Cloud Connect Is All About Automation

Automation. That is the theme I continue to come back to while at Cloud Connect. I think organizations are going to be getting the most benefit from automation in the near term, and automation is one of the many steps on the road to private cloud computing. Automation, when done right, can save you and your staff loads of work and can ensure that deployments go more smoothly. I sat down with representatives from VMWare, Gale Technologies, HP, TransLattice and Cloud.com, and got the lowdown on automation and private cloud.

My first meeting was with Allwyn Sequeira, CTO and VP of security and networking with VMware. I ran up from a session on cloud securrity where Christofer Hoff was laying out the security problems that cloud computing presents. His observations were echoed by Sequeira. What is interesting is that VMware is trying to tame the security issue by moving functions into the hypervisor that will service all VMs, rather then letting customers maintain the status quo of hardening VMs, which can take up precious resources. It's an interesting move, but I think the game will get more interesting if VMware can build an integration point where security vendors can hook into the the hypervisor functions, obviating the need to run VMs and route traffic flows through the vSwitch. Some of that integration is happening with Trend Micro being able to perform AV on file IO for any VM on a hypervisor.

I met with Garima Thockhom, VP of marketing, and Scott Powers, director of product management and marketing for Gale Technologies. While they have marketing in their titles, these two have some tech chops, and they get the IT issues that automation can solve. Gale Technologies automates provisioning of physical or virtual servers, networking and storage, regardless of vendor. It's that last part that sparked my interest, because when you buy a stack of hardware and software from a single vendor--like Cisco's UCS and HP's Matrix--you expect each vendors' products to work with all of the products in their respective lines. But few companies have that luxury and have to work with gear from multiple vendors.

That is where vendors like Gale Technologies come in. (By the way, HP makes this claim as well.) Gale uses a few methods, such as using a vendor's APIs or doing CLI scripts to configure all of the devices you need to configure, from deploying an app and setting up the networking and storage to installing an OS or image. They don't go up into the application stack, but they automate the bulk of the provisioning work. I would have gladly given up my own scripts that automated my data center for something that was more robust. I like what they told me,  though I think that unless they are grooming themselves for acquisition, they need to expand their automation capabilities into application delivery.

Next I met with Frank Huerta, CEO of TransLattice, which came out of stealth last year and makes a product that is--in my words, not his--a platform as a service (PaaS) in a box. I am not a developer guy, so maybe this is old news and I am drinking the Kool-Aid, but the claim is that they have an appliance, for about $100,000, that provides automatic all-over application delivery and highly scalable storage, and is almost completely automated. It runs J2EE apps today, though .Net is being considered. The J2EE apps don't need to be altered in any way. Just drop the container on the appliance. The system, dynamically and automatically, distributes applications and data over any number of devices, providing near constant uptime, graceful fail-over, scalable storage and processing.The lattice part is that you can define policies, such as distribute this application and data
over three nodes in two different data centers, and it just happens. If an appliance fails, the alternatives can pick up where it left off and the application gets distributed to a new node to maintain the required policy. You can also define policies that say where data can reside. For example, you can have a policy that restricts data, down to the table level, to specific locations or geographic regions so that you cam maintain governance rules. They can even push an Amazon AMI so that you can use cloud services with little upfront work. While we didn't get into how this magic worked, the explanation seemed reasonable enough that, if you have mission-critical J2EE apps (TransLattice's target audience), then this is worth a look. I wouldn't be surprised if they started offering, either direct or through ISVs, J2EE applications in a box. I think if they can make good on their promise, they will make a good acquisition for some larger vendor.

Next I sat down with HP's VP of Enterprise Cloud Solutions, Patrick Harr, to discuss HP's plans. Again, I came away pretty impressed not only with HP's vision but also their ability to execute. It's not just hardware and networking. They also have that professional services arm acquired from EDS years ago that gives them a wide breadth of implementation experience to draw on. This allows HP to deliver simple cloud services like Cloud Start to custom-build public or private clouds. Their own Enterprise Cloud Service (ECS) is tailored for running critical applications in a hosted cloud service, and HP is prepared to provide the visibility and isolation needed to satisfy an organization's compliance and governance needs. I bet that kind of service comes at a premium, but if they can deliver better service with little impact on security and application delivery, ECS becomes a viable cloud player.

Less lofty ambitions include providing the software and hardware for private clouds. While HP admits they'd really like you to have an all HP data center, they are realistic in knowing that probably won't happen. At least not overnight. So they will manage anyone's hardware, including Cisco's, so that you can get the benefits of cloud computing with what you have. That's a fine strategy, and you can bet they will use a toehold to get further into your data center. Let's face it: There are upsides and downsides to a single-vendor data center. It isn't all bad, and HP is one of a few that can deliver it. IBM and, to a lesser extent, Cisco and Dell in the United States are the other players.

Finally, I met with Peder Ulander from Cloud.com, which makes cloud platform software. They integrate with existing hypervisors, such as VMware, Xen and KVM, and provide the automation, user portal and management framework to create an on-demand cloud experience. In a very real sense, they compete with the likes of Gale Technologies, but Cloud.com's software stack is open source without limitations. Yes, you can download the full suite for free. In the next version, 2.2, they are going to simplify down to a single archive with all of the functionality available. They are hoping that if you get a taste of Cloud.com's software and you want to get serious, you will pony up for an enterprise support license.

Tomorrow, I am meeting with a few more vendors, but I will be attending a couple of sessions and crawling the floor for interesting products.