Journey to Cloud Computing - From Experimentation to Business Reality

8/3/2019 Journey to Cloud Computing - From Experimentation to Business Reality

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A Hurwitz wHite PAPer

The Journey to Cloud Computing:

from experimentation to business reality

Sponsored by IBM

Judith Hurwitz, President

Marcia Kauman, COO




Page The Journey to Cloud Computing: rom experimentation to business reality

The Journey to Cloud Computing: from experimentationto business reality

The greatest impact o cloud computing on enterprises is its ability to more

eciently and quickly satisy business requirements. The typical organizationnow relies on IT based services as the oundation or new products and servicesand as the primary way to ocus on customer value. It is a well-known storythat companies have too many underutilized IT resources in their data centers.Ironically, despite the existence o these untapped resources, IT is oten unableto respond to the needs o developers and business units in a timely and costeective manner. In order or the business to meet growth and protabilityobjectives, it requires higher levels o perormance and agility rom IT. Thus,cloud computing is becoming increasingly important because it enablesorganizations to make ecient and secure use o a pool o IT resources that canexpand and contract based on the business needs.

In this paper, Hurwitz & Associates will provide insight into the journey toenterprise cloud computing rom a quality o service perspective. Manycompanies have initially looked to virtualization to drive higher utilization o IT resources, lower capital expenses, and enable the scalability required tosupport business growth. These companies have also ocused on standardizingand automating IT environments to reduce costs and improve the quality o service to customers. However, as organizations move rom experimental cloudimplementations to using the cloud or mission critical workloads, quality o service requirements take on a new dimension. Service issues that may havebeen overlooked with less critical workloads may become magnied, exposingthe company to signicant risk. To protect against higher levels o risk it becomes

increasingly important to translate existing internal data center policies intopolicies that make sense in the cloud. Thereore, we will provide insights into thekey elements that these organizations need to ocus on to ensure that policiesor security, governance, and scalability are maintained as mission criticalworkloads are moved to the cloud.

In addition, we will provide an overview o what capabilities IBM PowerSystems™ cloud solutions oer to support customers.

While the business imperative is clear, the journey to leverage the cloud ina way that protects the company’s assets while providing a platorm that issecure, scalable and easy to manage, can be a challenge. In addition, enterprises

needing to balance a complex mix o workloads can nd it daunting toensure that quality o service requirements are met in hybrid IT environmentsthat include the traditional data center, private clouds, and public cloudservices. Thereore, many customers have approached the journey to thecloud with caution. Management wants assurance that the platorm itsel will not compromise the integrity o company condential data. In addition,management wants to know that perormance can be guaranteed and that thequality o service required by customers, suppliers, and internal business unitswill be supported. Thereore, many companies have begun their journey byexperimenting with Sotware as a Service (SaaS) applications in areas such as

Service issues that may

have been overlooked

with less critical workloads

may become magnied,

exposing the company to

signicant risk.





… companies need to start

thinking about the specic

requirements or managing

mission crucial workloads

and what this means in a

cloud-based environment.

sales support. Other starting points in the journey to the cloud have included theadoption o private and public cloud services or sotware development and testas well as data storage and retrieval.

The next phase, however, is the most important or businesses – creating privateclouds and leveraging enterprise ocused commercial cloud services as a meanso transorming the way technology is used to become an agent or businessgrowth and change.

The Commercial Cloud Transition

Now that many innovative businesses understand the oundational requirementsand benets o cloud computing, they are beginning to evaluate how to putcloud computing in context with their enterprise requirements. In order toaccomplish this goal, companies need to start thinking about the specic

requirements or managing mission crucial workloads and what this means in acloud-based environment. There are a number o key requirements including:

•Thereneedstobeanoverarchinggovernancestrategythatreachesacrosstheenterprise to ensure the integrity o all types o workloads.

•Security,scalability,reliability,andperformanceallneedtomeetthehigheststandards when workloads are critical to business operations.

•Managers need to consider how to manage quality of service objectiveswithout compromising on these important requirements. For example, youmay want to support sophisticated service and perormance managementrequirements in a hybrid environment without expanding sta overhead.

Other important considerations include eliminating risk o downtime whilemaintaining cost control and eliminating unexpected limitations whenleveraging virtualization to increase perormance.

Managing Mission Critical Workloads – A Customer Perspective

Today many businesses nd that they have an increasingly diverse group o ITworkloads–such as customer-acing web portals and email services – and moreo these workloads are considered mission critical. IT workloads – dened asan independent service or collection o code that can be executed - can be a

simple set o business services or a ull set o applications. Examples o businessworkloads range rom a simple sales management application used by a smallsales team to enterprise-wide order, inventory and customer service applicationsor compute intensive analytics applications. Faced with a complex mix o workloads to manage, more companies want to take advantage o the scaleup and scale down benets o cloud computing. However, these organizationsoten nd it conusing to try to determine what types o workloads are mostappropriate or cloud computing. Many IT executives are concerned about givingup control o the security and overall management o the workloads that are


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tightly integrated with business operations. Thereore, many companies ollowa multi-phased approach that allows IT management to gradually incorporatecritical workloads into their cloud environments. The experience o a typicalcompany is highlighted below.

Phase 1 - Exploratory/Pilot. The company selected the process o developingand testing applications as the rst phase o its cloud computing journey. Theintention was to establish a best practices approach to providing developerswith a sel-service option while working with non-production workloads. Thecompany established a private cloud and also supported the use o a publiccloud option. The idea was to give each developer “a personalized copy in thecloud” and allow him or her to use the IT resources they needed or a limitedamount o time. Development and test workloads were selected or this initialphase because there were ewer concerns related to security and inormationgovernance. One specic pilot implementation was to provide a small ecosystemor the SAP development sta to do some testing or a couple o weeks. They

wanted the team to be able to select a system rom a repository. One o thebenets o this exploratory phase was that developers learned rst-hand howeasy it is to make use o the right IT resources at the right time with a sel-service approach. They also learned about image management and what it waslike to move between public and private clouds. By ocusing the pilot eorton development and test, the IT management team was able to understandhow the developer community would react and accept the sel- service cloudwithout exposing the production environment to any potential risk or this newapproach.

Typically, a development task involves a set number o developers who needaccess to a server, an operating system, and a set o development tools. Thereore, the workloads are bounded and precise. The same can be saido the sotware testing process. Starting with development and testing is agood starting point because it helps companies understand what it meansto provision resources in a sel-service manner based on a policy set bymanagement. It also makes it easier or management to keep track o resourcesin a more eective manner. At the end o the development cycle, thoseresources used or development are put back into the resource pool so thatthey are available or the next project. Additional workloads more common inthe exploratory phase include other pre-production workloads and disasterrecovery.

Phase 2 - Support Mission Critical Workloads. The workloads supportedin the company’s rst phase o cloud computing were development projectswith a small team tackling a specic task that has a set beginning and end.Because these are development projects they don’t impact operational systems.In contrast, mission critical workloads are oten either customer acing or areessential to the day-to-day operations o a business. Although the company wasinitially concerned about business risk, the success with early cloud deploymentsconvinced them to expand on the types o workloads they could support in thecloud. They are currently extending their cloud inrastructure to take on missioncritical workloads.

By ocusing the pilot efort

on development and test,

the IT management team

was able to understand how

the developer community

would react and accept the

sel- service cloud …




Phase 3 - Support Range of Workloads with Hybrid Cloud Environment. The economics o managing workload requirements is a critical issue or thiscompany. They want to have the fexibility to be able to manage capacity ondemand. In the past, it has been necessary to anticipate workload requirements

years in advance. The IT team has been plagued by dramatically changingbusiness conditions making it impossible to plan ar ahead or workloadrequirements. For example, there have been several major acquisitions that ledto unexpected changes in workloads. In addition, there have been short burstso computing needs based on unanticipated projects or business changes.

With the growth o cloud computing, management now understands thatthere are more options than ever. The company expects its management o mission critical workloads to require a ocus on a hybrid approach to cloudcomputing. The organization will need to create linkages across its traditionaldata centers, its private cloud environment and its public cloud services to meetits diverse computing requirements. This may include everything rom a web

acing customer sales channel to transaction management systems. Rather thanneeding to estimate IT requirements in advance and hoping to be preparedor business changes, the company can use external as well as internal cloudresources to augment the data center capacity when needed.

As this company moves to incorporate mission critical workloads into its cloudstrategy, one o its key concerns is on providing the right quality o service.

The quality of service imperative – how do you establishquality of service?

The rst priority or any company wanting to leverage the benets o cloudcomputing or mission critical workloads is to ocus on quality o service andscalability. I either o these characteristics is missing, the business will be at risk.So, what does this mean rom an operational perspective? First, organizationshave to think about the purpose o putting mission critical workloads into acloud computing environment. For example, is the requirement or day-to-daymanagement o an ERP system or a customer acing portal? In some situations, acompany may want to provide a critical sel-service application to their suppliersand partners. In other cases, a cloud computing service might be used as adisaster recovery platorm or as a technique or being able to acquire additionalcomputing resources during a peak period. Despite the act that there are many

dierent reasons to leverage cloud computing there are some common issuesrelevant to all customers. They include:

•Automatedprovisioningofresources

•Leveraging virtualization to optimize performance and ensure applicationavailability

•Ensuringsecurityofinformation

•Havingtheabilitytomonitorandcontrolperformanceandservicewithinthecloud environment

… organizations have to

think about the purpose

o putting mission critical

workloads into a cloud

computing environment.




•Having the ability to optimize the environment to reduce operationalexpenses

Automated provisioning of resources. IT resources need to be provisioned

in a way that is consistent with the varied requirements o a mix o dierentworkloads. For example, in many situations, customers need to be assured thattheir workloads will support sel-service or on-demand provisioning. However,i a mission critical workload begins to expand because o increased demand,additional resources need to be made available as quickly as possible. Inorder to quickly respond to this change in demand, automated provisioningo additional resources to support the new demand must be supported. Theremay also be situations where workloads become less active and in order tooptimize their asset utilization, an organization might also like to automaticallydeprovision resources to reduce the number o resources actively deployed.

Leveraging virtualization to optimize performance and ensure application

availability. A well-designed virtualization environment allows IT to consolidateworkloads running on dierent computing platorms. This enables theseplatorm resources to be allocated dynamically to meet mission criticalworkload requirements. Within the virtualized environment, workloads canbe transerred between servers, mission critical workloads can be balancedso that perormance is optimized and application downtime is reduced. Forexample, when a university medical center recognized that it was quicklyrunning out o CPU as a result o a ast rate o growth in the business, it usedprocessor virtualization to leverage untapped capacity without requiring thecompany to purchase additional IT resources. The organization uses shared-processor pools to achieve close to 80% CPU utilization across its servers. A widevariety o workloads can be balanced throughout the day to achieve optimum

perormance.

Ensuring security of information. Whether a cloud computing service isdeployed in a private environment or based on a public capability, security o mission critical workloads and their data is an imperative. Identity managementneeds to be addressed or users who may use a service on a continuous basisor or short durations. Virtual machine images must also be secured since theycan open up access points or unauthorized users. In addition to virtualization,security reaches many levels within cloud computing including storage,data, network and applications. Organizations need to be able to secure theenvironment, the interactions between environments, and be able to govern

their overall security.

Monitoring and controlling performance and service. Cloud computingworkloads do not live in isolation. Most organizations have a hybrid environmentincluding both traditional data centers as well as both public and private cloudservices. Thereore, it is critical that the IT organization be able to monitor theentire environment based on the required service level and overall quality o service o these workloads. The more mission critical these workloads are, themore important it is or IT be able to have oversight into overall perormance,availability, and scalability.


A well-designed

virtualization environment

allows IT to consolidate

workloads running on

diferent computing

platorms.





Optimizing the environment to control costs. The ability to reduce overheadexpenses is one o the primary reasons that businesses are beginning their journey to cloud computing. Many organizations assume that the process o acquiring cloud services will reduce capital expenses overall. However, the

benets o cloud computing can be much more ar reaching. By balancing andoptimizing those workloads, the IT organization can actually turn on and o servers and storage systems, automatically without IT intervention, when theircapacity is not needed. This type o automated and granular control over internaland external computing resources can make existing resources more ecient,reduce IT management costs and help organizations do a more accurate job o responding to changing business demands. By turning o unused resources, ITcan save on electricity and power. In addition, IT can avoid purchasing excesscapacity or peak loads. Instead, IT management can leverage sophisticatedcloud service providers through sel-service provisioning to meet peak demandsor handle high-intensity compute workloads that it might not be able to supportin its internal data center.

These qualities o service concerns are important or companies as they look to transorm their data centers into a more fexible, scalable, and sel-serviceenvironment. They understand that hybrid cloud environments will be a reality i they expect to leverage the benets o cloud computing or their mission criticalworkloads. The ollowing section provides an overview o IBM Power Systemscloud solutions and how they are designed to help companies support missioncritical workloads.

How cloud solutions from IBM Power Systemscan support enterprise cloud computing

Once companies are convinced that they can saely move to the cloud ornon-production workloads, they oten are ready to move to use the cloud tosupport mission critical workloads. At this point, they need to be sure that thequality o service provided will match up to the increased requirements. Becausecharacteristics such as virtualization, security, and energy management are builtinto the POWER7 hardware, it can support these quality o service requirementsor workload management. For example, POWER7 systems are designed toimprove perormance by as much as ve times compared with their POWER6predecessor. This can be accomplished without increasing the physical sizeo the server. The platorm’s active memory sharing is intended to distribute

memory across workloads so that they can be balanced automatically withoutrequiring the application owner to make changes. Customers are also able tomanage overall virtualization in the data center through a graphical interacebased manager. Another key requirement or many customers moving to cloudcomputing is to improve energy management and expenses. The built-in energyoptimization o the POWER7 will help companies be successul rom an energymanagement perspective. The system evaluates the workloads and based onuser-established requirements or perormance and quality o service, it canautomatically turn o unused capacity.

Because characteristics such

as virtualization, security,

and energy management

are built into the POWER7

hardware, it can support

these quality o service

requirements or workload

management.





For customers planning to move to cloud computing, the act that the POWER7platorm can support the amiliar IBM AIX operating system along with IBM iandLinuxoperatingsystems,hasproventobeabenet.Bysupportingmultiple operating systems on the POWER7 systems, customers avoid costly

retraining and additional sotware acquisitions. At the same time, the act thatvirtualization is built into the rmware and expanded with IBM PowerVM meansthat not only can perormance be optimized, but enterprise-class security can beachieved.

PowerVM is the built-in virtualization capability in the POWER7 environment. Itenables customers to consolidate large and diverse groups o workloads ontoewer systems resulting in greater eciency and lower costs in the data center. There are three key types o virtualization controlled by PowerVM: processorvirtualization, memory virtualization, and I/O virtualization. The pooling conceptis important across all areas o virtualization enabling resources to be called onwhen needed to boost perormance. As many as 10 partitions are allowed or

each processor core and as a result o the resource pooling, processor, memory,and I/O resources can be moved between these partitions to support changingworkload requirements. With processor virtualization, a single partition intheservercanactasaseparateAIX,IBMi,orLinuxoperatingenvironment.PowerVMprovidesthedynamiclogicalpartitioning(LPAR)capabilitiesthatmake this possible. Each o these partitions can have dedicated or sharedprocessor resources. The memory virtualization capability o PowerVM providesor allocation o memory where and when it is needed most to help increasefexibility and perormance. Physical memory can be shared across the logicalpartitions in a single server. In addition to providing or shared memory,PowerVM allows or portions o memory to be dedicated or specic purposes. The role o I/O virtualization is handled by the Virtual I/O Server (VIOS). It is usedto enable the sharing o I/O resources. Network adapters, disk adapters, disk drives, tape adapters, and tape drives can be shared across multiple partitions.Similar to the situation with memory virtualization, VIOS hosted I/O or somepartitions can co-exist with dedicated I/O devices or other partitions in thesame system.

Advanced virtualization with PowerVM can be used to consolidate verylarge numbers o database and application workloads because as many as1,000 partitions per server are allowed. With PowerVM, customers are able todramatically increase the number o CPUs and the memory available to themost demanding workloads. When deploying mission critical workloads with

PowerVM, customers can scale to use all the resources o the host server. Inaddition, these IT resources can be changed as needed without requiring arebootofthesystem.PowerVMLivePartitionMobilityenablesactivepartitionstobemovedbetweenservers,virtuallyeliminatingplanneddowntime.Livepartition mobility can also be used to upgrade workloads between POWER6 andPOWER7 processor-based servers without an application outage. With POWER7,PowerVM and IBM Systems Director VMControl™ virtualization sotware willsupport up to 1,000 virtual machines on a single system.

With processor

virtualization, a single

partition in the server

can act as a separate AIX,

IBM i, or Linux operating

environment.





IBM Systems Director VMControl is designed to complement PowerVM byproviding automated virtualization management that minimizes time toprovision virtual machine images and enables the creation and managemento system pools. One o the key requirements or working with mission critical

workloads is the ability to dynamically add and remove virtual resources as yourneeds change and VMControl provides this capability. VMControl automates themanagement o both physical and virtual severs providing a single virtualizationmanagement tool. VMControl is used to create and manage standardized virtualimages. By automating this provisioning step customers have been able toreduce deployment times rom days down to hours. This management processallows companies to optimize system pools. The host system can monitor orailures, predict ailures and automate the process o recovering rom the ailureas well.

IBM Power Systems cloud solutions include several additional productoerings that are intended to support customers moving to cloud computing

environments. These include IBM CloudBurst, IBM Service Delivery Manager,and the IBM WebSphere CloudBurst Appliance. IBM has packaged hardwarecomponents, sotware, storage, and services together to help companies deliverprivate clouds quickly and cost eectively. The next section will provide adescription o each o these oerings.

IBM CloudBurst

The IBM CloudBurst on Power Systems solution is a tightly integrated cloudservice delivery platorm built on the IBM Power Systems platorm, bringing theadvantages o the latest POWER7 processor-based system capabilities to the

cloud environment. It includes a comprehensive set o components requiredto create, and manage a private cloud within the data center. This includesthe network, virtualized CPU, memory and storage as well as the platorm andservice management sotware. These components are integrated, pre-installedand pre-congured at the actory and are sold, delivered and supported as asingle product making it easier or companies to get started. Implementationand support services are included in the solution and provided to ensure thesolution is up and running as quickly as possible.

The IBM CloudBurst on Power Systems solution includes a sel-service portalthat enables users with authorization to request resources based on a service

catalog and have those resources dynamically allocated. Customers can usethe portal to reserve the various IT resources ahead o time via the sel-serviceinterace ensuring that the requested services are made available to users atthe time they are needed, in a sae manner and in accordance with governancerules. The solution provides an easy way to access the service catalog thathelps IT track and manage the codied components and services they oer totheir customers. The automated provisioning capabilities provided not onlyprovision requested resources, but also help companies control the recoveryo IT resources so they can be quickly returned when no longer needed. From

VMControl automates

the management o

both physical and virtual

severs providing a single

virtualization management

tool.




The Journey to Cloud Computing: rom experimentation to business reality Page 1

a management perspective, the IBM CloudBurst solution includes platorm,virtualization, energy, storage, service, and nancial management capabilitiesthat provide support or tuning workloads or high availability, energyoptimization, fexible billing or services and IT cost reduction.

The IBM CloudBurst on Power Systems solution is designed or customer privatecloud implementations rom initial pilot projects through to mature hybridcloud environments incorporating mission critical workloads. Customers haveound the IBM CloudBurst solution to be a cost-eective platorm or a mix o workloads including sotware development, test and pre-production, and dataintensive processing. Some examples o specic workloads are SAP, Oracle,Sybase, DB2, Business Intelligence, and Transaction processing.

IBM Service Delivery Manager

IBM Service Delivery Manager or Power Systems is a pre-installed and pre-integrated service management sotware stack intended to be used in privatecloud implementations. It is deployed as a set o virtual images that automatesIT service deployments and provides sel-service provisioning, resourcemonitoring, cost management, and high availability o services in the cloud. Oneo the key eatures o this oering is the sel-service portal designed to make iteasy or customers to provision and de-provision IT resources as needed. Thecustomer chooses the services they want rom the services catalog availablethrough the portal. IT administrators can dene the services and automatedworkfows to ensure that cloud resources are provisioned in a consistent andstandardized way throughout the enterprise. Users o cloud resources benetbecause they can request services when needed or the right amount o time.

With a more highly automated provisioning and de-provisioning process,administrators and users benet because there are ewer system outages causedby human errors.

IBM Service Delivery Manager includes an integrated process or monitoringphysical and virtual cloud resources. This process enables organizations toanalyze usage o IT assets that may be shared across dierent business entitiesand bill each unit or the resources they actually consumed. The monitoring,usage, and accounting capabilities provide comprehensive reports o howresources are used so that IT is able to plan better or uture needs and improvecustomer satisaction. IBM Service Delivery Manager or Power Systems also

includes platorm and virtualization management, so that customers not onlyget a complete picture o their systems and how well they are operating, butalso the tools to deploy, optimize and maintain these systems at maximumeectiveness and eciency. This also enables IT managers to automaticallymigrate virtual machines across systems to maintain or improve service levels.IBM Service Delivery Manager enables customers to quickly deploy the cloudservice management stack onto their existing POWER6 or POWER7 resourcesand integrate with their existing IT inrastructure to create a private cloudcomputing environment.

With a more highly

automated provisioning

and de-provisioning process,

administrators and users

benet because there are

ewer system outages

caused by human errors.




Page 1 The Journey to Cloud Computing: rom experimentation to business reality

IBM WebSphere CloudBurst Appliance

The IBM WebSphere CloudBurst Appliance speeds application deployment tocloud and virtualization environments. It is intended to leverage existing data

center resources and implement well tested WebSphere virtual images andpatterns. Although the WebSphere CloudBurst Appliance comes pre-loaded withbest-practices patterns, it is designed so that customers can choose to customizethese pre-congured patterns based on company experience and requirements. The preloaded patterns range in complexity rom a simple single server topologyto a highly available cluster topology.

The best practices ocus enables a consistent and repeatable deploymento an application environment based on patterns. Because the Appliance isnot designed as a black-box environment, customers can apply maintenanceand ederate cells. In essence, within the WebSphere CloudBurst Appliance,WebSphere patterns are implemented into a private cloud based on virtualized

hardware running supported hypervisors including IBM PowerVM. It also can beused to integrate with existing inrastructure through programmable REST APIs.

Conclusion

Organizations are moving to cloud computing as a means to help create moreecient and cost eective data centers. Many o these organizations begin their journey to the cloud with sel-contained workloads such as development andtest. However, ater seeing the benets o providing a sel-service environmentor developers, many o these organizations are beginning to reach a tippingpoint. They recognize that as they move along a path towards incorporatingmission critical workloads in to their cloud strategy, they need to re-evaluaterequirements or quality o service and scalability.

As a company constructs its private cloud environment, decisions that are madeat the virtualization layer will impact the capabilities that the inrastructure willbe able to provide or uture workloads. Mission critical workloads demandthe highest levels o scalability, security, and reliability. Power Systems cloudsolutions provide many options or customers to take advantage o the workloadoptimized systems, enterprise quality o service virtualization, automatedplatorm management as well as the service management capabilities neededto support mission critical workloads. Companies wanting to support mission

critical workloads in the cloud need a fexible, secure, and powerul virtualizationenvironment.

As a company constructs its

private cloud environment,

decisions that are made

at the virtualization layer

will impact the capabilities

that the inrastructure will

be able to provide or uture

workloads.



About Hurwitz & Associates

Hurwitz & Associates is a consulting, market research and analyst rm that ocuses on how technology

solutions solve real world business problems. The rm’s research concentrates on disruptive technologies,

such as Cloud Computing, Service Oriented Architecture and Web 2.0, Service Management, Inormation

Management, and Social and Collaborative Computing. We help our customers understand how these

technologies are reshaping the market and how they can apply them to meet business objectives. The team

provides direct customer research, competitive analysis, actionable strategic advice, and thought leadership.

Additional inormation on Hurwitz & Associates can be ound at www. hurwitz.com.

© Copyright 2010, Hurwitz & Associates

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Hurwitz & Associates is the sole copyright owner o this publication. All trademarks herein are the property o

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Journey to Cloud Computing - From Experimentation to Business Reality