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iPad: The Cloud Angle

Jan 28th, 2010
by Martin Glassborow.
3 comments

There has to be a Cloud angle to every technology story these days, so I thought I'd take a stab at it for the iPad! 

Apple needs large Cloud enabled data-centres to support the iPad. Why?

The iPad could quite possibly be for many people the only computer they need; well, not this iPad but whatever comes after the iPad. But even this one will be good enough for some people but if the iPad is the only computer they need and have; they are going to need somewhere to keep all the content that they consume on the iPad and this is rapidly going to exceed the internal storage requirements of the iPad. So I expect fairly shortly that you will be able to back-up and store all the content that you consume, produce in Apple's cloud. I also expect that you will be able to share that content within your household; so if Mum, Dad and kids all have an iPad; then they will all be able to access the content bought.

One of things that has stopped me using iTunes to buy content is the idea that if I manage to trash my iTunes environment; I will end up purchasing all that content again. I am expecting Apple to allow me to back-up my iTunes content to the Cloud for a reasonable monthly subscription. And then I expect that Amazon et al will follow suit. 

So there you go, there's the obligatory cloud angle. I have some some thoughts on the device itself but they will wait.

More Cloud Witterings…

Jan 26th, 2010
by Martin Glassborow.
3 comments

Must be time for me to witter on about some Cloud thoughts again, someone put up a slide at CloudCamp London last week basically saying something along the lines that in the Cloud all ‘Servers are Equal’; you don’t get a choice apart from number of CPUs or amount of Memory; that’s about as granular is gets.  

So all the servers are equally likely to fail, you don’t get any real options at the server-level for building in a resiliency, redundancy; even I/O performance. You can’t ask for better network connectivity and you certainly can’t ask for faster storage; sure you can have more storage but that storage will perform pretty much the same as anybody else’s and that performance may change from day to day; hour to hour; minute to minute; application developers are going to have get pretty smart about how they handle changes in responsiveness from their back-end data-stores.

But perhaps automated storage tiering will come to the rescue? And of course this lets service providers come up with yet another charge; not only a charge for space consumed but perhaps also a charge for the number of IOPs consumed over a period of time. This also changes application design, not only do you want to engineer applications to cope with variances latency but you also want to design applications to minimise I/O. Arguably applications should be designed like that anyway but in the future, there might well be real cost incentives to do so..

Just thinking..

A Bold Prediction

Jan 8th, 2010
by Martin Glassborow.
5 comments

Did VMWare save EMC? Looking back at the last decade, the acquisition that stands out is that of VMWare by EMC. An acquisition so important that I suggest that it saved EMC. Did EMC need saving? At the point it bought VMWare probably not but if EMC had not bought VMWare, I suspect it would have been in dire straights or at least not the company it is today. I'd go as far as to propose that it would have been bought itself by now.

Acquiring VMWare changed EMC from a storage company into a company which wants to be a lot more; it brought ambition and ideas into EMC. VMWare opened EMC eyes' to a new way of thinking for it; it has driven more innovation into EMC than any other acquisition. Without the experience that VMWare brought into it, I doubt that EMC would be trying as hard to innovate in Cloud Computing; they'd just be another 'me too'. 

So what will the defining acquisition of the next decade be? And will it be made by a storage company? Or will be by someone acquiring a storage company? Actually I'm going to make a bold prediction, it'll involve Cisco but I'm not sure whether Cisco will be the purchaser or the purchased. There's something to think about and no-one will remember if I was wrong anyway.

Terms of Service

Nov 19th, 2009
by Martin Glassborow.
No comments yet

One of the things you get used to as a consumer of services is that at times changes to the terms and conditions of that service irritate you and you consider moving your custom. Most of the time you don't and eventually you learn to live with the changes. Actually, most of the times, the changes don't make a jot of difference and you are just irritated for the sake of being irritated.

As consumers of 'cloud applications'; this happens to us a lot; Twitter changes something, we all howl, it generally stays changed and we learn to live with it. User-interfaces change underneath us all the time, we have no choice and we learn the new interface. We cannot opt-out.

Now, look around your data centre; how many applications have you got running on legacy hardware/operating systems which are long out of support and in some case, the company which built them no longer exists? As you own the infrastructure, you can simply take the decision to opt-out and continue to run the application. A Business Unit might have very good reasons for continuing to run the application but it could simply be the case of 'It Aint Broke, So Don't Fix It'.

If Cloud Infrastructures become the norm, this no longer becomes quite so tenable. If your Cloud Provider upgrades it's underlying infrastructure and you find your instance no longer works; your only opt-out might well to be find a way of moving that instance into a infrastructure which will support it. However, if the application is core and lots of applications partner with it; this might not be easy.

For support teams, this might finally give them the stick they need to encourage maintenance of applications enabling them to upgrade but if you are running a private cloud infrastructure, you could find yourself in the position where you have legacy clouds…and that will just make things worse.

Not a Cloud Storage Problem

Nov 16th, 2009
by Martin Glassborow.
2 comments

Before we all get carried away and pick on Cloud Storage as a specific target; perhaps we should sit back and think. It is not Cloud Storage; it is the Public Cloud which is the problem; the most visible failures have been storage related, but let's be honest; without storage, you don't have a Cloud Environment.

Cloud providers of Storage, Compute etc need to be held up to the highest standards of availability. You would not outsource your computing environment to Accenture, Cap Gemini, IBM etc without doing your due diligence, or perhaps you would?

Actually, I can think of many cases where people have outsourced various key parts of their business without due diligence; web-hosting for example, lots of SMBs have hosted their websites on random web-hosting companies with very little in the way of investigation. We have simply got into the habit of trusting people and we have accepted the enthusiastic amateur who starts a business. 

But this business has got too big and important; but it aint a Cloud Storage problem! Stop throwing bricks at Cloud Storage; start holding the whole hosted computing business to account. Demand SLAs, verify SLAs, check insurances, ask for references, ask for evidence of best practise operating procedures. Be an informed consumer!

However, also accept that if you pay peanuts; you'll get monkeys. So don't just look at the cost, consider the value!

An Exercise in Utility

Nov 9th, 2009
by Martin Glassborow.
1 comment

EMC and VMWare's coming together with Cisco is an exercise in Utility. If we take Nick Carr's analogy of comparing utility computing with the power-generation industry, what the VCE alliance could be said to be is an attempt to define a de-facto standard for the 'compute unit'. An attempt even to define what voltage the Cloud should run at.

This is not necessarily a bad thing and there will come a time when we do need a standard for the 'compute unit'; even a de-facto unit isn't necessarily a bad thing. De-facto standards happen all the time; the processor has almost become a de-facto standard in that of the Intel chip, the desk-top operating system standard is pretty much Windows (and this from a Linux/MacOS fan).

Around these 'standards'; an industry has been built and thrives. And where there are standards in computing, there are dissenting voices and where there are dissenting voices, little industries spring and thrive in their niche.

But considering where we are in the development of cloud computing and especially, the infrastructure as a service play; arguably this is a bold and a very risky play. Much of what is being offered is at least behind the scenes, the proverbial swan; 'graceful and elegant on the top, with little legs paddling like mad'. Perhaps this is why that this coming together is in the form of a services company? It's just too hard for a currently over-worked IT department to make the technology play nice together?

Thoughts on the Acadian Dream

Nov 3rd, 2009
by Martin Glassborow.
3 comments

So EMC, Cisco and VMware finally confirm their partnership and the formation of Acadia (that really ought to have an R in it!!); much rumoured and trailled by many over the past few months. Actually anything to do with Cisco seems to really struggle at keeping secret; more leaky than Cardiff on St David's Day.

So what does this mean to me as a customer and where's the value? Already a customer of EMC, Cisco and VMware; does this have value to me? Well, not at the moment as my infrastructure has a server component which is not Cisco. In fact, I wonder if the VMware value proposition might be damaged long-term if this is not played very carefully.

When EMC bought VMware; a lot of people were concerned whether EMC would turn out to be a good custodian but they did a much better job than I or anyone really thought they would. They just left VMware alone and let them carry on building partnerships with who-ever they wanted and allowed VMware to grow and develop.

In fact, of the possible suitors for VMware, EMC turned out to be ideal as they didn't have a server platform to push and there no real reason to make VMware work better on one company's server as opposed to some-one elses. Good job EMC!

But now this partnership could throw all this good work and custodianship up in the air. Ever since VMware became an independant company again and since the departure of Diane Greene; EMC's influence has been noticably growing or at least, as a customer, I feel that EMC and VMware work a lot closer than they have in the past. Actually conversations I have had suggest that this closeness is only the start and now we have this JV with Cisco.

So there is now potential for VMware to be tuned to work better on one server platform as opposed to another and this is worrying. Yes I get the 'one throat to choke' argument and I remember EMC railling against this argument when IBM used it!

This 'Bod is going to be watching developments very carefully; it's worrying when Microsoft could hold up their hypervisor as an example of infrastructure neutrality and whisper ever so quietly but insistently, 'How neutral is VMware, think of the risk of being locked into their hardware and software…they are no more open than us!'

If VMware take the compelling route of adding value to the partnership by tuning their software to run better on EMC/Cisco kit; their value to me, even as an existing EMC/Cisco customer is a lot less. I look to the hypervisor to give me infrastructure neutrality and common capability; I hope VMware maintain this ethos.

I'd be very sad to see this change; I've been a customer of VMware and I mean *me* personally since VMware Workstation version 1 when they made the sensible decision to release a hobbyist/student license at a decent price.

Not a Cloud Post!

Oct 22nd, 2009
by Martin Glassborow.
1 comment

Currently I have a whole bunch of blog posts half-written but at the moment inspiration seems to have gone a bit south. So I thought I would post on something completely different although it'll probably mutate into something familiar.

Now anyone who watches my twitter feed will probably have seen a few tweets on Spotify, the streaming music service available in some countries in Europe and coming soon I believe to the States. Although not the only streaming service available; it is in my opinion one of the best, it has a great selection of music covering all genres (I recently discovered that it has a growing classical selection) and it has great clients available for Mac and Windows but no Linux at the moment.

It also has two great mobile clients, one for Android and one for iPhone. If you want to use the mobile client, you must pay for the premium service but if you are happy with your music being interupted by adverts every now and then, the desktop version is free.

Now Spotify and services like it in many ways embody what to me is the real beauty of the Cloud model; a service which can be accessed anywhere from many devices but at the end of the day, the end product is the same, music streamed to my ears.

But this post isn't about Cloud, it came about after a brief MSN chat with a good friend of mine who specialises in all things Web 2.0 and especially getting useful information from the Internet; he's been training librarians and all kinds of other people how to use the Internet for years. And he mentioned that he had recently given a talk on how things like Spotify change things; it breaks the link between the physical instantention of the artifact and moves it completely into a virtual world and in doing so, it changes certain value assumptions.

Spotify for example has millions of tracks, now they are all searchable and I can just search for an artist and play their content; certainly, that's often how I use it but it also has the concept of playlists and publically shareable play-lists and it is these which will become more and more treasured and valuable.

Of course, it would be really useful if I could take Spotify playlist and then point it at another service such as Sky Songs and if playlists were portable. Or even take my iTunes database and point that at Spotify. I guess what we are talking about is portable metadata formats or at least gateways between services, in the Cloud or perhaps just stored locally.

Oh heck, this was a Cloud post anyway! We need to ensure that when we are building services or consuming services that in order to truly leverage the power of the Cloud, that we think about portability and flexiliblity. My playlists are currently locked into Spotify (and iTunes) but I am actively thinking about how I get round this and build a truly portable store; we need to think about this in our work lives as well.

Data Loss – nothing new here!

Oct 12th, 2009
by Martin Glassborow.
3 comments

One of the fore-runners of information storage and retrieval has after a long running saga of various failures including security breaches, data theft, data theft, mis-indexing and general mal-administration including corruption and incompetence has finally closed it doors today in dramatic fashion which has resulted in the loss of a great proportion of the world's knowledge. Fortunately there were some distributed back-ups but sadly some data has been lost forever.

When the Royal Library in Alexandria burnt down, a huge loss to the world's knowledge was felt but nobody decided that concepts of centrally stored information in the forms of libraries was fatally flawed. It was also fortunate that there were other libraries, even within the great city of Alexandria; which ensured some books survived. It would have been better if there had been a policy of copying all scrolls and ensuring that these were distributed through-out the world but the concept of Libraries are still with us and no-one is suggesting that libraries are a bad idea.

The recent catastrophic failure of the Sidekick service resulting in thousands of people loosing their personal data should not be seen as a failure of the Cloud; it's not! It's the failure of a centralised service which was apparently run by incompetents!

It is yet another lesson that if you only have a single copy of your data; you might as well only have no copies of your data. So if you are archiving and deleting, you better make sure that you have two copies of the archive or at least the ability to recreate that data. Read your SLAs and ask questions about the data-protection policies of anyone who is looking after your data; both internal and external providers.

That reminds me, better take a backup of my blog and better back-up my gmail account as well.

Thoughts on Filestore

Oct 6th, 2009
by Martin Glassborow.
1 comment

So Symantec have decided to enter the world of Cloud Storage; I'm not sure that simply packaging up a Linux Software appliance with some clustering actually counts but it was inevitable; if it was not packaged as Cloud, it would have been packaged as a basic NAS offering.

Realistically, Symantec needed to do something as NAS is a huge problem to them; if I go NAS, then I don't need VxFS and VVM. Even in their core Solaris market, ZFS will start to damage them. The volume manager as a standalone product is becoming an irrelevance. I've no idea what the penetration is in the Windows server markets but I doubt it is high.

Then there is Veritas Cluster Services; if I use virtualisation technologies such as VMware, then the clustering is part of the Hypervisor and I don't need VCS. Oracle RAC replaces the need at the high-end where VCS had a lot of it's core deployments protecting Oracle databases.

And I'm not sure what impact NetBackUp 6 has had on Symantec's share of the back-up market but it has been a poor release; both 6 and 6.5 have undergone patch after patch with problems always being fixed at the next patch level.

But Filestore is lauching into an increasingly crowded market-place and just comes across as a 'me too' product; I think Symantec are going to struggle with this one, it currently lacks features and it's price point is not as attractive it might be. I see some very tough times ahead for the Enterprise Software side of Symantec; the market's moved and I'm not sure that they can offer me enough.

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