Most purveyors of Cloud Computing claim that one of its great benefits is that it can turn capital expense into operational expense.  3tera’s AppLogic Cloud Computing Without Compromise, though, reduces all expenses, both CapEx and OpEx.

AppLogic encapsulates entire applications and everything those applications need to run – code, data, OS, middleware, DBMS, infrastructure, configuration, policies, etc. -  into a single, easy to manage entity that is abstracted from the hardware.  These encapsulated applications are “superimposed” on a server farm and dynamically allocate the resources they need to run.  Therefore, specific hardware is no longer assigned to specific functions – any idle hardware can be used by any active application.  Thus, hardware becomes much more densely populated, ergo, much less hardware is needed.  This results in greatly reduced CapEx.

As such, all servers in the farm can be commodity servers all configured the same way.  So there is no need for intensive server administration.  In most enterprises and at most data center operators, one administrator can manage approximately 50 servers.  With AppLogic, because the administrators are managing application instances each of which can consume any number – up to hundreds – of servers, the applications one administrator manages can be consuming hundreds of servers, thus, increasing administration efficiency by an order of magnitude.  This results in greatly reduced OpEx.

And, as great as this is, it is only icing on the cake.  The “cake” is this.  Because applications can be run on arrays of existing commodity servers, the time it normally takes to provision and configure hardware for specific applications is virtually, pardon the pun, eliminated.   Time to market is dramatically decreased creating huge revenue opportunity.

So, the next time someone proclaims, “You get what you pay for.”, tell them when you pay up for information technology infrastructure, you don’t have to pay more to get more.  With Cloud Computing Without Compromise, you get an awful lot for what you DON’T pay for!

This one’s been eating at me since September 17 at 10:09 AM.   That was when a speaker from Tier 1 Research concluded a presentation at the 4th Annual Hosting Transportation Summit (HTS) at the Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas.

HTS is a great event for anyone involved in the hosting industry.  It was attended this year by about 400 people representing everything that’s anything in the U.S. hosting industry.  Attendees, for the most part, have profit and loss responsibilities and were there to find new weapons for their arsenals to increase revenues.   I love these focused conferences.  Having them in Las Vegas is really smart.  That makes it easy to gauge attendees’ interest by seeing how much of the audiences at the various sessions are lost to the casino.  The sessions at HTS were well attended!

By contrast, that week was VM World, right across the street (which in Vegas means only a 15 minute stroll) at The Venetian.  VM World was impressive – close to 15,000 attendees, I am told.  My sense walking around there, though, was that the majority of the attendees were more technology oriented – looking for cool new technology – but were not the people in their organizations responsible for P&L, who make spending decisions, and, most importantly, who make strategic business decisions.

So, what happened at 10:09 AM Las Vegas time on 9/17?  I just finished watching and listening to a very well researched and prepared presentation by a Senior Analyst at Tier 1, who organizes the event.  He very thoroughly described how the Cloud people, the compute on demand people – people like Amazon and Google, were kicking the hosting providers’ butts as they remain a commodity whose ability to compete with these Cloud giants is starting to wane.

What he didn’t do, though (and this is no criticism of him – he did his job), was talk about what the hosting providers can and should do to combat this.

So, why now?  If it’s been eating at me 7 weeks, why am I writing about it now?

Well, for the last couple of months, enterprise interest in Cloud Computing seems to have emerged in spades (pardon the Las Vegas pun).  VMware, Citrix, Microsoft and others have all made announcements readying themselves for enterprise Cloud Computing.  Our own marketing efforts have been focused around the enterprise as, though we are largely used by hosting providers and our customers are largely hosted, we have a full Cloud Computing platform that can run behind a corporate firewall, and our number of customers who do that, particularly enterprise customers, are definitely growing.

So, let’s not forget our hosting providers.  They are not only the salt of the Cloud, but they will be an integral part of Cloud Computing’s future.  In fact, as Clouds begin to interoperate globally, it will be the hosting providers who jump on that bandwagon who will fuel it with much of its resources.

Note to Hosting Providers:

If you are worried about how you are going to cope with this new competition, there is something you can do about it.  This advice might sound like an “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” mentality, but it is far from it.  The mentality is more of the nature that you should join a movement that they, too, will eventually have to join.

Whatever people think, there will not be a single dominant Cloud from any of these guys.  Cloud Computing, like any other utility, will evolve into a series of Clouds that can interoperate among themselves and are connected globally.  These interoperating Clouds will be run by hosting providers, will be proprietary Clouds like EC2, AppEngine, etc. and will be corporate data centers.

So, how does a hosting provider get on board?

Hosting providers need to implement Cloud Computing platforms in their data centers (of course, I think that platform needs to be 3tera’s AppLogic – plug, plug – surprise, surprise).  They need to build product offerings on these Cloud platforms.  Once there is a critical mass of applications hosted in all of these Clouds, the leaders will start interoperating with one another as people will want to share and reuse technology components, and, more importantly, companies will want to effect business to business transactions with companies running in other Clouds.

It will be inevitable that businesses running applications in proprietary Clouds will want to have the same capabilities, and in order to do so, their Clouds are going to have to start interoperating in the same ecosystem that yours do.

And guess what.  Many of the new enterprise customers we are attracting are and are wanting to run their web applications in external Clouds - HOSTED BY YOU.  So, there’s a whole new customer base here ripe for the picking.

So, hosting providers unite.  Get on board the Cloud train and in time, and not a real long time, the Amazons, Googles, Microsofts, Akamis, Salesforces, etc, of the world will have to join you or be beaten by you!

OK, you can call me a geek, but I really like CLI’s. It could be that they so seldom have serious UI issues the way GUI’s do. Or it could simply be nostalgia for the days when screen savers actually had a purpose. Either way, I had to smile when I first came across goosh, a shell like interface for google.

Now if google would just put the database on a floppy . . .

Just found this one via slashdot. Enjoy!

Twenty Experts Define Cloud Computing (with source links)

http://cloudcomputing.sys-con.com/read/612375_p.htm

Poll: should we add our own?

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Update, 7:30pm: Bert adds his view on why we shouldn’t try to make our own definition

One of the truisms of promoting new technologies is that the market never forms as fast as you expect. Spending sixteen hours a day, seven days a week working on steeped in the nuances of your technology, it can be frustrating trying to breakthrough the FUD accumulated in consumers minds by years working with the status quo. So, when you start to see that people get it, the moment is really gratifying.

One such moment was finding an article on ZDnet about Accenture Technology Labs’ assesment that utility computing is a green technology:

“Industrial-scale computing facilities can be located so as to optimize across land costs, power costs, bandwidth costs and power reliability . . . This can result in significant savings and is not an option most enterprises have available to them. “

The use of virtualization to enable utility computing has become pretty well accepted over the past year. So much so, that it’s almost comical to think of some of the responses we got three years ago when we started 3tera and were touring VCs and potential partners with our Powerpoint slides.

Unfortunately, some folks take the idea too literally and believe that virtualization and a SAN is all that’s required. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. AppLogic has been in production for 18 months and EC2 for twelve, so we now have data about what services are required for utility computing.

Peter and I just finished an article for fishtrain that discusses how virtualization fits into utility computing and what additional services are required. Hopefully it’ll stir a little bit of discussion.

I’ve been asked more than once during interviews whether utility computing will ultimately cost IT jobs. With fewer physical assets to manage and with the ability to automate a great deal of the mundane labor intensive operations, the logic is there should be need for fewer system administrators. However, this is a rather poorly though out analysis.

Utility computing eliminates labor by substituting technology. At 3tera, we routinely find system administrators who run hundreds of systems. Even a thousand isn’t out of the question. Compare that with 20 to 30 in typical IT environments and the ROI become pretty obvious. So, what about the jobs?

Economics, and the history of technology, suggests that when we encounter a step function in cost overall usage increases by a greater multiple than the cost reduction. Of course, this assumes demand is elastic and I haven’t seen any indication that demand for computing overall has been satisfied. This is why minis, PCs and the Internet didn’t reduce the number of IT jobs. With each of these new innovations IT related projects got done quicker and more cost effectively. After a period of ajustment each caused a rapid increase in IT jobs associated with the new technology that dwarfed any losses of older job functions.

Accordingly, I find it odd to suggest that utility computing will eliminate IT jobs. Quite the contrary, I expect to see a rapid expansion of IT jobs as more users learn the advantages of utility computing.

Layered Tech has taken the covers off their new DynaVol storage service.

In addition to offering a reliable and secure way to store data, DynaVol can also be used to serve static content, taking a lot of load off your infrastructure. Plus, with packages starting at just $15 month, the system is exceptionally affordable.

I’m looking forward to using DynaVol for near-line storage of application backups.

Canadian domain registrar and hoster Sibername.com announced on their forum today that they’re beginning implementation of AppLogic. We’ve been working with them since HostingCon in Chicago as they put AppLogic through a barrage of tests. They have a good team and we’re pleased to have them on board.

Rich Miller has a post about the Open Virtual machine Format (OVF) that a consortium of vendors submitted to the DMTF last week.

I’ve blogged about standards for utility computing a few times before, and I continue to believe it’s too early for a standard.

Standards are a double edged sword - a trade-off to gain interoperability in exchange for stifling innovation. Once sufficient experimentation in an area of technology has been conducted that agreement can be negotiated between competitors on market requirements, a standard can be drafted that delivers interoperability and allows innovation at the next layer. IMHO it’s way too early to make that trade-off. We haven’t adequately explored the possibilities in utility computing.

For instance, the OVF is intended to provide interchange of applications between services. To my knowledge, no vendor other than 3tera has ever demonstrated this ability. Our customers do it frequently. Therefore, we can document precisely what the requirements of an interchange format are and what services are required on both ends. OVF, unfortunately, is simply insufficient.

Even if 3tera published our interchange specification tomorrow and all parties signed on to it, that wouldn’t be the end game, because transfering an application between data centers isn’t the end requirement. It’s merely one important step. 3tera’s roadmap includes several major leaps in capabilities that will require significant extension of our current interchange format. And, as I mentioned, that’s where the negative aspect of standards comes into play. To adequately explain the need for those extensions in a standard body, 3tera would be required to site use cases where they could be needed - in essence to divulge our product roadmap to our competitors.

That said, if the authors of the OVF draft want input and are willing to embrace capabilities they can’t yet provide, capabilities that will set the stage for years of innovation, then we’ll be happy to participate.