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Customized Solutions in the Cloud

Andrew Chapman — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 07:06:31 PST

This entry is part of a series of postings that consider the challenges of deploying enterprise software into the cloud. Specifically, how to customers can solve their unique business problems in the cloud. Normally customers will customize their environment to suit but the cloud is an environment that typically does not tolerate customer-specific customizations. As usual this is a balancing act. If you can take the cloud solution “as-is” and just configure it then you are in the best place from a technology and risk perspective. If you can isolate your custom processes outside of the core cloud offering then...

Cloud Computing Business Considerations - Overview

Andrew Chapman — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 07:08:44 PST

I started writing a series of articles on the virtualization stack that you'd need in order to host something as big and complex (and non-cloud designed) as an enterprise ECM solution. Then I went quiet...not because I got shutdown or bored but because I realized that I was focusing on the wrong part of the stack for my profession. If you are a regular reader of my Blog then you'll know that I tend not to talk about EMC-specific technology but in this case the topics I am going to cover don't make sense unless you understand that we have...

My thoughts on the week at the Cloud Computing Expo. Ugly Babies, Duct Tape and DevOps.

Andrew Chapman — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 17:33:15 PDT

My one big insight – in the future when the Cloud Computing Expo has 50% of the sessions on cloud- based applications, end user solutions and real customer usage stories then cloud computing will have arrived. Right now it is just starting to mature...an exciting time to be involved! This is a fast growing but still immature space. This is obvious because: There are lots of very specialized vendors selling point solutions. Most people here are talking about the issues and not solutions. There's a lot of work going on in areas that should 'just work'. Most of these areas...

Cloud Expo #4: Agile Development, CMOs and the Borg

Andrew Chapman — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 17:10:21 PDT

The fourth and final day of the conference. I sat through a few higher-level, vendor pitches today which were ok but they didn't introduce anything blogworthy. The “interesting” section today is the section Cloud Scar Tissue below. Agile Development in the Cloud - Jan Aleman, Servoy I wouldn't normally attend a session with 'Agile Development' in the title but this level of the stack seems to be very neglected. As I've mentioned in previous posts the focus seems to be on the infrastructure and platform layers. According to Jan: 65% of new offerings are SaaS 30% of total market is...

Cloud Expo #3: Segregation, Policies and Breaking Rocks.

Andrew Chapman — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 19:22:11 PDT

Interesting Section Almost without exception every presenter stands up and says “The single biggest issue is X…oh, by the way we have a unique solution for X.” but there’s definitely a pattern for the areas. You can easily see that the vendors will split into IaaS, PaaS & SaaS groups because they will all be selling into different parts of the business. There are a few interesting themes that I hear consistently throughout the conference: The industry is focused on solving IT issues with the Cloud but we need to be focused more on solving the business problems. Policy is...

Cloud Expo #2: Dark Rooms, Mobility and Hybridization

Andrew Chapman — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 18:05:27 PDT

Day two at the Cloud Computing Expo… "Interesting Section" I noticed that these entries are long and rambling so I'll put the interesting stuff here at the top. Everything else just constitutes the details . A lot of what happened today reinforces the fact that this is obviously a very immature area of the industry. For example, I have heard the word "hybrid" defined in three different ways in two days, the expo is full of small startup companies, and people list issues not solutions in their sessions. I heard it described as the "wild, wild west" twice today alone!...

Mobility and the Cloud

Andrew Chapman — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 19:08:20 PDT

So this topic came up in one of the sessions at the Cloud Computer Expo during a Terremark session and I think that it stands alone for those of us in the enterprise software space. When you say “Mobility” in the context of clouds people start to think about moving VMs between environments but if you accept that all enterprise clouds will have some element of hybridity (wow, that’s a real word!) then you have to accept that there will be differing levels of mobility depending on what you are looking at. You are going to have systems in the...

Cloud Expo #1: Security, Choice and Redundant Arrays of Jet Engines

Andrew Chapman — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 18:57:28 PDT

I am at the Cloud Computing Expo in NYC this week...it's great to attend a conference where (1) i am not presenting and (2) I have a lot to learn about the subject matter. I'm going to post brief summaries of the sessions that I attend with an eye on how it relates to enterprise software. Session One I arrived half way through and passed the other meeting rooms which were sparsely attended but the session I wanted to go to was filled to overflowing. It was a session on "how to move legacy apps into the cloud". What does...

Virtualization of Enterprise Systems vBlocks

Andrew Chapman — Sun, 17 Apr 2011 19:07:33 PDT

Now includes: Instructions to build your own vBlock! vBlocks are especially confusing because the noun “vBlock” starts with a little ‘v’ so you’d think that these things were a virtual something…but they’re not, they are physical. [Ed: See Kenny's comment below for 'v' clarification] What exactly is inside a vBlock is the interesting element, according to one official document they contain “Units of IT infrastructure”…I’m sure that there’s a more vague way of describing the inner workings of the vBlock but I can’t think of one offhand! Another description I found described a vBlock as a “reference architecture” delivered in...

Virtualization of Enterprise Systems - Index

Andrew Chapman — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 08:28:09 PDT

Earlier this year I started writing a series of articles about virtualization and the cloud. The aim is to demystifying virtualization by describing what it means in terms that someone who works with enterprise-class solutions would understand. I’ve got enough articles now to warrant an index. If you want to add to the ‘to do’ list just put in a request in the comments section and I’ll see what I can do. Primer A high-level comparison of the physical and virtual world plus some brief definitions of key concepts - virtual images, vapps, vcloud manager, virtual appliances, vcenter, vsphere, hypervisor,...