Breaking the Code

I love it when a plan comes together

"I love it when a plan comes together" is one of my all time favorite quotes from the A-Team, in turn one of my all time favorite TV shows and one which, whenever I see it, takes me straight back to when I was a student at Uni in the '80s.  Of course, context is everything and it normally guaranteed that complete mayhem was about to ensue!

So fast forwarding to 2009 it is great to see that in the midst of all the media generated hysteria about countries going bankrupt yada yada a plan is very definitely coming together and momentum is continuing to build around Cloud Computing.

Whether it is on twitter (stalwarts like @ruv,  @elasticserver etc), online (new kids like Alltop - Top Cloud Computing News), unconferences (Cloud Camp) or regular events, there is something new popping up every day.

Coming up in the next few weeks there are a couple of London events that it is well worth taking a closer look at if you are planning to be in town.

The first is Powered by Cloud which is a two day event Feb 2 and Feb 3 with a very ambitious and wide ranging programme looking at Cloud Computing from all points of the compass.  I have to declare an interest as I will be on a panel entitled "Finance, Investors and Cloud Computing".  I'll be blogging on this in the run up to the conference itself but I think it will be the premier Cloud Computing networking event this quarter.

The other event is the third outing for CloudCamp London which this time around will be at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre on March 12.

Again I should declare an interest as we are sponsoring this event for the first time and it will feature the debut of our Co-founder and CTO Alex Heneveld.  (He can't do a worse job than yours truly who at the last event in November staggered off a plane from Boston and tried to do a demo of Cloud Cover in under 4 mins ... not having quite grasped the format rigorous enforced by the merciless master of ceremonies one Alexis Richardson!)

In short, this is the age of viral marketing ... where Mad Men are but a dim and distant memory!

Finally you can now subscribe to this blog on Feedburner which I believe is viewed in some quarters as a good thing.

Cloudcover Demo Recording

As promised here is a video recording of the Cloudcover Demo we recently gave at the Tier1 Hosting Transformation Summit and also at High Performance on Wall Street.  The audio is a little quiet so we will be re-recording this shortly.

Cloud Control

Hats off to Scalent for blogging on this.  See Cloud Control - The secret to Cloud Computing Success.  It meshes perfectly with the session we did last week at High Performance on Wall Street.

For those of you that missed it here are William Fellow's introductory slides Keynote: Controlling the Weather.

I promised to post a video from this session.   It is on its way.

Cloudcover - An Insurance Policy Use Case

There has been a lot of talk about Cloudbursting but an equally interesting Cloud Computing use case is Cloudcover.  In other words, using the cloud as an insurance policy.

From a managed services provider point of view this is a great example of a Cloud service.  Offering DR-as-a-Service is perfect for any business which wants to ensure its key applications can run in the Cloud if its own IT infrastructure is not available for any reason.

Here is an example of a policy that captures this.  In this simple case we have an application which by default runs on company infrastructure leveraging pre-existing Scalent personas.  However, it can fail over to the Cloud where we've replicated the application components using CohesiveFT Elastic Server.

A key point to note is that the standard virtualization DR use case does not apply for a lot of SMBs as there is no dev/test environment to repurpose/use as DR environment so essentially DR is pure cost.

A live demo of this Cloudcover use case will take place at High Performance on Wall Street today.  We will post a video of this demo shortly.

[Shameless Plug:  This is a concrete example of the combination of several Cloudbase components to deliver a Cloud service as the policy was designed and implemented using the Enigmatec Management System (EMS) and leverages both Scalent and CohesiveFT under the hood.]

It's the storage - stupid!

I was blown away by the Dell keynote The Intelligent, Automated IT Infrastructure at VMworld yesterday.  John Joseph (VP, Marketing, Dell Equalogic) covered a lot of ground in an hour but what stood out was the role that iSCSI storage can play in virtualization.  It is ironic that it took VMWare so long to provide support iSCSI given its importance going forward but what is clear now is that "It's the storage - stupid!".  Or at the very least we won't get far without a clear understanding of the role of storage in virtualization whether provided by Dell, 3Par or whomever.

Cloudbase - A Definition

Maybe it is my philosophy training but if I am going to embrace a metaphor like Cloud Computing I need to understand it.  The emergence of new concepts like Cloudbursting (coined by Jeff Barr at AWS) are an important part of this process.

In the same spirit I'd like to introduce the concept of a Cloudbase which is the set of core infrastructure serivces that form the foundation of Cloud Computing; promote interoperability and underpin the Cloud Services that are delivered.

The term Cloudbase is no accident.  Cloud base has a very precise definition in meteorology.  It is the altitude at which a cloud forms.  In other words, the altitude at which atmospheric conditions combine to allow water to condense and form ice crystals.

In Cloud Computing, there are three key components to Cloudbase -

• Service Manufacturing - the ability to manufacture the core components that make up a service in whatever format is required as exemplified by CohesiveFT Elastic Server.
• Resource Management - the ability to manage networking, storage and compute both physical and virtual as exemplified by Scalent.
• Service Orchestration - the ability to enforce service levels; handle service requests; implement specific policies as exemplified by Enigmatec.

What I like about this approach is that it does away with the overhead and complexity associated with using traditional provisioning tools.

As CTO of Enigmatec I would be remiss if I didn't declare an interest but I don't feel too bad doing this as we've already built a demonstration that utilizes CohesiveFT and Scalent who are the best-of-breed offerings in their respective categories.

Of course the real reason is that Cloudbase is actually Spectrum HQ which by a happy coincidence "hovers continuously at a height of 40,000 feet and can be moved above any point on Earth as needed".

Above the clouds

I flew out to Las Vegas with Alexis Richardson from CohesiveFT yesterday on Virgin VS43.  Sadly this was the one place I couldn't show him the cloudburst/backup demo we've built.

This demo is going to be showcased at the Tier1 Research Hosting Transformation Summit at the Mirage where Antonio Piraino is delivering Cloud Computing keynote tomorrow.

Not to be outdone it is cloud, cloud, cloud (sorry make that vCloud, vCloud, vCloud!)  over at VMWorld which is running concurrently at the Venetian right across the street.  I am following this on ZDNet Virtualization blog.  VMware posted a Cloud press release yesterday that covers the same material.

There is huge emphasis on cloud services - whether it is Paul Maritz at VMWorld or John Zanni on stage here at HTS - which is ultimately about the packaging and delivery of cloud computing.  Equally important of course are the core infrastructure services that need to underpin this - the foundations of Cloud Computing.  More on this anon.

The Texas Triangle

I've been spending a lot of time in Texas specifically in what I've dubbed the "Texas Triangle".  This is the area roughly speaking that encompasses Dallas/Fort Worth & Plano to the north; Houston to the East and Austin/San Antonio to the West.

Not only does the Texas Triangle include one of the coolest places to hang out if you like live music but it also home to companies that collectively host around 15% of the Internet.  Wow.  Take LayeredTech for example.  You've probably never heard of them but they are one of the fastest growing wholesale suppliers of Internet real estate.

Oh and for live music why not catch Kate Edmonson at Eddie V's on 5th Street (she is there most Weds) or check out what's on at somewhere like Mohawk on Red River.  Last week we saw Shearwater - fronted by the haunting vocals of Jonathan Meiburg who has one of the most interesting voices since Antony of the eponymous Antony and the Johnsons - and Wyeoak who as far as we were concerned were the revelation of the evening.