Management Strategies for the Cloud Revolution: How Cloud Computing Is Transforming Business and Why You Can't Afford to Be Left Behind (BUSINESS BOOKS) - Hardcover

Babcock, Charles

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0071740759 ISBN 13: 9780071740753

Publisher: McGraw Hill, 2010

Synopsis

Increase efficiency while saving money with “on-demand” computing

The biggest game-changing force in business since the creation of the Internet,cloud computing simplifies and lowers the cost of operations while providing flexibilityand power you never dreamed possible. Make your strategic move now, with ManagementStrategies for the Cloud Revolution!

"Management Strategies for the Cloud Revolution is an important work that captures theconcepts and technological advances fueling the rapid adoption of cloud computing today.It illuminates how specific core technologies have led to the emergence of those patterns asthe foundation for the next generation of IT-managed infrastructure."
―Rich Wolski, Chief Technology Officer and cofounder of Eucalyptus Systems, Inc.,and Professor of Computer Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara

“Explains in marvelously plain English how clouds will change our world. . . . If the potential ofcloud computing doesn’t excite you now, it will after you read this book. Buy a copy and put iton your CEO’s desk. Babcock explains it all.”
―Paul Gillin, bestselling author of The New Influencers

“A valuable primer and handbook. It will help you master the technology and follow the storyas innovators craft the future of cloud computing.”
―Ted schadler, VP and Principal Analyst, Forrester Research, Inc.,and coauthor of Empowered

“This readable, thought-provoking book will be especially useful to business professionals and practitioners.”
Choice magazine

About the Book

Everyday business as we know it is poisedfor a monumental shift, courtesy of cloudcomputing―the biggest game-changer since thecreation of the Internet itself. There’s no doubtabout it: If you want to compete in the future,you must begin educating yourself about cloudcomputing now.

From InformationWeek editor Charles Babcock, aleading authority on the business benefits and pitfallsof cloud computing, Management Strategiesfor the Cloud Revolution provides the tools everymanager needs to create a new business strategythat harnesses all the power cloud computing hasto offer.

Cloud computing is the equivalent of renting timeon a computing infrastructure over the Internet, ratherthan building your own from the ground up. Accessto the cloud is growing quickly, and the benefits areundeniable. Those who begin incorporating cloudcomputing into their business strategy will enjoy:

• Dramatic Cost Savings: The cloud makesavailable innovative technologies that wouldotherwise be too expensive.
• Ubiquitous Access: Employees canaccess the server power they need anytime,anywhere, and send it the program theywant to run.
• Unprecedented Agility: Business processesand business infrastructures can be alteredquicker than ever.
• Steady Traffic Flow: Even during peak loads,systems in the cloud can overcome bottlenecksand expand to meet the user’s needs.

Working on the cloud, your analysts, business intelligenceexperts, and researchers can access large-scale,high-speed, highly reliable systems whilepaying only for short-term use.

You didn’t set up your own electrical grid to poweryour computers. Why pay big money to use themwhen you don’t have to? The cloud is on the horizon,and it’s looming larger by the day. Learn how to takefull advantage of it with Management Strategies forthe Cloud Revolution.

About this title

About the Author

About the Author
Charles Babcock has been reporting on the major trends in computing for the past 20 years. He currently serves as editor-at-large at InformationWeek, covering the business application of Web services, virtualization, cloud computing and other topics of interest as they come up. He writes major features and cover stories for InformationWeek, daily stories for its Web site, www.informationweek.com, and blogs regularly on related topics. He has also been integral in their transtition to the web. He is the former Software Editor and Technical Editor of Computerworld and editor-in-chief of Digital News.

He has been the winner of $400 William Randolph Hearst journalism scholarships for two years in a row in a national competition (third place, investigative reporting; fourth, editorial writing). He was also part of a team of three at InteractiveWeek that won the Jesse Neal award for business writing for an in-depth look at a failed effort to revamp computing systems at McDonalds Corp.

Babcock gives talks at user groups of software companies. He moderates or sits in on panels at shows, such as the Open Source Business Conference. He organizes, hosts and speaks at InformationWeek-organized Webinars on virtualization and cloud computing. Over the course of a year, he speaks to 800-1,200 people in various settings. He also appears in a regular show of video recorded interviews on Silicon Valley topics, called ValleyView, aired on the InformationWeek Web site.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES FOR THE CLOUD REVOLUTION

How Cloud Computing Is Transforming Business and Why You Can't Afford to Be Left Behind

By CHARLES BABCOCK

The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

Copyright © 2010 Charles Babcock
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-07-174075-3

Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INTRODUCTION
1 THE CLOUD REVOLUTION
2 THE AMORPHOUS CLOUD
3 VIRTUALIZATION CHANGES EVERYTHING
4 JUST OVER THE HORIZON, PRIVATE CLOUDS
5 THE HYBRID CLOUD
6 OVERCOMING RESISTANCE TO THE CLOUD
7 IT REORGANIZES
8 DANGERS ABOUND: SECURITY IN THE CLOUD
9 YOUR CLOUD STRATEGY: WHAT KIND OF COMPANY DO YOU WANT?
10 CALCULATING THE FUTURE
11 NEBULA: NASA'S STRATEGIC CLOUD
APPENDIX A NIST DEFINITION OF CLOUD COMPUTING
APPENDIX B INFORMATIONWEEK ANALYTICS, JUNE 2009
APPENDIX C CLOUD COMPUTING'S PORTABILITY GOTCHA: TRANSFER FEES CAN LEAD TO 
LOCK-IN AS DATA STORES GROW
GLOSSARY
INDEX

Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

THE CLOUD REVOLUTION

In works of art, from the photos of Ansel Adams to the paintings of ancientChinese artists, clouds have often been given tangible form and purpose. InAdams's arid West, they served as a backdrop to granite peaks, holding out thepromise of rain. To the Chinese, an all-encompassing mist allows specialfeatures to emerge out of the mountain landscape, or sometimes there will be aseries of ridges as far as the eye can see, their bases cloaked inclouds—an illusion of infinity.

For many years the cloud has played a more prosaic role among the squares,rectangles, and circles of the architecture diagrams of technology projects, butits meaning has been ambiguous. "The cloud" was a euphemism for everything thatwas beyond the data center or out on the network. The action that affected theproject at hand was in the data center; the cloud was a mishmash of remotelyconnected parts and network protocols that didn't have much to do with theimmediate problem. No matter how nonartistic the systems architect, he couldalways represent the cloud—an offhand, squiggly circle in the backgroundof his scheme.

As business use of the Internet has grown, the cloud has moved from a throwawaysymbol in the architect's diagram to something more substantial and specific: ithas become the auxiliary computing, supplied through Web site applications andWeb services, such as credit checks and customer address lookups, that backed upthe operation of standard business applications in the enterprise data center.Businesses built around Web services, such as Google, Amazon.com, and eBay,produced a new type of data center that was more standardized, more automated,and built from mass-produced personal computer parts. Access to these datacenters was kept under wraps for several years as their builders sought tomaintain a competitive advantage. As the notion caught on that it was possibleto provide more and more powerful services over the Internet, cloud computingcame to mean an interaction between an end user, whether a consumer or abusiness computing specialist, and one of these services "in the cloud."

When Microsoft appeared on the scene determined to stake a larger claim to thisnew form of computing, it started talking about its facilities in Chicago andIreland as a new type of data center. Google, which played a key role inestablishing the type, began illustrating key features of its data centers, andby late 2008 it was clear that the term cloud meant not only making useof innovative computing services out on the Internet, but sometimes gainingaccess through the Internet to computers in a powerful new type of data centerwith large resources available. Part of the appeal of using this type of datacenter was that you could pay for only what you used. The cloud had moved frontand center in thinking about the next wave of computing. The resource mightstill be described as being located in a squiggly circle, but oh, what aresource. The cloud deals with customers on a broad scale and with a level ofsophisticated automation never seen before. The vague goings-on out there in thecloud had taken on more significance and heft.

Even so, it is still difficult to summarize in a nutshell for the CEO, COO, andCFO what your company might do with cloud computing. Those who have watched theprogression just described sense that something big is under way, but it's hardto explain what it's all about with a sound bite. Rather, there is a large-scaleexperiment under way on many fronts to determine what might be done "in thecloud."

Many people agree that cloud computing is the next phase of business andpersonal computing, but why call it "cloud"? The term is ambiguous or, worse,amorphous. For 25 years, during tours of duty at Computerworld, DigitalNews, Interactive Week, and InformationWeek, I've watched visitorsdraw the cloud in whiteboard diagrams. It was the discard part of the picture.But first, what exactly is the cloud, and how did it go from something that youcould ignore to something that we can't seem to stop talking about?

Defining the Cloud

There are many definitions of the cloud—too many for any one to haveachieved a rigorous meaning. It's most specifically described as software as aservice, where a software application can be accessed online, as inSalesforce.com, Google Apps, or Zoho. It also takes the form of infrastructureas a service, where a user goes to a site such as Amazon Web Services' ElasticCompute Cloud (EC2) and rents time on a server. It also takes the form ofplatform as a service, where certain tools are made available with which tobuild software to run in the host cloud. These descriptors are common currencyin technology circles and have been defined by a government agency, the NationalInstitute of Standards and Technology. They have currency, but I don't put muchstock in them. I think they are temporary snapshots of a rapidly shiftingformation.

Nevertheless, the marketers have heard the buzz, and suddenly they want todescribe what they're doing as part of the cloud. "Cloud Computing: RealApproach or Buzzword Bingo?" asked the headline in an electronic newslettercrossing my screen recently.

So it's possible today that when the CEO asks his technical staff what's allthis he's hearing about the cloud, the IT directors and Web site managers willstart describing its parts, then argue over what's required in the cloud,disagreeing immediately and sometimes vigorously. The corporate IT staff knowsthe cloud when it sees it; it just can't tell you what it is.

The CEO has heard that the cloud is "the next phase of Internet computing," butwhat that means is now more muddled than ever. He shakes his head as he walksaway. If the members of his staff are arguing about what it is, chances are thatthey're not going to be able to tell him the thing he most wants to know: how'sit going to affect him and the business.

Lately he's heard that it's what consumers are doing as they increasingly usesmart handheld devices to download products such as iTunes. With seeming whimsy,these consumers turn some companies into huge winners, while bypassing others.So a subsidiary meaning of "cloud" is the next phase of business computing. Forsuch a thing to be true, more of each business will have to move out onto theInternet. Much of this book will discuss that prospect and what form the nextphase of business computing and business in the cloud age is most likely totake.

But to answer the CEO's question more directly, let's try to say what the cloudis. In late 2009, I saw Andi Gutmans, CEO of Zend Technologies, address agathering of 500 PHP developers in San Jose, where he said, "I'm not going totry to tell you what cloud is. Everyone's got their own definition."

Gutmans is coauthor of the modern version of PHP, which has become the mostpopular language on the Internet; in its 5.3 release, PHP is undoubtedly theleading language with which to build cloud applications. If Gutmans can't saywhat cloud is, I'm not altogether sure anyone else should try, but we must stillforge ahead.

Many people point to Travelocity's airline reservation system and Apple's iTunesStore as examples of cloud computing. While both of these are sophisticatede-commerce systems running on big Internet data centers, they are not what Iwould call cloud computing.

With the iTunes example, the so-called cloud is basically controlling the enduser consumer, taking the few digital bits of information on song selection andcredit card data that the user inputs and returning a song as a largercollection of bits. It has one purpose, and it executes the same electronictransaction for each end user, although shoppers can certainly pick out thespecific tune they want. Many iTunes enthusiasts believe that "the cloud" isworking for them. At 99 cents per digital transfer, I think they're working fora tiny subsection of cloud real estate owned by Apple.

To some extent, the same can be said for eBay and Amazon.com's retail store,although admittedly each keeps making use of more and more bits from the enduser to supply more services than a simple digital media download. They clearlydeserve citizenship in the emerging cloud nation and are representative of itspioneers.

Google comes closer yet to a solid definition of the cloud, with its massivedata centers around the world powering instant responses to millions of users.At Google headquarters in Mountain View, California, there's a display of arevolving world, with graphic spikes rising above population centers like Tokyo,Hong Kong, and Singapore. The spikes are a visualization of search engine use bylocation, showing that hundreds of thousands of searches are going on in eachplace simultaneously. The display is refreshed in real time; it's like apanorama of ongoing, intense human inquisitiveness around the globe.

Google's operations have many of the characteristics of the cloud: a modern datacenter resource, built from low-cost components, managed as a whole, activatedby end users on the network, and delivering automated results without eitherparty knowing much about the other's systems. This applies to both Google'ssearch engine and what it calls its Google App Engine, where developers buildapplications to run in the Google cloud. But what distinguishes some datacenters that are labeled as being "in the cloud," like Google's, from someothers that meet this description without by common consent being included aswell? In the end, even the description given here is inadequate to define wherethe essence of the cloud lies. Among good technologists, this definition wouldset off a debate that would still be going as the search visualization spikesdescended over Los Angeles and began to rise above Honolulu, Tokyo, and Beijing.

Instead of debating the technology innovations in the cloud datacenters—and there are many of them—we need to stand this debate onits head. It's not its most prominent feature, the huge Internet data center,that is the cloud's defining element. Rather, that is just one building block.The cloud is actually a number of advances—the data centers, the Web'ssetting of conventions for loosely coupled systems (two systems that don't knowvery much about each other), and an ability to activate virtualized serversremotely via standard Web services—that converge to give the cloud itsenticing power.

It's an interesting convergence, but in fact it's impossible to talk about thecloud without citing how anyone can use it at low hourly rates. Those big datacenters produce economies of scale that can be delivered to the end user,whether that user is an individual or a business. Amazon charges 8.5 cents perhour for the use of a server in its EC2 cloud infrastructure. Rackspace, anotherprovider of cloud infrastructure (servers and storage, with automated selfprovisioning), has lowered the cost further to 1.5 cents an hour, although atsuch rates it may be bidding for market share, not making profits. These ratesare presumed to be lower than corporate data center costs of operation becausefewer staff members manage many more servers through automated controls.Microsoft executives in statements to the Chicago press said they will managetheir new data center there with 45 people, including the janitors and securityguards. It's a data center designed for 300,000 servers, although it hadn'treached that number as this was being written. Many corporate data centers haveone system administrator focused on one application, or a handful ofapplications. In the cloud, one system administrator supervises hardware runninghundreds of applications.

Beyond businesses, many consumer end users have shown an appetite for consumingnew services on the Web. They enter personal data in MySpace; post pictures atflickr.com and both pictures and current commentaries in Facebook, and discloseprofessional associations on LinkedIn. The cloud offers a business model wheremany services, including massive amounts of computer server power, storage, andnetwork bandwidth, can be made available at a low price, even a price that seemsonly slightly more expensive than free. The technology convergence has foundexpression in a new distribution model for computing. So in addition totechnology, the cloud is a business model that makes a new form of computingwidely available at prices that heretofore would have been consideredimpossible.

To the technology and business model, we must add one final definingcharacteristic. What people call "the cloud" today is activated by a few presetend user actions, such as telling Facebook to upload a picture or post a commenton a wall. In the deeper example of sending a workload to the cloud and tellingit how it's to be run, the user has assumed a new relationship with the datacenter that has not been possible for most remote users in the past. The cloudgives the user "programmatic control" over a part of the data center, theability to command a server in the data center to run the program she hasselected and sent.

The cloud user doesn't have to ask someone to intervene to set up connections,turn on a powerful machine, and let him know what software is there to run. Onthe contrary, he "self-provisions" the computers he needs by swiping a creditcard and clicking off a checklist of what servers he wants to activate with amouse. For people who have a large task that they want to execute but don't wantto make out a purchase order to buy a new server, await delivery, then ask ITstaffers to configure it, this is as close to manna from heaven as they're goingto get.

Despite the ambiguity of the definition of the cloud, a fundamental shift isunder way. The data centers that serve the cloud seem to mesmerize those whohave learned the details of one or gotten near one, and in truth, many end userservices currently found in the applications on the desktop are likely to beserved from the cloud in the future. These data centers are often largewarehouse-style buildings, with few windows, surrounded by chain-link fences.Inside, row upon row of pizza box–style servers, or even smaller "blade"servers, are stuffed into racks standing seven feet tall. Amid the whir of fansand the hum of water pumps, row upon row of racks stretch into the distance.

Six years ago, I remember a debate over whether, if Microsoft built a datacenter that held 28,000 servers, it would be larger than Google's, but thatdebate is ridiculously out of date. Let's put this in perspective. Googledeclines to disclose how many servers its search engine runs on, lest it set offsuch an arms race. As it is, Microsoft boasts that the data center that itopened in September 2009 in Chicago to support its Azure cloud, the largest ofsix data centers that it plans to operate, will have 300,000 servers. And weknow that Yahoo! sorts and indexes the results of its Web crawls (the process ofassimilating all the documents and information on the Web) and executes otherinformation sorting on an internal cloud of 25,000 servers, and that doesn'tinclude running its content Web sites or conducting searches.

Google acknowledged in June 2009 that one of its data centers held 45,000servers. I am guessing that Google's total reaches 500,000 to 600,000 serversspread over at least 12 international data centers, and that may be too low. Ithas drawn up a plan that will allow it to manage a million or more servers. Thepoint is that few of the largest enterprise data centers claim 45,000 servers;some data centers in the cloud are being built on a scale never seen before.They tend to drive economies of scale that are not easy to duplicate anywhereelse.

These data centers are frequently what people are referring to when they discussthe cloud. In common parlance, the cloud is all those servers out on theInternet that are delivering information and services to end users, whereverthey may be. But such a description, in which we are still somewhat mesmerizedby size, is not the point. In addition to assembling a lot of server power, thecloud does things differently than the way computing has been organized before.Big Internet data centers have existed since the advent of AltaVista, Lycos,Excite, and other early search engines.

One distinction is that these new data centers have been able to leave so manyof the problems associated with traditional data centers behind. The traditionaldata center is labor-intensive and has many different kinds of servers,reflecting an evolution through several early models of computing supplied bydifferent manufacturers. The cloud data centers are different. They seem to havebeen engineered at a stroke for a new set of priorities; all the servers are thesame or closely related and are managed in the same way. They require fewerpeople. The traditional data center is overengineered and overinvested inhardware, trying to avoid machine failure. The cloud data center tolerateshardware failures and routes work around them. It solves through software thehardware problems that used to necessitate the shutdown of machines andreplacement of parts. It ties together large numbers of low-cost parts andmanages them as a single resource, and it performs accordingly. Thus, Amazon cantell you as soon as you make a purchase what other buyers like you also bought.And the marvelous Google search engine returns thousands of results from amultiple-keyword search in less than a second. Without the cloud, this speedwouldn't be possible.

But search and e-commerce are still child's play compared to what the cloud iscapable of offering. Facebook, with at last count 326 million active usersuploading text, photos, and video and manipulating content, comes a lot closerto showing the potential of the cloud, but it still falls short. Five years ago,such services would have seemed inconceivable. What will the new services looklike five years from now?

From out of the cloud will come massive computing resources at prices that seemto defy economics—information and services that stream to the end user asif from some beneficent power. Like a river flowing from the mountains, theInternet "cloud" provides resources to distant points without incurring anyextra charge. For example, you might get access to software that will help youdesign a sailboat to the latest principles of streamlined hull shapes. You mightfind advice and interactive guidance on how to cope with problems as you start acompany. You might go through an interactive process, using video to show whatyour firm is doing, with venture capitalists who are looking for a worthycandidate in which to invest. Once you've tapped into the cloud, you cease to bean isolated individual and you become part of a larger digital cosmos, whereeverything is linked to everything.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES FOR THE CLOUD REVOLUTION by CHARLES BABCOCK. Copyright © 2010 by Charles Babcock. Excerpted by permission of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Edition details

• Publisher: McGraw Hill
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0071740759
• ISBN 13: 9780071740753
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 272