Cloud Computing and the Lure of Hosted Solutions

“Cloud” Computing

and the Lure of Hosted Solutions

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What is Cloud Computing?

“a computing capability that provides an abstraction between the

computing resource and its underlying technical architecture (e.g., servers, storage, networks), enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider

interaction.”

What is Cloud Computing?

Also from Wikipedia:

“clouds have five essential characteristics: on-demand

self-service, broad network access, resource pooling,

rapid elasticity, and measured service.”

More simply:

Application portability

Separation of application from infrastructure (which

thereby enables pooled/shared resources)

What is Cloud Computing?

Cloud Architecture

What Isn’t Said About Cloud Computing?

Cloud Computing Doesn’t Always Mean:

• Security (do you know where your data is?)

• Availability (even Google has had big outages)

• High performance (will you get guaranteed metrics?)

• Cheaper (could end-up costing more)

• Public/hosted – see hybrid solutions

Ensure compliance

• HIPAA/SOX/EU Privacy laws?

• Can you perform that SAS 70 audit in the cloud?

• Where does your data reside and what’s applicable?

• Provider may have to turn-over business data that might not have to be turned-over if located in a private cloud

Don’t Believe the Hype

“The interesting thing about cloud computing is that we’ve redefined cloud computing to include everything that we already do. I can’t think of anything that isn’t cloud computing with all of these announcements. The computer industry is the only industry that is more fashion-driven than women’s fashion. Maybe I’m an idiot, but I have no idea what anyone is talking about. What is it? It’s complete gibberish. It’s insane. When is this idiocy going to stop?”

“Cloud.... I mean, cloud is water vapor...But it’s not water vapor, it’s just a computer connected to a network! What are you talking about? What do you think Google runs on? It’s databases and operating systems and memory and processors!”

--- Larry Ellison (CEO Oracle)

Buzzword Bingo

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)

Software as a Service (SaaS)

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

Platform as a Service (PaaS)

Hosted Solutions

VMDK

VHD

Hybrid clouds (public/private)

Cloud “Bursting”

How Can You Leverage Cloud Computing?

Rethink your DR plan

Consider specific components and how to adapt them

• Email

• Emergency Communications

• Storage

• Hot/Warm site

• Bursting

Consider a public/private hybrid

• Leverage the best of both

• Ensure entrance/exit strategy

Potential other benefits

• Faster deployments

• Fewer in-house staff needed?

Public/Private Hybrid Cloud

Private cloud

• Virtualized servers, SAN

• Internal chargeback (on the horizon)

• All the benefits of IaaS, SaaS, and PaaS with the security of maintaining it on premises

Public cloud

• Ability to move between private and public as needed for DR or maintenance purposes

• Still able to control charge-back

• Bursting on demand

Public/Private Cloud

You Need to be Prepared!

If “cloud” relies on the Internet, you’d better have

solid connectivity

• Redundant connections – on the WAN and via ISPs

• Fat connections (big enough to support everything)

• Fast connections (if performance is sluggish, you’ll hear it)

Don’t be afraid to negotiate – and don’t get locked-in

Consider Interoperability

Investigate the provider

• Financial Stability

• Their DR plan and redundancy

You need an exit strategy

• Any data that goes in may need to come out due to cost, security, stability of vendor

Cloud Computing - Virtualization

Why?

• Server in a file (abstracts software from hardware)

• Servers can share hardware (pooled resources)

• Quicker to bring-up and restart

• Requires less hardware

• Enables portability (sort-of)

How?

• Microsoft Hyper-V VHDs

• VMWare ESX – VMDKs

SaaS E-mail Continuity Options

Postini

• Spool email – add simple archiving for another $4/month

MessageOne

• $50/box/year for about 30 days of mail

• Replication with full fail-over

Mimecast

• $6/box/month

• Postini + MessageOne, and then some…

SaaS E-mail Options (Fully Hosted)

Google Mail

Microsoft Hosted Exchange

Simple Web Hosting

• $6/box/month for Exchange accounts

Before you go “all in,” think about

what else you have in your

environment that might be affected

(PDAs, internal servers that require

SMTP relays, encryption, etc.)

Other Applications

Google Apps, Zoho Office, MS Office

CRM Apps

MySAP, Workday

Salesforce.com

NetDocuments (doc management)

Hosted SharePoint

Webfiltering (Postini, Websense, Your ISP?)

Managed firewalls (most ISPs offer this)

DNS – you’re probably already doing this

Storage

Why?

• Defined cost per storage (do you really know what it costs internally now?) can be billed-back

• Storage is cheap

• Add space on-the-fly

• Ideal for short-term needs

Who?

• Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)

• Microsoft Windows Live SkyDrive

• 3Tera

• Rackspace

Computing

Why?

• Increase workloads on the fly – ideal for “temp” uses

• Avoid the cost of a completely replicated co-lo

• Cheap (as little as $0.40/hr)

• Great for developers

Who?

• Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud)

• Microsoft Azure (and SQL Azure, and AppFabric)

• 3Tera (AppLogic)

• AppNexus

• GoGrid

• Various other API providers (Yahoo, Google, etc.)

Telephony

Virtual DIDs via SIP trunking

• Verizon Business • Global Crossing • other Telcos/ISPs?

Fully-Hosted PBX

Consumer grade

• Grand Central (now Google Voice)

Questions?

Ben Weinberger, CIO

bweinberger@lathropgage.com 816-292-2000