Five Minutes in the Cloud
The Implications of an Enterprise Cloud
The new IBM CIO study of more than 3,000 global CIOs shows that 60 percent of organizations are ready to embrace cloud computing over the next five years as a means of growing their businesses and achieving competitive advantage. The figure nearly doubles the number of CIOs who said they would utilize cloud in IBM?s 2009 CIO study, and is one of dozens of new insights and trends learned from CIOs worldwide in businesses of all sizes.
With all the discussions going on around enterprise cloud ? private and public, I thought it would be interesting to spend Five Minutes in the Cloud, gathering different points of view from analysts, customers, partners, IT practitioners and architects.
As the first of a new series ? Five Minutes in the Cloud, I met with Gary Barnett, Partner and CTO, Bathwick Group and we talked about enterprise cloud, the impact that private cloud and using cloud services might have on an organization.
Here is the first interview?which is part of the new series entitled, Five Minutes in the Cloud.?
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?KL: What do you think the future of the IT department in the Cloud looks like?
Gary Barnett:
In the far future the IT department will be running and managing virtual infrastructure. Storage, compute power and key applications will be managed as a virtualised resource. The IT department will be responsible for sourcing the storage and compute resource from different suppliers, so the key role will transition from ?delivering? IT services to ?procuring and managing? IT services.
But there?s an ?in the meantime? ? before we achieve the level of nirvana I?ve just described, the IT department has a fundamental role in supporting, managing and delivering the change to the organisation?s infrastructure that needs to take place before everything is virtualised. So in the medium term the key role will transition from ?delivering IT services? to ?transforming the way IT services are delivered?.
KL: Do you have any thoughts on the commercial implications of a cloud based business?
Gary Barnett:
In a number of domains the commercial implications relate to agility, and the ability of small organisations to rapidly scale their capability to meet demand. A small SaaS provider can scale up just as much as any large SaaS provider. In some cases (where the large SaaS provider?s software isn?t optimised for the cloud), the smaller vendor will be able to scale much higher, and more quickly than its established competitor.
Another area where cloud is transformational in commercial terms is data analysis. Traditionally, if you wanted to analyse data that would take one server 300 hours to process in an hour you?d have to have 300 servers, sitting idly by waiting for this workload. Now, you can effectively rent 300 servers for just that hour. This benefits smaller firms who don?t have the internal scale to free up 300 servers? worth of processing power in their own infrastructure but have to compete with larger firms that may well be able to support that level of spare capacity.
KL: What does IT as a service mean to IT departments ? and what do you think the reception / or acceptance of commoditizing the IT departments with IT will be?
Gary Barnett:
You know, ?IT as a service? isn?t all that new an idea. Some companies have run their IT departments as a service provider for years, while for others the concept of ?IT as a service? is going to come as a bit of a shock.
I don?t think the ?reception or acceptance? by IT of this change matters a great deal ? It?s happening whether the IT department wants it to or not. Smart IT professionals will embrace the change, those that don?t will find themselves overtaken on the career ladder by younger more service oriented colleagues.
KL: Can you comment on the Consumption model of cloud based services ? moving from fixed cost to operating/variable cost model using cloud?
Gary Barnett:
One of the big challenges any industry faces when a new charging/payment model emerges is the assumption by the supply-side that the new model will mean more revenue for them, and the assumption by the demand-side that the new model will mean less cost for them!
Consumption-based pricing is something that most organisations are used to, one way or another. Most organisations pay for their electricity on the basis of consumption for example. In the context of cloud computing though, there is always going to be a premium to pay for elasticity ? the ability to scale up and down according to demand ? so I expect that most organisations will buy computing power using a hybrid model, paying a fixed rate for a set number of permanently available resources, and an elastic rate for those servers that need to be added for short periods of time to cater for fluctuations in demand.
KL: What do you think the extended impact of cloud will be?
From an IT perspective, what does it do to the traditional architecture model?
Gary Barnett:
Cloud computing mandates that you design your application with the expectation that it is going to be distributed across one or more (or many!) machines.
Lots of pundits are rushing to write awesome papers on ?Architecting Applications for the Cloud? and I?ve no doubt they?ll be really useful. But the truth is if you?ve designed distributed applications before, then all of the same rules still apply.
Some things have got easier; people have a much better understanding of ?loosely coupled? application design. While some have got harder (managing security, performance and reliability in a highly distributed environment is tough).
From a business perspective, what does it do to the line of business (from an ability perspective)?
Gary Barnett:
If the IT department does its job properly ? by embracing the idea of IT as a service provider ? then the biggest benefit to the business will be speed of action/reaction. The cloud should enable businesses to try, adopt and enhance ideas more quickly than they ever could before.
From an ecosystem and beyond the enterprise point of view, what does it do to the supply chain, for example?
Gary Barnett:
I think the biggest impact on the supply chain will be the opportunities it creates for small, very niche, players to step into the supply chain by focusing on a very small segment of it.
KL: Do you have any comments about how to drive creative business with cloud on System z?
Gary Barnett:
People who are not familiar with System z shouldn?t think of it as a ?mainframe? they should view System z as an Enterprise Cloud Appliance.
Compared with the cost, hassle, floor space requirements, energy costs, admin overhead and maintenance costs of building your own internal cloud by filling cabinets with blades, routers, cables and fans, getting an Enterprise Cloud Appliance could make a hell of a lot of sense for a lot of organisations.
And bear in mind, using System z as a consolidation platform for Java and Linux workloads isn?t a revolutionary new idea ? IBM has customer references going back nearly a decade that demonstrate that customers are using its mainframe platform to run non-mainframe workloads all over the world ? because it makes sense.
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Five Minutes in the Cloud? (on Tuesdays).
Please bookmark the Business Innovation blog and stay tuned for the next installment of Five Minutes in the Cloud when I hope to delve more deeply into security.
Do you have a specific topic you?d like to learn more about, or, interested in sharing your point of view? Please send an email to: calkaren@uk.ibm.com.
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