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a cloud of ones own

Many companies are finding private cloud infrastructures are the simplest way to get started on their journey to cloud computing.

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Ask any tech industry prognosticator about cloud computing these days and theyre likely to tell you the same thing: Slowly but inevitably, its sweeping the world of corporate it. indeed, adoption of cloud solutions is running at fever pitch, with some 72 percent of U.S. businesses planning to increase the number and types of cloud services they use over the next year, according to a 2010 survey by ComptiA, a technology industry membership organization based in Oakbrook terrace, ill. i dont think theres any question that its going to be the platform of the future, says Bernard Golden, CeO of hyperStratus inc., a cloud computing consultancy in San Carlos, Calif.

tion, and compliance implications of relying on off-site, third-party data centers and realize that their path to the public cloud may be a longer and more complicated than they expected. that, Schneider says, is when they often turn their attention to a second cloud deployment model known as private cloud computing. like their public counterparts, private clouds are scalable, efficient environments built around shared processing, storage,

I dont think theres any question

that its going to be the platform of the future.
and networking pools. But they use on-premise infrastructure that companies can more easily control, and technologies like virtualization that most businesses already know how to use. As a result, Schneider says, many of MomentumSis clients view private clouds as an easier, more incremental first step into the cloud. Schneiders customers arent the only ones reaching that conclusion. though public cloud solutions currently dominate media discussions, organizations eager to leverage the rewards of cloud computing as quickly as possible are increasingly turning to private clouds as a simpler yet equally compelling place to commence their cloud computing journey. unmatched Benefits Not that demand for public cloud solutions is languishing, mind you. Stamford, Conn.-based analyst firm Gartner inc. expects worldwide spending on public cloud services to reach $148.8 billion by 2014. At present, many observers say, interest in public cloud computing is outpacing actual deployments. theres definitely a huge gap, confirms Nate Johnson, CeO of reliam inc., a provider of hosting and internet application management services in los Angeles, Calif. Johnson and others cite several factors to explain that disparity. First off, placing customer data, sales information, and intellectual

Ask a customer how best to get started in cloud computing, however, and you may get a less confident reply. Were kind of seeing this common pattern, reports Jeff Schneider, CeO of MomentumSi inc., an it services consultancy and Microsoft Gold Certified Partner based in Austin, texas. First, customers hear about the efficiency and agility benefits to be had from public cloud computingso-called because it utilizes the public internet to deliver software, platform, and infrastructure resources on-demandand begin drawing up elaborate plans. then they start thinking through the security, integra-

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property in an off-premise data center makes many executives nervous. in fact, 78 percent of businesses cite data security as a source of concern about public cloud solutions, according to a survey from technology Partners international, a business and it advisory firm headquartered in houston, texas. Anxieties about service outages, customization, and integration are widespread as well. thanks partly to such fears, many companies view private cloud infrastructures as a safer alternative to the public cloud. in fact, 55 percent of it executives say they prefer private to public cloud solutions, according to recent data from Framingham, Mass.-based analyst firm, idC. its not hard to understand why. Unlike their public counterparts, private cloud solutions reside securely behind the corporate firewall, where it managers can more easily safeguard them against intrusion and enforce compliance with privacy regulations. And since they run on the same underlying technologies as traditional client-server infrastructures, private clouds are as easy to customize and integrate as other on-premise resources.

tion. instead of worrying about whether their servers are working properly or they have enough capacity, it departments can focus on whats really important, which is driving growth. core capabilities though private clouds include a range of ingredients, two stand out as especially important: Virtualization and dynamic management tools. You really cant do this without having virtualization in place. thats kind of table stakes, says Golden, of hyperStratus. Virtualization enables companies with private clouds to maximize hardware utilization rates, deploy new servers in minutes vs. days, and preserve non-stop availability by moving virtual machines from one physical host to another in response to technical problems or maintenance requirements.

Instead of worrying about whether

their servers are working properly or they have enough capacity, IT departments can focus on whats really important, which is driving growth.
dynamic management tools, meanwhile, allow organizations to capitalize on virtualizations strengths while trimming administrative overhead. A lot of the value you get from a private cloud comes from the automation you can achieve if you have the right management technologies, Vu observes. Vu also advises that these technologies should offer the following capabilities, among others: automatic resource optimization: to keep service levels and efficiency high, private cloud management solutions should be equipped to monitor system performance and then re-allocate infrastructure resources or move virtual machines automatically as conditions warrant. the vision is it happens without having to have humans intervene, Golden says.

Yet private clouds also deliver benefits that conventional environments cant match. For starters, theyre dramatically more efficient. By enabling businesses to share infrastructure resources across applications and business units, private clouds significantly increase server utilization rates. that not only lowers capital spending but conserves costly power, cooling, and data-center floor space as well. Moreover, private clouds are far nimbler than conventional data centers, as they allow users to rapidly add processing power or storage when demand spikes, and then scale resources back just as swiftly when theyre no longer needed. Perhaps best of all, by radically simplifying administration, private clouds help transform its primary role from managing infrastructure to delivering business services that support competitiveness and innovation. All of a sudden, it goes from being a bottleneck to an enabler, notes dai Vu, director of virtualization product management in Microsofts Windows Server marketing organiza-

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self-service Provisioning: Part of a private clouds power is the control it gives business unit it administrators over adding and removing resources. A properly-equipped private cloud management environment should include Web-based tools that internal consumers of it services can use to provision and delete server instances on their own. usage-Based: A well-designed private cloud should also give business units greater control over it spending, by allowing them to pay only for the resources they use. this takes management tools equipped to track how many virtual servers and storage resources a given group is using, and calculate charges accordingly. Getting started the good news is that making the move to a private cloud infrastructure isnt as complicated an undertaking as you might expect, provided that youve already virtualized your servers and use Microsoft platform technologies. its a pretty short step from having a virtualized environment to building out your own private cloud, says Jerod Powell, CeO of infinit Consulting inc., a San Jose, Calif.-based solution provider and Microsoft Gold Certified Partner. Microsoft Windows Server, Microsofts hyper-V hypervisor, and Microsoft System Center provide most of the tools and capabilities you need to turn a virtual infrastructure into a private cloud. As a result, Powell notes, companies that already run those products can get into private cloud computing without making major investments in new software and skills. Still, creating a private cloud does take careful preparation. Johnson recommends starting the process by articulating a vision of the features and abilities youd ultimately like your data center to possess. Based on that, you can lay out a game plan as to how you can use private cloud computing to get there, he says. Next, suggests Golden, build a small-scale pilot cloud and use it to host an existing application. Good candidates include systems large and complex enough to give your technical staff a realistic sense for the kinds of issues theyll encounter during a broader rollout, yet not so important as to put mission-critical business pro-

cesses at risk. Applications likely to benefit from a private clouds scalability, because theyre either growing rapidly or subject to fluctuating demand patterns, are a nice fit as well. Finally, draw up a detailed plan for gradually expanding your private cloud. the key is to avoid the big bang approach, counsels Schneider, of MomentumSi. Companies often make the mistake of implementing far more capacity up-front than they actually need. Scaling up graduallyand just fast enough to support additional applications as you migrate them onto your cloudis usually a more economical approach, Schneider says.

Its a pretty short step from having

a virtualized environment to building out your own private cloud.
Of course, planning a private cloud isnt where cloud planning in general will end for most companies. the future, experts generally agree, belongs to hybrid environments combining private cloud solutions with public ones. Youre always going to have some assets on site, Vu observes. Private cloud represents the most efficient, agile way to run on-premise infrastructure. All the more reason, he adds, to begin exploring private cloud computing today.

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Management: The Secret Ingredient to Private Cloud Success

Automated management is what enables private clouds to maximize it efficiency.
Plenty of factors distinguish private clouds from virtualized data centers, but scratch beneath the surface and many of them come down to one word: Management. Virtualization is a prerequisite to private cloud computing, but you really need to have a set of dynamic tools that can provide automation layers on top of that virtualization, says dai Vu, director of virtualization product management in Microsofts Windows Server marketing group. thats what enables private clouds to deliver significant administrative savings and efficiency gains, he notes. For example, tools such as the Microsoft System Center suite of management tools can help private cloud operators automatically keep infrastructure utilization levels high and response times low. Administrators can configure Virtual Machine Manager to monitor a variety of hardware, operating system, and application performance figures. if they drop below pre-set levels, the system can add new virtual machines, re-allocate infrastructure resources, or take other appropriate steps automatically. Similarly, Virtual Machine Manager offers live migration functionality that promotes continual uptime by seamlessly moving virtual machines onto new physical hosts during hardware failures and routine maintenance procedures. Private cloud owners also need automated tools for on-boarding new resource requests. Solutions such as Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager Self-Service Portal (VMMSSP) provide a Webbased interface that business unit it managers can use to request compute, storage, and network resources. data-center administrators can then review those requests and check them against available capacity. Upon approval, VMMSSP provisions the requested resources dynamically. From that point forward, business units can use standardized forms to add or remove server instances and other resources on their own. dynamic management tools can also help companies give business units tighter control over it spending by charging them only for the capacity they consume. We can enable dynamic chargeback through key partners, such as vKernal. Of course, administering a private cloud effectively takes more than tools alone. Most it departments must also adapt existing management procedures to the requirements of a fast-changing, automated environment. For instance, at many companies applications for new servers must be approved by a change committee. to get maximum value from a private cloud, however, businesses must replace these manual processes with dynamic ones based on pre-established rules. data-center orchestration solutions such as Microsoft System Center Opalis can help companies define these rules in workflows and execute them automatically. Additionally, notes Vu, data center managers must set and enforce clear policies that define who is authorized to use the private cloud and how capacity will be allocated, among other issues. theres a ton of things to think through, he observes. in the final analysis, though, all of this work is well worth the effort. Managing a private cloud requires a lot of forethought and tools, Vu says, but the return you get on those investments is enormous: A scalable, elastic infrastructure that supports agility and growth.

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The Cloud You Can Bank On

Microsofts comprehensive private cloud platform offers the features and capabilities businesses need to build, deploy, and manage with confidence.
Businesses that have already virtualized their data centers are generally just a short step away from making their first foray into cloud computing by deploying a private cloud infrastructure. Microsoft has all of the tools and partnerships companies need to complete that step quickly and easily. For one, Microsofts private cloud platform, hyper-V Cloud, utilizes applications that most organizations already own and use, such as Microsoft Windows Server. that means companies can get started with cloud computing while leveraging their existing software investments, notes ian Carlson, a senior product manager in Microsofts Windows Server virtualization marketing group. they can also leverage existing skill sets rather than master a complex set of new tools, he adds. Microsofts is a familiar platform, so it enables you to exploit the power of private cloud computing without retraining your technicians, Carlson says. Microsoft also offers private cloud operators end-to-end functionality. in addition to the Windows Server operating system, the Microsoft private cloud platform includes Microsofts hyper-V hypervisor and Microsoft System Center management solution. Moreover, Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager is included in System Center, which centralizes administration of virtual environments, as is Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager Self-Service Portal (VMMSSP), which helps it departments automate core private cloud processes such as on-boarding new users and provisioning resources. together, these and other tools give companies a wider range of capabilities than any other platform can match. Microsoft is really unique in having offerings across the entire stack from physical, to virtual, to the application infrastructure, says dai Vu, director of virtualization product management in Microsofts Windows Server marketing group. As a result, administrators of Microsoft-based private clouds can monitor and fine-tune the performance not just of virtual servers and also the applications running on the virtual machines. Additionally, Microsofts management tools support both physical and virtual infrastructures. As powerful as virtualization is, most data centers will continue to run some of their services on physical resources for the foreseeable future, Vu observes. Microsoft empowers it departments to manage all of their assets, both virtual and not, through a single, consistent toolset. Microsoft also partners with the top hardware, storage, and networking vendors to ensure their products work seamlessly with Microsofts platform technologies. And Microsofts extensive ecosystem of system integrators and solution providers stands ready to help businesses design and implement sophisticated private cloud solutions. Meanwhile, the forthcoming release of the Microsoft Windows Azure platform appliance will soon make Microsofts private cloud offerings even more robust. the Windows Azure platform appliance is a turnkey, on-premise version of Microsofts state-of-theart Windows Azure platform-as-a-service (PaaS) solution. PaaS makes developing and deploying applications significantly easier, Vu says. the Windows Azure platform appliance will enable companies to combine these benefits with the security, compliance, and data sovereignty provided by private cloud computing. its all part of Microsofts long-term commitment to helping its customers take full advantage of everything the cloud has to offer on their own termswhether in-house, offsite, or both.

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Public vs private cloud

debate rages over whether enterprises will favor shared or exclusive internet services
No one can argue that cloud computing is on the rise. But exactly how these internet-based it services are going to storm the enterprise market as public clouds shared by all or as private clouds operated by organizations to serve their own employees is up for debate. faQ: cloud computing demystified Cloud computing refers to it services that are purchased and delivered on demand over a network, either the public internet or a private iP-based network. Cloud computing services are powered by highly virtualized processing and storage systems in data centers that are made available via a Web interface to remote users. Cloud computing offers CiOs several advantages including faster set-up, easier scalability and no capital expenditures for hardware and software but it also has security risks, performance tradeoffs and inherent networking costs. Whether they realize it or not, more CiOs are relying on cloud computing, which can also be called utility computing, grid computing or software as a service. Nearly 60% of european CiOs reported using specific cloud computing services although many didnt understand that fact. Cloud computing is poised for significant growth over the next few years. Gartner, for example, projected in March 2009 that sales of cloud computing services would almost triple over five years, from $56 billion in revenues in 2009 to $150 billion in revenues in 2013. Much of the growth is coming from cloud-based applications such as Google Apps and Zoho, which run on the public internet and are open to any user that pays with a credit card. these Web-based applications are gaining popularity in such areas as salesforce automation, customer service, accounting and expense management. Another burgeoning area is cloud-based computing platforms such as Amazons elastic Computer Cloud (eC2). these services allow users to rent virtual computers for developing or running their applications and to pay for them on an hourly basis. Users can purchase cloud-based data storage services, too, from Google, Amazon and others. Private clouds, on the other hand, are owned and managed by an organization and restricted to particular users, who can provision their own services. Some vendors, including Amazon with its Virtual Private Cloud offering and Microsoft, are pushing private clouds as the more likely option in the enterprise market. One proponent of private clouds is the defense information Systems Agency (diSA), which claims to run a safer, more reliable cloud-computing platform than Googles. diSAs rapid Access Computing environment offers processing power and applications to military users for a monthly fee. Users can provision their own services in as little as 24 hours via a Web portal. Private cloud services are expected to be popular across the U.S. federal government, not just in the defense department. Federal CiO Vivek Kundra is encouraging agencies to embrace private cloud computing services as a way of saving taxpayer dollars and improving it services.

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Microsoft CIO Eats His Own Cloud Dog Food

A big part of Microsoft CiO tony Scotts job in redmond is to personally use all of Microsofts technologies, including its cloud products. Microsoft types call this eating your own dog food. Microsoft it was an early test environment for cloud-based productivity suite, Office 365, and Windows Azure, the companys platformas-a-service offering that is the basis for its cloud strategy. research firm Gartner said at its Gartner Symposium recently that despite the complexity of Microsofts cloud services, the company has one of the most visionary and complete views of the cloud. late last week at Microsofts PdC (Professional developers Conference) event in redmond, the company stirred the Windows Azure pot by announcing new virtualization capabilities designed to entice developers. in an interview with CiO.coms Shane ONeill, Microsofts Scott discussed some best practices for CiOs that hes learned from dogfooding Windows Azure. he also shares his views on how the cloud will change the financing of business projects and how CiOs can prepare accordingly. cIo.com recently published a story about cloud adoption that cited a survey where the number one reason for not moving to the cloud was dont understand cloud Benefits. How is Microsoft cutting through the noise and confusion to clearly outline for cIos how a cloud model will help their organization? in my experience CiOs are practical folks, with a healthy level of skepticism about the next big thing. Conceptually, they all get the benefits of the cloud. But theres a lot of uncertainty out there about how to get started. it can be a little bit intimidating. Our role at Microsoft it is to dogfood all our own products, so we started by moving some basic apps to Azure. this was two years ago, before the product was released to the public. We were just getting our feet wet, and i saw some healthy skepticism at the time even in my own organization. But once you dip your toe in, the learning process begins. We saw an improvement in the quality of the apps we moved to Azure. One example is MS.com, which we moved to Azure and were able to scale the services based on demand versus based on peak capacity. We really saw the advantages of a standardized cloud platform versus fine-tuning every server to each application. A great example of this is our Microsoft Giving Campaign tool, which we use for internal fund-raising for non-profit organizations. that app gets most of its usage once a year in October during the Giving Campaign. the rest of the year it sits idle. that is a perfect application for the cloud. the new Giving Campaign tool was built on Azure and on the last two days of the campaign, where we often see the peak loads, it never slowed down and the results were phenomenal. We raised twice as much money as we had in any prior year. So CiOs just need to get started. thats the hardest part. But once they get in there and experience a cloud platform, it will boost their enthusiasm and willingness to move forward. Conceptually, we all understand the benefits. Weve operated on what i call the double-double rule for years. Which is you figure out what capacity you need and double it and then double it again just for insurance. But thats frankly why you find that most apps running in production use only 20 percent of the resources. in a cloud platform you can improve utilization without penalty because you can expand capacity at will and only pay for what you need. when an enterprise starts moving applications to a cloud platform, what is tougher for IT groups: the change in technology or the internal politics that arise as the cloud forces traditional IT roles to change?

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i havent seen much internal political conflict, to be honest. i think most on the business side like the idea of more reliability and paying for what you use. So from a business perspective i havent seen a lot of resistance to the cloud. One thing i have seen both internally and externally, is that the cloud is changing how projects are approached. the shift has gone from capex [pay upfront] to opex [pay as you go]. Were used to the capex world where we buy a bunch of servers, which is very predictable financially. And predictability is a good thing in business. When you shift to opex with the cloud model, you can have peaks and valleys, and its not predictable in the same way capex is. From a budgeting perspective, CiOs are saying to finance people: the good news is that were using our resources better. the bad news is that were not sure what the actual costs are going to be. as for rolling up your sleeves and moving applications to the cloud, how should an organization get started? do it piecemeal? e-mail first, and then grow from there? Yes, were definitely seeing an incremental approach rather than a Big Bang. it lends itself to trying something, seeing how it scales and then modifying it. the first apps to go are what i call finished apps like e-mail and CrM. With those apps its kind of game over. theres very little uniqueness in how we use those apps, so they are the most ready to go to the cloud. in five or 10 years, well look back and say, why did we ever think about doing those ourselves. Custom-built applications are different. there are regulatory issues around line of business apps that a company has built. Also, they were developed a generation ago and appropriate for the technology of the time. they need to be modified for the cloud. internally at Microsoft, we have a complicated licensing application that manages volume licenses bought from Microsoft and supports our whole partner ecosystem. it has 100 components and lots of interfaces. its not that we think it wont work in the cloud, but we must modernize it first. it was built 15 years ago. its the kind of custom-built app that cant be taken as is and moved to the cloud.

at the enterprise level, most organizations want a private cloud. In an already crowded market for private cloud offerings, what is Microsofts advantage? A lot of it is portability. CiOs want to take advantage of the market, and youll have private cloud offerings built on Microsoft technology available from us, from third parties, or you can build your own. those are all indicators of our technology advantage. From a cost standpoint, those options will make a Microsoft cloud more available and less costly over time than models that have a narrower set of deployment and development tools. Also, if youre already a .Net developer with .Net skills, its a pretty fast transition from where you are today to a public or private cloud with Azure. theres no skill retooling needed. what are some factors that could prevent an organization from moving to azure? i think the biggest barrier are applications a company has built that were not well architected for the cloud. So in that sense you cant move them to our cloud platform or anyone elses either. those apps just need to be redone. On the commercial apps side, the big platform vendors that are supporting Microsoft today will likely continue supporting Microsoft. At the end of the day, i think Microsoft will offer the broadest set of choices across the broadest set of technologies, whether its support for PhP or whatever programming environment you really like, its more likely to run on Microsoft technologies than any others. what do you say to cIos who still dont trust the security of a cloud model? Well, its something we always should ask about, but theres great precedence in the outsourcing world. Weve all moved our servers to other peoples data centers over the years. the concept is not new. i do think theres a false sense of security when youre running your own data center. theres a lot security in having a contract in place that makes a third party responsible for security. My view is that its similar to the outsourcing model in terms of the benefits, but you also have this contractual right to expect great security from your cloud provider, which is probably better in the long run than the old practice of running everything yourself.

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Survey: IT wants public and private cloud services

A recent idC survey shows that it departments expect to use a combination of public and private clouds
Skeptics who disparage the concept of the so-called private cloud and doubt its relevance should think again, according to research from idC. in a recent survey, idC asked it executives about their preference for using a private versus a public cloud. Fifty-five percent said that a private cloud was more appealing than a public cloud, and 22 percent said they were equally appealing, said Frank Gens, an idC chief analyst who spoke on thursday at an idC tech Outlook event in Seattle. there are varying definitions for a private cloud, and some people say its just a new term to describe it integration efforts that have been in the works for years, he said. idC defines a private cloud as an internal corporate cloud resource where the it organization is the vendor, offering self-service provisioning, pay-per-use options and simple access, potentially through a browser. the concept emerged over the past few years as it departments continued to struggle to build integrated, efficient and quickly deployed it systems. they began to notice that some of the public cloud vendors had achieved the same goals by building new data centers from scratch. they said, why not make the job of the CiO easier by borrowing tricks from the public cloud? Gens said. idCs research shows that many companies expect to use both public and private cloud services, with a preference for private clouds. When asked about where they would run specific services, 75 percent of respondents said that theyd run collaboration applications on a private cloud and 53 percent said theyd run e-mail on a private cloud. theres clearly a higher comfort level with private versus public, Gens said. Still, he believes many companies will use both kinds of clouds. if you scoff at the idea of a private cloud, youre in peril, he said. But public clouds will drive a lot of solutions, so dont be too cocky if youre a private-cloud evangelist. Virtually every customer, at least from the midmarket up, will have a mix of both. Some individual applications may use both kinds of clouds. For example, the cache might reside in one and the operations in another, he said.

Public clouds will drive a lot of

solutions, so dont be too cocky if youre a private-cloud evangelist.
idC is expecting significant growth in public cloud services over the next few years. revenue from it cloud services exceeded US$16 billion in 2009 and should reach $55.5 billion in 2014, the research group said.

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