David Linthicum discusses Public Cloud at HP – Intel Executive Forum [hpcloud YouTube channel, Jan 29, 2014]
David Linthicum recently spoke at a joint HP Intel Executive Forum about the benefits and trends in Public Cloud computing.
In December of last year, Red Hat and Dell announced a partnership to provide organizations with a OpenStack-based private cloud solution.
Red Hat sees a lot of promise in OpenStack and is one of its biggest supporters. Think of OpenStack just like you might think about Linux. Red Hat has taken the open source Linux operating system and has made quite a bit of money selling services based on providing support and services for it.
Earlier this year, IBM announced that their cloud products would have core OpenStack bits.
An independent assesment of the Gartner’s Emerging Technology Landscape predictions for a number of years from cloud computing point of view [Big Data Applications and Analytics MOOC YouTube channel, July 22, 2013]: … 2004-2009: Top 10 Strategic Technologies … 2008-2012: Priority Matrix … 2002-2012: Emerging Technologies Hype Cycle
Unit 18 – X-Informatics Cloud Technology Part I: Introduction, Lesson 4 Overview: Gartner is well known for an ongoing suite of influential insightful technology evaluations. Some early listings of strategic technologies is followed by the priority matrix ( benefit versus years to mainstream adoption) where both clouds and recently big data are prominent in the ”transformational” ”2 to 5 year impact” categories. The famous hype cycle for emerging technologiesis introduced with examples from 2002 2009 2010 2011 and 2012 being given.
Note: this presentation is part of a FREE “Big Data Applications and Analytics” MOOC (Massive Open Online Course), currently (Feb 12, 2014) in preview form, investigating the use of clouds running data analytics collaboratively for processing Big Data to solve problems in Big Data Applications and Analytics. OR put otherwise it is about so called X-Informatics, where X = Physics, e-Commerce, Web Search and Text mining, Health, Sensors and Remote Sensing are somes application problems which could be solved by use of Clouds running Data Analytics Collaboratively processing Big Data.
(X-Informatics MOOC as a course had been first available to students during the Spring 2013 classes by Indiana University, School of Informatics and Computing.)
Gartner, Jan 9, 2013 (Cloud Computing | Technology Research | Gartner Inc.):
Cloud computing is a disruptive phenomenon, with the potential to make IT organizations more responsive than ever. Cloud computing promises economic advantages, speed, agility, flexibility, infinite elasticity and innovation. How will you phase your organization into cloud computing?
DID YOU KNOW?
By 2015, at least 20% of all cloud services will be consumed via internal or external cloud service brokerages, rather than directly, up from less than 5% today.
Cloud computing forces you to wrestle with three key strategic, operational and people challenges:
Governance:
Cloud computing enables speed, agility and innovation. You need to move from the drawing board to deployment. Is your organization ready to adapt?
Cloud Computing Environments:
You need to choose a cloud computing environment that’s right for your organization. Should you consider private cloud, public cloud or a hybrid cloud solution? Which vendors play in this space? Will they be in business 12 months from now?
Security & Privacy:
If someone else is running your computers and software, you need strategies to stay secure. Your security policy depends on how many pieces you control – the more you own, the more you control. Are you ready to extend your enterprise security policy to the cloud?
Governance
You need a clear vision and effective processes, skills and organizational structure to drive cloud innovation in your enterprise. What cloud adoption strategies should you consider? What does your road map look like?
Best Practices: How will you create a compelling cloud vision? What strategies will better align business and IT? How should you measure business value? Is cloud technology selection really the easiest part?
Business model: How will you deliver value to the business? Which functions will you move to the cloud? What use cases will drive the most impact? How will you fund cloud computing? What are the spending and staffing risks? Should you continue to maintain an on-premises staff?
Cultural Barriers: What cultural changes does your organization need to make? What political hurdles must you clear to get buy-in from your security department and other key stakeholders? Have you considered cloud requirements and needs for all stakeholders?
Cloud Computing Environments
More and more organizations are moving services, storage, email, collaboration and applications to the cloud. You need to decide whether to choose to support private, public or a hybrid cloud mix. What’s the right mix of infrastructure (IaaS), platform (PaaS), and application (SaaS) environments for your organization? Where are the cost savings?
Private Cloud: Which services require the most agility and speed? What’s the right balance of standard service offerings that will drive the most business value? Do you need to build an internal shared-service center? How does a private cloud implementation impact your data center architecture?
Public Cloud: Which applications are most likely to move to public cloud delivery models? Will your organization bypass your IT department and get its applications from the cloud via software-as-service (SaaS) for a monthly pay-per-user-per-month subscription pricing model?
Hybrid Cloud: Is hybrid cloud really the future? What level of flexibility do you need to customize, manage and monitor your applications? How will the cloud services brokerage role define future IT organizations?
Security & Privacy
You need to break through the resistance and increase confidence that cloud is safe. You need to keep your data safe from prying eyes. You need your security team to buy in to your cloud initiatives. That’s a tall order.
Virtualization: More than 50% of all data workloads are virtualized. How will you use virtualization to innovate? How can workloads be secured when consuming cloud-based infrastructure as a service? Are you ready to run your physical appliances as virtual appliances?
Data Protection: How will you protect your data in the cloud? What’s the right level of recovery and manageability in your organization? What security controls should you inject? Who will have access? Should you use data tokenization? How will you migrate your data?
Cloud Provider Assessment: Which security vendors will get it right first? Which will guarantee delivery? What if the cloud fails? Where are the standards? What level of transparency do you need?
Gartner, Aug 10, 2012: The Rise of Cloud Service Brokerage featuring Gartner and BCBS
Cloud Service Brokerage for IT with Gartner [Intel Application Security Channel, recorded in August, 2012; published on Jan 31, 2013]
According to Cloud Challenges Play to Solution Providers’ Strengths [The VAR Guy, Jan 31, 2014]
Cloud computing is permeating through every business regardless of size or industry. It is changing the face of IT, delivering efficiency, infrastructure flexibility, affordability and accessibility—and solution providers are at the very core.
In case there is any doubt, research tech giant Gartner now predicts that by 2015 at least 20 percent of all cloud services will be consumed through internal or external cloud service brokerages, rather than directly. That is up from just 5 percent currently. Solution providers, take notice to that fact.
Solution providers are at the very center of providing these services to organizations. And as more companies move over to a cloud environment bit by bit, department by department, function by function, the role the solution provider will become more important as they become even more engrained in the business.
There are three main challenges most businesses face when implementing a cloud solution—governance, cloud environment and security and privacy— according to Gartner [see above], all of which play to the strength of the solution provider channel. Organizations are finding they can’t do this alone and their IT departments need to work hand-in-hand with solution providers to select the right cloud environments, implement the solution and maintain and service it to keep it secure.
While cloud computing offers tremendous advantages, organizations need a clear vision and effective processes, skills and organizations structure to implement a successful cloud solution, according to Gartner. Solution providers need to work with their customers on best practices, the business model and align with IT on breaking any cultural barriers. Any internal resistance will only hamper the effectiveness of a cloud implementation.
Solution providers also play a crucial role in helping organizations select the right cloud environment for their specific business needs. While more organizations are moving services, storage, email, collaboration and applications to the cloud, they need help deciding on which platform to choose—public, private or a hybrid approach, Gartner said. Solution providers should be helping decide the right mix of infrastructure as a service, platform and application for their customers.
The final major bucket that organizations need help with, according to Gartner, is overcoming security and privacy concerns. Here is where the expertise of solution providers is truly needed. It also opens up opportunities for many other services such as virtualization, data protection and cloud provider assessment.
Cloud computing adoption is happening fast as more organizations realize the benefits and grow more comfortable with the technology. There remains challenges and solution providers are right in the middle of the solution.
From Updated: Top 100 Technology Predictions for 2014 Part I [The VAR Guy, Dec 24, 2013]
Reader Submissions and The VAR Guy’s Reactions
25. Amazon Web Services Will Rule: The consumerization driven by cloud and Internet of Things (IoT) will cause increased conflict — blurring the lines between enterprise, SMB and individual sales.Amazon will be a winner both on the cloud side as well as product distribution/resell. Submitted by: Community member Jay McBain, co-founder of ChannelEyes and ChannelCandy. The VAR Guy’s Spin: Agreed. Everyone seems to be chasing Amazon — including Wal-Mart, Best Buy, IBM, Microsoft, Rackspace… and the list goes on.
26. HP Will Continue To Flail: They will try to become a software company, like all hardware companies desire, to increase gross margins. They will make poor decisions, waste a bunch of money on software efforts, and leave their hardware business at risk in parallel. They feel the most exposed to me, of all the big guys out there. They own no strategic software, only nice-to-have software, and none of the people that own strategic software (OS, Virt, Database, Middleware, Hadoop, Cloud Infrastructure) will let them into their world. HP will need a new CEO to re-right the ship in a drastic fashion at some point in next 12-18 months. Submitted by: Community Member Bill Bickel. The VAR Guy’s Spin: Let’s give current CEO Meg Whitman a little credit, particularly when it comes to stabilizing HP and also rebuilding broken relationships with the channel. The VAR Guy’s biggest question involves Bickel’s point about intellectual property. What will ultimately make HP unique and compelling in 2014? Hmmm…
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34. OpenStack Becomes Commercially Viable: Many organizations and vendors are already rolling out OpenStack solutions as an alternative to vCloud and CloudStack to provide public clouds, support, training and system integration services and hardware and software products. Based on what we’ve seen over the years, the industry loves technology based on standards, and OpenStack is looking to be that solution. Major brands, such as HP and Cisco, are introducing significant offerings in this space and I expect to see adoption expand even further in 2014. Submitted By: RiverMeadow President and CEO Mark Shirman. The VAR Guy’s Spin: Keep an eye on Mirantis — the OpenStack training company.
35. Cloud Won¹t Be Just For Development And Test Servers Anymore:Migrating to or between cloud environments presents a number of IT issues, but the problems are compounded by having data stored and managed remotely, by external organizations and, in many cases, in multiple locations. As people become more comfortable with the tools and architecture they will begin to migrate existing workloads into the cloud, including public, private and hybrid environments. Submitted By: RiverMeadow President and CEO Mark Shirman. The VAR Guy’s Spin: This prediction is already true today.
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38. Private Cloud Puts Everyone At Ease: Private cloud will become a key strategy for companies that want to benefit from reduced costs, security and speed. Vendors will have to respond with a new kind of agility that is not usually expected from enterprise IT. HDS believes that a new private cloud enablement methodology is necessary to build a foundation for service-based delivery; however, at the same time vendors will have to embrace infrastructure agnosticism, openness and innovation. Submitted by: HDS CTO Hu Yoshida. The VAR Guy’s Spin: Again, The VAR Guy is a bit cool on private cloud but hot on public cloud. Still, our resident blogger’s temperature can change from day to day.
…
48. Providers will need a marquee customer or application that’s being
served in the cloud. Submitted By: Bluelock CTO Pat O’Day. The VAR Guy’s Spin:Case studies always win new customers…
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50. Cloud consolidation arrives. Submitted by: Bluelock CTO Pat O’Day. The VAR Guy’s Spin: It’s already happening — IBM acquired SoftLayer; CenturyLink Savvis acquired Tier 3, and the list goes on.
IT Channel Firms Navigate Cloud Business Models, CompTIA Research Reveals [press release, Aug 26, 2013]
As Cloud Matures, Solution Providers Continue on the Path of Business Transformation
Downers Grove, Ill., August 26, 2013 – Cloud computing has presented countless opportunities to information technology (IT) channel firms willing to embrace business transformation, while challenging those holding on to fading business models, according to theFourth Annual Trends in Cloud Computing released today by CompTIA, the non-profit association for the industry.
Forty-five percent of channel companies from CompTIA’s survey say determining the appropriate business model around cloud computing presented a significant challenge in the past year. That assertion falls just behind the most difficult challenge cited in the findings: Developing cloud expertise across both technical and sales arms within a company, a task that logically flows after the initial business model decision is made.
“Primary business considerations depend on where a company wants to go with cloud,” said Carolyn April, director, industry analysis, research, CompTIA. “Do they want to resell a vendor’s cloud solutions? Aggregate and broker cloud services from a variety of different sources? Integrate and customize cloud-based apps and services, or simply sell the infrastructure to an end user and provide consulting? Each of these paths and more are possibilities, as are varying revenue models available for all.”
CompTIA identified four main business models to encapsulate much of what is being done by IT solutions providers today in the cloud. View a matrix of those business transformation models at http://www.slideshare.net/comptia/cloud-channel-business-models:
Build: Firms procuring vendor-based hardware and software products to construct private and/or hybrid clouds for customers. They may also offer consulting guidance on the best IT architecture, configuration and product choices for the project.
Roughly half (48 percent) of channel firms today are currently offering some form of Build services, with another third planning to add this flavor of cloud to their lineup in the coming year. Build represents a bit of a cloud launching pad; of those firms that are also operating one of the other three cloud business models, 7 in 10 started with a with Build practice before adding the others.
Provide/Provision: This business model for cloud positions the solution provider as the hub for provisioning various vendor-based and homegrown cloud services to the end customer.
Half of channel firms doing cloud today are participating in the Provide/Provision model, with a third of all respondents in the study believing that this business model for cloud has the most growth potential in the next two years – regardless of whether they are involved in it or not today. That compares with roughly a quarter of firms that deem each of the other three business models as the fastest growth drivers.
Enable/Integrate: This business framework for cloud has been a sweet spot for channel firms over the past several years. Typically they are providing integration and implementation services that may include tying a customer’s on-premises IT solutions to its cloud-based solutions or, customizing cloud-based solutions to fit a particular business need or vertical.
For the past three years of CompTIA cloud studies, the number one source of post-sale dollars has been integration work. This area has routinely been a place where the channel cushions its overall profit margins. Since most solution providers charge customers on a recurring revenue basis for cloud solutions (by consumption or by number of users etc.), the project work associated with the Enable/Integrate category allows them to add revenue not included in the base contract.
Manage/Support: In this model, firms are delivering the ongoing management and support of cloud-based services as project work or in a contractual, recurring revenue model. They are also adding, scaling or troubleshooting cloud services as needed.
Six in 10 of these firms are conducting remote monitoring of cloud solutions for customers and/or managing solutions that reside in a multicloud environment. Multicloud management is a solid opportunity area for the channel as myriad cloud apps and other solutions mushroom in the market. Likewise, the channel is wisely developing ways to demonstrate cloud ROI to customers. In fact, 6 in 10 channel firms involved in Manage/Support have created IT dashboards that allow customers to track their cloud utilization, costs and other metrics to understand their investment.
Demand Exceeding Supply
With demand sometimes exceeding supply, channel firms need to react quickly in choosing the proper business model. Two thirds (63 percent) of channel firms characterize customer demand for cloud-based IT solutions and services as either very high or high, with another 3 in 10 describing demand as somewhat high. Four in 10 channel firms said they experienced cases where customer demand for cloud solutions outstripped their capacity to deliver, while 20% lost a deal because a customer desired a cloud solution they did not offer.
However 6 in 10 channel firms say that cloud has generally strengthened their customer relationships, with just 15 percent claiming it has weakened them and roughly a quarter that said that their client bonds have remained the same. This is encouraging news since many in the channel have feared publicly that cloud would drive a wedge between them and their customers. There’s been rampant apprehension about such ill effects as a resurgence in vendor direct sales and end-user customers choosing a self-service model for their IT solutions. And while both of these trends are happening to a certain extent, CompTIA data suggest not at such dire expense to most of the channel.
“Channel firms can play a critical role in determining when cloud versus on-premises works best for their customers,” April added. “For instance, the customers’ desire to increase mobile/remote access to company data sparked 46 percent of channel firms to recommend cloud solutions, compared with 38 percent last year. This underscores the surge in mobility solutions, as well as BYOD and telecommuting trends that are happening in the marketplace. It also demonstrates the channel’s ability to tie the value of cloud into these burgeoning areas.”
CompTIA’s Fourth Annual Trends in Cloud Computing is based on an online survey conducted in July 2013 of 501 business professionals in the U.S. involved in IT decision-making and 400 IT channel companies. The complete report is available at no cost to CompTIA members who can access the file at www.CompTIA.org or by contacting research@comptia.org.
About CompTIA
CompTIA is the voice of the world’s information technology (IT) industry. Its members are the companies at the forefront of innovation; and the professionals responsible for maximizing the benefits organizations receive from their investments in technology. CompTIA is dedicated to advancing industry growth through its educational programs, market research, networking events, professional certifications, and public policy advocacy. For more information, visit www.comptia.org or follow CompTIA on Twitter athttp://twitter.com/comptia.
CompTIA: Cloud Computing Poses New Financial, Technological Challenges for IT Distributors [press release, Feb 10, 2014]
New whitepaper examines “The Role of IT Distribution in a Cloud World”
Cloud computing is at the heart of one of the biggest transformations ever in the distribution chain that brings information technology (IT) products and services from suppliers to customers, according to a new whitepaper released today by CompTIA, the leading non-profit association for the IT industry.
The impact of cloud computing is being felt in particular by the “middlemen” in the IT product and service channel – the IT distributors.
“Unlike traditional IT products with clearly defined architectures and feature sets, cloud computing technology is by design more virtual and decentralized in nature,” said Carolyn April, director, industry analysis, CompTIA. “From a distributor’s point of view, this makes the technology more difficult to move through a supply chain – to ‘pick, pack and ship.’
“As if these transactions weren’t challenging enough, distributors must also contend with the ongoing disintegration of traditional product categories, which adds a layer of uncertainty to technology development,” April added.
In the new whitepaper, The Role of IT Distribution in a Cloud World, CompTIA details some of the steps distributors have taken to expand their relevance in the cloud market. These moves include acquisitions of companies to strengthen their cloud business lines; and the creation of new logistical capabilities built specifically for cloud resellers and providers.
The market upheaval caused by cloud computing is likely to result in the need for a new type of provider – one that can aggregate multivendor technologies at scale across both physical and virtual boundaries to deliver secure and reliable solutions to meet customers’ business, technology and regulatory needs.
“For the past 20 years, no one type of company has done that better than the industry’s wholesale distributors,” April noted. ”If they play their cards right, they could position themselves as the nexus of cloud computing.”
The latest CompTIA research on the cloud market finds that channel partners plan to use distributor cloud services in several ways:
• 57 percent – Technical support for cloud solutions
• 35 percent – Aggregation of cloud services
• 35 percent – Data center accessibility and hosting services
• 33 percent – Vetting and evaluating cloud service providers or solutions
• 25 percent – Relationship brokering with other providers of cloud solutions
The whitepaper on The Role of IT Distribution in a Cloud World and all CompTIA research are examples of how the association re-invests resources in the IT channel to help IT businesses expand and grow. The whitepaper is available at no cost to CompTIA members. Visit www.comptia.org or contact research@comptia.org for details.
HP
HP Cloud brings OpenStack to the Enterprise [hpcloud YouTube channel, Feb 5, 2014]
HP Cloud delivers choice, confidence, and consistency. Learn how HP Cloud OS as part of the HP Cloud portfolio leverages OpenStack to enable workload portability, simplified installation, and enhanced service lifecycle management. http://hp.com/cloud
Cloud leadership that makes a difference [Community Home > Software HP Software Solutions > Grounded in the Cloud Blog >, Nov 29, 2013]
Written by guest blogger Ken Spear
Bill Gates famously stated that, “…leaders will be those who empower others.” This is true of innovative products, as well as people. A product that is recognized for leadership should truly empower the user. In the recently published Forrester Wave™ Private Cloud Solutions, Q4 2013 this leading analyst firm noted that HP had developed a new end-to-end interface that was designed to empower all cloud users – administrators, architects and consumers of cloud services. “HP stands out from the crowd by providing a clean and navigable interface that wraps substantial breadth and depth of capabilities into the fewest number of interfaces.”
HP went to great lengths with CloudSystem to design an intuitive interface that can provide a rich set of underlying capabilities without complicating what the user sees. This consumer-inspired experience is designed to improve user productivity through automation and simplicity. In addition to affirming the advantages of this new user interface, Forrester recognized HP’s leadership in categories such as cloud management and self-service access as well as service management and creation.
Openness facilitates business agility
Oganizations are adopting the cloud to increase business agility as well as productivity. HP offers an easy on ramp to the cloud that is open and flexible while delivering very fast time to value. CloudSystem supports OpenStack as well the broadest range of hypervisors and public cloud platforms. Forrester also recognized HP as a leader in the following categories: additional hosting options, planned enhancements and third-party ecosystem. They noted that:
“CloudSystem Enterprise is one of the first OpenStack-based private cloud solutions and, more importantly, HP has effectively used this head start to develop additional capabilities while presenting a clean and navigable user interface.”
Download a copy of the Forrester Wave report.
This isn’t the first time HP has been recognized for leadership in cloud management. Earlier this year analyst firm Ovum, recognized HP as “the clear leader” in their report entitled, “Ovum Decision Matrix : Selecting a Virtualization and Cloud Management Solution 2013-2014”. They noted that CloudSystem and the related HP software were particularly strong in reporting, integration, virtualization management and financial management. “Ovum believes these to demonstrate a strong bias toward understanding the business perspective of cloud and virtualization management, and using its solution to articulate that value.”
To see HP CloudSystem Enterprise and the rest of the cloud solutions in action, come join us at the breakout sessions and demo stations during HP Discover in Barcelona [December 10-12, 2013].
Chris
For more information on HP Converged Systems
For more information on HP CloudSystem
For more information on Cloud service automation
For more information on Cloud Management
Follow me on Twitter @HPCloudSystem
Join the Cloud Advisors discussions on LinkedIn
From: HP vs AWS : An open source battle for two worlds | #OEForum [SiliconANGLE, Feb 3, 2014]
William Franklin – OpenStack Enterprise Forum – theCUBE [SiliconANGLE YouTube channel, Feb 5, 2014]
William Franklin, HP Cloud, at OpenStack Enterprise Forum with John Furrier and Dave Vellante @thecube #OEForum
John Furrier, theCUBE co-host: Why is the interest so high in OpenStack and what was the hardest question you received on stage?
William Franklin, Vice President of OpenStack & Technology Enablement and Cloud with Hewlett-Packard Company:
I think the interest is so high because OpenStack is the fastest growing open source project in the history of open source. Cloud computing is the third revolution of computing; we’ve started with mainframes, we moved into client server, and now we’re moving into this third revolution of cloud computing. It’s the perfect storm of rapidly adopted open source project in the middle of this transformation. I don’t think the questions were necessarily all that hard; HP is right in the middle of trying to deliver the hybrid cloud solutions and a lot of customers have a lot of questions.
Furrier: In the early days of cloud, in 2008 and 2009, it was pretty obvious what needed to be done. Where do you think we are now with cloud for business? Are we at full adoption, full migration?
As other participants on the Panel today have talked about, we are now at a stage where you see strategic adoption by a lot of the customers. During the early days everybody assumed it was going to be a public cloud, but for reasons relating to compliance and security, enterprises are looking at private clouds and managed service clouds, public clouds, and companies have to deal with managing their clouds, how do they upgrade it, how do they protect it – the whole lifecycle of the product.
…
Fundamentally we believe that those enterprises are going to be building hybrid clouds and that’s private, managed and public. We have solutions for customers from different product organizations at HP – software, servers, services, storage, hardware, that allow those enterprises to build hybrid clouds. If they’re bursting to Amazon, or to the HP public cloud, or they’re using managed services that are provided by HP’s services organization, we’re trying to take OpenStack and other solutions, bring it to the market to give them business solutions.
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Rounding up the comments received via Twitter and CrowdChat, Furrier asked William Franklin to talk about culture (organizations do not understand cloud), Ops, support configurations and standardization.
As I mentioned earlier, this is the third revolution of computing. The move from mainframe to client server didn’t happen overnight. Some of the questions asked today by customers – there’s different skillsets that are needed, different operational disciplines, different management. What HP is trying to do is deliver products that provide solutions to that set of problems. We don’t believe customers are going to move all of their workloads to the cloud tomorrow; it’s going to run in a client-server world and in the cloud. The solutions to be able to do that from an orchestration problem, you have to be able to deal with development, staging, production and the traditional client-server world, and you have to be able to deal with the DevOps paradigm. We build products to live in both of those worlds.
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From: OpenStack is crucial for HP’s strategy | #OEForum [SiliconANGLE, Feb 5, 2014]
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William Franklin and Lydia Leong Talk OpenStack at OpenStack Enterprise Forum [hpcloud YouTube channel, Jan 29, 2014]
William Franklin, VP OpenStack and Technology talks with Lydia Leong, Research VP Gartner talk about OpenStack and Enterprise Cloud adoption at the OpenStack Enterprise Forum on January 29, 2014 in Mountain View, CA.
[3:26 – just a kind of summarized transcript, towards the end heavily summarized, given by Silicon ANGLE]
Lydia Leong, Research Vice President with Gartner: How does the OpenStack fit the HP strategy?
William L. Franklin, Vice President of OpenStack & Technology Enablement, Cloud with Hewlett-Packard Company:
OpenStack is very crucial for HP’s strategy. HP believes in the hybrid cloud. Public cloud is really crucial for a lot of what people are doing with cloud. HP runs an OpenStack-based public cloud, but we also sell technology – software, hardware, storage, networking to service providers around the world. But we recognize that sometimes for compliance and security reasons – and sometimes for ego reasons – people want their own private cloud. In order to burst move workloads from a private cloud to a managed cloud to a public one and back-and-forth, we wanted a common architecture and a common set of tools we could use across all of this. HP has a very long history in open source, so we looked at different options and chose OpenStack. We were involved with folks at NASA and folks at Rackspace, helping create the foundation. We’re trying to move and more towards where we think hybrid is going.
As Leong noted, HP didn’t sell an OpenStack distribution, but chose OpenStack as a core of open source products.
Franklin agreed:
What we’re trying to do at HP is deliver cloud solutions to customers. In certain parts of OpenStack we’re fairily core, we have a reasonable number of core contributors to projects, but we’ve also done some projects that we think address both the scale aspects and some of the enterprise aspects. Things like TripleO, heat and bare metal provisioning are big areas that we’ve been making a lot of investments in. We were co-authors of the security book along with RackSpace and Nebula; the areas where we’re spending a lot of our time in are the big install: the upgrade / update space, the intersection of TripleO, heat, bare metal provisioning and security, as well as the networking space. So, it’s core, but it’s also what we would consider it’s needed by the enterprises to successfully pick the steps up and run with it.
Leong: The Enterprise is deciding to get OpenStack as software. They can choose to get it as a distribution, or embedded in some other product like HP Cloud. So why choose HP Cloud system enterprise rather than choosing an OpenStack distribution?
Franklin:
Different customers have different requirements and different wants; that was emphasized even by some of the panelists that have been up here. Some are building it on their own, like JC Martin and Rodney Peck, others are looking for a base-level solution. It goes back to the days of Linux and Debian. HP is trying to give the customers choice: some of them are going to build it on their own and some of them are going to consume cloud products either through a managed service or through a public cloud.”
Leong: The typical use-case scenario?
I have talked to customers about OpenStack and it really comes down to a set of business choices that they need to make: part of our strategy is trying to use this to build customer solutions. History is a great predicter of the future. In the days of Linux we had thousands and thousands of distributions; in the early days of Unix, in 1981, there were more than 150 Unix licenses, and by 1992 there were less than 20. If we’re not careful, we can wind up in a distribution war with 50 different spins. From HP’s perspective, we’ve tried to focus more on building solutions.
Leong: What do you think OpenStack needs to do to make it easier for customers to choose it?
Franklin:
I believe HP is on the news dial of IT: we’ve gone through the mainframe revolution, the client server revolution and the cloud revolution. Corporations are attempting more and more to outsource managing the VMs machines to someone like HP, thus allowing their in-house talent to focus on where they want to go. [13:50]
From OpenStack still has an enterprise problem [ITworld, Jan 30, 2014]
After trotting out some impressive enterprise users at its conference in Portland, Oregon, early last year, OpenStack hasn’t been able to showcase many additional big names. Supporters tried to address “the debate about the opportunity for OpenStack in the enterprise” at a half-day conference yesterday that was held at the Computer History Museum and webcast.
The speakers ended up highlighting a few of the challenges holding back OpenStack deployments.
Many businesses are looking for the kind of enterprise technology product that they’re used to seeing, and that’s not what OpenStack looks like yet …
…
Businesses, especially those in non-technical fields, are also struggling to figure out what types of skills to hire for when they want to use OpenStack. …
…
… to foster more conversations among existing OpenStack users so that they can learn from each other. This is key and gets to a point that I’ve been harping on for months. Businesses very much like to know that their peers are adopting a technology. It helps satisfy them that a technology is reliable and has enough momentum that it won’t disappear.
Yet OpenStack users tend to be a secretive bunch. While the OpenStack Foundation managed to trot out some impressive, big-name users at its conference early last year, not many others have emerged since. I’m told that some of the case studies profiled at the OpenStack conference in Hong Kong are household names in China. That may be so, but a year after the Portland conference, where are new, substantial users in North America, the birthplace of OpenStack?
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HP Cloud Professional Services Overview [hpcloud YouTube channel, Jan 30, 2014]
Learn how HP Cloud Professional Services can help you on your journey to Cloud. Gerry Nolan discusses how our Advise, Transform and Manage services help customers meet the challenges of getting to cloud.
7 Resolutions for Becoming a Cloud Service Broker in 2014 [Community Home > Software HP Software Solutions > Grounded in the Cloud Blog >, Jan 13, 2014]
With written contribution by Andrew Wahl
As IT leaders gear up for 2014, topping their New Years resolutions lists will be making the most of cloud-based technologies and services. The cloud offers the potential to significantly transform IT organizations with a new operating model, and for many enterprises, this will be an important year for taking steps toward becoming a broker of cloud services.
Delivering IT in a way that allows end-users to easily self-serve application, platform and infrastructure services clearly offers the potential for dramatic gains in efficiency, reliability and agility. But becoming a cloud service broker for line of business (LOB) takes more than procuring and deploying an intuitive self-service subscriber platform.
Now is the time, before the daily and weekly tasks begin to pile up, to consider what you need to do in 2014 and beyond to successfully embrace a future as a cloud service broker. Here are seven resolutions to make:
1. Map out a strategy for 2014 and beyond
Resolutions must be realistic. You will need a practical vision for how IT can evolve to serve the business, and there’s no one-size-fits-all approach. Your cloud strategy should align to overall IT objectives, addressing areas such as business service management, security intelligence and risk management.
Carefully consider your environments’ specific requirements—the platforms you use now and in the future, what kind of integrations your strategy will demand. Your enterprise will more than likely require a mix of traditional IT, private and public cloud environments, and depending on the performance and quality standards your business demands, it may even requiremultiples of each type. IT will need to find effective ways to blend public cloud services with internal services and manage them in a way that meets LOBs’ performance or availability requirements.
A clear cloud strategy will let your organization gradually evolve at a pace that works for the business and avoid unnecessarily high up-front or hidden costs. Better to start small with a foundation that lets you to scale over time, towards a bigger vision.
Read this blog post – Your cloud transformation starts here : How to develop a strategic plan [… > Grounded in the Cloud Blog >, Oct 14, 2013]
2. Build on a Foundation of Automation
To the business user, a cloud service brokerage is the portal where they can order IT services. But this is an abstraction layer—it’s on the backend where a lot of the magic really takes place. And that “magic” is really automation.
Where services are automatically provisioned, applications are automatically set up, changes get made automatically and when the business user no longer needs the service, it’s all automatically shut down. However, implementing that much automation does not happen overnight, and your strategic plan needs to incorporate a roadmap.
Start with task-based automation projects — Routine manual tasks such as provisioning network ports, servers and storage will inhibit your IT teams’ ability to scale with cloud services unless they are automated. It’s essential that lifecycle management is performed in a highly repeatable and consistent fashion.
Automate tasks as process workflows — Remediation, compliance, change management and application deployment are typically good targets to automate next, so an administrator only has to monitor these processes.
Read this blog post – Building on a foundation of foundation
[… > Grounded in the Cloud Bog >, Oct 23, 2013]
3. Decide what services should move to the cloud
Not all services will go to the cloud, so you will need to select what your organization should move there. Many companies start with Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), typically Virtual Machines used in dev/test environments, but some enterprises are also delivering databases, Disaster Recovery and middleware as cloud services.
It’s important to get alignment between applications and the right type of cloud. This will require a detailed review or audit of applications, how they are used by the business and requirements for performance and availability. Your IT organization will likely need to deal with multiple types of clouds and services. Even with IaaS, there are a lot of variations in services (in addition to the differences between public, private and hybrid).
Read this blog post – How to decide what cloud services to offer
[… > Grounded in the Cloud Bog >, Nov 11, 2013]
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