Cloud Convergence

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February 2014 $99 Cloud Convergence: 6 Standards That Matter While 39% of respondents say the goal of a fully converged datacenter guides their tech purchasing — and personnel hiring — decisions, just 7% say they’ve reached that ideal state. The No. 1 barrier? Insufficient budget, cited by 61%. Here’s how standards can help.

By Kurt Marko

Presented in conjunction with

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reports Cloud Convergence: 6 Standards That Matter

3 Author’s Bio 13 Figure 8: Tighter vs. Looser Vendor vs. Proprietary 4 Executive Summary Standardization 30 Figure 24: Public Cloud IaaS

S 5 Research Synopsis 14 Figure 9: Preferred IT Vendor List 31 Figure 25: Application Performance 6 Crack The Code 15 Figure 10: API Management Providers Interface 7 Bridging The Public-Private Cloud Chasm 16 Figure 11: Use of API Management 32 Figure 26: Job Title 10 Same Tune, Different Words Providers 33 Figure 27: Revenue 14 6 Standards That Matter 17 Figure 12: Success in Consolidating Skill 34 Figure 28: Industry 19 Conclusions And Recommendations Sets 35 Figure 29: Company Size 21 Appendix 18 Figure 13: Importance of Ability to Move 36 Related Reports Workloads 19 Figure 14: Formalized Standards 21 Figure 15: Technology Deployment Plans Figures 22 Figure 16: Technologies Deployed 6 Figure 1: Impact of FCoE and iSCSI SAN 23 Figure 17: Unified Storage and Data Deployment on Fibre Channel Network Plans 7 Figure 2: The Road to Full Datacenter Convergence 24 Figure 18: Number of Supported API 8 Figure 3: Reasons for Not Planning Datacenter Functions Convergence 25 Figure 19: Impact of Consolidation on IT

NTENT 9 Figure 4: Top Drivers for Adopting Convergence Head Count Technologies 26 Figure 20: Use of Technologies for TABLE OF 10 Figure 5: Barriers to Achieving a Fully Converged Storage Connectivity Datacenter 27 Figure 21: Storage Connectivity 11 Figure 6: 2014 Budget Technologies in Use 12 Figure 7: Organizational Viewpoint: Standard vs. 28 Figure 22: Standardization Policies Proprietary 29 Figure 23: Personal Viewpoint: Standard CO reports.informationweek.com February 2014 2 Previous Next

Table of Contents reports Cloud Convergence: 6 Standards That Matter

Kurt Marko is an InformationWeek and Network Computing contributor and IT industry veteran, pursuing his passion for communications after a varied career that has spanned virtually the entire high-tech food chain, from chips to systems. Kurt Marko Upon graduating from Stanford University with a BS and MS in electrical engi- InformationWeek Reports neering, Kurt spent several years as a semiconductor device physicist, doing process design, modeling, and testing. He then joined AT&T Bell Laboratories as a memory chip designer and CAD and simulation developer. Moving to Hewlett-Packard, Kurt started in the laser printer R&D lab doing electrophotography development, for which he earned a patent, but his love of computers eventually led him to join HP’s nascent technical IT group. He spent 15 years as an IT engineer and was a lead architect for several enterprise-wide infrastructure projects at HP, including the Windows domain infrastructure, remote access service, Exchange email infrastructure, and managed web services.

Table of Contents reports Cloud Convergence: 6 Standards That Matter

SDN, big data, and scale-out storage architectures have increased the complexity of datacenter convergence projects since we last surveyed our readership on the topic. Hybrid clouds are on the horizon for 65%, but to get there, IT must sort out everything from server architectures (internal vs. network storage, blades vs. rack-mount) to storage protocols (FC vs. iSCSI vs. NAS) to network management and administration (including SDN) to virtualization and cloud platforms (OpenStack, CloudStack, vCloud). We decided to explore adoption of datacenter technologies that support convergence and how willing IT is to entertain proprietary specs versus waiting for standards bodies, to ward off lock-in. Some findings: >> 19% of the 214 respondents to our 2014 Datacenter Convergence Survey say they are not looking to converge. The top reasons: no perceived business advantage and other projects having a higher priority, both cited by 32%. >> 73% of those respondents with datacenter convergence plans say reducing costs is the top driver for adopting technologies that support convergence. The No. 2 response, building a private cloud, was selected by 30%. >> 68% say deploying an FCoE and/or iSCSI SAN allowed them (21%) or will allow them (47%) to eliminate Fibre Channel. >> 22% will devote more than 20% of their fiscal-year 2014 budgets to achieving datacenter convergence, virtualization, and private cloud; 7% will devote more than 30%. >> 20% have consolidated personnel with networking, storage, and server skill sets into one integrated unit versus 30% with separate teams. In our 2012 poll, 28% had consolidated. In this report, we’ll examine survey findings, discuss cloud specs to watch and six places to standardize now, and provide four steps to forward convergence goals. EXECUTIVE Respondent breakdown: 41% have 5,000 or more employees; 35% are over 10,000. Government, financial services and IT vendors are well represented, and 44% are IT director/manager or IT executive management (C-level/VP) level. SUMMARY reports.informationweek.com February 2014 4 Previous Next

Table of Contents reports Cloud Convergence: 6 Standards That Matter

ABOUT US Survey Name InformationWeek 2014 Datacenter Convergence Survey InformationWeek Reports’ analysts arm business technology Survey Date December 2013 decision-makers with real-world perspective based on qualitative Region North America and quantitative research, business and technology assessment Number of Respondents 214 and planning tools, and adoption best practices gleaned from Purpose To gauge the adoption of datacenter technologies that support convergence experience. Methodology InformationWeek surveyed business technology decision-makers at OUR STAFF North American companies. The survey was conducted online, and respondents were Lorna Garey, content recruited via an email invitation containing an embedded link to the survey. The email RESEARCH director; [email protected] invitation was sent to qualified InformationWeek subscribers. Heather Vallis, managing editor, research; [email protected] Elizabeth Chodak, copy chief; elizabeth.chodak@ ubm.com Tara DeFilippo, associate art director; [email protected]

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Table of Contents reports Cloud Convergence: 6 Standards That Matter

Crack The Code

In some ways, the cloud is becoming a stan- 19% of those using or planning to use the tions and managing it all in a unified manner. dard in its own right. Accenture forecasts that public cloud aren’t go ing to supplement that Sounds to us like a call for standardization. cloud services will grow at seven times the usage with a private cloud setup. Yet the world of cloud technology is like the rate of in-house IT between now and 2016, at Our take: In 2014, enterprise IT teams will be Wild West, with few rules, little enforcement, a which time 46% of all IT spending will be tasked with integrating public cloud services “just make it work” attitude, and a breakneck cloud-related. A KPMG survey finds that for 14 with on-premises infrastructure and applica- pace of change. Meanwhile, the word “stan- major enterprise functions, from email and of- Figure 1 fice productivity to HR and supply chain, 60% to 90% of respondents will be using cloud Impact of FCoE and iSCSI SAN Deployment services within 18 months. Has your deployment of FCoE and/or iSCSI SAN allowed you to eliminate Fibre Channel from your environment? While the public cloud garners the most at- tention, enterprises will deliver most IT ser - Yes vices from private and hybrid clouds for the No, we still need FC 21% foreseeable future. In our 2012 Information- 32% Week Private Cloud Survey, 21% of respondents had built private clouds, with an additional 30% starting projects. Our 2014 Private Cloud Survey shows 47% of respondents with private clouds in production for some or most of their applications and 30% testing or start- 47% Not yet, but that’s the plan ing private cloud projects. Those shops tend to want to integrate private and public cloud Base: 78 respondents at organizations with FCoE or iSCSI SAN deployed in production R7601213/7 services in a hybrid architecture — in fact, just Data: InformationWeek 2014 Datacenter Convergence Survey of 214 business technology professionals, December 2013 reports.informationweek.com February 2014 6

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dards” evokes images of combative commit- as-a-service, on full display at Dreamforce 2013, In this report, we examine standards and lay tees taking six months to decide where to with its more than 130,000 attendees. Most or- out guidelines for designing a hybrid cloud hold a meeting and then letting dominant in- ganizations will integrate cloud services with that can evolve with both industry changes dustry players steamroll superior technology. internal infrastructure and applications. A well- and your own needs. Vendors blamed delays with the 802.11n spec considered design that uses stock compo- for their going rogue with proprietary imple- nents, protocols, and interfaces wherever pos- Bridging The Public-Private Cloud Chasm mentations that often didn’t work together; sible will improve efficiency, lower costs, and Your mission: Build a hybrid cloud that seam- eventually the Wi-Fi Alliance had to expend maximize flexibility and scalability. lessly works with public clouds and minimizes

money and effort on a certification program. Figure 2 FAST FACT And while the Open Networking Foundation begs to differ, Cisco CEO John Chambers The Road to Full Datacenter Convergence recently asserted that advanced networking Does the notion of a fully converged datacenter guide your organization’s technology purchases and personnel decisions? 71% “can’t be done in software.” His unstated 2014 2012 of respondents to our pitch: “Why wait for messy SDN standards to Yes; we’re already there 2014 Datacenter gel? Just cut a check for Cisco ONE.” 7% Convergence Survey say Going with proprietary technology is tempt- 13% opting for tighter vendor ing. But resist. Standards are critical for shuttling Yes; we’re working toward it standardization is better 32% workloads between on-premises and multi- 36% than a looser approach. tenant systems. While half of the respondents Maybe; we’re evaluating to our 2014 InformationWeek IT Budget Survey 42% outsource less than 20% of their IT operations, 32% with only 14% farming out more than 60% to No 19% external datacenters, cloud ser vices, or contrac- 19% tors, that’s likely to change. Consider the grow- Base: 214 respondents in December 2013 and 298 in October 2011 R7601213/1 ing popularity of infrastructure- and software- Data: InformationWeek Datacenter Convergence Survey of business technology professionals reports.informationweek.com February 2014 7 Previous Next

Table of Contents reports Cloud Convergence: 6 Standards That Matter

the risk of lock-in. Standardizing on a con- Of the 19% with no plans, 32% perceive no face spending constraints — either other proj- verged architecture both within the datacenter business advantage (up seven points from our ects have a higher priority (32%) or there’s no and at the interface between private and pub- 2012 survey) and 24% see no benefit. Others money for new equipment (29%). Years of par- lic services borrows from the service provider playbook. Mega-datacenters use a common Figure 3 set of server and storage components on a Reasons for Not Planning Datacenter Convergence converged Ethernet backbone to lower costs Why doesn’t your organization have plans to work toward a converged datacenter? and improve versatility by allowing workloads 2014 2012 to migrate (often automatically) from system to system without worrying about hardware 49% compatibility or system configuration. Sounds great in theory, but respondents to our 2014 Datacenter Convergence Survey seem discouraged. Thirty-nine percent say the goal of 32% 32% 32%

a fully converged datacenter guides their tech 29% 26%

purchasing — and personnel hiring — deci- 25% 24% sions now; just 7% of them say they’ve reached

that ideal state. An additional 42% are consid- 17% ering this approach. Only 19% aren’t interested. 16% 12% That 39%, however, represents a 10-point drop 11% 10% 10% 9% 10% since our 2012 survey.This is surprising b ecause 9% 5% 5% 41% of our 2014 respondents hail from organi- 5% zations with 5,000 or more employees, solidly No perceived business advantage No perceived a higher priorityOther projects have technologies new purchase No budget to see no benefit We Lack of people with cross-departmental skills inertiaOrganizational additional management support afford costs Can’t functions datacenter outsource plan to We IT teams existing reorganizing for No stomach Other

within the large-enterprise demographic that Note: Multiple responses allowed R7601213/2 should be all over this. Base: 41 respondents in December 2013 and 57 in October 2011 at organizations with no plans for datacenter convergence Data: InformationWeek Datacenter Convergence Survey of business technology professionals reports.informationweek.com February 2014 8

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simonious IT budgets have instilled an “if it ties. “Old hardware is the hardest thing to over- no longer fits convergence or scalability.” ain’t broke, don’t fix it” conservatism in many come,” says one respondent. “If it works, too of- Still, the notion of using standardized build- IT pros that compounds actual financial reali- ten the choice is made to keep something that ing blocks that can be deployed quickly is Figure 4 gaining steam. It’s the basis of the “Super- pods” that Salesforce.com is working on with Top Drivers for Adopting Convergence Technologies Hewlett-Packard, for example. Essentially, if a What are the top drivers for adoption of technologies that support convergence at your organization? customer doesn’t want to share application 2014 2012 infrastructure, Salesforce can plop down a standard set of hardware, spin up its software 76% stack, and deliver a service identical to its pub- 73% lic cloud SaaS suite. Like Salesforce, respondents going down the convergence path see that using standardized components saves money — 73% cite lower costs as the chief reason for adopting converged technologies. An additional 36% 30% plan to build Superpod-like private 32% 30% 29% clouds, while 25% say converged infrastruc- 25% 25% 24% 24%

21% ture is a good fit with virtualization projects. 19% 19% 18% 17% As one respondent put it, convergence is a 15% 15% 14% 13% 12% 11% 10% 10% “critical path to sustainability.” 9% We couldn’t agree more. Make no mistake: 2% Reduce costs cloud Build a private virtualization projects Leverage recovery disaster datacenter Improve reliability system Improve performance network Improve changes systemic make to Reduce the time required agility datacenter Improve performance application Improve easily supportMore applications new server and service time Improve provisioning staffing datacenter Reduce overall Other 0% Standardizing the interfaces between public Note: Three responses allowed R7601213/3 and private clouds, whether for workload Base: 173 respondents in December 2013 and 241 in October 2011 at organizations with datacenter convergence plans Data: InformationWeek Datacenter Convergence Survey of business technology professionals orchestration, application image packaging, reports.informationweek.com February 2014 9

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infrastructure management, or user authenti- IEEE’s P2302 Standard for Intercloud Interop- is focused on message transmission (standard cation, makes using and operating services in erability and Federation. The key goal is inter- communication protocols among clouds), the two environments much easier. Instead of operability through standardization. This spec data transmission (uniform data exchange seeming like separate and distinct services, Figure 5 where workloads and resources exist in their own bubbles, standard interfaces facilitate mi- Barriers to Achieving a Fully Converged Datacenter grating applications between the two, using What are the top barriers to achieving a fully converged datacenter at your organization? corporate identities on public clouds and 2014 2012 managing public and private infrastructure from a single management console. 67% 61%

Same Tune, Different Words 55%

The biggest inhibitor to this unified vision? 49% Cloud technology has outpaced the indus- 44% try’s ability to craft comprehensive standards 43% for interoperability, management, auditing, and data migration. While standards efforts are underway, neither major cloud vendors 23% 23% 23% 22% 20% 20% 19% nor customers have been in a mood to wait. 19% 17% 16%

So what else is new? We’ve done this dance 14% 13% before, and hopefully, IT pros will get proac-

tive and partner with the standards bodies 4% 3%

that are forging ahead. technologies new purchase Insufficient budget to a higher priorityOther projects have Lack of people with cross-departmental skills additional management support afford costs Can’t inertiaOrganizational support Lack of executive-level functions datacenter outsource to Business preference IT policies corporate rewrite Need to IT teams existing reorganizing for No stomach Other Perhaps the most comprehensive project is Note: Three responses allowed R7601213/4 Base: 173 respondents in December 2013 and 241 in October 2011 at organizations with datacenter convergence plans what we term the “Internet of clouds,” the Data: InformationWeek Datacenter Convergence Survey of business technology professionals reports.informationweek.com February 2014 10

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formats), virtual machine transfers (standard Figure 6 image formats), and run-time environments (a platform- and ser vice-independent API for 2014 Budget How much of your overall IT budget for fiscal year 2014 is your organization devoting to achieving datacenter SaaS developers). convergence, virtualization, and private cloud? The Cloud Standards Wiki provides a com- None 1 prehensive listing of active cloud-related stan- Don't know 3% dards efforts, from the Open Virtualization For- 1% to 10% mat (OVF), for standard VM image packaging, 24% 27% to the Oasis Topology and Orchestration Spec- Like This Report? ification for Cloud Applications, which is build- 4% ing a consistent means of describing the parts, Rate It! Greater than 40% 3% interrelationships, and operational behavior of 31% to 40% Something we could do various cloud services to facilitate portable de- 15% better? Let us know. 24% ployment, migration, and flexible bursting. 21% to 30% 11% to 20% Rate Another great resource is NIST’s Inventory of Standards Relevant to Cloud Computing. It Base: 173 respondents at organizations with datacenter convergence plans R7601213/13 includes links to authoritative standards de- Data: InformationWeek 2014 Datacenter Convergence Survey of 214 business technology professionals, December 2013 scriptions for everything from basic protocols like HTTP, SOAP, and WSDL to cloud-s pecific net gain of 2.5 million new European jobs and key aspects of cloud standardization, includ- efforts like OVF, OpenID, and the Web Services an annual boost of 160 billion euros to EU ing a definition of roles in the cloud; classifi- Resource Framework. GDP (around 1%) by 2020 by increasing the cation of more than 100 cloud use cases; a list Last fall, the European Commission an- use of cloud computing. The standards effort, of relevant organizations in cloud standardi- nounced “a strategy for ‘Unleashing the under the auspices of the European Telecom- zation, including around 150 associated doc- Potential of Cloud Computing in Europe.’” munications Standards Institute, recently uments, standards and specifications, and re- The document outlines actions to deliver a completed a draft report that reviewed the ports and white papers; and a mapping of the reports.informationweek.com February 2014 11 Previous Next

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selected cloud documents (in particular, stan- Figure 7 dards and specifications) to these activities. The EC report offers hope for those looking Organizational Viewpoint: Standard vs. Proprietary Which of the following best describes your organization’s philosophy toward IT technologies and interfaces? for more mature cloud standards. “Standard- We want the best, leading-edge ization is much more focused than antici- performance and won't wait for 1 pated,” the authors write. “In short: the Cloud standards to catch up 9% Standard is always better than proprietary Standards landscape is complex but not We want the most bang for the buck; 31% chaotic and by no means a ‘jungle.’ ” whether products use standard or 16% Still, the working group identified four areas proprietary technology isn't that important in need of cloud standards work: interoperability, security and privacy, service-level agree- ments, and legal regulation and governance. Regarding service interoperability, whether for IaaS, PaaS, or SaaS, the report finds “many pro- 44% All else being equal, we prefer prietary and open source solutions, but very standards-compliant products few, if any, standards. This is a potentially seri- Base: 173 respondents at organizations with datacenter convergence plans R7601213/15 ous issue as vendor lock-in is a big risk, and al- Data: InformationWeek 2014 Datacenter Convergence Survey of 214 business technology professionals, December 2013 though mitigated slightly by open source, open source cannot replace the role of stan- isting on-premises security monitoring and standards bodies like the IEEE, will lead to dards.” In the area of cloud security, the pri- incident management systems with cloud greater collaboration among cloud users, Like This Report? mary issue is a complete lack of uniformity, or services. The report also highlights the need providers, and standards bodies to build a set even a common vocabulary, for specifying and for further standardization regarding terms, of comprehensive and enforceable standards. Share it! subsequently measuring compliance with se- vocabularies, and metrics to express quality of A less formal, customer-driven domestic Like Tweet curity and privacy requirements. service in SLAs. Still, the group is hopeful its effort at fostering greater standardization is Share Another gap: standards for integrating ex- efforts, perhaps in conjunction with other the Cloud Standards Customer Council, which reports.informationweek.com February 2014 12 Previous Next

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hopes to lower the barriers to widespread Figure 8 cloud adoption “by helping to prioritize key interoperability issues such as cloud manage- Tighter vs. Looser Vendor Standardization Do you personally believe that it's better to err on the side of tighter or looser vendor standardization? ment, reference architecture, hybrid clouds, as well as security and compliance issues.” This 1 effort will come in the form of best practices, case studies, use cases, and standards road Looser maps that the organization will use to 29% influence standards development. More of a customer advocate than an actual Tighter standards body, the council has formed seven 71% working groups: financial services, government, healthcare, security, XaaS, big data, and something called “practical guide.” That group is aimed at providing best practices 2014 State of Storage that simplify the move from exploration and Base: 173 respondents at organizations with datacenter convergence plans R7601213/19 Data stores are big, with 83% testing to cloud implementation. The group’s Data: InformationWeek 2014 Datacenter Convergence Survey of 214 business technology professionals, December 2013 reporting 10% or better annual steering committee includes representatives growth; 27% are wrangling 25% or more yearly increases. The from large enterprises, including Aetna, Boe- cluding SSAE 16, ISO 20000-7, and various well and good. But navigating the current al- main culprit: enterprise data- ing, IBM, and Lockheed Martin, and small identity management protocols (LDAP, SAML, phabet-soup cloud standards landscape is bases and data warehouses. Yet money’s still tight, with 25% say- cloud specialists like CloudOne and Kaavo. So OAuth, OpenID). Other useful documents in- still largely an intellectual exercise.” Agreed, ing they lack the budget to meet far, the council’s output is focused on use clude guidelines for negotiating SLAs and but sooner or later you will need to pay at- demand, never mind optimize for performance and capacity. cases and best practices; however, a recent considerations and best practices before tention. And before that day arrives, you white paper provides a nice summary of rele- moving applications and data to the cloud. should get your own house in order. Two Download vant security standards and regulations, in- We hear what you’re thinking: “That’s all keys for improving the efficacy of and adher- reports.informationweek.com February 2014 13 Previous Next

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ence to converged standards are a well- 6 Standards That Matter dustry can do to pry these boxes from the defined infrastructure setup and strategic 1. Physical infrastructure typical IT pro’s grasp. Cloud service providers, vendor relationships. One stat that should Most enterprises are still stuck on 1U or 2U on the other hand, run warehouse-scale dat- make Cisco, HP, IBM, and other incumbents rack-mount servers with some form of two- acenters packed with highly redundant and smile: 71% of respondents say opting for tier leaf-spine or three-tier Clos network distributed systems built from thousands of tighter vendor standardization is better than topology. As we point out in our recent State the cheapest servers they can find — some- a looser, lowest-available-bidder approach; of Servers report, it seems there’s little the in- thing few enterprises have the applications half are somewhere between firm and downright inflexible about whose products Figure 9 they let in the door. Preferred IT Vendor List The bad news? Among organizations work- How firm is your shop about holding to a prescribed set of IT vendors? ing toward a converged, virtualized, cloud-like datacenter, most devote 20% or less of their It’s anarchy; we pick the best or 1 lowest-price option for any given job IT budgets to the program, while a mere 7% Very firm across the board Not very firm in any area 4% spend more than 30% of the total budget. So 8% 14% investments are modest for now. Drilling down, taking cloud standards from the procedural to the practical means focus- Firm in most areas, flexible in a few ing on six core issues: the most efficient server 38% and network design, choice of workload pro- 36% visioning and orchestration platform, inte- Mixed; depends on the area grating user identification and authorization systems, packaging virtual applications for de-

ployment on different services, a flexible stor- Base: 173 respondents at organizations with datacenter convergence plans R7601213/18 age network, and PaaS portability. Data: InformationWeek 2014 Datacenter Convergence Survey of 214 business technology professionals, December 2013 reports.informationweek.com February 2014 14 Previous Next

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or DevOps expertise to pull off. CSPs, led by properly sized enterprise networks, there’s no OpenFlow is overkill. Increasingly, leaf-spine the Facebook-inspired Open Compute Proj- need to micromanage local flow switching. fabrics are paired with a virtual network over- ect, are pushing our industry to embrace Any potential improvements using central- lay, like those from N uage, Plumgrid, or rack-scale system designs with dozens of ized intelligence are negligible. Translated: VMware NSX, that manages virtual ports, small, tightly packed motherboards sharing Figure 10 power, cooling, cabling, and systems management infrastructure. API Management Providers Finally, the message may be taking hold. Which API management provider(s) do you use? Intel is promoting a reference architecture 71% meeting the Open Compute specs, and

vendors including AMD SeaMicro and HP 61% have introduced hyperscale systems packing 10 to 25 low-power CPUs (typically Atom- or ARM-based) per rack unit. This is more compute density than most enterprises need, for now anyway, but the overall con- cept is instructive. On the network side, despite all the hype 19% 19%

about OpenFlow and software-defined net- 16% 10% working, most enterprise datacenter networks 10% 7% 7% 7% 7% can get by with a two-tier Layer 3 fabric of 10 7% Gbps Ethernet ToR edge switches linked to a 40 (upgradeable to 100) Gbps aggregation IBM Oracle (Expressway) Intel Software SOA Managed Methods Axway 7) CA (Layer 3scale Apigee (Mashery)Intel MuleSoft Other Note: Multiple responses allowed R7601213/25 layer. As we pointed out when contrasting Base: 31 respondents at organizations using an API management provider physical and logical SDN, on well-designed, Data: InformationWeek 2014 Datacenter Convergence Survey of 214 business technology professionals, December 2013 reports.informationweek.com February 2014 15 Previous Next

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switches, and network services like virtual fire- Figure 11 walls and load balancers, often in conjunction with a cloud orchestration stack. Use of API Management Providers Does your organization use an API management provider or providers? 2. Cloud provisioning: AWS, OpenStack, or vCloud? 1 The core of any cloud is the workload provisioning, management, and orchestration Yes stack. Here, the field has effectively narrowed 33% to three choices (with all due apologies to Cit- rix CloudStack). You can pick among Amazon No Web Services (proprietary, public-only unless 67% you’re the CIA); OpenStack (open source, private or public); and vCloud (proprietary, private or public). All can provision virtual ma- chines, storage (block and object), and network resources; include a browser-based Base: 94 respondents at organizations offering and maintaining APIs R7601213/24 central management dashboard; and have Data: InformationWeek 2014 Datacenter Convergence Survey of 214 business technology professionals, December 2013 APIs allowing programmatic access and con- trol of services via everything from a Web yet standardized on a cloud platform, as we HP CloudSystem, IBM SmartCloud Orchestra- browser to a mobile app. point out in a recent InformationWeek report tor, RightScale, ScaleXtreme, and Scalr. Market dominance has made the AWS API on multicloud infrastructure and application Note that just over 20% of respondents to set the de facto standard, evidenced by Open- management, there are several options for the InformationWeek 2014 DevOps Survey Stack exposing its features via the AWS syntax handling heterogeneous setups. These include run production systems on public cloud ser - and vCloud now able to deploy internal appli- vCloud plug-ins like Hotlink and SaaS products vices, with an additional 14% planning to do cations to AWS. For organizations that haven’t including Cloudsoft, Dell Multicloud Manager, so within the next year. Of these, almost 75% reports.informationweek.com February 2014 16 Previous Next

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use, or plan to use, a cloud management plat- Figure 12 form. When it comes to automating data - center operations, most still use simple script- Success in Consolidating Skill Sets Achieving convergence requires consolidation of networking, storage, and server skill sets. How would you ing languages like Bash, with only 20% to 30% characterize your organization's success in this area? using modern frameworks like Puppet and 2014 2012 Chef. Although neither is a formal standard, We’ve consolidated datacenter IT into one unit both are based on open source projects, 20% 28% widely distributed, and supported by major cloud ser vices including AWS, Rackspace (and We have created cross-functional teams 23% other OpenStack clouds), and vCloud. 28% 3. Application packaging Separate teams, but tighter relationships As we discussed earlier this year in our cloud 27% 28% standards report, when it comes to packaging We still have separate teams applications for cloud deployment, there is a 30% clear standard for image portability: Open 16%

Virtualization Format, released by the Distrib- Base: 173 respondents in December 2013 and 241 in October 2011 at organizations with datacenter convergence plans R7601213/9 uted Management Task Force and created by Data: InformationWeek Datacenter Convergence Survey of business technology professionals Dell, HP, IBM, Microsoft, VMware, and XenSource. But be warned: “Really large image sizes break or virtual appliances, designed to include the 4. Storage down the standard, and if you’re moving system image and configuration (including Like other cloud elements, storage pools among different hypervisors, you have to make physical requirements like number of CPUs, should be abstracted from physical resources, some changes to the OVF files to make the im- memory required, network interfaces, and ad- logically centralized, and distributed. For private ages work,” says Michael Biddick, CEO of Fusion dresses) in a format that’s portable across clouds, this means storage either sits directly on PPT and an InformationWeek contributor. cloud platforms, secure, and extensible via compute servers and uses a distributed file sys- Think of OVF as an installer package for VMs vendor-specificR metadata. tem like Ceph, OpenStack Storage, or GlusterFS reports.informationweek.com February 2014 17 Previous Next

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in OpenStack and VMware VSAN for vCloud, or Figure 13 it sits on one of the many scale-out systems with native support for OpenStack and vCloud Importance of Ability to Move Workloads How important is the ability to easily move application workloads between internal and external compute and storage — think EMC Isilon, NetApp, or Nimble. resources, using software orchestration tools? The bigger problem in a hybrid design is Critical; we’re fully committed to a 1 hybrid cloud architecture getting data in and out of the cloud. As we We don’t use cloud infrastructure services 5% recently highlighted in a cloud storage col- Moderate; we like to move workloads, 22% umn, making cloud storage as easy to use as but not for anything mission critical a local NAS box, and thus reducing the bar- 22% riers for both end users and application de- Not at all; were all in on one side, velopers, is the raison d’etre of cloud storage either completely private or fully public 13% gateways. Gateways can be either virtual appliances, like Amazon’s AWS Storage Gate- way, or physical hardware that typically in- 38% Somewhat; it's nice to have, but we’re still cludes a local cache. Think products from developing our cloud architecture Avere, Nasuni, Panzura, or TwinStrata. Base: 173 respondents at organizations with datacenter convergence plans R7601213/21 Gateways act like a NAS filer or iSCSI target Data: InformationWeek 2014 Datacenter Convergence Survey of 214 business technology professionals, December 2013 on the private cloud that talks to cloud storage services on the remote end. Thus, they can au- cloud distributed storage systems, and plenty passwords, and credentials. Adding cloud tomatically synchronize on-premises data to of backup and archive software products on services without duplicating account data- the cloud, translating it to appropriate cloud the list. bases entails using some form of federated formats. AWS is on everyone’s list of supported 5. Identity management identity management protocol. There are cloud services, but interoperability can vary Enterprise identity and access management three main areas of standardization: applica- widely. TwinStrata’s support matrix is a stand- systems typically use Active Directory as the tion authentication (SAML); federated, cross- out, with 15 cloud storage services, four private central repository for user and group profiles, domain identity (SCIM); and user authentica- reports.informationweek.com February 2014 18 Previous Next

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tion (OAuth). A full discussion of federated multiple clouds is to stick with an open source portability consideration is application de- identity management is a topic for its own re- platform, like Cloud Foundry or Cloudify on pendencies — any additional application run port; however, in sum, SAML and OAuth are OpenStack. As this blog post from OpenShift’s times, data stores, or third-party services in use. the most common means of authenticating strategy director points out, an important While there are no standards as yet, the post with cloud-based services using an existing Figure 14 enterprise account. For example, whenever you use a Facebook account to access a new Formalized Standards Web service, OAuth is the protocol. For which areas does your IT organization have formalized standards? Some scenarios demand direct cloud ser vice

accounts, such as when using native mobile 80% apps that don’t support any form of SSO. That’s where SCIM comes it. SCIM is little more than a

RESTful protocol for managing user identities 60%

in cloud-based applications, providing the abil- 53% 51% ity to add, delete, and search for users and 49% 44% groups using simple HTTP operations. It’s still 42% 41% a new protocol, however, and adoption is sparse, although several identity management 30% products (Ping), platform-as-a-service offerings (Pivotal CloudFoundry), and SaaS applications 17%

(Salesforce) already support it. 9% 6. PaaS Portability

It’s too early in the evolution of PaaS for for- proprietary Unix) Linux, OS (Windows, hardware/vendor Network Server hardware/vendor KVM) Hyper-V, Hypervisor (vSphere, management suites, management protocols, Network tools and automation RISC/EPIC) Server (x86 vs. architecture iSCSI) SAN (FC, hardware/vendor Storage and/or OpenFlow SDN, virtualization, Network vCloud) CloudStack, cloud stack (OpenStack, Private OpenStack) vCloud Hybrid, GCE, Azure, cloud servicesPublic AWS, (IaaS like mal standards. The best approach for organiza- Note: Multiple responses allowed R7601213/17 Base: 173 respondents at organizations with datacenter convergence plans tions looking to run custom applications on Data: InformationWeek 2014 Datacenter Convergence Survey of 214 business technology professionals, December 2013 reports.informationweek.com February 2014 19 Previous Next

Table of Contents reports Cloud Convergence: 6 Standards That Matter

notes that Heroku (now part of Salesforce) Build- platform, virtual network technology (NSX), cloud designs. Looking at the panoply of data- packs and OpenShift Cartridges provide good and feature road map, vCloud paired with center technologies, when it comes to stan- techniques for packaging and porting applica- VMware’s vCloud Hybrid or another vCloud dards, we see most organizations playing it safe tion dependencies between PaaS providers. service provider makes the most sense. and focusing on the basics: 80% of our survey Organizations building new, “cloud-first” respondents have formal policies for the OS, Conclusions And Recommendations applications should look seriously at one of the 60% for network hardware or vendor, and just Enterprises building hybrid clouds while commercial OpenStack implementations, like over half for servers and hypervisors. Only 17% seeking to maximize flexibility to move Cloudscaling, Mirantis, or Piston Cloud. Bring have standardized on a private cloud stack, a among public cloud services should start with application developers into the decision mere 9% on public cloud ser vices. And despite some basics: process, particularly when it comes time to the sound and fury from both analysts and ven- >> Get your own house in order. Build a con- evaluate public cloud services, where the big dors about SDN this year, only 30% of respon- solidated, high-density private cloud from choice is between a native OpenStack cloud, dents have decided on a network virtualization 1U/2U or hyperscale servers with a distributed like HP Cloud or Rackspace, and AWS or Google technology like OpenFlow or one of the many storage design using either scale-out arrays or Cloud Engine (supported by Cloudscaling). overlay approaches (NSX, Plexxi, Plumgrid). JBOD and a distributed file system, all sitting >> If you expect to regularly move data Keeping your head down and hoping cloud on a two- tier 10/40 Gbps Ethernet network. between private and public clouds, evaluate and SDN either go away or don’t provide an >> Choose your cloud stack carefully. While storage gateways. If using AWS, you can try edge to your competitors is not a plan. Be only 27% of our respondents think the ability the S3 gateway for free on a spare VM, but proactive. Monitor the standards efforts out- to easily move workloads between private and strongly consider hardware products for lined above; InformationWeek’s Cloud commu- public clouds is important, we disagree and added features and multicloud compatibility. nity is a great place to keep track of the news believe the majority of that ambivalent 38% Most of all, don’t be timid. The speed of and read expert analysis. Use the power of the still developing their cloud architectures will change and a sense that products, technolo- purse to encourage standardization. When eventually see the value. Plan for it. If you’re al- gies, and standards are too fluid to make strate- evaluating software and equipment, press ven- ready heavily invested in vSphere and are gic commitments is undoubtedly slowing IT’s dors on their compliance with existing stan- comfortable with its cost model, management move to converged infrastructure and hybrid dards and commitment to emerging ones. reports.informationweek.com February 2014 20 Previous Next

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Figure 15 Technology Deployment Plans Is your organization deploying, or planning to deploy, these technologies?

Deployed in production In test/lab environment No plans Plan to deploy to production within 12 months Plan to deploy to production within 24 months 8% 10% 7%7%7% 24% 31% 10% 35% 36% 38% 40% 38% 40% 40% 41% 46% 45% 16% 13% 9%10%8% 20% 13% 17% 18% 14% 16% 16% 14% 25% 14% 18% 16% 16% 71% 15% 6% 23% 12% 13% 12% 11% 13% 47% 12% 16% 14% 17% 18% 13% 17% 18% 37% 13% 13% 28% 14% 17% 25% 21% 19% 17% 16% 14% 13% 13% 10% 6% Server virtualization virtualizationStorage iSCSI SAN virtualizationNetworking Ethernet Channel over Fibre server virtualizationHeterogeneous management system 40/100 Gbps Ethernet Channel 16 Gbps Fibre Dynamic scaling application Server self-service provisioning deletes) adds, moves, (automated Orchestration etc.) GlusterFS, HDFS, (Ceph, file system storage Distributed and switches controller OpenFlow gateway Cloud storage

Base: 173 respondents at organizations with datacenter convergence plans R7601213/5 Data: InformationWeek 2014 Datacenter Convergence Survey of 214 business technology professionals, December 2013 APPENDIX reports.informationweek.com February 2014 21

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Figure 16 Technologies Deployed Which of these technologies has your organization deployed in production or in a test or lab environment?

2014 2012 79% 78% 67% 63% 50% 47% 44% 44% 40% 40% 34% 32% 31% 30% 29% 28% 28% 28% 28% 25% 23% 20% NA NA NA NA NA Server virtualization virtualizationStorage iSCSI SAN server virtualizationHeterogeneous management system virtualizationNetworking Ethernet Channel over Fibre 40/100 Gbps Ethernet etc.) GlusterFS, HDFS, (Ceph, file system storage Distributed moves/adds/deletes) (automated Orchestration Channel 16 Gbps Fibre Dynamic scaling application Server self-service provisioning and switches controller OpenFlow gateway Cloud storage NA

Note: Multiple responses allowed R7601213/6 Base: 173 respondents in December 2013 and 241 in October 2011 at organizations with datacenter convergence plans Data: InformationWeek Datacenter Convergence Survey of business technology professionals

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Figure 17 Unified Storage and Data Network Plans What are your plans for creating a unified storage and data network within your datacenter?

2014 2012 We’ve already done it throughout our datacenter 15% 18% We’ve started implementation of a unified network in some parts of our datacenter 21% 28% We plan to implement a unified network within 12 months 16% 17% We plan to implement a unified network within two years 17% 11% We’re evaluating the idea but have no plans for implementation 27% 23% We’re not interested 4% 3%

Base: 173 respondents in December 2013 and 241 in October 2011 at organizations with datacenter convergence plans R7601213/8 Data: InformationWeek Datacenter Convergence Survey of business technology professionals

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Figure 18 Number of Supported API Functions How many API functions are supported across your company?

1 to 5 1

10% 6 to 10 Don’t know 29% 13%

11 to 25 13%

M More than 100 13% 6% 16% 51 to 100 26 to 50

Base: 94 respondents at organizations offering and maintaining APIs R7601213/23 Data: InformationWeek 2014 Datacenter Convergence Survey of 214 business technology professionals, December 2013

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Figure 19 Impact of Consolidation on IT Head Count How do you expect consolidation to affect IT head count?

2014 2012 Increased head count 8% 8% Reduced head count 21% 24% No change in head count 33% 40% Too soon to tell 38% 28%

Base: 173 respondents in December 2013 and 241 in October 2011 at organizations with datacenter convergence plans R7601213/10 Data: InformationWeek Datacenter Convergence Survey of business technology professionals

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Figure 20 Use of Technologies for Storage Connectivity To what extent are the following technologies used for storage connectivity at your organization?

Widely used Limited use Not in use Direct-connected storage 49% 39% 12% Fibre Channel SAN 44% 25% 31% NFS NAS 34% 40% 26% iSCSI SAN 28% 32% 40% CIFS NAS 23% 36% 41% Scale-out storage arrays 21% 36% 43% FCoE (Fibre Channel over Ethernet) SAN 13% 39% 48% Distributed storage file system (Ceph, HDFS, GlusterFS, etc.) 12% 37% 51%

Base: 173 respondents at organizations with datacenter convergence plans R7601213/11 Data: InformationWeek 2014 Datacenter Convergence Survey of 214 business technology professionals, December 2013

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Figure 21 Storage Connectivity Technologies in Use Which of the following storage connectivity technologies are in use at your organization on a widespread or limited basis? 2014 2012 Direct-connected storage 88% 87% NFS NAS 74% 67% Fibre Channel SAN 69% 75% iSCSI SAN 60% 63% CIFS NAS 59% 50% Scale-out storage arrays 57% NA FCoE (Fibre Channel over Ethernet) SAN 52% 45% Distributed storage file system (Ceph, HDFS, GlusterFS, etc.) 49% NA

Note: Multiple responses allowed R7601213/12 Base: 173 respondents in December 2013 and 241 in October 2011 at organizations with datacenter convergence plans Data: InformationWeek Datacenter Convergence Survey of business technology professionals reports.informationweek.com February 2014 27 Previous Next

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Figure 22 Standardization Policies Do you have standardization policies covering areas like server architecture, storage network protocols, network management and administration (including SDN,) and/or virtualization and cloud platforms? 1 No Yes, comprehensive policies for 10% servers, storage, and networks 20%

34% Not yet, but we’re developing 36% Yes, for some technologies

Base: 173 respondents at organizations with datacenter convergence plans R7601213/14 Data: InformationWeek 2014 Datacenter Convergence Survey of 214 business technology professionals, December 2013

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Figure 23 Personal Viewpoint: Standard vs. Proprietary Which of the following best describes your personal philosophy toward IT technologies and interfaces? I want the best, leading-edge performance and won't wait for 1 standards to catch up 7% Standard is always better than proprietary I want the most bang for the buck; whether products use standard or 31% proprietary technology isn't that important 21%

41% All else being equal, I prefer standards-compliant products

Base: 173 respondents at organizations with datacenter convergence plans R7601213/16 Data: InformationWeek 2014 Datacenter Convergence Survey of 214 business technology professionals, December 2013

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Figure 24 Public Cloud IaaS What is your approach to public cloud infrastructure services?

We have standardized on a specific provider that 1 we integrate into our private cloud as a hybrid cloud 10% We have standardized on a specific provider but do not integrate it with internal resources We do not use public IaaS 19% 51%

20% We use multiple cloud services as dictated by application needs and price and performance

Base: 173 respondents at organizations with datacenter convergence plans R7601213/20 Data: InformationWeek 2014 Datacenter Convergence Survey of 214 business technology professionals, December 2013

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Figure 25

Application Performance Interface Does your organization offer and maintain any APIs?

1 Yes, internal

26% No 46% Yes, external 4%

24% Yes, both

Base: 173 respondents at organizations with datacenter convergence plans R7601213/22 Data: InformationWeek 2014 Datacenter Convergence Survey of 214 business technology professionals, December 2013

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Figure 26 Job Title Which of the following best describes your job title?

1 Other IT executive management (C-level/VP) Consultant 6% 11% 11% Line-of-business management 2% 7% IT director/manager Non-IT executive management (C-level/VP) 33%

30% IT/IS staff

Data: InformationWeek 2014 Datacenter Convergence Survey of 214 business technology professionals, December 2013 R7601213/26

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Figure 27 Revenue Which of the following dollar ranges includes the annual revenue of your entire organization?

1 Don’t know/decline to say Less than $6 million 15% 12% $6 million to $49.9 million Government/nonprofit 8% 15% $50 million to $99.9 million 15% 8% $5 billion or more 8% 13% 6% $100 million to $499.9 million $1 billion to $4.9 billion $500 million to $999.9 million

Data: InformationWeek 2014 Datacenter Convergence Survey of 214 business technology professionals, December 2013 R7601213/27

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Figure 28 Industry What is your organization’s primary industry? 21% 13% 11% 11% 9% 9% 8% 6% 5% 3% 2% 2% Construction/engineering and business servicesConsulting Distributor Education servicesFinancial Government Healthcare/medical IT vendors noncomputer Manufacturing/industrial, Nonprofit Telecommunications/ISPs Other

Data: InformationWeek 2014 Datacenter Convergence Survey of 214 business technology R7601213/28 professionals, December 2013

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Figure 29 Company Size Approximately how many employees are in your organization?

Fewer than 50 1 14% 50-99 10,000 or more 6% 35% 100-499 13%

7% 6% 19% 5,000-9,999 500-999 1,000-4,999

Data: InformationWeek 2014 Datacenter Convergence Survey of 214 business technology professionals, December 2013 R7601213/29

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