The fact that a few hundred people came out on a cold wet London night to discuss Cloud Computing is a testimony to the growing fascination with all things cloud-like. One way or another, it is a phenomenon that will disrupt the status quo in software and service provision.

The evening kicked off with a set of speedy presentations: 5 minutes per presenter, brutally speedy. Their velocity and compactness made them hard to summarize, but let me try:

Simon Wardley, now with Canonical, was first on stage. Always an interesting presenter (I might have been biased by his love of ducks and the fact I that I was using his power supply, stealthily borrowed). Actually, the fact that I could use his power supply on my laptop is a testament to the importance of portability and the power of re-use, which was the theme of Simon’s presentation. It continued his XaaS theme from the last CloudCamp, making the case for the importance for standards. Simon also argued for the importance of transparency in cloud services (cf. recent happenings in the financial world as the result of opacity). Who owns and operates the equipment isn’t always obvious in cloud services. An immaculately timed 4 minute 59 second presentation.

Joe Bagley, CTO Europe of Quest Software, was next up, asking if the cloud is really green. Here we are, putting 20kw of power demand into a rack, then trying to keep it at  22′c. Less than 0.3% of the electricity used makes it through to the processor. Rather than looking at how much processing each watt gives, Joe argued that the new question people will ask is: for each service in use, how much energy is consumed? Server power consumption doesn’t scale linearly with use. An idle server still consumes huge amounts of power. Even so, virtualization doesn’t give the power savings many expect. Even worse, while VDI (desktop virtualization) is trendy, it moves even more processing into the datacentre and uses lots of RAM, and therefore even more energy. Then you throw away the old desktops… definitely not very green. Joe’s advice? Go green: take a hybrid approach, re-use and rethink. Oh, and make sure you get the (power) bills. (4 minutes 50 seconds).

Paul Watson, of Newcastle University, has been doing some work on behalf of Arjuna.  Throw away the cloud infrastructure, or get cloud from existing infrastructure? Paul suggested that you should create a private cloud, and spread the load. Put service agreements on sharing resource in place, and then share computing resources between different departments to make efficient use of (unused) computing power. Then link that to public cloud services to cope with peak demand. Paul’s model suggests the idea of many federated clouds (both public and private) – a kind of cloud of clouds. Interesting.

Duncan Johnston-Watt, Enigmatec CTO, performed a canned demo (using Elastic fox), showing how the cloud might be used for disaster recovery. Apart from his very correct use of the work “momentary”, the demo was a little pedestrian. Thankfully Cisco’s Phil Dean hopped on stage to tell us what CIOs want from the cloud. A reminder from Phil that CIOs are seeking to be business leaders. Accord to him CIOs like Cloud’s offer of consistency for all users, service simplicity (cost and 24×7 operation) and service orientation (for business agility). They don’t like the loss of control, risk management issues (business continuity and security) or migration and hybrid operation. I found myself thinking that perhaps CIOs don’t understand Cloud Computing yet, and are still wrapped around the axle trying to understand Web 2.0. Never the less, cloud needs a business focus says Phil.

Zimory’s Philipp Huber used his commanding stage presence to talk about what pervasive cloud computing might look like. He wheeled out comparisons with the energy market. Why does the energy market run so smoothly? Multi-tier supply – energy products, distributors, resellers – and 100+ years to get where they are. Both private and commercial demand, with well educated customers, and well established infrastructure standards (fuses, plugs… ). SLAs and quality standards, operating in an open market. How does cloud computing compare? New cloud providers emerging daily. Increasing demand, but driven by early adopters. The early majority still has major concerns about security and stability. Standards are emerging, but still not providing a seamless experience. Full interoperability is still “in the clouds” – fundamentally it works against the cloud producers, since it reduces stickiness. Billing models need to be transparent between clouds too, and easy to understand – again, something that might not be immediately attractive to providers.

Rhys Jones (from RBS) laid out an IT department perspective in “Clouds are cool (so why aren’t we using them yet)”. Power is nothing without control was his cautious note, before laying out some key benefits from his perspective: Switching from capex to opex is attractive. Cloud can do things that couldn’t be done before (due to resource constraints). Cloud gives ability to scale down (relevant currently). Someone else can do the optimisation, leaving you free for higher value activities. Rhys doesn’t see the cloud as just another form of box rental. Because of the cost structure, it enables rapid, low-risk trials – that opens up new possibilities for innovation. He noted that moving to the cloud is a cultural shift, and changing culture is hard. In corporate IT, demand outstrips supply, and the demand has always been upfront. That steers against Cloud technology.

Wayne Horkan, Sun Microsystems CTO (UK and Ireland), talked about the global cloud infrastructure build out. A little unsurprisingly, he sees cloud computing as becoming dominant. He cited bandwidth figures from Amazon showing S3 using more bandwidth than Amazon web sales – I’m not sure that’s a proof point, but interesting none-the-less. Wayne said, “This is the Klondike gold rush…” – I agree that the building wave is definitely starting to feel that way. Wayne drew out a nice layered model, from network up to operations…. “What’s the next stack?” open source he says. Wayne ran out of time and was gracefully ushered from the stage by a gracious host.

Neil Hutson, senior director at Microsoft, outlined their vision. Drawing a linear platform evolution from mobile, to client, to server, to cloud, Neil outlined the changing economics of software towards a consumption based model. He pointed out that Microsoft already run their own data centres, and have done for a long while, supporting their Live offerings. He outlined the Microsoft Azure announcement, and the themes contained in it: standards and simplicity, and citied support for HTTP, REST, SOAP…. The Azure announcement has been covered just about everywhere, so nothing new to add. Only time will tell where it goes…

[Open Spaces Round up next...]

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Talking earlier this month with Bill Beverley, Security Manager at F5 Networks, F5′s focus is clear: “deploying applications is really the central role of IT”. That’s certainly part of it. Keeping them up and running is too, and that has been bread and butter business for F5, delivering kit to put in front of servers to deal with the peaks in capacity and inevitable server failures.

Load balancing provides availability, but acceleration and optimization are also key in today’s infrastructures. That has made WAN optimization a hot area, especially now that bandwidth prices are no longer falling rapidly. Bill talked about how F5 are adding extra layers of security for web applications, something that is big in PCI and compliance driven environments. F5 see their solutions as complementary to the network firewalls, with the firewall dealing with the high-load, low-intelligence packet filtering. As Bill was keen to point out, “if you have a really efficient smaller piece of kit doing that job, then we can deal with traffic in an effective and more intelligent way.”

F5 boxes terminate the TCP connection and then regenerate it out of the other side. Since the devices have application-level visibility into the application streams, this is the perfect place to apply application acceleration and application security magic. However, this isn’t going to be a clean battle. The traditional firewall players like Cisco, Juniper Networks and Checkpoint, are keen for a piece of the action too.

A battle is brewing between the folks coming from the application towards the network, and the network folks heading up the stack to optimize applications. On the application side, F5 might be the baby gorilla, but there are a number of chimps ready to fight it out with them. Database security has seen specialist players like Secerno emerge. In talking to Bill about SQL security, his comment was “I think you will see consolidation in that area.” I wouldn’t take that as a statement that F5 is feeling acquisitive (although they have been), but rather that smaller players will get swept up or washed away in the coming quarters.

Hosting and data centres are becoming more and more sophisticated environments, as you can see from the diagram. Layers have been added to the network to provide security, then availability, and now application acceleration. Those layers are spreading in their functionality too, with SSL VPN being added to the security layer, and storage virtualization added into availability. The latter will help many IT managers to clear up the NAS(ty) mess on the network, by balancing across multiple NAS devices, and migrating data at rest to slower storage devices.

F5 solutions are purchased as a mixture of sticking plaster remedies and strategic design, where acceleration and availability are part of the fundamental architecture, rather than an add on when capacity gets exceeded. F5 have some interesting developments coming down the line in the virtualization space. Because they see the application performance, then can provide feedback into VMotion / ESX running on the servers, to tell it to provision extra servers or deprovision them. The integration works through SNMP and SYSLOG, so could potentially be open to other vendor combinations too. Certainly lots for F5′s channel partners to apply their expertise to.

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David Kelly - Meru Networks

Meru have differentiated themselves by focussing on large, high-density WiFi deployments. Their technology reduces the issues of PCs handing off from one access point to another. You can argue the benefits of that for data, after all, how often do you walk around whilst surfing with your PC? But for Voice over WiFi it become more essential. Even when PCs are static, there are benefits in balancing load across different access points.

So, why are Meru both unheard of and much talked about? The answer lies in their users base, which tends to be formed from people who are experienced WiFi users. The majority of people I encounter who are into their ‘second phase’ of deployment are aware of Meru and considering them. This makes sense when you think about it: For a small scale deployment, there are a large range of vendors who can provide a working solution. When it comes to scaling, it is a completely different matter.

Meru have a big push on 802.11n technology. 802.11n has been spinning around the standards bodies for far too long, but will hopefully emerge, fully ratified, this year. The general view, including that of Meru Networks, is that any changes to the standard between now and then will be addressable via a software upgrade.

I’d always viewed 802.11n as a consumer technology, because that is where the bulk of the noise about it has been :- extending WiFi range in the home, dealing with interference etc… However the technology is just as applicable in the Enterprise, and this is where the Meru folks are pushing it.

By deploying access points delivering standard 802.11b/g, which can be converted to n, you get a degree of future proofing. The Meru solution is nice in that you can use b, g or n and still deliver the appropriate speed to users (it isn’t dragged down by the lowest common denominator).

Going back to Gartner again, they position Meru as a 4th generation, single cell architecture, with the intelligence in the access point. This takes away the drop off during access point hand over, and allows the layering of networks (read Gartner’s full piece here).  

Meru’s David Kelly was keen to stress their push into the UK and Europe. The company has a strong customer base in the US, including education (where user mobility is exceptionally high), health care and government. They are now repeating that success over here.

“Unleash the users and let them go,” says David. And why not? The traditional security concerns about WiFi are receding, with enhanced encryption and dedicated security capabilities such as Meru’s “AirShield 2.0″ (I’m not making that name up! read for yourself).

Meru use air time fairness to share bandwidth between different users, protecting VoFi (voice over WiFi) calls, and controlling would-be bandwidth hogs. Applications also include retail and distribution, as more and more data terminals have WiFi capability built in. If you are looking to refresh your WiFi deployment, or going straight to large scale WiFi use, Meru Networks is definitely worth checking out.

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Clouds in the Setting Sun

Cloud computing blogs are popping up all over (James Urquhart’s “The Wisdom of Clouds” being a personal favorite - check out his updated “Cloud Computing Bill of Rights“). But what exactly is cloud computing?

Cue “Cloud Computing Defined” on Mashable. The post went up before the weekend, its the conversation in the comments I’ve been watching. Cloud Computing is somewhat blackbox-like for those trapped outside. All the more reason for a good definition, and a good understanding of you might be dragging your business into (or at least the IT infrastructure).

Starting for what it isn’t, Mark Hopkin, on the Mashable blog, quotes Mike Elgan (the names are dropping left, right and center(re) ):

“Cloud computing” has been used to mean grid computing, utility computing, software as a service, Internet-based applications, autonomic computing, peer-to-peer computing and remote processing. When most people use the term, they may have one of these ideas in mind, but the listener might be thinking about something else.

Or to put it another way, it is the marketing umbrella of the day (Kool-Aid if you must). OK, so what should we be looking out for in cloud then? In the 90′s, in my consulting engineering days, we would draw grandiose architecture diagrams. In the middle would be clouds.

The clouds represented the ‘something magic happens in here… will figure out how later’. And for me, that is part of the essence of cloud computing. It takes a boat load of complexity that deals with storage, process distribution and many other things too hard and dull to think about and puts them in a neat box. As a user (in the sense of programmer, as well as end-user), you simply don’t have to worry about what happens in the middle. It just happens, and it is 24×7. I like Doug Klein’s comment:

In the networking cloud bad things happen all the time. Routers die, packets get dropped, loops occur. What has evolved over the decades, however, is a sophisticated and mature set of recovery tools; applications, protocols, processes all designed to detect, work around, patch and recover from failures. For cloud computing to realize its full potential we have to go through the same learning curve. It’s not impossible but it is certainly an order of magnitude more complicated give the much more varied nature of the situation. 

Mark harks back to those early networking days (with a quick name check for MCI nee Worldcom). The fact is, from a technology standpoint it might be tricky to put a finger on exactly what cloud computing is, other than a moving feast, but from a business one it is this: The next generation of IT outsourcing, staring us right in the face.

A little addendum… Even the register is on the case: “Cloud computing: A catchphrase in puberty“.

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Can a Lonely Bird Survive?

This little chap fell out of his nest outside of my office. He was ok, but it got me thinking about a long piece on Twitter over at The Go West blog. It references Adam’s fuller article in Fortune “The True Meaning of Twitter” from earlier this month. Both are a fairly representative taster of the swirl around the Twitter microblogging/messaging service: When will it make money? And how?

The reality is there are lots of ways that it could, but the one that interests me is the use of twitter for business communication. It is one that seems least likely. Twitter differs from blogging in that it restricts users to a single line of text at a time, think of the length of a mobile SMS message. It differs from standard enterprise instant messaging in that it is a one to many, rather than one to one communication method (think website, rather than phone call). It is also persistent, in that the messages remain after a user signs out or updates.

Microsoft have invested in persistent messaging technology, and it is something that has been around in the finance space for quite a while. However, it has uses in many other types of business. It is a great way for remote staff to keep up to date with the business buzz, or to keep in touch with contacts at business partners. Padmasree Warrior, Cisco’s chief technology officer is a keen Twitter user (see “Another view on Twitter“):

What I use Twitter most for is to share “What I am thinking” rather than “What I am doing.”

Instant messaging clients let users set a status message (as do social platforms like Facebook), but IM clients don’t usually keep a history of those messages. It is that journal (of thinking or doing) that is most interesting from a business communication perspective, since it allows staff to ‘checkin’ on each other actually disturbing their workflow. The sales team can know if there is a problem booking orders, or they can get a heads up about delayed shipments. It’s much more efficient than everyone phoning in and the same message being repeated 10 times – you can see my twitter stream, and Redcatco’s as examples (all be it outside-the-firewall ones).

The nice thing about the tool is that it is lightweight, fast to set up and easy to use. On the Twitter service, updates can be left as public (for all the world to read) or they can be set as private, enabling only people with permission to see the updates. I have heard of a number of early stage startups using Twitter with private messages as their communications backbone.

There is a fly in the ointment. Twitter has had a number of high profile outages. Also, what if you want Twitter inside of the firewall, rather than outside of it? Well there is an answer, but it isn’t Twitter.

Automattic, the people behind blogging platform WordPress, have produced a WordPress theme that enables you to turn a standard WordPress install into your very own Twitter-like microblogging service. It’s called Prologue. It also makes use of WordPress tags to enable messages to be associated with, for example, projects. You can see how Automattic have used it here.

Blogging and microblogging should be part of a business’s communication strategy these days, both for internal use, as well as for external (both marketing and non-marketing) use. Services are still coming and going, but the format is here to stay.

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Mobile Workers

An increasing percentage of the business workforce have escaped the office. In the early 90′s remote working just meant having a desktop PC at home, these days it is having a laptop in your bag. Much has changed with the technology in between.

Last week Dell unveiled a new range of laptops targeted at all of us ‘digital nomads’ (“Dell Takes Business Laptops to New Latitudes” – slightly cringeworthy press release title, slides on slideshare here). Anyway, I like the digital nomad phrase – it sums up the modern business-tech lifestyle so well: wandering the wild universe with a laptop and clutch of other gadgets. So much more becoming than ‘road warrior’ or ‘mobile user’. I am now a digital nomad.

So, what does the nomad need in their tent? The full answer is another post, but focussing down on the laptop piece, here is my wish list:

• Enough battery power to get me through the working day.
• Or at least a power supply that doesn’t wrench my arm off with its bulk.
• Enough screen real-estate to do some meaningful work.
• And/or the ability to plug into an external screen and run at high resolution.
• Decent network connectivity (that means bluetooth/usb for mobile, and decent WiFi)
• Enough USB sockets and juice to charge my other gadgets.

The new Dell range manages all of that, with some nice features to boot:

• 19 hours battery life on some of the models (E6400) – enough to get through the day (if not two).
• Highly compact power supply (about the size of a Blackberry – interesting comparison pic).
• Charging from the USB ports, even when the laptop is off.

The last feature got me very excited. Thankfully James Governor (Redmonk) calmed me down by reminding me that the Asus Eee PC and others have had this feature for a while. Nonetheless, it is surprisingly useful and sorely missing from my current laptop. One feature I do already have, which is now in the Dell range, is a backlit keyboard – essential for those of us who endure long train journeys or try to type at the back of a darkened conference room. 

For those that want to do the big screen thing, there is the E6400 and E6500. However, having lugged a 17″ MBP around for a while, I’m more interested in the ultraportables: E4200 and E4300 (I’m after something in red – very Redcatco – I love the idea of branded laptops).

A couple of other things to bear in mind, depending on your CSR stance. Dell has been making very good progress on the ‘green’ front, managing to steer clear of most of the greenwash. I like the low power consumption (be green AND reduce the electricity bills). Likewise, the  backwards compatibility of the power bricks means that they can be reused – I’m amazed by how many people (including me) keep two or more power supplies these days – one for the office, one for the road and sometimes even one for home.

We’re less convinced on the carbon neutral front. Dell is jumping through the CO2 hoops with the very best of them (“Dell meets Carbon Neutral Goal Ahead of Schedule“), but we really wish that the industry wouldn’t. Consuming resources, then planting a tree is nowhere near as effective as minimizing the natural resource consumed during manufacture, and making products with a long life and good reuse capabilities. Dell is doing well on those fronts, and the laptops have Energy Star 4.0-compliance, so good job there. Environmental preach over…

Weight is another big issue for the digital nomad, and the machines don’t disappoint there. It really is something to think about – a light machine and a good laptop case are almost a health and safety requirement these days.

There are also some discussion forums for us digital nomads to swap tips on the Digital Nomad Site. Nice touch Dell.

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