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As an IT community we are still stuck in the past relative to the strategic nature of cloud. Many of us are looking at the adoption of cloud as just another technology, and are leaving the decisions on how to adopt, own, and manage the cloud up to engineers. But acquiring a cloud management platform is not an engineering decision — it’s a strategic one. Do engineers need to be involved? Yes, but your cloud adoption strategy has already failed if you don’t treat cloud as the operational construct that it is.

Mark Thiele wrote “Cloud management, what’s the big deal” a little over a year ago and the good news is many more of us now at least acknowledge the need for robust management tools. The problem is, we still think of them as “tools”. Cloud management isn’t just a pretty wrapper that you put on top of virtualization to make it easier to use, and it’s not a few scripts that automate builds or scaling functions. Cloud management is a platform that allows the cloud(s) owner to express their company’s directives and policies effectively and safely onto their myriad technology solutions and across international borders.

Why the cloud management platform you choose is so important ?

Like any software that solves a problem or creates an opportunity (often one and the same), a cloud management platform should be acquired only after defining a clear set of requirements. The requirements should be defined with the CIO and I’ve explained why after each requirement. A cloud management platform should:

Be capable of managing a variety of clouds – A strategic vision for where and how clouds will be adopted or dropped is important for a number of reasons: avoiding lock-in, the ability to retrieve data in a usable format, finding the appropriate cloud platform for the expected workload and location. Depending on the business you’re in you may use partnerships and or competitive concerns as a decision factor in your multi-cloud strategy.

Handle data security and location – Do your systems administrators have access to corporate strategy around locations and data privacy requirements? What about HIPAA or other regulatory concerns? If they don’t even recognize this as an area of concern, why would they look for it in a management tool?

Take care of policy management across clouds – Your architects and engineers might be terrific, but are you sure they are the best ones to determine the value of having a common and simplified set of tools for managing policy and governance across your images and across different clouds? Policy considerations can take into account everything from privacy to security, to performance and lifecycle depending on the platform you choose.

Include well-developed role-based security – While your engineers and infrastructure leaders are more than capable of handling security decisions for team access to a cloud management platform, are they the right group to determine how customers (developer or end-user) and partners might access your cloud?

Incorporate a virtual machine security suite – This is an area where the CIO likely doesn’t need much involvement, but there should be a senior security role involved in the project.

Consider the full life cycle from creation to deletion – Unfortunately, most of us in the trenches don’t think about whether the images we create today should be reviewed six months from now? Ensuring you have a solid life cycle approach will help you develop a more efficient use pattern and reduce the risk of inappropriate resource use.

Integrate with operations platforms (monitoring, billing, etc.) – The effort to define these requirements will mostly fall on the technical team, but feedback from management about expectations of monitoring and billing etc., is still critical.

Offer APIs for common tools and scripting languages – Mostly a technical/architectural decision, with the exception of integration that might enable out of the box opportunity, there might be value in having a larger team, including leadership involved.

The above isn’t a complete list of considerations in the evaluation of an appropriate cloud management platform, just serious food for thought. However, of what’s missing above, the most critical element of all includes thinking about how a cloud management platform should complement and re-orient your IT organization.

Where the rubber meets the road!

The CIO needs to consider a ground up redo of the organization, how it delivers IT services and how it integrates with the business at the function and end-user customer level. Admit it; you weren’t thinking that these organizational changes were a factor in your requirements and prioritization process for acquiring a cloud management platform.
Of course, the aforementioned needs aren’t necessary if all you want is a shiny set of tools or some home-grown scripts to handle your cloud. Tools and scripts which won’t scale, aren’t standardized, won’t work across clouds and will likely be developed differently by each IT group in your enterprise.
The delivery of IT is different. The old ways are gone. The addition of cloud to your organization isn’t an opportunity to do the same old things faster, it’s an opportunity to deliver functionally improved IT services in real-time to your business.
How will you deliver in real-time if you still work through a traditional helpdesk process? Or maybe because you haven’t figured out how to integrate billing, you still have business or IT groups who want to “pay” for their servers. What about the purchasing process or the approval process for a new application?

This isn’t just more tech bells and whistles!!

In modern IT you should be able to test, fail, test, fail, test, and implement in less time and for less money than one effort in the past. In light of the improved application adoption options, a change in how you review and approve ideas is also important. In other words, why send a project to the executive team for review, when you could run a proof of concept in a matter of days or hours and actually demonstrate the value almost immediately at little or no cost.
OK, maybe there are more bells and whistles, but treating cloud like a technology solution purchase is the wrong approach. Take a holistic approach to how IT can and should participate in the business of doing whatever your company does, then build the operational model to support that.

Important Features of Cloud Computing

Since the inception of Information Technology, it has played an important part in ensuring that companies and businesses run smoothly. Information Technology has provided various types of services which are secure, reliable, and available every time. In order to obtain the highest quality cloud computing, business owners have turned to its characteristics and features in order to acquire this service. Cloud computing has become attractive to end users and customers because of these salient characteristics.

A key characteristic of cloud computing is its quick scalability. Upgrades and changes to the services are done instantaneously and easily enabling the cloud computing service to be resilient. A business owner can easily request for additional bandwidth, data storage, processing speed, and additional users or licenses. There is no need to do project implementation, procurement, and project costing because the system just needs the business owner to place an order to the cloud computing vendor.

With the cloud computing service, everything is measurable. The business owner can obtain a specific number of user license per software, and a fixed network bandwidth and data space which fits the business’s demands. This feature makes the cost of cloud computing predictable. It also defines accurately the inclusions in the service. If the business owner avails of such service, his employees can experience different services online with large data spaces; various new software; multi-value added services; various processing techniques; and ease of accessibility to a capable and rich network.

An important feature of cloud computing is its ability to let the business owner decide on his current and future needs. If he expands his business, he can easily request for additional services which can match his needs. Cloud computing also makes available various hardware or software resources. A business owner can access such resources on demand. Cloud hosting is also more reliable because it manages the whole cloud thereby allowing a business owner’s website more data spaces, bandwidth, and more resources depending on the site’s needs. Resources of websites which are not accessed currently are freed and moved to sites which are in dire need of additional bandwidth, data space, and other resources.

Security is also stricter in cloud computing. Data is share within a server therefore the provider must ensure that each account is secured, that only authorized users in one account can access it. Loss of data is also avoided because the supplier must ensure that every hardware or software resources are high end because there are a lot of clients relying on the service. Backup is also sophisticated in cloud computing. A business owner need not worry about backup responsibilities because the supplier has taken steps to put up a great system for backup. Disk failure or server crash won’t create much problem because the supplier can easily restore the latest backup.

Cloud hosting is for business entities which use resources heavily. Small and medium scale industries can also be accommodated but only large companies can take advantage of the availability, versatility, and power of cloud computing. Huge businesses which transfer their applications which use up too much resources to the cloud in order to free up their old dedicated servers to decrease cost of operation.

By Florence de Borja

The Distinction Between Software As A Service And Cloud Computing

Software as a service and cloud computing are two terms which are quite becoming popular in the world of computing. These two concepts have a positive outcome in the industry by making use of the internet to beat the conventional computing strategies. Although both concepts have similarities, they offer different services.

Software as a service applications have no huge upfront costs and even do not require upkeep and maintenance. They are often offered for lease to business owners and are accessed remotely through web browsers connected to the internet. Business owners save money because they only pay for software they need and do not have to worry about managing renewal fees, patches, and updates which are often identified with onsite applications.

Cloud computing also leases computer technology through the internet. It allows business owners to rent hardware, software, and more infrastructures which the business needs in order to accomplish its computing tasks. Through cloud computing, costly programming and technology demands are outsourced thereby allowing the entity’s employees to have access to computer resources via web browsers. Users need not have thorough knowledge of the hardware and software needed to support the web browser.

Cloud computing and software as a service have almost the same concept. A business owner can lease the services from a third party instead of spending a lot of money on upfront costs commonly associated with onsite infrastructure or software. A business owner who can’t afford expensive on-premise applications and infrastructure can take advantage of software as a service and cloud computing. Both software as a service and cloud computing are even more efficient and manageable than their traditional counterparts.

Software as a service and cloud computing are not one and the same. They vary in their scope. Cloud computing has a wider scope than software as a service. Although useful and innovative, software as a service leases computing applications only. A business owner who takes advantage of software as a service still needs computing resources for business computing to be effective and efficient

Cloud computing, on the other hand, leases software, infrastructure, and hardware. The whole leasing process offered by cloud computing to business owners can totally overhaul the whole accounting department. It can change the way the accounting process is undertaken. With cloud computing, less personnel and resources are needed for maintenance and development. This clearly differentiate software as a service from cloud computing.

Software as a service only provides access to specific applications in order to make the accounting process easier and more efficient but the entity still has the responsibility of storing data, and hiring and training employees. For cloud computing, the whole accounting process is simplified further by outsourcing not only the accounting software but storage space as well. Because storage space is also outsourced, there may no longer be a need to hire more experienced employees because cloud computing makes it possible for users who have no knowledge of the applications to access the software through web browsers.

Cloud computing and software as a service may essentially be the same concept with the same goal of improving and enhancing computing capabilities of business entities, cloud computing has a more dramatic impact to all businesses.

By Florence de Borja

Cloud Computing and Why Educational Sectors Need to Modernize

Cloud computing has been one of the hottest trends today. Basically, in the world of business, cloud computing has been seen as something that is highly beneficial. In fact, to say that it is beneficial is largely an underestimation. After all, modern day businesses will not be able to compete and they will not be able to keep up with the dynamism of the world if they do not make use of the latest in digital and internet technology which includes cloud computing.

The education sector is one of the sectors which have largely been overlooked. Basically, education is normally regarded as something which is less important than those sectors or areas of the government which actually produces income. For instance, the industrial and commercial sectors are those sectors which can rake in billions, the health sector takes care of the health of the population, while the armed forces is responsible for securing the people and the interests of the country. What about the education sector? What is its contribution to society?

The United States is probably the richest country in the world. As such, it has allotted huge percentage of its resources to these public service sectors. Of course, educational institutions are also getting a fair share of the budget. But there have been some questions if it should continue to be generously given the money. Furthermore, is there really a need to modernize education?

Basically, educational institutions are responsible for ‘educating’ the people. Some may look at this fact with little regard, but, the thing is, a well-civilized populace constitutes a progressive country and community. It is just impossible to create a well-rounded society of the people themselves are not well-rounded. As such, education is truly critical in any society. In fact, it is already accepted by the vast majority of the countries all over the world that investing in education is investing in the long-term future of the people.

Is there a need to modernize education? Of course, there is! Schools are, whether we like it or not, the second home of the learners. In fact, learners and young people spend more than 8 hours a day in school, while they spend their sleeping hours at home. What we are saying here is that schools, apart from the formal education they give, also influence the learners indirectly. Basically, if we want to produce quality learners, then we must have quality schools.

Cloud computing is, without doubt, one of the latest innovations that is of good use to the education sector. Cloud computing does not only allow school administrators to make work more efficient, it also allows learners to keep themselves updated. Through cloud computing, learners will be able to access most of the modern internet amenities that are out there. And, through it, they will be able to learn at a pace that we have not imagined possible before.

Basically, to assume that education can continue and prevail without modernizing it is, well, foolish. If we want our learners to learn, then we must make sure that our schools are at par with the technological breakthroughs in the real world.

By Cenon Gaytos

What is cloud hosting?

Generally, a cloud-hosted website is opearting on multiple connected servers. Instead of limited to a single server like what we have in traditional hosting services (dedicated/shared hosting), the website now has the access to multiple servers. Virtually, the processing power is unlimited as you can always add a new server and scale up.

Cloud Hosting in plain English

Here’s a video released to help people fully understand what Cloud Computing is all about and I think it’s a good piece of learning material.

Benefits of cloud hosting

Cloud hosting benefits the users from various angles. It’s scalability and cost efficient is the commonly known advantages.

As the technology is highly scalable (load balancing, hardware upgrades, etc), website expansion can be done with minimum limitations. Think about the hassle of migrating your website from a shared server to a dedicated server; think about server crash when your website experienced a sudden surge – all these problem can be avoided easily by switching to cloud hosting.

Cost is another huge plus if you need a lot of processing power. Cloud hosting companies charge their users based on the quantity of computing power consumed. It’s like your electricity and water supply bills – it’s pay-per-use thus gone are the days where you need to reserve massive server powers to avoid website crash from sudden traffic surge.

Major disadvantage with cloud hosting: Security

Questions like these arise when it comes to cloud hosting:

• I am sharing the same physical hardware with other users, is my data safe?
• Where is my data located at? (You no longer control the physical location of your data in cloud hosting)

The security issue is always one of the major questions and arguments raised when it comes to cloud hosting. For those with similar concerns, further reading on this article (article dated Aug 31, 2009) is highly recommended: Cloud Security: Time to Smoke Another One? Also, check out this interview with George Reese (Author of “Cloud Application Architectures”) where he discusses cloud security and the challenges it poses for new adopters.

SaaS Do #10 Leverage Your Community

This section is intentionally titled “Leverage your community” instead of “Engage your community.” Community engagement is great, but if you are in a for-profit business then any action you take should ultimately result in either increased revenue or reduced costs. A recurring theme in this list of dos and don’ts is that software-as-a-service businesses must take advantage Web-based automation and network effects to reduce costs, especially labor costs. So what is the true economic value of your community to your business? Free labor. Honest labor. Loyal labor. Viral labor.

By reaching out to your advocates and supporting their goals be they back-office or blogging, you are putting feet on the street. If you are a startup with a sales force of two, all of a sudden you find yourself with a sales force of hundreds or thousands or millions! When you open up your application and encourage your own customers to crowdsource improvements, then you can check items off your roadmap without writing a single line of code. There are plenty of books out there that will give you tips and tricks on how to do this. The point of this rule is simply to emphasize why a software-as-a-service business absolutely must do it as a matter of survival.

SaaS Do #9 Open Up to the Cloud

Everyone is talking about computing on the cloud. Technology marketers are scrambling to ride the wave and recast their SaaS applications as cloud computing. But, don’t let the hype blind you to the very real, disruptive technology shift that is occuring, or to the concrete steps necessary to take advantage of it—and not get trampled by it. Software interacts with three things: people, hardware and other software. The SaaS revolution has been about reducing costs by aggregating remote and dispersed groups of people over the Web—software interacting with people to lower TCO. The disruptive shift called cloud computing is about the computers talking to each other over the Web—software interacting with other software, and thereby other hardware.

Just as you should reach out to your prospects over the Web to drive demand, now you must reach out to complementary applications on the Web to complete your offering, because your product will not be able to stand on its own. It must fit into the myriad ecosystems of applications and application components that form the basis of each customer’s unique computing environment. Only applications with extensive, open, standards-based APIs will survive, because customers will expect your application to slip seamlessly and effortlessly into their environments.

Is your software-as-a-service Web-aware and cloud friendly? Do you have an open, standards-based approach to integration built on a Web services framework? Have you created partnerships with companies that offer complementary applications? Do you natively support RSS and widgets? Are you actively cultivating a developer community and crowd-sourcing extensions and mash-ups? Where you should focus your investments in the cloud will depend on the nature of your business. But, any SaaS application that attempts to live in isolation or keep its customers inside a walled garden limits its value by depriving itself of the very network that has fueled its innovation and it will die from lack of nourishment.

SaaS Do #8 Enable Mass Customization

Henry Ford once said: “Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black.” Then, in 1923 Alfred Sloan of General Motors came along changed the rules of the game by offering a tremendous variety of colors and models. Because, it turns out that even the most apparently uniform markets have customers with unique requirements. But, GM didn’t do it one customer at a time. GM redesigned its manufacturing line with the required flexibility to produce a multitude of models and colors without compromising the inherent economies of scale of Ford’s assembly line innovation—a practice that has evolved into the modern concepts of flexible manufacturing and mass customization.

The primary enabler of mass customization is the elimination of setup costs. Setup costs occur from the labor, time and tooling it takes to switch a production line from one product to the other. High setup costs encourage long production runs to cover the expense incurred in switching over. By reducing them, production runs can be shortened. If set up costs are completely eliminated, production runs can be reduced to a single unit. That I, you can make the variations A, A1, A2, … AN of a product (GM colors and models) for the same costs as making N units of A (Ford Model Ts). If you apply this idea to enterprise software, taking each customer installation as a unit and the associated, customer-specific implementation, configuration, customization, and ongoing maintenance time and effort as the setup costs, then the roadblocks to mass customization in SaaS become clear: eliminate, automate and generally squeeze the cost out of your ability to handle unique customer requirements without compromising your fundamental cost advantage.

Your customers will have unique requirements. This is a fact. This business need implies an architectural requirement that is as essential to software-as-a-service business success as system security and a scalable, single-instance, multi-tenant design. It requires automated deployment that consumes minimal resources, extensive, easy-to-use, self-service configuration and complete interoperability built on open, standards-based APIs. It cannot be off-loaded to VARS or customers. This shifts the costs downstream and undermines competitive advantage, because from the customer’s perspective, total cost of ownership is not reduced relative to installed software.

SaaS Do #7 Monetize Creatively

It has taken almost a decade for the software industry to absorb all the ramifications of moving from perpetual license pricing to SaaS subscription pricing. The longer payback period for investors, the headaches of high acquisition costs, and the upfront pre-revenue investments in infrastructure being just a few of the issues with which SaaS entrepreneurs and VCs have had to wrestle.

So, why go out on a limb looking for new revenue and higher margins by experimenting with even more unconventional monetization models? Won't this just make a bad situation worse? To temporarily borrow a well known trademark, the reason is simple: it's the network. If there is a common theme emerging from this short list of dos and don’ts then this is it. It's the network. It's the Web.

SaaS is not software. New business value arises from the characteristic that your software-as-a-service offering, unlike licensed software, can become a network hub that can connect any business entity, user or system it touches to any other: your prospects, your customers, your partners, your customers’ customers, your customers’ vendors, your customers’ partners’ customers, and so on all the way out to the edges of the Web. Given that value is created by the network, it follows that new network-based monetization opportunities are also created. Here is a quick (and very incomplete) list of new monetization opportunities open to software-as-a-service businesses.

Network-enabled services

• Advertising
• Syndication (content/applications/data)
• Benchmarking and market intelligence
• Integration
• Cloud services
• Marketplaces

Revenue models beyond subscriptions

• Referral fees
• Transaction fees
• Consumption-based pricing
• Performance-based pricing
• Reseller margin
• Revenue sharing

The monetization opportunities open to you will depend on many factors, including the nature of your business, the attitudes of your customers and the sophistication of your product. But most importantly, it will depend on your own creativity.