The classification of cloud providers continues to expand. Gartner and InfoWorld (amongst others) have created diagrams trying to explain the different categories of Cloud providers and services. My view below encompasses both their views as well as tries to rationalize the categories in a slightly different way than those papers.
Types of Cloud Services
I will not explain each box – the names are relatively self explanatory + you probably have read enough material that explains each box in more detail than I can on a blog.
This view of the categorization should help clarify that IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) and PaaS (Platform as a Service) is typically a collection of multiple cloud services – which can be consumed from one or multiple vendors to put together a comprehensive solution for a customer. Security is an emerging area of focus amongst Cloud Providers. As Cloud Computing emerged, enough noise was raised about security of data. This was addressed typically using encryption mechanisms for data at rest and data in motion. As more and more companies starting leveraging the cloud (either in SaaS models or as extensions to their data centers), it is important to see how security requirements are evolving.
It is interesting to see companies want Single Sign On and User Provisioning between their on-premise applications and their SaaS applications. Several startups are emerging in this space that focus on seamlessly integration “User Identity” information for SaaS.
In many of the categories; there are very mature providers offering products and services. However, some of the areas are still emerging. Specifically, Security, Governance, Testing, Management and Integration are probably the most nascent of these areas. I might explore some of these areas in future blog postings.
I am partnering with Bodhtree Consulting, a boutique consulting form from Hyderabad, India to build a SaaS and Cloud Computing center of excellence. Here is a recent press release announcing this partnership.
CNBC
Reuters
Sys-Con
Financial Express
CIOL
Silicon India
EFY Times
India PRwire
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As part of Enterprise IT, you might have been asked this questions a few times now – “Should we be using a Cloud as part of our data center strategy?”
In order to answer this questions, here is some food for thought…
What do you expect the benefits to be?
- Data Center Agility – managing unpredictable demand
- Economic – Capex to Opex, overall cost saving
- Simplicity – Less headache; managing a data center is not your core competency
Define the scope of this effort for you
- Phased approach – maybe move non-production systems to the cloud
- Define Risk – Acceptable risk tolerances for your enterprise might impact scope
- Is SaaS an option – reduce some services that you currently run by using SaaS (HR systems, time/expense management, email, document management etc)
- What internal business processes will have to change if you have services provided in the Cloud?
Vendor Selection
- Define criteria to select a cloud vendor – technology support, reliability, availability, scalability, security, disaster recovery, market reputation etc
- Which vendors are best suited to address your needs?
- Maybe select 2, one primary and one as a backup – define your strategy
Security
- Define your security architecture – authentication, authorization, role/entitlement management, governance and compliance
- What other regulatory compliance issues do you need to deal with – SOX, PCI, HIPAA, ISOXXXX etc
This is not comprehensive, but helps me start thinking in the right direction…
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Identity in a Cloud
As the Cloud Computing phenomena catches on, the management of Identity becomes even more critical. Consider the simplest use case – A typical consumer is trying to buy a eBook and store it some online storage SaaS provider. The diagram shows the typical flow for this consumer. How can this person link all their accounts using the same identity so that it is easy for them to manage.
Ideally they would have Single Sign On between these disparate providers. Ok, if they do that, how are they convinced that their identity is protected.
This is becoming an important question in the SaaS world. However, does this translate to large enterprises also?
I run the Identity Management program at Sony Pictures Entertainment and am faced with this issue. We have over 400 internal systems (custom web apps, client server apps, packaged apps (SAP, PeopleSoft and several others), mainframe apps – everything u can imagine!!). 50 or so out of these are integrated into our Identity Management program for Single or Simple Sign on. Last few months we have started working with several SaaS vendors for HR, Time & Expense, Facilities management and others… We are mandating that they are all integrated into Identity Management.
The lack of Identity standards and the fact that all these SaaS vendors have implemented their authentication and authorization layers differently, is causing a lot of challenges in our integration. I for one, would like to see this mature as a key enabling factor for enterprises to start adopting SaaS / Cloud Computing.
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In my last posting, I put out a thought that SOA is the foundation to the success of Web 2.0 and SaaS. Let’s talk more about that.
SOA provides for the loose coupling of business functionality and access to this functionality over the wire. Actually the real value behind SOA is how Web 2.0 / SaaS services are simple, easy to “mash” ,ease to use and consume. The concept is that of Service Composition where composite applications are built using tens and hundreds of smallers services to deliver business value. This is well served by the technologies and products in the Web 2.0 and SaaS spaces.
Thus the fundamental principles behind SOA, combined with the innovations around Web 2.0 and SaaS offerings, lead to a SOA approach that targets the millions of internet consumers. Web 2.0 allows the thousands of internet services to be orchestrated together to form new services for the internet consumer.
In Enterprise SOA initiatives, or rather in an Enterprise, you end up needing a tighter wiring of the Services and typically have fewer of these Services, which then begs you to question the value of SOA in that environment. Additionaly E-SOA is typically behind the company’s firewall – and each Service has 1-5 consumers. This agains begs you to ask the question, do you really need a “Service” or some other form of integration between that data or business functions.
As someone said, SOA is dead in 2009. If you start agreeing with this line of reasoning, you will probably say something like “SOA will be re-born in 2009, 2010″.
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