Recently, BlueLock’s Brandon Jeffress and I visited Anderson University in Anderson, Indiana to take a look at how cloud computing is being used, or could be used, in the classroom environment. Jeffress, alum of Anderson, arranged for us to meet with Professor Charles Koontz, head of the Information Technology department there. After a tour of the facilities, we sat down with Professor Koontz to discuss the role of virtualization in modern college IT training.


You can’t open a news feed today without reading something about cloud computing, virtualization, or infrastructure as a service (IaaS), so Brandon and I were surprised to learn that these topics are all but absent from the modern college IT major’s curriculum. Professor Koontz explained that colleges follow the guidelines of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) which sets standards for the curriculum of IT majors in order to ensure that graduates possess the appropriate body of knowledge upon entering the working world. Cloud computing, it seems, has simply exploded onto the business scene so quickly that education has not been able to keep up. Curriculum changes take time, and so it is left up to the proactive student to engage with these expanding fields through their own research and internships. 

Brandon and I weren’t satisfied with that. Even for the most proactive students, internships and independent exploration cannot compare to the engagement one gets with a project under the direction of a professor. Wouldn’t it be great if there was a way to introduce students to virtualization through a short classroom tutorial, allowing them to interact with the topics they were reading about in the news through actual hands-on experience? 

      
Professor Koontz suggested that the IT major’s senior capstone class might be a great place to start. He invited Brandon to come and teach a day’s class on Cloud Computing, the advantages of cloud hosting, and his role at BlueLock this fall. Brandon agreed that even an introductory level class might really help to give the students some clarity around the whirlwind of topics referred to as “cloud,” including: Platform as a Service (PaaS), Infrastructure as a Service(IaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS). 

Additionally, Brandon suggested that the advantages of cloud computing could work in the students advantage when it comes to getting hands-on experience in managing environments. Before virtualization, it would have been impossible for an individual student to practice managing their own multiple-server environment. Even just three servers would have cost thousands of dollars in years past. But now, with virtualization, it takes just a few minutes to spin up three new VMs. If a college were to leverage virtualization in its classroom, students could manage their own multi-server environment in the cloud with ease. The student could control everything from creation of the VMs to their retirement, giving them great experience in one of the hottest fields in IT.

Professor Koontz believes such a program would be a great addition to a student’s education and would be willing to experiment with such a program at Anderson. He also recommended we investigate other local universities, including Indiana University, IUPUI, Ball State, Purdue University, and The University of Indianapolis. Together these schools could work to build a standard curriculum and pool their resources to implement this short tutorial series which might give Indiana’s recent graduates a leg up as they step out of the classroom and into a very “cloudy” business world.

Last week I attended Softletter's SaaS University in Washington, D.C.  It was a great event aimed at helping SaaS companies learn how to better market, sell and deliver their cloud computing solutions using the Software-as-a-Service model.  BlueLock was asked to deliver a session on the infrastructure choices that SaaS companies face when deciding how to host their application. 

The numbers from the 2010 Softletter SaaS Survey revealed that SaaS companies have many infrastructure choices to make, from highly virtualized (Cloud) server farms to highly managed service systems and many variants in between. My session analyzed the choices available to SaaS providers and and gave some realistic numbers, checklists, and scenarios that hopefully helped them make the best choice for their operations and peace of mind.  Infrastructure As A Service offerings can be a great benefits to SaaS companies in that they can help them move opex expenses to capex expenses, lower their overall costs, align their expenses with revenues, improve their speed-to-market and provide a competitive advantage.

Here's a link to the PPT and the presentation on SlideShare.

Cloud Computing means many things to many people.  It excites, motivates, and even scares some.  But what does it mean to you?

The advantages of cloud computing have been touted again and again - from flexibility, speed, versatility, convenience, and cost effective to green, secure and scalable.  But what makes cloud computing so interesting is that everyone has different thoughts and views around what it really does for them and means to them.

So first things first, what is cloud computing? At BlueLock we describe it in terms of 5 major things: on demand self-service, broad network access, resource pooling, rapid elasticity and measured service.  It is provided in three different service models: software-as-a-service (SaaS), platform-as-a-service (PaaS) and infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS). (BlueLock does IaaS.)

But what's the real value of the cloud? These are the major values our clients have seen:

• Transitioning IT infrastructure costs from Capex to Opex
• Opportunity to lower overall costs
• Better match expenses to revenue
• Rapid provisioning (speed to market)
• Competitive advantage

 But again, I must ask, what does cloud computing mean to you?  

Cloud computing (virtual cloud or "vCloud") is buzzing everywhere now, but what is it?  InfoWorld has a good article about "What cloud computing really means". I find it to be a rather helpful overview, here is a quick snippet from the post:

BlueLock Cloud Hosting lets you choose which cloud service works best for you (see this article from ReadWrite Cloud - BlueLock Lets You Customize Your Cloud Infrastructure).  Using the "Cloud" means choices, and using BlueLock gives you the benefits of choices. 

We are a hosting service provider in the cloud space. Some call it Infrastructure-as-a-Service, others call it cloud hosting.  Whatever you call it we manage, maintain and run the IT infrastructure from the operating system down so you don't have to.  What do you do with all that extra time? Focus on your core business!

Step 1: Research

Quality Programs typically consist of procedures, policies, audits, & the old saying “if you don’t measure it, you can’t improve it.”  Before beginning any of these, I decided to research some industry best practices.

The IT world is filled with white papers, webcasts, blogs, etc…  Mike Durham and I started to filter through this information over the past week & came across an interesting concept
entitled ITIL Lite. 

ITIL (Information Technology Information Library) is a set of concepts and practices for managing IT services/operations.  This Lite approach focuses on the steps that need to be taken to achieve an organization’s desired level of ITIL implementation.

Could this concept be utilized here at BlueLock to help us define a Quality Control Program?  Stay tuned as we research ITIL Lite further, join local user groups, and continue the journey of quality implementation in a SaaS Virtualization environment.

BlueLock has been named to Nine Lives Media Inc.’s third-annual MSPmentor 100, a
distinguished research report identifying the world’s most progressive managed service providers.

“We are honored to be recognized by MSPmentor as one of the world’s most progressive managed service providers," said John Qualls, President and CEO, BlueLock. “We believe our selection is recognition of our continued company growth over the past year and further validates our business plan and the market’s need for different classes of managed IT and cloud hosting services. Three years of cloud experience has allowed us to deliver true cloud computing services that enable developers to Fortune 500 enterprises to deploy and operate their applications on a highly available and scalable platform that is tailored to the
needs of their apps.”

The free MSPmentor 100 report, available at www.MSPmentor.net, is based on data from MSPmentor’s global online survey, conducted October through December 2009. The MSPmentor 100 report recognizes managed service providers based on a range of revenue and management metrics.

Founded three years ago, BlueLock was one of the country’s first providers of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), enabling companies to provision and manage their technology infrastructures more efficiently and cost-effectively. Delivering pre-configured, secure and resilient virtual IT environments which scale ondemand,

“Despite the challenging economy, MSPmentor 100 companies generated more than $700 million in combined recurring revenue and managed services revenue, up 31 percent from the companies’ combined results in 2008,” said Joe Panettieri, editorial director, MSPmentor. “Our report also reveals how MSPs are already profiting from SaaS and cloud services.”

MSPmentor, produced by Nine Lives Media Inc., is the ultimate guide to managed services. MSPmentor features the industry’s top-ranked blog, research, Webcasts, and FastChat videos. It is the number one online media destination for managed service providers in the world.

In my last post, I tackled tips 1-5.  This week I’d like to take a look at the next five tips Adam Stone referred to in regards to "Making sense of the cloud: 15 tips for software CEOs" and provide you with the BlueLock perspective on what companies looking to migrate to cloud computing should be thinking about.

Tip #6:  To Avoid vendor Lock-in, stick to open standards. 
This one makes a lot of sense to me – in the end, you need to make sure that whatever you put in the cloud you can get back easily and intact.  While some may argue that deploying VMware technology locks you into VMware’s virtualization platform, I would argue that VMware is the defacto standard for virtualization technology for the enterprise, by virtue of their large market share.  Deploying VMware gives clients a lot of flexibility to move that server to another VMware host if they wish to move.  We even have cases where companies wish to protect themselves from something happening to BlueLock as a cloud provider.  In that instance, we’re replicating the entire virtual machines to a neutral third party, Iron Mountain.  If a triggering event were to occur, the company simply contacts Iron Mountain and receives immediate access to the virtual machines, which can immediately be loaded on servers running VMware.  That’s just one straight-forward example of how “portable” the environment is as a result of running in a VM ware-based virtualization platform.

Tip #7:  Location, Location, Location. 
Yes, indeed, it’s difficult to bend the laws of physics and the speed of light.  This tip talks about two real issues – the first is latency and the second deals with the laws that govern the location where the data center sits, in both cases, BlueLock has engineered solutions to address our client’s specific challenges.   We have clients that need to have the data closer to them than our data centers in Indianapolis, IN or in Salt Lake City, UT for speed or data privacy issues.  For these clients, we introduced our version of a private data center called The BlueLock Box in October 2007.  This private cloud solution entails installing an HP C3000 blade chassis with redundant SAN shelves behind the client’s firewall.  This solution provides them with the same benefits of BlueLock’s public cloud such as fault tolerance and scalability, but puts the data closer to them for speed and/or privacy issues. 

Tip #8:  Consider using a middleman. 
I agree with Adam – there is a huge opportunity for cloud brokers or companies that have expertise in helping clients make thoughtful decisions about what can and/or should go into the cloud and then to actually help architect and deliver the cloud solution.  We’ve worked closely with several partners who have trusted advisor relationships with large fortune 1000 clients that have chosen BlueLock as their cloud solution.  In fact, we’ve been asked to present next week in VMware’s Partner Exchange keynote on the topic of how partners can work with a cloud providers to deliver real value to their clients.  I will be sharing the stage with Carl Eschenbach, EVP of Worldwide Field Operations and Casey Watson, VP Business Development for Apparatus to talk about how BlueLock and Apparatus have built a sizable business delivering cloud integration services for large clients.

Tip #9:  Monitoring uptime isn’t enough, you need an action plan. 
We couldn’t agree more with Adam on this point.  From day one, we’ve had a resolution-based 99.99% uptime SLA in place for our clients.  This means that not only will we respond quickly to the issue, but we’ll promise resolution of that issue.  On top of that, we’ve also patented a portal that we call “the VITAL signs portal” that provides our clients with an overall view of the health of their environment, as well as an ability to drill into each aspect of their environment, to see what’s actually happening.  Finally, we have also built capabilities in the portal to send alerts and alarms when something goes wrong or when the environment has reached a pre-determined limit on things like CPU, RAM and storage.   If those measures aren’t enough, we’ve also built tailored metrics for some clients that wish to monitor additional key metrics in their environment.

Tip #10:  A clause may look good in the contract, but be useless in the real World.  Adam’s tip in this area covered a “useless” escrow agreement.  In tip number six, I shared how we’ve put an escrow agreement in place that can be tested and actually works.  Having said that, I agree that empty legal promises are not the way to make sure you’re protected.  Testing the system is the best way to insure what’s being set aside actually works.  In addition to the escrow agreement, we also have numerous disaster recovery clients that have performed successful tests of our geographic failover disaster recovery service.  In the end, you want the “promise” in writing, but then you want to do a test to make sure it performs as expected.  Reminds me of an old Reaganism – “trust but verify”.

Next week, I’ll take us down the homestretch and walk through the final five tips for migrating successfully to the cloud. 

Tip #11:  Set financial penalties for downtime
Tip #12:  It takes time to see ROI on SaaS development
Tip #13:  Savings are not in the cloud, but in headcount
Tip #14:  Follow the cloud into new markets
Tip #15:  Let the cloud lead you to new innovations

If you'd like to read the original post by Adam Stone, go here.

SaaS virtualization is creating an ocean entrepreneurial opportunities, where small, nimble businesses can create real value by making creating more efficient ways of doing things.

One thing that James Urquhart points out in his Wisdom of Clouds blog post is that there is still a lot of opporutnity in the SaaS virtualization realm. Businesses that currently use enterprise apps need experts who can transition them to more robust and reliable SaaS apps. There is certainly plenty of room for experts like these to create value, while collecting strategic consulting and referral fees.

As more and more companies take on SaaS apps to manage their business processes, the need for consolidation will increase. Imagine the ability to pay for your campany's blogging platform, accounting system, email marketing platform, and CRM tool -- all on one bill. Now wouldn't that be nice? Urquart rightly points out that SaaS meter consolidatoin could craete a level of convenience for which some companies would be willing to pay.

It will be interesting to see how enrepreneurial companies take advantage of the small pockets of opoprtunity in the SaaS industry next year. It's hard to say which ideas will win, be you can be certain that speed and agility in deploying new business models will be key ingredients to success in SaaS virtualization innovation.

 

All schmoozing and business-card-swaping aside, there are some fantastic advantages of attending cloud computing conventions and expos. I've found meetups like Cloud Camps, ITEC, TechPoint Summits, and Cloud Users Groups to be a fuel source for both professional and personal growth.

Assimilation of knowledge through osmosis is simple.
There are usually tons of super-smart people at events like those listed above. Whether these people are cloud computing providers, vmware virtual server specialists, or others utilizing a cloud computing platform; just standing b and listening in on conversations can be a learning experience. Be curious, pay attention, and ask questions.

Networking -- the interpersonal relationships kind -- reaps rewards.
Meet some new people, nd expand your network. How can you help event attendees? I always make it a goal to make at least three connections that don't immediately benefit me in any way. While you should never help someone with the intent to gain something in return, the law of reciprocity always pays dividends.

Fluency increases competency.
The simple repetition of explaining the advantages of cloud computing has helped me build a certain level of confidence and competence around the benefits of virtualization, vmware hoted environments, and SaaS irtualization. Join in the conversation and learn to talk the talk. The act of speaking about cloud computing platforms, helps to organize thoughts, enhance comprehension, and vet new ideas.

Bottom line: get out of the office and learn somthing from somebody -- including yourself. Find the next cloud computing meetup in your area. Hope to see you there.

New to the idea of Software as a Service SaaS Virtualization? This video from Salesfor will help bring you up to speed:

This short video clip, produced by Salesforce.com, effectively points out that managed cloud hosting is a superior way to run your business. It's clear that multitenancy is simply a more efficient way to approach IT infrastructure.

For those of you who are new to cloud, some of the major benefits of cloud computing are that your data is:

• secure
• backed up in another location (redundant)
• not limited in storage or resources

To help you better understand Infrastructure as a Service (Iaas), Common Craft recently put out a cool little video that is put together like School House Rock for the 21st century.

You can check it out here: Cloud Computing Hosting in Plain English

I always keep an eye open for better ways to explain the benefits of virtualization and cloud computing to not-so-technically-inclined friends as well as potential clients. I found these quick videos to be expremely helpful in succinctly illustrating cloud computing hosting.

A recent email industry survey shows how businesses are reacting to email infrastructure being migrated to the cloud.  Osterman Research found that security-related email functions are dominating the software as a service market today and that the functions most likely to be outsourced in the future, if not already, include anti-spam, bulk email, anti-virus an anti-malware.

What factors are holding companies back from migrating to the cloud?  Findings show that more companies haven’t migrated to the cloud because of privacy concerns, data retrieval concerns (will they be able to grab that data back once it’s in the cloud?), because of regulatory compliance issues and because some companies are just plain scared of losing control.  However, upon a closer glance at cloud computing - a full-fledged look at what cloud hosting can do would show that cloud computing advantages include more choices, agility, control and protection than what a standard IT infrastructure environment can provide, which is why more than 20% of the users surveyed have outsourced their email functions to the cloud already.

Here are some of the results of the survey:

• 40% of companies surveyed are outsourcing some or part of their email infrastructure
• Anti-spam (64%) and bulk email (46%) are being outsourced by most companies
• Today:
  •  20% of users are served by a SaaS solution
  • 22% of email servers run as virtual servers
• In two years:
  •     38% of users will be served by a SaaS Solution
  •     49% of email servers will run as virtual servers

I think the two year projections are somewhat low, but the general growth towards using cloud hosting for email functions and/or using virtual servers is evident.  At BlueLock we’ve seen great success in migrating email to the cloud.  For many companies it makes the most sense to get email off of their machines freeing up space for them internally and getting their IT people working on more strategic applications.  Contact us today to learn more about migrating email to the cloud. 

Read the original post about the survey.

Earlier this week, the Open Group announced the creation of the Cloud Work Group which was established to ensure the effective and secure use of cloud computing in enterprise architecture as well as to continue previous Open Group efforts to develop and promote standards for cloud computing that will prevent vendor lock-in, which has been a hot topic these past few months.

As we all know, there are hundreds of “cloud experts” with hundreds of different definitions about what cloud computing really is.  I think we’re beyond that at this point.  Cloud computing has no official definition, but at this point there’s a general consensus around capacity on demand, access via internet with the use of virtualization, etc. etc.  So now that we’re no longer seeking the “what,” the focus has been drawn more towards the “how” in regards to how do we make this technology the best it can be, and in a format that is beneficial to the service providers and the end users.

And that is precisely where the Cloud Work Group fits in.  Defining the “how” starts with architectural requirements and works towards the different cloud computing platforms (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS).  Vendor lock-in is important to consider as these standards are created – as it’s the main reason for them.  However, just because standards are defined, it doesn’t matter until the vendors and providers adhere to those and build their solution around them.  There’s the rub. 

There are tons of different providers out there, with lots of different solutions on different technology platforms.  And currently, there’s just no economic incentive to go towards interoperability (or is there?).  So how will we get all of the providers on the same page?  What will be the biggest obstacles?

Cloud computing providers differ in two main ways: people and control.  No two cloud services are alike for that very reason and people and control are the two variables that differentiate cloud computing providers from one another.

The definition of cloud computing varies everywhere, but some main characteristics of “the cloud” are: virtualization, capacity on demand, shared resources and subscription-based pricing.  If you fit that bill you’re a cloud, but which segmentation of cloud?

It's either:

SaaS (Software as a Service) – The web-facing software that users interact with (i.e. SalesForce or Google Apps)
PaaS (Platform as a Service) – a platform that helps utilize cloud resources (i.e. RightScale or rPath)
Or IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) – the actual infrastructure behind the cloud, the virtualized servers and network (i.e. BlueLock, GoGrid or your internal cloud)

For purposes of this post, we’re going to focus on Infrastructure as a Service (makes sense because that’s what we’re experts at).  From here, there are also a few different type of IaaS clouds (surprise, surprise!) and their characteristics, to make things just a little more interesting.  Here they are:

Private internal cloud:
-    Limited Capacity
-    Expensive
-    Highly Secure
-    Enterprise Features
-    Self Managed

Public utility cloud
-    Limitless Capacity
-    Lower cost
-    Self Managed (DIY)
-    No/DIY SLA
-    No/DIY Security

Full-service public cloud
-    Large Capacity
-    Fully Managed
-    Customized Security
-    Enterprise Features
-    Enterprise Services
-    SLA

Back to IaaS cloud differentiation – again, all about people and control.  First, you have to decide how much control of the infrastructure you want, can manage or more importantly, can afford.  Then take a look at the other components that will affect your costs in the cloud (some of these you may already have):

-    Hardware & software
-    Licenses
-    People
-    Place

If you’re looking at a do-it-yourself platform like Amazon EC2, you’ll have to purchase your own people and they’ve have to monitor, control and manage the infrastructure.  With this option you’ve got a lot more control, but a much higher TCO – because those people are going to cost you lots of money.  But if you don’t have the people, or you want them to focus on something else, like your core business (i.e. your software solution) instead of the infrastructure then a trusted full-service cloud option like BlueLock makes a lot more sense and could save you about $50,000 a year. 

How’s that even possible?  When you purchase a BlueLock solution, you’re not only purchasing the infrastructure and place to house that infrastructure, you’re purchasing the people and expertise behind it – meaning less employee costs for you (or more beneficial employee costs).  Some would argue you lose a little control because your people, your team isn’t the one working on the infrastructure, but others think that a partner like BlueLock is just an extension of their own team – and a better use of their IT budget at that.  Take Projetech for instance – watch this video and you’ll see that they really see BlueLock as an extension of their company not just another vendor, and that’s the way we like to think about it too. 

Version One has produced the findings of a survey showing that 41% of Senior IT Professionals admit that they “don’t know” what cloud computing is.  However, this is by no means an aggregate of the findings of what could have been a much larger survey.  The findings are based on the responses of only 60 senior IT professionals all of whom are from the UK, in various private and public sector organizations.  They had released a prior study that showed that two-thirds of UK’s senior finance professionals were confused about cloud computing.

However, there are some small signs of life in cloud computing in the UK.  5% of respondents say they use cloud computing “a lot” and 19% say they use it “sparingly.”  Their definition of cloud computing may be a little blurred though, making those responses somewhat inaccurate.  59% said they know what it is:  17% say its internet-based computing, 11% believe it’s a combination of internet, software as a service, software on demand, outsourced or managed service and a hosted software service, and the remaining respondents say it’s a mixture of the above.   The definitions are loose, although in some manner they’re all cloud-related. 

Assuming the 41% that don’t know the definition of cloud computing didn’t claim to use the technology, we’ve still got about 25% of these UK IT professionals using cloud technology.  Now to me, that sounds like the technology is catching on.  The other 75% will just have to play some catch-up once their companies begin to see the value in SaaS, PaaS and/or IaaS.  As for the 41% who don’t even know what cloud computing is, well they’ll wake up one of these days and actually read something regarding their industry.

I couldn’t’ find the actual report, but to read VersionOne’s summary, click here.

Want to see a short video that explains virtualization and cloud technology...with LEGOs? We like to make things easy here at BlueLock, Click here.

Want to know why cloud computing will succeed?  Click here.

Brian Wolff's definition of cloud computing.

BlueLock just finished up our latest case study - our client focus was on Right On Interactive (ROI), a provider of customer lifecycle marketing, automation and demand generation software.

BlueLock & ROI's objective: Reliable, redundant infrastructure promising security and compliance for guaranteed uptime and compatibility.

The Solution: BlueLock platform combined with VMware vCloud, HP Blade, LeftHand SAN technology with Shavlik Security Suite Software for PCI Compliance.

Business Technology Improvements for ROI:

• Creation of PCI Compliant environment in SAS 70 Type II data center to meet requirements of ROI's marketing partners and SalesForce.com AppExchange
• 99.99% uptime and real-time access to data
• VPN enables seamless movement between ROI in-house servers and BlueLock's virtual cloud
• Secure environment, data transfer and redundancy

To learn more about BlueLock's cloud computing service and its SaaS virtualization solutions, click here and read the case study.

As the various branches of the Federal government have begun investigating and adopting different “cloud computing” and cloud-like applications, they like the private sector have struggle with the definition of ‘what is cloud computing’.  To provide clarity and a common platform for discussion, a draft definition by Peter Mell and Tim Grance at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) was presented at a federal CIO summit last week. 


Cloud computing is a pay-per-use model for enabling available, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction. This cloud model promotes availability and is comprised of five key characteristics, three delivery models, and four deployment models.

Key Characteristics:
On-demand self-service. A consumer can unilaterally provision computing capabilities, such as server time and network storage, as needed without requiring human interaction with each service’s provider.

Ubiquitous network access. Capabilities are available over the network and accessed through standard mechanisms that promote use by heterogeneous thin or thick client platforms (e.g., mobile phones, laptops, and PDAs).

Location independent resource pooling. The provider’s computing resources are pooled to serve all consumers using a multi-tenant model, with different physical and virtual resources dynamically assigned and reassigned according to consumer demand. The customer generally has no control or knowledge over the exact location of the provided resources. Examples of resources include storage, processing, memory, network bandwidth, and virtual machines.

Rapid elasticity. Capabilities can be rapidly and elastically provisioned to quickly scale up and rapidly released to quickly scale down. To the consumer, the capabilities available for rent often appear to be infinite and can be purchased in any quantity at any time.

Pay per use. Capabilities are charged using a metered, fee-for-service, or advertising based billing model to promote optimization of resource use. Examples are measuring the storage, bandwidth, and computing resources consumed and charging for the number of active user accounts per month. Clouds within an organization accrue cost between business units and may or may not use actual currency.

Note: Cloud software takes full advantage of the cloud paradigm by being service oriented with a focus on statelessness, low coupling, modularity, and semantic interoperability.

Delivery Models:
Cloud Software as a Service (SaaS). The capability provided to the consumer is to use the provider’s applications running on a cloud infrastructure and accessible from various client devices through a thin client interface such as a Web browser (e.g., web-based email). The consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure, network, servers, operating systems, storage, or even individual application capabilities, with the possible exception of limited user-specific application configuration settings.

Cloud Platform as a Service (PaaS). The capability provided to the consumer is to deploy onto the cloud infrastructure consumer-created applications using programming languages and tools supported by the provider (e.g., java, python, .Net). The consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure, network, servers, operating systems, or storage, but the consumer has control over the deployed applications and possibly application hosting environment configurations.

Cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). The capability provided to the consumer is to rent processing, storage, networks, and other fundamental computing resources where the consumer is able to deploy and run arbitrary software, which can include operating systems and applications. The consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure but has control over operating systems, storage, deployed applications, and possibly select networking components (e.g., firewalls, load balancers).

Deployment Models:
Private cloud. The cloud infrastructure is owned or leased by a single organization and is operated solely for that organization.

Community cloud. The cloud infrastructure is shared by several organizations and supports a specific community that has shared concerns (e.g., mission, security requirements, policy, and compliance considerations).

Public cloud. The cloud infrastructure is owned by an organization selling cloud services to the general public or to a large industry group.

Hybrid cloud. The cloud infrastructure is a composition of two or more clouds (internal, community, or public) that remain unique entities but are bound together by standardized or proprietary technology that enables data and application portability (e.g., cloud bursting).

Each deployment model instance has one of two types: internal or external. Internal clouds reside within an organizations network security perimeter and external clouds reside outside the same perimeter.

SearchSecurity.com just released an article about a recent Forrester report.  The report advises a cautious approach to cloud computing or cloud-based services.  The study found that early adopters ran into some roadblocks such as not knowing where their data is located or what happens to the data if they want to change services and even not knowing specifically how the service provider protects customer privacy.

Forrester advises that companies who are considering cloud-based services gain a clear understanding of security, privacy and legal consequences of contracting with a service provider.  At BlueLock, we like to make it as easy for you as possible to learn about our practices and procedures and match those up against other cloud computing providers.  In our opinion, the last thing we want is to have clients come in and sign on unaware of how their security, privacy and data will be handled.

In regards to security, Forrester recommends that organizations create a checklist of data security and compliance priorities.  This is great advice.  The more you can elaborate on your needs, the better able BlueLock is to provide you exactly what you need.

We’ve had lots of requests for highly compliant IT environments.  The beauty of cloud computing is that BlueLock is able to build your company a compliant environment at a fraction of the cost of building an entire IT system and infrastructure on your own.  Right On Interactive chose BlueLock as their SaaS hosting provider for that precise reason.  Their 5Buckets solution (integrated marketing automation software) needed to be highly compliant in order to be able to integrate with companies such as ExactTarget (email marketing) and SalesForce.com. 

They turned to BlueLock, laid out their needs and wants in regards to security and compliance, decided where they wanted their data stored (Indianapolis facility) and off BlueLock went designing a VMware virtualized IT environment.  They now pay for IT infrastructure as a monthly operational expense; their compliant and secure environment can scale on demand and its environment if fully managed by virtualization experts 24/7/365.  What more could a growing software company ask for?

In a controversial presentation last week titled “Clearing the Air on Cloud Computing,” an analyst from McKinsey delivered his findings on the costs and benefits of cloud computing. His preliminary finding, based on one client, is that cloud computing would actually be more expensive.   The response to this report has varied dramatically. 

Personally, I felt the study was too narrow, and failed to consider the implications of a gradual transition, or the benefits of improved access to data and process. In fact, I might suggest that McKinsey is playing catch up in the cloud and showed us that they’re a little behind on content and vision.  There is a tremendous amount of energy being spent by many companies, especially VMware on creating cloud “inter-operability”, which will allow large and small companies to be very thoughtful about where they place certain applications. 

Thus, as John Foley suggests in his post, it will not be an either or proposition – it will likely be both.  I met a company last week at VMware by the name of IT Structures and their main value proposition was the ability to turn up and turn off quickly demo sites and test sites.  They can do in days what it would take internal IT departments weeks to do.  Now why wouldn’t a large enterprise “bless” that sort of behavior? It makes them more flexible and it keeps the business happy and moving forward.  This, of course is just one idea for how “specialty” clouds will add value to enterprise companies.
Here is what a few others had to say:

Amy Wohl, In a post entitled McKinsey Got it Wrong She says:

The value of cloud computing lies elsewhere: 

• In the flexibility of being able to gain immediate access to additional computing (or to shrink your system when you don't need it).
• In the difference in Time to Market for new business opportunities.
• In the additional value (not included in the McKinsey study) provided in clouds that offer to manage the hardware (via systems software and other offerings) or to provide applications (SaaS). 

Writing for Information Week, John Foley is less critical of the report overall, but he does say:

McKinsey paints cloud computing too much an either/or decision, and that's the wrong way to look at it. IT pros need to do both--virtualize internal systems like crazy and investigate cloud services as a fast, flexible, and cost effective (if not always cheaper) option to capital investment in on-premises software and hardware.

As the responses continue, what do you think or the McKinsey report?

With much of the conversation about Cloud Computing focused on the “Open Cloud Manifesto” it is easy to lose sight of why cloud computing is at the center of almost every tech conversation lately.  That is because cloud computing, with its many advantages, is the future. 

Just as we have made transitions from vinyl records to cassettes, 8tracks and CD’s to iTunes and Pandora our business processes are making the same evolution from dedicated hardware to virtualization solutions such as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS).

Why?  Jeff Kaplan identifies several key reasons for the accelerating pace of the transition:

• SaaS/cloud computing solutions are delivering measurable business benefits, and generating high customer satisfaction and referral rates.
• Corporate executives and end-users need and want a better way to acquire and utilize technology and business applications to meet their rapidly changing business and workplace requirements.
• A new generation of workers—Generation “F” for Facebook, are entering the market who have grown up online and will demand web-based services to do their jobs.
• Today’s tough economic climate demands that organizations of all sizes fundamentally change the way they do business, and few will resist the temptation to revamp the way they procure and use technology and applications so they can get a lower price and higher ROI.

Any one of these would be enough to add “fuel” to the cloud fire. Together, they are creating a perfect storm, where the needs of businesses, preferences of workers and consumers, economic pressures, and the capability of the technology converge to create an environment ready to capitalize on the benefits of cloud computing.

Is cloud computing taking over every industry?  It sure seems that way.  What started out as a viable solution for software-as-a-service (SaaS) providers & companies with loads of data, has now crept into just about every mainstream market.  Specifically, new media's interest in the cloud grows stronger every day.

Just last week there was lots of news about music heading to the clouds, and today we're hearing more about how media and advertising can benefit from the virtualization in the cloud.

John du Pre Gauntt, wrote an article in adweek explaining why it only makes sense for new media to reach for the clouds.  In response to the argument that "media and advertising firms don't have gigantic data processing operations like pharma or defense" he says:
 

"However, cloud computing isn't a killer application but a "killer environment" for media distribution and consumption and therefore advertising and marketing. That's a lot bigger.

Cloud computing hits both sides of the ledger. First, it dramatically changes the economics of operating and scaling an interactive HD-quality multimedia network. Second and equally important, cloud-native media is more likely to act like software than a piece of content. By that I mean that media on the cloud carries with it the ability to transact -- for money, for attention, for ID, for anything that makes sense from a social and/or business point of view.

New media cloudonomics matter."
 

The cloud seems to find a new market to benefit every day.  The reason: it enables any type of organization to access software or data at a fraction of the cost with an insane ability to scale on demand for any reason. For new media (music, video production and other mutlimedia assets) all you have to do is basically rent infrastructure and you can grow your business and offer your service to the world with unlimited infrastructure resources.  Cloud-based media systems make the process more simple, effective and cheap.

du Pre Gauntt explains media & advertising's shift towards the cloud best when he says:
 

But as we saw how retailers, automotive dealerships, and travel and real estate agents scrambled to reorganize their businesses once e-commerce negated much of their information and infrastructure advantages, we should expect a similar -- perhaps violent -- overhaul of media and marketing. Given the current flux caused by the Great Recession of 2009-?, media and advertisers would be wrong to assume they will have a similar time cushion to respond.