In the first quarter of 2010, we created a 4-phased Cloud Storage Maturity Model which still makes complete sense in 2012. The market is finding the way forward, following the blueprint we described almost to a T.
With our cloud storage maturity model in mind, here are some thoughts on the trends we're seeing this year. What we're describing is the State of Cloud Storage in 2012:
The rise of a new application delivery architecture
We think this year everyone will figure out that cloud storage is not just cheap storage via the web, but the delivery of a new application architecture, whereby applications are fully contained on a variety of devices (smartphones, tablets and PCs) and the backend is a cloud data store with REST APIs.
The consumerization of everything
Enterprises as well as large institutions will seek alternatives to allowing their employees to use consumer tools like DropBox as well as alternatives to tools like box that still store data (albeit encrypted) in a public cloud (i.e. Amazon S3). This trend, aptly named the "consumerization of IT" is creating many alternatives that provide more security, and integration with key corporate support tools. Cloud Storage is a key enabler of the consumer tools that have found favor with early and wide adoption, so look for the successful entrants with enterprise class security to be
based on cloud technologies, and stored behind private firewalls so that
the solutions will be as attractive to end users as the consumer tools,
but that IT can control the security of their confidential corporate
data and compliance initiatives.
Disintermediation of services
The disintermediation of telcos and device manufacturers will continue, with the most cogent example being Apple delivering text messaging "off network" via iCloud. Already, with devices using WiFi, from multiple suppliers, a storage cloud is a key enabler of these services.
Manageability
Storage cloud manageability will grow as a requirement as the storage clouds get larger. Storage clouds will become a delivery vehicle for highly complex management schemes focused on storage tiering. Let's talk ITIL in the Cloud.
Let's discuss the rapid adoption of "App Stores", and the types of applications that are being enabled for a variety of devices, primarily tablets and smartphones. While these applications are each written to deliver unique capabilities and take advantage of the platform they are designed for, as well as being written for different platforms (for example, Android apps are developed in JAVA, Apple IOS apps in Objective C) they share a common enabling technology: REST API access to a storage cloud.
This approach is rapidly enabling new applications, which differ from older approaches like client server, virtual desktop and Web browser enabled applications in very important ways. The backend infrastructure ( a REST API storage cloud) is a simple, massively scalable server-based solution, that can reside within the enterprise data center (a private cloud), or at an IT Service Provider (either a hosted private cloud or a public cloud). It is easy to scale, easy to manage, and by providing a consistent storage backend, it allows developers to focus on their applications and associated business logic versus worrying about the backend architecture. This provides for a "separation of concerns" in that Web, Windows, MAC, Android or IOS applications can be substantially different, but they all use the same REST API of the storage cloud they depend on. As your application use and portfolio grows, you simply scale the storage cloud, versus having to make significant changes to the server infrastructure, as is the case with client server, virtual desktop or Web browser enabled applications.
The disruptive wave is coming fast, and you will see it bringing new capabilities and applications for that large screen in your automobile (watch for car makers offering applications in App Stores), a touch screen on your refrigerator, as well as enterprise applications that will support tablets and smart phones. Think about estimating at a job site with an application on a tablet, or estimating a property insurance damage claim with a tablet, the application is on the tablet, and the data could reside in multiple storage clouds.
Expect to see more enterprise applications taking advantage of this low cost, and easy way to deliver the kind of applications their employees and partners need.
Las Vegas, Nevada - The Mezeo team is at the Tier 1 Research Hosting & Cloud Transformation Summit this week. The Summit has been very well attended this year, and we are seeing an increased focus on the cloud (evident by the name change of the summit itself) and much discussion on the enterprise adoption of the cloud. This is our third time to sponsor the summit, and we're seeing new faces like CA and Nimsoft this year.
In the opening keynote, Antonio Piraino, VP of research for Tier1 Research, talked about "phase two" of the cloud computing market. In this phase, Piraino says we'll see enterprises begin to seek hybrid solutions and telcos enter the cloud market. He noted that the entry of the telco cloud is a significant development in that it reflects that enterprises are driving this demand for cloud-based solutions. This change is already evident in the marketplace with many of the recent telco acquisitions of cloud based providers.
On Tuesday, I participated in a panel discussion with CA, Microsoft and Verizon Business on Enterprise Cloud Adoption. The consensus from these big players is, like Tier 1, is that they are seeing enterprises begin to move to the private cloud, and that the public cloud adoption was coming next.
We discussed the advent of hybrid cloud in our earlier post on a maturity model for cloud storage. While it is important that technology providers are beginning to grapple with the requirements to move seamlessly from a private cloud to a public cloud, the assumption here is that the workload owner is willing to utilize a public cloud multi-tenant solution for their workload. I'm not sure we're there yet.
It is unclear to me that the marketplace and especially the higher end enterprises (who retain and own significant IT resources and data centers) are yet willing to embrace public multi-tenant clouds. I know they'll eventually do so as the security solutions and their early experiences improve confidence in the public cloud. Certainly there are non proprietary workloads that will be used for the earliest testing. However, this is still a very nascent market, and you should expect that we have several years of work ahead of us to build out a fully functioning hybrid model that provides appropriate security and control.
I strongly agree that the level of activity is reminiscent of the late nineties. The majors are trying to build out their cloud stacks, and they are doing that with internal development and by buying smaller companies focused on individual layers of the stack, or even a feature on the layer. I looked at some "gee whiz" numbers from various research organizations, and saw that IDC postulates that more than one third of all digital information created on an annual basis will reside in, or at least pass through, the cloud at some point in its life cycle.
On July 19, 2010, Rackspace led the announcement of OpenStack, with a goal of creating an open source cloud software solution for use on industry-standard hardware. The initial releases contemplate solutions for both cloud compute and object storage. While these are the first two releases, they are separate offerings. Remember, cloud storage is not just the storage target for cloud computing, it is one potential storage target for cloud computing, and is in and of itself a stand alone cloud offering of programmable storage.
Now, I have purposely used a term from the clothing industry, "off the rack", to spend a moment looking at a framework for evaluating the opportunities this may present. With dress shirts, you can buy off the rack, semi custom, or custom, each with a unique value proposition based on fit, choice and cost. Interestingly enough, this may be a good lens through which to consider the possibilities of OpenStack, and in particular, OpenStack Object Storage.
Rackspace has made no secret of its motivations for leading this initiative, and its desire to focus on "fanatical" service as it's key differentiator versus the fundamental technology on which the service is based. Fair enough, and so the question becomes, is the rapidly emerging and immature cloud marketplace already "mature" enough to seek homeostasis? (Homeostasis is the property of a system, either open or closed, that regulates its internal environment and tends to maintain a stable, constant condition.) Have enough models and innovations, from startups, academia, open source movements and large tech companies, been tested in the marketplace to the extent that we can already race to the common denominator? Perhaps now is a good time to start, as long as you are willing to acknowledge that the desired results are a good ways off.
Before we jump off into "Off the Rack" software, a quick look back at open source is helpful. For more reading on the open source software industry a good introduction is The Cathedral and the Bazaar. Six things are particularly interesting:
An open source alternative can emerge as a follow on to a successful commercial technology and can become pervasive versus the commercial offerings it succeeded (LINUX versus UNIX is the reference case here).
A second result of this approach can also end up with a big success, although in more of a niche than a pervasive replace for the earlier commercial offerings (MySQL versus Oracle, IBM and Microsoft in the relational data base space).
An open source effort can also emerge earlier in a technology cycle and come of age as a pervasive solution (Apache Web Server comes to mind here).
Open source generally requires very careful cultivation of the community of developers, with active interest by academia (and partnering with NASA is part of the formula here). Commercially sponsored open source efforts are becoming more common, although it as of yet has not been proven as the typical "breeding ground" for most great open source successes. Eucalyptus, with its roots at University of California Santa Barbara, seems to be a more traditional route.
Open source is not necessarily reflective of rapid commercial opportunities for success. Eucalyptus is obviously beginning to maneuver towards a repeat of the commercialization model. OpenStack is taking the approach most favored by other open source successes like Apache. A couple of good reads here are this article from BusinessWeek and this. See also Derrick Harris' post over at GigaOm.
There are also hundreds of thousands of open source projects that had mixed success or languished altogether. A quick look at SourceForge (an open source project hosting site) shows nearly a quarter million hosted projects. How many of these have languished or had little impact on the market.
So, the first issue is that there will exist for some time to come a real question as to the adoption potential of OpenStack. I believe that adoption is driven by applicability to need. In a moment we will address a serious issue which OpenStack Object Storage must overcome to be successful, at best, and at worst, will confine it to a niche market. My views are very much directed at the Object Storage offering, versus the compute offering, which I believe exists in a different space and as a different type of solution. With this backdrop, let's have a look at the cloud storage marketplace today, and use the analogy of off the rack, semi custom and custom:
Off the Rack: implement as is, one size fits all, each with unique approaches for performance, scalability, bit integrity, may or may not provide geo services.
Semi Custom: Select from storage types (DAS, SAN, NAS, JBOD), shared or distributed file systems and object systems, mix and match storage for different SLA and cost/usage patterns on the same infrastructure, multiple APIs, meta data and catalog abstracted from storage layer, geo services.
Custom: Generally a service only offering and not available as deployable infrastructure, specifics will vary widely based on service provider offering strategy.
Infrastructure
Type
Comments
Eucalyptus
Off the Rack
Limited S3 APIs
OpenStack
Off the Rack
CloudFiles APIs
Scality
Off the Rack
S3 APIs
Mezeo
Semi Custom
Mezeo Cloud Storage Platform API and Interoperability API
NetApp
Off the Rack
Bycast APIs, NetApp storage
EMC Atmos
Off the Rack
Atmos ReST APIs, EMC storage
Service
Type
Comments
Amazon S3
Custom
S3 APIs
Microsoft Azure
Custom
Windows centric
Rackspace
Off the Rack
Is the basis for OpenStack
Nirvanix
Custom
SOAP APIs, multi node
Google
Custom
Offers S3 APIs
AT&T Synaptic
Off the Rack
Based on EMC Atmos
OpSource, SoftLayer, Layered Tech and others
Custom
Based on Mezeo
As you can see from the summary above, there exist as many views of what constitutes either a cloud storage service or a desirable cloud storage deployable infrastructure as there are service providers and vendors. Note that a semi custom infrastructure results in a "custom" service as implemented. "Off the rack" results in very similar services by those who utilize the same infrastructure unless they make their own major additions. Any offering can be differentiated by service, and the degree and quality of service is critical to customer satisfaction and plays a strong role in value creation.
The OpenStack announcement as it regards Object Store and its approach to cloud storage seems to view cloud storage infrastructure as highly akin to an operating system (or at least a "hypervisor") and more similar to a selection of LINUX or Windows than that of an application or middleware layer. While I agree that cloud compute is very close to this model, cloud storage is a service oriented architecture, with programmability for new applications that can tolerate Internet latency because of Web Services (like ReST APIs). The industry constantly overlooks this key point as it is consumed with the low cost, pay for use and thin provisioning capabilities of this storage tier. Solutions for thin provisioning and low cost have been available far longer than cloud storage. Further, pay for use is more of a business decision than a technology.
In the earliest days of cloud storage, there existed initial confusion that cloud storage was defined by cost, scalability, pay for use, and thin provisioning only and not programmable access (usually via ReST APIs). ParaScale paid a huge price for not understanding that cloud storage requires Web services (like ReST API) access. Now, with OpenStack Object Store, we see a follow on case of this same perspective, but with basic APIs for Put, Get and List. Yes, it provides for Internet access via ReST APIs, but the focus continues to be primarily cost based versus new application enablement based. It could be argued that the open source approach will provide for the appropriate additions of "advanced services" to be added. However, even the use of the platform by NASA is more focused on cost of storage than on advanced functionality because NASA stores much more data than almost any institution or enterprise in the world.
I think Savio Rodrigues states this view very well in his post:
"Select products based on business needs, not license alone: It's also interesting to note that very few enterprises are in NASA's position with regards to size of IT investment and skills in-house. While NASA engineers were ready and willing to contribute new features into the Eucalyptus open source community, few companies have the skills or governance to consider allowing their developers to contribute to open source projects. Summary trend number 7 from the 2010 Eclipse survey results highlighted this issue.
To suggest that NASA's buying or IT decision making patterns represents much more than the top 1 percent of IT buyers would be a stretch."
The overwhelming majority of enterprises would rather pay a vendor to deliver, maintain, support and enhance their private cloud software infrastructure than place that burden on internal IT staff. Whether the enterprise is paying for a closed source commercial product, a commercial product based on an open core product, or a subscription to an open source product, the product selection decision will be made based on business requirements much broader than 'is the product open source or not?' "
Keep in mind that cloud storage is a stand alone service associated with application delivery over the Internet and also associated with low cost, pay for use, scalable storage resources. Social media applications and many Web based applications exploit these capabilities; for example publishing a file to a URL and significant tagging of files.
This view of cloud storage as nothing more than cost and volume-based ignores its extraordinary importance as a service-oriented architecture for new application enablement. I believe both views are equally important and need to be equally served. Will OpenStack, with its pervasive cost focus, be able to drive its community to this additional view of needed contributions of advanced services for cloud storage? Lydia Leong of Gartner Group provides an interesting view of the open source community issues associated with this in her post:
"At the same time, open sourcing is not necessarily a way to software success. Rackspace has a whole host of new challenges that it will have to meet. First, it must ensure that the roadmap of the new project aligns sufficiently with its own needs, since it has decided that it will use the project's public codebase for its own service. Second, it now has to manage and just as importantly, lead, an open-source community, getting useful commits from outside contributors and managing the commit process. (Rackspace and NASA have formed a board for governance of the project, on which they have multiple seats but are in the minority.) Third, as with all such things, there are potential code-quality issues, the impact of which become significantly magnified when running operations at massive scale."
One last comment on this business of vendor lock in and cloud storage APIs (another focus of the OpenStack announcement). I would submit that while a specific set of APIs has the potential to create vendor lock in, this is a much smaller problem than what is experienced in other technologies. If you are really worried about it, you probably have never actually written a ReST API call. It is written in many languages, and we have seen cases where applications that run on S3 run unchanged on Mezeo. Others need very minor modifications, and still others are excited to take advantage of some of the unique Mezeo services. It just is not a problem, and this is much more related to FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) and marketing zealotry than it is associated with technological reality. The APIs of choice will shake out, and it is far too early to say if it will be S3, OpenStack, CDMI or a combination of all of these, and others, as yet unforeseen.
At Mezeo, we have never believed there will be one winner, and instead focused on architecture to enable easy and effective delivery of whichever APIs stand the test of time. The Mezeo Cloud Storage Platform API enables advanced services and programmatic access to Mezeo enabled storage clouds. The Mezeo Interoperability API enables seamless interoperability of applications developed for Amazon S3, Google and Eucalyptus based storage clouds. The interesting view that seems to be missing here is that marketplace competition by service providers already serves to drive down the price of cloud storage, soa commoditized stack embraced by most is unlikely to yield extraordinary incremental savings. At the same time, while the competitive market conspires to drive cloud storage costs ever lower, the need to differentiate, and deliver solutions as well as a programmable storage to enable multiple new and exciting types of applications will rapidly replace the pure cost and scale focus of current cloud storage offerings. Sometimes, the "new" application is simply enabling it in the cloud, to produce the same result at a lower cost! This requires significant cloud storage functionality in order to make this easy and productive. Amazon continues to prove this with their many additions and capabilities which differentiate their service. Mezeo sees much the same view on the part of our customers. The focus is on what cloud storage can do, what problems will it solve, what business opportunities does it create, what new applications can it enable and all of these views assume it will be competitively priced.
Cloud storage represents significant opportunities for institutions, the enterprise (see my recent post on the business case for enterprise cloud storage) and for the IT service provider. Cloud storage is substantially different from cloud compute, and requires that you understand this difference in order to effectively evaluate the impact of this announcement, as well as your next steps.
There is no doubt that every enterprise has devoted some time and energy to evaluating how cloud technologies can best be put to work in their ongoing pursuit of cost reduction and to a lesser extent for potential improved service levels particularly around rapid provisioning of compute and storage resources. Mezeo has recently begun to work with various enterprises, and I want to share some of the opportunities that appear to align strongly with these two goals.
In terms of cost, most enterprises are experiencing continued and significant growth in unstructured data. As they look at the cost of this growth, it is more than just physical storage, data center occupancy, bandwidth utilization and power and the accompanying management demands; it is also the backup and disaster recovery requirements and the ability to quickly satisfy users who need more storage in order to execute whatever tasks and jobs they have. Against this backdrop, the drumbeat of Amazon S3 and other public storage clouds advertises storage at costs that are generally below the internal "advertised" cost of the typical Fortune 500 company. What gives?
First, cents/GB/month is only the tip of the iceberg, and bandwidth along with access charges gives a more realistic cost appraisal. Next, real and legitimate concerns about data security exist (will someone gain unauthorized access, by accident or via an attack, to company data stored in a multi-tenant public storage cloud?). Also, data integrity concerns are well founded (will the bits I store be returned, and will they be backed up and appropriate DR measures taken?). Finally, can I absolutely trust the service provider to execute to the extent deemed necessary, and if they do, can they really save me any real money versus the assumed risk profile? Private cloud computing is an appropriate strategy for addressing these issues.
Not all unstructured data is a candidate for the latency of cloud storage as delivered from an IT service provider via the Internet. So, while some tiers of data may be appropriate for a cloud storage service, it is a subset of the enterprise unstructured data requirement and not a lower cost panacea. Hopefully, CIOs can easily make this case with their peers in senior management, although it may sometimes seem like they are making an excuse for keeping control and not exploiting new technologies.
Question one surrounds the cost proposition, and our analysis suggests that, even at sub petabyte initial cloud sizes, the enterprise can deliver economics for in-house cloud storage that compare very favorably. In fact, it may even be lower than what is available from a service provider. The Mezeo team comes from both a hosting and a cloud storage background, and this just reinforces our view that the cost proposition for private cloud storage has favorable economics. However, if you are being forced to allocate capital for data center build outs, or you are otherwise CAPEX constrained, the hosted public cloud economics can be quite appealing. Since businesses require positive margins, this further drives up the cost of cloud storage as hosted at a public service provider.
The case for improved user satisfaction is similar, regardless of public versus private, because the cloud gives users the capabilities they want. First, with rapid provisioning of pay-as-you-go low cost cloud storage, the end user gets what they need when they need it via a frictionless interface. Second, several benefits drive end user demand for cloud storage; including: avoidance of workstation storage upgrades, one solution for file sharing and collaboration, new capabilities and applications that exploit file search, tagging and publishing to a public URL, and the ability to access your storage anytime, anywhere and on any device. Third, the solution is also ideal for implementing a workstation backup solution with sync. It is not hard to see why end users would find all of these capabilities appealing.
Cloud storage clients, gateways and edge devices are also beginning to appear, and can solve many different issues. For example, a client gives the end user access to multiple cloud storage accounts at multiple providers. Why not replace that tape backup operation at a remote location with an iSCSI interface directly to a storage cloud, for a scheduled backup without local user intervention (get rid of the tape backup of your local file server, forever)? Speaking of file servers, multiple solutions for replacing or even displacing file servers are coming to the market. The savings from removing an entire layer of infrastructure are quite compelling.
New applications, including use of social media, may require file publishing. Cloud storage allows you to store training videos, and make them easily available at every end user in the company. Tagging and search offers new application capabilities, and new opportunities to support existing compliance requirements. Secure file sharing, versus file publishing, may be a significant requirement as you work with customers and business partners. Partner, customer and employee portals can reach new levels of capability with API accessible cloud storage, as the availability and the management of information is delivered via the cloud.
Our observation is that the early adopters have begun the move to cloud storage. Why? Simply, enterprise private cloud storage allows you to gain many of the benefits and set aside the security and data integrity concerns of public cloud storage. At the same time, data tiering and private and public could solutions will drive "hybrid" cloud approaches that will allow the enterprise to exploit the best of both worlds. In an upcoming post, we will offer up some tools to examine the cost and the benefits of cloud storage for the enterprise.
It is a little difficult to discuss an article like What's a Hybrid Cloud and Where Can I get One? without at least agreeing upon some sort of definition. We've already heard many of these definitions, but I'm not sure they're good enough. Note: we did try to define the term hybrid earlier, as part of our Cloud Storage Maturity Model.
Well, what is it?
First, let's look at the textbook definition of the word hybrid:
A hybrid is the combination of two or more different things, aimed at achieving a particular objective or goal.
A "hybrid car" has both an electric motor and an internal combustion engine, and the combination of the two serves to propel your automobile while providing a more efficient use of fuel. So, a hybrid cloud is a combination of a public and a private cloud, aimed at providing a common cloud computing experience.
But for what purpose? Hybrid computing clouds provide cloud computing that delivers the appropriate offerings with provisioning, pay-as-you-go for relatively limitless capacity, and improved security, and some would say at a lower cost than an internal cloud. Hybrid clouds can and do offer the opportunity to provide baseline processing within your own facilities, and use service providers for peak requirements. By doing this, they can lower the cost versus private cloud computing.
I've seen some hybrid cloud definitions that include edge or gateway devices, but I do not think that is definitive for hybrid cloud. Now, with this definition, we can sort out what a hybrid cloud actually delivers. In general, the argument that a multi-tenant public cloud is lower cost (on an absolute cost basis) than a private cloud is hogwash, in my experience. I have seen examples of all of these, and in the case of a large enterprise, they may very well run private clouds for their own use that cost less than what they can buy the resources for on an open market basis. (Now, before the switchboards light up with capex versus opex and idle resource arguments, I want to assure you that even taking these issues into account, the theory holds water). This still begs the question as to what purpose does hybrid cloud serve?
In its most general case, the business value of hybrid cloud lies in its ability to bridge the gap between baseline computing and peak computing, assuming all things are equal or if not equal, at least acceptable (in terms of security and other incremental costs associated with hybrid cloud). Otherwise, why go to the trouble?
There are other examples that are associated with backup and disaster recovery versus cost that also can be of high value with a hybrid approach, particularly if you only have one data center. I store my backup locally, in case I need to do a speedy recovery. I store an encrypted copy remotely, at a service provider, for DR purposes. Voila! Low cost, secure, multiple requirements solved. Hybrid, it's a beautiful thing.
The hybrid cloud can also allow you to "bridge the gap" if you are in a data center bind, i.e. out of space or between build-outs. This is a special case of bridging the gap.
Cloud storage is already showing signs of Phase Two (see our post on the cloud storage maturity model), as a new set of solutions arrive in the marketplace. These solutions are referred to as cloud gateways, on ramps, cloud clients, edge devices and other exotic names.
For ease of discussion, lets use "cloud client" to describe a solution that is on a single user device (workstation, PDA, Tablet) and "cloud gateway" or just "gateway" for a solution that is delivered on a server or router for many users. Whether they are a client or a gateway, some store a "blob" of data, and some store "chunks" of data that are parts of the original object. Others store the actual object. What's the difference and is it important? Should you consider it in your cloud gateway use plans?
What is a blob? A blob can start as either a single object or a collection of objects, for example, all of the files on a single server, or a VM image. Then, you do something to it in the client/gateway device that requires it to be brought back through the original client/gateway to be returned to a useful state. Examples include de-duplication and compression followed by encryption prior to transmission of the object to the cloud (I call this D/C/E). The result is a "blob" of data, an object that is minimized in size, and must be retrieved by the application that created it in order to be useful again.
A chunk is part of an object, and the original object must be re-assembled by the gateway that parsed it in the first place. Some gateways store blobs. Some store the object in chunks. Finally, some store the actual object with its original file type, intact. These may be workstation clients, or interface solutions that allow for a CIFS or iSCSI (today, TwinStrata is an example of the iSCSI capability) attached device to store in the cloud. There are trade-offs and advantages associated with each approach, and your cloud storage use case and objective must be carefully analyzed in order to determine the applicability of the gateway to your business requirement.
Now, let's consider D/C/E. This provides savings in addition to the savings associated with cloud storage. D and C gives you a small object size, so your bandwidth cost is lower, and your overall storage cost is lower. When there is a change to the stored objects, chunks allow you to send only the changed part of the object, reducing bandwidth and potentially improving performance. Encrypting, or chunking, or both, may improve security and relieve you of the costs and management associated with other security approaches.
So, blobs and chunks sound pretty good, providing better security and lower costs. What's the catch? First, storage clouds are great places to provide anytime and anywhere access to your data, from multiple devices. If you have to go back to a gateway to get the original version of the object, that flexibility may be very limited or non-existent. Clouds are also a great place for sharing and collaboration, which is not in play if the object in the cloud is not in a useful form. Finally, vendors are not giving gateway solutions away - we must ask what they cost, and are they worth it?
As usual, the answer is, it depends. What services can I get from the cloud? And what services can I get from the gateway?
An example that is getting a lot of attention is file server replacement, or even better, file server displacement. I get less excited about replacing a file server with another server that is a policy driven cache, because I still have this layer of technology in place. However, if you can displace most of your file servers, then the potential for significant cost savings become obvious.
I tend to look at single user clients as very interesting on ramps to the cloud. A client, using some modest amount of workstation storage as a cache, can deliver most of the benefits of a file server. Companies like Gladinet, SMEStorage, GoodReader, Mezeo and others have very interesting cloud clients. You will still need a few file servers if you need to provide a place for very large files. Interestingly enough, those very large files are often rich media (like training videos), and streaming them to a reader on the client from the cloud is often good enough. Another cloud client capability we expect to see will allow the end-user to store files and move them across multiple storage providers - from private to public and vice-versa, for example. This functionality could also be in a server-based gateway.
Another cloud client capability might include giving encryption capability to the end user, and let them decide if they want to encrypt the file themselves. Or, use a cloud that provides user selectable encryption. Give your end users or customers the power of choice, the freedom of access anytime and anywhere, the ability to get the amount of storage they need when they need it (what Gartner calls "reservationless", and kudos for them, great term). Don't tie users to a "home base" gateway that does not store their object in it's original format, or at least give them a choice. All that being said, we are seeing that some mix of clients for file server displacement, and file server replacement gateways may ultimately be the appropriate solution.
Backup and archive is a different story, and here a gateway can make a lot of sense. First, there is quite a bit of local housekeeping associated with these solutions, and the solution can decide if utilizing the cloud for some or all of the files makes sense. Speed of restore is a major consideration for a backup, and may drive local versus cloud based storage solutions. Further, the need for a disaster recovery site, or to archive, can often be a cloud use case. Companies like Zmanda and CommVault are very active in cloud based backup solutions. What if you have applications that do not speak REST APIs, like a legacy backup solution? There are gateways that can attach these legacy applications to the cloud, for example, TwinStrata.
Special purpose gateways can also solve an immediate problem. Blue Thread offers a cloud storage interface for SharePoint. The marketplace is rapidly developing a portfolio of cloud storage gateways and clients, as well as backup and archive solutions and all have their own unique perspective on cloud use. Examples include StorSimple, Cirtas, Gladinet (who also makes clients), and EntropySoft. Venture capital companies are deploying significant capital for these sorts of solutions. Each of these solution providers sees a clear path to adding significant value to cloud storage solution delivery.
Cloud storage requires significant use case consideration to evaluate the functionality required, both in the cloud and in the gateway or client, and where the application or user can best exploit the functionality. After all, cloud storage is also about empowering the end user with the storage they need, when they need it, at a favorable price, and providing advanced functionality, like publishing and sharing.
At Mezeo, we have both a deployable cloud infrastructure, and clients. That causes us to look at where the best place to put the functionality is. That creates a slightly different perspective, and we think it creates very useful products. On the other hand, nothing gets us more excited than the thought of more solutions that drive cloud storage adoption and usefulness. For this reason, we are rolling out a new marketing and certification program, Mezeo Ready™.
With Mezeo Ready™, service provider public storage clouds can easily identify their offering as being "Ready" for use by Mezeo Ready™ clients or gateways, and backup and archive solutions. Users of these products can pick one of many trusted service providers hosting Mezeo Ready™ cloud storage solutions. This cloud storage on ramp and cloud storage provider "ecosystem" ultimately delivers valuable solutions to customers and is a big part of Mezeo's vision for the cloud storage market.
So, more to come on Mezeo Ready™, we are nearing the official announcement of the program, and will extend it to storage providers and file system providers who work with Mezeo to deliver storage clouds, both private and public. Other solutions, like billing and provisioning systems will also be in the Mezeo Ready™ program. The changes the cloud is delivering are new and useful, and deliver real value to the institutions and businesses that are embracing them. The ecosystem is critical to the value delivery chain, and key to providing unique, desirable solutions.
We see a lot of coverage about cloud storage these days - and why it is or is not being adopted. One way to look at cloud storage adoption is to view it as an evolutionary process which changes over time, as both the organization matures and becomes adept at leveraging the new technology, and as the technology itself evolves to meet the real needs of the end-user. The common name for this sort of thinking is a "maturity model."
With that in mind we developed this simple maturity model for cloud storage, based on the actualcloud storage adoption process we're witnessing in the industry. We'd like to hear your thoughts - are you seeing the same trends?
PHASE ONE: Public Cloud Storage
Description There remains significant marketplace confusion about what constitutes cloud storage. Cloud storage is a persistent storage for unstructured data accessed via Web services APIs over a network (LAN or WAN), with the additional characteristics of rapid provisioning of both new accounts of any size as well as rapid provisioning of increases (or decreases) in account size, along with a pay for use model, Some believe that cloud storage is just the provisioning and pay for use model with access method being varied between older technologies (CIFS/NFS) and http (Web services API access). Public, multi-tenant storage clouds as delivered by service providers clearly meet our definition, as traditional access methods like CIFS/NFS are not useful over the Internet.
Many technologists and almost all non technologists, make the initial mistake that cloud storage is simply the storage used when using cloud computing. In fact, a cloud computing image (CCI) may very well be provisioned and stored when not in use on traditional iscsi type storage systems, and is often dependent on very high speed access associated with a locally attached device. Many times, the data needed for the application supported by the CCI is often stored on shared storage devices within the same data center as the CCI, for application performance reasons. The data for these CCIs may also be block, or data base data. This is storage for cloud computing, but it is not "Cloud Storage"! This confusion permeates the marketplace in Phase One. Many vendors, particularly traditional storage vendors, have confused the marketplace by claiming to be cloud storage based on "thin provisioning" attributes with traditional data center access versus HTTP access. Cloud storage may also be accessed and utilized by CCI based applications, but that is not a defining attribute of cloud storage. Cloud storage is accessed by applications on both CCIs and dedicated servers, as well as clients on PDA's and PC's, wherever they are and whenever they need access. The use cases are very tolerant of the latency associated with the Internet. The thin provisioning and pay for use model of cloud storage does deliver the important cloud storage attribute of transferring storage costs from a CAPEX to an OPEX basis, if you are acquiring your cloud storage form a service provider on a pay for use basis.
The IT service provider space is the earliest adopter of cloud storage, for both offensive and defensive purposes. Many service providers are hosting workloads on dedicated or virtual servers (CCIs), and the workloads are new applications that utilize cloud storage from companies like Amazon S3, Rackspace Cloud Files, Nirvanix, and SoftLayer CloudLayer. Since the amount of data can be very large, it is difficult to move without downtime. And since the processing is relatively easy to move, IT service providers recognize the need for their own cloud storage service in order to provide a complete offering to their customers and to promote retention. Without the associated cloud storage, the application server workload can easily move, usually to the provider who provides the storage cloud. This is the defensive argument for service providers to offer their own storage cloud. On the offensive side, cloud storage is growing rapidly in terms of adoption, provides a new revenue stream, can attract new hosted workloads (cloud or otherwise), and drives increased (and very profitable) bandwidth use.
The web hosting industry also saw the initial development activities associated with adoption of Web services APIs, which provide many programming capabilities that are now resident in the storage, and easily enabled new applications that are delivered via the Web. These services, including tagging, searching and filtering, sharing, publishing, and collaboration, all exist within the APIs of a storage cloud, and are easily implemented within the application. While the enterprise has not yet adopted this new functionality, it has become quite pervasive within social networking apps, enabling new apps on mobile devices, file sharing services, and online file services, and backup and archive services.
Cloud storage is currently offered by only a few service providers including Amazon (S3); SoftLayer (CloudLayer); Rackspace (CloudFiles), Nirvanix, and is only available as a service. Enterprise adoption is limited to development only, primarily testing, and enterprise adoption has not yet occurred, primarily because of security concerns.
Key attributes
Adoption Drivers: Business drivers: low cost, rapid scalability and on-demand capacity Technology enablers: New programming capabilities
Adopters: - SMBs/ SMEs - Developers - Consumers
Use Cases: - Testing and application development - SaaS (Consumer & SME/SMB users: Backup, file sharing, additional device storage, rich media)
Differentiators: - SLA variability - Pricing elements
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PHASE TWO: Public & Private Cloud Storage
Description: As large enterprises start to fully comprehend the benefits of cloud storage, their interest grows. While security concerns keep them from adopting the public cloud, they begin building private clouds behind their firewall. A private cloud provides them with the level of control and security that they are comfortable with and improves the utilization rates of their existing storage infrastructure, because of thin provisioning and potential for technology reuse. Enterprises start to roll out advanced capabilities such as file sharing and collaboration to their employees and their partners. The initial use of storage cloud services allow the enterprise to begin initial development of storage cloud based applications. They also start to move backup and archives into their own clouds. Since these applications do not require the highest performing storage, enterprises are able to reuse decommissioned hardware. This effectively starts the process of "tiered storage."
At the same time, the public cloud storage offerings continue to grow. The availability of deployable solutions to create your own storage cloud begin to arrive in the market, enabling IT service providers to quickly implement storage clouds versus being faced with a roll your own development effort. Public storage cloud service offerings become more pervasive and better accepted as security and awareness increases.
Key attributes (Private Cloud Storage)
Adoption Drivers: Business drivers: low cost, rapid scalability, high security and control Technology enablers: new programming capabilities, cloud gateways (such as Blue Thread, Entropy)
Adopters: - Enterprises
Use Cases: - Application Development - Testing - Backup - Archiving - File Sharing and Collaboration
Key attributes (Public Cloud Storage)
Adoption Drivers: Business drivers: Low cost, rapid scalability, on-demand capacity Technology enablers: new programming capabilities, cloud gateways generating multi-cloud usage
Use Cases: - Testing and application development - Backup - SaaS (Consumer & SME/SMB users: Backup, file sharing, additional device storage, rich media) - Personal cloud storage with access clients - Backup and archiving using cloud gateway - Special use cases enabled by cloud gateway - File server replacement - Availability of CIFS/NFS access within the data center
PHASE THREE: Public, Private and Hybrid Cloud Storage
Description: The maturity of the cloud (both private and public) has enabled many new applications which now require all the advanced services of a storage cloud (Web services API access, tagging, search, sharing, collaboration, etc). Capabilities such as Geo Access (accessing files from a repository closest to the requester) and Geo Replication (policy driven replication across geographies to facilitate disaster recovery) are realized. As Internet latency is constantly improving, more and more applications become "cloudy" in terms of storage, and cloud location becomes slightly less important as associated with performance. Cloud storage is now a requirement of developers and development platforms. Most SaaS applications also expect the availability of cloud storage. Everyone is storing everything! Most importantly, the improved security in public storage cloud offerings begins to blur the distinction of importance of security as being where data is stored (in public or private clouds). Instead, applications utilize both public and private clouds, for reasons associated with location of data, disaster recovery and backup, and CAPEX versus OPEX. Only the most sensitive data still retains a private cloud requirement. Performance is a more salient driver of where the data is stored, does it need to be on a LAN in the same data center as the application?
This use of both public and private clouds as solutions for storage, often by the same application, becomes what we refer to as the Hybrid Cloud.
Key attributes (Private Cloud Storage)
Adoption Drivers: Business drivers: Low cost, high security and control, rapid scalability, compliance and forensics Technology enablers: New programming capabilities, cloud gateways
Adopters: - Enterprises
Use Cases: - Application development - Backup - Archiving - File sharing and collaboration - Geo access
Key attributes (Public Cloud Storage)
Adoption Drivers: Business drivers: low cost, rapid scalability, on-demand capacity, clouds become more pervasive Technology enablers: new programming capabilities, cloud gateways generating multi-cloud usage
Use Cases: - Testing and application development - SaaS (Consumer & SME/SMB users: Backup, file sharing, additional device storage, rich media) - Personal cloud storage with access clients - Backup and archiving using cloud gateway - Special use cases enabled by cloud gateway - File server replacement - Availability of CIFS/NFS access within the data center
Differentiators: - SLA variability - Pricing elements - Scalability and performance - Access options - Multiple clouds vs. single cloud
Key attributes (Hybrid Cloud Storage - a mix of Public and Private Cloud Storage)
Adoption Drivers: Business drivers: lowered average cost obtained via a mix of public/private cloud, reduction of DR/BC costs, optimized mix of capex and opex Technology enablers: improved security
Adopters: - Enterprises
Use Cases: - Incorporates use cases for private and public clouds
Differentiators: - SLA variability - Pricing elements - Scalability and performance - Access options - Multiple cloud vs. single cloud
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PHASE FOUR: Federated Cloud Storage
Description: With the advent of greater security, flexibility and interactivity, users will demand applications that provide real time dynamic interaction within their supply chain. Regardless of where their data may reside, partners, customers, employees and consumers will want a seamless, transparent access capability. Enter the Federated Cloud. Through a common management layer, Federated cloud will connect private and public clouds exposing all storage as a single name space. Through federated identity management and creation of trust relationships amongst various vendors and enterprises, authorized users (human or programmatic) will be able to authenticate to their cloud and be able to access information that resides anywhere across the globe. Excess capacity will be easily pushed over a grid and be sold and consumed as a true utility. Ultra-high utilization rates will be achieved, and within the trust circle security and compliance requirements will be defined and met. Interoperability will be ensured by continued maturity and standardization of APIs and applications.
This truly will culminate in a meaningful internet of knowledge and commerce. The "Semantic Web" has arrived! Note that, for matters of very high security, agencies and enterprises will continue to use private clouds.
Key attributes (Federated Cloud Storage)
Adoption Drivers: Business drivers: need for real time dynamic interaction with partners/customers on different clouds, ability to sell excess capacity within the trust circle, optimized infrastructure utilization, establishment of trust relationships Technology drivers: federated authentication and provisioning across clouds, streamlined cross-cloud management, standardized APIs ' Adopters: - Service providers - SMEs/SMBs - Consumers - Enterprises
Use Cases: - Supply chain management - Ad-hoc capacity capacity enhancement - Non-sensitive and sensitive data hosting
Differentiators: - SLA variability - Pricing elements - Scalability and performance - Access options - Security - Governance and regulation compliance
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Based upon our experience in the marketplace, a large majority of the organizations are still in the first two phases. There is an undeniable appetite by the early adopters to be at the forefront, however, unlike many other emergent technologies, cloud storage comes equipped with a very compelling economic model and that is really helping justify the move into the cloud.
There are
relatively few options for early adopters to implement private clouds
that deliver the appropriate capabilities. This is why Mezeo focused
on a deployable platform versus only offering cloud storage as a
service. With the deployable platform, enterprises can implement their
own in house cloud, and also take advantage of a "private" cloud hosted
on their behalf at a service provider. See my discussion of this topic
in my post: Cloud Storage for the Enterprise - Part 2: The
Hybrid Cloud
In summary, those of us who hail from the IT
service provider industry are very comfortable with cloud storage. We
see the adoption as proceeding, and the issues are being knocked off as
they arise. We are in an early technology cycle but with innovative early adopters we see a bright future.
According to a recent Gartner press release, 20% of businesses will own no IT assets by 2012:
Several interrelated trends are driving the movement
toward decreased IT hardware assets, such as virtualization,
cloud-enabled services, and employees running personal desktops and
notebook systems on corporate networks.
The need for computing hardware, either in a data center or on an
employee’s desk, will not go away. However, if the ownership of
hardware shifts to third parties, then there will be major shifts
throughout every facet of the IT hardware industry. For example,
enterprise IT budgets will either be shrunk or reallocated to
more-strategic projects; enterprise IT staff will either be reduced or
reskilled to meet new requirements, and/or hardware distribution will
have to change radically to meet the requirements of the new IT
hardware buying points.
This is a bold statement. If we believe Gartner, it means that we are at the beginning of an explosion in cloud-based services managed by trusted providers on behalf of the enterprise. Of course not all businesses will choose this path, but a substantial number of industries can and will. As I blogged about earlier, the message from the CFO office is clear. We will see adoption rates rise dramatically as the benefits of cloud services become more obvious to business leaders.
A second point of interest is the prediction that by 2012, India-centric IT services companies will
represent 20 percent of the leading cloud aggregators in the market
(through cloud service offerings).
Here’s the take-away:
Gartner is seeing India-centric IT services companiesleveraging
established market positions and levels of trust to explore nonlinear
revenue growth models (which are not directly correlated to labor-based
growth) and working on interesting research and development (R&D)
efforts, especially in the area of cloud computing. The collective work
from India-centric vendors represents an important segment of the
market’s cloud aggregators, which will offer cloud-enabled outsourcing
options (also known as cloud services).
We are witnessing examples of what GE innovation consultant Vijay Govindarajan calls reverse innovation in IT. Natarajan Chandrasekaran, the CEO of Tata Consultancy Servicesnotes:
I’ve seen the new cloud-based computing models for
applications and processes gaining currency in emerging markets. Rural
cooperative banks and small and medium businesses in India are actually
far ahead of their western counterparts in adopting these models. In
fact, companies from emerging markets, buoyed by strong domestic
revenues and revival in growth, have been making adjustments to their
global strategies and fine-tuning their investments in order to be part
of the recovery process in the west and build on their global expansion
plans.
As the enterprise embraces the cloud, they’ll need a maturity model to help them on their journey. My next post will explore what the maturity model for cloud storage looks like.
