Cloud Computing; the Invisible Infostructure

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Just as Web 2.0 seems to be falling into place in terms of the collection of technologies and how to use them, up pops the next ‘big thing’; Cloud Computing, complete with all the hype. Actually there is a certain linkage going on here and it's reasonable to say that just as there is a relationship between SOA as an enterprise enabler for ‘Services’ then there is a relationship to Cloud Computing as the enabling environment for wide spread support of Web 2.0, as well as ‘Services’ in general.

I promised in a previous Blog to try to make some sense of Cloud Computing following having spent some time discussing this topic with Intel, HP, and several specialist start-ups during the Intel Venture Capital event in San Francisco in the first week in June. So why is it called ‘cloud computing’ might be a good place to start. In theory at least it's because those provisioning ‘services’ do not have to concern themselves with the supporting technology layers instead they can represent them in a schematic drawing as a ‘cloud’ in much the same way as we have been representing the complexities of Networks over the last few years. At this point you can see why Cisco is pretty keen on Cloud Computing, or as it terms it, ‘Network based Services’ arguing that it’s not just a computing resources topic.

As each conversation invariably is focussed on the vendors point of view it was difficult to try to get a useful break down on how a Cloud works, but eventually we got there. (Thanks Russ at HP, and Bill at Google, in particular). So here is my simple breakdown into three major elements of what we at Capgemini dubbed some time ago as ‘the Invisible Infostructure’ based on the original O’Reilly seven principles of Web 2.0 definitions one of which referred to; ‘The Web as a Platform’. If you think about it then you realise you assume things work on, or over, the Web without further thought hence the phrase that its ‘invisible’!

Everything sits on the bottom layer which I think is best described as Computational Tasks, this is everything from raw compute power to storage capabilities all tied together and delivered as a single integrated entity under its own sophisticated management. This embraces absolutely everything that could be required to support the upper layers. That broadens the technology quite a bit and sees Cisco coming in with IBM, HP, Sun and others such as EMC, etc.

On top of this sits the Platform, or rather a series of Platforms from different technology vendors, but also you could consider Google, or FaceBook, etc, a platform in this definition. The job of the Platform is to add value in a way that it can be used to mount the last layer of Services upon. That means it is open in terms of published APIs and has a generic capability such as Google Maps, or FaceBook communities, that you can use to add specific services to. And of course its well known that Google deploy their data centres for the computational tasks layer in a very different manner in order to support the use of the platform by an unknown number of people, or services, in an unknown time frame.

So the last layer contains the ‘services’ meaning something such as a logistics company building services to locate your parcel over a map of the neighbourhood coming from Google. I think you see the whole stack best by considering Amazon and their Elastic Compute Cloud, EC2, with their shopping mall platform over it, and the ability to allow shop owners to place their group of ‘services’ on top of the Mall platform.

So far so good, conceptually at least, but we have a long way to go to make our current generation of computers and applications to go near Cloud Computing, so it seems more likely that Cloud Computing belongs to supporting Web based systems, and the conventional data centre will continue to support our current generation of Enterprise Applications. Though of course the pricing model for provisioning the existing data centre may well start to change towards ‘power by the hour’, something Sun has been doing for universities for some time know under the ‘grid’ tag.

It occurs to me that I have not mentioned IBM in this, sorry guys, you are right up there too, and here is your link!

My summary? As we deploy more and more Web 2.0 active solutions we will need a different provisioning model and that’s the first target for Could Computing. But for a while at least it's not going to do much to change the data centre operational model, but you will increasingly be able to change the charging and provisioning model for the computers and supporting elements such as storage towards a ‘usage’ based charging model.

Posted by Andy Mulholland on June 30, 2008 | Digg this | Seed Newsvine

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Comments

# on June 30, 2008 4:20 PM, Greg McDougall said:

This article (http://www.gridtoday.com/grid/2405790.html) discusses IBM's offering. Buried in the text is this excerpt "...over the past year, IBM has provided cloud computing services to clients such as...Sogeti...". Any background on how companies like Capgemini are making use of Cloud Computing? I'd also be interested in how the Invisible Infostructure element of TV2012 plays to this, and how businesses draw a line from the current work on Utility Computing to Cloud?

# on June 30, 2008 6:39 PM, andy mulholland said:

Hi Greg

i have replied on an internal mail as much of this concerns internal activities by Capgemini, but yes Sogeti is working exceptionally closely to IBM. The difference between Cloud Computing, Grid and Utility lies in the whether or not its the provision of pure computational services, with various forms of charging mechanisms or wheher there are higher layer services that enable it to classified as support the Web environment (in particular) as an operating platform.

However it has always been a somewhat grey area and i suspect will be for some time to come!

# on July 1, 2008 4:36 AM, Niraj J said:

My comments here
http://www.gandalf-lab.com/blog/2008/06/cloud-computing-its-not-just-about.html

# on July 1, 2008 10:26 AM, andy mulholland said:

Hi Niraj

Just to summarise your comments - using a Cloud Computing environment requires a huge shift in enterprise application design, and implementation.

I beleive that the shift is too much for existing applications and they will continue to run 'as is' but there may be benefits from the scale aspect of Cloud Computing computational layer where they can use capacity and be charged under the utility or grid models.

It does make me at least wonder how quickly conventional data centres will change or if they will continue to run as on site in house services for a long time yet.

No for me Cloud Computing is tied to the development of a new generation of light wieght business/technology architectures that specifically include the use of the environment.

# on July 4, 2008 4:40 PM, Phil Dean said:

Many of the technology aspects of cloud computing seem to be falling into place. But I wonder whether an even bigger mountain to ascend is related to business process, value creation and culture. Specifically, cloud should allow innovation as you suggest with the parcel tracking example but then how does this integrate into the increasingly automated processes which organisations aspire to ; secondly this will only happen if a way of monetising and differentiating the services from a cloud can be implemented (is it merely a comoditised processing capability or is the cloud an engine which is carefully tuned to the needs of a company) ; and lastly, cloud promises to upset the finely balanced hierarchies, structures and governance of many organisations. It's going to an interesting few years while it gets hold !!

# on July 4, 2008 11:13 PM, andy mulholland said:

hi phil

i thnk we are all increasingly of the view that it is becoming impossible to seperate technolgy and business, hence the increasing use of the term 'business technology' and that means business architecture and technology architecture will be the same.

which is my way of saying that a) i think you are right that it is a busienss issue, and b) i am more positive than you might be that business will drive this by spotting market opportunites through business ecosystems.

# on July 26, 2008 12:42 PM, Sam Johnston said:

I think you've touched on an important point here; one that I discussed in my article (linked above) on the definition of Cloud Computing:

Why 'The Cloud'?

Remember all those network diagrams with a fluffy cloud in the middle? Why a cloud and not a black box or some other device? Because we simply don't know, and better yet we don't need to know, what goes on in there - we just pass a packet down our pipe and (most of the time) it arrives at its destination. This is an abstraction (in reality the Internet is an incredibly complex beast) but an important one; it significantly reduces the complexity of our systems; a good example is relatively simple VPNs having quickly displaced many complex WANs.

# on July 27, 2008 1:18 PM, andy mulholland said:

great point there Sam about the 'hidden' complexity. this is something that concerns me as the concept of 'the web as a platform' is fine for social networking add ons but for enterprise strengh applications there has to be more system engineering attention to the whole stack.
I had the chance to discuss this a couple of weeks ago with Vint Cerf and he more than shares this concern too.
seems that we have a gap between the specialist skills of the networkers and those of the internet app developers.
anyone else looking at this 'gap'?
andy

# on July 31, 2008 7:41 AM, Niraj J said:

Andy ,

Your response got me thinking further about enterprise adoption.

Here is my reaction to your comment
http://www.gandalf-lab.com/blog/2008/07/discussion-of-adoption-of-cloud.html

# on July 31, 2008 9:31 AM, andy mulholland said:

great set of comments in your own post Niraj and I would recommend everyone to read them.
many thanks for the link!
andy

# on January 22, 2009 7:07 PM, Zeta said:

cloud computing allows companies to outsource their entire IT infrastructure. Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) provides scalable capacity run on Amazon’s servers: you just pay for whatever storage you use. It powers Amazon’s own websites along with tools as diverse as the New York Times’ online archive and Twitter. Similar services include the UK-based Flexiscale, which is aimed at web 2.0 start-ups...http://www.zeta.net/blog/2009/01/what-cloud-computing-means-for-you/

# on January 22, 2009 7:10 PM, Zeta said:

# on January 23, 2009 12:21 AM, andy mulholland said:

Hi Zeta
and thanks for offering a link to your own blog with further good information!
regards andy