Recently in Cloud Storage Category

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.

Ladies and gentlemen, fellow citizens of the Cloud, the enterprise is ready for cloud storage. Let us know what you think.

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.

There are multiple productive and desirable use cases for cloud storage for the enterprise.  This spans many use cases, including specialized applications that use programmable API cloud storage, file server replacement solutions, backup and archive solutions and what we call "Personal Cloud Storage."  (Personal Cloud Storage, or PCS, is the use of PC, tablet, mobile clients and web browsers by an individual to access a pool of storage.)  As opposed to a long discussion about all these, let's focus for a moment on the phenomena of the "consumerization" of IT and what if really means in the context of enterprise IT, and specifically as it relates to PCs.

The enterprise continues to register significant concerns about using public, multi-tenant storage offerings, primarily because of the "triple threat" of risk:  unauthorized access, data loss, and the opportunity for enforced access by government institutions.  In addition to the triple threat, employees are beginning to expect the enterprise IT organization to be as responsive to their needs as they know public storage service providers can and will be.  This includes easy and immediate provisioning of whatever amount of storage is required, on a pay as you go basis, at a fair price, on all your devices, and what is now represented as the consumerization of IT.

So, what's the appropriate response for the enterprise IT organization?  I believe there are three responses forming up:  

1)    We can't stop it, so let's publish acceptable usage policies and hope for the best;
2)    Just say no - you cannot do that - and then try to control it; and,
3)    Obtain an alternative that is better controlled and delivered by a trusted service provider as a "private" or "hybrid" cloud solution for your institutions use, and/or implement an in-house solution.

At Mezeo, we saw this coming and we strongly believe that the third option listed above is the appropriate response.  It recognizes the need for self service provisioning of required storage solutions along with multiple access points, but puts in place appropriate controls to avoid the triple threat.  

In Standardized Cloud APIs? Yes, Don Macvittie takes on the opposing view held by editor Mike Fratto in Standardizing Cloud APIs Is Useless.

Gentlemen, you are both right.

In a previous blog entry, I noted the following:

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 some are excited to take advantage of some of the unique Mezeo API based 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 yet unknown. 

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 interoperability of applications developed for Amazon S3, Google and Eucalyptus based storage clouds. 

(Note:  we are soon announcing our first addition to the Interoperability API that will deliver the SNIA CDMI data management capability).

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, so a 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.  Their focus is on what cloud storage can do, the problems it can solve, what business opportunities it creates and what new applications it enables.  All of these views assume it will be competitively priced.

So, should we ultimately and will we ultimately achieve some sort of "standardized" API for cloud storage and cloud computing?  YES! 

What benefits will it bring?  The usual ones we expect from standardization. 

Will it be a panacea and a reason to buy?  No, but it will ultimately be a reason not to buy.

Is it the most important thing all of us in the cloud space can do right now?  No, but supporting the standards bodies is, and your suppliers should have a position on that. 

I like practical business approaches.  That is why we try to look at cloud storage through the lens of what it can be used for, why that makes sense and why it is a big business opportunity.  We developed our Interoperability API to make it easy for cloud storage solution providers to use Mezeo enabled clouds.  We built the Mezeo API to provide a robust development environment for programmable storage.  Both are important.  We did not do either one to get engaged in the "which API will prevail" struggle for becoming a standard.  We support CDMI, and are beginning to utilize it where it makes sense and adds real business value. 

I would like to close by saying that standardization will be important, it will never be perfect and it is going to take some time.  In the meantime, what I do know is that there are excellent ways to use cloud storage to solve real business problems in new ways that will yield substantial business improvements, including savings.  If you are worried about vendor lock in, get your top technical people together and do two things:

1)    Make sure that you understand that converting from one API to another, while not the most productive or best use of time, is simply not that big a deal and;

2)    Remember that there are big market forces at work here, and that your cloud storage service suppliers will be bound as much by those versus being protected by their proprietary APIs!

Check out our FREE TOOLKIT >>
CLOUD STORAGE: A BUSINESS MODEL for THE ENTERPRISE

Enterprises are increasingly looking to on-premise private storage clouds as a cost-effective way to share information.  Why?  A cloud behind the firewall enables users to easily access, share and collaborate without compromising data security, integrity and availability.  But there are still a few points every enterprise needs to consider before making the decision.

1. Consider your security needs.  How private is a private cloud?  How confidential is the data that you may ultimately store in the cloud?  Do you want the cloud behind your firewall, and if so, how will you access it?  Will you open a port and depend on a user id and password for access control, or will you also require that your cloud is accessed via a VPN?  Remember, today an employee can decide to email a confidential file to someone outside of the firewall, so what do you really accomplish with a "private cloud"?  If the cloud is available thru a port, can you monitor the cloud and shut it down when (not if) it comes under attack?  If the data being stored cannot be compromised then it cannot be on a network, at all.
   
   
2. Make sure you have adequate internal resources.  Do you have the scale, expertise and data center space to host your own private storage cloud and will you save money versus public, multi tenant storage clouds?  Assuming that your analysis of number (1) above suggests that a private cloud is a desirable approach, then our experience is that you can host your own cloud for an identified operational cost that is at least as low as the public provider.  Now, if it forces you to accelerate capital consumption in order to build out a data center, it may be a poor decision.  But all those sorts of things being equal, you can do it.  The intangible costs, like unanticipated headaches, dilution of focus on your scarce resources, and or a poor choice of cloud infrastructure can quickly turn a winner into a loser.
   
   
3. Identify a use case before starting.  A common mistake that we see is the extraordinary focus on the technology as opposed to a focus on your cloud storage use case and the business case that surrounds the use case.  The project should start with an analysis of the use case and its resulting impact on the business, and operate on the assumption you can source a cloud of appropriate size, scalability and costs.
   
   
4. Research technology solutions that are most appropriate for your use case. When you take the use case approach, you will quickly understand that a private cloud is not just a storage infrastructure; but rather an ecosystem of cloud storage clients, backup and archive solutions, special purpose data movers, management and support, that, when combined with a cloud storage infrastructure gives you a complete solution.  Once again, a use case focus will flush this out, versus a platform technology led process.
   
   
5. Integrate cloud storage with your overall cloud computing strategy.  A storage cloud is simply one layer of a cloud computing stack.  How does this cloud fit within your cloud computing stack?  Does the way in which you integrate it support the other cloud computing decisions you have made?  Evaluation of the cloud storage solution and how it will interact with, support and/or be the infrastructure associated with your overall computing cloud is a critical part of your overall evaluation.  You may also choose to use a service provider hosted "private cloud" to solve issues associated with your deployment, and not ever deploy the storage part of a compute cloud within your own data center.   

And finally, you may want to check out our FREE TOOLKIT >>
CLOUD STORAGE: A BUSINESS MODEL for THE ENTERPRISE

Dan Decasper co-founded Cirtas with the vision of enabling the enterprise to utilize cloud storage as if it were a local array.

CloudStorageStrategy.com asked him a few questions about "Cloud Storage Controllers" and what the technology means for the enterprise. 

Note: Cirtas is a Mezeo Ready Solution Partner.

What was the original idea behind Cirtas?
Cirtas' co-founders previously built a WAN optimization company that was acquired by Citrix.  Together, they saw the coming of the cloud and recognized that broad scale adoption of cloud storage would require a "catalyst" technology to make the experience seamless and high performing.  They had the expertise to develop such technology and founded Cirtas to address the market need.

What is a Cloud Storage Controller?
A Cloud Storage Controller (CSC) is analogous to the array controllers found in enterprise storage systems, except instead of providing data protection, security, advanced virtualization features, and performance for an array of locally attached disk drives, a Cloud Storage Controller provides these capabilities on top of public cloud storage.  The net result is that public cloud storage can be utilized by the enterprise as if it were a local storage array - quickly, easily and for any application.

Who uses them Cloud Storage Controllers? Why do they need them?
Cloud Storage Controllers are used by mid-to-large enterprise - typically organizations with 10TB to several petabytes of data that are looking to reduce their overall cost of storage and simplify their storage environment.

These types of customers need Cloud Storage Controllers because leveraging public cloud storage services is simply not feasible without them.  The sheer number of applications running in a typical enterprise precludes them from being re-written to cloud APIs, and other concerns such as security and performance must be overcome.  Cloud Storage Controllers address all these concerns in a very robust way, allowing cloud storage to be used like local storage - but with superior economics and simplicity.

What benefits does a CSC offer?
A Cloud Storage Controller offers three main benefits:

1) It creates a seamless and highly robust connection to cloud storage, while requiring no changes to applications running in the data center.  Applications are able to access the cloud using standard block and file access protocols on what appears to be a standard logical volume.  The magic of the Cloud Storage Controller is in presenting a standard storage interface to servers and applications on the SAN, while connecting to the cloud over the WAN, and requiring nothing of the user to make this happen.

2) It accelerates the performance of applications using cloud storage through advanced WAN acceleration techniques including caching, deduplication, compression, and protocol optimization.  These techniques make cloud storage perform like local storage - even over relatively limited Internet connections (e.g. a DS3 at 45Mbps).  Furthermore, these same techniques help customers reduce their cloud storage service fees (and total cost of ownership) since they are not storing as much data in the cloud or moving as much data back and forth to it.

3) The Cloud Storage Controller provides the same features and capabilities expected of local storage arrays, such as thin provisioning, automated storage tiering, volume management, snapshots, and more.  These capabilities enhance the native functionality of the cloud, making it easier to use and providing superior data protection capabilities.

What applications/data sets make sense for the cloud?
Any Tier 2 or Tier 3 application or data set makes sense for the cloud through a Cloud Storage Controller.  The applications that don't yet make sense are highly mission critical or performance sensitive applications like large databases, ERP systems, and data warehousing.  Applications that make perfect sense are home directories, unstructured content storage, SAN offload, archiving, backup/tape replacement, and large-scale data collection (e.g. log storage)

What are your impressions of the cloud storage market today, and where it's going?  
It's an exciting time to be in the cloud storage market.  There's so much potential and things are just getting going.  Cloud storage has been very successful for web applications, and in conjunction with cloud computing.  However, it hasn't yet transcended into a tool for the mainstream enterprise.  At Cirtas we've got an opportunity to change that and we're seeing tremendous traction.  When we started two years ago, IT managers were aware of the cloud, but were fairly uneducated about it.  Today there are increasing numbers of cloud storage initiatives being driven from the CIO level, along with much more recognition of the technology among the media and analyst community as a potential game changer.  So these days it's much easier to engage with customers.  Keep an eye on the statistics published by cloud storage providers - you'll be amazed at the growth rates you see them achieve.

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.

For more insights, see our cloud storage business maturity model >> 

Here’s the audio of my interview with Network World:

In essence, I cover the points I made in this blog post on OpenStack >>

Our Enterprise Cloud Storage ROI Model identifies the key enterprise business drivers for cloud storage, and provides a model that helps organizations quantitatively evaluate if implementing a private storage cloud is the best option for them.

The ROI model and paper may be downloaded here >>

In addition to reducing the cost of storage, the Enterprise Cloud Storage ROI Model examines other areas of opportunity, including:

• in-house backup
• thin provisioning
• risk management
• productivity gains
• the ability to manage large file transmissions
• workstation storage upgrades and
  
• sharing information versus emailing information

The good news is that implementing a private storage cloud can provide cost savings while maintaining control behind the firewall. This ROI model helps you evaluate multiple use case options so that you can make the right decision for your organization.

Download the Enterprise Cloud Storage ROI Model >>

Just read David Linthicum's post, A way out of the private cloud dead end. 

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. 

Amazing!