elemental cloud computing
intentional cloud watching - by brenda michelson
On Friday, David Linthicum invited me on his cloud computing podcast to chat about what we heard, and didn’t hear, at the Cloud Connect conference. Naturally, our discussion wound its way to the connections of cloud computing, enterprise architecture, service-oriented architecture and data architecture.
Our podcast is Picking Apart Cloud Connect. Check it out.
Salesforce.com just added a powerful new tool to its Force.com development platform, a Visual Process Manager:
“The Visual Process Manager brings the power of Cloud Computing to Business Process Apps. Now you can visually draw any business process and instantly deploy it in the cloud with no code, no software and no infrastructure. The Visual Process Manager helps companies easily automate specific business process like call center scripting, sales quotes, and new employee on boarding.”
According to a post on TechCrunch:
“The technology powering the Visual Process Manager is based on technology acquired from Informavores, call scripting startup Salesforce bought last year.
The Manager has several different components. The Process Designer essentially helps businesses more >>
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.
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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.
Cross posted from elemental links. Commentary on Event Processing and Cloud Computing about midway through the post. Personally, I see a big tie (opportunity) at the intersection. I’ll share more on that another time. Original post follows.
Session Abstract: Roy Schulte and Dr. Chandy released a new book on Event Processing in October 2009, aimed at business and system analysts, architects, application managers, CIOs, and technically-oriented business managers. This session will highlight the key points of the book and explain why and how mainstream IT departments will ramp their use of event processing up during the next ten years.
Dr. Chandy is the Simon Ramo Professor at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California. He has received numerous awards including the CMG Michelson Award, the IEEE Kobayashi award, and the Babbage Award.
W. Roy Schulte is Vice President and Distinguished Analyst at Gartner. He was the lead author of the 1996 Gartner report that introduced the term SOA to the industry. Mr. Schulte originated the research in the field of message brokers, coined the term business activity monitoring (BAM), and wrote the first analyst reports on the zero-latency enterprise and the enterprise service bus (ESB).
Yesterday, Roy did a rapid-fire session on Event Processing. more >>
David Bressler, SOA & Cloud Evangelist for Progress Actional is up now, talking about the Impact of Cloud Computing on Enterprise Application Architecture:
“Cloud Computing will change enterprise consumption of IT, but challenges around data management, no longer “owned” by the individual application, pose a threat. These include: how to keep data accurate and in the right hands; how to add new sources; how to provide contextual information; and how to successfully drive this all into a business-users hands. In this session David Bressler, SOA Evangelist, Progress Software, will outline the “new enterprise app” vision where data relationships and their impact to the business process matter, and define best practices to ensure “safe” Cloud Computing that drives tangible business IT improvements.”
David promises to be entertaining, and since it’s now 7:00pm, I’m counting on it.
Punch line, turning commodities into utilities.
Cloud computing, culture of enterprise integration, will take a shot at defining cloud computing, then talk about some best practices.
“Integration is hard, by hard, I mean expensive”. more >>
exploring the opportunities, issues, technologies, offerings and implications of cloud computing from a practitioner perspective
- by brenda michelson
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