While my colleagues at Gartner believe that there will be different types of cloud providers (in terms of the services they offer), it is probably fair to say that for each category IT organizations and/or end users will have several from which to choose amongst. Let’s assume that somehow there is increasing standardization on the container structure – perhaps some variation of the Amazon Machine Image (AMI) format. With several vendors to choose from that can run the same server image, I need to determine a criteria for selection. But wait .. how did I know “who” was out there that could host my server in the first place? I’m thinking that there needs to be some sort of registry that I could query perhaps ala UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration) – which I don’t think ever really materialized at least along the concept of an “uber” Internet registry that was heavily talked about in the early SOA days. Then I need something else – price and QoS information. And I probably want this updated pretty frequently as perhaps in the future prices will fluctuate according to demand (along the lines of how airlines perform revenue or yield management to maximize their passenger capacity).
So I can envision a couple of things based upon this scenario: 1) cloud “brokers” that help me know what services are out there along with their prices, etc., 2) analytics programs that help IT business or “cloud” analysts to continuously be able to determine where optimally to run my server at any given point in time and maybe even 3) the development of a commodities-style market where I might be able to purchase futures contracts for cloud computing resources to lock in my prices. In addition, I’ll probably need some additional on-premise management tooling to provide a self-service interface for this request or “job” (maybe an extension of today’s virtual machine lifecycle management tools) plus technology to convert to the correct service provider image format. I’ll likely also want to inject a management “agent” to collect statistics such as service quality, etc. These latter capabilities by and large already exist today so I see the key stumbling block as container standardization … but maybe I’ve been in my analyst “tower” too long. What does anyone else think?
3 responses so far ↓
1 Lori MacVittie // Nov 21, 2008 at 10:40 am
Cameron,
Interesting thoughts, especially on the cataloging and BAM style visibility into the cloud. Perhaps you should coin that phrase now, CAM (Cloud Activity Monitoring), before someone else nabs the opportunity.
Pricing seems to be a sticking point for cloud computing, as well, because it depends on the model of the cloud. If you’re leasing infrastructure as a service, then it makes sense to charge per GHz and RAM, while if the cloud is primarily about object storage then charging on a per GB per month basis is probably more appropriate. Similarly, if you are a Platform as a Service provider, you might want to charge based on a combination of GHz/RAM/Bandwidth/Database access.
The possibility of value-added services like app acceleration, optimization, application security, etc… also provides an interesting pricing model for vendors, and plays well into your concept of an uber registry in which not only core capabilities/SLAs might be stored, but what additional options are available for performance-minded customers.
Interesting thoughts in general. This is definitely an emerging market with a lot of potential.
Lori
2 Cameron Haight // Nov 21, 2008 at 6:48 pm
Thank you Lori! I like the term “CAM” – but maybe I can make it CAMeron!
Seriously, you raise some good points on pricing both in terms of the model plus how value added services may be taken into account. It will be an interesting market to watch develop! Thanks again for taking the time to comment!
3 Lydia Leong // Dec 10, 2008 at 4:48 pm
OVF looks like it’s the emerging standard for VM portability. It goes beyond the individual virtual disk image formats (AMI, VMDK, VHD, etc.) to specify an environment. Portability is inherent to a lot of VMware’s vCloud concepts, and is a necessary enabler for the commodities market you’re thinking about. Of course, what vendor is going to voluntarily commoditize? Every vendor is likely going to want to do its own special sauce, limiting ready portability.
Leave a Comment