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Rise of Event Processing / Active Information Picks

Earlier this month, I made my first and only prediction for 2010, that we would (finally) see the “Rise of Event Processing”.  Often, when I speak of Event Processing, I refer to a broader context of Active Information and (when relevant) the establishment of an Active Information Tier.  This past week, I read several articles that are applicable to the event processing / active information space.  I’ve included excerpts and links to 5 of those articles.  [Emphasis is my own.]

Briefly… I was particularly heartened to see the MIT Technology Review article dispel the notion that real-time, and the real-time web, is solely the domain of Twitter and related social media technologies.  The Economist SIS and Fast Company Corventis pieces highlight interesting sense, analyze and respond use cases in the real (physical) world.  The Carol Bartz piece, also in The Economist, discusses leadership traits in the age of information deluge.  Finally, the Progress Software predictions echo my sentiment in “Rise of Event Processing”, which is “You can’t change what you can’t see”.

Rise Event Processing / Active Information Picks:

1. MIT Technology Review: Startups Mine the Real-Time Web, There's more to it than microblog posts and social network updates.

“The "real-time Web" is a hot concept these days. Both Google and Microsoft are racing to add more real-time information to their search results, and a slew of startups are developing technology to collect and deliver the freshest information from around the Web.

But there's more to the real-time Web than just microblogging posts, social network updates, and up-to-the-minute news stories. Huge volumes of data are generated, behind the scenes, every time a person watches a video, clicks on an ad, or performs just about any other action online. And if this user-generated data can be processed rapidly, it could provide new ways to tailor the content on a website, in close to real time.”

… “Richard Tibbetts, CTO of StreamBase, explains that financial markets make up about 80 percent of his company's customers today. Web companies are just starting to adopt the technology.

"You're going to see real-time Web mashups, where data is integrated from multiple sources," Tibbetts says. Such a mashup could, for example, monitor second-to-second fluctuations in the price of airline tickets and automatically purchase one when it falls below a certain price.”

… Real-time applications, whether using traditional database technology or Hadoop, stand to become much more sophisticated going forward. "When people say real-time Web today, they have a narrow view of it--consumer applications like Twitter, Facebook, and a little bit of search," says StreamBase's Tibbetts.”

2. The Economist: The World in 2010 – Big SIS (Societal Information-Technology Systems) is watching you

…“Thanks to Moore’s law (a doubling of capacity every 18 months or so), chips, sensors and radio devices have become so small and cheap that they can be embedded virtually anywhere. Today, two-thirds of new products already come with some electronics built in. By 2017 there could be 7 trillion wirelessly connected devices and objects—about 1,000 per person.

Sensors and chips will produce huge amounts of data. And IT systems are becoming powerful enough to analyse them in real time and predict how things will evolve. IBM has developed a technology it calls “stream computing”. Machines using it can analyse data streams from hundreds of sources, such as surveillance cameras and Wall Street trading desks, summarise the results and take decisions.

Transport is perhaps the industry in which the trend has gone furthest. Several cities have installed dynamic toll systems whose charges vary according to traffic flow. Drivers in Stockholm pay between $1.50 and $3 per entry into the downtown area. After the system—which uses a combination of smart tags, cameras and roadside sensors—was launched, traffic in the Swedish capital decreased by nearly 20%.

More importantly, 2010 will see a boom in “smart grids”. This is tech-speak for an intelligent network paralleling the power grid, and for applications that then manage energy use in real time. Pacific Gas & Electric, one of California’s main utilities, plans to install 10m “smart meters” to tell consumers how much they have to pay and, eventually, to switch off appliances during peak hours.

Smart technology is also likely to penetrate the natural environment. One example is the SmartBay project at Galway Bay in Ireland. The system there draws information from sensors attached to buoys and weather gauges and from text messages from boaters about potentially dangerous floating objects. Uses range from automatic alerts being sent to the harbourmaster when water levels rise above normal to fishermen selling their catch directly to restaurants, thus pocketing a better profit.

Yet it is in big cities that “smartification” will have the most impact. A plethora of systems can be made more intelligent and then combined into a “system of systems”: not just transport and the power grid, but public safety, water supply and even health care (think remote monitoring of patients). With the help of Cisco, another big IT firm, the South Korean city of Incheon aims to become a “Smart+Connected” community, with virtual government services, green energy services and intelligent buildings…”

3. Fast Company: Corventis's PiiX Monitor Promises to Predict Heart Failure

… “The company's first product, PiiX, is a wireless, water-resistant sensor that sticks to a patient's chest like a large Band-Aid and monitors heart rate, respiratory rate, bodily fluids, and overall activity. It transmits the data to a central server for analysis and review by doctor and patient.

The basic technology platform has already received FDA approval, but Corventis envisions the PiiX as much more than a simple monitoring system. The company is working to generate algorithms that can predict, for instance, when a patient is on the verge of heart failure by comparing trends in his or her vital signs to other cases. "When you apply it in the real world, the algorithm begins to learn," says CEO Ed Manicka. "Not from 5 or 10 patients, but from hundreds of thousands of patients, as the system is applied across the planet."

… "What Corventis is trying to do is fundamentally create a new type of machine intelligence that serves to manage the patient's overall health," he says. "It moves from the reactive approach of practicing medicine that is prevalent today to something that is much more proactive, preventative, and individualized."”

4. The Economist: The World in 2010 - Leadership in the information age, by Carol Bartz, CEO of Yahoo!

… “The second obligation that information creates for executives is to identify and mentor thought leaders. In the past, seeking out “high potential” employees typically meant looking for those who could climb the next rung of the management ladder. That remains important. But equally pressing is finding those employees who, though perhaps not the best managers, have the ability to digest and interpret information for others. Grooming these in-house ideas people helps foster a culture of openness to fresh thinking—the greatest energy an organisation can have.

The deluge of information is only going to rise. Leadership will increasingly mean leveraging that information, clarifying it, and using it to advance your strategy, engage customers and motivate employees. Business stakeholders are interested not only in your products and services, but also in your ideas.

So, welcome the information flood. Those who learn how to keep their head above it will be the most effective leaders.”

5. 2010: IT set to move from evolution to quiet revolution, predicts Progress Software

“Based on feedback from customers, as well as its own research and development, Progress Software sees five key technology trends set to shake up computing in 2010.

1. Real-time insight and business control will become a must-have, as organizations can ill-afford to lose money and customer through being slow to notice problems in delivery. In 2009, our research found that 67% of businesses only become aware of problems when customers report them. 80% of companies already have critical business events they need to monitor in real time. In 2010, insight into these events, powered by the right technology, will be essential to success.

2. Event-driven computing will accelerate, driven by business needs, and impacting both the way applications are built and how they are deployed in the enterprise. Architectures are increasingly being built around ‘events’, and this will increase to deal with both new sources of events appearing within the enterprise as well as external event sources from partners and customers.”

@ Gartner AADI: SOA Success Stories: Delivering Business Value and a Go-Forward Foundation in a Tough Economic Climate

Session Abstract: Tough economic climates call for tough decisions. Instead of jeopardizing the future by cutting out all initiatives mentioning architecture, the organizations represented on this panel continue to invest in their business-driven SOA initiatives, resulting in near-term business value and creating a viable foundation for continued business optimization and growth initiatives. In this session, SOA Consortium and CIO magazine case study contest winners, along with leading members of the SOA Consortium, will share insight from their SOA success stories, including the business challenge addressed, achieved ROI, business participation, lessons learned and how they have, or plan to, incorporate complementary techniques such as BPM, event processing, business analytics and cloud computing.

Panelists: Tom Keen, CTO of BlueStar Energy, Leo Shuster, Director of Application Development at Safeguard Properties, John Woolbright, CIO for Omega Financial and Scott Metzger, CTO TransUnion Interactive

Moderators: Richard Soley, OMG/SOA Consortium and Daniel Sholler

This is the second of two SOA Consortium Panels at Gartner AADI.  The first was an end user session Cloud Computing.  As SOA-C Program Director, I helped organize this panel. 

Introductory Statements

Leo Shuster: Prior to Safeguard, was running SOA program at National City Bank.  National City has since been absorbed PNC.  National City was industry recognized leader in SOA, post-merger, PNC shut-down the SOA program.  However, everything that was delivered from the SOA program is running in production, adding value to the business.

Tom Keen: BlueStar Energy was a SOA Consortium 2009 Case Study Contest Winner, see the write-up of their winning case.  Took an engineering approach to this project.  Iterative plan for value delivery.  Technology stack is open source, about 98%.  Spent a lot of time on resiliency.  View the technology stack as temporal.  Some has been replaced out already, replacement also open source. 

Business success: explosion of product, entered new territories, new demographic market, all done in initial timeframe estimate.  Have had very little IT attrition with this approach.  Currently on 4th generation of NextStar.

Scott Metzger: Startup developing capabilities that needed to be delivered across multiple channels, in multiple regions.  Some capabilities were developed internally, others were third party sourced.  Startup was acquired by TransUnion Interactive.  The business, technical and change requirements were best met with SOA.  Now, some of the services are being offered to customers via the cloud, by creating APIs into the services.

John Woolbright: Previously, John was with Synovus Financial.  Synovus was the grand winner in the 2008 SOA Consortium Case Study contest, see the write-up.  John shares that Synovus is well positioned with SOA platform to emerge from economic downturn.

Q&A

Q: For Leo, why didn’t the new management embrace SOA? 

A: Cultural issue with acquiring bank.  PNC is siloed.  As acquirer, there was a bit of not-invented-here (NIH).

Q: For Scott, was your technology approach a reason for the acquisition?

A: Yes.  The agility the infrastructure offered allowed the acquiring organization to meet agility and growth goals.  Scott’s team, framework and approach became the “tail that wagged the dog”, driving SOA adoption within the acquiring company.

Q: Types of services, exposing services externally?

Leo: Majority of services were internal.  The services weren’t directly tied to revenue streams, like Synovus’ and TransUnion’s services are.

Q: BlueStar had enterprise architecture initiative at center of SOA, was that true for other panelists?

John: Started with centralized strategy, enterprise (shared) ESB.  Learned that a federated approach, with well-defined domains of control, and well-defined standards, was a better approach.  So, EA approach, but not centralized strategy.  EA provided investment protection, such as establishing contracts with key vendors.  Having well defined service standards saved them money in contracting the development of services.

Q: SOA as management approach versus technology approach?

Tom: A major building block in their success was business engagement.  The business has accepted responsibility for the delivery of NextStar.  The business speaks to IT in terms of business services, architecture and refactoring, when discussing new business opportunities and the work required to attain the new business capability (new product, new market).  Tom has so much support that asking for a 23% budget increase resulted in a 68% budget increase.  The business believes in the value of the architecture and program and understands that continued investment enables continued revenue growth.

Q: Role of master data management, BPM, etc in SOA success?

Leo: Successful SOA depends on services.  BPM became ancillary because the services layer was in place.  Services were created to expose master data.

John: Applied process thinking to the project.  How do you break out a project into a process approach.  How do you orchestrate the work across domains.

Tom: Leverage business rules, semantics from BPM in SOA.

An audience question on technology problems.  The theme of answers was the complexity of the distributed computing environment.  In one example, an unknown firewall blocked a service request for weeks.  In another, there was a code check-in miss on a bug fix.  Subsequent version of code reintroduced bug.  The key is to have visibility into your environment.  Integrate your service development processes into existing code and change management practices.

Another question called out the need for a proactive approach to SOA security.  Plan a security framework, don’t append security as an after thought. 

Another called out need to isolate impact of version or provider changes.  Implement a proxy layer to allow for seamless upgrades and backwards compatibility.

@ Gartner AADI: Mastermind Interview on Event Processing – Roy Schulte & Mani Chandy

Session Abstract: Roy Schulte and Dr. Chandy released a new book on Event Processing in October 2009, aimed at business and system analysts, architects, application managers, CIOs, and technically-oriented business managers. This session will highlight the key points of the book and explain why and how mainstream IT departments will ramp their use of event processing up during the next ten years.

Dr. Chandy is the Simon Ramo Professor at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California. He has received numerous awards including the CMG Michelson Award, the IEEE Kobayashi award, and the Babbage Award.

W. Roy Schulte is Vice President and Distinguished Analyst at Gartner. He was the lead author of the 1996 Gartner report that introduced the term SOA to the industry. Mr. Schulte originated the research in the field of message brokers, coined the term business activity monitoring (BAM), and wrote the first analyst reports on the zero-latency enterprise and the enterprise service bus (ESB).

Yesterday, Roy did a rapid-fire session on Event Processing.  A few nuggets of his that I tweeted:

• "traditional systems give 'slow-motion' situational awareness"
• "Need to move management reporting and decision-making to continuous intelligence
• "continuous intelligence gives the opportunity for continuous corrections"

Today, Yefim Natis is interviewing Roy Schulte and Dr. Mani Chandy on event processing.  Here goes…

YN: Why this book, why now?

RS: A lot of books on agile business and real-time business, and a lot of event programming books, but no book that brought the two together.  How you would go about creating an agile business, using sense and respond, creating real-time visibility and responsiveness.

MC: There are a lot of event systems in practice, but across a variety of industries – cow pasture management, intelligence community, financial services.  This book brings the common ideas across those implementations together.

YN: What is an Event?

MC: Event is a change.  That change can be just a passage of time. 

RS: Two big ideas behind event processing.  Simple event processing – reacting to one event at a time.  Complex event processing – processing and potentially reacting to a plethora of events.  [My Event Driven Architecture Overview has similar definitions]

MC: There is an EAI aspect of event processing, and the sense and respond aspect of business event processing.  Both make sense.  Both have been programmed before.  Business events (and processing) drive agile business.

YN: Let’s be real about event processing.  How much is hype, how much is real?

RS: Right now, there is not enough hype on event processing.  Speaks to google trends on event processing.  Fear that EP becomes overhyped, over promised.  Wants enough hype to create awareness for business change, but not too much. 

MC: Event Processing won’t replace SOA, complements SOA.  Event Processing has tie to cloud computing, event objects (instances) may reside/pass thru event clouds, in the “cloud”.

RS: Event Processing and SOA, there is an event-driven style of SOA.  But again, not a replacement.

MC: A lot invested in SOA.  A lot invested in defining the right business services.  In Event Processing a big piece of work is teasing out the Business Events.  If you have an SOA in place with well defined business services, it will be easier to tease out those events, placing an event layer on top.

YN: Is SOA a first step in Event processing?

MC: SOA is decoupled distributed architecture.  SOA needs to be done regardless. 

RS: Event-driven architecture is not a goal in itself.  Need to have supporting business goals.  Ask: Does adding event sense and respond enable optimization of your business processes?  Does having real-time, or near real-time, visibility to particular sets of business information or activity allow you to make better decisions?  If so, as you work on those business processes, services or information sets, you need to identify the related events as first class citizens in your design process.

YN: How do you make sense of all these events?  External events?  Events from different systems?  Do you need event-specific application integration?

RS: Dispel the notion that you have to buy software to do event processing.  You can do event processing via programming.  You might want to purchase tools to deliver faster.  Also, many packaged applications are sending events out now.  When you configure the package, you specify the events you want.

MC: When working with external events, you need to do some degree of integration, such as data (schema) mapping and data quality checks.

YN: How do BPM and Event Processing relate?

RS: Nice thing about architecture, and BPM is they have so many definitions.  BPM, the business discipline, is very compatible with event processing.  As you model a business process, you identify the relevant events (triggers, outputs).  Also, the monitoring of business processes (BAM) is event based.  BPM tools, if they don’t already, need to add event awareness.

MC: Another integration point between Events and BPM is that an Event can trigger a business process, or activity within a business process.

YN: What tools should people look at?  At what point do you need to look into tools?

RS: Simple event processing is about creating and conveying an event object, you can do that with standard communications software in place.  If you have high volume and/or low latency requirements, you might need to buy an additional tool.  Another investment might be a CEP engine, or rules engine, to correlate events and execute the associated next steps.

YN: Do you see opportunity to generate events out in the cloud?  [I do.]

MC: Gives an example of earthquake detection.  If there were sensors on mobile devices, buildings, etc to detect a “shake”, events could be generated and sent to the cloud, the cloud based application could then generate an earthquake warning.  This same application could be used for earthquake detection around the world. This is an actual example, the cloud based application is done in GoogleAppEngine.

RS: Aware of cloud based CEP engine services.  Also data feeds from financial markets.  EP and Cloud Computing will increase ties overtime.

…

RS: If you are going to do event processing, you should be aware of common practices and patterns.  Sharing this information was a goal of the book.

YN: Is event processing crystallizing old ideas?

RS: Event processing happens today, situational awareness happens today, in your head.  It is different to automate this processing.  The vastness of information processing, and the speed required, needs automation.  Event processing is not new at all.  The automation of EP provides significant business (and social) advantage.

MC: There is a discipline of event processing.  If you understand the discipline, you can build sense and respond, situational awareness applications, better..  [I agree]

YN: How do organizations sell the need for Event Processing to the business executives?

RS: Don’t do justification for event processing.  Do justification for business application (business solution) that will incorporate aspects of event processing.  A good method is to create a mock-up of a dashboard showing the data that would be available for decision-making with event processing.

Yefim is advising audience to read the book.  [I agree]  Asks, what should attendees do on Monday?

MC: Focus on the business and ask what situations they need to respond to quicker?  Identify the data sources.  Make an inventory the tools you already have to enable event processing.  With that inventory, you’ll see how close you already are.

RS: Start learning.  There aren’t a lot of people that know how to do this.  Educate yourself for your business.  Educate yourself to be in high demand. 

[As an EP consultant, I’d be remiss not to add, or contact me.]

@ Gartner AADI: Eric Knipp: Buckle Your Seatbelts: Web and Cloud AD Convergence Ahead

Session Abstract: Customers, prospects, and partners use the Web to connect to enterprise applications at an increasing rate, underscoring the need for high developer productivity that achieves superior time-to-market relative to rivals. Cloud computing provides a powerful combination of value and cost drivers, and a growing number of Web-facing enterprise applications will find a home there, heralding a new era in enterprise Web development and execution.

Key Issues:

• What’s driving the convergence of Web and cloud AD, and what does the market offer today?
• How will future enterprise-developed solutions be architected, and how will the software development life cycle evolve?
• How should this be factored into near-term AD decisions on development environments, tools, methodologies and staff/skill planning?

Eric opens: By 2014, about a 1/3 of new web applications will be developed on platforms in the cloud.  Platform that is horizontally scalable, designed for multi-tenancy.

Drivers of this enterprise shift: developer productivity, time to market, cost of ownership.  Eric shares data point that 80% of cost for custom application development is salary.  So, imagine if you can make developer’s more productive.  What else can you get done?

What is converging in the clouds: runtimes. tools, techniques and patterns.

SEAP – SaaS-Enabled Application Platform, such as Google AppEngine.  SEAP container has variety of capabilities, such as AppDev, XTP, Multi-Tenancy (MT), AppServer and Metadata.  SEAP is part of an APaaS – application platform as a service.

Trends in enterprise adoption.  SaaS is a gateway to APaaS.  Steps:

• Start with SaaS
• Expand to APaaS with customizations (Force.com)
• Dabble in On-Premises SEAP
• Tiptoe into low-risk APaas Apps
• Trust APaaS with the Mission Critical … Not done in enterprise yet, but many startups are building their products on top of Google AppEngine.  (Cites  OrangeScape).  Some VC’s are demanding a cloud start.

Eric has a good slide up now, comparing cloud application platforms. The platforms are: Google AppEngine (GAE), Force, Azure, Zoho, Heroku and Intuit.  The features are browser-based IDE, Eclipse-based IDE, Generic Business Components, Proprietary Language (all but GAE & Heroku), Relational Database (all but GAE).

Next side: Enterprise Cloud AD by Project Type in 2013: 25% new SaaS, 12.5% new Services, 12.5% Cloud Bursting, 50% SaaS Extensions.  Unfortunately, I’m not sure if the 25% of new SaaS is enterprise specific apps, built using APaaS, or SaaS from the cloud.  Based on the talk, I’d guess the former, but he didn’t say this specifically.  (Or, I didn’t hear him).

How do you factor this information into near-term decision process?

Capabilities & Skills Tradeoffs

• Proprietary vs. Open
• Libraries vs Components
• A Range of Programming Models: 3GL, 4GL, beyond?

An example, Force.com is high productivity, low flexibility, medium programming skills, low openness.

Barriers to Adoption, Pain Points identified by CIOs:

• On-premises integration <—CIOs say this is their biggest problem
• unique usage scenarios <—can’t benefit from jumpstart (available) capabilities
• security and SLAs <—Eric wants bonded insurance policies
• buyer confusion <—sheer number of vendors, pace of new offerings, inconsistent capabilities (apples & oranges)
• governance concerns <—plug into my existing SDLC, change management practices etc

Eric is advocate, but says can’t ignore the risks, the barriers that exist today.  Even if all technology and risk barriers are resolved, there is still the cultural adjustment, giving up control, not having physical infrastructure, managed at your location.

@ Gartner AADI: End-User Panel: Cloud Computing in the Real World

Session Abstract: Is your organization considering cloud computing? Are you tired of hearing about simplistic (email and calendaring), enterprise irrelevant (Twitter, Facebook), and extreme (Google Datacenter) use cases? You aren’t alone. In this session, government and enterprise practitioners will discuss the cloud computing use cases they are considering, actively pursuing, and rejecting. In addition to the use case specifics, the panelists will share insights on financial benefits, true implementation costs, assessing and managing risk, governance, standards and their cloud computing wish list.

Moderators: David W. Cearley, Gartner and Richard Soley, OMG / SOA Consortium

Panelists: Clark Dorman of Next Century, Andy Lapkin of Kelley Blue Book, Joseph Larizza of Fieldpoint Private Bank & Trust

This is the first of two SOA Consortium Panels at Gartner AADI.  The second is SOA Success Stories on Wednesday.  As SOA-C Program Director, I helped organize this panel.  My fingerprints are all over the session abstract.

Introductions:

Clark Dorman: Specific use case, analyst in DoD collects a lot of images, genetic algorithm to review images.  Use cloud computing to optimize processing.  Started with in 18k server, got output in 8-14 days.  Now, use Amazon EC2, 100 images at a time, 12 hours, get run done for $130.  There is an opportunity to parallelize further and reduce runtime in half again.

Picked EC2 because it is the biggest.  Clark mentions Eucalyptus as way to hedge against lock-in.  Use Appistry to orchestrate startup and runtime execution.

Andy Lapkin: Looking at cloud, on premise they pay for availability, not for use.  Build KBB.com to peak.  This is expensive, for off-hours, plus hedge against growth.  Sized for extra 25%.  Example of unexpected traffic was “cash for clunkers” program.  A second use case is in data management.  KBB has a lot of data not shown on website that is used to produce website.  Also, data provider to car dealerships, etc.  Data management work is done in batch.

KBB uses Azure and SQL Azure for their cloud computing environment.  KBB is a Microsoft shop.  Now, testing KBB.com failover site in Azure in SQL Azure.  Biggest lesson learned: Transition to cloud is as good as your application maintenance. 

Joseph Larizza:  Customers are high net worth individuals, mostly from financial services industry.  The IT budget is a shoestring, similar to community banking.  Joseph has big banking background.  Some providers Digital Insight, Rackspace.  Full banking site, portal to members, all in the cloud.  Core competency is banking, not data center management.  Cost is critical factor.

Risk Question: Look at it as risk ledger.  Responsiveness of provider vs. key employee risk.  Compliance can be provided by cloud, more effectively than if done internally.  Surprise, the amount of support you need to do, such as patching, backups, security.

Online banking application, could have built their own.  But, not core competency.  Could never keep up with feature/function of a Digital Insight.  Instead, use Digital Insight, which is an Intuit company.  Core banking platform is all in the cloud. 

Implemented single sign-on across these applications; does have Fieldpoint branding.

Q: Security Concerns?

Joseph: Rackspace compliance and security, third party providers, learn their procedures.  They are careful about what data is stored in the cloud.  Didn’t elaborate further on this.

Andy: Security isn’t biggest concern, given the type of business application.

Clark: VPN on their side, SSH into Amazon.  Data isn’t classified, but still don’t want to “leak all over”.  Data is encrypted on the fly.  No data resides in the cloud.  Data is brought up at startup.  Have very specific startup process.  (Again, use Appistry)

Q: SLA with Amazon?  Is the data really gone when the images are shut down?

Clark: Matter of trust, trust that policy and agreements will be adhered to.  Security isn’t a thing, it’s a process.

Q: Cost of moving the data, latency?

Clark: For this use case, 6-8 hours of processing, 20 minutes worth of data movement isn’t an issue. 

Q: What is your interest in standards in the cloud computing space?  Cloud interoperability?  Avoid lock-in?

Joseph: Very interested in the ability to move cloud to cloud, for risk management, and to move work closest to current customer base (time zone).

Clark: Want to develop application at highest level you can.  Make the lower levels someone else’s problem.

Andy: Not moving everything to the cloud.  Will always have a mixed model.  Will always have datacenter to fall back on.  The real issue is the operations work to move from running on one cloud to another.

Q: Cloud brokering, not just for interoperability, but also for arbitrage, on SLA and cost?

[skipped]

 

Q: New job roles?

Andy: Monitor the same way as on-premise.  Use Keynote for monitoring. 

Joseph: Think about operations (backup and security) differently.  Can’t just stick equipment in the mix.  Don’t have control over the equipment.

Clark: Systems administration changes to cloud administration.  Don’t worry about hardware layer, but still need to manage the environment (to deliver the application).

Q:  Old wine in new bottles?

Clark – what’s new is dynamic nature, speed that you can do things, low costs.  8 cents for CPU hour. 

Andy: Spin up new instance in 6 minutes.  Scale, knowing you can serve 14 million visitors a month.

Q: What needs to improve in cloud computing?

Andy: Azure needs third party support for management tools.  Doesn’t want to write his own.  Needs tooling to sift through all the log data.

Q: [for Clark]  Your project is a proof of concept, if DoD accepts this product, will it remain in the cloud, or move somewhere else?

Clark: It is up to the government to decide.  The government does have a few clouds – NIST, DISA Race, and GSA Apps.gov.  This application could land on existing government cloud.

Q: [for Andy] Considered running base load on premise, then burst peak to the cloud?

Andy: Something they are considering.

Q: [for Joseph] Said want to get to zero servers, does that mean Opex will outpace Capex?  Is that ok?

Joseph: Not for their size.  In general, economic model is service first, no related employee expense, if not appropriate, have inside.

Andy: KBB uses SaaS applications to run business, such as CRM (Salesforce.com)

 

 

[Disclosure: The SOA Consortium is a client of my firm, Elemental Links.]