Thank you Ms. Maria, for the presentation. Lots of new ways to look at the hybrid form of a cloud, don;t know if its applicable in our neck of the woods.
Mitch: the big wake-up call for NYC DR -- especially for financial services firms -- was 9/11. Many companies moved their backup data centers farther away as a result of that.
Kim: If I was in a heavily regulated area, such as medicine, I'd be very careful about which cloud vendors I was using, and would pick industry-specific ones that were familiar with the regulatory climate -- and I would still get everything vetted.
At the end of the day, you're responsible for your own compliance. You can't outsource it.
I wonder if Sandy will get companies more conscious about the importance of DR. Sure, there are disasters every year around the world, but so many big companies are either headquartered in New York or having big presence there.
Kim: But the enforcement is still catching up. This is such a fast-changing area. And each cloud vendor offers different guarantees and features. Some will tell you where your data is located. Some will encrypt everything -- or allow you do encrypt everything.
Mitch: if you're on Amazon, they have availability zones -- make sure your applications are set up to move to another zone if the first one goes down. it costs a little extra, but it can be very much worth it if the application is business-critical
Mitch: Have your backup cloud be in a separate location from your primary one. Some large companies are having their clouds span several continents, moving data and processing around as needed.
Mitch: You can think of it as a bridge built from both directions at once. On the one hand, companies are cloud-ifying their existing data centers to get the most use out of them, with the intent of -- eventually -- connecting to public clouds for overflow.
On the other hand, companies are using public clouds for testing, new product development, etc... with the intent of moving it in-house eventually for security and tighter control.
You want the two to meet in the middle -- so keep an eye on standards and compability!
Kim -- Most servers are greatly under-utilized -- up to 90 percent is unused, by some estimates. Putting in cloud infrastructure lets you tap into that unused capacity.
Kim, Mitch -- Yes, you can easily get "cloud sprawl." You will need to watch out for that. Make sure you know which employees are authorized to set up stuff in the cloud, and keep track to ensure compatibility, and compliance with long-term planning.
The main cost benefits surely come from sharing resources. I see the security/control benefits of private cloud, but I am still scratching my head about savings.
Kim: Yes, with a private cloud, you don't have the benefits of only paying for what you use. However, if you connect it to a public cloud, you don't have to keep growing you local data center. You can use cloud technology to wring every last compute cycle out of it that you can, then use a public cloud for overflow.
Maria, question from Kim: Kim: This idea of being up and running in the cloud in minutes scares me. How about an inventory of the data you're moving, how about knowing where it will be stored, how about compliance and regulation issues?
Alison: The Chinese Amazon is... Amazon. If you're a Chinese firm, especially if you have international customers. Amazon -- or other global cloud hosting providers -- is a good platform to use.
mschmitz -- if you already have a data center, deploying cloud technologies will maximize the use you get out of it, and also allow you to connect it to public clouds for spikes in usage, backups, or testing.
Maria, mschmitz asks: @Maria so seems like you'l lose most benefits of cloud if it is a private cloud. You still have to purchase, staff & maintain. So what's the net gain of private cloud?
Alison: If you're a tech startup in China, you don't want to sell packaged software. You want to run it as a cloud-based service, and charge subscriptions.
Alison: Vendors in China love online delivery of services because it avoids the piracy issue. Gaming companies really pioneered this, selling pre-paid cards at street-side kiosks.
Alison: it depends on the enterprise. Companies with large datacenters are slowly upgrading from traditional virtualization to cloud infrastructure, which would be private clouds.
Startup companies without data centers are building their products in the public clouds from the get-go.
Kim: if you're paying by compute cycle, or by minute of usage, you're using a public cloud. If you're paying by the physical server, you're renting servers and are running a private cloud.
Kim: Yes. Except that if you rent space in a data center, you can put your own cloud in there, and it's a private cloud. The difference is -- are you paying rent for the servers? Or are you paying for individual computing cycles?
Mitch: One difference is hardwae. The traditional virtualized environment tends to be more homogeneous -- all the servers are from the same vendor. A cloud allows for a more heterogenous environment.
I definitely agree w/ having a lawyer look over SLA's - that's where the real understanding of the service(s) being delivered is defined that is business worthy for both parties
django: normally, I would put "price hikes" into the vendor lock-in worry column, but given the highly competitive nature of clouds, i don't think we need to worry about this in the near future. Instead, vendors seem to be passing along the savings they're getting from dropping storage and server and management costs
Maria, yeah, but I'm wondering how a private cloud is different from traditional IT infrastructure? What's the difference between a private cloud and a traditonal virtualized environment?
Yesterday Tom recommended having a lawyer review an SLA. I've been told different things, though. Your thoughts on bringing in an attorney to eye over an SLA?
eahurstjr: I totally recommend hybrid. And if you start with either a public or private cloud, I recommend picking a vendor that would let you go hybrid later if you wanted to.
Alison: I'm not seeing any delays in cloud adoption right now. Lack of standards may have been an issue a couple of years ago, but it's not any more. Cloud expenditures are growing very quickly.
@Maria thanks, nice presentation. I'd posted earlier while you were speaking, but seems like private cloud would really minimize most of the benefits of cloud, you are still purchasing equipment, planning for spikes, maintaining and staffing. So what is the net gain on private cloud?
But I was serious about avoiding vendor lock in. I'm really big on that. It's too easy to get a nice shiny vendor with lots of nice shiny features -- then be stuck with them.
Very Good High Level Overview! I had thought that a Private Cloud was having dedicated servers at a vendor's site which were only used by your organization. I did not realize that it is really having the cloud on-site.
Question: This idea of being up and running in the cloud in minutes scares me. How about an inventory of the data you're moving, how about knowing where it will be stored, how about compliance and regulation issues?
@Mitch increase in revenues, but probably not much net profit because of the capital outlay. This was pre-cloud days, and would certainly look at differently in this environment.
@mschmitz it did, but we purchased much extra equipment that was then not used after about a 2 week peak. Was not in the cloud, so we paid for it and then didn't use it
Yes, as @Mitch said, Tom Nolle's session yesterday - available here if you want to listen later - covered some of these areas. These two lectures really complement each other.
your IT team doesn't need to worry about high availability, disaster recovey, business continuity. Clouds will have redundant data (I think) and should be able to switch over to another set of machines somewhere else, i.e. maybe on a different power grid
Yes, @mschmitz. You have an SLA. But from what I hear, you may not necessarily get $ back if there's a failure. So you really need to scrutinize that SLA.
@Mitch @Alison but they must have some sort of SLA so as a company you have expecations of uptime and some way of financial compensation when expectations are not met?
They all offer varying degrees of guaranteed uptime, @goodsamtraining. But i don't think any of them can guarantee when they WON"T fail - such as Black Friday for retailers!
Private cloud: if suddenly there is a peak in demand of resources, you won't be able to "scale out & expand instantaneously" unlike in public cloud. As demand increases, cloud will provide more resources
@Maria so seems like you'l lose most benefits of cloud if it is a private cloud. You still have to purchase, staff & maintain. So what's the net gain of private cloud?
Gihan - If you are having problems with audio, please refresh your browser. If that doesn't work, shut down and restart the browser. If that doesn't work, switch browsers. If that doesn't work, it's possible you're dialing in from a corporate network with a firewall that blocks this stream, in which case you'll have to log in and listen to the archive later.
Happy Thursday, everyone! Are you READY to RUMBLE?! And by RUMBLE, I mean, participate in an informative and enjoyable presentation and discussion of cloud computing?
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