Technology as a service

Cloud computing concept is transforming the IT industry and shaping the IT service delivery into a pay-as-you-grow model. Here’s a whitepaper from Cisco on Cisco-powered “network clouds”. Thought I’d share some keypoints / highlights…

Abstraction of physical hardware (virtualization) & the ability to share common resources among users (multi-tenancy) are at the heart of cloud computing. It is with virtualization & multi-tenancy that various utility-based approach can be realized and built onto one another:

Infrastructure as a service (IaaS): the abilityy to buy servers, data center resources, network equipment as an outsourced service delivered through the network cloud. Amazon, Joyent, GoGrid and FlexiScale are some examples of providers in this arena.

Platform as a service (PaaS): provides developers access to development tools for various software platforms that the developer needs to develop on. Some examples of development platforms currently out there:

• AppEngine from Google: based on Python and Django
• Force.com from SalesForce: based on the SalesForce SaaS infrastructure and Apex language
• Bungee Connect: visual development studio based on Java
• LongJump: based on Java/Eclipse
• WaveMaker: visual development studio based on Java and hosted on Amazon EC2

Software as a service (SaaS): enables service subscribers to access a software application from a software vendor through the web. Many traditional off-the-shelf application providers are transitioning to a SaaS model. The most well known SaaS provider is probably salesforce.com. WebEX is another example of SaaS.

IT as a service (ITaaS) encompasses IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS. It is a service model where an organization or individual contracts with a service provider to provide individual or bundled services. (more…)

VMWorld 2009 recap: Cisco UCS, WAAS.. and more

With over 12,000 attendees, VMWorld 2009 was definitely impressive. It was great to be there as part of the Cisco data center team and see Cisco continue to make progress into the server & virtualization space. A few exciting technology showcases & announcements that were exciting to me:

VMWorld Data Center chose Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) to virtualize and reduced an environment of 37,728 physical servers using 2,483 racks and 25,329 KW of power to 776 physical servers in 28 racks using 528 KW of power.

The Cisco UCS infrastructure supported all the instructor-led labs with an aggregate of 4096 Intel Nehalem Cores and 24 TB of memory using:

16 racks
64 chassis
512 blades
32 6120 XP Fabric interconnects (2 per rack)

Here’s a cool time-lapsed video on the entire build out of the Data Center at VMworld:

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State of the Cloud: Use of Infrastructure-As-A-Service

InfiBase researched top 500,000 websites (based on Quantcast metrics) and their usage of cloud services. While EC2 showed a 9% growth from July to August, less than 1% of all the sites use cloud for infrastructure services. (more…)

Making the case for a virtualized hardware appliance

As Data Center infrastructures become more virtualized, the desire for virtualized network services increases. We see 2 types of offerings:

1. virtual appliances delivered in a VM image, such as the Netscaler VPX from Citrix
2. hardware appliances that can be virtualized, such as Cisco ACE or ASA

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Another Amazon EC2 story

Looks like HotPads.com has abandoned traditional hosting and moved into Amazon’s elastic compute cloud (EC2). This is a trend that I’ve been following in the web space. (more…)

Painting the Cisco Unified Computing vision and the steps to go there…

Wanted to share my thoughts around the launch of Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) and my thoughts around what Unified Computing means to me (more…)