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Google vs. Amazon Cloud Options


Google offers much more than just Storage for Developers. They keep packaging pieces of their million-plus server data center network in the form of focused special purpose offering. Storage for Developers should be seen as marketable service aimed at dealing with specific proprietary features offered by Amazon.

The Storage for Developer is a part of a much larger Google App Engine offering. For further details see
http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/whatisgoogleappengine.html
For instance, the data store feature is an App Engine distributed data storage service that includes a query engine and transactions.

The Platform-as-a-Service offering that I mentioned represents the start of a series of technology collaborations with Google to deliver solutions that make enterprise software developers more efficient at building, deploying and managing applications within any cloud environment.

The "commercial infrastructure-as-a-service" shown are for firms such as Amazon.

There decision which which cloud solution the the Department of Defense should pursue will depend on the economics of how to proceed with migration of legacy applications.

You can buy storage both from Google and from Amazon except that the Google storage is relocatable, whereas the Amazon storage can be moved only with reprogramming.

Platform as a Service

At yesterday's conference Google and VMware made what is perhaps one of the most ambitious cost reduction announcements in the history of information management.*

Google, with >1 million servers, has joined the dominant virtualization firm VMware (with >50,000 customers) to announce the availability of a "Platform-as-a-Service" cloud.

Here is the significance:

1. Google will provide the computing infrastructure (Platform) from 27 global data centers to anyone
on an as-use basis. Various Service Level Agreements (SLAs) will be available, including six sigma reliability.

2. Customers will avoid devoting  >50% of the development costs to the creation of application level
infrastructures. A complete data center and a continually evolving secure infrastructure will be delivered by Google and be completely transparent to any customer.

3. VMware will provide code development Tool Suites to customers. By means of these tools customers will be able to manage applications for the cloud, thus by-passing many of the existing problems associated with the writing and installing code with a minimum of testing.

4. Google and VMware will deliver software development tools that will integrate software performance
monitoring with production environment tracing technology. This will enable end to end performance visibility for all applications as well as load balancing across several data centers.

5. Large libraries of open source tested components will become readily accessible. This will offer a major
departure from the existing Microsoft .Net tools and methods.

6. Open standards will make it possible for customers to relocate processing from Google Platforms to
other Public or Private Clouds. National Security processing will be able to use the identical technology
to create a "Secure-Platform-as-a-Service".

SUMMARY

We can expect large reductions in the development and operating costs of new Java applications (>70%)
plus improvements in reliability and in error reduction.

These developments will alter how we will have to view the ways how to organize the creation and the application of software.


* http://www.vmware.com/company/news/releases/vmware-google.html

Cloud Computing Guidance

On May 20, 2010, Vivek Kundra, Federal Chief Information Officer, issued
guidance regarding cloud computing:*

By September 2011 – all newly planned or performing major IT investments acquisitions must complete an alternatives analysis that includes a cloud computing based alternative as part of their budget submissions.

By September 2012 – all IT investments making enhancements to an existing investment must complete an alternatives analysis that includes a cloud computing based alternative as part of their budget submissions.

Of the available three models of cloud only two are applicable to the Department of Defense on account of security:

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

Cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS).
 Provides the consumer the ability to provision 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 limited control of select networking components (e.g., host firewalls).

Summary


Cloud computing is far from simple. It embraces a confluence of concepts — virtualization, service-orientation, elasticity, multi-tenancy, and pay-as-you-go — manifesting as a broad range of cloud services, technologies, and approaches in today’s marketplace. The Federal CIO guidance has opened all IT investments as well as operations to a radical examination. Whether the component CIOs can rise to this challenge in the limited time provided remains to be seen.


* http://www.cio.gov/pages.cfm/page/Vivek-Kundra-Testimony-on-Cloud-Computing

Data integration of diverse legacy applications within a "cloud"

This is one of the most exciting new developments I have ever seen: It is possible to integration diverse legacy data sources across applications within a cloud environment.

The acquisition will advance SpringSource and VMware’s vision of providing the infrastructure necessary for emerging cloud-centric applications, with built-in availability, scalability, security and performance guarantees. These modern applications require new approaches to data management, given they will be deployed across elastic, highly scalable, geographically distributed architectures. With the addition of GemStone’s data management solutions, customers will be able to make the right data available to the right applications at the right time within a distributed cloud environment.

“Data management technologies are fundamental to the creation of applications, and with the rise of virtualization and cloud computing, the manner in which applications need to access data is evolving. Cloud computing is a distributed deployment model, and for that reason, caching and data accessibility are of far greater strategic importance than before. We are acquiring and will integrate into the SpringSource portfolio a well-regarded set of high performing data management solutions with GemStone.”

SpringSource plans to fully support GemStone’s product line and will continue to support all GemStone customers. GemStone’s flagship product is GemFire Enterprise, a scalable, distributed data platform that puts data where it is needed across a network to remove latency.

Cloud Computing for DoD Business Applications

Popular slides in recent presentations keep announcing the arrival of a new computing environment – the “cloud” - that will make all applications work better, faster and cheaper. However, there are difference between generalizations and reality. Even at an optimistic 25% growth rate, the current cloud spending is less than 5% of total IT spending, though at that growth rate if may soon become one of the dominant forms for organizing information systems. Time has come for the DoD Business Mission to start picking the path to cloud operations in order to migrate from its current high cost and low performance environment.

The DoD FY10 IT cost of the Business Mission (exclusive of the payroll costs for uniformed and civilian personnel) is $5.2 Billion plus about one third of the costs of the communications and computing infrastructure adding another $5.4 Billion to total costs.

The scope of DoD Business Applications exceeds by a multiple of three the average IT budgets of the largest US corporate organizations. Consequently, DoD Business Operations must think about its future IT directions as operating a secure and private cloud that is managed organically by the DoD Business Mission in order to reap the benefits offered by the cloud environment.

Cloud computing comes in many forms. They are: Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS); Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). From the standpoint of the Department of Defense we will discuss only offerings that can offer complete support of over 2,000 applications.
Business Operations cannot be attached to "public" clouds that are proprietary.

For instance, DoD cannot rely on the largest “cloud” service, such as the Amazon Elastic Cloud. Amazon offers computing capacity that is totally managed by the customer, which is operated as a “public cloud”.  Computing processing is purchased on demand. This makes Amazon an IaaS service. However, once you place your applications in the proprietary Amazon cloud, the ability to transfer the workload into a different environment would be difficult to extricate from.

The Google App Engine offers a (PaaS) service as a “public cloud”, which is accessible to all.  Google allows developers to build, host and then run web applications on Google's mature infrastructure with Google’s own operating system. Google provides only a few Google managed applications.

Enterprise level computing by Salesforce.com now operates at a $1.4 billion revenue rate per year, with 2 million subscribers signed up for SaaS application services running in a proprietary PaaS environment. Salesforce offers only proprietary solutions and cannot be considered by DoD though this will most likely change as result of a recent partnership agreement with VMware.

There are several other cloud providers, such as Terremark Worldwide, that offer IaaS services, but in every instance leave it to customers to manage their own applications. These organizations qualify for DoD applications provided that would meet open source and security criteria.

Open Platform and Open Source

The Microsoft Windows Azure platform offers a PaaS environment for developers to create cloud applications. If offers services running in Microsoft’s data centers in a proprietary .Net environment. Azure runs preferentially .Net applications, which are integrated into a Microsoft controlled software environment, but which can be defined almost entirely as a “closed” platform.

DoD Business Mission applications are running largely in a Microsoft .Net environment at present. The question is whether DoD will pursue cloud migration into a multi-vendor “open platform” and “open source” programming environment, or whether DoD will continue adhering to a restrictive Microsoft .Net? This matter will be discussed in a future blog that will deal with the economics of evolving from .Net legacy solutions.

The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), with the largest share of the DoD IT budget, has advocated the adoption of the open source SourceForge library in April, 2009 for unclassified programs. DISA's Forge.mil program enables collaborative software development and cross-program sharing of software, system components and services in support of network-centric operations and warfare. Forge.mil is modeled from concepts proven in open-source software development. It represents a collection of screened software components and is used by thousands of developers, taking advantage of a huge library of tested software projects. Forge.mil components are continually evaluated by thousands of contributors, including contributions to its library by firms such as IBM, Oracle and HP but not from Microsoft, which continues to control its own library of codes.

A DoD Memorandum of October 16, 2009 signed by the Acting DoD Chief Information Officer on “Clarifying Guidance Regarding Open Source Software (OSS)” defines OSS as software for which the human-readable source code is available for use, study, reuse, modification, enhancement, and redistribution by the users of that software.” Accordingly, OSS meets the definition of “commercial computer software” and shall be given preference in building systems. With the announcement of Forge.mil DoD has started the process of adoption of open source computer code.

Implications

The migration of business applications into the cloud environment calls for a reorientation of systems development technologies in favor of running on “private” clouds while also taking advantage of “open source” techniques for maximum savings.

The technologies now available for the construction of “private” clouds will ultimately make it possible to achieve the complete separation of the platforms on which applications run from the applications themselves . In addition, the simplification that can be achieved through the sharing of “open” source code from the Forge.mil library makes it possible to deliver cloud solutions faster, better and cheaper.