“… a federated private cloud is really quite viable as it enables a true on-demand footprint.”

The year 2009 looks to be trying for many businesses worldwide. Cloud computing has come on to the scene as a means to optimize corporate cash flow, create efficiencies in data centers of all sizes and simplify the way users consume IT and application resources.

This interview with Dr. Stephen Herrod, CTO, VMware, helps enterprises understand how they can continue to drive these benefits through virtualization, automation and management — leading them to the private cloud. Whether the goal is building an internal cloud on-premise to gain efficiencies and cost transparency, or leveraging external resources off-premise to reduce CapEx, enterprises need to understand the risks and benefits to maximize their return on “clouds.”

A Look at How Private Clouds, That Federate On and Off-Premise, Are Changing The Game

By Dr. Stephen Herrod, CTO, VMware

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applications in external private clouds to establish overall expectations, such as SLAs, cost savings, and application performance. Another action is 2010 strategic planning. First, determine if your IT business goals include cost savings, enhanced SLAs, greater user or IT effi ciencies, departmental chargeback/cost transparency, or other items that impact the top or bottom lines. Then, determine which business groups and applications you want internal and which you’ll consider in an external cloud. Look at what is virtualized and where you can leverage that with automation and self service access for specifi c groups.

Obviously, part of 2009 will include talking with other CIOs, visionaries, technology leaders, and analysts to determine industry directions, expected standards announcements, best

What is driving enterprises to create or consume cloud services?

There are a few things that determine how an enterprise is approaching this market trend. One factor may include the need for greater effi ciencies, like optimizing limited resources or deploying new services without adding hardware, (yet security and compliance concerns may hinder the adoption of external clouds today). Another aspect could be those companies looking for improved agility to offer or consume services or applications that can’t be accommodated internally. Either way, both are looking for ways to more effi ciently deliver or access services.

What is a private cloud?

Let’s look at all the options an enterprise should evaluate when considering clouds. An internal cloud is located inside an enterprise’s own data center, and is owned and managed by the company employees onsite. Internal clouds tend to have the greatest alignment with security and compliance standards required by the company, and is why many enterprises are starting with this solution in their cloud journey.

An external cloud is located off-premise and is typically delivered though a service provider or hosting company. There are two variations of external clouds: public and private. A public external cloud is the infrastructure associated with cloud services consumed off-premise and typically not deployed on an enterprise-ready virtual platform, meaning compatibility, reliability and mobility are not part of the core attributes delivered. Public clouds are typically not concerned with security or networking compliance to meet the needs of most enterprises and are more frequently associated with “disposable environments” commonly used by developer groups.

A private external cloud, a component of the “private cloud,” assumes you’re consuming

resources in an external environment that has the same characteristics you’d expect from an internal environment. Additionally, workloads that live in these environments are compatible, on and off-premise, allowing IT to optimize its use of IT resources regardless of location. The concept of a private cloud, will enable enterprises to look at external resources as an extension of their data center without the concern for security or application compatibility currently found in many external clouds today.

What should CIOs be doing in 2009 for cloud?

Many analysts agree, 2009 is the year to experiment and plan for 2010 cloud implementations. There are a few ways to get started; one is experiment with non-critical

The fi rst VP and senior group manager and enterprise architect at a leading fi nancial services company, recently shared

some insights into how his company has been positioning cloud computing across the enterprise.

“Our business goals included lowering IT deployment and operational costs and obtaining a predictable and faster application model. We also wanted to increase infrastructure fl exibility, agility, and scalability to be able to respond to business needs quickly. The biggest demand from our internal customer base was the ability to make changes to their compute environment and the underlying cost structure without having to make dramatic and fundamental forklift changes to the physical infrastructure.”

They also wanted to improve server utilization across the enterprise. “Our utilization was running at an average of 10% on about 9,000 distributed servers. We needed to drive that number up signifi cantly. We also wanted to develop a faster deployment

mode. Deployment times were typically in the 60-70 day range for any new physical asset from ordering to operational status.”

Working with VMware from the beginning, the move to cloud computing progressed in four distinct phases over a three-year period:

1. Islands of compute: They started in 2006 with 9,000 traditional, physical server deployments. This model was infl exible, under-utilized, and costly.

2. Compute pools: They then moved to permanent allocations of virtual servers. This resulted in more fl exibility, better utilization, and was more cost effective. But they still had many virtual servers sitting idle and needed to plan for peak loads.

3. Dynamic compute: They then shifted its focus to transient allocations of virtual servers. This created a highly fl exible and highly cost effective environment. VMs were requested and allocated in 30 day increments. But they still had virtual servers sitting idle, and teams didn’t always need the compute for as long as a full month.

Figure 1: VMware’s private cloud aligns to enterprise needs.Enterprises want reliable clouds that enable applications to span on and off premise, as needed.

Source: VMware, 2009

VMware Financial Services Customer Snapshot: Evolution of the Internal Compute Cloud

16 ITO AMERICA APRIL 2009

practices, new technologies, organizational impact, and many other facets associated with signifi cant change.

What should an enterprise consider when evaluating both internal and external cloud usage?

The fl exibility to have some workloads kept internally and others federated externally gives enterprises the best of both worlds in cost savings and improved effi ciencies. However, there are three core elements you want to look for when evaluating this combined on and off-premise solution. Core to performance and reliability is an enterprise-ready cloud infrastructure that can be federated to work with other cloud providers, as well as on-premise. Additionally, enterprises must choose where to deploy a private external cloud, each choice having a variation in services and cost structures. And lastly, you’ll want to ensure you have a cloud that works with new and current production level applications. Many clouds today work on proprietary platforms, requiring application rewrites and incompatibility if on-premise deployments are required.

When considering an external solution, look for a service provider that is running the same virtualization platform you have internally. This will obviously simplify the mobility of services delivered on and off-premise. And depending on what applications you’re considering, you’ll want to consider the reliability and performance of that virtualized platform to ensure the application will be ready when you need it. Many consider cloud computing similar to “plumbing.” People don’t actually care to learn and understand the “plumbing,” they just want the water to come from the faucet. Ironically, homeowners do often ask if there’s copper plumbing in a house. They don’t necessarily want to know how it’s all

connected, they just want to know it’s safe and reliable. As IT executives, you want that same peace of mind in your underlying infrastructure to ensure the reliability and compatibility of services you’ll deliver on and off-premise. Of course, the professionals on your team, much like a general contractor, want to know how it’s all connected to ensure it works properly, and the right materials ensure the desired result is met.

What can we expect from VMware’s vCloud Initiative?

As a leader in virtualization, VMware is working with hundreds of leading service providers to deliver a common reliable platform that can federate applications and workloads on and off-premise. Unlike vendors that are building data centers and proprietary platforms, VMware’s vCloud Initiative is focused on enabling partners with the tools to deliver feature-rich services that allow users to move those services when and where they desire. Additionally, we realize enterprises want control of the environment on and off-premise, and thus are working with leading service providers to deliver an integrated management console that allows a single view of both on and off-premise environments.

If your IT goals include cloud exploration, we encourage your teams to understand how their investment and returns on virtualization lay the foundation for the effi ciencies of the enterprise-ready private cloud. The key steps to building the internal cloud, the featured customer story and other analyst and thought-leader commentary can be found on www.vmware.com/cloud.

4. On-demand compute: In the fi nal phase of its move to cloud computing, they targeted allocations of compute on demand – self-service-based, highly automated deployments of user-defi ned and user-funded periods of compute time.

“Our cloud computing program has dramatically reduced waste and complexity from its IT environment by allowing hardware and software to be leveraged more effi ciently across the enterprise.” As a result of moving to the cloud computing model utilizing the VMware solution, they have realized the following benefi ts:

• Virtual server footprint has grown to >1,500 servers• Utility compute is typically 40-70% more cost effective than

equivalent physical servers• Unit costs for individual VMs have fallen 60% in 18 months• Deployment times for a virtual server are now less than fi ve

days• The cloud/utility program is fully self-funded and continues to

grow

When asked what advice they could give to other enterprises considering the move to a cloud computing environment, they recommended the following steps:

Step 1. Standardize and simplify all offerings– Focus on building a repeatable set of building blocks– Target adoption for 80% of deployments– Develop easy to understand costing metrics

Step 2. Use server consolidation to drive critical mass– Use virtualization to consolidate workloads– Refresh all aging systems onto virtual platforms– Build trust with application development teams and business

process owners

Step 3. Automate and refi ne the offerings– Deploy tools to drive transparency for platform users– Automate the deployment and lifecycle processes– Actively seek customer feedback and develop an advisory

group to promote adoption

“In the fi nancial services industry, I see companies starting to focus on this model internally fi rst – leveraging multiple data centers and looking at how cloud enables the taking and using of excess capacity – but over time, this notion of a federated private cloud is really quite viable because it enables this true on-demand footprint.”

Dr. Stephen Herrod,Senior Vice President of R&D and Chief Technology Offi cer,VMware

Stephen Herrod is responsible for VMware’s new technologies such as mobile phone virtualization and technology collaborations with customers, partners and standards groups.

Stephen joined VMware in 2001 and has led the VMware ESX group through numerous successful releases. Prior to joining VMware, he was Senior Director of Software at Transmeta Corporation co-leading development of their “Code Morphing” technology.

Stephen holds a Ph.D. and a Masters degree in Computer Science from Stanford University, where he worked with VMware’s founders on the SimOS machine simulation project.www.itoamerica.com/vmware

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