Well, I thought that I could get away with no more articles in 2008. I guess that I was mistaken. I just read a good article by Chuck Goolsbee on SearchDataCenter.com titled: “Don’t buy cloud computing hype: Business model will evaporate” and I figured that I would put in my 2 cents on some of the items mentioned within.

Goolsbee takes a very pragmatic approach to “slicing through” traditional datacenter hosting (using Occam’s razor to boot), so that he could evaluate each and every aspect of what is contained in a physical environment. To summarize (and I’m paraphrasing, hopefully accurately), he mentions:

1. Payment Card/eCommerce systems – hard to audit the purchased virtualized hardware within the Cloud
2. Security – this works with auditing, but is the environment physically secure? Is there “data mingling?”
3. “Fully acronym-compliant” – is the Cloud HiPAA, SOX, SAS70, GLBA, etc compliant?
4. Data retention – for legal purposes, how can you ensure data retention?
5. Cloud Computing Success Stories – pure cloud solution successes are marketing driven
6. Margins for Cloud Providers – how can a cloud provider keep a good profit margin?
7. Data Center On-Demand – that is what Cloud Computing is
8. AWS is only real “successful” cloud provider – they are selling unused capacity
9. “Buzzword overlap” – SaaS is NOT a cloud

Those are just a few points that I wanted to call out and respond to from my own perspective. First of all, I don’t disagree (completely) with the items that are listed above. Any company looking at the Cloud as the end-all solution for their IT needs may be disappointed unless they fully think it all out. To address the points above:

1. I somewhat agree with this assessment. It is impossible to fully audit what I call “disposable IT.” However, the shift from CapEx to OpEx means that auditing methods need to be re-evaluated. In the past (and currently), if you wanted to requisition hardware, there was a process for doing so. It took time and had rigorous approval processes built in. Now, with the Cloud, you can do this “on the fly” and servers in the Cloud can be created and disposed of extremely quickly. With data in general, you can never fully have “absolute certainty” with an audit. Compliance requires a “reasonable certainty”, especially since data isn’t persistent in or outside of the Cloud. So, saying that the Cloud model will fail because it isn’t compliant or can’t be audited is erroneous.
2. Physical security is left to the hosting provider or even to an outsourced 3rd party whose specific job is ensuring security and complaince therein. This is true with traditional datacenters, “cloudcenters” (a term that we at GoGrid are using to describe our Cloud Infrastructure), and even shared hosting. Just as Credit Card fraud initially got a lot of hype due to the launch of eCommerce, security in the Cloud will undergo a similar scrutiny. There is (unconfirmed) more Credit Card fraud that happens over the phone or physically at merchants than with eCommerce. When you choose a hosting provider, cloud or traditional, you need to think about data mingling anyway. Just ask your provider those questions. As standards arise and Government and Enterprise adopt Public and Private Clouds, security, as I have said previously, will be as robust if not more so than traditional centers. As in the Credit Card example, it’s probably safer to use a credit card online now than over the phone, but that depends on the site.
3. Yes, the ever-persistent acronyms are important. GoGrid and parent company, ServePath, are SAS70 Type II certified, for example. But, these regulatory organizations will ALSO have to adopt to this new business and technology model. This could prevent some traction of the Cloud for a few corporations but I don’t think it will slow down others that much. And audits like we have, like SAS70, are widely-accepted industry standards for showing reasonable assurance and allowing auditability.
4. I agree with the assessment that the Cloud will make it difficult for Law Enforcement to ensure data retention. Cloud Storage and/or backups can be used to allow for data retention to take place. However, if data retention is a requirement due to compliance or legal issues, processes can be built in to any IT infrastructure, cloudy or not. The other thing to consider here would be “hybrid solutions.” Since GoGrid is run by a traditional managed hosting provider, ServePath, we understand that there are certain items that are better fit for physically residing somewhere. To that end, we developed Cloud Connect. Corporations or businesses that are concerned about data persistence and the physicality of that data could opt for a solution like Cloud Connect to meet this need.
5. Success Stories generated by providers are great. But what is better is blog posts or end-user reviews of the service. There aren’t too many reviews on successful implementations with datacenter deployments, mainly because it takes a very long time to roll out fully within a data center. And, it’s not “sexy.” Deploying a full IT infrastructure in the cloud in a matter of hours (vs. days or weeks in a datacenter) IS sexy, and people are talking about that. Time is money. If you can reduce your time to market by using the Cloud, then you will be many steps closer to monetizing than if you took a traditional method. Again, this could be where hybrid clouds (e.g., Cloud Connect) might come into play. I don’t agree with Goolsbee’s statement that “the cloud cannot contain anything critical”. Just look at SalesForce or EC2 or GoGrid. Plenty of critical data is contained within those Clouds. I do agree that Cloud Computing IS great for start-ups, but if you stop there, you are missing many larger opportunities.
6. Margins for traditional data centers is a topic unto itself. I will only scrape the surface here. GoGrid, for example, was born from traditional managed, dedicated hosting provider experience. In order to roll out and deploy servers, there is a large capital and operating expense. When new clients come on board, servers have to be configured to their needs, hard drives formatted, memory installed, cables connected, etc. The man-hours spent to roll out a single customer is quite large. We saw these inefficiencies as well as the fact that once deployed, servers sat idle and under-utilized. GoGrid was developed to combat these internal and external cost and labor inefficiencies. Not only could more “servers” be “contained” within fewer larger physical servers (reducing datacenter footprints, power, cooling, etc. metrics), but also, automated deployment reduced the human capital needs. Coupled with the fact that the control was now in the hands of the end user (in terms of scalability and configuration, for example), time to deploy was reduced (equating to less grumbling on all sides). If you read between the lines here, there are better margins for a hosting provider to convert some internal infrastructure over to providing Cloud “services” than not. Once the technology is created, rolling out Cloud infrastructures within a hosting provider for end users to later use is better than rolling out a handful of customized dedicated servers.
7. Some Cloud Computing providers are data-centers on demand, but very few. As I mentioned, we now refer to GoGrid as a CloudCenter, the equivalent of a DataCenter but in the Cloud and using the requirements of Cloud Computing: dynamically and rapidly scalable, paying for what you use and using only what you need, programmatically controlled through an API (or web interface), and somewhat “virtualized”. To be a true “datacenter in the cloud” you must have all of the components of a datacenter (servers, switches, firewalls, load balancers, storage, multiple network pipes, internal and external networks, etc.). Only those Cloud Providers that give out Infrastructure solutions (e.g., GoGrid and potentially EC2) can be considered “data-centers on demand” and even then, EC2 doesn’t quite fit.
8. AWS had a few things going for it to get it on its way to being considered a “successful provider”: its name,  its size and the fact that it was first to market (or appeared to be). Don’t get me wrong, their entire suite is very impressive and they have a lot of extremely happy customers. Also, they have truly cut the ice for other Cloud providers to come along (to which we are thankful). I’m not sure about the accuracy of what Goolsbee says (that they are “selling unused capacity”). This may have been true initially, but I believe they are their own business unit by now and their data centers have nothing to do with their “book selling.” Also, the mention of uptime and security guarantees being lacking will change (they recently released an SLA for EC2…it’s not as robust as GoGrid, for what it’s worth). The general pessimism about AWS not being good for mission-critical IT functions is not really warranted, I don’t feel. Datacenters fail, as do servers. This is not specific to the Cloud. If you are worried about your data, back it up! That is the best practice and not something that you should only do if you are using the Cloud.
9. I agree that Cloud Computing as a general buzzword is over-used and vague, but it is here to stay until something better comes along. We are already seeing segmentation within it. It is a general encapsulation of many different things. I do think that SaaS belongs as one of the Cloud layers (Cloud Applications) provided it meets the Cloud checklist. Google IS a cloud provider (Google App Engine as a Cloud Platform; Gmail as a Cloud Application). Buying application time (specifically “hosting” your Python application within their datacenters) IS using the Cloud, but not Cloud Infrastructure but rather Cloud Platforms. In fact, you will be able to buy additional capacity on App Engine soon.

Goolsbee’s article is a definite read. Since he is an executive at Digital.Forest (a colocation provider), it does make sense that he believes the Cloud business model has some faults. I’m glad that he eloquently articulated many of the concerns that businesses, data centers and hosting providers have about the “coming of the Cloud.” I’m lucky enough to be able to visit both sides of the equation: DataCenter (ServePath & ColoServe) and CloudCenter (GoGrid). Happy New Year!

The start of a New Year is upon us so it is time to get a list together of things that you will do (or do your best to do) in the coming year. Everybody has their own personal Resolution lists, but what about your Business ones? How are you going to remain competitive? What steps are you going to take to cut your budget to remain lean and mean? Are you going to stick with your current methods or adopt some new strategies?

Here are some “Resolutions” that you can think about as you ready your business for 2009.

1. Invest some time in understanding the term “Cloud Computing” – there are several easy-to-understand definitions and movies that have come out that make Cloud Computing a bit more understandable. This one was done at the 2008 Web 2.0 Expo. Then came the GoGrid “Cloud Computing in Plain English”. Recently, there is a new “In Plain English” from the actual Common Craft folks (whom we got our inspiration from). And here is a more technical presentation that came out recently. Regardless, there are lots of sources out there for quick understandings. I have been maintaining a Bookmark RSS feed as well of many of the Cloud Computing blogs and sites. Subscribe to that feed for updated links. Also, read through the popular Cloud Computing Group on Google. Lastly, you can check Wikipedia for their ever evolving definition of Cloud Computing.
2. Do some research on different Cloud Providers – no Cloud Computing provider is the same, and the differentiation is continuing. Last year (2008), I introduced the idea of the Cloud Pyramid which has Cloud Applications (SalesForce) at the top, then Cloud Platforms (Google App Engine or Microsoft Azure) in the middle and finally Cloud Infrastructure (GoGrid and Amazon EC2) as the bottom foundation. Also hooked into it are Cloud Extenders (e.g., Amazon’s SQS) and Cloud Aggregators (RightScale). It’s pretty obvious that there are many choices to be made and that these are very specific to the type of business you are running. In fact, we will be further segmenting the IaaS (Cloud Infrastructure) section more over the next few weeks. Briefly, GoGrid is now being positioned as a “CloudCenter” (which is essentially, a DataCenter equivalent but in the Cloud). More on that later. In the meantime, compile a series of questions for yourself and for your prospective provider. We will get a list together of things you might want to ask (post to come).
3. Review your IT Budget – If you are like most companies out there, you are going through your 2009 budgeting (or have done so already and are probably on your 10th revision now). One way to make your CFO happy is to reduce your Capital Expenditures (CapEx). The easiest way to do that is to really take a hard look at Cloud Computing. If you can slash your CapEx spend by downsizing your physical server footprints, you can easily upsize that same footprint in the Cloud.
4. Empower your Programmers – Cloud Computing offers something new to Programmers: the ability to programmatically control their IT infrastructure. Using an API, Programmers can skin the functionality provided by Clouds as well as develop “intelligent” applications that scale dynamically, for example.
5. Empower your IT Staff – Be sure that you don’t ignore your IT Staff as you look at the Cloud as a physical IT infrastructure alternative. They have some best practices and standards that should be incorporated in what your IT strategies will be. Let them experiment with the Cloud so that they fully grasp what it can do for your organization. They may tell you that it is a great direction to go in, or, they may say that your current infrastructure simply cannot be ported to the Cloud. There may also be some hybrid solutions (like GoGrid’s Cloud Connect) that will give them the best of both worlds.

These are just a few Cloud Computing New Year’s 2009 Resolutions to get you thinking. What are your business resolutions for 2009?

Many of you have been asking about when the next release of GoGrid will be and what new features it will have. Trust me, we have been just dying to get this exciting release out, so much so that I tried to extract some details from the development team back in September. Well that day has arrived and you can now unwrap your holiday gift early!

Some highlights of what is included in this release:

Cloud Storage v0.7

GoGrid Cloud Storage is an instantly scalable and reliable file-level storage service for Windows and Linux servers running in the GoGrid Cloud. If you want to place it within the Cloud Pyramid, it would be considered a Cloud Extender which means that it works in conjunction with another Cloud Service (specifically, GoGrid Server Clouds):

GoGrid Windows & Linux cloud servers are able to mount GoGrid Cloud Storage using a secure private network and common transfer protocols such as SCP, FTP, SAMBA/CIFS and RSYNC to move data back and forth from Cloud Storage. The Cloud Storage service is dynamically scalable and charged on a pay-as-you-use basis.

Pricing is as follows:

• Initial 10 GB Cloud Storage is FREE
• Additional storage is $0.15/GB per month. For example, if you use an additional 100 GB’s of storage, the cost would be $15/month, giving you 110 GB of storage.
• Zero set-up fee
• Zero long-term commitment
• You are billed for your peak usage during any particular month. For example if you spike to 110 GB during a month and then scale back to 60 GB, you are charged for the peak of 100GB (or $15)
• Since Cloud Storage is attached to your private network, there is no charge for data transfer back and forth between is and your GoGrid Cloud Servers

Features include:

• 10 GB FREE Cloud Storage
• FREE data transfer to and from your GoGrid Cloud servers and GoGrid Cloud Storage
• Can be used as a “file level backup” (note: there are no tools to automate this backup; you must provide your own solution)
• Servers access Cloud Storage using transfer protocols like SCP, FTP, SAMBA/CIFS and RSYNC
• GoGrid Windows and Linux Cloud servers can share the same storage quota
• On-the-fly provisioning which means instant scalability
• Storage utilization graphs available within the GoGrid UI (see screenshots in the section below)

Some Important Things To Know:

• Cloud Storage cannot be deleted via the user interface (the way you can with other GoGrid objects). In order to not incur Cloud Storage charges, you must bring your storage usage below the 10 GB threshold.
• Setting up GoGrid Cloud Storage is a 3-step process: 1) Create within the GoGrid web portal, 2) Connect each of your servers to your Private Network and 3) Mount the storage on each of your Cloud Servers
• With the 0.7 release, you cannot use the API to upload/download using web services (PUTS, GETS, LIST, Deletes). You will be able to do this in the 1.0 release coming soon.
• You can only create one GoGrid Cloud Storage device per GoGrid Account
• Username and Password are automatically created for accessing your Cloud Storage allotment and is presented in the Passwords section of the GoGrid portal. Note: username and password cannot be changed or deleted
• You cannot RDC or SSH directly into Cloud Storage
• Your GoGrid Storage Quota will automatically adjust in 100 GB blocks. When you hit an 80% utilization on your current quota, your account will automatically increase by 100 GB. You are, however, only billed for what you actively use within your Storage.
• Cloud Storage is in addition to the persistent storage already available on each GoGrid Cloud Server

How-To documentation is available on the GoGrid Wiki. Specifically:

• Cloud Storage Overview and Instructions
• Configuring CentOS Servers to Access Cloud Storage
• Configuring RHEL Servers to Access Cloud Storage
• Configuring Windows 2003 Servers to Access Cloud Storage
• Configuring Windows 2008 Servers to Access Cloud Storage
• Cloud Storage Quick Start Guide (9 page Adobe PDF)

New On-hover Implementation

In order to increase the usability of GoGrid’s Award Winning web portal, we have added some “eye candy” that actually provides some useful information. What is an “on-hover?” Essentially, if you hold your mouse over any of the GoGrid objects within the GoGrid web portal, you will see additional details display automatically.

Pictures are worth 1,000 words so:

Cloud Storage shows the hostname of your storage as well as your Quota. As you use more, the status will graphically change and reflect the percentage used.

Cloud Server on-hovers show the name you gave it, the description, how much RAM is allocated, the base image used, the contents of the server image template and the IP address assigned to it.

The Load Balancer on-hover shows the name and description of your load balancer, as well as the type of load balancing and persistence that was configured. Also, the load balancer’s Virtual IP and port and the Real IPs and ports (the IPs of the servers where the balancer is directing traffic) are displayed. This makes for easy and quick information gathering of your load balanced infrastructure.

Those are two pretty great features! Also, look to the next coming days for a NEW Customer Wiki, UPDATED GoGrid Wiki and NEW User Forums! (I will post details on this once it is live and ready to use.)

What do you think? Pretty great release, no? Drop me a note!

After about a year of Cloud Computing under my belt, analyzing trends in the market, talking with various professionals as well as customers in the space and watching our own Cloud Computing product, GoGrid, take off as a Cloud Computing leader and innovator, I feel that it is time to make some 2009 predictions for Cloud Computing. Who would have guessed that 2008 would have been “The Year of the Cloud“? I think that 2009 will be “The Year of the CLOUDS” (emphasis on multiple).

A Quick Look Back

If you look back to January 2008, the players in Cloud Computing were few are far between. Obviously, Amazon was breaking ground in establishing themselves as the front-runner at that time. But the term was too new and largely undefined. One of my first blog posts discussed some trends of grid computing, virtualization & virtualized hosting, cloud computing and “green hosting.” For the most part, many of those concepts have not changed. Rather, they have evolved, grown and become more established as leading technologies for the future. As of the writing of that article, GoGrid was still in Private Beta, but with well over 2 years of development getting it ready for prime time.

Virtualization was definitely the buzzword of the beginning of 2008, mainly because it was something that people could fairly easily understand. There were several desktop virtualization products available for users to host different OS’s within their own OS. As Jeff Kaplan predicted, On-Demand services started to really take off for several reasons that are applicable even today (if not more so). His number 1 reason: “Services are Recession Proof” (more about that later in my predictions). While Jeff’s ideas were largely focused on SaaS, there is a lot to be said when you apply them to Cloud Computing in general.

Close to when GoGrid was launched at the end of March 2008, coincidentally(?) the search term “Cloud Computing” (according to Google Insight) really started a strong upward trend within World Wide Searches:

As the US (and World Wide) Economy fell off the cliff, so it seems, did the interest in the Cloud (but that could be due to other worldly distractions). What is actually a bit interesting is that just after the Economy went south, there was a big spike in interest in the Cloud…were people thinking it was recession-proof? Perhaps. (“Cloud Computing” is the blue line below and “US Economy” is appropriately red).

Analysis of the previous year is probably better handled through a separate post. On to some of my 2009 predictions.

Ten Cloud Computing Predictions for 2009

Below is a list of some trends or ideas that I think will surface or grow in 2009. Note, these are not ranked.

1. Clouds Reduce the Effect of the Recession
   The US Government just announced that the US has been in a recession since December 2007. To most people, this is simply stating the obvious. Many in the Cloud Computing field have been touting how moving to the Cloud can lower high Capital Expenditures (CapEx) and shift this to Operating Expenditures (OpEx). Coupling that with a pay-for-what-you-use, use-only-what-you-need model, and Cloud Computing becomes a panacea for extending the runway of your business. Prudent companies are slashing budgets and looking to weather the turbulent market for as long as possible. Those companies that are heavily dependent on advertising will be seeing the effects of cash hording in Q1 and Q2 of 2009. Utility-based spending is a shift in mind-set that could potentially slow the freefall and domino effect we are currently experiencing.
   Recently, I heard about a similar type of idea that could potentially help the sales of hybrid or electric cars. One of the primary barriers that is preventing users from purchasing “green” cars is the high cost associated with a purchase. If the auto industry were to adopt a cell phone business model where you pre-buy your electrical charges and the cost of the car is “subsidized” through the use of recurring and predicable revenue, users might more readily opt for a purchase (at a discounted price). However, several infrastructure changes would be required in order for such a pricing-shift to take place, meaning that charging stations would have to be abundant (and possibly government subsidized as well). In the long term, building the green infrastructure would reduce the US dependence on foreign oil, establish new businesses and competition for charging station infrastructure and move towards bettering the environment. While not exactly the same, similarities can be drawn between this idea and the shift from self-hosted servers to Cloud Infrastructures. CapEx is reduced (e.g., green cars become less expensive to buy/no need to purchase servers that are under-utilized) and costs are moved to OpEx (e.g., charging your car when you need to/paying for only the infrastructure you use).
2. Broader Depth of Clouds
   Cloud Computing providers are leapfrogging each other with new features and offerings. This will continue in 2009. GoGrid was the first to provide a wide assortment of Windows Server Clouds (Windows Server 2003 at launch and later Windows Server 2008). Towards the end of the year, Amazon’s EC2 announced the availability of Windows Server 2003. Microsoft jumped into the ring as a Cloud Platform with Azure. By far, AWS is leading the field by offering a wide array of Cloud services (EC2 – Cloud Infrastructure/ S3, SimpleDB, CloudFront, & SQS – Cloud Extenders). Their footprint continues to deepen as well. But sometimes it’s not bad being #2. GoGrid is a Cloud Infrastructure provider with Cloud Extenders (with GoGrid Cloud Storage) with an emphasis on mirroring standard IT infrastructure services with a focus on ease-of-use through a GUI and programmatic control through an API. Microsoft will be launching their own Cloud Infrastructure in 2009 as well as a variety of Cloud Applications (e.g., Exchange). Google will extend its Cloud Platform with services for storing and serving large files, larger dataset management, pay-for-use enhanced usage and new runtime languages (beyond Python). RackSpace made its move at the end of 2008 with SliceHost and Jungle Disk acquisitions; look to them putting all of the pieces together in 2009. I am seeing the trend towards a broader range of services by several large players. This may confuse the market in the first half of 2009 as IT organizations struggle to figure out the best Cloud solution and how to put it all together as a financially and technologically viable strategy.
3. VC’s, Money & Long Term Viability
   With the credit market increasingly tight, if not non-existent, VC’s, Angel funders and other investors will be faced with some tough decisions. The Dot-Com era allowed for almost anybody to get money for business plans that were essentially vapor-ware. Web 2.0 was slightly better, you had to have a viable business strategy, an established user base, and well on the path to monetization to receive funding. Even with that, there was no guarantee of survival. Many Web 2.0-ers are now shutting shop, despite the fact that they are loved by many. Web 3.0 will present a much steeper hill to climb from a funding perspective. I have spoken to a few investors and VC’s recently (as the Economy imploded) and they still seemed to be somewhat optimistic, but very cautious. But it is their job to keep a positive outlook as they look for the next best thing. With Cloud Computing services gaining even more momentum, this is a good market for funding. But the VC’s and others are really doing their due diligence this time through (are they finally learning from their mistakes over the past 10 years?). Cloud Infrastructure providers will not be the ones receiving the scarce capital, I don’t think. And SaaS providers are a dime a dozen (not in a derogatory way). The SaaS market will continue to grow (not as quickly as previously, I don’t think), in fact, the first Quarter of 2009, we may see a dip as some SaaS organizations actually go under, unfortunately. I think that Cloud Aggregators (those who work to provide integrated Clouds and management services around them) will be ripe for additional funding. For Cloud Platform providers the outlook is a bit trickier as frequently they are dependent on public run-time languages or maintaining proprietary code to keep momentum. I think the smaller providers may see an influx of capital in order to remain competitive, if not survive.
4. Partnerships Galore & Weeding Out of Providers
   Strategic alliances and partnerships are critical to any business success. Not only do you increase exposure to other audiences but also provide more innovative and robust services in the process. GoGrid recently announced partnerships with RightScale, Appistry and GigaSpaces to name a few, with several others coming in 2009 (GoGrid Partners). We will see several new alliances within the Cloud Computing space but this is where my crystal ball is a bit hazy. Cloud Aggregators will be the big movers here and they really have to be. Aggregators need to ensure their own fiscal viability by broadening and diversifying their offerings. If a provider is too attached to EC2, for example, and if Amazon decides to develop functionality that mirrors that of the Aggregator and offer it for free or at a fraction of the cost, the Aggregator will struggle to remain competitive. Aggregators will be core to driving standards and interoperability (#7 below) as they will have much deeper insight into the workings of each of their partners. If they can’t remain ahead of the curve, a big fail whale is on the horizon. Tied to #3 above ($$$), those providers who can’t remain solvent or make smart decision or even monetize in a clean, clear way will go under. Obviously I don’t wish this on any provider, but it is inevitable. I won’t make any predictions but several Cloud providers are for sale or seeking funding to keep their lifeline healthy.
5. Hybrid Solutions
   Not every corporation or business is looking to the Cloud as the next sliced bread. While the Cloud can be the catalyst for a potentially more sound IT and financial strategy, it will not solve every IT challenge. There are some IT infrastructures that must remain in a private datacenter or running on dedicated, bare-metal servers. Database intensive environments may not be conducive to exclusively residing within the Cloud. This year, GoGrid launched the 1.0 version of  Cloud Connect as a way to allow for these types of hybrid (dedicated servers connected to Cloud servers) solutions. Others are calling Hybrid Infrastructure “Cloudbursting.” I expect that some of the strategic partnerships coming in 2009 will include other hybrid solutions of this nature. In fact, they may give way to full mirrored failover or redundancy solutions where traditional infrastructures are mirrored within the Cloud, sharing common datastreams to ensure near-real-time availability of data and services.
6. Web 3.0
   Web 3.0 is upon us. I have long thought that it will be all about Integration and Standards (#7 below). I have written about “mashups” and integrations as being a large component of Web 2.0. Web 3.0 will make these integrations much more seamless and go well beyond that of simple visible shared data applications. What we saw with mashups was essentially proof-of-viability and with some experimentation thrown in. Like a strategic partnership, successful integrations are critical to the furthering the power of the Cloud. In 2009, we will see integrations taking place at a much lower level of IT. Data integrations will remain as they are fairly established. Infrastructure integration and companies offering this as a solution, either as consultation or aggregation of technologies, will drive the innovation of Web 3.0. These integrations will help create new and unique SaaS and even PaaS offerings to the market. The hurdle here will be in the explanation and usability of said solutions.
7. Standards and Interoperability
   While Cloud Computing seemed like the New World in 2007 and the Wild West in 2008, it has now been colonized and settlements established. 2009 will be that of Civil Engineering. The development of standards and interoperability between the varying levels of Clouds is inevitable. It is also tied directly to the needed adoption by the Enterprise. Without clearly defined standards, best practices and even open interoperability, further adoption of the Cloud will slowed dramatically. Just as Phone Number Portability was an important factor in reforming the telcos during the 1990′s and early 2000′s, I believe that Cloud portability (enabled only through guaranteed standards and interoperability) will be a movement in mid to late 2009. Everyone has “agreed to agree,” and now are making inroads towards standards, a reality. It will be important that the big players in the space (e.g., Amazon, Microsoft, Google) become involved. IBM has tossed their hat into the Cloud ring by announcing a Cloud Computing Certification called “Resilient Cloud Validation” (but only if they collaborate with IBM). Without these big players’ participation, there will be 2 types of clouds (standard and non-standard) and/or companies that provide filters or converters to allow for Cloud Portability.
8. Staggered Growth within the Cloud
   I will go out on a limb here as say that there will be tremendous growth within the Cloud. But that is an easy prediction to make. The Cloud encompasses so much that it would be difficult to really see a stagnation or shrinkage. SaaS will expand (perhaps not as rapidly as previously) and offerings by other layers within the Cloud Pyramid will deepen and broaden. Because of the complexity of building up Cloud Infrastructures (from a provider perspective), the Infrastructure layer will take a less steep growth curve as compared to Platform Clouds and Application Clouds will beat the previous two layers out as well. Cloud Aggregators will come and go, and Cloud Extenders will evolve and become more intertwined with other Cloud layers. 2009 will also see the increased visibility of Private Clouds, especially within the Enterprise, until standards and security concerns are met within Public clouds.
9. Technology Advances at the Cloud Molecular Level
   There is probably a new layer to the Cloud Pyramid that needs to be added, one that resides at the “molecular” level. Chip makers such as Intel, are making plans on enabling Cloud-optimized CPU and other types of chips to allow for a more unique control of built-in switches. They are extremely interested in many of the open and proprietary virtualization technologies out there (Xen, VMware, Virtual Iron, etc.) and are strategizing on how to make their chipsets more compatible and efficient for use in the Cloud. Obviously, their vision is to have all Cloud infrastructures running with “Intel Inside” stamped on them. Many Cloud Computing providers, including GoGrid, already hook into chip-level switches and controls to make better use of the processors. Dell, HP and IBM will most certainly release servers specifically designed and configured for running optimized Clouds. Since all Clouds are powered by physical hardware and as advances are made further propelling Moore’s Law into the stratosphere, Clouds will become more powerful and able to take the place of traditional servers even more readily.
10. Larger Adoption
    If one factors in many if not all of the items mentioned previously, the obvious conclusion is that Cloud adoption will be significant in 2009. The Enterprise will move beyond simply testing the waters and just using the Cloud for project work. Private Clouds will help with their acceptance and the undeniable call for cost-savings through reduced CapEx will be too loud to be ignored. My gut also tells me that Government will play a much larger role as well. In 2008 I spoke with a person from the French government whose mission it was to bring the Cloud to their government infrastructure. This is only the tip of the iceberg. With the 2008 US Election, Barack Obama proved how critical an online presence is to furthering the concept of “change.” The Obama-Biden Technology Agenda points to the obvious importance of Technology, especially with the appointment of a Chief Technology Officer for the US Government.  And, as always, Web 3.0 and Startups will remain on the bleeding edge of hosting technology yet conserving cash for a sunnier day (ok, it can be a bit “cloudy”).

It’s always fun trying to gaze into a crystal ball and predict the future. When peering into it for perspective and predictions on Cloud Computing, a “cloudy” crystal ball is a bit of an oxymoron. Cloud Computing is no longer a just a “newfangled” movement but rather an established IT and business strategy that will be critical to all companies regardless of business models. What are your predictions? Leave a comment!

There have been a flurry of announcements in the Cloud Computing space in the past two days, most notably coming from Rackspace and Amazon. I have been trying to digest these quickly and wanted to post a recap and my analysis of this news. It’s pretty obvious to those of us within the Cloud Computing space that this is not a trend, but actually a logic progression of technology and services. The benefits of the Cloud are clear: pay for what you use, use only what you need, internet infrastructure provisioned using a web browser or API. But once again as the space becomes cluttered with new providers or features, the confusion starts bubbling up.

Rackspace Announcements

So let’s take a look at what Rackspace announced on Oct 22nd. Billed as expansion of their “Cloud Hosting Portfolio”, Rackspace’s Cloud announcement provides some insight into their vision and roadmap. I listened to their “Cloud Event” which seemed to get a lot of hype, however, nothing truly jumped out at me as being earth shattering. A phrase comes to mind after all of the dust settled from the event “innovation through acquisition.” Don’t get me wrong, Rackspace’s achievements within the hosting business are definitely impressive and the company did manage to pull off one of the only IPO’s of 2008 within the Technology Sector. But this event seemed to be more of a requirement stemming from stockholders and their Board to “show something noteworthy.” They did do a great job at getting everyone’s attention though.

From the Cloud Event, I wrote down some points that they mentioned:

• They broke down the Cloud into only 2 segments: Cloud Hosting & Cloud Applications
• Their Cloud Hosting Division now consists of 3 products: Cloud Sites, Cloud Files & Cloud Servers
  • Cloud Sites – this is the current Mosso offering, rebranded. I view this to fall under the Cloud Platform part of my Cloud Pyramid. You are free to do what you want within it, but with some limitations (predefined application frameworks, no SSH or RDC access currently, no API access, month-to-month billing). This is a good option for people who want slightly more than what Google App Engine offers Python users for free.
  • Cloud Files – one can view this as a CDN meets an online storage solution (e.g., an Enterprise DropBox). For this solution, Rackspace acquired JungleDisk (which interestingly uses Amazon’s S3 service for their cloud storage solution – this is expected to change to CloudFS, Rackspace’s own product, at a later date). I think of this offering as falling within the Cloud Extender’s portion of the Cloud Pyramid, detailed within this presentation.
  • Cloud Servers – with the acquisition of Slicehost, an innovator within the Xen virtualization, low-cost VPS hosting arena, Rackspace adds to their product line “cloud servers.” Similar features here compared to EC2 and GoGrid with some feature omissions and I view this to be Rackspace’s Cloud Infrastructure entrance.

My Competitive Analysis of Rackspace’s Announcements

While many within and outside the industry may view Rackspace’s recent announcements as a “unified cloud strategy,” my, albeit biased, analysis of the news is a bit different, not as unified and lacking in some areas. Some points to ponder:

• Why does Rackspace view the Cloud as only having two segments (Hosting and Applications) as stated by their CEO, Lanham Napier, in his keynote? It is much broader and richer than that, with Cloud Applications, Cloud Platforms, Cloud Infrastructure, Cloud Extenders and Cloud Aggregators. Perhaps Napier’s statements were specific to their strategy, and that would explain how Infrastructure and Platforms seem to fall under the umbrella of Cloud Hosting. Over-simplifying does make sense if Rackspace is trying to go mainstream with their announcements. However, if you try to be everything within the space, you could be spread a bit thin. This is one of the reasons why GoGrid chose to be at the most fundamental layer of the Cloud and provide Infrastructure as a foundation to build other Clouds or Services on top of.
• Do their new services seem to be a cobbling together of technologies? Will they have integration problems as they move toward a more cohesive offering? This isn’t necessarily an issue as they are trying to accomplish something on many parts of the Cloud Spectrum. But this could potentially present logistical and business issues as they attempt to wrap the offerings together.
• Cloud Storage as as stand-alone solution is good. It will be interesting to see if and how their Cloud Files offering can integrate with Mosso and Slicehost.
• Billing madness on the horizon? Will users of many of their products get unique bills for each one? How will monthly pricing (SliceHost and Mosso) work with Cloud Files (usage based)?
• What about Windows? Slicehost offers no Windows Cloud Servers. Mosso offers limited platform support for Windows environments. Remember, GoGrid is the largest Windows 2008/2003 Cloud Infrastructure provider on the planet!
• Where is the rest of the infrastructure? If Rackspace is going to bill this as Cloud Hosting, what about hardware-based load balancing?
• SLA’s – At the event, Rackspace claimed to have a 99.99% uptime guarantee, but I believe this was only related to their Cloud Files offering. I’m actually a bit confused by Mosso’s. It states that for each 60 minutes of unscheduled downtime, they will credit you 1 day of hosting. Does that mean you have to have an outage lasting more than 60 minutes for the SLA to kick in? Can six 10 minute outages be lumped together for that 1 hour? Does it span months? There is no mention of an uptime guarantee. Similarly (and coincidentally), Slicehost thinks that “SLA agreements are just plain silly”. Try telling that to an Enterprise user or corporation who has been hit with an outage. No guarantees there. I expect both of these to change soon. Note, if a GoGrid user is down for 7 hours, they get a month for free.
• Play Cloud Computing Product Announcement Bingo for yourself to see other areas where GoGrid stacks up better.

Amazon’s Announcements

Today, Amazon rattled its saber with some Cloud announcements of their own. Amazon has done a tremendous job in the Cloud Computing space and analysts and the press consider GoGrid to be Amazon’s #1 competitor. Two of their three announcements today seem to be more of a “catch-up” play than anything else. More about that in the analysis section. Today marked three important items, specifically:

• The removal of the Beta tag from their EC2 product
• The availability of Windows Servers in EC2
• The availability of a Service Level Agreement (SLA) for EC2

Amazon had announced that they would be offering Windows several weeks ago and most likely this “availability” announcement was brought on by the fact that the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC) is starting next week. Note: GoGrid is an exhibitor at the PDC and will have some exciting Windows Cloud Server announcements at the event.

My Competitive Analysis of Amazon’s Announcements

It’s nice to have some competition in the Cloud. It drives innovations, prices and surrounding services to the benefit of the end-user. So let’s take a quick look at what these three items mean (and once again, I put on my GoGrid-green colored glasses for this):

• Removal of Beta – the beta tag is over-used and has lost a lot of its value. However, it does provide a shelter for some companies and forces other companies to live to higher standards. EC2 has been out in the market for a long time so this does make sense. But if you couple this with the details contained with Amazon’s new SLA, you can see how the removal of the tag may have forced their uptime guarantee to be lower (99.95%). Note: GoGrid has a beta tag, however we treat all aspects of our product to be that of a production environment. “Beta’s” are not technically covered under our SLA credits, yet we have been honoring SLA Credits fully since GoGrid’s launch in March.
• Windows availability – Windows in the cloud is huge. Over 2/3′s of GoGrid’s cloud servers deployed are Windows. It is only logical that Amazon release Windows then. The important thing here to note though, is that they are ONLY launching Windows Server 2003 and not Windows Server 2008 (already available on GoGrid). Amazon also offers only Microsoft SQL Server Express and Standard Editions; GoGrid offers Express, Workgroup and Standard editions. While EC2 now does offer higher-end Windows Server 2003 with larger RAM allocations, GoGrid already has plans for larger RAM allocations and other methods for utilizing higher-end SQL Server environments. Also, just figuring out your Administrator password for new Windows instances on EC2 seems a bit more complex then necessary (GoGrid does this in an easy way, you simply look it up within the GoGrid portal…no command line interface required – you could, if you want, get your passwords via the GoGrid API if you like command line interfaces). Since we are on the topic of command lines vs. GUIs, our Windows in the Cloud experience indicates that many Windows users are more comfortable using a point-and-click environment (GoGrid’s Web Portal) vs. command line. Users trying Windows on EC2 may be greeted with an unwelcome surprise at the level of “code” they will need to employ with Windows on EC2.
• SLA details – SLA’s are good and there for the protection of the end-user (Mosso and Slicehost should listen and follow our and Amazon’s lead). It makes business sense to me that as EC2 removes the Beta tag, they also add an SLA. But let’s read a bit between the lines here:
  • 99.95% availability during the service year – that’s about 5 hours of downtime a year (not bad)
  • 10% SLA – for every $1.00 you spend during an outage, you will only get $0.10 back; GoGrid takes a different approach by offering 100 times the fees back, so for every $1.00 you spend during an outage, you will get $100 back in Service Credits. To put it differently, if you are down on EC2 for a month, you only get credit for 3 days.
  • No mention of data loss or coverage/recovery; at least with GoGrid, your storage is persistent we will make all reasonable efforts to recover your data.

While I realize that this is not an exhaustive analysis, it did tire me attempting to read between the lines. And do understand, this post is not intended to criticize any of the companies mentioned, it is more designed to provide another Cloud vendor’s perspective on the announcements and hopefully open a critical eye to these announcements. I always recommend “shopping around” as you look for a Cloud Solution as some vendors will have offerings that better meet your business or technical needs. Don’t get caught up in the hype of it all. It’s good to see the space starting to mature…I think I’m getting a few more grey hairs in the process.