As a young boy, I always wondered what it would be like to be a weatherman on TV. I'd sit with my mom and dad, watching the local news from San Francisco and marveling at the way Pete Giddings on Channel 7 always seemed to know exactly what was going to happen. I thought to myself that this would be a cool thing - to know the future ahead of time! More than two decades later, I actually did get the opportunity to be a TV weatherman, though just as a fill-in for the vacationing regular on a tiny station on Cape Cod, Massachusetts in my former life as a sports reporter. Of course, by then, I realized that there wasn't so much magic in the forecasting, but a lot of science. I still was fascinated by the science of weather, though, and especially found the variety and function of clouds to be most interesting.
Now, about 25 years later, clouds have reached a whole new level of significance in my life as a technology advisor and consultant. Like the effect of the naturally-occurring namesakes in the sky, the emergence of the cloud in the computing world seems to have signaled a change in the climate of business computing. But just what is this notion? And what are the good and bad consequences of adopting this growing trend to your business, especially with the tenuous economy and the more pronounced effects on the small to midsized business.
First of all, we need to understand exactly what is "cloud computing." Since the early days of ENIAC, man has thirsted for ways to get more and more processing power to perform increasingly complex tasks. Early machines relied on faster internal workings to do this, until the trend became combining many different machines in a cluster on one site to maximize the load sharing. But in the 1990's, Ian Foster and Carl Kesselman had a different take. They postulated that setting up a "grid" over many machines connected remotely to each other could be a better way to share the load over many more CPUs. Unfortunately, since the machines could be separated by huge distances, delays in accessing the data stores or latency kept the concept from gaining any major traction in the business world.
So the acceleration of the Internet and its adoption allowed for a logical next step into "cloud" computing. It is thought that the phrase comes from the long-used symbol in flow charts and diagrams that used a cloud to designate the Internet. Thus, cloud computing takes the grid computing concept and adds a level of decentralization inherent in what the Internet is. Cloud computing can be both private and public. Private clouds are built, used and maintained by an individual organization for internal use or private resale. Public cloud computing is sells services to anyone on the Internet. At this time, the Amazon Web Services called S3 (Simple Storage Service) is the largest public cloud provider, though Microsoft's Azure platform is gaining rapidly, as well as EMC.
The public cloud marketplace has been divided into three types by some - Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS). In the Software-as-a-Service cloud model, the vendor supplies the hardware infrastructure, the software product and interacts with the user through a front-end portal. SaaS is a very broad market. Services can be anything from Web-based email to inventory control and database processing. Infrastructure-as-a-Service, including Amazon's S3, provides virtual server instances with unique IP addresses and blocks of storage on demand. Customers use the provider's application program interface (API) to start, stop, access and configure their virtual servers and storage. The third menu item, Platform-as-a-service, is a set of software and product development tools hosted on the provider's infrastructure. This allows developers to create applications on the provider's platform over the Internet and not build and maintain costly testing environments. PaaS providers may use APIs, website portals or gateway software installed on the customer's computer. Force.com, developed by Salesforce.com, and GoogleApps are examples of PaaS. Potential developer customers should be aware that currently, there are no standards for interoperability or data portability in the cloud. Some of the providers will not allow software created by their customers to be moved off the provider's platform. Kind of defeats the purpose, doesn't it?
Recently, enhancements to several key factors have accelerated the shared computing concept to what cloud computing is today. The ever-growing availability of higher-speed connectivity, along with advances in data storage and increased input/output efficiency has allowed this previous notion of grid computing to evolve. Today, cloud-based applications and storage are being touted as the next wave of business tools to leapfrog us well past where we are today. Many larger enterprises have already leveraged the concepts of the cloud to realize great savings, as describe in the applications in the previous paragraph.
How does the cloud create these savings and improvements? There are several technologies and applications that come into play here. One is the ever-growing adoption of virtualization in the data center. Taking many, or even thousands, of servers out of service, replaced by "virtual" servers in a larger host environment is becoming more and more the standard by which data centers are being built or rebuilt. Do the math - fewer servers means less equipment and power to run it, and smaller rooms requiring less cooling. All of that costs money, so there are built-in savings. In addition, with less hardware come fewer points of failure and lower licensing purchases and renewals. Not to mention enhanced disaster recovery with more robust offsite storage options.
While setting up an internal cloud structure is a preferred methodology for some, there are organizations large and small that have opted for an even more radical shift to the third party "cloud services" providers, like Amazon, etc. In many cases, why go through the expense of building your own if you can get all the benefits for a monthly fee? There are of course trade-offs in that using the Internet does expose the data and applications to the potential of breaches, but more secure tunneling methods are making those worries minimal. And with more powerful endpoints, computing power at the desktop can handle the load.
Of course, it makes sense for the largest enterprises and government entities to be embracing these technologies in the tighter economic situation we live in. But the real question is, can the SMB marketplace ride their coattails? The answer is "definitely, maybe". Sure, also the title of a completely mediocre recent romantic comedy in the theaters, but also indicative about the split between expert opinions. A Forrester Research study in May of 2009 reported that an estimated 2% of small businesses (categorized as under 100 employees) were using cloud computing. But with the ever-growing selection of premier providers and regional options, it would appear that this number is poised to see dramatic growth.
In our own practice in the Philadelphia area, we are leveraging cloud-based services in every area of what we do. For a small customer with limited budget or a new startup without huge amounts of seed capital, we can steer them into the Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite, or BPOS. This recent Microsoft offering provides anything from simple email hosting right up through hosted Instant Messaging and SharePoint site. And with mobility being paramount for many, these solutions can be integrated with the smartphone of choice to make it accessible from anywhere.
In some cases, a more traditional server/client approach is needed, and this we provide either through an onsite implementation at the customer location, or completely cloud-oriented with virtual servers in our hardened data center. We have revolutionized this concept with our flagship Managed Environment program. Provided on a per-user basis is all the hardware, software and labor services necessary, based upon the custom solution. This allows the client to avoid a substantial capital expenditure, create a tax-benefitting operating expense, and cancel the need for expensive full-time IT staff. There are firms that have scrapped their aging network infrastructure and moved lock, stock and barrel to this model. In many cases, they've added services that didn't make sense with their old solutions, including internal instant messaging and presence, hosted VoIP telephony, multi-layered backups and disaster recovery. Essentially, the small business now has access to enterprise-class technology and security without the astronomical investment.
Whether it be specific cloud services, or a full-blown all-encompassing solution, it is apparent that this revolution is just in its nascent stages. Despite recent failures in the marketplace, like Amazon's days-long outage, it would seem clear that the direction of both small and large organizations is clearly headed up in the cloud. The potential for cost savings, productivity enhancements, and increased employee mobility and satisfaction will drive the providers to even greater levels of reliability. And even though the Jetson's "air cars" are a long way from reality, it would seem in the short term that the future of IT network infrastructure lies clearly in the air above. Who knew? What's even more amazing is that I didn't even need Accu-Weather to predict it!
