enterprise
Moving to the Cloud: The Road Ahead
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BuzzOver the past few posts I covered a number of key points to consider as you plan to move to the cloud. These issues are based on our experiences with many public clouds, as well as what we have learned from working with enterprises adopting the cloud.
I hope it’s clear that today’s clouds are powerful resources that can be used to rapidly develop and deploy applications; they provide on-demand resources and true value. The challenges I outlined in configuration, storage, networking, and management really come into play when you try to integrate the power of the cloud with your existing infrastructure and processes. These challenges are centered on the fact that the cloud is separate from the data center – a problem that hits home when you want to utilize existing applications and rely on your existing services and infrastructure.
We believe that this hybrid model, where companies can use the cloud as a flexible extension of their data center, is central to the adoption of cloud computing, and efficiently addressing these problems is essential for cloud deployments to succeed. The technology we have been developing at CloudSwitch is designed to bring this vision to life. Software from CloudSwitch can now integrate your existing infrastructure with the power of the cloud while preserving your applications, tools and infrastructure investments.
As we look forward to the evolution of cloud computing, I expect the cloud will continue to play a larger, more significant role in enterprise IT. Cloud providers have shown they can rapidly iterate and improve their offerings in response to customer input and have been drawing from their experiences to develop new and powerful infrastructure and features. It has been exciting to be part of this evolution so far, and we’re looking forward to the continuing innovation and expansion of cloud computing.
To end this series, I’d like to leave you with the key principles that guide our technology and product development at CloudSwitch:
- Provide end-to-end security between data centers and clouds to protect all data and storage
- Enable existing multi-tier applications to move to the cloud without modification
- Integrate cloud deployments into the existing data center’s management tools and processes
- Eliminate cloud lock-in so you can move between clouds or back to the center as needed
With these principles in place, it becomes possible to resolve or eliminate most of the challenges I’ve outlined in this series, making cloud a much more secure and viable option for the enterprise.
Dynamic Cloud Fitting - The Future in Automated Cloud Management
The cloud computing landscape is evolving rapidly, with more and more players introducing cloud products and services of all kinds. Most recently we’ve seen the announcements by VMware partners including Terremark, BlueLock and others, as well as the introduction of Rackspace’s Cloud Servers. EMC is planning to offer a compute cloud in addition to its existing Atmos storage cloud. As the proliferation of offerings continues to accelerate, IT managers have questions about how to proceed: How can you evaluate the range of potential cloud offerings to find the right match? How do you route an application or workload to a target cloud and make sure that it works? How do you integrate it with other applications running back in the data center?
Cloud Brokers
As Gartner Group points out, getting the most out of the cloud will ultimately require the assistance of a knowledgeable and reliable expert: the cloud service broker. Cloud blogger John Willis feels strongly as well about the importance of this emerging category. Even within a single cloud, deploying an application requires learning the provider’s operating environment, management tools and business terms and conditions. Doing this for every cloud provider you may wish to utilize is likely to prove daunting and not cost-effective. In a cloud environment characterized by multiple providers, each with its own service terms, operating platforms, management systems, security levels and disaster recovery approaches, the specialized expertise and value-add of a cloud service broker will help IT managers find the right cloud offering, deploy their application in the cloud and manage it properly.
Effective cloud management will not only require technical expertise but also the business savvy and leverage necessary to negotiate the best deals and relationships between cloud consumers and cloud providers. This specialized knowledge, as well as access to the latest cloud management tools and services, will make the cloud broker a strategic partner for companies that want to use the cloud (broadly defined) to full advantage — especially as a wave of new cloud services come to market and the environment becomes still more heterogeneous.
Going Dynamic
Within the next few years, the cloud will become a much more dynamic environment, with the cloud broker playing a leading role. In the early adoption phase, enterprises will still want to “fit” their computing needs to a cloud manually. But over time, at least some cloud applications will be managed using an automated, rules-based approach, both for initial deployment and also for periodically reviewing performance and evaluating alternatives. For example, when the cost of running an application reaches a certain threshold, other cloud options will be evaluated automatically. If a more attractive offering meets established policies, the changeover can occur in real time.
The benefits of this dynamic cloud fitting will soon become apparent, whereby cloud service brokers use specialized tools to identify the most appropriate cloud resource, and then map the requirements of an enterprise application to it. Cloud service brokers will be able to automatically route data, applications and infrastructure needs based on key criteria such as price, location, latency needs, SLA level, supported operating systems, cloud scalability, backup/disaster recovery capabilities and regulatory requirements. IT managers will be able to run applications where they truly belong, while the broker takes care of the underlying details that make the cloud so compelling.
Legacy Apps: The Next Frontier in the Cloud
Although cloud computing momentum continues to build and scarcely a day goes by without a new cloud announcement or study, there’s been little real enterprise adoption and almost no meaningful case studies. In part, that’s because early cloud providers and vendors were focused on developers and technology start-ups when they designed their offerings, and larger, more established organizations were rarely on their radar screen. While start-ups can easily embrace new technologies and architectures, enterprises have far more constraints and have been largely limited to “tire kicking” the cloud with small applications that aren’t particularly meaningful for the business.
Cloud computing is now entering a new stage as CIOs and IT managers recognize that cloud computing is going to become an integral part of the enterprise computing environment. For it to be strategic as opposed to experimental, they need to know that the cloud can integrate with their existing data center infrastructure and incorporate the legacy applications that reside there. That’s where the major pain points, complexity, and costs have always been, and where the cloud can potentially offer its greatest returns. In our discussions with CIOs, we hear this theme over and over.
Legacy apps cover the entire installed base of applications running on a company’s internal infrastructure. They include everything from highly-used apps that are optimized for particular hardware to older versions of apps that must be maintained for specific customers as well as test and development environments, and apps used for internal purposes such as training. The true enterprise payoff for cloud computing will come from the ability to offload a wide range of legacy apps that don’t need to run in the data center to a cloud environment where they can be managed more cost-effectively. Not all legacy apps will make sense to move to the cloud initially (or perhaps ever), so the trick will be to select the right ones.
As Bernard Golden points out, the conundrum is that while putting legacy apps into the cloud can provide huge value for the enterprise, it’s also where the biggest hurdles lie. While a new application designed specifically for a cloud can usually be rolled out fairly easily, legacy apps come with a whole new set of challenges. Many of today’s cloud offerings were built for serving up web apps and Amazon-type storefronts, and have attributes that were not originally designed with the enterprise in mind (non-standard storage, isolated networking, and multi-tenancy are some examples). The result is lots of manual re-configuring, complex engineering, and trial and error before the enterprise application is able to run in the cloud. And once the app is in the cloud, it’s completely separate from the existing management tools and policies, and potentially locked-in to the cloud for which it has been re-architected. This lack of fast, incredibly simple ways to migrate legacy apps to the cloud and back without modification is one of the major factors holding back enterprise cloud adoption today.
CloudSwitch is focused on eliminating the barriers to moving legacy apps to the cloud. We believe applications should be able to run in the cloud “as is”, without worrying about the technical hurdles that today makes cloud deployments complex, time-consuming and expensive. We’re excited to be part of the “next frontier” in cloud adoption, working closely with enterprise customers and cloud providers.
Moving to the Cloud: How Hard is it Really?
Many IT managers would love to move some of their applications out of the enterprise data center and into the cloud. It's a chance to eliminate a whole litany of costs and headaches: in capital equipment, in power and cooling, in administration and maintenance. Instead, just pay as you go for the computing power you need, and let someone else worry about managing the underlying infrastructure.
But moving from theory into practice is where things get complicated. It's true that a new web application built from scratch for the cloud as a standalone environment can be rolled out quickly and relatively easily. But for existing applications running in a traditional data center and integrating with a set of other systems, tools and processes, it's not nearly so simple.
What's really involved when moving an application from your enterprise data center to the cloud? Let's say you've decided on a particular cloud, and you've identified the application you want to run there - now what? You need to consider a range of issues which can potentially turn the migration into a complex engineering project.
Migrating to the Cloud
Today's cloud providers impose architectures that are very different from those of standard enterprise applications. As Bernard Golden explains in his in-depth look at cloud computing, difficulty in migration is holding back uptake, and there aren't yet any automated tools to smooth the way. The result is lots of manual configuring, complex engineering, and trial and error before the enterprise application is able to run in the cloud. A whole landscape of specifications for OS versions, storage, networks, integration with other applications and databases - all those configuration steps that normally happen behind the scenes - have to be mapped to a cloud environment that is probably very different from what your IT staff is used to. It's the type of project that can tie up a development team for weeks or even months.
Keeping Your Data Safe
When data moves to the cloud, it moves beyond the reach of tools and mechanisms put in place over the years to preserve its integrity. In an environment characterized by multi-tenancy and decoupling between hardware and applications, cloud users need to be vigilant and understand the risks. (For a good introduction to cloud security issues, see David Binnings' article, Top Five Cloud Computing Security Challenges.) In brief, you'll need to make sure that the cloud provider has a level of physical security and regulatory compliance that meets the needs of your business and the specific application (for example, those with public information vs. confidential vs. compliance-regulated). You'll also need to consider what additional measures might be necessary to protect against potential threats, including protecting data in transit as well as at rest. It may also be appropriate in some cases to keep the database within your data center and put the rest of the application outside in the cloud.
Managing Dual Environments
After you finally get your application running in the cloud, you'll find another big hurdle: how are you going to manage it? The cloud and the data center are currently two completely separate environments, each with its own set of system management tools, and no meaningful way to integrate the two. Accordingly, your IT staff will need to learn and use each cloud provider's management tools and policies, in addition to the ones they already have. They'll also have to give up some of the control and visibility into an application and its supporting infrastructure that's available in the data center, at least in current cloud environments. (More details about the challenges of managing enterprise applications in the cloud can be found in Peter Loh's article in Cloud Computing Journal.) And as the cloud provider makes changes to their underlying infrastructure (for example, patching a version of their OS), the cloud version of the application needs to be maintained to meet this new environment, so it becomes even more different from the local versions over time.
What if You Want to Change Clouds or Move Back to the Data Center?
All that effort was just for one cloud! What if another cloud provider comes along with lower prices or better service? Since you've invested all that time to set up the application for one cloud, you're going to be very reluctant to repeat all the development and integration work to meet the new provider's requirements. Many companies also wish they had the flexibility to use the cloud to develop and test a new application (leveraging the cloud's benefits in agility and low cost for early research/prototyping/development), before bringing it back to the data center to take advantage of the production set of data and their corporate processes and infrastructure. Today, it's not possible to move an application between different clouds or back to the data center easily, with a few mouse clicks. For many companies, the goal is to create a federated environment of their data center with one or more clouds, and to move applications and workloads wherever is most appropriate.
The cloud offers a great opportunity for enterprise applications, but it's important to understand the work required before embarking on a migration, and how the cloud environment will integrate with the existing data center. CloudSwitch has been working hard to address these issues.
