elemental links

@ Tibco’s TUCON: SOA, Event Processing, Cloud Computing & more

For the start of this week, I’m at Tibco’s annual conference, TUCON.  I was invited by Tibco to attend the Analyst Summit and the main conference.  My primary interests here are no surprise: event processing, cloud computing and SOA.

One thing I’ve always liked about Tibco is they understand, and exploit, the connections between technology strategies.  Tibco has been linking SOA and Event-Driven Architecture for years.  And now, with Silver, they link SOA (services & composite applications) and event processing (sense and respond elasticity) in their cloud computing strategy. 

I’ll cover the conference via my blogs and Twitter.  I believe the twitter tag is #TUCON.  As disclosure rules allow, I’ll share interesting information from today’s analyst day.

 

[Disclosure: Tibco is not a client of Elemental Links.  However, they did provide travel and accommodations for TUCON.]

@ ITLC 2010 Conference: Cloud Computing for the Trucking Industry

I’m at the Information Technology & Logistics Council (ITLC) conference on Amelia Island in Florida.  I was invited here to speak on SOA.  Now, I’m sitting in on a cloud computing session.  The format is three mini-presentations, followed by a panel discussion.

• Chris Rafter, Solution Services Group, Logicalis, Inc.
• Jackie Baretta, CIO, Con-Way Inc.
• Dave Tezler, Oracle
• Moderator: Steve Chaffee, Logicalis

Steve Chaffee opened quoting the Forrester paper by Gene Leganza on Enterprise Architects and Cloud Computing Adoption.  He also mentioned the citizen development aspect of cloud, as familiarized by Gartner.

First up is Chris Rafter, Logicalis is an IT Services Company.  Chris is starting with some Cloud Computing fundamentals.  After some What is Cloud? Chris is talking about how cloud computing isn’t just an IT topic.  It’s also a business topic and finance topic.  The overall value prop: “Deliver the same application, with “good enough” quality of experience, for dramatically lower cost.”

He’s going over some cost savings details now.  Cites small companies moving over to Google Apps, and companies without dedicated data centers, getting IaaS services from Amazon.  So, not completely “moving” to cloud computing.  But, utilizing cloud services.

Chris says “amazing deals” right now.  The low price is all about a land grab.  He infers this won’t last.  Many people speak to the eventual race to zero.  Chris sees this differently.  More laws of supply and demand, versus just economies of scale.  [I agree with Chris. I don’t see zero as an efficient (market) end goal for providers.  At least those providers with shareholders.]

Now, the requisite Private | Hybrid | Public cloud slide.  He’s giving good information.  For many here, this is an initial exposure.  In general, trucking and logistics organizations are not early adopters. 

[Interesting note, while this session is well attended, the SOA session was fuller.  In other industries, or at Analyst conferences, I see the opposite trend.  More people in Cloud Computing sessions, as SOA is well underway.]

Next up is Dave Teszler of Oracle.  Dave is a Sun guy, datacenter, cloud computing and HPC background. 

Dave has Oracle’s Logistics IT Services Footprint up now.  Talks about the potential need for high performance compute with the “traveling salesman problem”.  What happens when the planned route is interrupted.  How do you re-route with least impact on subsequent appointments.

Dave is going over a Private PaaS Lifecycle:

1. setup cloud: virtual machine, o/s, database, middleware and management software, with shared service layer
2. build app
3. use app
4. scale up/down
5. chargeback

Private Cloud Evolution:

silo’d –> grid –> private cloud (self service, policy based) –> hybrid solution, spanning private & public clouds. Hybrid includes virtual private cloud, SaaS, PaaS and IaaS

Dave is giving some examples of Cloud Computing within Oracle.  First, Oracle Development is self-service private cloud.  [Sounds like early Amazon AWS driver].  Second, Oracle University.

In closing, Dave does point out there are both “compelling benefits as well as serious concerns”.

Finally, Jackie Barretta, CIO of Con-Way.  Her brief definition: A standardized IT capability (services, software, or infrastructure) delivered via internet technologies. 

Real promise, especially in transportation, is public cloud.  The reason, the spikes of transportation.  Not carrying high cost burden just to meet spikes.  Leverage the public cloud for those spikes.

Biggest benefit, “Cloud Computing allows us to concentrate on our differentiators”. 

Strategic Value compared to Internal vs. External Efficiency.  Differentiators: Business Unit Application design, Integration, Business Intelligence and Enterprise Architecture.  Focus on these things.  Commodities: Help Desk, Development & Support, Infrastructure.

Mapped application categories to 2x2 box, strategic value (X), Internal vs. External proficiency (Y).  High Strategic, Low Internal –> External Novelties. (Salesforce.com)  Upper right box, stays within Con-Way.

SWOT Diagram: Platforms from the Cloud (development platforms).  Only one viable for them, is Force.com.  Con-Way is Java shop.

S: Rapid Ramp Up for developers, rapid application delivery

W: No SLA’s, Will not run existing code (proprietary Java, hopeful of new Force.com release)

O: Faster time to market, rapid scalability

T: Data & Apps may not be secure, Vendor Lock-in (biggest concern)

Moving on to Infrastructure.  Mix of co-location, cloud computing, managed infrastructure and on-premise.  Not confident in cloud computing infrastructure (right now) to fully “move” to the cloud.

Business functions that are core competencies and differentiators are NOT in, or moving to, the cloud. 

Con-Way has always controlled own infrastructure.  Just signed agreement with HP for 6 year outsourcing deal.  There are “shades of cloud” in that agreement.  Co-location, managed services, and SaaS on public cloud (such as email). 

Also pursuing a pilot on Amazon EC2 for one of their “spikiest” applications.  Deal structure allows for movement to public cloud without penalty, if public cloud offers better deal (cost, performance, etc).

Jackie is addressing the renegade (citizen) cloud adoption threat.  Advice: Embrace cloud computing.

Q&A has started.

Jackie on Security in the cloud.  In many ways, cloud computing providers are more secure, because they have more funds to put towards security.  This is a general (industry) statement, not Con-Way specific.

Chris: Encryption.  Insist on encryption: data in flight, PII data at rest.

Good question on application response (latency).  How long do users need to wait for response from cloud.  General agreement from panel of criticality of network architecture as moving to cloud.  Might be big concern for shops with thick client applications.  Shops with “thin client” or “web based architecture” are probably better positioned.

Cloud Computing Environments, Events & Event Clouds: Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS)

Here we go.  Event Processing and Cloud Computing are natural allies.  Events can be used in the monitoring, notification, and adjustment of cloud computing environments (CCE), and in the monitoring, notification, adjustment of, and in response to, the business capabilities running on those CCEs.   As I’ve mentioned numerous times, I believe event-based data integration will be critical to information, and therefore, business synchronization. 

In addition to being an event generator, and responder, cloud computing can also be a highly efficient, scalable, event processing platform.  For proof, just ask my friend Colin Clark at Cloud Event Processing.

So, it’s with no surprise, but great expectations, that I’m noting the beta release of Amazon’s Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS).  From the Amazon service page:

“Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) is a web service that makes it easy to set up, operate, and send notifications from the cloud. It provides developers with a highly scalable, flexible, and cost-effective capability to publish messages from an application and immediately deliver them to subscribers or other applications. It is designed to make web-scale computing easier for developers.

Amazon SNS provides a simple web services interface that can be used to create topics you want to notify applications (or people) about, subscribe clients to these topics, publish messages, and have these messages delivered over clients’ protocol of choice (i.e. HTTP, email, etc.). Amazon SNS delivers notifications to clients using a “push” mechanism that eliminates the need to periodically check or “poll” for new information and updates. Amazon SNS can be leveraged to build highly reliable, event-driven workflows and messaging applications without the need for complex middleware and application management. The potential uses for Amazon SNS include monitoring applications, workflow systems, time-sensitive information updates, mobile applications, and many others. As with all Amazon Web Services, there are no up-front investments required, and you pay only for the resources you use.”

From the SNS Functionality Overview, the service appears to be cloud based publish-subscribe:

• “Create a topic: A topic is an “access point” – identifying a specific subject or event type – for publishing messages and allowing clients to subscribe for notifications.
• Set policies for your topic: Once a topic is created, the topic owner can set policies for it such as limiting who can publish messages or subscribe to notifications, or specifying which notification protocols will be supported (i.e. HTTP/HTTPS, email). A single topic can support notification deliveries over multiple transport protocols.
• Add subscribers to a topic: Subscribers are clients interested in receiving notifications from topics of interest; they can directly subscribe to a topic or be subscribed by the topic owner. Subscribers specify the protocol format and end-point (URL, email address, etc.) for notifications to be delivered. Upon receiving a subscription request, Amazon SNS will send a confirmation message to the specified end-point, asking the subscriber to explicitly opt-in to receiving notifications from that topic. Opting-in can be done by calling an API, using a command line tool, or – for email notifications – simply clicking on a link.
• Publish messages / send out notifications: When topic owners have updates they wish to notify their subscribers about, they publish those messages to the topic – which immediately triggers Amazon SNS to deliver this message to all applicable subscribers.”

Of the features list, “scalable” caught my attention:

“Scalable – Amazon SNS is designed to meet the needs of the largest and most demanding applications, allowing applications to publish an unlimited number of messages at any time.”

Largest and most demanding? Tweets, market data, click-stream, blue mussels, Internet of Things … 

Amazon’s SNS is a springboard to industrial strength event processing and the active information tier.  As I said, “here we go”.

[Cross posted from Elemental Cloud Computing, because it’s Event Processing too.]

David Linthicum’s Cloud Computing Podcast: Dave and Brenda talk Cloud Connect

On Friday, David Linthicum invited me on his cloud computing podcast to chat about what we heard, and didn’t hear, at the Cloud Connect conference.  Naturally, our discussion wound its way to the connections of cloud computing, enterprise architecture, service-oriented architecture and data architecture.

Our podcast is Picking Apart Cloud Connect.  Check it out.

100-day Cloud Watch: Cloud Connect – Keynotes, Cloudonomics, & Adoption Models

As I mentioned on Monday, I spent a couple of days this week at Cloud Connect in Santa Clara for some upfront cloud watching.  The conference was spilling over with the clouderati -- those visionaries, strategists, technologists and analysts at the forefront of cloud computing. 

It was literally, the cloud computing twitter stream come to life.  As such, much of the conference conversation is captured in twitter, under the  #ccevent tag.

I did blog from a few sessions, links to those posts follow:

• @ Cloud Connect: Tuesday Morning 10 Minute Keynotes
• @ Cloud Connect: The Surprising Economics of the Cloud
• @ Cloud Connect: Public, Private, or Hybrid: Where’s the Value Today and Where’s It Going?

Mostly though, I took the opportunity to absorb the ideas presented and engage in conversation with fellow attendees. 

I’ll do a summary of my observations soon, but wanted to pass along these links now.  Cloud Connect is “the” cloud computing conference.  I look forward to future editions.

I also had a chance to attend a special session of the San Francisco Cloud Club, which focused on PaaS platforms.  The decision considerations presented by Engine Yard and Heroku really make you appreciate the difficulty of the work that PaaS providers do on behalf of adopters. 

These are definitely interesting times, and not in the curse sort of way.