IFR in the Clouds: True Heading & Cloud Computing

Bitkom Conference

Last week I had the chance to visit the annual Bitkom Outsouring Conference in Bad Homburg.

As I love to have a more aktive part in this kind of conferences....I was glad to be asked

to provide a not-so-technical view on  Cloud Computing in the Ousourcing space. 

How to do a presentation when everything is already said ?

For me, as you already know if you read my blog.....CC is not too much about technology, but

very much about business, business processing, compliance and legal requirements,

my background is only computer science an ecconomics......it was a great chance to

do this presentation together with Dr. Michael Rath  a real expert not only in Compliance

issues, SLA management, Outsourcing contracts but also on Intellectual Property and Copyright Law.

This is exactly the know how you need if you enter the cloud space. Probably not, if you life in

countries with no legal protection for individuals.

But as we are European residents we will see some regulatory impact:

• There are hundrets of rules that make significant influance to all your Cloud Computing plans
• These requirements will give easy Cloud Computing solutions some overhead
• This overhead will sometimes add a quite high amount of costs - reducing the CC benefit
• The compliance requirements will in some cases prevent the usage of CC, as legal requirements can not be met.
  

Next we agreed that the world does not need a next presentation on Cloud Computing definitions. We did in fact

give an overview on the trends and give some detailed recommendations.

.pdf Version of the workshop will be available here and announced in one of the next blog entries. Stay tuna.

Cloud Washing

Some of the work gets kinda hard
This ain't no place to be if you planned on bein' a star
Let me tell you it's always cool
And the boss don't mind sometimes if you act the fool

At the car wash
Whoa whoa whoa whoa
Talkin' about the car wash, girl

(Car Wash, Rose Royce, 1977)

That was the theme song of the first day at the Bitkom Outsourcing conference.

The main idea was to somehow wrap all already existing solutions and sell them

with a CC logo. So we leared that the IBM Lotus product is now Cloud Computing. Whoa whoa whoa.........

Reasons why you should no do Cloud Washing

1. Re-Branding is no innovation. Lotus is no CC, and a Mainframe is no open System. It is just marketing.
2. Your customer expect real innovations. Not only in technology, but also in the way services are packaged, offered and sold.
3. Customers like the fast moves and innovation cycles in CC.
4. Customers already know that a 3 year outsourcing contract is probably not a Cloud Computing Solution
5. If you cheat yourself.....you will miss a real market change and new chances for new, additional business.

How to start business in the Cloud Computing arena ?

1. Involve your legal department. Minimize risk. Follow legal/compliance rules. Call Dr. Rath.
2. If you plan to offer XaaS Services: Always include European Legal requirement in your solution.
3. Offer acceptable SLAs. You can kill your customers business with weak SLAs.
4. Don't kill customers
5. Offer always an acceptable exit plan. Keep your customers with service quality, not with ties.

And remember: There is always a higher risk if you outsource a process that is close to your strategic process (kernel process).

The eye of the storm....but this is a good tagline for the next blog entry. Tuna.

This is an interesting Oracle Whitepaper about Cloud Computing. Just published  in August 2009.

Title: "Achitectural Stategies for Cloud Computing". 

Zum Schluss die Empfehlungen:

• Behandeln Sie Cloud Computing wie jeden anderen Supplier
• Beachten Sie, dass Cloud Computing einen h
  
• Planen Sie Alternativen/Fallbacks, falls der Cloud Service nicht weiter angeboten wird (EVAPORATION)
• Zu jedem Supplier-Vertrag gehört eine klare EXIT-Strategie
• Ignorieren Sie die Aussage unsinninge Aussagen wie "ITIL und Cloud Computing funktionieren nicht miteinander"
  

[Read More]

The internal IT department and the Cloud

At one of my last customer visits Cloud Computing was not very popular...

The usual refusal:

- That will never work !

- This is only a 3 quarter trend..

- Aah, by the way, we are doing Cloud Computing since 5 years.

The last ones are my favorite ones....You talk probably to the slowest moving and lease inovative  ISP in the german market. Maybe it is caused by their company history or just by inertia:

All customer negotiations need months, their end-customers call them slow and unflexible.

 And than you are forced to listen to one person of the marketing department saying " Cloud Computing is nothing new. We do this since several years"

 Or, even better:  Products that are sold on the market since more than 10 years are now called Cloud Computing Security Solutions, claiming that they are your only chance to have security in the Cloud Computing space.

This is in my opinion a real danger for the Cloud Computing idea. Same happens in the Green-IT space. After a few months every server is green.

This kind of non-sence treating you as a customer as a fool is called 

Cloud Washing =  Repainting  standard offerings as new, trendy and Cloudy

So, you just take your standard product offering, print "Cloud Computing inside" on the bag an off you go ! If you work in the product marketing department of one of these company, here is the perfect tool for you !

What are my recommenations for ISPs or internal IT Departments ?

1. Be open. Open skies.
   Take the opportunity to learn about Cloud Computing. Take it serious.
   
2. Manage risk, manage compliance requirements
   There are risks around. Vendors might disapear (Cloud evaporation). In Europe you have to deal with high Compliance requirements, even rising.
   
3. Manage vendor-lock
   Don't use a Cloud Computing offering without a clear EXIT strategy !!!
   
4. Offer cloud services, no Cloud Washing
   Offer your customers easy and new Cloud Computing offerings. You don't have to start with 100 Servers or 10 SaaA. No Cloud Washing, never. Your customer will notice and will hate you.
   
5. Consulting services
   Offer consulting services around your new business. ALL of your customers have high demand on technology neutral consulting services, thats for shure. Offer your services fast, or your customers will listen to somebody else.
   
6. Architectural services
   Integrate Cloud Computing offerings into your standard service catalog.
   
7. Cloud services, but with acceptable SLAs
   Offer services only with acceptable and good SLAs. If you want to know what is not accpable: Just have a look at the SLAs of most of the Cloud Computing Infrastruture offerings in the web/cloud.
8. Strict control # of operating systems
   Reduce the number of operating systems and operating system variants. Keep in mind that a virtulized operating system is still an operating system. Remember that  a virtualization SW does not solve your Release-/Patchmanagement requirements. Learn about the best operating system for cloud computing.
   
9. Cloud services must be part of a solution
   Don't even think about IaaS offerings. This is a crazy market with no market prices but political pricing. You as a small company will have no chance in this market, beleave me. Offer allways more complex services like PaaS or SaaS.
   
10. Offer building private clouds
    Just start your own little Private Cloud ! Read how to start your own little Cloud in one of the next blog entries :-) stay tuna.
    

[Read More]

Let's start with a definition of Cloud Computing. When I do a presentation on CC, I start with an description of
Cloud Services, like Iaas, SaaS, PaaS. And, to get the ultimate definition, we ask Wikipedia:

Definition #1 Wikipedia (Version of March 22nd 2009)

Cloud computing is Internet ("cloud") based development and use of computer technology ("computing")....
It is a style of computing in which dynamically scalable and often virtualised resources are provided as a service over the Internet.....
Users need not have knowledge of, expertise in, or control over the technology infrastructure ......

OK, if you don't have control over your technology, this is Cloud Computing, I like that part :-)

But let's be serious, here are the main points:

- dynamic (or elastic)
- scalable (or elastic)
- virtualised (I don't agree, but this is an own blog entry)
- over the internet

Definition #2

Cloud Computing is technology term pushed by new-IT infrastructure providers to extend their business and market share in the traditional
IT space.  


The IT market is dominated today by hardware vendors like Dell, HP, IBM, Sun Microsystems, internal and external infrastructure providers.
Non-IT companies like bookshops, search engines or software vendors start enhancing their business by using their IT infrastructure and
know-how and offer IaaS, PaaS or SaaS services.

They do this for three reasons:

- They expand their traditional business (I will cover this in a next blog entry)
- Hardware vendors fail to offer flexible billing models ("capacity on demand", finance reasons)
- ISPs don't like the idea of non-bindig  business relations (old business models ?)

OK, the first definition sounds a lot better, as we are all technology and feature driven. Probably the second definition is the right one
if you watch Cloud Computing from a pure business/marketing view..

........ . The first sentence in a blog is very hard to write, so I just start with the second.

Too many blogs about Cloud Computing ?

Probably YES.

So why do you start a new one ?

Well, after visiting CloudCamp I noticed a very special demand in the Cloud Space: Most CloudBlogs are around Witchcraft and Technologie, about Interfaces, APIs Scripting Languages and, when it comes to Sun: About Servers, Storage and Q-Layer.

I miss the data center view on Cloud Computing. Business aspects, Legal aspects, how to make money and how to save costs. At CloudCamp we discussed questions like “Is there a difference between System Metering and System Monitoring ?”. A question we answered in the old data center world about 10 years ago.....Let's combine this experience with the enormous flexibility of Cloud Computing.

CloudFront and IFR

The Cloud front is moving from the internet closer and closer to the data center. And if more applications will be moved from “behind the firewall” into the Cloud...we have to enhance Cloud technologies with the ideas, experience, rules, regulations (sorry) of a classical data center. If you don't follow the exact rules and quality, your next flight into the Cloud will end with a ugly session with your auditors (And The Evil Eye Of The Hurricane's Coming In Now For The Kill). IFR rules will keep us alive :-)

This is my first entry. Please let me know if I am right or wrong here :-)   

Just hold your heading true.  Ralf