Like it or not, cloud computing, services, storage, solutions, and products are here to stay. Despite the hype and FUD, the question is not if but when, where, why, and how will you be using clouds. Since there are different types of clouds, you must decide which is applicable to your different needs.
I routinely hear from IT professionals in diverse organizations around the world that clouds are an all-or-nothing model. They think that using clouds means moving all your applications and running them at Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Rackspace, or other service providers. Another common misconception is that cloud storage is only about AWS, Carbonite, Dropbox, Mega, Google, Apple iCloud, or Rackspace.
A lot of people ask if clouds are ready for them and their organization. You should turn this around and ask if you are ready for cloud technology in some form. Keep in mind that going to or using a cloud provider does not have to mean an all-in approach. It can complement or co-exist with what you already have.
Your concerns about the platform might determine if cloud technology is ready for you. But understanding your concerns or caveats about cloud service providers, solutions, or products can also determine if you are ready to use them. Why do you need or want to go to a cloud? What do you need or want to leverage by using it? Will you be moving your applications as they are or using cloud services to complement and support them? For example, will you use cloud storage to supplement or enable high availability, business continuity (BC), and disaster recovery (DR) or to modernize data protection, backup, and archiving.
Likewise, determine what type of cloud resources -- from servers to products -- can be used today or in the future in various modes (public, private, hybrid, community, or other). Develop a vision, strategy, and plan for how you will implement those resources over time. The strategy should take into account how your environment will be supported, moved into a cloud, or complemented by cloud products. For example, your applications, data infrastructures, and development may remain the same, but you may choose cloud resources for testing, BC, DR, backup, archiving, and other functions.
Data protection, including availability, durability with backup, BC, DR, and security, is a shared responsibility in cloud services. The vendor or service provider is responsible for some things, including logical and physical security, availability, and durability, under service-level agreements. Likewise, the user or consumer of those services has responsibilities in how they are configured, how resources are leveraged, and how best-practices are followed. If the primary objective of going to a cloud service is a level of availability, reliability, and durability lower than what a provider recommends, guess who is taking responsibility when things go wrong?
The question is not whether bad things (such as network outages) will happen to you. The question is when they will happen. Plan and design for resiliency, because that is part of taking shared responsibility.
It is OK to have cloud concerns if you can identify what they are, why they are relevant, and your workaround options. By identifying your concerns, you and your provider can discuss and address them. In some cases, the resolution may be to do nothing about that application, function, or use scenario today but plan to revisit it in the future.
Explore how your applications could run in a cloud environment with no changes. What would the performance, availability, cost, or other considerations be? Would you simply be moving a problem instead of fixing it? You can also assess the costs of changing applications to run them in a cloud, or you can figure out how to use cloud services for development and testing while deploying in a private environment. For greenfield or new applications, there can be more options. However, keep the total life cycle in mind.
Do some proofs of concept or pilots. They may identify new concerns that, if addressed, could boost your confidence. Even if they aren't addressed, at least you'll gain better insight into whether cloud services are ready for you -- or whether you are ready for them.
Don't be scared of clouds. Be prepared for them by determining your concerns and how they can be addressed.
— Greg Schulz is founder and senior advisor at the independent IT advisory and consultancy firm Server and StorageIO. He has more than 30 years of experience across applications, server, storage, networking, hardware, software, cloud, virtualization, and services. Read his blog at www.storageioblog.com, and follow him on Twitter: @storageio.
@Magneticnorth good point about sometimes onsite (private cloud or non cloud) can be lower cost including buying hardware, software, services, staffing and so forth for both large and small organizations. Otoh, there are scenarios where cloud can be a benefit, key however is looking beyond the basic costs/tco/roi models often presented for or against one approach vs. another.
It could be what the cost of those IOPS are vs. doing them yourself.
E.g. AWS Provisioned IOPS, or EBS Optimized volumes or Rackspace IOPS among others.
Cloud conversations: AWS EBS Optimized Instances
http://storageioblog.com/?p=4688
Or the low cost of using something like AWS Glacier that can be as low as 1 cent per GB per month, however limits on how much restore per month w/o additional fees.
Cloud conversations: AWS EBS, Glacier and S3 overview (Part III)
http://storageioblog.com/?p=4697
Thats where digging deeper comes into play including pilot or poc to see if functionalty is there, along with what the costs look like and how would they scale (also becarefull using the free trial versions as basis for models ;) ).
In the case of backup, I know that I can buy and have local storage onsite for about the same or lower cost vs. using cloud. In fact I do have some local storage for local onsite backup, staging, rapid restores, etc. However I also know that Im paying more for cloud backup storage vs. free storage in cloud so that I get resiliency, durability, reliabity, security, SLAs, SLOs, and flexibility beyond what I get otherwise. Thus cloud co-exists with my local, local makes cloud better, cloud makes local better, better together vs. one vs. other...
@Mr. Roques: the transaction-based pricing model is precisely why my previous employer didn't continue pursuing an engagement with a cloud provider. They hated being strangled by Microsoft's ERP licenses, but after the pencil pushing was done, it was rather obvious that buying our software and hardware was a lot cheaper than cloud rates.
Great post Greg, picking a cloud service provider today is akin to finding an ERP vendor in the locally hosted enterprise days. Security is a major concern with so many high profile breaches in recent times. Readers would also find this whitepaper "Cloud risks Striking a balance between savings and security" I just read about a topics discussed here interesting @ http://bit.ly/ZFPu1l
@Akaffen no woories, likewise the zip car example plays well for some aspects, part of the multi-dimensional approach involved with clouds, different types, functions, services, products, time span and so forth.
More I think about the zipcar some scenarios come to mind such as great for very cheap and low cost, if you can get one. However then what happens if not available, yet you need one? Taxi? Bus, rail, bike, walking, etc...
Not that any of those are bad, however what if you are in a rush to get somewhere vs. have time to wait, or perhaps share a ride.
Share a ride might be cheap, however what if you have a noisey co-rider?
All pro's, con's, tradeoffs and considerations same with clouds...
@Mr Roques why not try a couple of the different providers as part of your assessment. After all some of their value prop is how easy to move in, setup, get started, so take an application or create a new one where you can try such things.
One of the things to try is run some transactional type of work to see how it performs, as well as how your billing statement is impacted.
We are considering moving to the cloud, and have precisely decided to do a pilot project. We have contacted several cloud providers, but still haven't decided about one.
I have a few concerns about a transaction-based pricing model that is hard to determine when speaking of public use applications.
@Akaffen I see and get the zipcar which is simlar 2 a rent (shorter duration) vs. lease (longer duration) vs. buy and how it relates to cloud. However unlike a zipcar where you just pickup and drop off (not to mention probally being bound by some geo limits), some cloud services/functions have a longer temporal period closer 2 car rental vs. lease vs. buy. Particular when you have to schedule the move or relocation or actually moving things.
Thus see some aspects of the zipcar type model, however also other variations particular when you factor in value of money, time, etc...
That may very well tie into the theme of what type of cloud or service an organization needs, is it rapid quick on demand, or perhaps something more intensive requiring more data to be moved thus a longer stay measured in days/weeks/months vs hours? Or perhaps months or a year vs. weeks?
Otoh, I want 2 get a smart car or similar that I can carry in the back of my Ford F150 when I go into town. Then park the truck at edge of town, unload the smart car for driving around town. My wife said thats a solution looking for a problem, kind of like some other tech and trends ;)...
To borrow a car analogy ... I don't think of it so much as "lease vs. buy". It's more like "buy vs. zipcar".
Whether you buy or lease a car, you have that one car. Either it's a tiny car, a big car, a fast or slow car, etc. With something like ZipCar, you're not only paying just when you need a car, but it can be any car you need at the time like an SUV, compact, truck.
Cloud computing does the same thing. It's not just a matter of whether you're paying less or more for the same infrastructure. It's that you have the freedom to actually change the makeup of your infrastrucutre day by day to optimize for changes in your usage and needs.
Good points about the purchasing aspect, there is perception its saving costs. While it can, it can also be a shell game of moving costs from one part of the budget to another. Kind of like lease vs. buy, which is cheaper? It depends...
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