Hyper-V supports mixed OS virtualization with Windows and Linux systems. Hyper-V is a player in the IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) area. This means that any type of OS and any type of applications / services on top of the OS can run on Hyper-V. There is no vendor lock-in since the applications / services running inside the Virtual Machine can easily be transferred to a different IaaS offering.
Windows Azure platform: Windows Azure Platform offers a familiar Microsoft development environment to create cloud applications and services. In order to do this, the Windows development environment is mandatory. Because Windows Azure offers a development platform, it represents a so called PaaS (Platform as a Service). This means an application or service has to be specifically developed to run and take advantage of this platform. Once developed, the application or service is bound to this platform (vendor lock-in). The big advantage is that the application / service can use the Azure built-in services that enable e.g. enormous scalability.
Open Source Hypervisors (Xen/KVM)
Xen is an open source hypervisor project initiated by Citrix. The latest offering Xen 4.0 adds significant memory and security optimizations that will drive virtualization infrastructure forward.
In the open source community it is currently unclear if Xen or the hypervisor that is built into the Linux kernel (=KVM = Kernel-based Virtual Machine) will prevail in the future. This unclarity will further strengthen the already very strong position of commercial hypervisor vendors like VMware.
Cloud Computing has gained global acceptance in 2-3 short years! Infact, very few actually knew what cloud computing was just 5 years back. But today cloud computing is changing how we build our web applications!
According to a recent numbers published by a survey conducted jointly by BitNami, Cloud.com and Zenoss, show that 80% of the companies today already have a cloud computing strategy or are in planning stages right now!
Cloud computing has become so mainstream that Google recently launched a Mobile device or netbook (or Chromebook) that works only on the cloud using only the Chrome Browser as the Operating System.
Here's a survey that has come out with an interesting infographic on outlook of Cloud Computing.
Was 2010 the year small business IT took the cloud computing plunge? Yes and no.
A company called 7th Sense Research recently conducted a study on cloud computing in small business computing environments on behalf of Microsoft. According to the study, 29 percent of SMBs see the cloud as an opportunity for small business IT to be more strategic; 27 percent of SMBs have bought into cloud because it integrates with existing technology investments and 12 percent of SMBs have used cloud computing to start a new business.
But at the same time, small businesses overall are largely unfamiliar with cloud computing. "Roughly 20 percent of SMBs claim to know what cloud technology is," said Josh Waldo, director of SMB Marketing at Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT).
Those numbers don't seem to jibe, but Waldo noted that while people may not identify with the cloud computing term, that doesn't mean they aren't using the technology. For instance, many people use Gmail or Hotmail -- prime examples of the software as a service (SaaS) form of cloud computing -- without ever realizing they're tapping into the cloud.
"People might not understand what cloud is," he said. "But they are using it. They're using in their private life. In some cases they're using it in their work life. But they might not necessarily identify it with the term cloud."
Waldo believes small business's lack of familiarity concerning cloud computing is an opportunity for Microsoft and other providers of small business technology.
"For Microsoft, what that means is that this gives us a big opportunity to really educate SMBs about cloud technologies and how they can benefit their business," Waldo said. "Our goal is really going to be to help SMBs evolve how they think about technology."
The benefits for small businesses that embrace cloud computing are potentially enormous, according to Waldo.
"First, SMBs can get enterprise-class technology at a fraction of the price, where you're not purchasing on-premises technology that's going to cost you an enormous amount upfront," he said. "Second, it really allows companies, whether you're a development shop and you're building software, or you're an end customer -- like a financial or insurance firm -- to focus on your business rather than your IT requirements."
For instance, by outsourcing datacenter needs, small business IT no longer needs to build out capacity to handle potential spikes in data processing or transaction processing. Instead, they buy the processing power they need as they need it.
And that leads into another of the key benefits of cloud computing according to Waldo: elasticity and the expectation of mobility. Elasticity, he explained, is the capability to scale up or down rapidly based on your needs.
That includes adding processing power as needed, but it also means being able to easily add new users from a seasonal workforce without all the headaches of per-seat licensing that can come with traditional desktop software.
As for the expectation of mobility, Waldo noted that today's employees -- armed with notebooks, smartphones and tablets -- have the desire to make their work more flexible by making it mobile. By exposing core applications as SaaS via the cloud, SMBs can let employees access the information and applications they need while on the go.
Small Business Technology : Embracing Cloud Computing
For SMBs that have decided to take the plunge and add cloud computing to their small business technology portfolio, where's the best place to start? Waldo recommends getting expert advice.
"We really think it's important that SMBs choose carefully," Waldo said. "If they're uncertain, they should work with a third party or a consultant or a value added reseller or some type of agent who understands the various elements of cloud technology and [who] can advise clients."
Nate Odell, director of marketing at Skytap, a provider of cloud automation solutions, said the first thing a small business should consider is the problem it is trying to solve.
"The most important thing from Skytap's perspective is that the cloud really isn't just about infrastructure," Odell said. "It's about people solving problems. It should be about scalability, elasticity and economy."
He added, "What our small business customers are asking for is the ability to create virtual environments, run applications without code changes or rewrites and, most importantly, to be able to collaborate and share using a self-service Web interface."
Odell said anyone responsible for small business IT should ask a number of questions when considering a cloud services provider.
Most importantly, does the cloud provider allow you to run existing applications without any code rewrites or changes to code? This may be the most fundamental question of all. According to Microsoft's research, 27 percent of SMBs have already bought into cloud services because it integrates with existing technology. Another 36 percent of SMBs would be encouraged to buy into cloud services because it integrates with existing technology.
"Being able to migrate custom applications over to the cloud without rewrites is not only a huge cost saver but also a huge time saver for SMBs," Odell said.
Small business owners should also ask whether the cloud provider offer granular user access and user-based permissions based on roles. Can you measure value on a per user basis? Can you auto-suspend resources by setting parameters on usage to avoid overuse of the cloud?
The latter is especially important, he noted. While cloud services can lead to tremendous cost savings, their pay-as-you-go nature can lead to a massive bill if not used efficiently.
Odell also recommended paying special attention to the level of responsive support offered by a cloud provider.
"I think for SMBs it's really important," he said. "Having to log a Web form and then wait 24 to 48 hours for support can be really frustrating." Instead, he said, the provider should guarantee that a support team would respond within a few hours.
Waldo agreed, noting that a service-level agreement with a high-availability guarantee and 24-hour support is essential.
Anyway, now that we got a little better idea about Cloud Computing let us see what it does to us in the software industry. Here are a few thoughts:
IT Infrastructure will change dramatically. Some applications will shift to private clouds and others to public clouds. There may be a lot of optimization of resource usage.
Some IT jobs may vanish altogether. New skills will be in demand.
The way applications are developed, tested, deployed and continuously re-factored will undergo a change. What if every enterprise becomes like a Google in delivering incremental improvements constantly?
The selling and licensing of applications will change too. I wonder what happens to all those batch apps that run once a week or a month?
The way data is handled will undergo a major shift. Data driven applications will be will become a mainstream. Customer data, visitor data, partner data, behavioral data will provide more insights for businesses.
Business models will change. We have already seen some interesting shifts.
The architecture of applications will continue to evolve. The way apps store/retrieve data, the way they inter-connect with other apps on the cloud will change. Every app has the potential to become more intelligent and more adaptive since we will know how users use them.
Data volumes will skyrocket. This will cause a new class of skills to emerge. Facebook is talking about petabytes and zetabytes will become common. There are already jobs like Data Scientists, Data driven Journalists appearing on job boards. There will be pattern miners, data visualizers and machine learning will become mainstream and will get better with so much of training data. Google is already talking about “serendipity engine”. Data Analytics will become a core tool for every business.
Search will undergo change as well. As so much data sits in the cloud, a lot of it locked as the invisible web, we need a new class of search engines. “Exploration Engines” will become the dominant breed of search for private data.
Information Engines will start appearing – information discovery engines, filtering engines, semantic extraction engines, pattern detection engines will be the first generation.
New markets will be created. I can’t even hazard a guess on the innovations that will be enabled by this new computing infrastructure. Most of it will happen due to the unbelievable level of access to government and public data as well as social graphs, information streams, activity streams and real-time location data.
This is not even a comprehensive list. Each item in the list points to several opportunities. That is a topic for another post. www.woodappleunik.com
India has the highest rate of adoption for Mobile. And the adoption drove the big players in the local and international market to have their presence in the Indian Mobile Operators space. In a similar way you will soon see various service providers for Cloud Computing emerging and it is going to be the next big wave after the Mobile era.
If you take a deep look at the Cloud Computing technology, it is nothing but providing IT related resources such as computing, storage, Network, system security, application, platform as a service. These services are charged based on the usage. Usage-based pricing is not something new to us and our Mobile, Telephone, Internet and Electricity follows the same pricing model.
Scarcity of Resources
India as a country with a huge population base has never been given adequate resources to embrace innovation. The case is even worse if you are an individual who wants to gain access to the latest technologies for your research and development needs. Cloud Computing addresses this challenge to a great extent and provides access to the necessary IT resources to satisfy your IT needs in an affordable way.
Future
In today's world, new business opportunities heavily depend on their IT infrastructure availability. Cloud computing technology in India will dramatically change the way we compute.
Some of the obvious segments that can directly reap the benefits are listed below:
Schools, Colleges & Universities - Embrace R&D and provide access to the latest technologies at an affordable price.
New Innovative Business Firms - Start-ups need not invest for their IT infrastructure cost and consume as their business grows. In fact, you can run your business on the Cloud J with an office at home.
Long Tail Business Units - A small petty shop can use a CRM available on the Cloud to send SMS greetings to their customers.
Multimedia Content Providers - Multimedia digital content can be distributed to various consumers for a lower price.
Telco (Network Operators) - Becomes the Cloud Computing technology provider, We have already seen TATA Communications is investing heavily on IaaS business.
I am sure there are many more innovative segments that are going to be discovered and soon you will see that all your desktops, laptops are going to vanish and you will walk around with a lightweight device such as an iPhone or Sixth Sense (Pranav Mistry's innovation) and all your computing a storage will be outsourced to a Cloud Computing Provider.
Our country's network infrastructure could be slow it down, but we should soon be fine with the help of 3G adoption in the network space.
The economics of the cloud, the rise of the mobile workforce and the consumerization of IT are making the transformation to the cloud a foregone conclusion within enterprise IT. But not every company, organization or government agency is necessarily keeping up. Are you?
You need more than capacity and utilization metrics to demonstrate cloud computing's ROI to the business. Consider these eight metrics to create a score card of your current and future business and IT needs relating to cloud computing.
Cloud computing has been described as a technological change brought about by the convergence of a number of new and existing technologies. The promise of cloud computing is identified primarily by the following key technical characteristics:
• The ability to create the illusion of infinite capacity performance is the same if scaled for one or one hundred or one thousand users with consistent service-level characteristics.
• Abstraction of the infrastructure so applications are not locked into devices or locations.
• Pay-as-you-go usage of the IT service; you only pay for what you use, with no or minimal up-front investment costs. You typically just use the service through a connection and device.
• Service is on-demand and able to scale up and down with near instant availability. Typically, no forward planning forecast is required.
• Access to applications and information can be obtained from any access point.
But this is only half the story. These technical characteristics can also be found in many non-disruptive technology solutions. What sets the promise of cloud computing apart is that the rate of change, magnitude of cost reduction and specific technical performance impact that cloud computing can provide is not just incremental, but can give a five-to-ten times order of magnitude of improvement.
The following are business metrics that can help translate the indicators from the capacity-utilization curve to direct and indirect benefits to the business:
1. The speed and rate of change - Cost reduction and cost of adoption /de-adoption is faster in the cloud. Cloud computing creates additional cost transformation benefits by reducing delays in decision costs by adopting pre-built services and a faster rate of transition to new capabilities. This is a common goal for business improvement programs that are lacking resources and skills and that are time sensitive.
2. Total cost of ownership optimization - Users can select, design configure and run infrastructure and applications that are best suited for business needs. Traditionally this has often been decoupled when IT projects are handed off to production services. In cloud computing environments these are joined up.
3. Rapid provisioning - Resources are scaled up and down to follow business activity as it expands and grows or is redirected. Provisioning time compression can go from weeks to hours.
4. Increased margin and cost control - Revenue growth and cost control opportunities allow companies to pursue new customers and markets for business growth and service improvement.
5. Dynamic usage - Elastic provisioning and service management targets real end users and real business needs for functionality as the scope of users and services evolve seeking new solutions.
6. Risk and compliance improvement - Cloud computing green capabilities can be leveraged through shared services.
7. Enhanced capacity utilization - IT avoids over-and under-provisioning of IT services to improve smarter business services.
8. Access to business skills and capability improvement - Cloud computing enables access to new skills and solutions through cloud sourcing on demand solutions.
These measures define a new set of business indicators that can be sused to create a "score card" of your current and future operational business and IT service needs relating to cloud computing potential.
Cloud computing is the latest and most advanced technology that all companies should optimize. Cloud computing is the most advanced IT standard that companies should optimize for improving the efficiency of their business. IT structure of cloud computing systems should give companies a more developed system that will be able to make more profit. Therefore, companies should not choose any cloud computing companies to support their business. Cloud computing will be able to help business to increase their computing capacity and improve their capabilities on using the online systems without investing on infrastructure that will suck up their marketing budget. Cloud computing will be able to help companies to improve their capabilities without training new personals. Licensing new software is also not quite important to get benefits from cloud computing system.
It will be more efficient and cheap to use the services of cloud computing companies. This service makes use the internet to efficiently run business with a compact package with internet based. The applications of cloud computing is wide and profitable. Cloud computing is something that modern business needs to face the limited time and tight business competition in this cyber world. Besides the business efficiency, there are many other reasons why people need to use this cloud computing services.
When people entrust their business to the top cloud computing companies, they will get various advantages. First of all, companies will be able to get crucial access to their applications and date from anywhere at any time and any place. Using their internal network, companies can employ any computer with the system linked to the internet. In addition, cloud computing companies can help their clients to reduce their hardware cost. With the system provided by top quality cloud computing companies, business runners will be able to press their budge on their hardware supplies since this system does not require their clients to purchase much hardware or replacing their hardware with the fastest computer.
Besides, companies can also save a lot in the software purchase since they can only pay for a metered fee to the cloud computing companies that they trust. Corporations can save their IT support and improve their business efficiency a lot better with this cloud computing services. Servers and digital storage devices take up spaces that will burden their systems but with different things occur in cloud computing services. Simply, companies should make use this system for developing their companies and managing their business a lot better.
At the present time, there are various web hosting services being offered by different hosting providers firms in Australia. Popular versions of which include shared hosting, reseller hosting, dedicated server hosting, virtual private server hosting and cloud computing. Even though they are under one umbrella, each kind has its own benefits, features, disadvantages and price tag. Some would say that beginners need shared hosting because it's cheap and light. Others digress and would recommend server hosting for optimum use. For those that want to gain profit, many would refer them to reseller hosting. But the million dollar question is: which is really the best among the cream of the crop? As of now, I would gamble for cloud computing.
Cloud computing is one of the unpopular hosting service nowadays. This is of course not because it is ineffective or it is costly. But, it is owing to the fact that it is not yet widely used and only several people understand its concepts. So to speak, it does not have anything to do with the cloud we see in the sky. But, the general idea revolves around it. First and foremost, cloud computing is an IT application wherein every resource needed-storage, software, applications, operating system, infrastructure- are stored over the Internet. Simply put, there is no need for hardware, like servers, to run a computer program. All you need is the World Wide Web. Free emails such as those provided by GMail and Ymail are perfect examples of what cloud computing is.
So, why bet for cloud computing? There are a lot of answers to this question. For one, it is cost-efficient. Your company will be relieved from the large expenses associated with hardware acquisition, installation and maintenance. Add to that, you do not have to hire IT experts who will monitor your tangible equipments. Second, it is flexible and easy to implement. The absence of hardware makes it convenient and fast to start the service and make upgrades at the drop of the hat. The third boon refers to remote accessibility. As long as there is Internet connection, you and your employees can browse files and other information whenever and wherever you so desire. This allows you to do your work even when at home.
Furthermore, web hosts in the Land Down Under secures your data. Their facilities have been engulfed with safety measures that will prevent or reduce the damages of natural disasters. Hosting providers have employed IT experts that are proficient in the administration and troubleshooting of their resources. This does not only mean less chances of viral attacks, hacking and data loss but also giving you ample time to focus on your core business. Next, it is environment-friendly. The lesser need for physical devices greatly reduces hardware and energy consumption. This, in turn, diminishes carbon dioxide emissions.
The evolution of web hosting services has been a great blessing for all. Cloud computing has brought a new way of doing IT services. It does not only save money to be used for critical functions. More than that, it is now possible to conduct IT activities without the reliance on hardware components. If you want to change the way you see web hosting, then go for cloud computing. And when you are ready to embrace it, hire an Australian web host to get the best results.
After months of research and demos / presentations, you’ve finally decided which CRM software you want to implement in your business. The next question on your mind is…now what? With the manual in hand and the support team just a phone call away, the logical first step is to tailor the system to your business’ precise needs and goals.
However, most CRM systems make customization super easy, which results in adding in lots of unnecessary fields and notifications that you don’t even end up using. So before you go on customization frenzy, take a peek at some of these helpful tips to getting your CRM solution customized to perfection.
1. Always have a plan
Though it’s tempting to just add fields left, right and centre that you think would be of value to input in your CRM database, it is so important for you and your team to first sit down and discuss what you want to achieve with your CRM. Think about what types of reports you want to produce and therefore what data you need to have in your system in order to create them. Knowing this in advance will greatly help to ensure you have the necessary fields in each module and more importantly, that the CRM system is truly providing value to your business.
2. Begin with the basics
Make sure to begin your customization process at a basic level. The last thing you want to do is to overwhelm your users with too many input fields as this will only make them more resistant to adopting the solution. As your team gets used to the system and as your business grows, add the other fields gradually and begin making some fields mandatory so that your CRM solution is up-to-date and serves as a true data repository.
3. Create a mirror image
Your CRM system should work with you and not against you so when customizing, always ensure that the solution uses your lingo, reflects your business’ processes and seamlessly functions the same way you do. For example, if you need to be reminded of upcoming meetings and appointments a day in advance, set up email or SMS notifications in your CRM solution to do so for you. Alternatively, if your company refers to Leads as Prospects, change the name of the module so that the CRM system not only looks but talks like you too.
4. Trial and error
Always be open to making changes to the way you use your CRM system. The solution must adapt along with your company so fields and processes that were once relevant when the CRM was first implemented might need to change a few months down the road. As long as your entire team is on the same track and agrees with the changes, your potential for success with the system is endless.
Though these tips may seem commonsensical, you’d be surprised with how many people dive into customizing their CRM solution without thinking them through. Now that you have the basic know-how on how to approach the CRM tailoring process, start working on it one step at a time, because after all, customizing your CRM system makes all the difference.
Did you know that the total cloud computing market in India is pegged at $110 million and is expected to reach figures of $1,084 million by 2015? An article by Zinnov Management Consulting, titled “Cloud Computing in India: Opportunities & Way Forward,” explains that in the cloud computing market in India, Software-as-a-Service has witnessed the most rapid uptake until now. The study further adds that “as components of the overall cloud market, Software-as-a-service (SaaS) in India is likely to reach a mark of US$ 650 million by 2015, while Platform-as-a-service (PaaS) and Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) markets cumulatively would touch $434 million each by then.” In fact, sometime last year, Microsoft's CEO Steve Ballmer had opined in the press that "India will not only see a surge in cloud computing services but companies all over the world will look to India to support their transition to cloud computing.''
With so much confidence being shown for cloud computing in India, the fact remains that cloud computing in India is still in its very early stages and enterprises are yet to fully comprehend the actual benefits of private clouds, public clouds or even IaaS, PaaS and SaaS. Although India has shown ample scope of cloud computing services being used by IT enterprises, enterprises are still unsure about adopting the cloud. The Indian IT industry, which grew from a $100 million industry to an industry that has crossed the $50 billion mark in 2010, relies mostly on outsourced software work. The companies that have understood the changes that cloud computing can bring to their core businesses have already started evolving to being not just providers of software solutions but also software utility companies.
Indian enterprises are slowly growing aware that the cloud will be useful in terms of management and network infrastructure and will also help optimize service models. Additionally cloud computing will help decrease the effects of capital expenditures as the cloud will help manage costs. For cloud computing truly to prosper there is a need to deploy a platform that can be as significant and large in scale as Google and Amazon are currently. Also cloud computing providers do not have large data centers that are capable of large scale services. Issues that may hinder building better and bigger data centers in India include irregular electricity supply and network connectivity, among others. Also the bigger question of security also crops up. Yet with all such issues, there is a slow but definite shift in interest towards cloud computing by most Indian enterprises.
Cloud computing comes into focus only when you think about what IT always needs: a way to increase capacity or add capabilities on the fly without investing in new infrastructure, training new personnel, or licensing new software. Cloud computing encompasses any subscription-based or pay-per-use service that, in real time over the Internet, extends IT's existing capabilities.
Cloud computing is at an early stage, with a motley crew of providers large and small delivering a slew of cloud-based services, from full-blown applications to storage services to spam filtering. Yes, utility-style infrastructure providers are part of the mix, but so are SaaS (software as a service) providers such as Salesforce.com. Today, for the most part, IT must plug into cloud-based services individually, but cloud computing aggregators and integrators are already emerging.
WoodApple talked to dozens of vendors, analysts, and IT customers to tease out the various components of cloud computing. Based on those discussions, here's a rough breakdown of what cloud computing is all about:
1. SaaS
This type of cloud computing delivers a single application through the browser to thousands of customers using a multitenant architecture. On the customer side, it means no upfront investment in servers or software licensing; on the provider side, with just one app to maintain, costs are low compared to conventional hosting. Salesforce.com is by far the best-known example among enterprise applications, but SaaS is also common for HR apps and has even worked its way up the food chain to ERP, with players such as Workday. And who could have predicted the sudden rise of SaaS "desktop" applications, such as Google Apps and Zoho Office?
2. Utility computing
The idea is not new, but this form of cloud computing is getting new life from Amazon.com, Sun, IBM, and others who now offer storage and virtual servers that IT can access on demand. Early enterprise adopters mainly use utility computing for supplemental, non-mission-critical needs, but one day, they may replace parts of the datacenter. Other providers offer solutions that help IT create virtual datacenters from commodity servers, such as 3Tera's AppLogic and Cohesive Flexible Technologies' Elastic Server on Demand. Liquid Computing's LiquidQ offers similar capabilities, enabling IT to stitch together memory, I/O, storage, and computational capacity as a virtualized resource pool available over the network.
3. Web services in the cloud
Closely related to SaaS, Web service providers offer APIs that enable developers to exploit functionality over the Internet, rather than delivering full-blown applications. They range from providers offering discrete business services -- such as Strike Iron and Xignite -- to the full range of APIs offered by Google Maps, ADP payroll processing, the U.S. Postal Service, Bloomberg, and even conventional credit card processing services.
4. Platform as a service
Another SaaS variation, this form of cloud computing delivers development environments as a service. You build your own applications that run on the provider's infrastructure and are delivered to your users via the Internet from the provider's servers. Like Legos, these services are constrained by the vendor's design and capabilities, so you don't get complete freedom, but you do get predictability and pre-integration. Prime examples include Salesforce.com's Force.com, Coghead and the new Google App Engine. For extremely lightweight development, cloud-based mashup platforms abound, such as Yahoo Pipes or Dapper.net.
5. MSP (managed service providers)
One of the oldest forms of cloud computing, a managed service is basically an application exposed to IT rather than to end-users, such as a virus scanning service for e-mail or an application monitoring service (which Mercury, among others, provides). Managed security services delivered by SecureWorks, IBM, and Verizon fall into this category, as do such cloud-based anti-spam services as Postini, recently acquired by Google. Other offerings include desktop management services, such as those offered by CenterBeam or Everdream.
6. Service commerce platforms
A hybrid of SaaS and MSP, this cloud computing service offers a service hub that users interact with. They're most common in trading environments, such as expense management systems that allow users to order travel or secretarial services from a common platform that then coordinates the service delivery and pricing within the specifications set by the user. Think of it as an automated service bureau. Well-known examples include Rearden Commerce and Ariba.
7. Internet integration
The integration of cloud-based services is in its early days. OpSource, which mainly concerns itself with serving SaaS providers, recently introduced the OpSource Services Bus, which employs in-the-cloud integration technology from a little startup called Boomi. SaaS provider Workday recently acquired another player in this space, CapeClear, an ESB (enterprise service bus) provider that was edging toward b-to-b integration. Way ahead of its time, Grand Central -- which wanted to be a universal "bus in the cloud" to connect SaaS providers and provide integrated solutions to customers -- flamed out in 2005.
Today, with such cloud-based interconnection seldom in evidence, cloud computing might be more accurately described as "sky computing," with many isolated clouds of services which IT customers must plug into individually. On the other hand, as virtualization and SOA permeate the enterprise, the idea of loosely coupled services running on an agile, scalable infrastructure should eventually make every enterprise a node in the cloud. It's a long-running trend with a far-out horizon. But among big metatrends, cloud computing is the hardest one to argue with in the long term.
