IT's Evolutionary Transition

Could they? Could it be out of Vogue to operate your own data center? Current developments in Corporate Social Responsibility and a maturing data center marketplace are starting to drive these changes.

For many, this could be a discussion about the pink elephant in the room. Data centers have been, and continue to be a requirement for businesses around the world. We rely more heavily every day on systems and the applications they run. Those applications run on servers and use storage subsystems; all of which are connected with networking devices. Collectively, we call this the “IT Load” for a data center.

The root question is not whether a data center is required. The obvious answer is: Yes! The real question is: Do I need to operate my own data center? But we will get to answer that question in a minute.

Data Center Energy Consumption

Data centers are consuming a larger percentage of the world’s energy every day. Our growing appetite will continue to take a toll on natural resources. In 2007, the EPA issued (for some) an eye-opening report on data center consumption and potential areas of efficiency.

http://www.energystar.gov/ia/partners/prod_development/downloads/EPA_Datacenter_Report_Congress_Final1.pdf

While the report is a bit dated (2007), the core data still holds true today. The majority of the report is focused on projections and potential areas of efficiency. In 2011, Jonathan Koomey issued an updated report on the findings.

http://www.analyticspress.com/datacenters.html/

In his report, he noted that data center power consumption did not grow as strongly as the EPA projected. By 2010, global data center energy consumption hit 1.3% while in the US that number rose to 2%. Those are still very significant numbers.

What is Missing?

To add more fuel to the figures, a significant number of “facilities” are missing. Most notably missing from these findings is the energy consumption by the myriad of smaller “data centers”. While many would not call them data centers, they still serve the same purpose of housing servers, storage and networking equipment. These are smaller closets, rooms and labs. It may be as small as a server and switch under a desk to a rack or two of gear in a closet to a 1,000 sqft room. It is much harder to pin down the power consumed by each of these smaller locations. If you consider that these are the common solution for Small and Medium Businesses (SMB), the aggregate consumption is significant.

Potential Impact

Increasing the efficiency of the physical data center is a great start. There are many opportunities to improve the efficiency of power and cooling systems. People have focused on increasing the efficiency of power and cooling systems for years. Many of the solutions are simple to implement and make a significant impact. While others take quite a bit of work, expertise and money. And there are many brilliant minds around the world that are currently working on this very challenge.

However, the largest potential impact may come from the IT load itself. For the majority of IT loads, the equipment is not used efficiently. Server, storage and network utilization figures are much lower than they could be. Servers are designed (from an energy perspective) for high utilization. One look at the power supply power curve for a server supports this. On the server, processor utilization rates commonly peak at 20-30% with average utilization in the 5-10% range. In addition, the current implementation rates for virtualization are still relatively low. The latest figures suggest that as many as 50% of servers are virtualized. Anecdotally, that figure still seems high. Regardless, pushing the implementation of virtualization to 80%+ would significantly reduce the overall power consumption…for the same IT workload.

Imagine reducing the US power consumption by a full 1%. The impact could be that significant.

Strategic and World-Class Expertise

Now back to the root question: Do you need to have your own data center? Before answering, two other questions will shed light on the answer. Is your organization in a position to operate your data center (100,000 sqft facility, 5,000 sqft room, closet, lab, etc) at a world-class level? Asked a different way: Is your organization willing to make the investment of installing a team of people to operate a world-class facility where it is their whole job, not just a line in the job description? Second, is operation of a data center strategic to your organization? We already covered that data centers are vitally important. So is electricity. Are you willing to make the investment in operating a data center that is unique and provides an advantage from your competition? Or are there alternatives that better fit the strategic direction of the organization?

The Solution

If you set personal beliefs, cultural norms and inertia aside, for most, the answer to these questions is no. There are viable alternatives today that offer the economics, flexibility and responsiveness. And the alternative data center providers do employ teams to ensure their facilities are world-class. Only those few with large-scale requirements or the uncommon corner case will still need to operate their own data center.

Cloud computing is just one of many ways to accomplish these objectives. Startups and others are already heading down this path unencumbered by cultural norms and inertia. The challenge for established organizations is how to effectively turn the corner.

Bottom Line: Most organizations are not in a position to efficiently operate a world-class data center and should look at alternative solutions. The data center provider market is mature and competitors are already heading down this path.

Cloud Computing is still a hot topic in 2012. For the Small and Medium Business (SMB) community, it is a game changer. Unlike the days of past, cloud computing offers leverage previously only available to enterprise class companies. In essence, cloud computing levels the playing field for SMBs. I wrote about this back in June 2010:

Leveling the Playing Field for the Startup and SMB

http://timcrawford.org/2010/06/05/leveling-the-playing-field-for-the-startup-and-smb/

Roughly 18 months later, that article still holds true. The opportunities are numerous and within reach today. Many focus on the financial benefits first and foremost. Unfortunately, that is where most stop. What has changed in the past 18 months are the number of solutions available and the accessibility to those solutions.

Look for upcoming posts to address both the opportunities and challenges that cloud presents for SMB. Those are not the same for many corporate environments and need to be well understood.

In my various conversations and presentations last year, I was starting to hear a concerning theme. I’ll get to why it is concerning in a bit. The theme was around what I called “cloud fatigue”. That is, people were starting to get tired of talking about cloud computing. The reason was that the term had been over-hyped with little substance to the true value cloud computing would bring. In addition, people were having a hard time figuring out how to setup clouds.

This hype happened over the prior couple of years. One way to track the cycle is through Gartner’s annual cloud computing Hype Cycle. Here is the updated version from 2011:

To provide some empirical data to support my theory, I took a look at the search stats around the term “cloud computing”. Last year, I penned a blog entry with details on my findings.

http://timcrawford.org/2011/04/17/cloud-computing-search-trends-show-growth-and-plateau/

2012 Update

Today, I re-ran the reports to determine if the theory played out over 2011. Indeed it did. The subject, while discussed widely, has plateaued in search results. The global results show a marked flattening of the results.

International cities continue drive the top results with the United States falling from #7 in April 2011 to #10 in January 2012.

Within the United States, the results are similar to last year.

If interest in cloud computing was acutally decreasing, that would be a concern. Cloud computing presents a significant opportunity for most organizations both technically and organizationally. The business value it brings is not to be missed. While I don’t have empirical data to support my new theory, I suspect the change has more to do with depth of understanding. Today, many folks have heard about cloud computing and understand what it is (generally speaking). Now the conversation has moved into specific details of how to use it within a specific use case.

I would expect to see the general term of cloud computing continue to plateau and possibly decrease. This is natural and signifies a maturity of the term. In addition, new subjects will continue to fill in the cloud’s wake.

Many have looked into their respective crystal balls at what the coming year brings. Personally, my horizon looks not just at the coming year, but the years to come too. As I gaze into my crystal ball for 2012 and beyond, I see a changing tide in the world of technology.

The changing of the tide is nothing new. We saw these evolutionary changes with the advent of distributed computing, the Internet and most recently cloud computing. Each wave brings both uncertainty and opportunity. There are naysayers and optimists. In hindsight, each wave brought enhanced capabilities and ultimately increased value.

The current wave of cloud computing started a few years back. We are still feeling the effects and trying to understand the ultimate value.

2012 will bring further clarification to how technology brings business value. In addition, IT organizations will start the evolutionary process of IT Transformation. And the businesses we serve will start to see the opportunities that IT can bring.

Now, this is not easy to do and will take time. It will take an open mind, persistence and passion to make the change. But the opportunities are too great to pass by. While 2009-2011 were great starts to the transition, 2012 will see a significant increase in change.

And 2012 is only the start. This truly is an exciting time to be in IT.

Last year, I took a slight departure to discuss the opportunities and challenges that cloud computing presents to the road warrior. Almost a year later, it is time to update the results.

Since my last posting, I have traveled throughout the US and Asia. My rate of travel has continued at a strong pace. You know you are traveling quite a bit when the pilot is sending you handwritten notes thanking you for your patronage. Another common indicator is the hotel front desk recognizing you as you walk up. One of these days, I will add up the number of nights I spend in hotels. However, it may be easier to count the number of nights I was actually home.

During that time, my arsenal of technology has varied. I used to travel with a 15” MacBook Pro and an iPhone 3GS. Just prior to my last missive, I started using an Apple iPad 3G. Today, the MacBook Pro has been replaced with a 13” MacBook Air. Interestingly, the combined weight of the iPad and MacBook Air is still lighter than the 15” MacBook Pro.

Ideally, I would prefer to only travel with the iPad and iPhone. And on several of my trips, that is exactly what I did. Talk about traveling lightly! My only hesitation is when I need to create quite a bit of content. The iPad is a great device for content consumption. Content creation is still a clumsy process on the iPad. The exception is email and text documents.

Over the past 10 months or so, the core challenges noted in my first posting still exist. It is all about data access. Yes, there are ways to store data online securely. Yes, there are ways to access data remotely using the iPad (or laptop). However, the challenge is getting connected wherever I go.

From anecdotal experience, access in hotels, airports and airplanes has not improved much. Until this is resolved, cloud computing will continue to present challenges for road warriors. Here are some examples:

Japan: Last year, I took two trips to Japan. I did my research and found that they had free Internet connectivity throughout the hotel. Great! This would be my opportunity to travel overseas with only my iPad and iPhone. The trip through airport security was a breeze. The iPad does not require removal for security screening like laptops. The long battery life provided more than adequate time for two movies, a ton of emails, some other work and a few games. Nice! I checked into the hotel and immediately found the free Wi-Fi in the hotel lobby. Great! I proceeded up to my room and couldn’t locate the signal. I called down to the front desk and was politely informed that only wired access was available in the room. Wi-Fi is only available in the lobby. This was inconvenient when your device only has Wi-Fi access. Over the course of the two trips, I found quiet places to hang out while connecting, downloading, uploading and conversing via Skype.

Airports: Over the years, I have spent plenty of time in the United Red Carpet Club lounges. It offers a relaxing place much quieter than the hustle and bustle of the airport terminal. It also provides free Wi-Fi access. The challenge is when you are in an airport without a Red Carpet Club. Some airports are moving to free Wi-Fi in the terminals. But many still charge $12-15/day to connect. Alternatively, with the iPad 3G, I pay $25/ month and do not have to worry about where I am or if there is free Wi-Fi. The built-in 3G works for the iPad, but the laptop requires an external 3G card to support wireless everywhere. Plus, the laptop just is not convenient to whip out and use anywhere.

Airplanes: I had hoped that Wi-Fi access on aircraft would have improved since my last posting. Truth be told, I typically only fly United Airlines, so my scope is limited. United does offer Wi-Fi on their P.S. flights between SFO-JFK and LAX-JFK. While some carriers have offered Wi-Fi from the start, United is planning to equip more of its planes with Wi-Fi starting in 2012. In all cases, there is a cost to use the Wi-Fi on aircraft.

Hotels: Many hotels offer free Wi-Fi today. However, the performance can get fairly slow during the evening rush and morning times. During the evenings, I have experienced Hotel Wi-Fi with such poor performance that I had to just work off-line.

Aside from connectivity woes, I still find that cloud presents opportunities for both road warriors and businesses alike. Considering the amount I travel, I still prefer to travel as light as possible. The advent of cloud and tools like the iPad present a glimpse of what is to come. Without cloud-based options, my productivity would be severely limited…unless I had the laptop in tow.

Bottom Line: The back-end options for cloud computing have advanced in many ways over the past year. While the end-user options have not progressed as quickly, one can only expect to see improvements in the near term.

A couple of days ago, I posted some thoughts about the recent Amazon AWS outage. In the passing days, many others have written their own missives collecting their thoughts on what may have happened and the ensuing consequences. The opinions range widely from a typical outage to outrage to a potential cover-up of a larger issue.

The ramifications of the outage are certain to impact the stratospheric velocity of the cloud computing trajectory. Many will consider the impact in a very negative way. They may go so far as to say that an outage at the poster child for cloud (Amazon) demonstrates that the cloud market is still immature for the demand it seeks.

While some place the blame squarely on the provider (Amazon in this case), others point to the short-sided expectations of the clients. Personally, I believe both carry some responsibility in the matter. This is true of all cloud providers and those that leverage the cloud. Further, it is not specific to cloud, but any provider that one uses.

I’ve been on both sides of the coin over the course of my career; both provider and consumer. The objective should be to create a true partnership. But what is a true partnership? And what are the characteristics that differentiate a partnership from a traditional vendor/ customer relationship? We each may have a different set of objectives and characteristics that define a partnership.

A partnership is much like a personal relationship; friends, family, etc. And both parties are responsible for maintaining the partnership over time. Partnerships take work. As such, there are several attributes that characterize a true partnership. Honesty, trust, communication and shared responsibility are just a couple of the core attributes. Without a solid foundation, it is difficult to pinpoint expectations. I could delve into the realm of SLAs and SLOs, but will save that for a future entry.

While it is well and good to talk about what makes a partnership, is it (or should it be) necessary for the cloud market? That depends on the expectations. If the expectations are for basic services with few requirements around confidence, then probably not. If, however, the expectations are more critical to the business or the expectations are higher, a stronger relationship is warranted. And I’m talking about more than just a contract and SLA.

There are many ways to create a partnership. Understanding what is core and important is a good first step. I’m not referring to technology requirements. I’m referring to relationship requirements. What is important to you for that specific service or offering? Thinking ahead, what is expected when things do not work as expected? Do both parties agree to the approach? In some cases, this may be a simple documented communication and action plan. In other cases, it may require a more engaged discussion.

In many ways, this is not too different from a contract. What is a contract? Frankly, it should be something you negotiate at the beginning of the relationship and never have to refer to again. But it really serves as a backstop for when things do not go as planned. SLAs may serve in a similar capacity. When the contract is negotiated, both parties agree to the process, actions and consequences…up front. When something happens, you know what to expect.

But is that really enough? Plenty of providers have written contracts and SLAs available. They provide a basic understanding of expectations, but do not go far enough for critical business processes. In those situations, one needs to look deeper into the organization, the processes, the expectations and the level of relationship to establish. Where there is a gap, correct it. When there is confusion, clarify it.

I was told many years ago that the best business relationships have a senior or executive-level relationship behind it. That is very true to this day. I’m sure this is harder to do with the larger providers. But you may be surprised.

Bottom Line: Look beyond the contract and SLA. What other attributes are in place to ensure a successful relationship?

Today, Amazon suffered a major outage of their EC2 cloud services based out of their Virginia data center. There are plenty of other blogs with more technical details on what specifically took place. Many cloud pundits are pointing to the outage as another example of the immaturity of cloud-based infrastructures. I think this is overblown.

In past missives, I outlined examples of past outages:

• Oct 14, 2009   Microsoft Sidekick Data Loss
• Jun 29, 2009   Rackspace Data Center Outage
• May 14, 2009  Google Outage
• Mar 21, 2009   Carbonite Storage Failure

While the dust-up of Amazon is fresh, outages of infrastructure are something to expect. We expect them in our own data centers. So are we back to expecting a double standard with cloud providers? In the case of Amazon, is the expectation that a higher class of service is delivered for a fraction of the price compared with internally provided data center services? Really?

Outages happen all the time in cloud data centers. Most of those outages are never observed or significantly impact users. Why? In most cases, simple tiers of redundancy are used to lower the statistical probability that an outage will occur. Yes, I said lower the statistical probability…not eliminate it. That’s all that redundancy does.

Then why did these outages happen in such a large and public cloud offering? At some point, one has to make a business decision as to how much redundancy is valuable. It’s easy to take pot shots from the outside of a cloud provider and looking inward. But these same challenges exist within traditional data centers too. And not all redundancy is infrastructure-based. Application architectures must consider the risks too.

I submit that it is time that we need to consider a different approach to how we provide services. I’m not referring to IaaS services. I’m referring to application-level services (SaaS in many ways). Our application architectures have relied on redundant infrastructure at the most basic levels for some time. That includes networks, servers, storage and so on.

This may sound like a pipe dream, but application awareness needs to move much higher in the OSI stack. If you think about it, SaaS applications do this to some degree. Do you know which data center is serving data when visiting http://www.google.com/? No. But when you put that in your browser, it works. Why is that? Does that mean that Google doesn’t have infrastructure failures? Do they have applications failures? Of course they do. But they’ve architected their applications and infrastructure to be resilient from failures.

In the case of the Amazon failure today, if the client applications were architected to leverage multiple Amazon data centers, would they have experienced an outage? While it may not have eliminated the entire outage for clients, it most likely would have reduced the impact. From the initial reports, the outage appears to be isolated to Amazon’s Virginia data center.

Some will argue that data sets are the Achilles Heel and prevent this type of redundant application architecture. I would propose that maybe we just haven’t figured out how to deal with it yet.

Bottom line: Failures are a reality in private data centers and in the cloud. We need to stop fearing failure and start expecting it. How we prepare our services and applications to respond to failure is what needs to change.

There has been quite a bit discussion about the topic of Cloud Computing and specifically if interest was starting to wane. In discussions over the past year, I’ve used the term ‘cloud fatigue’ to describe how cloud came on strongly, but without a clear understanding of value, multiple issues are creating confusion. More clarity around direct business value from cloud computing is needed. This includes both top-line and bottom-line impact.

As a current benchmark, I was curious to see how the term ‘cloud computing’ was trending in Google searches. The results were surprising. The charts below were collected April 12, 2011.

Here are the Google search results for the term ‘cloud computing’ since 2004.

It appears that the term has had a steady climb, but is hitting a plateau of late. More on the plateau…or plateaus below. Further details revealed searches originating from India as the top country. The United States came in 7^th behind India, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Ireland and Malaysia.

It is interesting to see the heavy interest from countries in Asia. The top states (or sub-regions) and cities were fascinating as well. Quincy, MA ranked top in the US well ahead of any other city.

In addition to the surprise in locations that generated the most interest, the data showed another interesting trend. Since 2004, interest has plateaued a few times. Steady growth was observed from 2004 until March 2009. Then growth plateaued for two quarters until October 2009. Afterward, growth continued again until November 2009. However, interest plateaued for another three quarters until June 2010. Then growth resumed again until September 2010. Since then, growth has essentially plateaued yet again.

It’s not clear what is driving these growth spurts followed by plateaus. One could map major announcements against the data. It’s not obvious that the data reveals seasonality either. Overall, normalization of the data does represent overall growth, but suggests a potential slow-down of interest in cloud computing. The slow-down could be attributed to cloud fatigue. Based on past plateaus, the next quarter should tell if growth resumes, continues flat or declines.

In the spirit of paradigm shifts, here’s one to think about.

Servers that are purchased today will not be replaced. Servers have a useful lifespan. Typically that ranges in the 3-5 years depending on their use. There are a number of factors that contribute to this. The cost to operate the server grows over time and it becomes less expensive to purchase a new one. The performance of the server is not adequate for newer workloads over time. These (and others) contribute to the useful lifespan of a server.

At the current adoption rates of cloud-based services, said servers will not be replaced. But rather, the services provided from those systems will move to cloud-based services. Of course there are corner cases. But as the cloud market matures, it will drive further adoption of services. Within the same timeframe, when existing servers become obsolete, many of those services will move to cloud-based services.

This shift requires several actions depending on your perspective.

- Server/ Channel Provider: How will you shift revenue streams to alternative offerings? Are you only a product company and can you make the move to a services model? Are you able to expand your services to meet the demand and complexities?

- IT Organizations: It causes a shift in budgetary, operational and process changes. Not to mention potential architecture and integration challenges for applications and services.

These types of changes take time to plan and develop before implementation. 3-5 years is not that far away in the typical planning cycle for changes this significant. The suggestion would be to get started now if you haven’t started already. There are great opportunities available today as a way to start “kicking the tires”.

Having written about the challenges for Road Warriors and cloud computing, I thought it a good opportunity to write about the challenges that connectivity brings to a cloud-based methodology. Some challenges are very real while others are perception.

It is true that road warriors are still challenged with hosting data in the cloud. There are a myriad of reasons this becomes problematic. The vast majority of airplanes still don’t have Internet connectivity. And those that do have limited bandwidth. Just try to open that large PowerPoint presentation or make a Skype call from an airplane over WiFi. The same is true in airports and hotels. And when there is connectivity, the options can be frustrating. I recently stayed at hotel in Japan (a global brand). They offered free WiFi in the lobby. In the rooms WiFi was not available…only wired access. Of course this presented a challenge for someone who typically only travels with an Apple iPad. And then there are the hotels, airports and other locations that charge exorbitant rates to use their WiFi network. If you’re traveling to a conference with other tech-minded folks, expect the connectivity performance to suffer accordingly.

However, for businesses, the challenges are less concerning. Businesses are more stationary and less mobile. Redundant connectivity is a real option as the cost of bandwidth drops. For this reason, connectivity is less of an issue for businesses than the mobile users that access cloud-based services. Local access to productivity apps and their related files can realistically be accessed across the Internet today. There are corner cases, but for the majority, it is very possible.

When considering whether to leverage cloud-based services, one has to consider many factors. Those include the location of users (end-users, developers, administrators), applications that consume the data and value to business (economic, flexibility and responsiveness). More to come on the “three tenants” of cloud computing in a future post.

It is important to consider the different scenarios. It is equally important to look at new paradigms and not be constrained by conventional wisdom.