Posts Tagged ‘Neal Leavitt’

CIO Cloud Computing 101: Why Use The Cloud?

Wednesday, July 29th, 2009

By Dr. Jim Anderson

CIOs Need To Make Sure That Cloud Computing Is Not Just A Fad

CIOs Need To Make Sure That Cloud Computing Is Not Just A Fad

Does anyone besides me remember the big Furby craze that swept the U.S. in the early ’90′s? People went crazy for these little plush dolls and they started collecting them in hopes that they would one day be valuable. Well, that never happened and a lot of people got stuck with expensive toys that they couldn’t get rid of. Is is  possible that the current cloud computing craze in IT could be another Furby fad that will fade away?

What Kind Of Services Come In A Cloud?

If a CIO can move beyond the hype, he/she needs to spend some time doing their homework in order to find out what kind of services a cloud could offer that their company could make use of. Neal Leavitt has spent some time studying cloud computing and has boiled cloud services down into four types of services:

  • Basic Services: this is not glamorous, but it may be the most popular type of service that a cloud environment can offer to your business. Basically simple Internet based services such as database functionality and capacity, middleware, and additional storage are used to supplement what your company already has.
  • IaaS: Buzz word alert – “Infrastructure As A Service”. This is when you are renting a complete computer (CPU, storage, bandwidth, etc.) that you access via the Internet. You would use this infrastructure to run your company’s applications on lock-stock-and-barrel.
  • PaaS: Platform-as-a-service – provides your firm with a development environment that your IT staff can use to create new applications for the rest of the company (and your customers) to use. This is computer plus development tools.
  • SaaS: Software-as-a-service – this is where you don’t care about what the software is running on, you just want to purchase access to the application. The most famous example of this is Salesforce.com’s CRM application.

Why Bother With A Cloud?

The Forrester research company has done some investigating and they now claim that most company’s data centers are using less than 50% of their total capacity. Despite the hype that is currently surrounding cloud computing, Leavitt has uncovered three very good reasons for looking into having your firm start to use cloud computing:

  1. Availability: interestingly enough, despite many firm’s misgivings about losing control over their IT equipment, there is a lot to be said to having a professional firm that has the deep pockets needed for redundant systems and tested disaster recovery plans run your IT infrastructure. If you work at a small or even a medium sized firm, this may be especially valuable to you.
  2. Integration Of Applications: sorry, we can’t do anything about those old apps that you are running. However, the new ones that are developed to run in the cloud will almost automatically be easy to integrate because they will use the suite of Web interface languages/tools  (SOAP, XML, etc.) that make this easy to do.
  3. Flexibility: unlike the majority of cell phone vendors in the U.S., currently most cloud computing service providers don’t require users to sign long term contracts that lock them in. This makes it easy to quickly get more cloud resources when your firm needs them.

Final Thoughts

It is all too easy for CIOs who are adverse to change to look at the current excitement over cloud computing and decide that it is yet another fad that will fade away in time. The reality is that cloud computing provides several different types of services that are useful to any IT department. This can’t be ignored.

Additionally, successfully adding cloud computing resources to the company’s existing IT infrastructure will mean that a CIOs will have found a way to apply IT to enable the rest of the company to grow quicker, move faster, and do more.

Questions For You

How much of your existing IT infrastructure do you think that your firm is currently using – more or less than 50%? Which of the four types of cloud computing services would have the most immediate value to your company? Why? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Cloud computing is all the rage these days and everyone who is anyone is making plans to implement at least some flavor of it as soon as possible. It turns out that the decision to go with a cloud computing solution for your IT department might not be as simple as some would lead you to believe. There are challenges to successfully using a cloud and we need to talk about them…

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Posted in cloud computing | 10 Comments »

CIO Cloud Computing 101: Who Are The Players?

Monday, July 27th, 2009
CIOs Need To Understand Cloud Computing

CIOs Need To Understand Cloud Computing

One of the great things about working in the IT field is that whenever things start to get boring, we have the ability to create new buzzwords and make things interesting all over again. The arrival of “Cloud Computing” on the scene a couple of years ago showed that this cycle has not gone away. Maybe it would be worthwhile to take a step back and make sure that we’re all on the same page here – what is cloud computing and why should anyone care?

The Many Flavors Of Cloud Computing

Neal Leavitt has spent some time studying cloud computing and has some thoughts for us.  A quick definition of just what cloud computing is might be a good place for us to start. In olden days (3 years ago), if you wanted to run an application you pretty much had to go out, buy a server, plug it in, load up the software, connect it to a network and then you were in business. Cloud computing changes all of that.

Now all you have to do is set up an account with a company who has already done all of the above steps. You can then load  your application onto their server(s) using the Internet to reach these servers and ta-da you are in business.

There are three main “flavors” of cloud computing that users are employing currently:

  • Thin Clients: allows you to minimize the processing power / storage needed by the end user’s computer and do the “heavy lifting” on servers and storage that are stored elsewhere.
  • Grid Computing: allows computers that may be located in completely different locations to be connected together in order to form a single virtual computing system. An example of this would be specialized image processing computers that were linked to a massive image storage system for processing.
  • Utility Computing: this is cloud computing in its purest form – CPUs for hire. You pay for what you use and you can use as much as you need. This is a great solution for firms that have seasonal spikes in the amount of data that they have to process.

Who Are The Cloud Computing Service Players?

The list of cloud computing service providers is long and seems to be getting longer every day. Here’s a partial list with a number of names that you’ll probably recognize…

Final Thoughts

Ok, so clearly this is not the final thought on Cloud Computing. I’ve got a lot more to cover with you, but this is a good place to quit for now. Cloud Computing was treated as a bit of a novelty when it first showed up. I mean, who would trust unreliable links to remote computers to run critical corporate apps?

Times have changed and the economics of Cloud Computing have also changed to make this a more attractive option. Every CIO needs to be thinking about how his / her IT shop is using computing resources right now and what role Cloud Computing could play in the future. Addressing this issue this will mean that CIOs will have found a way to apply IT to enable the rest of the company to grow quicker, move faster, and do more.

Questions For You

Have you spent any time thinking about using Cloud Computing yet? How long until you run out of room to add more servers to your company’s infrastructure? Have you calculated the total cost of ownership for the servers that you do have? Are your applications too critical to trust to a cloud? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Successful CIO Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Does anyone besides me remember the big Furby craze that swept the U.S. in the early ’90′s? People went crazy for these little plush dolls and they started collecting them in hopes that they would one day be valuable. Well, that never happened and a lot of people got stuck with expensive toys that they couldn’t get rid of. Is is  possible that the current cloud computing craze in IT could be another Furby fad that will fade away?

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Posted in cloud computing | 2 Comments »

First-Mover Advantage: Complex-Event Processing Is What CIOs Need

Monday, June 22nd, 2009
CIOs Need To Get To Know Complex-Event Processing

CIOs Need To Get To Know Complex-Event Processing

The job of  a CIO and the IT department is to equip the rest of the company to move faster and do more. One of the ways that a CIO can do this is by staying on top of new and emerging technologies (ex. unified communications).

If such technologies can be implemented in a useful way BEFORE the company’s competitors can do the same, then the CIO will have done his/her job. Complex-Event Processing looks like it may be another one of those technologies.

What Is “Complex-Event Processing”?

In business, knowledge is power and power is profit. Every business has multiple streams of information flowing into it at all times. Information on sales, inventory, returns, web site clicks, weather conditions, bank balances, etc.

For years firms have been processing these information streams individually and in near-real-time. These are the core business applications that produce the reports that get sent to senior management each night for them to review the next day. This is better than nothing, but it’s not quite enough.

Neal Leavitt writing in the IEEE’s Computer magazine points out that today’s traditional databases are not up to the task of analyzing continuous streams of business data in real-time searching for complex events (events that require more than one data stream to detect).

What is now arriving on the IT scene are general-purpose platforms that provide an IT department with enough processing horsepower to analyze real-time business information simultaneously across multiple business applications.

What’s It Good For?

Complex-event processing gives a firm the ability to spot interconnected business trends and patterns in real-time and then combine this information into complex events that can trigger alerts that can be sent to people in the company.

Complex events can include such things as determining when to trade stocks, detecting fraud as it is happening, spotting inventory issues before they become a problem, network status monitoring, etc.

Are There Any Risks?

Of course – this is cutting edge technology, there are always risks with this stuff. The current limitations to this type of technology include:

  • Lack Of Standards: specifically for the event-pattern detection and rule-based languages for different vendor’s products.
  • Education: this is new technology and businesses don’t fully understand what the products can do nor all of the situations in which they can be applied.
  • Missing Benchmarks: No standardized benchmarks currently exist so it’s difficult to compare products.

Final Thoughts

Every great business break-through starts with a dream. What could your firm do if you could analyze all of your business data streams in real-time? If the benefit is compelling enough, then perhaps it’s time to start looking into how you could apply complex-event processing to as a way to apply IT to enable the rest of the company to grow quicker, move faster, and do more.

Additional Resources

If you’re interested, here are links to several vendors who have products in the complex-event processing. I have no relationship with any of them so there is no order to the list:

Questions For You

Does your firm have multiple streams of real time data flowing into it? What do you do with these streams today?  What kind of delay is there from when the data arrives to when staff can take action on it? What could you do with the ability to analyze this data in real-time? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

Click here to get automatic updates when
The Accidental Successful CIO Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

If you could be running the IT department for any company out there right now, which one would it be? A lot of us would say Google – everything that we’ve read and heard about the company makes it seem like a great place to work. However, it turns out that even Google is not immune to IT staff problems…

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Posted in technologies | 2 Comments »