Last week, my colleague Randy Bias, introduced the concept of the “cloudcenter” and it has gotten some good commentary, traction and feedback. Most basically put, a cloudcenter (e.g., GoGrid) is a “datacenter in the Cloud” with features, systems, processes and functionality that sysadmins and IT Operations folks are accustomed to. But I feel that the concept needs to be explored a bit more as well as from some different angles.

I attended a technology meetup on Tuesday night in San Francisco where GoGrid is a sponsor. People were packed elbow-to-elbow in the space and I had lots of time to talk about GoGrid and our vision of Cloud Computing to many. A few times, I was asked the common questions “How do you compare to Amazon EC2?” as well as “Are you a competitor to Amazon Web Services (AWS)?” To those people who asked, I gave the following answer (probably not as well articulated though):

Both Amazon and GoGrid are Cloud Infrastructure or Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) providers. We both reside within the bottom layer of the Cloud Pyramid, a term I coined last year to help explain Cloud Computing in an “over simplified” way. Both of our companies do essentially the same thing: providing elastic and dynamically scalable computing resources and infrastructure that is consumed on a self-service basis billed by usage. But how this infrastructure is provided is nuanced differently.

This broad definition warrants further explanation. First, my answer to the “competition” question. Personally, I don’t view AWS exactly as a competitor. They have provided incredible space validation as well as attracted new users to the Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) model. In fact, I would almost go as far as to categorize them as a “soft partner.” Here are a few reasons why I think this:

• we share the same generalized space of Cloud Computing,
• we offer similar feature-sets and functionality within the Cloud, and,
• we are driving towards a common goal of moving IT infrastructure into a “greener,” more cost-effective and much more efficient environment.

By sharing similar ideas and broad goals, GoGrid and Amazon play off each other well. So, if you group our marketing, sales and engineering efforts and pit them against more traditional infrastructure deployments, we are working together on this front: Cloud vs. self-hosted, traditional datacenters. We are an unofficial and non-formalized “soft-partner.” But that is the 10,000 foot view (from way up in the Clouds).

Let’s bring this down to a 100 foot view. This is where differentiation begins. As Randy outlines, there are two segments within the Cloud Infrastructure layer: Infrastructure Web Services and Cloudcenters. Infrastructure Web Services are characterized by specific Cloud services that can be consumed together or individually. That is to say, you can use EC2, for example, for raw compute power on its own, or couple it together with S3 for dynamic storage. The key here is that you have to work to integrate the two as a single offering, which requires programming and non-standard “glues” or protocols to connect it all together^[1]. I like to describe this as an a la carte offering, you essentially pick and choose what Amazon Web Services you want, develop the integration points and proceed from there.

On the other hand, the idea of cloudcenters is that the “solution” is provided for you, in the manifestation of “a datacenter in the sky.” Within the cloudcenter you are presented with tools, infrastructure and environments that are familiar to sys-admins and IT operations folks, but with all of the benefits of the Cloud: dynamic, pay-as-you-go, scalable hardware infrastructure that YOU are in full control of and can manage easily through a Web GUI or programmatically through an API. At the core of a datacenter or cloudcenter is the idea that you have various components available for managing your “physical” infrastructure (albeit “in the cloud”):

• hardware-based load balancers^[2]
• hardware-based firewalls^[3]
• Windows Server 2003/2008
• Linux Servers^[4]
• Persistent Storage^[5]
• Cloud Storage^[6]
• Dedicated Private Networks (VLANs)
• Hybrid Infrastructure connections (Cloud Connect)
• Infrastructure management (DNS, DHCP, etc.)

The distinction is clear, right? Or still “cloudy”? Let’s think of it a bit differently in terms of building a house. Using Infrastructure Web Services is akin to working with several contractors to put together different portions of your house (e.g., electrical, plumbing, sheet rock, etc.). YOU act as the general contractor to pull it all together, manage the process, identify what item needs to work with the other, etc. A cloudcenter, on the other hand, acts as the “general contractor” for you by telling what options are available and then seamlessly engineering and integrating these items within a single point of reference and management.

Geva Perry had some good commentary on Randy’s initial post on the idea of cloudcenters. I’m intrigued with the idea of a “Cloud Spectrum” which does work with his idea about the blurring of the Cloud with regards to the various offering.

However, I still stand by the distinction between Infrastructure Web Services as a “pick & choose” offering and Cloudcenters being an “all-in-one” model. Providing “raw infrastructure” within a controlled environment presents time and cost-savings that are visible on the other end of the spectrum. That is to say, Cloud Applications (SaaS) & Cloud Platforms (PaaS) are easy to use because the functionality is siloed  in a restrictive feature set. If you follow Perry’s spectrum model, the further left you go (towards SaaS), the higher the ease-of-use and time savings. The further to the right, the more flexibility your Cloud environment is, but the harder it is to “put together.” However, I would like to offer a slight twist to Perry’s Cloud spectrum idea because the idea falls apart a bit due to the multi-dimensionality of the axes. Obviously depending on the cloudcenter provider, ease-of-use does factor in, forcing the spectrum to become somewhat bent. GoGrid provides Cloud Infrastructure with the same characteristics of that of SaaS and even some PaaS vendors in terms of ease-of-use. So, while the spectrum idea works as you go towards the right with complexity and flexibility increasing, it splits apart as you move toward (and hit) EC2 and GoGrid. This is probably the subject of another post as I would like to explore this concept in greater detail. The bottom line is, with a GoGrid cloudcenter, you not only get flexibility and full control of your Cloud Infrastructure, but you also receive it “wrapped up” within a cohesive and easy interface normally present within the SaaS end of the spectrum.

What is your read on cloudcenters vs. Infrastructure Web Services? I would love to get your view on this.

1. S3 not accessible via CFS/NFS; SQS doesn’t all for JMS or STOMP protocols [↩]
2. Currently available & free [↩]
3. To be released in 1Q09 [↩]
4. RHEL, CentOS and soon Ubuntu and others [↩]
5. Available on every Cloud server [↩]
6. Dynamically scalable, 10GB Free, mountable storage [↩]

Amazon’s Web Services (AWS) is not the only way to build scalable Cloud Infrastructures.  There are two emerging methodologies for constructing Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) AKA “Cloud Infrastructure Services”.  The first is what we call “cloudcenters”, which are essentially datacenters in the sky.  The second is what we call an “Infrastructure Web Service”.  GoGrid was one of the pioneers for cloudcenters, while AWS largely created the second model.

Understanding IaaS means looking closely at these two approaches.  Clearly the notion of cloudcenters embodied by AWS competitors such as ourselves, FlexiScale, ElasticHosts, AppNexus, and others is important.  My colleague, Michael Sheehan, will go into more depth on how we think this distinction modifies his earlier Cloud Pyramid (right) in a follow-on blog posting to this one.

Infrastructure Cloud Models

Understanding these two approaches is important because it directly affects your selection of a Cloud Infrastructure provider.  These two models highlight a difference in core infrastructure and in target markets. Cloudcenters provide a direct equivalent to traditional datacenters and hence are usually more desirable for IT staff, systems operators, and other datacenter savvy folks.  Infrastructure Web Services on the other hand are more analogous to Service-Oriented-Architectures (SOA), require significant programming skills, and are much more comfortable for software developers.

Infrastructure Web Services

I’m going to assume for this article that you are somewhat familiar with Amazon Web Services (AWS), but I’ll briefly re-cap.  AWS provides a number of different ‘Web Services’ that can be consumed individually or put together to support different kinds of applications, usually a batch processing or web application of some kind.  These services include:

• Object-based file storage via Simple Storage Service (S3)
• Servers on demand via Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
• Block storage on demand via Elastic Block Storage (a part of EC2)
• Distributed database functionality via SimpleDB (SDB)
• Content distribution and edge-caching via CloudFront
• Messaging & queuing via Simple Queuing Service (SQS)
• Payment processing via Flexible Payment Services (FPS)
• Billing & re-packaging of the above services via Amazon Dev Pay

This is a robust ecosystem of services from which you can use any or all in order to build your application, getting the traditional benefits of Cloud Computing such as self-service, pay-as-you-go, and massive scalability.

Unfortunately, every service above is based on an Amazon standard, not an industry standard.  S3 is not accessible via CIFS or NFS.  EC2 provides Xen hosting, but image management and storage is completely custom.  SQS does not use any standard queuing or messaging protocols such as JMS or STOMP.  SimpleDB now has an ‘SQL-like’ interface, but is essentially a 100% ground up creation of Amazon.

A major advantage of using the Amazon approach however is that greenfield applications developed from scratch have a very powerful set of vetted, scalable services, that can be used to build that application.  This means avoiding the intrinsic and extrinsic costs associated with deploying a separate queuing or database system.

The alternative, of course, is to use the same tools, paradigms and standards that you deploy in an industry standard Enterprise datacenter today.

What’s a Cloudcenter?

Cloudcenters are that solution.  They provide the same kinds of tools that all datacenter and server operators are already accustomed to, but with all the traditional advantages of cloud (i.e. self-service, pay-as-you-go, and scalability).  Instead of creating completely new paradigms, cloudcenters are a methodology by which you, the customer, can have a virtual datacenter hosted ‘in the sky’.  Each virtual datacenter, a ‘grid’ in GoGrid terminology, is hosted in isolation from other customers, in a cloudcenter as shown in the diagram below:

Your grid is akin to a traditional datacenter whereby you have all of the regular components you expect such as hardware firewalls^[1], hardware load balancers, network storage (NAS or SAN^[2] ), virtualized servers, dedicated networks (VLANs), and the option for physical servers for workloads that should not be virtualized.

Logically, a grid looks like:

As you can see, this looks very much like a traditional datacenter infrastructure.

Traditional Datacenters and The Cloud

Just briefly I want to highlight what is in a ‘traditional’ datacenter.  These are all built in the same way.  The following diagram highlights the typical components in a datacenter and their relative dependencies on each other.  (This diagram isn’t perfect, it’s simply meant as a talking point.)

Cloud Infrastructure providers are in the business of providing you the equivalent functionality in the cloud using their scale for cost-effective service delivery.  They must also package this functionality to provide you a high level of control as it’s no longer your datacenter.  Control comes through a user interface (GUI), programming hooks (API), transparency (SAS70 audits), and performance and reliability guarantees (SLAs).

Cloudcenters focus on making your Cloud Infrastructure look very much like infrastructure you already have or are already familiar with, while Infrastructure Web Services ask you to embrace a new paradigm.

Cloudcenter Advantages

Besides the obvious advantage of ‘looking like’ your current datacenter, cloudcenters allow for strategies like using the Cloud for off-site disaster recovery.  It will be much easier to model a copy of your current datacenter to a cloudcenter than it would be to model a copy onto a Infrastructure Web Service.  There are many other advantages to the cloudcenter approach such as:

• Servers meant to be reliable not ‘unreliable-by-design’ on commodity hardware
• Cloudbridging^[3] will be much easier between dedicated VLANs on each side using IPSEC VPNs
• Cloudcenters will look more and more like each other over time, while there will probably never be another AWS
• Datacenter software tools will ‘just work’ with datacenter & cloudcenter standards
• User Interface for controlling the entire datacenter including firewalls and loadbalancers, not just servers^[4]
• Let your cloudcenter provide core infrastructure services like DNS, DHCP, NTP, and image management

Cloud Choices

Ultimately it’s great that there is so much choice when selecting a Cloud Infrastructure provider.  Both Amazon and GoGrid provide compelling solutions.  We believe that GoGrid, the very first public cloudcenter, is the Cloud of choice for sysadmins, operators, and Enterprise IT staff who need infrastructure that looks just their current datacenter infrastructure.

In the future we’ll blog in much more detail contrasting and comparing these two approaches to building Cloud Infrastructure services.

1. To be released in 1Q09 [↩]
2. Scheduled for 2009 [↩]
3. The ability to transparently connect you internal datacenter to your external virtual datacenter or cloudcenter [↩]
4. Imagine VMware VirtualCenter++ [↩]

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.

Today (Wednesday) there were a flurry of announcements about Microsoft Windows suddenly being available in the Cloud, first by Amazon Web Services and then by 3tera. (Oh, and now since the writing of the first draft of this post, Steve Ballmer just revealed the “Windows Cloud.”) It made me scratch my head a bit. If you are a regular reader of this blog or are familiar with GoGrid in general, you would know by now that GoGrid has been offering Windows Server 2003 (and more recently Windows Server 2008) in the Cloud since the public launch at the beginning of 2008. So why is this suddenly “breaking news” in the industry? Probably because the Goliath in the Cloud industry, Amazon, has thrown its weight behind this.

Being the “David” though has its definite advantages. Having the ability to introduce new and different Operating Systems and features quickly (weeks as opposed to quarters or years) is a clear plus. And being able to offer a “complete” package is another. One thing that Amazon EC2 users are used to is using a command line to control their EC2 server instances. Many of those users are Linux programmers and developers – those who are well versed “in the command line.” Windows users are a very different breed. For them, the GUI is very important. Users want to see icons, click on them, use menus, etc. to “make things happen.”

When we started developing GoGrid over 3 years ago, the user experience was a huge factor in determining the feature set. We settled on using Google’s Web Toolkit (GWT) because it provided the structure to create a rich experience without compromising performance. We won awards (Linux World 2008′s Best of Show) for our implementation. The rich web portal won the hearts of many for its ease of use and the eye candy.

GoGrid users wanted to also control their infrastructure programmatically as well. We responded with a public API for full “control in the cloud.” The GoGrid API is a huge untapped resource for any developer. Add the rich experience of a graphical web interface with the programmatic power of an API; GoGrid provides the full control spectrum for all types of users. 

So, before you run off spawning a bunch of EC2 Windows servers (oh wait, you can’t yet), remember that GoGrid has already almost a year of proven experience providing Windows Server 2003/2008 to end users… we are also a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner.

Regardless, it is important for Cloud Users to have a choice. Making the proper one is the challenge however, which means that (as I have mentioned before) one has to look beyond the Cloud itself and also at the ancillary services (SLA, Support, Industry knowledge, etc.) when making the choice.