Move towards 'open' cloud services
23-11-2009
Corporate confidentiality, clean and easy shift to an alternate operator, may become possible
Like their peers the world over, India's telcos are going gung ho to sell connectivity services for cloud computing. Reliance Data Center, a part of Reliance Communications, has announced the launch of "Reliance Cloud Computing Services" based on the Microsoft platform.
Tata Communications is also looking at this market. Simon Cooper, Tata Communications' vice president of network strategy, architecture and optimization, says Tata's connectivity assets places it in a strong position to deliver managed data center services. Tatas are eyeing Asia's S$4 billion hosting market and will open a new data center in Singapore next year, making it Tata's fifth in the region.
Abroad, telcos, as well as IT firms like Amazon, Google and Microsoft, are investing heavily to make computing just like electricity - something that you simply plug into via the Internet. It's supposed to be the next BIG thing.
The basic idea behind "cloud computing" is sound. Why should businesses buy hardware when they could use online computing power and storage? Why buy software, with support and upgrades, when you can simply use SAAS (software as a service) via the cloud?
But cloud computing has pitfalls:
1. Virtual machines are "file factories", spawning new versions and backups which will be hard to track, and don't meet many companies' confidentiality requirements.
2. The cloud is still largely a one-way road into Web services. Closed data networks makes it difficult to move data into competing services. This is cause for concern.
Sensing that this will slow the market, vendors are moving towards open APIs for this segment. For instance, Fujitsu Limited and Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd. has submitted its cloud API specification to the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF). This will provide capabilities that enable customers to create, configure, expand, and delete a user's virtual ICT (Information and Communication Technology) system dynamically in a self-serve manner via the Internet. Operations can be directed either by the actual user through the web browser or by software through a "cloud API". Using the cloud API, an adaptive and flexible system can be developed, such as a system which increases or decreases the number of deployed virtual servers corresponding to the system load.
Over the next few years, along with the increasing demand for cloud services, several service providers including Fujitsu will offer IaaS (Infrastructure as a service). A standardized cloud API greatly reduces customer dependency on one particular cloud provider thus allowing them to switch to a provider with the optimal service level without the need for changing their applications. The same cloud API is applicable to an "enterprise cloud," which is an enterprise system owned by customers and operated privately using cloud technologies. Customers can choose to run the same application system either on the cloud providers' IaaS or on the customer's own datacenter depending on business requirements such as capital expenditure, operational cost, and compliance.
Inputs from jimpinto.com, ZDNet Asia, Fujitsu
Like their peers the world over, India's telcos are going gung ho to sell connectivity services for cloud computing. Reliance Data Center, a part of Reliance Communications, has announced the launch of "Reliance Cloud Computing Services" based on the Microsoft platform.
Tata Communications is also looking at this market. Simon Cooper, Tata Communications' vice president of network strategy, architecture and optimization, says Tata's connectivity assets places it in a strong position to deliver managed data center services. Tatas are eyeing Asia's S$4 billion hosting market and will open a new data center in Singapore next year, making it Tata's fifth in the region.
Abroad, telcos, as well as IT firms like Amazon, Google and Microsoft, are investing heavily to make computing just like electricity - something that you simply plug into via the Internet. It's supposed to be the next BIG thing.
The basic idea behind "cloud computing" is sound. Why should businesses buy hardware when they could use online computing power and storage? Why buy software, with support and upgrades, when you can simply use SAAS (software as a service) via the cloud?
But cloud computing has pitfalls:
1. Virtual machines are "file factories", spawning new versions and backups which will be hard to track, and don't meet many companies' confidentiality requirements.
2. The cloud is still largely a one-way road into Web services. Closed data networks makes it difficult to move data into competing services. This is cause for concern.
Sensing that this will slow the market, vendors are moving towards open APIs for this segment. For instance, Fujitsu Limited and Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd. has submitted its cloud API specification to the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF). This will provide capabilities that enable customers to create, configure, expand, and delete a user's virtual ICT (Information and Communication Technology) system dynamically in a self-serve manner via the Internet. Operations can be directed either by the actual user through the web browser or by software through a "cloud API". Using the cloud API, an adaptive and flexible system can be developed, such as a system which increases or decreases the number of deployed virtual servers corresponding to the system load.
Over the next few years, along with the increasing demand for cloud services, several service providers including Fujitsu will offer IaaS (Infrastructure as a service). A standardized cloud API greatly reduces customer dependency on one particular cloud provider thus allowing them to switch to a provider with the optimal service level without the need for changing their applications. The same cloud API is applicable to an "enterprise cloud," which is an enterprise system owned by customers and operated privately using cloud technologies. Customers can choose to run the same application system either on the cloud providers' IaaS or on the customer's own datacenter depending on business requirements such as capital expenditure, operational cost, and compliance.
Inputs from jimpinto.com, ZDNet Asia, Fujitsu
