Here are three (3) critical questions; there are others, but if you do not good responses from these, there is no need to pursue the topic any further:

One:  How scalable is the vendor’s offering and how easy is it to scale?  Is there a limit to the number of users or application/per user?  What does one have to do to add another user or equally important add another application AND more users?  What is required to reduce the number of users or applications?

Two: What is the cost structure?  Is the vendor’s cloud computing price based on a utility basis such as cost per user or cost per minutes or cost per transaction?  Does the vendor incur the cost of all the required equipment and applications or does the buyer pay or lease some or all of it? Is the utility cost (if that is the basis) linear or are there certain levels where the cost/utility changes? Are there penalties for not using your “minutes” or “bits”?  Be careful and as they say, read the fine print.

Three: What is covered in the Service Level Agreement (SLA)?  Do not assume that uptime, performance and availability are the only items that need to be covered in a SLA. For instance, what happens if an application goes offline or crashes…is there a backup or a recovery capability available?

Another concern, Is the vendor providing just bandwidth and not applications under the SLA?

Bottom line, cloud computing is not anywhere near what is being promoted and if one does not do their due diligence, you may actually be worse off after signing up for cloud computing then before. So look up, is it a sunny cloud or a rain cloud?

If you would like more information about cloud computing send me an email (dick.lush@firealarmmarketing.com) or Contact Us.

RHL 3/1/11

 In Forrester’s article titled “ A Close Look At Cloud Computing Security”  by Chenxi Wang, Ph.D. Wang states “While cloud computing is able to deliver many benefits, organizations should not jump on the “cloud” wagon without a compelling business driver and a clear understanding of the security, privacy, compliance, and legal consequences. An effective assessment strategy covering these items will help you reach the ultimate goal: Make the cloud service work like your own IT security department and find ways to secure and optimize your investments in the cloud.”

Forrester includes data protection, disaster recovery, and identity management as some of the areas under security and suggest that an audit of the potential cloud provider to see what level of security is actually provided.

As for compliance, the user should analyze how the cloud may or may not impact one’s compliance requirements.

For legal and contractual issues, Forrester advises that one understands who owns/is responsible for what, between the user and the provider (the data, the infrastructure, etc.)

Another article by Network World’s Jon Brodkin titled “Gartner: Seven Cloud – Computing Security Risks” he talks about seven security risk areas.

1. Privileged user access, sensitive data processed outside the enterprise.

2. Regulatory compliance, how does the cloud provider match your guidelines?

3. Data location, where exactly is your data housed?

 4. Data segregation, understand that your data is “sitting” next to other’s data

 5. Disaster Recovery, what happens when there is an outage?

6.  Investigating inappropriate or illegal activity may be impossible in cloud computing,

7. Long-term viability, what happens if your provider “goes away”?

Another article in Network World that reported on the RSA conference, and stated that the former technical director of NSA, Brian Snow is very concerned about vendors offering cloud computing from a security point of view. He is concerned about vendors not addressing current security issues and about new issues that cloud computing will create.   Ironically another panelist was concerned about “Big Brother” listening in on cloud computing and how this might impact enterprises’ privacy and compliance issues.

So to wrap up, the internet has security issues, and since cloud computing is in the internet, cloud computing will have those security issues, ones listed above, and ones yet to be discovered. It comes down to the risk profile for your corporation; what level of risk is right for your company relative to investing in cloud computing? Obviously part of the risk assessment depends on your type of company.  If you are a financial advisor or in stock management where your intellectual property is basically the company then cloud computing as we currently know it is not right for you at any cost savings. If you resell ping -pong balls (no offense to ping- pong ball resellers) than the risk is relatively low and the savings from cloud computing outweigh the security and other considerations. 

Have you conducted an adequate risk assessment before deciding to move to cloud computing?

RHL 03/10/10

Please note, there are hundreds of vendors proposing to offer cloud computing. I have  selected five vendors and reviewed them at a very high level to see how they address our major considerations/filters (costs/capital expenditures, scale, instant access, business applications).   So as you read ask yourself if these vendors meet the minimum criteria for cloud computing

Microsoft’s Azure – Windows Azure offers an environment for developers (Web, ISV, business. etc.)  to create cloud applications and services.  So right off the bat; Azure is a developer’s “kit” not actual cloud provider. Microsoft’s Azure pricing is consumption based (usage) and they offer a SLA agreement (could not find any details).  Part of Microsoft cloud computing developer’s platform will be incorporated in data centers for off- premise applications for the final end user. 

 Callidus Software – Bring Sales into the Picture

Callidus, who provides Sales Performance Management (SPM) software, is expanding its suite on the Force.com platform to offer entire sales life-cycle from on-boarding deployment and payment, to talent development, while providing visibility into sales operations and financial performance. Basically this is an enhancement of SPM and it is supported by a “cloud” environment that provides scalability and uniform access.

Rackspace’s offering is usage based ($10.95/mo or 1.5¢/hr) with no long-term contract AND free technical support.   One can scale up & down at any time and access the cloud via Open Source APIs. Bandwidth is available for 7¢/GB in and 22¢/GB out.

According to Rackspace it is a three (3) step process; 1-Select your size of the cloud, 2-then the operating systems and 3- the rest is done by Rackspace    One note about their SLA guarantee. Cloud Files service will be available 99.9% of the time in a given billing cycle; if not you get a credit on your next bill.   Personally, this is not a good SLA component. 

 Zetta – Enterprise Cloud Storage on Demand

Zetta claims to provide cloud on – demand (scale) with pay (Zetta Enterprise Cloud Storage pricing starts at $0.25/GB/month) as you go. Zetta provides a Total Cost of ownership calculator so you can quickly compare your current costs to Zetta managed storage costs.  Along with the performance is performance assurance (assume some sort of SLA).  Not sure about instant access to business applications.

Stratascale – The world’s first physical cloud

They provide servers, firewalls and storage that are scalability (4 levels of clouds, which consist of 70GB/server, 1 Gbps bandwidth between servers, secure and reliability).  I did not find anything about their pricing structure or SLA agreements, so no comments.

This is really a hosted/managed service for servers with fire walling. Not sure how far they can scale and where are the business applications.

Bottom line, given this was a random sample: technically, none of these met all of the criteria for being a cloud computing vendor.  Most are offering some sort of storage/server solution with some uniqueness like added security or a management tool. Their specific offering may well meet a foundation or infrastructure component; but one would still have to find other vendors to help provide the complete solution.  Given this situation the pros might not outweigh the cons in your decision process.

Lesson learned, do a complete due diligence before you sign on the dotted line.

Happy researching in the cloud or it pays to keep your head in the clouds!

RHL   3/3/10

In my last posting I discussed the definition and some of the major factors about cloud computing.  This posting will outline its major “Pros and Cons.”

Remember our simplified definition of cloud computing, consists of shared computing resources that are virtualized and accessed as a service through an APL[1].

The Pros

1-      Costs/capital expenditures

If cloud computing is right for your company, then major cost savings can be seen in the buying and maintaining the needed infrastructure, support equipment and communication costs. The vendors and/or service provider, who charge the users a utility or user type fee, own these costs.

2-      Scalability

One of IT’s biggest problem is the constant need to add more equipment to keep up with the growing demand of accessing, storing and analyzing information by both internal and external users.  One example is in the data center where adding servers is a major cost issue (actually power for the data center is the number one issue, but it is related to the growing need for items like servers). Since cloud computing is virtual, one can expand or contract equipment/infrastructure as demands change.

3-      Start – up

Since the cloud (theoretically) contains the infrastructure and applications, all one just needs to do is “dial” in to the cloud.  One can start using applications immediately versus a customary installation, testing and then providing access to the appropriate user community. (Training is assumed to a constant.)

4-      Business Applications

Again, the cloud (actually the vendors and/or service providers) through contracts (Service Level Agreements –SLAs) provides numerous business applications for any user who is their client. Again like scale, enterprises only need to know which applications they need to run their business and understand what is actually provided to have access to various business applications. (Training is assumed to be a constant.)

5-      Flexibility

Since cloud computing is a virtual offering, a user has the flexibility to choose, on a regular basis, the applications, amount of bandwidth or the number of users by basically modifying his user contract and increasing or decreasing costs at a known rate or factor.

The Cons

1-SLA Agreements

This is the tricky and most important one.  SLAs can be very involved and it really leaves the onus on the user to understand and define all requirements in specific detail, and more importantly understand what one is getting in the terms of support, performance, security, etc. A good example is quality of service; one should understand what is offered and what the recourses are if the specified quality is not maintained.

2-Performance

Performance guarantees are usually part of the SLA document, but I have singled this one out because it is critical to maintain the performance (uptime) one needs both for internal AND external users.  Understand if the performance guarantee is defined as an average or just during peak times versus a “uniform” performance. If performance is compromised, it can impact many things including revenue and your company’s goodwill.

3-Vendors

Not all vendors are created equally! Many vendors are claiming to provide cloud computing, but in reality, they are just providing a specific service, or a specific application or worst they are a middleman and provide no value-add at all.  As I sated in my previous posting, one needs to understand the difference between cloud computing and hosted services or managed services or seemingly some form of virtualization. My best advice is to definitely get with reference customers and see if they model what you would like from the cloud.

4-Security

We all know that the internet has some security issues and since the cloud utilizes the internet coupled with applications infrastructure and support, users should be aware of the potential for new threats and increased risk exposure.  It is important to include your firm’s risk tolerance in any decision to move to cloud computing, as not all the security issues are understood, and new ones will arise.

5-IT Staffing

If one does utilize the cloud, then make sure one understands the vendor staffing that is available to support your needs and hundreds of others using their cloud.  A number of vendors out-source staffing and some of the personnel may not be as good as your own internal organization. Ask the potential service provider if they have trained personnel to support the applications you request.

As I have always stated, know your strategy for your IT organization and your lines of business and weigh whether the “pros” out weigh the “cons” for going with cloud computing.  Note that there are a number of advantages and disadvantages; do not be swayed by looking at cloud computing from only a cost-saving point of view. 

In all probability the answer will be some thing in the “middle”, i.e. some hybrid form of cloud computing.

Next time we will discuss some of the vendors that are offering cloud computing.

RHL 02/23/10

What is cloud computing? Well right off, there are various and numerous definitions. In the same breath you will hear about, hosted solutions, managed solutions, virtualization, Internet Service Providers (ISP), Software as a Service (SaaS), grid computing, utility computing, security, and platforms, just to name a few.  We will discuss all of these and more in later postings, but first what is most important is seeing if cloud computing is right for you. So in the spirit of simplicity, here are definitions for cloud computing.

First a definition from Wikipedia:  

Cloud computing is Internet- (“cloud-”) based development and use of computer technology (“computing”). In concept, it is a paradigm shift whereby details are abstracted from the users who no longer have need of, expertise in, or control over the technology infrastructure “in the cloud” that supports them. Cloud computing describes a new supplement, consumption and delivery model for IT services based on the Internet, and it typically involves the provision of dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources as a service over the Internet.

Whoa that was clear!  Try this one:

Cloud computing consists of shared computing resources that are virtualized and accessed as a service, through an API.¹ 

 If it is still not clear try this analogy; for people who have a home, and you if do your own lawn care then you might own the following pieces of equipment; a rake,  shovels,  a hoe, hoses, lawn mower, fertilizer spreader, an edger, leaf blower, seed, fertilizer and other variety of tools. Instead of owning all this equipment and taking up the time to maintain your lawn, you can hire someone to do this and therefore pay a fee per application usage, letting the lawn care company provide all the equipment and materials and work. The benefit to you is no cost for the all the equipment; they come when you want them and you only pay if the service is performed to your satisfaction. You can spend that saved time golfing or just reading a few novels.  Now the equivalent for an IT enterprise is they must have servers, cables, infrastructure, routers, switches, a data center, massive power supplies, and software applications to support the various lines of businesses.  Cloud computing is like the lawn care company; all the hardware (except for some form of a terminal), applications and services are in the internet cloud.

Again, the benefits of cloud computing to the enterprise are: scalable, instant access and cost savings.  A little more about the proposed benefits:  Scalable, in the current environment, as your business grows and more people use your systems you will need to add more servers, more connections to support the additional traffic and more infrastructures. This impacts your costs and eventually a limit to the amount of scaling you can actually achieve.  With cloud computing you not only can scale but you only pay for what you are actually using.

Instant access; again in the current environment, applications might not be available or limited to the number of users it can support or not even exist. Cloud computing you can have access to applications you currently use and even new applications.

Costs; your capital expenditures decrease considerably and you are paying on a usage basis, thus you are maximizing on your returns. For small businesses the barrier to entry is greatly reduced and thus one can compete with larger enterprises, by using the same applications.

Now like anything in life, there are pros and cons.  Cloud computing might not be good for every enterprise. One example is, a small or medium enterprise that has an efficient infrastructure might find that cloud computing could be more expensive than the current mode of operation. Another consideration is your installed quality of communication versus the quality of communication services or service level agreement (SLA) that is provided by the cloud provider. Other issues to consider are what type of security and maintenance are being provided by the “cloud”?

Like I have said many times before, first make sure you have a strategy and see if cloud computing supports the strategy.  Key factors in determining if cloud computing is right for you are:  the need for scalability, access to applications, availability of skilled IT resources, security, service level agreements, economics, reliability, and maintenance.

But at the end of the day the real issue is cost; is your cost to run your IT for today and tomorrow less then the potential cost of using the “cloud”?

Next time we will go into the next level of discussion regarding cloud computing.

RHL 2/9/10

1. www.appistry.com