Although Software Design is further down my enterprise considerations list, when Gojko Adzoc’s post on lessons he has learned developing in Amazon’s AWS environment, I knew I had to pass it along. The post describes new challenges for developers who have previously worked in a purpose-built, directly controlled, infrastructure environment. These challenges range from server reliability to storage speed. After articulating the challenges, Adzic offers advice on “How to keep your sanity”:
“It took me a while to understand that just deploying the same old applications in the way I was used to isn’t going to work that well on the cloud. To get the most out of cloud deployments, applications have to be designed up-front for massive networks and running on cheap unstable web boxes. But I think that is actually a good thing. Designing to work around those constraints makes applications much better – faster, easier to scale, cheaper to operate. Asynchronous persistence can significantly improve performance but I never thought about that before deploying to the cloud and running into IO issues. Data partitioning and replication make applications scale better and work faster. Sections of the system that can work even if they can’t see other sections help provide a better service to customers. This also makes the systems easier to deploy, because you can do one section at a time.
To conclude, there are three key ideas to keep in mind:
- Partition, partition, partition: avoid funnels or single points of failure. Remember that all you have is a bunch of cheap web servers with poor IO. This will prevent bottlenecks and scoring an own-goal by designing a denial of service attack in the system yourself.
- Plan on resources not being there for short periods of time. Break the system apart into pieces that work together, but can keep working in isolation at least for several minutes. This will help make the system resilient to networking issues and help with deployment.
- Plan on any machine going down at any time. Build in mechanisms for automated recovery and reconfiguration of the cluster. We accept failure in hardware as a fact of life – that’s why people buy database servers with redundant disks and power supplies, and buy them in pairs. Designing applications for cloud deployment simply makes us accept this as a fact with software as well.”
In the post, Adzic maintains that he is a cloud computing advocate, his goal of the post, and the presentation it came from, was to “expose some of the things that you won’t necessarily find in marketing materials.”
Read Adzic’s post. Remember the 4th Enduring Aspect of Cloud Computing.
Tagged as:
Amazon,
EC2,
enterprise considerations,
Gojko Adzoc
Posted by brenda michelson at 5:28 pm in 100-days, Cloud Watch, networks, performance & reliability, readiness, software architecture, storage | Permalink
| Comments(0)
| Trackback URL
Each time I think I have my cloud computing survey list set, another is released. The latest is from Enterprise Management Associates, in a report entitled The Responsible Cloud. The report price is outside of my price range, but Data Center Knowledge provides a good summary.
The survey sample:
“Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) interviewed 159 enterprises with active, or immediately planned cloud deployments, and reports that 75 percent said private cloud is the preferred model. Fifty two percent are implementing both on-premises and off-premises clouds…”
The key findings, according to Data Center Knowledge:
“Of the enterprises already running cloud computing, lowered IT capital costs (hardware, facilities, licenses, etc.) was cited by 61% of respondents. One quarter of all respondents reported that they had reduced both capital expenditure and operational expenditures such as staff, power, rent and maintenance costs.”
“Other benefits include freeing up strategic resources (49%), enabling disaster recovery/business continuity planning (46%), and increased flexibility and agility (46%). Overall, 89% of customers reported multiple outcomes, with just under half of all enterprises (46%) reporting five or more significant outcomes.
The report also found that the single most common level of OpEx reduction (from a sample of 79 respondents) was in the range of 21-30 percent. However, across all these respondents, cloud computing returned an average 22 percent OpEx saving.
Of the 76% of cloud customers that also reported real, measurable cost savings, the single most common level of CapEx reduction was between 11-20%. The CapEx return across all these respondents was 26%.”
Given the mix of public and private cloud and early adoption stage, it’s not surprising the CapEx reduction is in the 11-20% range. As more use cases (workloads) shift to a cloud computing environment, you’d expect the CapEx reduction to increase. Those CapEx reductions will further increase as use cases shift to a public cloud. However, some of those savings will be offset by OpEx increases, as pay-as-you-go is a new OpEx item, and in-house personnel are still required to manage cloud computing deployments and business service levels.
Suffice to say, ROI calculators will become an important tool for cloud computing adopters and prospects.
Tagged as:
business drivers,
capex,
Data Center Knowledge,
enterprise considerations,
Enterprise Management Associates,
metrics,
opex
Posted by brenda michelson at 12:19 pm in 100-days, Cloud Watch, adoption, economics | Permalink
| Comments(0)
| Trackback URL
The next survey on my list from MWD Advisors, a UK based IT Advisory group, specializing on issues concerning IT business alignment. Neil Ward-Dutton was kind enough to share this premium report with me. This survey was conducted in partnership with the IASA (International Association of Software Architects), and had a diverse sample (organization size and geography) of 358 architect-type respondents. From the report overview:
“In September 2009, MWD worked in conjunction with our partners at the IASA to discover how IT architects view Cloud Computing – what the current challenges are, who is committed to using Cloud Computing – and to gain an insight into what is needed to make Cloud Computing compelling for organisations. The resulting study shows that there are strong levels of Cloud Computing activity being driven by IT architects – but at the same time, that some of today’s vendor marketing drives are missing the mark.”
Out of respect for the premium nature of this content, I’m going to limit this post to a few points.
First, the key findings point out the importance of IT architect involvement with cloud computing initiatives. However, the reasoning differs from the Forrester findings. The MWD survey emphasizes “cohesion between on-premise systems and those in the Cloud". Cohesion includes “ensuring that applications are robust enough to deal with changes to the physical environment that may happen at any time.” [This aligns with one of my 5 Enduring Aspects of Cloud Computing]
Second, despite the rampant hype surrounding cloud computing, only 9 respondents agreed with the statement: “Cloud Computing is all hype and no substance”. The majority of the sample believes “Cloud Computing is fundamentally about service delivery and consumption, not technology”. [So, for everyone who believes service management practices go away with the cloud, think again.]
Third, respondents perceive cloud computing’s greatest value to be “Access to scalable resource with no capital expenditure required – pay as you go”. This differs from the Forrester survey results that ranked “Speed up application delivery” (63%) well over capex avoidance (30% for production, 28% for test).
There are many good insights in the MWD Advisors and Forrester reports. Each paints a picture of cautious optimism for cloud computing, recognizing business benefits and risks, and the need for thoughtful adoption strategies.
Tagged as:
enterprise considerations,
Forrester,
MWD Advisors,
Neil Ward-Dutton
Posted by brenda michelson at 5:30 pm in 100-days, Cloud Watch, adoption, enterprise integration, software architecture | Permalink
| Comments(0)
| Trackback URL
Continuing the 100-day cloud watch, I’m working through my list of cloud computing surveys and papers. Given my background and primary readership, I’m starting with the enterprise architecture focused research. First up is the Forrester Report: EAs Are Seeing the Beginning of Cloud’s Impact On IT by Gene Leganza. The paper stemmed from a recent Forrester Leadership Board (FLB) teleconference:
“A recent Forrester Leadership Boards (FLB) teleconference, attended exclusively by Enterprise Architecture Council members, focused on the impact of cloud computing on EA and the traditional IT structure. We polled the 75 attendees, all enterprise architects, to determine their level of familiarity with cloud concepts and terminology, the degree to which these enterprise architects are engaging with the business and IT community to make decisions about cloud deployments, and the motivation for looking to the cloud for solutions.”
The report offers good information about why organizations are adopting cloud computing – include the different drivers of enterprise architecture and infrastructure professionals – along with enterprise architecture’s involvement in cloud computing adoption and implementation. I’d like to focus on this last point:
“Of the 54 session attendees who responded to this question, 20% said they were aware of no cloud deployments in their enterprise. Of the 43 who knew of cloud use, 26% said enterprise architects were involved in all cloud decisions, 58% said they were pulled in for guidance on possible cloud deployments some of the time, and 16% said their business or IT staff had licensed cloud services without EA’s involvement.”
Forrester surmises: “The ease of procuring cloud resources makes it likely that business project sponsors or IT development and support staff will acquire cloud services without engaging the standard technology governance processes where architects typically become engaged.”. At the Gartner AADI conference, Eric Knipp referred to this phenomenon as the rise of “Citizen Development”.
In the report, Leganza suggests that instead of “falling victim to an end run by the business”, enterprise architects need to embrace the role of business advisor. Specifically, Leganza recommends:
“Get proficient in cloud-related issues and terminology. If IT in general and architects in particular are to position themselves as trusted advisors to the business — thus playing a role in the IT-to-BT transition rather than being a victim of it — architects should be the ones to recommend cloud services when they are appropriate rather than let the business position cloud as a way to get IT services without the IT department. To be in a position to advocate cloud-based solutions, architects must have a thorough understanding of the facts, subtleties, hype, and misinformation surrounding cloud computing, and they must develop a practical model for which of their workloads are appropriate for the cloud and which must be deployed internally…”
“Look for ways to improve IT services with cloud-based offerings. Work with subject matter experts in infrastructure and application engineering to see where cloud-based services can provide hosted solutions that are more cost-effective and flexible than in-house scenarios without introducing undue risk…"
“Consider cloud services when brainstorming business solutions. Create a cloud cheat sheet — your own customized guide listing criteria that identify a workload appropriate for the cloud — for use in early-stage architecture reviews or when discussing possible solutions to business problems. Any flexible and cost-effective hosting arrangement that does not introduce risk can translate to technology-enhanced business capabilities with no increased support burden on internal IT, which is a win-win for both IT and its business stakeholders.”
“Provide a context for solution decisions with an integrated view of architecture. …Providing an easy-to-understand high-level graphical view of business, information, and applications — such as in a capability map — can enable informed discussions about possible cloud-based solutions that don’t ignore integration requirements.”
Todd Biske, a seasoned enterprise architect and renowned SOA Governance expert, also speaks to the EA as Business Advisor in a recent post.
Tagged as:
enterprise architects,
enterprise considerations,
Forrester,
Gene Leganza,
Todd Biske
Posted by brenda michelson at 2:07 pm in 100-days, Cloud Watch, adoption, analyst positions, enterprise architecture, enterprise integration | Permalink
| Comments(0)
| Trackback URL
The Chicago Tribune is reporting that “Orlando became one of the first cities in America to switch all of its employees to Google e-mail.” The savings are impressive:
“If Orlando were to keep its current system, city officials estimate it would cost $133 a year for each of its 3,000 employees — or $399,000 — including annual software licenses.
Google is charging $45.50 per user, or $136,500. In return, everyone from city planners to police officers will use a Web-based e-mail system similar to Google’s popular Gmail, but without the advertisements that support the free consumer version. Google servers will store all city e-mail and run the application, and Google technicians — not city employees — will make sure it runs smoothly.
"The costs and IT support are someone else’s nightmare, and that’s what we’re paying for," Chief Financial Officer Rebecca Sutton said.”
More interesting is the confidence, dare I say “trust”, in using a cloud-based solution:
“[Google’s] Lock said Google will archive Orlando records, which must be kept and accessible under state public-records law, in "super-secret data centers."
And Cross [Orlando’s Chief Information Officer] said he’s confident city records, including sensitive law-enforcement and legal documents, will be safe from loss or cyberattack. Google has greater security resources, from people to money, than Orlando could muster on its own.
Besides, Cross said, the city last year contacted other e-mail providers, including Microsoft and IBM, about moving to the cloud.
"They gave us pricing that couldn’t compete with Google," he said.”
While the Los Angeles Google deal is much better known, Orlando led the way:
“Los Angeles became Google’s crown jewel in October, when that city approved a $7.25 million e-mail contract with the Internet giant, but Los Angeles has not yet moved its 30,000 employees to the Google system.
Google cited its deal with Orlando, which had already been signed, in its pitch to Los Angeles.”
In a reversal of classic technology adoption patterns, government agencies are cutting the path to cloud computing. Interesting times.
Tagged as:
Google,
GoogleApps,
government,
IBM,
microsoft
Posted by brenda michelson at 4:41 pm in Cloud Watch, SaaS, adoption, business capability offering, use cases | Permalink
| Comments(0)
| Trackback URL
