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CIO Focus Executive guides for strategic decision making Forecast: Cloud Computing Looms Big on the Horizon TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUctiON OVERVIEW 3 | QuickStudy: Cloud Computing 4 | What Cloud Computing Really Means PUTTING IT TO WORK 6 | Cloud Computing: Tales from the Front 8 | Capex vs. Opex 9 | Cloud Computing: Don’t Get Caught Without An Exit Strategy 12 | Early Experiments in Cloud Computing 14 | Cloud Computing: What UC Berkeley Can Teach You RISK/REWARD 17 | The Dangers of Cloud Computing 18 | Cloud Computing Survey SPONSORED BY http://vmware.com INTRODUCTION Forecast: Cloud Computing Looms Big on the Horizon “Cloud computing” is basically the latest incarnation of grid computing, util- ity computing, virtualization and clustering. It differs in that it provides the ability to connect to software and data living on the Internet (the cloud) instead of on a hard drive or local network. Since IT is always on the lookout for new and better ways to increase capacity or add capabilities on the fly without investing in new infrastructure, training new personnel, or licensing new software, cloud computing holds much promise. It is, however, still in a nascent stage, and it behooves IT management to look closely and carefully at what’s involved and whether or not the concept is a workable one for the company. What follows is a compendium of articles about cloud computing in which we explore the current state of the art, early adopters, the economics, the potential pitfalls and what you can do to avoid them, and what IT leaders are saying about the concept. This is one time when it makes good, practical business sense to have your head in the clouds. All content copyright CXO Media Inc., 2009. All rights are reserved. No material may be reproduced electronically or in print without written permission from CXO Media Inc., 492 Old Connecticut Path, Framingham, MA 01701. CIO FOCUS FORecAST: CLOUD COMPUTING LOOMS BIG ON THE HORIZON 2 locations was transmitted. OVERVIEW Also, grid or cloud computing means users and busi- nesses must migrate their applications and data to a third party or different platform. For enterprises with huge invest- Quick Study: Cloud ments in existing software and operational procedures, this has been a real barrier to adoption of these shared technolo- Computing gies. Other significant concerns include data security and confidentiality. Users can hook into the Why it works power of “out there” Critical to the success of cloud computing has been the growth of virtualization, allowing one computer to act as if sk any five IT specialists what cloud computing it were another—or many others. Server virtualization lets is, and you’re likely to get five different answers. clouds support more applications than traditional comput- AThat’s partly because cloud computing is merely ing grids, hosting various kinds of middleware on virtual the latest, broadest development in a trend that’s been grow- machines throughout the cloud. ing for years. Cloud computing is the most recent successor to grid Where it’s going computing, utility computing, virtualization and cluster- If cloud computing succeeds on a wide scale, it may well ing. Cloud computing overlaps those concepts but has its be because of recent initiatives from Amazon, IBM and own meaning: the ability to connect to software and data Google. on the Internet (the cloud) instead of on your hard drive or In 2007, IBM and Google Inc. teamed up to provide local network. the hardware, software and services needed to teach com- To do anything with a PC 10 years ago, you needed to buy puter science students large-scale distributed computing. and install software. Now, cloud computing allows users to Their Academic Cluster Computing Initiative began when access programs and resources across the Internet as if they a Google software engineer, Christophe Bisciglia, wanted were on their own machines. to improve computer science curricula by teaching college students how to solve problems involving massive computer Definition clusters and terabytes of data. Cloud computing describes a system where users can con- nect to a vast network of computing resources, data and Why a cloud? servers that reside somewhere “out there,” usually on the For years, in flow diagrams and PowerPoint presentations, Internet, rather than on a local machine or a LAN or in a people have represented the Internet as a fuzzy cloud with data center. Cloud computing can give on- demand access communications lines going in and out of it. Now that they’re to supercomputer-level power, even from a thin client or actually talking about using a remote, black-box approach mobile device such as a smart phone or laptop. to computing, the old familiar cloud seems an appropriate metaphor. In the beginning Google’s CEO recruited his counterpart at IBM to join First, there were mainframe computers, then minicom- the initiative. The two companies say they will dedicate puters, PCs and servers. As computers became physically hundreds of computers to it. Located in data centers at smaller and resources more distributed, problems some- Google, IBM’s Almaden Research Center and the University times arose when users needed more computing power. of Washington, these resources are expected to eventually IT pros tried clustering computers, allowing them to talk include more than 1,600 processors. with one another and balance computing loads. Users didn’t Initially, six universities—the University of Washington, care which CPU ran their program, and cluster software Stanford University, Carnegie Mellon University, MIT, the managed everything. But clustering proved to be difficult University of Maryland and the University of California, and expensive. Berkeley—are participating in the Google-IBM program. In the early 1990s, the grid concept emerged: Users could There are lots of discussions going on right now about connect to a network, much as they plugged into the electri- cloud computing is, but I feel there isn’t enough definition cal power grid, and use service on a metered-utility basis. of what it isn’t. Thus, people began speaking of utility computing. Meanwhile, Amazon.com Inc. offers a couple of cloud One problem was where data was stored. Grid nodes services. Web service developers can use its Simple Storage could be located anywhere in the world, but there could Service (S3) to store any amount of data. And developers be significant processing delays while data stored at other can use Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) to set up a CIO FOCUS FORecAST: CLOUD COMPUTING LOOMS BIG ON THE HORIZON 3 OVERVIEW virtual server in minutes, with none of the maintenance of emerging. buying and installing server hardware and software. Both InfoWorld talked to dozens of vendors, analysts, and IT services are offered on a pay-per-use basis. n customers to tease out the various components of cloud computing. Based on those discussions, here’s a rough Russel Kay is a Computerworld contributing writer in Worcester, breakdown of what cloud computing is all about: Mass. You can contact him at [email protected]. 1. SaaS This type of cloud computing delivers a single application through the browser to thousands of customers using a multitenant architecture. On the customer side, it means What Cloud Computing no up-front investment in servers or software licensing; on Really Means the provider side, with just one app to maintain, costs are low compared to conventional hosting. Salesforce.com is by far the best-known example among enterprise applica- The next big trend sounds tions, but SaaS is also common for HR apps and has even nebulous, but it’s not so worked its way up the food chain to ERP, with players such fuzzy when you view the as Workday. And who could have predicted the sudden rise of SaaS “desktop” applications, such as Google Apps and value proposition from the Zoho Office? perspective of IT professionals 2. Utility computing loud computing is all the rage. “It’s become the The idea is not new, but this form of cloud computing is phrase du jour,” says Gartner senior analyst Ben getting new life from Amazon.com, Sun, IBM, and oth- CPring, echoing many of his peers. The problem is ers who now offer storage and virtual servers that IT can that (as with Web 2.0) everyone seems to have a different access on demand. Early enterprise adopters mainly use definition. utility computing for supplemental, non-mission-critical As a metaphor for the Internet, “the cloud” is a familiar needs, but one day, they may replace parts of the datacenter. cliché, but when combined with “computing,” the meaning Other providers offer solutions that help IT create virtual gets bigger and fuzzier. Some analysts and vendors define datacenters from commodity servers, such as 3Tera’s App- cloud computing narrowly as an updated version of utility Logic and Cohesive Flexible Technologies’ Elastic Server on computing: basically virtual servers available over the Inter- Demand. Liquid Computing’s LiquidQ offers similar capa- net. Others go very broad, arguing anything you consume bilities, enabling IT to stitch together memory, I/O, storage, outside the firewall is “in the cloud,” including conventional and computational capacity as a virtualized resource pool outsourcing. available over the network. Cloud computing comes into The Cloud: Your View focus only when you think about Cloud computing will cause a radical 58% 3. Web services in the cloud what IT always needs: a way to shift in information technology driving Closely related to SaaS, Web increase capacity or add capabili- the next wave of innovation service providers offer APIs ties on the fly without investing in Cloud computing is an evolving concept 54% that enable developers to exploit that will take years to mature new infrastructure, training new functionality over the Internet, personnel, or licensing new soft- Current on-demand offerings are not 36% rather than delivering full-blown appropriate for my business ware.

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