@ Cloud Connect: Public, Private, or Hybrid: Where’s the Value Today and Where’s It Going? : elemental cloud computing

Public, Private, or Hybrid: Where’s the Value Today and Where’s It Going?

There’s no doubt that virtualization, automation, and service-centric architectures lead to cost efficiency and more agile information technology. But there are many ways to deploy clouds: Privately, atop on-premise hardware behind enterprise firewalls; publicly, through third-party service providers; or in a hybrid, blended model that leverages the best of both worlds. Which of these is right today? Why, and will this change? Join this panel for a look at the sweet spot of clouds and how utility computing will evolve in coming years.

Moderator – Vanessa Alvarez, Industry Analyst, Enterprise Infrastructure, Frost & Sullivan

Panelists:

Joseph Ziskin, Vice President, Strategy, IBM
James Watters, Sr. Manager Cloud Solutions, VMWare
Sailesh Yellumahanti, Director, Service Provider Practice, Cisco Internet Business Solutions Group
Valerie Knafo, Senior Manager, Business Development, Dell, DCS
Scott McClellan, Vice President & Chief Technologist, Cloud Services, Hewlett-Packard Company
Jinesh Varia, Amazon AWS Tech Evangelist

Opening statements

Joseph Ziskin, IBM: Setting context from IBM point of view, Joseph reminds us, no enterprise will move the entirety of their service delivery to “the cloud”. As well, there isn’t “a cloud”. There are a variety of cloud types, including private (on-premise), public, trusted provider cloud and community cloud. Community cloud is a theme here, it’s an affinity group, such as in the credit card industry.

James Watters, VMWare: “Wouldn’t it be great if all those 10 million applications running on our technology could be flexibly deployed?” Fundamental concepts/questions for hybrid cloud computing: how are you formatting your application package? what’s the common API used across the clouds?

Scott McClellan, HP: Starts with mini-shot a Cisco, “HP is not a cloud computing arms dealer”. Types of clouds: on-premise private cloud, hosted private cloud, virtual private cloud and public. Scott calls out the virtual private cloud as a compelling trend.

Jinesh Varia, Amazon: Public clouds are the ultimate way to scale. Amazon is continuing to innovate in public cloud, offering advances for adopters in both cost and scale.

Sailesh Yellumahanti, Cisco: Remarks based on discussions with 80 IT executives, customers are (naturally) at varying stages of decision making. The network is an important factor. Private vs. Public is not a binary decision for these executives. In general, most are starting with a non-core workload in a public cloud. Over time, there will be no sacred cows.

Valerie Knafo, Dell: Dell’s cloud plays: infrastructure (to the cloud providers) and the delivery of IT services and solutions from the cloud. See cloud today as traditional and virtualized. Cites an inflection point in technology, such as processor (core) innovation, price points dropping. On customer side, IT is being forced to be more flexible, agile. Cloud computing is an enabler for these new demands of IT.

Before getting into the questions, Vanessa sets the boundaries that we’ll be using the NIST definition of cloud computing.

Hot Debate Points:

- Virtualization (is) or (is not) Cloud Computing

- Private Cloud (has) or (has not) existed all along in Enterprise Data centers that employ virtualization and service management

- Public / Private / Hybrid (is) or (is not) defined by the underlying technology

- Public / Private / Hybrid (is) or (is not) defined by the types of deployed workloads

- Cloud Computing Value Statement is significantly reduced CapEx and lower, more predictable, OpEx. Therefore, private, on-premise cloud isn’t really cloud computing

- Virtualization (is) or (is not) required for Cloud Computing

- Public Cloud is (always) or (only sometimes) less expensive than Private Cloud.

Uncontested Points:

- Amazon’s work was groundbreaking

- Maturity of internal processes and [application] architecture will impact the effectiveness (and even fit) of cloud based application deployment

- Not all “scale” requirements are the same, because not all applications have same internal architectures, business and workload profiles. Therefore, some “scaling” requirements will be better met in [commodity designed] public clouds, others in [specialized] private clouds.

- Cost savings is not the only value of cloud computing. Business agility is also a factor.

Interesting Audience Questions

1. Top 3 workloads for the public cloud? IBM: Collaboration, analytics and dev/test. VMware: dev/test, batch processing, anything that lives on the web, lives in the cloud. HP: High Transaction, Mission critical those are NOT good things to move. Bursty things are good things to move to public cloud. Amazon: after dev/test, analytics, etc, sees backup and recovery, disaster recovery, and applications that need immediate scale. Cisco: all those mentioned, plus simulation and analytics that require a lot of computing capacity. SaaS view: collaboration and CRM. Dell: Yes, on all those mentioned.