GigaOM » Structure 09

Structure 09: SAP Aims to Glue Together the Hybrid Enterprise Cloud

Liz Gannes — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 00:29:19 +0000

SAP, not exactly an early cloud adopter, thinks cloud computing will factor significantly into large-scale computing services, said SAP CTO Vishal Sikka in conversation with GigaOM’s Stacey Higginbotham at the Structure 09 conference in San Francisco today. But that doesn’t mean enterprise services of the future will be any simpler, said Sikka.

“The landscape is always heterogeneous,” he said, repeating multiple times throughout the conversation the admonition, “One size doesn’t fit all.”

In some cases, a cloud solution makes sense; in others, a more traditional one. In some cases, a private cloud makes sense; in others, a public cloud offers a better benefit. SAP aims to offer software that helps all these systems together. And so interoperability should be a key priority for any enterprise cloud solution; a lock-in approach is less likely to succeed.

Even with pervasive electricity, Sikka pointed out, people still carry around batteries. Not for any lack of electricity, but because some things are always local, and some things are better shared.

Video of the chat is here:

Photo by James Duncan Davidson.

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Structure 09: Private Clouds: "It's About the Services, Stupid"

Celeste LeCompte — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 22:31:43 +0000

While it may seem that everyone and their mother is moving to the cloud, the truth is that many enterprises are still wary about moving into public, shared infrastructures. But there are undeniable business benefits to cloud computing, and enterprises are beginning to ask: How can we get the cost of IT operations and application delivery down? That’s where private clouds come into play.

George Gilbert, co-founder and partner for analyst firm TechAlpha, moderated a discussion among representatives from infrastructure/hardware, the infrastructure management layer, and public clouds — including James Urquhart, technology strategist for Cisco (@jamesurquhart), Chuck Hollis, VP and CTO of Global Marketing for EMC (@chuckhollis), Stephen Herrod, CTO and SVP R&D of VMware; Scott Morrison (@kscottmorrison), chief architect of Layer 7; Kia Behnia, CTO of BMC; and Brandon Watson, director of Microsoft’s Azure Services Platform (@brandonwatson) — to discuss the question: What are the pieces that have to come together to make private clouds a reality?

The hardware side has long been the subject of much discussion about the cloud, so the panel started there. But even the hardware vendors agreed: The key shift occurring around private cloud adoption is understanding that it’s not about IT anymore — it’s about the services that IT provides. In the case of Cisco’s recently unveiled Unified Computing System, that means the ability to begin to work with abstractions, rather than actual physical resources, said Urquhart.

Private enterprises have adopted some kinds of virtualization, but UCS allows them to converge server, computer and network virtualization into a single layer. That, in turn, boosts manageability of the application workload. “The ability to know that your workload can choose from a very large pool of resources to run on is a very critical element,” said Urquhart. VMware’s Herrod agreed that this kind of deeper level of virtualization, which further separates the logical view of a process from its physical implementation, makes it easier for companies to innovate. Urquhart stressed, though, that UCS isn’t just about virtualization — it is about a way to leverage fixed components in a very dynamic way.

Dynamic management of workloads, ultimately, was another reason many of the panelists agreed private clouds have emerged, and systems that enable companies to implement workloads based on actual needs will be important. Hollis of EMC said companies need to create use cases for each workload — do it all at the server layer, or all in the network, or in some cases leveraging a homogenous storage array. “You ought to be having a discussion about the functionality and less about where in the stack it happens,” he said.

That’s the key issue for most IT professionals today — BMC’s Behnia said currently, the majority of IT shops are not managing services; they’re managing servers. “That’s not going to go away, but it’s going to change in a virtualized environment,” he said. The solution is for management to become much more top down and service-oriented.

Traditionally, IT has focused on service-level agreements that established “5 9s,” as opposed to application response times and other things that matter to the business. With private clouds, IT has to care more about the relevance of their services to the business: “Business doesn’t care about 5 9s,” Behnia said. EMC’s Hollis later reiterated the point that business decision makers care more about the value provided by services — including how quickly they can be deployed and revised — than about how they’re deployed.

In terms of architecting private clouds, the management layer — which TechAlpha’s Gilbert suggested is the least understood today — is critical for delivering the efficiencies most businesses are after: just enough hardware, power and computing to achieved desired goals. VMware’s Herrod said that separating implementation from policy allows businesses to fine-tune the kind of SLA they need — e.g., availability or performance.

Morrison, of Layer 7, said that management itself is becoming a service. “We have to remind ourselves all the time, it’s about the services: small, compact pieces of functionality. The mechanism for doing that is management policy and enforcement policy.” While the big discussion is about the virtualization layer, big chunky things — app server, OS, application, all that — we have to focus on that application and what it’s about.

Morrison gave the example of a stock app that might have different services — delivering quotes, buying stock, or some other “strange Madoff app, no one knows what it does” — that would require different levels of security and monitoring. Providing management in the communications layer, where services are talking to each other, allows for better visibility and security across the application. “It’s about the services, stupid,” he quipped.

That approach has implications for IT professionals’ skills: “In true cloud fashion, you need your knowledge to scale out, not up,” said Cisco’s James. Cloud computing also puts pressure on IT teams to compete with outside service providers, Hollis said. Fortunately, that will force IT to change faster and become more innovative. “There are new barabarians at the gate, and they’re knocking at the CEO’s door, promising faster, better, cheaper.”

One impact, Behnia said, is that IT is becoming more amenable to adopting best practices and standards, rather than make everything different and specialized — ultimately, that cuts costs and time.

But private clouds still face the question of scale — and many turn to public clouds to serve at least a portion of those needs. In terms of which workloads will migrate to the cloud, VMware’s Herrod said the question should be how quickly you can migrate. “On-premise may be more efficient — allowing for self-provisioning, chargeback models — but you shouldn’t have to rewrite your model of programming to work in the cloud,” he said. Which workloads move to the cloud will depend on the data: “Mission critical data is not going to move to the cloud unless a company feels comfortable.” Meanwhile, test and development are very likely to move to the cloud.

The panelists agreed that for enterprise, their private cloud services are designed to give companies more room to push forward, not to tell them what they have to stop doing. Cloud services enable that kind of decision making, based on new needs that emerge. According to Microsoft’s Brandon, workloads will move to the cloud, when it enables customers to accomplish their other goals.”Get out of their way,” he said.

Video of the panel is here:

Photo by James Duncan Davidson (@kscottmorrison

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Structure 09 Live Stream

Edit Staff — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 15:00:39 +0000

Today we are live-streaming Structure 09, our second annual conference devoted to all things cloud computing. As Om said in his opening remarks this morning: Last year companies were just taking about the cloud, this year we’re living the reality. If you’re unable to join us in person at Mission Bay Conference Center in San Francisco, we hope you’ll tune in below. Enjoy!

Follow and contribute to the discussion across all these sites (tag @structureconf):

Official Structure Twitter Feed, and Twitter Community — please tag #structure09

Official Structure Flickr Feed, and Flickr Community — please tag “structureconf”

Live blog posts from the panels/presentations, with the most recent one first:

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Put Cloud Computing to Work at Structure 09

Josh Pigford — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 13:23:56 +0000

Many of the services we use now will eventually be web-based or “in the cloud.” People who use services like MobileMe will increasingly see more of their data and “work” being done out there in the cloud.

The GigaOM Network will be hosting the second annual Structure conference in San Francisco on June 25. The CEOs of Salesforce.com and Akamai, among dozens of other speakers, will talk about what the capabilities of platforms like MobileMe will be in the near future.

Last year’s event sold out, so be sure to check out the event details soon. We’d love to have you. Register here now, and we’ll give you a $60 savings on your ticket. Check out our speakers and topics here.

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Get the Lowdown on Cloud Computing at Structure 09

Simon Mackie — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 18:00:18 +0000

Many of the web apps that we cover here on WebWorkerDaily wouldn’t have made it off the ground without the scalability and flexibility offered by cloud computing. It’s one of the main reasons that we’ve seen an explosion in the number and variety of web apps over the last couple of years, and it’s radically changing the way that we work on the web.

The cloud offers many benefits, but as the technology is still very much in its infancy, it’s hard to sort the signal from the noise and identify the real opportunities. If you’re looking to get ahead of the pack and exploit cloud computing in your next project, or simply want to check out the opportunities that it brings to the table, you should check out Structure 09, our annual cloud computing conference, returning to the Mission Bay Conference Center in San Francisco on June 25, 2009. The day will be keynoted by two pioneers in the world of “infrastructure on demand,” Marc Benioff and Paul Sagan. Sagan, CEO of Akamai, will share his vision about how Akamai continues to innovate in an industry it helped birth a decade ago. Benioff, CEO of Salesforce.com, will share his insights that drove Salesforce.com to become the first SaaS (Software as a Service) company to pass the billion-dollar revenue mark.

A strong base of industry leaders and innovators supports the keynote speakers. Structure 09 is proud to have Michael Stonebraker, a pioneer of database (RDBMS) systems, participating and also welcomes luminaries such as Werner Vogels, CTO of Amazon.com, and Greg Papadopoulos, CTO of Sun Microsystems, back to share their thoughts on the progress of the industry since their keynote addresses at last year’s sold-out event. In a unique panel, Jonathan Heiliger, VP of Technical Operations at Facebook, moderates a panel of his industry peers, who handle some of the biggest web infrastructures on the planet — Yahoo, Google, LinkedIn and MySpace — and asks them to share their learning and best practices from the industry’s cutting edge.

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Cloud Movers and Shakers at Structure 09

Kevin C. Tofel — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 03:20:19 +0000

While we tend to focus on the consumer space here, many of the great products we review, use or buy wouldn’t be worth as much without the infrastructure and services behind them. That’s why I’m calling attention to our second annual Structure conference on June 25, 2009 at the Mission Bay Conference Center in San Francisco. Structure 09 is a one-day event that’s packed with these great speakers and panelists, just to name a few:

Paul Sagan, CEO of Akamai
Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce.com
Werner Vogels, CTO of Amazon.com
Greg Papadopoulos, CTO of Sun Microsystems
Jonathan Heiliger, VP of Technical Operations at Facebook

There’s sure to be plenty of great discussions on topics that touch your daily lives (and your gadgets): cloud computing, web applications and more. If you’re going to be in the San Francisco Bay Area later this month, consider planning ahead for Structure 09. Register here now, and we’ll give you a $60 savings on your ticket. Check out our speakers and topics here.

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Structure 09: Sustainable Cloud Computing

Katie Fehrenbacher — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 00:00:52 +0000

Last year, our parent company, the GigaOM Network, held its first Structure conference looking at the future of cloud computing and how on-demand computing infrastructure will change web businesses. This month, Structure’s back and will be featuring awesome speakers like Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff and Akamai CEO Paul Sagan. It will be held on June 25 at San Francisco’s Mission Bay Conference Center. While the daylong event isn’t focused exclusively on energy-efficient aspects of cloud computing (check out my argument for how the cloud is greener by design in this GigaOM Pro story), it will touch on the larger and crucial aspect of how power will be used for the cloud and data centers.

Last year at Structure, and this year at our GreenNet conference in March, Jonathan Koomey, project scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, detailed how important it is for data center operators to focus on energy in the overall costs of their computing. Greener data centers is a topic we’ve been following closely at Earth2Tech, and expect a lot more on that discussion at the upcoming Structure show. Register here now, and we’ll give you a $60 savings on your ticket. Check out our speakers and topics here.

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Mobile Tech Minutes: First Look at Viliv S5 UMPC

James Kendrick — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 21:17:12 +0000

Wow, talk about surprised! The Viliv S5 that left Korea only yesterday showed up at Mobile Tech Manor this afternoon. This video gives you a first look at the S5 along with me as I had only just received it when this was shot. I will be shooting a better HD video soon but meanwhile give the S5 a look.

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