Responsive and Automated Cloud Ecosystem (RACE)

Cloud Outlook for 2012

2011-12-12T12:12:00.000-05:00

Once again, it is getting closer to the end of the year. Looking back, we have experienced another phenomenal year for cloud growth in 2011, showing the increasing rate of cloud adoption and implementations in various regions. What's next for cloud computing in 2012?

The following are the areas that highlights the key trends in the new year:

Big Data Cloud - The amount of data created and replicated in 2011 surpassed 1.8 ZB. It is estimated by IDC that the total size of data in the data universe will reach 8 ZB by 2015, and nearly 20% of the information will be touched by cloud - about 1.5 ZB will be stored and processed in a cloud. The big data cloud enables an economical way to extract value from very large volumes of a wide variety of data by high-velocity capture, discovery, transformation, and analysis.
Business Cloud - The cloud delivery model will go beyond the traditional software (SaaS), platform (PaaS), infrastructure (Iaas), and business process (BPaaS) to a more business-oriented cloud model. Business-context clouds are anticipated to align directly with the industry verticals and offer unique solutions addressing the specific business and technical challenges in the individual sectors, such as healthcare and financial services.
Mobile Cloud - Mobile applications will continue to grow with the social capabilities and innovative mobility devices, which will drive the accelerated progress of cloud computing to empower the users and consumerization: anybody, anywhere, anytime, and any device. The mobile cloud will push many organizations to rethink their business models.
Gamification Cloud - More leveraging of the game design techniques and mechanics is expected to innovatively solve problems and proactively engage audience. The gamification cloud will make technology edutainmental, guide a participant with a path to mastery and autonomy, encourage users to involve in desired behaviors, and make use of humans' psychological predisposition to engage in gaming. A versatile gamification cloud platform tends to emerge and ramp up in 2012.

For more information, please contact Tony Shan (TonyShan@live.com).

Cloud Unified Process (CUP)

2011-11-11T11:11:00.034-05:00

Ivar Jacobson, one of the famous “Three Amigos”, who invented UML, once said: "We need to fundamentally reengineer the way we design, configure, teach, adopt, and deploy process". What he emphasized is very true for the cloud computing paradigm at the current stage of its advancement. A holistic process model for systematic cloud adoption and implementation is lacking, but it is a mandate for organizations of all sizes. This leads to our proposed framework - Cloud Unified Process (CUP).

Cloud Unified Process is an end-to-end iterative and incremental process structure for the development and operations of cloud services in a lifecycle fashion. The key characteristics of CUP include:

Goal-oriented
Use case-focused
Role-based
Architecture-centric
Risk-aware
Iteration-centered
Model-driven
Product-neutral
Vendor- agnostic
Technology-independent

The core benefits of CUP are more focused effort, built-in flexibility, time savings, higher quality, increased cost effectiveness, and reduced project risks.

The CUP framework is composed of a hierarchical structure. The top level of CUP comprises five components: Strategize, Transform, Operationalize, Run, and Enrich (STORE). At the second level, each component is further decomposed to individual sub-components, forming a 5X5 matrix with more granular details. Further, the inputs, activities, and outputs for every process step are prescribed in the framework, coupled with other artifacts, such as key objectives and practice guidance.

Contact Tony Shan (tonyshan@live.com) for more information.

PATH to Cloudification

2011-10-10T10:10:00.000-04:00

One of the biggest challenges in the cloud endeavor is how to make up a comprehensive action plan systematically.

I am scheduled to present a keynote talk in the upcoming Business Technology Congress (www.biztechcongress.com). I'll take a reality check of today's IT paradigm and assess how cloud computing may help deal with the complexity in the current IT solutions. Then I review the fundamental concept of cloud computing and its evolution in the past few years, followed by an in-depth analysis on the state of cloud and outlook of the mega trends in the space for the next 5 years. Afterwards, I am going to anatomize various challenges in the cloud adoptions and implementations, which leads to a methodical approach presented to establish a winning cloud strategy. Subsequently I will walk through a unified roadmapping framework that systemizes the comprehensive strategization and operationalization of cloudification, composed of 4 incremental stages: Plan, Adopt, Transform, and Harness (PATH). Different roadmapping dimensions will be discussed, along with the best practices to execute PATH: Alignment, Blueprint, Checklist, and Discipline (ABCD).

For more information, please contact Tony Shan (TonyShan@live.com).

Enterprise Cloud Governance

2011-09-09T09:09:00.000-04:00

Without proper planning, effective oversight and policy-driven management, cloud computing will inevitably produce the same outcome as what SOA had experienced. Cloud governance is a subset discipline of IT governance focused on the performance and risk management of cloud services and systems.

An enterprise cloud governance model is structured to address the dimensions of Process, People, and Technology. These three axes are subsequently decomposed to individual aspects in a hierarchical format:

Process

Lifecycle
Methodology
KPI and monitoring
Certification

People

Organization
Competency
Roles and responsibilities
Incentives

Technology

Portfolio
Tools
Standards
QoS

Furthermore, each aspect is made of various elements associated with enforceable policies, which are covered in a separate publication.

Careful and deliberate cloud governance is a necessity to ensure that the cloud efforts proliferate inside an enterprise in a well-controlled manner.

For more information, please contact Tony Shan (tonyshan@live.com).

Service-Oriented Cloud Computing-Enabled Roadmap (SOCCER)

2011-08-08T08:08:00.067-04:00

As virtually all of us are marching in the journey of cloud and SOA, a critical question is what is the right order to deal with these two disciplines. There are various routes that can be taken. The following table provides a pro-and-con comparison of different paths.

Regardless which route to take, an organization needs a solid plan to organize the undertakings in a lifecycle fashion. A technology roadmap is a comprehensive plan to achieve short-term and long-term objectives with specific technology directions and actions to help meet the strategic goals. It is an arrangement and guide that apply to a product, service, process, portfolio, division, organization, industry, or an emerging technology.

Roadmapping aims to achieve the following purposes:

Reach a consensus about a set of needs and identify appropriate technologies required to satisfy those demands
Provide a mechanism to help forecast technology advancement and evolution, and consequently establish roadmapping as a core competency of architecture practices
Set a framework to help plan and coordinate technology developments, and leverage existing capabilities to mobilize stakeholders to master and facilitate all dimensions of roadmapping
Promote and share best-of-breed disciplines, and prepare for skills and process retooling
Create awareness of future state for migration to next level of maturity

The following diagram illustrates a progressive process for holistic IT roadmapping: Strategize, Transform, Operationalize, Rationalize, and Mobilize (STORM):

STORM is incremental and iterative by nature with supporting artifacts built-in. I plan to discuss this framework in the forthcoming UP 2011 Cloud Computing Conference. Please check the calendar and allocate time to join.

For more information, please contact Tony Shan (TonyShan@live.com).

Why SOA and Cloud combined?

2011-07-07T07:07:00.000-04:00

Though the industry focus has shifted from SOA to cloud computing in the recent years, SOA still serves as the foundation of disciplined IT solutioning, particularly in the software-centric space. It is necessary to identify the commonalities between SOA and cloud. For instance, both are intended to yield increased agility, enable faster time-to-market, drive more cost savings, lead to reduced integration, and facilitate easier outsourcing.

More importantly, it is critical to differentiate these two items from a variety of perspectives. The highlights of the key differences are illustrated in the following chart.

Service Function - The cornerstone of SOA is service-orientation, such as loose-coupling, reusability, composability, and granularity, whereas everything tends to be converted as a service in the cloud world, emphasizing interoperability, commoditization, elasticity, and automation.
Focal Area - Most of SOA engagements are software-intensive, while the high visibility of cloud activities tends to be mostly hardware-centric.
Feasibility - SOA facilitates the inter-application integration, and cloud makes full use of resource provisioning.
Core Principle - a key tenet in SOA is loose coupling, whereas on-demand scalability is the first-class citizen in the cloud space.
Means - SOA realizes reuse via shared services, but cloud maximize the resource use via multi-tenancy.
Usage - SOA counts on asset-based utilization, while cloud takes advantage of the utility-based consumption.
Approach - SOA relies on service components and composition, whereas cloud leverages infrastructure pooling and outsourcing.
Applicability - SOA is predominantly used within the enterprise, and cloud is primarily employed as a new business model for service delivery

It becomes clear that SOA and cloud need to be combined, so they can complement each other to maximize the values and strengths of individual disciplines, resulting in converged service-oriented cloud-based solutions to solve business problems in the most cost-effective way.

Part of my upcoming presentation at the OMG's SOA in Healthcare conference this month will cover this topic. Please come and join the session to discuss more.

For more information, please contact Tony Shan (TonyShan@live.com).

Enterprise Clouds vs. Commodity Clouds: Divergence or Convergence

2011-06-06T06:06:00.006-04:00

As Cloud Computing is gaining increasing traction in the complex heterogeneous enterprise environments, there is a battle between building private clouds and leveraging public clouds.

An "Enterprise Cloud" offers a virtualized, scalable, multi-tenant infrastructure that provides secure enterprise-grade computing capabilities with stringent SLAs. On the other hand, a "Commodity Cloud" provides a low-cost information technology environment with inexpensive computing power and storage capability as a simple commodity in the eyes of the market or consumers.

A key decision point is whether big organizations should construct enterprise clouds, which may be on premises or hosted on public providers' data centers, or large-size firms should migrate to commodity clouds that tend to be more cost effective economically.

The key differences between the enterprise clouds and commodity clouds are highlighted in the chart on the right.

Are enterprise and commodity clouds moving towards separate directions? Or does the trending lead to combined enterprise commodity clouds? Or will the path become hybrid routes - diverge then converge, or the opposite sequence? What are the key criteria and how to justify objectively?

We have formed a distinguished panel of industry gurus and field practitioners to share their forward-thinking insights and practical forecasts in the upcoming 2011 IEEE Cloud Conference. Please come and join the session to discuss the potential outlook and tendency in the short term and long run.

For more information, please contact Tony Shan (TonyShan@live.com).

Cloud Architecture Modeling & Engineering Language (CAMEL)

2011-05-05T05:05:00.079-04:00

The adoption of cloud computing has been speeding up. A lot of IT professionals and organizations are working on a variety of initiatives leveraging the cloud capabilities. At present, most designs of cloud solutions are represented in a variety of dramatically diverse formats. In terms of the visual diagramming of a cloud solution, it is literally all over the place - people are using different symbols with random and inconsistent meanings in the charts. This becomes a huge barrier in the communications, leading to unnecessary ambiguity and confusions among the stakeholders involved.

A cloud engineer must use a consistent, explicitly-defined, and well-understood mechanism to communicate the requirements, design, and implementation with other engineers, otherwise the product will founder, fail, or become a disaster. The industry really needs a standard language for analyzing, specifying, designing, verifying and validating cloud systems.

Cloud Architecture Modeling & Engineering Language (CAMEL) is a general-purpose modeling language for engineering cloud applications and systems. CAMEL supports the specification, analysis, design, deployment, verification and validation of a broad range of cloud solutions. It is designed with well-defined syntax and grammar to bridge the semantic gap, the professional engineering discipline gap, the collaboration gap, and the training gap that exists between those who undertake the cloud initiatives. The structural organization of CAMEL is illustrated in the following picture.

More is being developed. Stay tuned...

For additional information, please contact Tony Shan (TonyShan@live.com).

Cloud Methodology

2011-04-04T04:04:00.056-04:00

Cloud computing tends to mandate a reset of traditional structured forms of definition, analysis, modeling, design, development, and deployment in IT solutioning. Methodology is critical for identifying key variables and influencing factors in a technology paradigm, and thus predicting how those aspects will change and evolve in response to certain inputs and market forces.

Cloud Methodology is the systematic description of comprehensive methods and techniques that are applied in the discipline for cloud computing. On the right is a conceptual structure of a holistic cloud methodology, developed out of a number of real-world engagements and advanced applied research initiatives in the cloud field.

The model comprises 4 components: Context, Approach, Knowledge, and Enablement (CAKE)

Context: a contextual metamodel, represented by Cloud Advancement Blueprint and Cloud Capability Map
Approach: an end-to-end process model, represented by Cloud Adoption Lifecycle Framework and Cloud Roadmapping Toolkit
Knowledgebase: a special kind of repository for cloud knowledge management, represented by Cloud Ontology and Cloud Body of Knowledge
Enablement: a set of effective means and patterns to operationalize cloud computing, represented by Cloud Engineering and Cloud Accelerators

CAKE constitutes a constructive generic framework, which may be broken down in sub-processes, combined, changed sequence, or augmented with customizations and extensions.

I'll present this framework in the upcoming 3rd International Cloud Symposium. Come and join the discussion. For more information, please contact Tony Shan (TonyShan@live.com).

Private or Public Cloud for Financial Industry

2011-03-03T03:03:00.032-05:00

I was in the Financial Technology Insight Summit a few days ago, where I was invited to serve in a panel to discuss the perspectives on Cloud computing for banking. During the panel session, a question was raised as to whether a private or public cloud is more suitable to today's financial industry. At a high level, this is a tough question as the context and scope are vague, and to a large extent there is no black and white answer.

Given the current state of the public clouds in the market, it is difficult for large banks to move their data centers to the immature public cloud providers right away. We are still working out a solid and portable solution to various challenges around security, data privacy, performance, reliability, quality, SLA, monitoring, lifecycle management, ROI, etc. A thorough assessment and roadmapping exercise is a necessity to plan it out in a large-size financial organization, which will lead to a phased approach in practice.

A prevalent solution for financial institutions to take on Cloud now is to build private clouds, which is a natural evolution of their existing IT infrastructure and development practices. This increment will pave the way to iron out the issues and barriers, known or undiscovered yet, so the real value of Cloud can be validated with low hanging fruits seen in a short period of time. Prototyping and pilots are proven methods to realize quick wins.

The next logical step is a hybrid cloud as a combination of a private and public cloud. Typically, low-risk and non-mission critical tasks are good candidates to be first migrated to public clouds, such as testing, development labs, data backup, and data archiving, to name a few.

The subsequent step is to completely move to public clouds. The will enable the financial companies to reach the goals of software-, hardware-, and infrastructure-free in the end state by leveraging the virtual computing as a commodity, which will be a few years from now to come true.

One thing I'd like to point out is that a viable alternative is a community cloud. A bank cloud or finance clouds are positioned to drive the advancement and Cloud industrialization in the banking vertical sector faster than moving everything to public clouds. In terms of deployment, a community cloud can be in the format of a virtual private cloud or semi-public cloud. Regulations, standards, interoperability, security, and the banking community are key factors to make this happen in the near future.

For more information, please contact Tony Shan (TonyShan@live.com)

Cloud Adoption Lifecycle Management

2011-02-02T02:02:00.031-05:00

As more and more organizations are adopting and introducing Cloud computing solutions to their IT environment, it becomes increasingly important to have a holistic view and strategic plan on the utilization of this new computing technology. A Cloud Adoption Lifecycle Model (CALM) depicts the significant phases or activities of the Cloud use from the sunrise until the sunset. The lifecycle model describes the interrelationships between the transition phases, and guide the practical implementations and executions in enterprise programs.

CALM consists of 9 stages: As-is State Modeling, All-encompassing Evaluation, To-be State Definition, Multi-generation Planning, In-depth Investigation on Targeted Areas, Prototyping and Validation, PMO and Governance, On-boarding and Acceleration, and Mobilization, as illustrated in the following diagram (click the image to enlarge). Templates, tools and reusable working artifacts are developed for the work breakdown in each individual stage. For example, in the phase of As-is State Modeling, the current business and technology models are created or reverse-engineered, along with the future business and technology drivers and directions. 4 working artifacts (Cloud maturity model, industry domain model, reference model, and Cloud reference architecture) are devised to assist the gap identification, impact analysis, Business/IT alignment, and architectural examination. A rich set of techniques and means are formulated to facilitate the anatomical diagnosis and investigations on multiple dimensions, such as SWOT, cost-benefit, bubble chart, radar diagram, and comparative study, to just name a few.

I am scheduled to have a presentation on CALM in the forthcoming Cloud Slam event this April. Please take a look at the updated agenda and join the session online.

For more information, please contact Tony Shan (TonyShan@live.com).

Applied Cloud Engineering

2011-01-01T01:01:00.016-05:00

Applied Cloud Engineering (ACE) is a holistic engineering approach for pragmatic development and integration of real-life cloud solutions. It is the field concerned with the converged and codified application of the Cloud Engineering and Cloud Metaengineering practices to the practical design, operation and consumption of Cloud services from a womb-to-tomb perspective, including the concepts, principles, methods, frameworks, techniques, and patterns. ACE equips the practitioners with the best industry practices, management schemes and technical skills to accelerate the adoption, buildout and execution of Cloud products in a systematic fashion.

A layered structure is designed for the applied cloud engineering discipline, consisting of Foundation, Lifecycle, Implementation, and Pragmatism (FLIP). The detailed elements are subsequently defined for each layer, such as principles, methods, frameworks, maturity, governance, etc. A subdiscipline map is built to cluster the related aspects of ACE, which also shows the adaptivity of the multidisciplinary knowledge that encompasses contributions from diverse areas.

I'll present this topic at the forthcoming Cloud Expo Europe in February. Please check out the agenda, and come and join us for an in-depth discussion.

For more information, please contact Tony Shan (TonyShan@live.com).

Outlook of Cloud Computing in 2011

2010-12-12T12:12:00.000-05:00

Cloud Computing has had a phenomenal year in 2010 with increased adoption and steady growth, as shown in various surveys and polls. Though organizations are still concerned with the potential issues and challenges of the Cloud technology, practitioners tend to be more confident that the rewards and benefits outweigh the risks. For example, it is interesting that the US federal government has been taking a strong push to leverage Cloud computing across the board in full swing. The evolution of Cloud use is encouraging, which further drives the advancement of the technology.

Looking forward for the upcoming year, several key areas can be foreseen to make vigorous progress in 2011.

Security

Arguably, security is usually one of the top concerns among the Cloud users. More activities are expected to formalize the practices in this area, such as the Governance, Risk management, and Compliance (GRC) stack by CSA.

Standards

Without standards, lock-ins or proprietary implementations become inevitable among the users. There are interesting work under way in various groups, such as OASIS, OMG, Open Group, NIST, etc. Improved coordination and collaborations are anticipated to avoid fragmented and disjointed efforts in this crowded space.

Quality

Cloud services will be more reliable and responsive. Better defined SLA will improve the overall quality of Cloud services, which in turn enhances the monitoring and enforcement of well-structured SLA.

Governance

Cloud program management will mature to deal with the end-to-end needs and implementations by means of industry best practices and patterns in an engineering fashion.

Please contact Tony Shan (tonycshan@gmail.com) for further details.

Cloudification Lifecycle, Enablement, Acceleration and Ramp-up

2010-11-11T23:11:00.006-05:00

A Cloudification roadmap is of paramount importance to strategize and operationalize an effective Cloud program in a large-scale enterprise computing environment, which is typically complex and heterogeneous. To successfully reap the real benefits of Cloud Computing, an organization must objectively assess the strengths and weaknesses, establish a strategic direction, spot gaps, define a practical path, mitigate risks, rationalize portfolios, manage demands, justify tradeoffs, prioritize activities, balance long-term goals and short-term needs, and reassess the route periodically as the execution progresses.

I'll present a procedural workflow for systematic roadmapping in the upcoming UP2010 Cloud Computing conference. Check it out: http://www.up-con.com/content/cloudification-lifecycle-enablement-acceleration-and-ramp.

For more information, please contact Tony Shan (tonycshan@gmail.com).

SOA as a Prerequisite of Cloud Computing?

2010-10-10T10:10:00.021-04:00

In the panel I moderated in the recent Cloud Symposium event (http://www.cloudsymposium.com/), a question was raised from the audience about whether an organization has to fully implement SOA before considering Cloud computing. Although this is not a strictly black and white situation as the scope of SOA and Cloud can be interpreted in multiple ways, the general answer to the dependency is NO.

In fact, the independence of Cloud computing is one of the key advantages of this technology. In other words, you can start reaping the benefits of Cloud computing without worrying about how to put SOA work in your environment. This is especially valuable for small business and medium-size companies, which can instantly obtain the enterprise-grade computing infrastructure via Cloud without a huge CapEx burden and time to build out their own data centers. In case they decide to shrink the IT usage, Cloud provides unprecedented flexibility to downsize the renting in the public Cloud easily.

On the other hand, a lot of organizations have already developed SOA solutions to various extents. This becomes a good foundation to further adopt Cloud, particularly in the SaaS and PaaS areas. I had discussed the synergy and interlocks of SOA and Cloud in previous posts before. Linking the existing SOA investment with the Cloud activities can maximize the values and minimize the risks in the convergent and collaborative efforts. A seasoned practitioner can be of great help for a company to get on the right track in a more effective way, to avoid pitfalls and antipatterns preemptively.

Please contact Tony Shan (tonycshan@gmail.com) for questions or consulting requests.

FAST ROUTE to Cloudification

2010-09-09T09:09:00.000-04:00

The current Cloud adoption, development, and implementations generally lack a sophisticated and disciplined method, largely due to the nature of immature and changing Cloud computing. A holistic approach is sought to cope with various issues and concerns in a systematic fashion. Here is a comprehensive framework for overarching cloudification, composed of 9 components: Foundation, Applicability, Strategization, Transformation roadmapping, Reference models, Operationalization, Unification, Tooling, and Ecosystem (FAST ROUTE).

I presented this framework in the recent IEEE Cloud Computing Conference. Check it out: http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/SERVICES.2010.82.

For more details, please contact Tony Shan (tonycshan@gmail.com).

Top 10 List of Areas of Concern in Cloud Computing

2010-08-08T08:08:00.000-04:00

There have been different surveys and reports on the high-priority considerations and issues in adopting and implementing Cloud computing. The following is a list I compiled with regard to the top 10 areas of concerns:

1) Quality of services (SLA, security, performance, etc.)
2) Usage scenarios (applicability, suitability, readiness, use cases)
3) Iterations (increments, evolution paths, maturity, transition states)
4) Cost-Benefit Analysis (TCO, ROI, value, impact, KPI)
5) Kit (tooling, highly integrated package, stack)
6) Governance (PMO, CAB, RACI, people, skills, architecture standards, procurement, risk, etc.)
7) Uptime (HA, reliability, DR, backup, RTO)
8) Interoperability (interoperation, portability, lock-in, standards)
9) Deployment (private, public, hybrid, community, location, etc)
10) Engineering disciplines (SDLC, operation lifecycle, process, e2e procedure)

Contact Tony Shan (tonycshan@gmail.com) for more info.

From Cloud Engineering to Cloud Meta-Engineering

2010-07-07T07:07:00.000-04:00

As we are marching on the journey of Cloud computing at a fast pace, it becomes obvious that an engineering approch is a mandate to successfully adopt, produce, consume, and manage cloud services. I have articulated on the notion of Cloud Engineering in the past postings. Now, an interesting question is how to leverage the Meta-Engineering discipline to evolve cloud computing.

Meta-Engineering is the development of new knowledge (scientia), new ‘made things’ (techné) and/or new ways of working and doing (praxis) with the purpose of creating new useful products (artifacts) or services for engineers or engineering organizations. At the infancy stage of the immature Cloud technology, the praxis of Cloud computing brings more values to smooth the successful adoption and implementation in the real world. In particular, in-depth investigations and systemization on specific areas tend to drive the advances of Cloud, such as engineering practices, competency, thinking, design, retooling, action, transfer, and consulting. The social impact on the maturing of Cloud is yet to be seen, but there is no doubt that Cloud Meta-Engineering will play a critical role in formulating the inter-disciplines in the pursuits.

Please contact Tony Shan (tonycshan@yahoo.com) for more info.

Cloud Computing and SOA

2010-06-06T06:06:00.000-04:00

Cloud Computing has been gaining momentum to steal the limelight away from SOA, which has recently faded out of the mainstream, particularly after the infamous declaration of "SOA is dead" early last year. It is worth taking a retrospective look at how SOA has evolved in a bumpy journey and what can be learned from its success as well as underperformance.

We have a panel session organized in the upcoming IEEE CLOUD 2010 (http://www.thecloudcomputing.org/2010), where we invite business and technology thought leaders from both industry and academic worlds to discuss the interplay between SOA and Cloud Computing, and then explore the convergence and divergence of these two solutions. The panelists of practitioners and researchers will share their insightful perspectives and real-world experience on how Cloud Computing will mature, what is the best approach of transformation, and where SOA and Cloud Computing can play in tandem. Selected subjects and issues will be examined in depth in the discussion, such as what Cloud Computing can do what SOA did not or could not do. Come and join us in this exciting session next month at Miami, FL, USA.

Please contact Tony Shan (tonycshan@gmail.com) for more details.

Cloud Strategization

2010-05-05T05:05:00.000-04:00

The evolving yet immature Cloud Computing makes it a double-edged sword. On the one hand, leveraging this new technology can help organizations reduce the CapEx and take advantage of the time-to-market benefits with ready-to-use infrastructure as a service. On the other hand, companies have to carefully gauge the risks as an early adopter, and do things right to avoid pitfalls and mistakes. For example, there are successful large-scale migrations to Google applications (such as gmail and Goole Doc) in places like City of LA and Washington DC, whereas UC Davis recently opted not to outsource email services for faculty and staff, after the pilot of Gmail indicating the data privacy as the showstopper issue.

A methodical approach to strategizing the assessment and adoption of Cloud computing is not only important, but also necessary for organizations who are seriously considering moving into this space. Consequently a systematic framework is in need to assist organizations to objectively evaluate the opportunity and justify the course of actions to take. The following is an overarching model to comprehensively assess the readiness and define a roadmap for transformation:

Click the image for an enlarged figure. Please contact Tony Shan (tonycshan@gmail.com) for more details.

Service-Oriented Cloud Computing

2010-04-04T04:04:00.000-04:00

As the industry focus has been shifting from SOA to Cloud Computing, it becomes clear that we should leverage what we have accomplished in the SOA endeavor in the last decade. More importantly we ought to make full of the lessons learned in the SOA work to ensure that we don't repeat the inefficient routes and fall into the pitfalls and overhypes. A pragmatic approach is to pursue service-oriented cloud computing. I will discuss part of this practice in the upcoming conference talks this month - 2nd Annual SOA Symposium and the Open Group's Enterprise Architecture Practitioners Conference. Come and join the sessions.

Please contact Tony Shan (tonycshan@gmail.com) for more info.

Cloud Computing Maturity Model (CM)2

2010-03-03T03:03:00.000-05:00

There have been some discussions and debates on the need of a maturity model for Cloud Computing. It seems to me that having a model, albeit primitive and unripe by nature, is at least better than having nothing to reference to. A maturity model is a structured collection of elements that describe certain aspects of maturity in the technology evolution. It can be used as a benchmark for comparison and as an aid to understanding, for comparative evaluation of different organizations. The metrics can be used as a basis for comparison and justification.

Here is a draft of a Cloud Computing Maturity Model (CM)2 - click the table to see the enlarged image:

BTW, I will discuss part of this model in my upcoming conference talks:

Take a peek. Additional information is available at http://cloudmaturity.com.

For more info, please contact Tony Shan (tonycshan@yahoo.com)

Public, Private, Hybrid Cloud or Something Else

2010-02-02T02:02:00.000-05:00

The results and findings in some recent surveys and polls revealed that a majority of IT firms are experimenting with mostly 'private' cloud architectures and nearly 85 percent intend to keep their cloud initiatives within their own firewall (e.g. http://blogs.zdnet.com/Gardner/?p=3505&tag=content;col1). IMHO, a private cloud is the most feasible direction for enterprise environments as a first step towards a Cloud-enabled paradigm, particularly for the large-scale heterogeneous infrastructure.

However, Virtual Private Compute Cloud (VPCC) and Virtual Private Storage Cloud (VPSC) are viable options as promising alternatives. The former environment can be used to handle traffic spike or a DR service farm. The latter is useful as a data archiving and backup infrastructure. Another interesting area is what I named as Virtual Community Cloud (VCC), which is a semi-private cloud for a community to share and exchange, running in a public cloud.

Please contact Tony Shan (tonycshan@gmail.com) for more info.

Practitioner's Guide to Cloud Computing

2010-01-01T01:01:00.000-05:00

As cloud computing continues to grow and advance in the new year, it becomes clear that there is a need of a comprehensive guide for practitioners to enable the successful adoption and effective development of cloud services, as well as the migration and maturing of the practices in the projects. A fourm has been established to jump-start the discussions and drive the establishment of a Practitioner's Implementation Guide (PIG). Please take a look and join the group to contribute your insights and expertise: http://groups.google.com/group/practitionersguide

Contact Tony Shan (tonycshan@gmail.com) for more info.

Cloud Trends for 2010

2009-12-12T12:12:00.000-05:00

As the New Year is around the corner, it is time to take a forward-thinking look at what will be the trends of cloud computing in 2010. Though it is always hard to accurately predict what would happen, given the fact that the economy is still in a muddy stage and the true vaule of cloud computing is yet to be quantified convincingly, 10 key areas can be forecasted to have the most potential to make great progress next year.

More open platform and API for better interoperability, particularly in open source solutions
Pragmatic adoption plan for massive consumption and transformation
Increasingly secure environment for multitenancy
More integrated development and run-time deployment with patterns, tools, and best practices
Convergence and expansion of SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS
Unified ontology and holistic taxonomy of cloud services
Evolution of cloud engineering disciplines and application of metaengineering
End-to-end cloud management methods with automation
Quality of cloud services
Standardization and governance

Contact Tony Shan (tonycshan@yahoo.com) for additional info.