Monitis: Cloud Monitoring Blog

There is some great reporting coming out of InterOp IT Expo in Las Vegas this week.

One observation I think is right on the mark is that the demands on networking are going through the roof as consumers and businesses increasingly take to the lure of new and improved technologies.

Capacity needs are climbing – not just from growing use of cloud tools and services, such as systems, transaction, cloud performance and other monitoring, but also from the ever-growing ranks of iPod users, virtual desktop users and the popularity of favorites like Salesforce.com SaaS.

PCMag’s blog writes that the show looks like it’s more crowded than it has been over the last few years (Good news for the convention industry and Las Vegas!), with a lot of presence from companies like F5, Riverbed and Bluecoat talking about their traditional networking solutions. Security, network traffic, and WAN acceleration were big topics.

But also among the buzz was cloud talk. HP had one of the biggest booths (and a second booth, actually, because of its recent acquisition of 3Com), and HP’s CTO for networking, Paul Congdon, talked about the role of the cloud in merging the two firms. He said HP’s focus is flexibility. In other words – using the same components to allow different companies to control different parts of the network. Converged infrastructures will clearly make it easier for large firms to build their own cloud platforms.

Software vendors were plentiful, too, and the topic du jour was apparently network management and virtualization. Both Citirix and VMware hawked their desktop virtualization tools – Xen Desktop and VMware View, respectively.

I predict we’ll see continued dependence on networks as the cloud industry grows – just as commerce has grown dependent on oil to run smoothly and relatively cheaply (and I hate to make this comparison as an oil slick wreaks disaster in the Gulf of Mexico). That’s why it’s so important to implement a system that continually monitors servers and networks. You don’t want to lose business to competitors or make your employees miserable with unnecessary computing problems!

One day I read about a survey saying there’s little interest among businesses for data storage on the cloud; another day I read about a poll that leads me to believe the opposite. Such contradictions make me:

a) Question the polls themselves or

b) Remind myself how very enthusiastic—and yet at the same time unsure—IT folks and their CIOs are about the cloud these days – despite all the talk about it.

The latest poll comes from ReliaCloud, a Minneapolis-based IT infrastructure developer. It surveyed 150 IT decision makers at small and large companies across the US, and found that three-quarters of them said development of cloud computing was a priority for 2010.

In the poll, a majority, 85% or so of decision makers were either currently implementing cloud computing services or had plans to do so within the next year. Further, 95% of IT decision makers think that cloud computing will either radically shift or have a definite impact on how technology services will be provided inside their companies.

Here’s the conflicting part about data storage. The survey found that the services that would be best suited to cloud computing were Web applications, databases and data storage.  

So why does one survey reveal IT folks saying “yes” to data storage on the cloud and another saying “no?” I think businesses are still torn up about issues like security and support, while at the same time they’re attracted to the cloud’s promises of up-time/high availability, performance and cost savings.

Let’s wait and see how cloud providers in 2010 act to reassure IT people on their doubts and – through development and enhancements – also affirm their positive beliefs.

Wondering about the WAN landscape in 2010? Well, think virtualization, cloud computing and video traffic; they’ll all be part of WAN optimization this year, according to a news account that I came across recently.

Riverbed, which specializes in IT infrastructure (including WAN optimization) performance for enterprise networks, applications, and storage, predicts that this year more and more end users will demand to connect to corporate resources – no matter where they’re working. Among its forecast, it said: “As more cloud and virtualization projects come to fruition, users will be further away from their data. More vendors including Riverbed will step up to provide offerings for the cloud that address several key issues including service availability, data and vendor lock-in, security, data transfer bottlenecks and performance unpredictability.”

Sounds like much-needed help in a world where SaaS providers like Google get attacked in cyberspace because their cloud app (Gmail) customers are political dissidents. Safety, security of data – those are the kind of assurances that companies want about the cloud. Seems like I can’t say this enough!

More demand for WAN-optimized solutions will come, too, because the growing inventory of apps traversing the cloud will be content-rich, real-time and bandwidth-intensive, “as the use of collaboration and Web 2.0 applications become more widely utilized across distributed enterprises and virtual workgroups,” said Adam Davison, vice president of corporate sales and marketing at Expand Networks, in the story.

And Davison makes a good point that – in the face of increased demand for advanced WAN optimization solutions – IT folks are “already realizing that it is no longer just about providing acceleration, but about enabling enhanced levels of traffic visibility and control, and assuring the quality of the user experience across all these complex environments.”

So, seeking greater adherence to SLAs is part of the future, too, I’m glad to see. That’s a trend that I can confirm, too, providing monitoring services to companies whose end goal is to provide their customers with a seamless and positive solution.

Watch out Google Docs. I read about a service from Box.net (offered via a company called Increo Solutions that Box.net has acquired) that allows users to upload and view the content of a wide variety of files as well as share and embed files across the Internet.

There’s also an embedded viewer that lets you see all the files, just like you’d see in Google Docs (Personally, I like the above viewer better).

Why is embedding files anywhere on a website news-worthy or notable? As noted on readwriteweb.com, it’s one thing to upload and share documents online, but downloading them carries issues for companies and end-users.

For one, a company, out of concern for privacy, may not want their documents to be downloaded. Another: sometimes end-users just want the convenience of viewing something online, and that’s the extent of it – they don’t want to download it. They’re the ‘less-is-more’ kind. They don’t even like to carry around thumb drives.

But today’s workforce is different from that of even a few years ago. There are more home-based workers, and, much to Apple’s delight, iPhone sales (and other smart phones) are going through the roof. In short, people now have easier ways to access and collaborate on documents. That’s why these tools, from the likes of Box.net and Google are so important – and needed—these days.

Apparently, this ability to store, upload, collaborate and download (if one so chooses), is being called “cloud content management” by Box.net, yet another cloud buzzword.

If cloud content management (permit me to invent the acronym: CCM.) works smoothly, that gives enterprises and end-users a tremendous boost of confidence in the cloud, and I applaud that. But there are plenty of IT folks at both growing and large companies alike that still have reservations about the soundness and security of the cloud – whether it’s over the reliability of a platform or the safety of data.

So, even as these CCM tools multiply, so will services like cloud data center and cloud platform monitoring.

Imagine yourself as an IT superman, and on your best day, configuring 50 or so desktops at your company. That would be pretty impressive, I’d say.

Now, imagine process automation that can ramp up thousands of virtual machines in less than a month. In this age of virtualization, this is a reality now with products such as Surgient’s Cloud Express suite of tools that allows IT organizations to do just that.

I read about this new development by Austin, TX-based Surgient on CTOedge, and the goal is to provide companies with a turnkey set of systems management tools automating the provisioning of virtual servers across massive cloud computing deployments. That’s according to Brian Wilson, Surgient’s VP of services and support.

So, you may ask, why is this capacity so important in today’s computing environment? Well, like everybody else in the corporate world these days, IT has to cut costs, and that often means labor, unfortunately.  Meanwhile, the number of virtual servers that organizations need to deploy or implement keeps on climbing. And so companies need to employ the latest IT automation tools that do the job of the system manager.

I don’t like to see anybody – and their skill set – replaced, but this is the kind of technology that companies need today to increase efficiencies on a grand scale and stay competitive. And I suppose the more competitive that companies remain, the better able they’ll be to expand and grow and then, perhaps, take on more IT specialists to focus on other areas. It’s a vicious cycle.

Meanwhile, companies, especially small businesses, continue to seek out services, such as automation to monitor websites, that allows them to do more with little or no IT support staff. And the cloud is the perfect infrastructure model because IT tasks like monitoring can be done 24/7 and from anywhere in the world – not just one location.

Local and national governments around the world continue to migrate data and productivity applications to the Cloud – as part of initiatives to save money and make processes more efficient.

We’ve certainly seen cloud computing initiatives in the U.S., for example, the city of L.A.’s migration this year from internal email to Google’s Gmail – a move expected to save the city hundreds of thousands of dollars over several years. And cities around the U.S. are considering conversion to the cloud, too.

National governments, too, are developing private clouds. The U.S. announced its Apps.gov initiative last year (Google’s handling this one), and the Japanese have built an infrastructure dubbed the Kasumigaseki Cloud.

But now, from across the pond (the Atlantic ocean, that is) comes news that the U.K. government plans to save more than £3 billion pounds yearly by 2013/14 by sharing software and IT services in the cloud. The British want to build a government-wide cloud computing platform (to be called the G-Cloud) and an application store, among other IT strategies.

Right now, Whitehall (as the government sector is known) runs on hundreds of data centers and tens of separate networks. And that’s just not going to work going forward, according to Government CIO John Suffolk, in a story about the initiative. Here’s more on how the U.K. government would save: right now, public sector agencies buy many separate versions of the same type of software packages, serving common departments such as HR and finance, as well as much of the same IT infrastructure. But the centralized G-Cloud would allow the public bodies to reuse the same software applications.

The British G-Cloud would slash the number of data centers from hundreds to about 12, which would save British taxpayers about £300 million pounds per year and cut server power and cooling costs by 75%. Plus, the G-Cloud’s app store, where government agencies could re-use apps on a pay-as-you-go basis, is estimated to save another £500 million pounds per year.

Britain’s proposal is impressive, and I expect we’ll see even more cloud development by governments around the world. And as we do, we’ll see even more demand for ways to monitor cloud platforms.

It makes sense to protect your investment in a cloud provider – especially when public money is at stake.

The new year has brought out some cool predictions on the direction of cloud computing, and there’s plenty more where that came from. A new cloud-related trend (this one on the consumer side) that I read about on the horizon is the growth of services that stream movies, TV shows, music, video games, newspapers, magazines and books on demand from the cloud to a Web-connected portable or home computing device.

That would mean the end of physical content downloaded off the Internet.

If you think this is mere cloud conjecture and more hype, consider Comcast’s recent beta launch of Fancast Xfinity – a cost-free bonus for its cable/Internet customers that streams shows from partners like HBO and Cinemax, TBS and TNT to up to three of a customer’s computers, regardless of the physical location of the computers.

And remember Apple’s recent purchase of streaming music company LaLa Media? The strategy behind Apple’s move there is to create an alternative to its file-download process – which is time consuming and confines sales to its own customer base. The LaLa acquisition will enable Apple to sell virtual copies of songs or an album via instant stream, on-demand to your chosen device – be a mobile phone, MAC or PC. Another project in the making: a streaming subscription video service over the Web to devices such as the Apple TV set-top box, challenging the cable and satellite TV industries. CBS and Disney have reportedly expressed interest, according to a recent article I read.

Among other trends in development of cloud-based consumer devices:

A new generation of tablet-like smartbook computers that are bigger than a smart phone but thinner and lighter than a netbook portable PC. Look out for them this year, say Apple insiders, notes the story. Because these tablet smartbooks won’t feature a hard drive, they’ll be energy efficient and rely on Wi-Fi or mobile phone connectivity to retrieve and store content from the cloud. The smartbooks could also be used for Internet phone and video calling.

While consumer use of the cloud is a bit off-topic for this blog, there are parallels in the business world – such as more companies putting their apps on the cloud versus keeping them on expensive and high-maintenance servers.

Whether you’re a consumer or a business, changes are coming. For consumers, the days of buying songs to store on your computer may be a coming to an end. And for businesses, the days of keeping files or apps on an internal server are ebbing.

It’s becoming more and more apparent daily that Microsoft is betting heavily on the future of cloud computing.

The big cloud-based news that came out of Microsoft was back in the fall, when it launched Azure, the lynchpin of its cloud-computing strategy.

But now, The Wall Street Journal reports that Microsoft is creating a new unit, called the Server and Cloud division by merging two existing sub-units within its broader server and tools business: “the Windows Azure group, which has driven the launch of its cloud-computing program, and the Windows Server and Solutions Group.”

According to the story, the new division will be headed by Amitabh Srivastava, who reports to Server and Solutions Group head Bob Muglia.

Microsoft made the announcement on its internal blog.

Tivoli Live Monitoring Services – that’s the name of IBM’s new cloud-based monitoring suite for data centers that it has built for IT administrators. IBM’s aim is to give IT folks a central point of control to monitor network activity and help prevent outages, which is not healthy for data centers – as we know.

IBM’s new product gives businesses a snapshot view of all their different operating systems, virtualized servers, middleware and software and software applications.

“With digital information as the lifeblood of more organizations, even the smallest companies or divisions consider the datacenter’s functionality mission-critical,” Al Zollar, general manager of IBM Tivoli, said in a statement from the company.

According to a press report that I read about the new product, the new monitoring service will help “quickly identify and address potential outages and bottlenecks that threaten application availability before impacting end-users.” Tivoli, available on IBM’s cloud, also alerts IT operations when the service detects a potential problem and it gives dashboard data to help administrators analyze and correct the issue.

Even though Big Blue is a late-comer in SaaS launchings, versus companies like Google (with its Apps and Docs), Tivoli represents the latest in a general ramping up of SaaS offerings by the company. Recently, IBM issued another cloud-based product (Blue Insight) that lets users analyze and distribute business intelligence and analytics applications.

Of course, there are already many great monitoring solutions out there that are providing businesses that move apps and databases to the cloud with an extra measure of comfort and reliability. Here at Monitis, we’re seeing incredible demand from website owners and businesses that need stable, 24/7 monitoring of everything from transactions to servers and networks, even printers – and from the cloud.

Who knows, perhaps Big Blue even took a look at us (and companies like us), and spying our growing success, decided that this was a game they needed to be part of?

Oh, no, say it isn’t so.

I read where users of the fast-selling Windows 7 are resorting to re-installing the software – which facilitates different aspects of cloud computing – because they’re seeing a totally black screen after logging on to the system.

It’s being called the “black screen of death,” and it’s not the kind of dark stain that Windows needs now, especially as it paves the road to cloud computing with Azure.

According to a news story I read on the “black screen of death,” Microsoft said it was checking out whether its latest security update, issued on November 10th, caused the problem.

I heard that the flaw also affects Vista, XP and other operating systems, and that millions of people may have been affected.

The “black screen of death” moniker is a play on the “blue screen of death,” which appears when Microsoft operating systems crash.

As of this posting, no fix has been issued by Microsoft.