Many analysts predict the future of IT and we are all talking about what technologies will shape this future, but back in the real world CIOs are trying to deliver a service to their users while using for the most part a mixed bag of technologies.
I believe that many organisations in the next few years will reach a tipping point where they must make the leap and implement new technology, which could create problems for other older technologies; therefore, I think a time will come when organisations think about complete replacement using Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) approach, which will be the beginning of the cloud revolution.
However, do not worry that time is a few years away yet, and in fact may not happen for 10 years, but like the Internet, it is coming so do not bury your head in the sand, be prepared and start planning now for a brave new IT world.
About Me
- Roy Illsley
- A Senior Research Analayst for a leading firm, with a focus on infrastructure management and virtualisation
Tuesday 4 November 2008
Monday 3 November 2008
Clouds
Dell raised a petition to trademark the term ‘cloud computing’, but in August the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) issued a ruling that denied the company's claim to the term, but it did leave Dell with the option of appealing.
Over recent weeks a number of high profile announcements about cloud initiatives have circulated, and at first sight this may suggest that cloud computing has broken through from concept to reality in the enterprise, but is this just more hype or are we at the dawn of a new era in computing?
Firstly, the concept of cloud is not universally categorized so all the rhetoric needs to be carefully evaluated; I describe ‘cloud computing’ as the ability to deliver IT as a collection of services to a wide range of customers over the Web. We further refine this definition as either internal – IT within an organization’s firewall making its resources available as a cloud to its customers – or external – where a service provider supplies IT capability to customers via the Internet as either a top-up to existing IT resources, or as a complete solution thereby making the server-less organization a reality.
One of these announcements was that IBM is investing US$300M in 13 new data centres world-wide aimed at providing Disaster Recovery (DR) capabilities. This new initiative was described as a cloud computing solution for DR; it provides backups of data on servers that can then be quickly accessed to rapidly restore lost files. This solution can be seen as IBM leveraging its acquisition in 2007 of Arsenal Digital Solutions – a manufacturer of rack-mounted appliances dedicated to business continuity.
However, the IBM announcement uses the term cloud, but does not really deliver a cloud solution; it merely offers a single cloud-based service which I believe represents the current state of the market: that is to say single cloud solutions aimed at particular niche deployments. In July HP, Intel, and Yahoo announced that they are working together to deploy a global test-bed of six data centres for the open development and testing of solutions to the challenges cloud computing will present. This announcement is a larger scale than the Google and IBM announcement of October 2007, where two data centres dedicated to cloud research were being set-up.
I consider the concept of cloud computing to represent the future of how IT will be delivered to its customers, but we believe that many issues remain with cloud computing and applaud the efforts of HP, Intel, Yahoo, IBM, Google, and Microsoft for providing the platforms for developers and researchers to work on the challenges. One of the most fundamental challenges to be how the services and delivery will be managed, and more importantly charged for. This is just one example of the sort of practical questions that come to mind when you start to consider how the cloud concept can be used.
I expect many more announcements of cloud solutions like the IBM DR one will be made over the coming years. This we believe will create confusion in the market similar to that when virtualization first appeared, but as the research turns to solutions the scope of these announcements will increase from single solutions to more enterprise-ready solutions; however, the marketing hype may have already created a high-level of scepticism among end-user organizations that will need to be convinced that the cloud has arrived and is fit for purpose in commercial deployments.
Over recent weeks a number of high profile announcements about cloud initiatives have circulated, and at first sight this may suggest that cloud computing has broken through from concept to reality in the enterprise, but is this just more hype or are we at the dawn of a new era in computing?
Firstly, the concept of cloud is not universally categorized so all the rhetoric needs to be carefully evaluated; I describe ‘cloud computing’ as the ability to deliver IT as a collection of services to a wide range of customers over the Web. We further refine this definition as either internal – IT within an organization’s firewall making its resources available as a cloud to its customers – or external – where a service provider supplies IT capability to customers via the Internet as either a top-up to existing IT resources, or as a complete solution thereby making the server-less organization a reality.
One of these announcements was that IBM is investing US$300M in 13 new data centres world-wide aimed at providing Disaster Recovery (DR) capabilities. This new initiative was described as a cloud computing solution for DR; it provides backups of data on servers that can then be quickly accessed to rapidly restore lost files. This solution can be seen as IBM leveraging its acquisition in 2007 of Arsenal Digital Solutions – a manufacturer of rack-mounted appliances dedicated to business continuity.
However, the IBM announcement uses the term cloud, but does not really deliver a cloud solution; it merely offers a single cloud-based service which I believe represents the current state of the market: that is to say single cloud solutions aimed at particular niche deployments. In July HP, Intel, and Yahoo announced that they are working together to deploy a global test-bed of six data centres for the open development and testing of solutions to the challenges cloud computing will present. This announcement is a larger scale than the Google and IBM announcement of October 2007, where two data centres dedicated to cloud research were being set-up.
I consider the concept of cloud computing to represent the future of how IT will be delivered to its customers, but we believe that many issues remain with cloud computing and applaud the efforts of HP, Intel, Yahoo, IBM, Google, and Microsoft for providing the platforms for developers and researchers to work on the challenges. One of the most fundamental challenges to be how the services and delivery will be managed, and more importantly charged for. This is just one example of the sort of practical questions that come to mind when you start to consider how the cloud concept can be used.
I expect many more announcements of cloud solutions like the IBM DR one will be made over the coming years. This we believe will create confusion in the market similar to that when virtualization first appeared, but as the research turns to solutions the scope of these announcements will increase from single solutions to more enterprise-ready solutions; however, the marketing hype may have already created a high-level of scepticism among end-user organizations that will need to be convinced that the cloud has arrived and is fit for purpose in commercial deployments.
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