7 truths about data in the cloud Fresh from the IBM acquisition, Cloudant CEO Derek Schoettle offers his take on how the migration of data to the cloud is changing IT 1. Multicloud use cases will become the norm, not the exception Whereas Amazon Web Services used to be the only choice for developers, the market now has several viable cloud options, such as SoftLayer, Rackspace, and Windows Azure that work well with one another. Developers will look for the best service and expect providers to be compatible with one another. Take Green Man Gaming as an example of an effective multicloud application topology. The digital e-commerce site uses Cloudant database as a service (DBaaS) on IBM SoftLayer infrastructure to ensure that its back end is always available during the large traffic spikes generated when the company runs special promotions on its website. With Cloudant managing the data layer, Green Man Gaming can focus on scaling its application tier, which the company manages itself on AWS. Green Man Gaming uses a multicloud strategy to get the best of both worlds for its site: elastic virtualized application servers, and bare-metal cloud infrastructure tuned for database performance. No one wants all of their eggs in one basket, and developers are no different. With more choice will come the birth of the heterogeneous cloud experience. 2. Open source technologies will continue to drive out proprietary options Keeping up with the pace of technology innovation is nearly impossible for one company to do on its own. Part of this is because the larger a company gets, the more risk averse it becomes, and pushing technology forward requires taking risks. The power of open source development in cloud data management and its exportability will allow companies like Cloudant to innovate at a rate as fast as -- if not faster than -- the largest software companies in the world, as open source allows a company to select the best existing solutions or platforms and deliver a tailored final service to its customers. This reality drives up the value of innovating on top of open source projects. 3. Customers do not benefit from vertical integration in the cloud economy While at first vertical integration can drive cost efficiency, ultimately, it compromises the sum value of the parts. For example, having all of your data in one Oracle or AWS stack may save your company money up front, but once youre locked in, there is little need for that provider to innovate, given the lack of competition. At this point, it becomes a game of price increases and big support contracts. Thats not to say there is no benefit to vertical integration when it comes to hardware. Wikinomics made the point long ago that its good for everyone when Oracle can create a new business ecosystem by acquiring Sun, or when Google launches its own handsets so that it can control the firmware and deliver better mobile apps to users. The supply chains involved in producing hardware harken back to the industrial age. Efforts like the Ubuntu Edge show how difficult it is to manage the hardware supply chain at a smaller scale. The cloud economy allows companies to leverage the good of vertical integration while avoiding stagnation. The whole purpose of the cloud is to make hardware irrelevant. Many new companies launch today never having touched the physical hardware that runs their applications. When cloud infrastructure is this commoditized, theres no reason to get locked into the software and services layered on top of it. Thats why were seeing the current revolution in open source information management software. As 2014 progresses, well see the smart companies hopping from cloud provider to cloud provider, taking the best open source software along with them for the ride. 4. Its the end of the beginning for NoSQL Though NoSQL has been criticized over the past couple of years, data scientists, architects, and traditional IT departments will get over the perceived risk of the alternatives to relational data stores. Companies will move in droves to leverage the ease and simplicity of the schema-less approach to building data-rich Web and mobile applications. NoSQL is not as immature as many think -- its an established group of database technologies, and even Gartner is helping to educate IT decision makers on the benefits of eventual consistency and how it can be a far more powerful and cost-effective option to traditional strong-consistency models. 5. The data layer becomes the cloud operating system With the high availability of network, compute, and storage, the real value in the cloud economy is the data generated by systems and applications. There are so many ways to take advantage of this data, and thats where companies should focus. They no longer have to educate themselves on the latest innovations in switching, storage subsystems, file systems, chip sets, and operating systems. Where is your data stored? How available is it for your users? Can it scale with ease and affordability? Is it optimized for my application? These are the questions companies are asking themselves, and more and more companies are realizing there is not a significant return for making all of these decisions for themselves. Their real value is focusing on the decisions around their application and how to leverage the data generated. In the future, all of these hardware and server decisions will be wrapped up into the data layer, much like an OS, so companies can focus on their core business. 6. IaaS is a commodity with increasing price pressure As evident from Oracles move to build up its cloud service to take on Amazon and others, infrastructure as a service (IaaS) really is being treated as a low-margin commodity. In 2014 the provider market will thin out, and to survive the thinning, providers will need not only a massive balance sheet, but also an expertise in building and operating Internet-scale services. Customers want their service providers to innovate and take ownership of more decisions, not less, so providers will be expected to compete with differentiated services. This trend is already taking hold. CenturyLink recently acquired Tier 3 to complement the companys IaaS capabilities in an effort to become a more complete platform for app developers. Inversely, IBM already had an extensive software portfolio, but acquired SoftLayer to extend its cloud computing infrastructure and data center footprint. 7. Do it yourself will be questioned more frequently The decision-makers of 2014 and beyond will understand the benefits of working with a specialized service provider, far more than they ever have in the past. Business and technical leaders must ask themselves if they are spending time and valuable resources on aspects of their business that will drive differentiation and value, or if their time is being detracted from these core competencies.
Posted on: Fri, 07 Mar 2014 03:21:26 +0000
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