Service providers or carriers own the network infrastructure that supports the Internet, and are well-positioned for cloud computing. I addressed some of the opportunities and challenges service providers face in an earlier post about carriers and clouds. Interestingly, though these businesses have a service-orientation in the front-office, they still have a network operations mindset in the back-office shaped by years of focusing on call completions, tariffs, and a corresponding revenue model. Some service providers offer infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) and storage-as-a-service (STaaS), for example, but it’s really only outsourced resources instead of a cloud services model.

Telecommunication service providers look at cloud service providers including IaaS suppliers such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) and the platform-as-a-service (PaaS) providers like Google App Engine, and recognize opportunities to leverage their core competencies and networks for new services. To realize these opportunities, however, service providers need to think and act differently to take advantage of cloud computing and compete in the cloud market. Continue reading →

Is platform-as-a-service (PaaS) relevant to the enterprise?

Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) offers small organizations compute, network, and storage resources on par with the IT capabilities afforded previously to only larger, well-capitalized organizations. Now, PaaS has the potential of taking this IT on-demand concept a step further with applications and services.

IaaS was first popularized by Amazon Web Services (AWS). The startup community embraced the model where no upfront capital expenditure was required, and IT burden was significantly reduced because IaaS provided both infrastructure and operations management for a fee.  This model gave startups, and larger enterprises alike, a much faster time to market than building out infrastructure themselves.

Since being introduced, IaaS has gone mainstream in enterprise organizations. EMC itself is 92% virtualized and provides IaaS to its internal customers.

Following a similar course taken by IaaS, PaaS is currently available on the fringe of enterprises from providers like Heroku and CloudBees, as well as more established providers like Google App Engine and Microsoft Azure. Like IaaS before, PaaS could gain significance as the offerings mature and enterprises get savvy to the benefits of this platform model. Continue reading →

What is the future for storage infrastructure?

It is not uncommon at this time of year to see predications on a variety of subjects for the coming year.  While nobody has a crystal ball, knowledge and experience can lead to insight. To this end, I polled a number of my colleagues for their thoughts to add to my own around our core competencies to deliver a list of five IT storage infrastructure predictions for 2013.

Foreseen for the coming year is the continued paradigm shift for IT from the back office to a contributor of business value. Key to accelerating this change will be the further automation of the data center.  This includes the move to software-defined architecture such as software-defined storage, and the growth of object storage in both public clouds and enterprises. Data growth will continue to be a challenge, though more organizations will tap into their vast data pools with analytical tools. IT management will increasingly be implemented across domains rather than up and down the stack and tools will be judged by their ability to provide context for the information they present. Continue reading →

How does object storage fit into the enterprise?

Object storage is highly scalable architecture where data gets stored by unique IDs and attributes that describe the data. It is commonly used in public clouds and is finding its way into the enterprise, especially to retain unstructured data. While object storage has its benefits, it has limitations too that need to be taken into account.

When faced with the decision to implement object storage, data center managers have basically two (2) choices: 1. they can either outsource their object storage needs or 2. bring it in-house. On-premise solutions in the data center usually mean adding yet another storage device, possibly from another vendor, to the already crowded floor.

The trade-offs between outsourcing and in-house solutions involve cost and scale, as well as security. A pragmatic approach involving balancing cost with scale will determine which approach is best. Just don’t be surprised if the tipping point falls in a gray area where a hybrid cloud model is the best solution. Continue reading →

How are you managing your new virtualized IT infrastructure?

If you are a data center manager or administrator, the chances are pretty good that your IT organization is running a Network Operations Center (NOC) with a firm hand on the pulse of the networking elements that comprise the lifeline of any computing environment. Or, possibly your organization has moved to a more geographically distributed approach with a Global Operations Center (GOC). While effective to varying degrees, these operations approaches have their limitations when applied to transformative technologies such as virtualization and cloud computing.

Enterprises, service providers, and other organizations are all moving to virtual data centers, or cloud architectures, including the new software-defined data center, to obtain the well-documented benefits of agility, efficiency, and cost control. But the move to these new architectures also challenges conventional management tools and processes for assuring the effective operations of the data center. The need to improve data center operations is leading to the new concept of the cloud operations center (CLOC). Continue reading →