Comments on: There’s no need to be a one-cloud company

By: Joshua Merritt

Joshua Merritt — Fri, 04 May 2012 15:34:54 +0000

Really interesting thoughts. I think the key point I got from the article is the focus on a single management platform. Most of the major cloud vendors provide limited tools for monitoring and management to begin with, but definitely aren’t equipped to consolidate your view of a multi-vendor approach.

Full disclaimer: I work for BMC Software, and this is the exact space we play into in the cloud – adding the layer of tools you truly need to manage your entire cloud, regardless of which of the big (or small) vendors you are using, or how many. Consider looking into the cloud management space to see what tools are available from vendors that may be able to help you with these challenges – they are very real, but very solvable.

Key takeaway: Every vendor will sell you on their cloud platform, and claim full “management” tool integration. Very few actually have it at the scale you will want as technology continues to drive your business.

By: Hassan Hosseini

Hassan Hosseini — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 17:06:34 +0000

I can chip in on the ‘low data transfer costs’ point. We have a free tool which you can design your multi-cloud deployment and using the latest cloud provider prices (inc data-in and data-out), we create a detailed cost report. You can then assess how major the data transfer costs actually are compared to lets say instance hours, or storage etc.. Its at ShopForCloud.com. Would love to get your thoughts on it.

Thanks,
Hassan
ShopForCloud.com co-founder

By: Brian Reeves

Brian Reeves — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 19:30:03 +0000

A small Cloud provider called FracRack LLC fracrack.com has already seen the writing on the wall and has begun testing of a second Cloud. Still only one company but two completely different Clouds for this exact need.

By: Mark Thiele

Mark Thiele — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 15:33:06 +0000

Jeff, excellent comments and points. I do believe that you could potentially buy all your cloud options from one partner as this would mitigate technical failure risk. Also, with an “agnostic” partner, you’re less likely to have a proprietary solution that would limit your future negotiation options.

By: Mark Thiele

Mark Thiele — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 15:30:13 +0000

Thanks man!

By: Mark Thiele

Mark Thiele — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 15:29:41 +0000

Excellent points, and I agree.

By: Mark Thiele

Mark Thiele — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 15:28:50 +0000

Robert, great comments, thank you. There’s no doubt that “data gravity” is an issue. However, with the appropriate management tools in place to provide policy and governance (I.e., ServiceMesh) you can solve these problems. The ability to solve these problems doesn’t necessarily mean your provider will make it easy, that would need to be part of your cloud due diligence.

By: Mark Thiele

Mark Thiele — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 15:25:42 +0000

Good catch, I was remiss in not mentioning Windows Azure! Thanks for pointing it out.

By: Mark Thiele

Mark Thiele — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 15:24:56 +0000

Adrian you guys are definitely leaders, but you are unique as compared to the vast majority of enterprises. On the other hand, I don’t think Netflix would lose much in the way of operations efficiency if your cloud ops were distributed ala Zynga. The volume is there to justify solving the problem of multi-cloud once, but then benefiting long term from price, failure, dramatic tech changes, etc.

By: Jeff Schneider

Jeff Schneider — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 13:23:56 +0000

Hey Mark –
I prefer separating the concepts into ‘hosting provider options’ and ‘as-a-Service options’. The days of force-bundling the two together are (thankfully) going away. The modern cloud provider offers a set of as-a-service offerings that were written by various parties while adhering to the hosting providers capabilities (SLA’s, tech support, etc.)

If the Dell Cloud were to offer Azure services, OpenStack services and CloudFoundry services, would it be a multi-cloud? Or does it require multiple hosting providers to be multi-cloud?

I concur that the common cross-cutting aspects like security, compliance, audit, SLA management, cost controls, etc. are a fine fit for these tools. I also agree with Adrian that certain items (like managing PaaS functions) will have an impedance mismatch leading to an undesirable lowest common denominator. Do you remember when people tried to put a single ‘abstraction layer’ across both J2EE and .Net? Some things weren’t meant to have the ‘multi-’ layered over them. I’m a strong supporter of multi-provider options that focus on the true cross-cutting concerns. I’m also a big fan of single-platform-multi-provider solutions (greatest common factor).
Jeff