Monitis: Cloud Monitoring Blog

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.

A new report released on November 20^th by the European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA) outlines the benefits and potential pitfalls of cloud computing. The 123-page report, “Cloud Computing: Benefits, Risks and Recommendations for Information Security,” offers recommendations to businesses on how to minimize the security risks of trusing their data to a cloud provider.

This report seems right on time, as more companies turn to the cloud to do business, drawn by lower maintenance and costs. Analysts IDC expects worldwide spending on cloud services to hit $17.4 billion, climbing to $44.2 billion by 2013.

The ENISA report spells out the risks of, well, risk, on cloud computing. While cloud-service providers offer 24/7 availability, data centers can go down. And customers relinquish security – which they previously handled on their own – to providers.

It also discusses the dangers of customers becoming dependent on a single provider, facing challenges if they want to move data and apps to a different provider. Further, companies could face risks from regulatory audits on the data they keep on the cloud, the report said. And, because we all know that tasks lists tend to be bigger than what we actually get done, some cloud providers may not fully or properly delete data when a customer requests it.

In its report, ENISA outlines measures that companies can take to safeguard their security when dealing with cloud-service providers.

It recommends that firms perform risk assessments, essentially comparing the potential risks of storing data in the cloud against keeping files in an internal data center. It’s a good idea to also compare different cloud providers to narrow the list and then obtain service-level assurances from selected providers. It says, too, that customers should clearly specify which services and tasks are to be handled by internal IT and which by its cloud provider.

I recommend, too, that companies making the leap to the cloud employ 24/7
website and server monitoring services that can warn customers if cyber crooks are attempting unauthorized access to data or trying to breach firewalls.

ENISA even provides a checklist and detailed questions that customers can use when shopping for a cloud provider.

This is a great read; I encourage you to take a look at the full report on cloud security.

One of the great things about cloud computing is its “pay for what you need” model. In these difficult economic times, that’s a huge appeal for cost-conscious companies.

And it seems that, more and more, cloud service providers are recognizing that appeal. For example, AT&T recently said it will unveil a product by year’s end called Synaptic Compute as a Service, which lets businesses buy more computing capacity when they need it.

According to a story about the offering on Cnet.com, AT&T designed it to enable IT people to store and maintain internal applications and data via AT&T’s cloud. “Capacity and availability can be ramped up when needed, especially if a company’s own data center resources become taxed,” AT&T said in the story.

“The service is designed is to help businesses save money by not having to maintain full network capacity year-round if demand only shoots up during certain times of the year,” according to the story.

One other development that caught my eye here: With Synaptic Compute, AT&T’s customers can seamlessly access software and content they need – whether stored internally or on AT&T’s network cloud.

That ability to help companies who have one foot in its internal servers and another out on the cloud is tremendously valuable. I think this is a huge differentiator for cloud services companies these days.

Take monitoring services. Some firms can only monitor and report on transactions, servers , networks, databases and other metrics over companies’ internal servers. Others, like our company, have the ability to be a watchdog for companies on both their internal servers and cloud-based infrastructure.

If you’re one of those people that balk at or doubt the rosy forecasts of cloud computing growth and revenue by analysts, perhaps you should pay more attention to the evidence, for example, cloud tech company earnings.

I just read that Rackspace Hosting, a San Antonio, TX-based provider of enterprise-level hosting services, posted better-than-expected profits of $162.4 million for the third quarter, a rise of 17.4% year-over-year. Earnings grew by 45.3% year-over-year to $7.6 million, or six cents a share.

The numbers were higher than during the second quarter, too.

But most telling of all was its growing cloud hosting business. Managed hosting revenue increased to $147.1 million, up 6% from the second quarter. And of that, cloud revenue grew to $15.3 million, up 17% from the previous quarter.

Rackspace Hosting’s cloud business now makes up 10% of its total net revenues, up from 5% this time last year.

Read more about Rackspace Hosting’s good fortune – fed increasingly by cloud computing – in this article.

The industry seems to be swimming in new research about cloud computing these days. Every time I turn around I find something new to read about the explosion of provider services, bandwidth or database capacity and cloud services, for example, site and server monitoring on the cloud.

Found another with a slight twist this time: a research report on how cloud computing will affect tech stocks.

Next Inning Technology Research, an online investment newsletter focused on semiconductor and technology stocks, said it published a special report on the emerging cloud computing trend covering companies including Amazon, Microsoft, Yahoo, Oracle and Motorola.

Apparently, the report covers questions such as:

– How does cloud computing, now the domain of companies like Google, have its roots in technology trends going back 40 years?

– Why do smartphones, netbooks, and other mobile, internet-connected devices represent a potential paradigm shift in the cloud computing trend?

– Where do companies like Amazon, Microsoft, Yahoo, Oracle, and Motorola fit into the cloud computing trend and how are they likely to benefit from it?

Unfortunately, to get a look at the report, you’ll have to visit Next Inning’s site, and enter into a trial service. But from what I read about the investment researcher and advisor, it might be worth it. “Next Inning Editor Paul McWilliams draws on his more than twenty years of experience in the technology industry to alert subscribers to companies and technologies that are poised for explosive growth,” the site says.

It also adds that McWilliams and the Next Inning staff “spend hundreds of hours each month speaking with industry contacts, analyzing data and company conference calls, and combing through financial statements looking for investment ideas.”

If you try out the service, I’d appreciate a head’s up to let me know where to invest.