Private Cloud Application Opportunities: Exploring Benefits, Challenges of Using Private Cloud

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Private Cloud Application Opportunities: Exploring Benefits, Challenges of Using

Private Cloud

Contents

Public vs. private cloud applications: Two critical differences

Creating a private cloud architecture

Best Practices for Implementing a Private Cloud Computing Environment

Comparing private vs. public cloud application support

This handbook examines private cloud use, architecture, implementation and application support practices and choices that can give organization a competitive advantage today without the risks – in security, data access and more – of public clouds. Getting into pragmatic right now matters. Learn best practices for IT, DevOps and business decision makers when creating and implementing private clouds, and analyze application support differences between public and private clouds.

Public vs. private cloud applications: Two critical differences By Barney Beal When it comes to applications and the cloud, approaches can be broken down into a variety of flavors: Software as a Service (SaaS) business applications, in which a vendor hosts and manages the application in a multitenant environment; a public cloud infrastructure, where a company takes advantage of the economies of commodity hardware and shared infrastructure from a cloud provider; and private cloud applications companies running a virtualized data center architected to scale like a public cloud. For application professionals considering private clouds and wondering which business applications fit there, the answer is pretty simple, according to Tom Nolle, president of CIMI Corp., a New Jersey-based strategic consulting firm. "Generally speaking, companies would be considering substantially the same kinds of things as for public cloud," he said. "The distinction would be cost or security."

Page 3 of 16 Sponsored by

Private Cloud Application Opportunities: Exploring Benefits, Challenges of Using

Private Cloud

Contents

Public vs. private cloud applications: Two critical differences

Creating a private cloud architecture

Best Practices for Implementing a Private Cloud Computing Environment

Comparing private vs. public cloud application support

While that seems a pretty clear delineation, there's still plenty to think about when considering the cloud from an applications perspective -- and it’s not necessarily just about SaaS, Nolle said. For example, a large organization may have IT spending too much time and effort running and supporting a fairly simple, linear, departmental application. One solution may be to run it in a data center on virtualized servers, perhaps along with other applications. That could be done in a private or public cloud. Deciding when private or public cloud applications are feasible Not all applications are so simple. "If you had an app that intertwined with a half dozen others, exchanging data in an SOA kind of connection or using a common database with five or six other applications, the management of something like that is totally different," Nolle said. There are, of course, some applications that simply aren't made for the public cloud. For example, a retail bank's demand deposit account program. "There is not a bank on the planet that would ever put that in a public cloud," Nolle said. "The security issues would be insurmountable." It’s not just security that companies need to consider with cloud-based applications, but also cost. Cloud computing's economies of scale and the savings it creates is commonly cited as one of the biggest benefits of the cloud, but it doesn't necessarily work for all scenarios. Larger companies can likely achieve the economies of scale with the public cloud on their own, Nolle said. "The app would cost two to four times as much as running it in house," Nolle said. "90% of people who talk about the cloud don't bother to look at how cloud services are priced." Cloud computing services are mainly priced on a Web-hosting model, which works when a company is storing small amounts of data like webpages,

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Private Cloud Application Opportunities: Exploring Benefits, Challenges of Using

Private Cloud

Contents

Public vs. private cloud applications: Two critical differences

Creating a private cloud architecture

Best Practices for Implementing a Private Cloud Computing Environment

Comparing private vs. public cloud application support

Nolle said. Once a company gets into multiple gigabytes, cloud costs can soar. "There's a lot of work that's going to have to be done to figure out how apps designed to run in a local data center with servers and storage could be moved to the cloud," Nolle said. "It's unclear whether it would be profitable to do something like that." Characteristics of a private cloud application If a private cloud does make sense for an organization, which applications should they put there? The first private cloud applications that come to mind are those that have fared well in the SaaS markets -- CRM, HR and other disconnected departmental applications that the rest of the company does not need to access. The larger the user base, the more difficult it is for a traditional IT shop to support it in a cloud environment, whether private or public. "If you look at mainstream IT, once you get to employee users in the 10,000 to 15,000 range, it's unlikely they'd be able to provide that service," Nolle said. In fact, whether an application is suited for a private cloud is not really application specific. "You need to determine how much data is involved, how often is it accessed, how large a resource pool the company has to host the information compared with a cloud provider," Nolle said. "None of those are application specific." Bill Claybrook, president of New River Marketing Research in Concord, Mass. agrees. "Anything high performance, high security you don't want to move to the public cloud," he said. "Ones that require special hardware and clustering are starting to edge their way into the public cloud area."

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Private Cloud Application Opportunities: Exploring Benefits, Challenges of Using

Private Cloud

Contents

Public vs. private cloud applications: Two critical differences

Creating a private cloud architecture

Best Practices for Implementing a Private Cloud Computing Environment

Comparing private vs. public cloud application support

In fact, companies are increasingly turning to hybrid cloud deployments, running most of their applications in house but turning to public clouds when the need for capacity spikes when using cloud bursting techniques. E-commerce websites that need capacity during the holidays are a frequently cited example. "Web applications are some that are often moved between the two [private or public cloud]," Claybrook said. "You can move just about anything you want, but the ones that are more difficult are those that demand high performance." However, moving some applications between public and private clouds can be difficult and that's something organizations should consider as they craft their cloud plans. "Private to public is not all that easy," Claybrook said. "It's simpler if you're using the same hypervisor to build the private cloud. The way to get around it is to build a private cloud using VMware and hook up with a public cloud. Then moving apps back and forth is easier." And some applications simply aren’t candidates for the cloud. Legacy applications that run on Unix or mainframes are not moving to a cloud environment; they'd need to be rewritten since all the virtualization software is written for x86 machines, Claybrook added. Again, it depends on what an organization already has invested. "If I have a private cloud, I could run CRM or all my apps on private cloud. Or if I'm only using CRM, I'll probably just get that from someone like Salesforce.com," Claybrook said. "You can run the applications anywhere you want. You just have to see what makes sense." The cloudy future As the cloud marketplace and the IT management of cloud environments evolve, most companies larger than about 500 employees are going to employ both private and public cloud principles to some degree or another by the end of the decade, according to Nolle.

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Private Cloud Application Opportunities: Exploring Benefits, Challenges of Using

Private Cloud

Contents

Public vs. private cloud applications: Two critical differences

Creating a private cloud architecture

Best Practices for Implementing a Private Cloud Computing Environment

Comparing private vs. public cloud application support

"That's going to be the dominant cloud model," he said. "We're moving toward a more componentized, Agile deployment method. Instead of a rigid way of one app, one server, we're now deploying application components against a general pool of resources that might expand or contract to cloud hosting." But traditional models aren't going extinct. "People are going to be running apps on mainframes forever," Claybrook said. "Even though with Unix, the market share for servers out there is dropping off each year, there are a lot of Unix systems running mission critical systems. Unix is not going away. There's still AIX, there's still Solaris.

Creating a private cloud architecture By Crystal Bedell An increasing number of large enterprises are adopting cloud technologies, specifically private cloud technologies. In the most recent survey conducted by TheInfoPro, 22% of enterprises are investing in cloud technology, and over two thirds are spending the majority of their resources on private cloud development, says Carl Brooks, analyst, infrastructure and cloud computing, Tier1 Research, a division of 451 Research. As organizations retool the IT environment to create a private cloud, a private cloud architecture begins to take shape. It is important, however, that organizations consider their requirements for a private cloud and move forward accordingly. “There’s a natural roadmap that organizations follow,” says Thomas Bittman, vice president and distinguished analyst, Gartner. “They virtualize to consolidate. Then they say, ‘now I have this pool of resources and I can be more flexible,’ so then they automate.” Automation allows organizations to provision virtual machines faster than a physical server. The third stage, says Bittman, is to build a private cloud. That involves creating a self-service interface on top of the automation.

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Private Cloud Application Opportunities: Exploring Benefits, Challenges of Using

Private Cloud

Contents

Public vs. private cloud applications: Two critical differences

Creating a private cloud architecture

Best Practices for Implementing a Private Cloud Computing Environment

Comparing private vs. public cloud application support

However, the organizations themselves don’t always distinguish between these stages. Some organizations say they’re running a private cloud, when in reality they’re missing key components of the architecture. Bill Corrington, cloud strategy lead, Stony Point Enterprises, says he wonders when his clients say they are building a private cloud if that isn’t just talk for building another data center. “Is it really going to deliver highly elastic, scalable, pay for use services?” he says. “If you’re serious on delivering those capabilities and services to an internal customer base, then you need to have a management capability to handle usage tracking, billing, access control, making sure that customers can’t see each others’ data,” says Corrington. Jason Bloomberg, president, ZAPThink, a Dovèl Technologies Company, concurs. “When building a private cloud, on the one hand you’re building a data center. You have to think about facility, power and cooling, racks, servers, the network, and you have to think about virtualization software. But even then you still don’t have a cloud. You have a virtualized hosting environment,” says Bloomberg. Bloomberg encourages organizations to consider whether a virtualized hosting environment is sufficiently meeting business and technology needs, or whether it’s time to take the next step to the cloud. “What is it that the cloud has that a traditional virtualized hosting environment does not have? The answer is elasticity. Dynamic provisioning and deployment of resources, and automated provisioning and deployment of services,” says Bloomberg. “On the private cloud side, it’s up to the enterprise to build all this for themselves.” Considerations when architecting a private cloud “The first [consideration] is to figure out what exactly they are trying to achieve and what the overall strategy for infrastructure within the IT organization will be,” says Brooks. This varies by the size of the company. It may be as simple as picking a goal and choosing the closest and cheapest service provider. When planning a private cloud architecture, consider whether it is for a single purpose and single application or part of a larger strategy for IT in general, says Brooks. Brooks also advises IT organizations to consider how big the private cloud needs to be and what else it might be

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Private Cloud Application Opportunities: Exploring Benefits, Challenges of Using

Private Cloud

Contents

Public vs. private cloud applications: Two critical differences

Creating a private cloud architecture

Best Practices for Implementing a Private Cloud Computing Environment

Comparing private vs. public cloud application support

used for. What tech stack will be used and how much do you want to pay for it, or will you build it yourself? Bloomberg encourages organizations to consider whether they are looking for an operational production environment, or a development and test environment. The answer will impact scalability and bandwidth, he says. You should also think about elasticity. How dynamic does the environment need to be? A private cloud is limited in its elasticity because it is built from a traditional data center. “It is only as elastic as the size of the data center,” says Bloomberg. Experts agree that the majority of private cloud architectures are being built to provide Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). Bittman says these private clouds are based on virtual machines, and the virtualization technology that organizations choose often dictates which technology they use to take that leap from virtualized data center to private cloud. When choosing a hypervisor to virtualize and consolidate servers, explains Bittman, the decision can be made in a vacuum. But that choice later influences what management and automation tools you choose. If you started out with VMware, you may very well choose to continue building a private cloud with VMware. However, open source software is also a viable option. Choosing cloud automation and management software “The thing to think about when building a private cloud service is that you’re basically building an interface for the user that completely abstracts everything around it,” says Bittman. He likens it to a restaurant menu. The customer sees what dishes are available, but they don’t know how it’s prepared. “Behind the scenes [of a private cloud], it’s all automated. If someone clicks item A, the provisioning, the deployment, the optimization, the ongoing management and updates and the growing and shrinking need to be handled automatically. You need automation down through the entire stack. This whole thing needs to be integrated and fluid from the top down,” says Bittman.

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Private Cloud Application Opportunities: Exploring Benefits, Challenges of Using

Private Cloud

Contents

Public vs. private cloud applications: Two critical differences

Creating a private cloud architecture

Best Practices for Implementing a Private Cloud Computing Environment

Comparing private vs. public cloud application support

According to Bittman, Gartner breaks down the stack into five distinct pieces: access management, service management, service optimization, resource management and the resources. “We break it into these five pieces because vendors out there are moving into this private cloud market, and they have an offering and they declare victory. But they only have one piece. Most vendors have strengths in certain areas, but weaknesses in others,” says Bittman. This is why organizations need to carefully consider their private cloud requirements when choosing cloud automation and management software. “Today the primary concern is the immaturity of what’s available, whether it’s open source or commercial; it’s still very new. When we say we’re going to automate something, what we really want is to be able to push a button and it all happens automatically. What you don’t want is it to be almost automated,” says Bloomberg. “You don’t want to push a button, then have tweak a bunch of things,” he explains. “That’s what operations has done their whole careers.” “In a cloud you don’t do anything. Now can you create that configuration sufficiently detailed so that you can do everything automatically? You deprovision and reprovision if there’s a problem with the configuration. Once you monkey with it, there’s no way to manage it anymore,” says Bloomberg. Bloomberg offers this analogy: “In the past, we treated servers like pets. We gave them names and nursed them back to health. In the cloud, we treat servers like sheep. We number them instead of naming them, and if one gets sick we shoot it. There’s always one to take its place,” he says. About the Author: CRYSTAL BEDELL is an award-winning writer specializing in technology. She writes articles, tips and guides to help IT professionals evaluate technology, secure and modernize their IT infrastructure, solve business problems and prepare for IT certifications. Email her at cbedell@bedellcommunications.com.

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Private Cloud Application Opportunities: Exploring Benefits, Challenges of Using

Private Cloud

Contents

Public vs. private cloud applications: Two critical differences

Creating a private cloud architecture

Best Practices for Implementing a Private Cloud Computing Environment

Comparing private vs. public cloud application support

Best Practices for Implementing a Private Cloud Computing Environment By Bill Claybrook When IT organizations realized that public clouds had some security issues, and they (IT) might lose control of their data center if the business app guys started using Amazon EC2, they quickly began to push for private cloud computing environments. Unfortunately, many IT managers equate private cloud with server virtualization. However, they are not the same thing. Virtualizing servers is only part of implementing a private cloud. Some best practices for implementing private cloud environments:

1. Do up-front planning. Determine what a private cloud structure will do to your budget and financial flow. Chargeback should be an integral part of your private cloud computing environment. It makes users realize that they actually have to pay for resources used. Determine the use cases for the cloud and create a strategy for how you will actually move apps to the private cloud. Which apps will run in the private cloud? Make decisions on apps running on Unix in proprietary clusters or on special hardware and mainframe legacy apps. Remember that the virtualization software runs on x86 servers.

2. Select the implementers. If you do your own implementation (not advised), you need good in-house expertise. You also have the option to contract professional services in private cloud vendors to do the implementation (very expensive), or hire a third party consultant to work with a private cloud vendor. Private cloud implementation is expensive and difficult.

3. Know the implementation stages. Start with server virtualization,

follow that with storage virtualization, get virtualization-based management tools in place for monitoring, etc., implement a self service portal/service catalogue function and add automation and orchestration tools. The order of the above actions can change, but you start with server virtualization.

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Private Cloud Application Opportunities: Exploring Benefits, Challenges of Using

Private Cloud

Contents

Public vs. private cloud applications: Two critical differences

Creating a private cloud architecture

Best Practices for Implementing a Private Cloud Computing Environment

Comparing private vs. public cloud application support

4. Train employees/create new operational procedures. The best way to train employees is to have them involved in implementing the private cloud. At least, have a select group of employees work closely with whoever is implementing the private cloud. You will have to create new operational processes for change management, provisioning, security, etc.

5. Buy new software and hardware. You will have to buy new software to monitor performance and traffic flow in the new virtualized environment. Traditional physical monitoring tools are not capable of monitoring traffic flow in the virtualized networks created by the hypervisor. You will almost certainly have to purchase some new hardware because some of the old hardware is not suitable for use with automation tools.

6. Work with app business groups to satisfy their needs. Private

cloud computing environments involve two groups: IT operations staff and the business users who want to run applications. A properly implemented private cloud gives business app users the opportunity to quickly provision a server and run an application when they want to without human intervention. If this is not possible, then you need to rethink your private cloud implementation plans.

7. Consider hybrid clouds for the future. Plan for the possibility of

integrating with a public cloud provider as you plan for and implement your private cloud environment. As you choose your private cloud vendor, pay attention to the virtual infrastructures implemented in public clouds to see how they might match up with the virtual infrastructure in your private cloud. This will help with cloud interoperability issues if you decide to move to a hybrid cloud environment in the future.

About the Author: BILL CLAYBROOK is a marketing research analyst with more than 35 years of experience in the computer industry, the last dozen years in Linux, open source, and cloud computing. He was research director of Linux and open

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Private Cloud Application Opportunities: Exploring Benefits, Challenges of Using

Private Cloud

Contents

Public vs. private cloud applications: Two critical differences

Creating a private cloud architecture

Best Practices for Implementing a Private Cloud Computing Environment

Comparing private vs. public cloud application support

source, at The Aberdeen Group in Boston and a competitive analyst and Linux product marketing manager at Novell. He is president of New River Marketing Research and Directions on Red Hat. He holds a Ph.D. in computer science.

Comparing private vs. public cloud application support By Jan Stafford Private cloud computing holds a strong appeal to businesses that are leery of public cloud providers’ ability to support their applications. In some cases, such as minimizing latency, this wariness may ring true; in others, as IT pros often say, it depends. Private cloud seems like the obvious next step for businesses with in-house data centers, because it enables managing hardware locally -- the traditional IT path -- while letting end users access infrastructure remotely, which has become the norm today. Yet, does that control come with too many limitations? Does public clouds’ broader application support services balance out minor losses in control? Cloud experts explore how private cloud vs. public clouds stack up in key application support criteria -- scalability, workflow, device support and more. Is your IT in the 8%? Comparing on-premise systems application support capabilities to a prospective public cloud provider’s system is the first between private vs. public cloud. “Can your systems maintain application support in all situations at the same level of rigor as the hardware and software in the public cloud?” asked Dan Cornell, principal for The Denim Group software consultancy. If so, then that’s one mark in the pro column for private cloud. “Having my apps on a server where no other organizations reside is far preferable,” he said. Don’t wear rose-colored glasses when reviewing in-house application support capabilities, said James Staten, principal analyst, Forrester Research Infrastructure and Operations. Approximately 8% of enterprises

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Private Cloud Application Opportunities: Exploring Benefits, Challenges of Using

Private Cloud

Contents

Public vs. private cloud applications: Two critical differences

Creating a private cloud architecture

Best Practices for Implementing a Private Cloud Computing Environment

Comparing private vs. public cloud application support

have the operational capability to run and maintain a private cloud, according to Forrester’s research. That 8%, however, will build a strong, niche base of private cloud instances, making up $15.9 billion of the $241 billion cloud computing market predicted for 2020 by Forrester. Public cloud will account for $159.3 billion, with the rest split between hybrid cloud. Application reach Is the application you're planning to deploy one that you want to have globally available, and will it have the need to be globally available with high-performance and with dynamic activity? If so, private cloud may not be your best option, cloud experts say. You're going to get better economics on a public cloud with any application that scales out,” said Staten. “If your application has that behavior, it is going to activate public cloud economics and by default be cheaper there.” Private cloud environments can get better scalability if the user – employee, customer, supplier, etc. -- access is increased, according to Bill Claybrook, president of New River Marketing Research, a cloud, open source and virtualization analysis firm. “If the apps are bursty, requiring additional resources at scheduled or unscheduled times, then the private cloud would have to have resource overcapacity to handle the scaling,” Claybrook said. Yet, providing access to many non-employees can be costly technology-wise and risky security-wise. A deciding factor is whether a public cloud provider will commit to a service-level agreement (SLA) that would guarantee the high-performance required, said Claybrook. Also, he recommends making sure the public cloud vendor has the server clout to handle high-performance apps, which usually requires high-octane servers with price tags of $20,000 or more each. Application complexity and latency The complexity of your application and whether it has latency dependencies are important considerations when choosing between public and private cloud.

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Private Cloud Application Opportunities: Exploring Benefits, Challenges of Using

Private Cloud

Contents

Public vs. private cloud applications: Two critical differences

Creating a private cloud architecture

Best Practices for Implementing a Private Cloud Computing Environment

Comparing private vs. public cloud application support

Can you use a SaaS application as it is designed? A key decision point is how much you can consume the SaaS app versus how much you have to change it to make it fit your company’s needs, according to Staten. If your application is more complex than the SaaS app and you have to do a lot of customization, it will absolutely be more expensive to use SaaS than a private cloud. Surprisingly, the location of a public cloud vendor’s data center plays a role in application support, too. Complex applications also may require some application elements to be on-premise or to have their own dedicated hardware. Public clouds typically don't give you dedicated hardware, said Staten. They may have an ancillary service that does, however. For example, a public cloud service provider may have cloud and a traditional hosting, as well as co-location, in the same data center. Private cloud may be preferable if your application has to communicate with other applications in its workflow and must resolve the connections between all those different applications in milliseconds, Staten said. Public cloud providers may not colocate all of those interconnected applications on the exact same hardware. Frequently, public cloud providers spread applications across the dynamic environment to whatever capacity and resources are available, which could make latency a big issue. “Very few cloud providers today can deliver the needed quality of service for networks,” he said. Latency is less of an issue in the U.S., where most public cloud providers reside. The farther away the apps and data are, the larger the latency, said Claybrook. Data is accessed over the Internet and unless the enterprise (private cloud) or public cloud provider is willing to pay for a faster, dedicated network for moving data, expect latency. Public cloud users should address potential latency problem in SLAs. Also, check out how much extra cloud providers charge for network bandwidth. If your company needs strict control of latency, then consider private cloud.

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Private Cloud Application Opportunities: Exploring Benefits, Challenges of Using

Private Cloud

Contents

Public vs. private cloud applications: Two critical differences

Creating a private cloud architecture

Best Practices for Implementing a Private Cloud Computing Environment

Comparing private vs. public cloud application support

Technology adoption issues The more adoption of new technologies you have to do, the more expensive it will be to use a private cloud, experts say. In particular, today the speed of adoption of consumer-like devices in enterprises increases the importance of how quickly you can move to support a device. For example, it almost always takes less time and money to add support for a new device on SaaS than on private cloud, said Carl Brooks, analyst, 451 Research Infrastructure Services. With a private cloud, you have to upgrade the hardware, think through the architecture, determine how many users there will be and consider the implications of all of that and more. What can take internal IT months can be done on a SaaS cloud in weeks. Let the cloud computing buyer beware Do your own analysis of how cloud computing options fit your application support needs, and don’t be swayed by public cloud success stories or vendors’ pitches, experts say. Also, said Staten, don’t jump to the conclusion that public clouds are the best choice for large applications. “Size is irrelevant,” he said. Instead, look to how well your application activates cloud economics. About the Author: JAN STAFFORD is executive editor for TechTarget’s Business Applications and Architecture Media Group. She works closely with the editorial team to keep the group’s sites focused on the information needs of software developers, testers, project and quality assurance managers and others in the software development community. Jan has covered the computer industry for 20-plus years, writing about everything from personal computers and operating systems to server virtualization and application development. She has served in top editorial positions with several national trade publications, as a contributor to such publications as PC Week Inside and Investor's Business Daily and as a speaker at industry conferences.

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Private Cloud Application Opportunities: Exploring Benefits, Challenges of Using

Private Cloud

Contents

Public vs. private cloud applications: Two critical differences

Creating a private cloud architecture

Best Practices for Implementing a Private Cloud Computing Environment

Comparing private vs. public cloud application support

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