In the case of my dad’s flashlight the answer is now. Heck, I would have replaced that flashlight even before the switch broke because it was never that good and today’s flashlights are built using superior technologies. There is a point of diminishing returns with almost everything and enterprise IT is no exception. So, it is time for enterprises to start thinking about getting out of the datacenter business.

Datacenters have always been important to the enterprise but they have become even more so. IT leaders have added space, power, cooling, servers, storage, virtualization, and now private clouds. The next thing everyone will try to solve is the hybrid cloud where private and public cloud resources are joined in a way to generate maximum efficiency. So you can say they are constantly fixing the datacenter instead of replacing it with something better.

A nice alternative to this never-ending foot race is to buy what you need from a service provider. I am not suggesting that the entire datacenter could be moved to a pay by the hour Cloud service. Instead, enterprises should look for a service provider that can offer a combination of Cloud, Committed, and Dedicated resources; storage that grows as your needs do; dynamic intelligent network technology ; and application platforms. They should look for a service provider that continually advances technology and allows them to take advantage of these investments.

Could you imagine if every company built their own networks by burying their own cables or fiber and setting up their own networking equipment? This approach would have greatly slowed business growth. Many companies would still be running on 14.4 modems today and those that made technology upgrades would be struggling to justify the exorbitant costs.

In summary, the world is changing quickly and enterprises need new datacenter strategies that allow them to adapt swiftly and achieve true business growth.

Do you agree that business growth requires flexible IT and that true flexible IT can only achieved with the help of Cloud and Data Center service providers? What do you see as the next innovation beyond hybrid clouds?

The two and a half hour keynote session is always thrilling and this year lived up to the hype.  Ralph De La Vega, President and CEO—AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets, introduced a number of new smart phones and tablets.  Glenn Laurie, president of emerging devices, resale and partnerships, AT&T Mobility, discussed gaming and the evolution and mobilization of the game console.  John Donovan, AT&T’s Chief Technology Officer, discussed the recently announced AT&T Platform as a Service and newly announced AT&T’s API Platform, AT&T Cloud Architect Service, and AT&T’s participation in Openstack.

Deep in all these messages was a recurring theme—choice! Ralph talked about 6 new Android LTE devices and low price tablet and smart phone options.  He even showed the Pantech Element, which worked after marinating in a fish bowl.  This is amazing.  It sure seems like there is a device for everyone.

On the Cloud front, there is plenty of choice too.  AT&T Synaptic Compute as a Service has been in the market for over a year now, is VMware-based, and truly caters to the enterprise users.  With the announcement of AT&T Cloud Architect AT&T now has a product that caters to the DIY developers.  This service uses Xen today but with AT&T joining the Openstack movement look for some Openstack choices down the road.  This choice is critical because the needs of an Enterprise are very different than those of an independent developer.

There was quite a bit of information shared during the keynote so I can go on and on. Take a look at my tweets @donald_parente for more details.  I tried to capture as much as I could.

What devices and cloud technologies would you like to see from AT&T?  What newly announced capability are you most excited about from AT&T?

#1  Put an ID bracelet on your child that contains your mobile phone number. In our house we tell the children if you are ever get lost look for a mommy and ask her to call us with the numbers on their bracelet.

Sorry guys, but this is a job for mommies. Think about it. Everyone has a mobile phone and you always carry your mobile phone. So why not make it easy for someone to reach you if they find your child? Then I thought about where I can get an ID bracelet? As mentioned in a previous blog posting I am an avid bike rider. To protect myself I wear an ID tag from a company named RoadID. This tag contains my name, date of birth, blood type, and the all important emergency contact info. I was going to buy all my kids a Road ID but instead found a site that carries IDs that are sized for children. Alternatively, you can just write your phone number on your child’s arm with a ball point pen, but I prefer the bracelet.

As I watched the park security team jump into action to help out the panicking mother I imagined the things they asked. 1) What does she look like, 2) what is she wearing, 3) do you have a recent photo?  Hmmm, this led me to idea #2.

#2 Before you leave the house take a photo of each child with your phone.

We all have photos of our kids, some at home and some on our phones but they are not recent and they don’t show what they are wearing now.  Ideally you can take these photos on a Smartphone that is enabled with email.  This will allow you to email the photo to security to broaden the search.

These ideas are not earth shattering and probably not all that original to some, but they are very effective. I sure hope I never need to run around looking for my child.  However, if it does happen to me the first thing I am going to do is make sure the ringer on my phone is on and loud.

What ideas do you have for protecting your children?  Check out this site for some other great ideas.  Do you have any other ideas — both technical and non-technical — which could help in tracking children?  Help out your fellow parents by sharing your ideas.

Shifting the discussion from “What is PaaS” to “How will my business benefit from using PaaS” requires the same focus on the audience. A PaaS is a great tool for mobile app developers, enterprise IT, line of business owners, and ISVs looking to move to a SaaS business model. A PaaS can support all of these audiences but in completely different ways. Now that AT&T has launched its own PaaS I find myself having to answer this question several times a day.

Here are ways that I think a PaaS can serve this broad array of customers:

Enterprise IT – Enterprise IT can use a PaaS to consolidate, modernize, and mobilize legacy applications as well as build new applications. I hear all the time that businesses have way too many apps and way too many application stacks to maintain. A PaaS can provide a single customer interface for all business productivity and back office applications.  The PaaS provider maintains the stack while enterprise IT focuses on the apps.

Enterprise IT can also use a PaaS to deliver value to their internal customers. Too often business unit or department specific situational apps are not built because they are too costly or would tie up too many resources. Some PaaS offerings provide an easy-to-use development GUI allowing a user to build sophisticated applications in just a few hours. Thought you did not have the time to build an app that tracks a marketing campaign? Think again.

Line of Business Owners – Line of Business owners look for prebuilt apps. Some PaaS offerings offer a catalog of applications that can be used right out of the box. Some providers even have an eco-system of software developers in their catalog. Or, as mentioned for the Enterprise IT user, LOB users can build applications and databases using an easy-to-use development GUI. Often LOB projects are too small for IT. With PaaS the LOB can build apps without IT. So no project is too small.

Mobile App Developers – Often Mobile App developers do not need help building the actual device application software. Instead they need an easy to use backend for their app. A PaaS service can be that backend. Online databases, access controls, business logic, and workflows can be easily created in the PaaS environment and reachable via standard APIs from the developer’s mobile app client.

ISVs Moving to SaaS – There are many ISVs who currently serve specific niche businesses and verticals that need help moving to a SaaS model. A PaaS service can take care of all the operations, scaling, patching, and backups; so an ISV can do the things that they do best. Such as, writing applications and selling applications. Some PaaS services have all the building blocks (API library) an ISV needs to build multitenant scalable applications.

You can see that there is no one answer to the question “how can PaaS help my business?” Who you are and what you want to do will change the answer greatly. I sure hope folks log into AT&T PaaS to see how it can help their business.

Now I understand that not every enterprise application will be replaced by Software as a Service. But all back office applications, especially those that are commonly used across companies and industries, will end up in the cloud. For example, expense management, sales force automation, project management, and human resources applications, to name a few, will all reside in the cloud. Smaller firms will use more Software as a Service than larger firms, but, in general, everyone will use it.

Critical “run-the-business” applications that are core to one’s business will remain in house. For example, large hospitality firms will not be moving away from their home- grown critical booking application anytime soon. These capabilities are key differentiators and will not be shared. For these Infrastructure as a Service will be used to drive efficiencies.

So what does this mean to IT?

1) IT will have to shift their focus from building and maintaining applications to integrating a variety of cloud-based services.

2) Corporate-owned data centers will be consolidated. They will use Infrastructure as a Service to consolidate even further.

3) IT will have a renewed focus using technology to improve the core business. For example, they will look to use technology to improve customer experience or expedite the selling process.

If you are wondering about Platform as a Service you will have to wait for a future article. Platform will serve those who need a little more customization then they can get from Software as a Service but delivered in a much more turn key manner than Infrastructure as a Service.

How much Software as a Service do you use today?  Do you plan to move back office applications into the cloud?  We look forward to your comments.

Before we get started let’s baseline the definition of Virtual Private Cloud.  Virtual Private Clouds are similar to public clouds in that their resources are owned an operated by the Cloud provider.

Unlike public clouds, that are Internet reachable, Virtual Private Clouds are Intranet reachable.  So they look and feel like a part of a companies MPLS-based internal Wide Area Network.

1)  Bandwidth Efficiency

Take a look at the following two diagrams.  Notice anything different?  Exactly, the one on the left has traffic destined for the cloud looping through the company datacenter.  This is a big waste of bandwidth, not to mention router, switch, and firewall capacity.  You will pay twice for bandwidth, once for the primary WAN connection and then the Internet.  What about network sizing?  Cloud resources are all on-demand, yet your network must be sized for peak.  How is that efficient?

With Virtual Private Clouds, shown in the right diagram, your users will take the shortest and most efficient path to the application.  The bandwidth required to reach the cloud will be provided and billed for on-demand.

2) Application Performance

The Internet does not have Class of Service!!  That is probably all I need to say but let me explain a little further.  The Internet can get congested at times and when it does your application traffic could suffer.  Also, in as much as you think you sized your network for peak, inbound congestion on your Internet circuit could greatly impact application performance.  See point of congestion as indicated in the left diagram above.  Don’t understand why your app is running so slow?  Look over the cubicle wall to see who is using BitTorrent and messing things up for you and everybody else.

With Virtual Private Clouds, the Cloud resources appear on the corporate MPLS-based, Class of Service enabled, WAN. So traffic that needs a higher priority can be marked and delivered accordingly.  Problems on the Internet and inconsiderate colleagues are not a factor.

3) Security

Traffic to and from the Virtual Private Cloud stays within the corporate firewall without crossing the Internet.  With routing policies companies can also specify which users are allowed to reach the Cloud resources and which are not.

With public clouds, encryption technology will be required to help secure the transmission across the Internet. Although encryption is generally secure it is still one more thing that needs to be managed by Corporate IT and it needs to be configured correctly.  Furthermore, corporate IT will have no way to prevent users from attempting to access the Cloud resources.

There are probably many other benefits to Virtual Private Clouds but these are the three that jumped into my mind.

Why do you think Virtual Private Clouds are best suited to service businesses?  Do you agree or disagree with my top three?

In the infrastructure as a service world, first came public clouds, followed by private clouds. However, I believe  the “steady state” will be hybrid clouds. See my representative chart below.

Early success in public clouds had the masses believing that enterprise IT would move everything to the public cloud. This was an overreaction for sure. Cloud is a business model that allows one to bring up and down IT resources on demand and only pay for what is used. It is a lot like hiring a temporary workforce to get you through a big project. We don’t completely replace full time workers with temp workers so we should not think of public clouds as a complete replacement for own IT infrastructure.

Security concerns and build vs. rent economics led many to believe that the private cloud was the answer. Private clouds are great but they do not have the same economic benefits of public clouds for bursting and short term workloads. It would be like augmenting your full time staff for the one project a year when you need more help. These folks would be sitting around bored for the majority of the year. Sharing private cloud resources across multiple projects helps a little, but often projects overlap, which could lead to delays.

The hybrid cloud is clearly the answer for enterprise IT and SaaS (Software as a Service) providers. Hybrid clouds seamlessly bring together public and private clouds allowing them to behave as a single system. Private clouds serve the routine and predictable workloads, while public clouds serve temporary and unexpected workloads.

If we think about the lifecycle of an application, we would expect to see the application developed and tested in the public cloud.  Later, it would be  moved into production on a private cloud (or some other dedicated or virtualized environment). This private cloud would then be augmented with public cloud capacity during busy periods, and finally moved entirely to the public cloud in the event of a disaster. See graphic below.

When looking at my first chart if you had a question why I put steady state above the Hybrid line on the side of public, there is a reason. Not all clouds will be hybrid. Hybrid will make up a very large percentage of Enterprise clouds. Some companies will go all private and some will go all public. I believe public (and virtual private) will outnumber private.

One last thought on public clouds. Virtual Private Clouds have the same economic advantage as public clouds but have the added benefit of greater security and performance. A deeper look into Virtual Private Clouds will be covered in a future blog.

What is your take on Hybrid Clouds? Leave a comment below and join in on the discussion!

During one of my presentations I was explaining the benefits of a network-based approach to remote access vs. a premise-based approach. That is when it happened!  The customer asked me, “Don’t you mean premises?” I forgot the rule about the customer always being right and said “No, I mean premise.” He was not happy and further explained that a premise is a basis of an argument and that equipment is kept on premises. Following the demo I looked it up and he was right!!! OMG, how many times did I make this mistake and why didn’t anyone tell me before?

Now I can’t help but notice when premises is used correctly or incorrectly. I noticed my local diner got it right when they hung a sign that read “Baking done on premises.” Yet the cloud industry can’t seem to make up their mind.

I went to CloudExpo in June and noticed that some presenters used premise and others used premises. Unfortunately, the majority of the time premise was used and no one was making an argument. One presenter had premises on their slides but said premise when they spoke. Last year during Oracle Openworld I observed similar errors. During a recent trip through Pennsylvania I passed a store with a sign that read “Premise Maid Chocolate.” There are two mistakes on this one but let’s stay focused on the first. Clearly, this problem is not limited to the cloud industry.

The one thing that has me the most troubled is that this error is starting to show up on websites and marketing collateral. You see, in the past mistakes like this would never get through the editing process.

There is so much momentum behind the use of premise that I don’t think it will ever change. At least that is my premise. I sometimes wonder if an additional definition should be added to premise in the dictionary that includes the definition of premises. One thing I know for sure, until it is changed in the dictionary; I will use premises and avoid future embarrassment.

What do you think? Have you run into similar misuse of words commonly used in technology? Share your ideas in our comments and see what others are experiencing in their work.

Last September, I was out in San Francisco for Oracle OpenWorld and found a recurring theme around Private Clouds.  It seemed like the perfect solution for enterprises that want to take advantage of cloud automation and efficiency.  However, unlike Public Clouds it does not take advantage of pay per use economics.  Since Openworld I have been reading a lot about Hybrid Clouds.  These are the combination of Private and Public Clouds, where a customer uses the Public Cloud to augment their invested Private Cloud.

This upcoming week I will be attending Cloud Expo in NYC and look forward to hearing more about how Cloud will serve enterprise customers. Here are the top three things I want to learn from the expo:

1. How to choose between public, private, and hybrid clouds?

2. What role does the hypervisor play in the hybrid cloud model?  There are a lot of hypervisors on the market, VMwareESX, Xen, KVM, OVM, Openstack, HyperV, and more.

3. Will a fragmented hypervisor market negate the economic benefits of cloud?

These are just a few things that I hoping to learn more about while attending Cloud Expo in NYC.

What questions would you have going to the Cloud Expo in NYC? Leave a comment below and share your thoughts!

Why do I bring this up? Simple. There was a big cloud outage last week and as a result, many are declaring the Cloud dead. This is outrageous. Outages happen. They happen in the cloud, they happen in managed hosting sites, and they happen with self-managed servers in a customer-owned super-redundant data center. So we should all be prepared for when they do happen. But even if you choose a carrier-grade, enterprise-grade cloud provider you still need to plan for the unexpected. Lance Armstrong probably spends a lot of money on tires. I imagine his bikes are equipped with some of the lightest, most durable tires in the world, yet he has a whole team of people driving behind him ready to change his wheel in the event he gets a flat.

Now ask me if my 8-year old daughter has a spare tube, a pump, tools, and a mobile phone when she rides up and down my street. God no!! She is simply developing her riding skills, testing what works and what doesn’t on a bike, and certainly won’t miss school or sleep if she’s sidelined with a flat. Why do I bring this up? Simple.  Some workloads can run in the cloud with no plan B at all.  Development, test, and quality assurance (QA) projects are great for the cloud. If an outage occurs, there’s no impact to customers or on revenue. And provided there’s geographic diversity, the cloud is a great place for your disaster recovery (DR) or backup site.

To illustrate this, let’s remind ourselves of how we calculate availability:

In the last equation, two sites running in parallel–each with an availability of 90 percent–will result in a system that is 99 percent available. So what if you have a hosting provider who delivers 99 percent availability and you use a cloud for DR that has 90 percent availability? This yields a system that is 99.9 percent available—a considerably higher service level. In other words, the cloud is a great place for DR.

Please note these numbers are being used to show the math and that one should check with their hosting and cloud provider for the actual availability.

While significant cloud outages are scary, let’s be careful not to make them out to be something bigger than they are. At the end of the day, there is no substitute for good planning and engineering. Some projects can run in the cloud with no backup and some will need a backup site. So take a step back, decide what your tolerance for failure is and design accordingly.

Have you been affected by outages? How is your company adjusting its hosting strategy to mitigate this risk moving forward?