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Laggard Rackspace growth sparks concern: is there enough cloud biz to go around?

May 9, 2013 By 1 Comment

Reblogged from GigaOM:

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Here's the narrative that cloud vendors would like us to believe: there are infinite workloads flowing to clouds of infinite capacity. There's enough business for all, keep moving.

But there is nagging worry, sparked anew by Rackspace's laggard Q1 cloud growth, that the appetite for cloud services may not be unlimited after all. For its first quarter ending March 31, Rackspace(s rax)logged $91 million in public cloud revenue, up 4 percent sequentially and 40 percent year over year.

Read more… 544 more words

Rackspace has an "in" with their existing traditional hosting customers. But you have to ask yourself how many of them already are satisfied with a traditional model of computing. After all if they don't even want to host their own infrastructure what's the appetite for investing in the development effort needed to build cloud aware applications. This means that beyond their existing customers they have to appeal to the market you mentioned above. This is a competitive landscape. These organizations not only have to choose between vendors but platforms and strategies. Do they want to just extend their existing enterprise using vCloud or SCCM/Azure (one day). Or do they want to build a new delivery model all together. Once, this decision is made the next question is which platform/vendor. What's the pool for this type of organization. Rackspace is probably the best option for an Openstack Cloud but what's the market potential for OpenStack clouds? I agree this is what we are seeing in their results.
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Understanding VMware vCloud vs. Openstack

April 11, 2013 By 12 Comments

It’s very tempting to compare vCloud and OpenStack. It’s very difficult to imagine an enterprise Cloud that both would co-exist. I wanted to take some time and really think about the two solutions and give a break down of why comparing the two solutions head to head really doesn’t work.

This isn’t about directly comparing vCloud and OpenStack Public Clouds. The drivers for a Cloud provider selecting a Cloud management platform are different from an Enterprise selecting a Cloud manager. However, selecting one over another more or less locks you into either vCloud or OpenStack Public Clouds. So, it is a consideration but we are just looking at traditional enterprise public Clouds on this post. (Hey I have to save the consultants some work)

It’s important that we take a bit of time to frame the discussion of what I consider the “typical enterprise.” This is the non-high tech enterprise. We aren’t looking at developer heavy environments such as Paypal, Netflix etc. We are looking at the enterprise that is highly virtualized, which looking at the market means VMware or Hyper-v with or KVM and others to a much lessor extent. So, the “typical” administrator will have strong Windows skills.

I believe I’m of the same elk of the typical traditional VMware enterprise sysadmin. If I were to still be in the business of administering servers, I’d be a Windows expert and feel comfortable managing a number Linux appliances within the environment. Thinking about the nature of these traditional enterprise admins brought me to thinking about how I’d go about evaluating OpenStack and vCloud. This isn’t as simple as comparing Hyper-V to Xen. OpenStack and vCloud look to please two difference targets with the obvious overlap.

I like the Networkworld article asking if OpenStack is mature enough for the Enterprise. I believe it helps set the stage for what OpenStack is and is not. Earlier, I asked the question if the Enterprise has a need for OpenStack. When I wrote the article if you wanted to bring OpenStack in-house and compare it to vCloud you had to basically have a different skill set than someone who would manage vCloud. This is where you begin to see the difference between the two solutions.

OpenStack is a platform that’s designed from the ground up to provide and infrastructure to software developer’s to build Cloud aware applications. I believe OpenStack see’s application developer’s as the ultimate customer. This is an important observation. With earlier versions of OpenStack the administrator who wanted to take it for a dry run would find that they needed developer lite skills. This is a different skillset than most administrators that run Windows infrastructures. Most Linux admins wouldn’t have too much of a problem installing the solution. However, once you did get it installed what do you do with it? There was no portal that we see in solutions live vCenter and System Center Operation’s Manager (SCOM).

After, getting OpenStack installed you had all of the services running that allowed applications to leverage the virtual resources through OpenStack’s API’s. The admin had some ability to define and configure physical compute, storage and network resources for provisioning via the command line and scripts. This is foreign to the target administrator and is a completely different approach to consuming physical resources vs. the VMware model. It’s not better or worse, it’s different. However, who are the solutions targeting when it comes to the enterprise?

Developer’s build applications and don’t manage the data center. But given the option of which solution best supports their goals for building Cloud aware applications, I believe they’d understand and prefer the OpenStack model for Cloud management. But, again they don’t run the data center.

Administrators install, configure and administer data center management tools. They normally have a different set of requirements and general interests for management software than developers. Their roles are fundamentally different and this shows from the actually installation of the solutions.

That’s why I like how OpenStack is maturing. Rackspace now offers a packaged install for OpenStack. I haven’t played around with it yet but I plan to get it in the lab and see if the interface makes sense to a traditional Sysadmin such as I used to be.

VMware actually has the opposite problem. vCloud does a great job of provisioning physical resources similar to how we do and understand it today. vCloud wasn’t designed from the ground up to provide a different approach to infrastructure consumption. It’s a Cloud manager bolted on top of vSphere. The previous VMware management team’s approach was to marry Cloud Foundry and vCloud to provide the rich API’s that developer’s need to build Cloud aware applications within the enterprise. However, VMware has since refocused on its core hypervisor and Data Center management software products. Cloud Foundry will continue to be a hypervisor independent solution for building Cloud applications.

I’m not a fashion guy but I know if I buy a pair of Nike Air Jordans and a Air Jordan Jump Suit then I have a pretty good idea that I will have a matching outfit without much thought. This is vCloud and vSphere. They are more or less the same. If the end customer are other administrators then it’s easy to design a consumption model based on provisioning virtual machines or vApps. For large organizations that have multiple system administrators that need to provision virtual machines, vCloud Director just feels comfortable. It takes more work to make developers feel the same way.

So, like most software evaluations it boils down to the business requirements and the features needed. What type of service are you trying to deliver and to what consumers of the Cloud ends up being the driver. After the decision is made I think from a pure OpenStack vs. VMware becomes a much simpler comparison with one caveat. That being your Public Cloud strategy. If you have some religious, political or business driver that forces OpenStack over VMware or vice versa then you have some work.

Either solution can be made to fit the needed use case but you will need customize each solution to get you to where you need to be functionally. This could have been a much bigger post that looked at the actual features and more limitations of each platform. But, that’s what the comments section and Twitter are for :)

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Is the Rackspace OpenStack cloud really open?

August 15, 2012 By 9 Comments

I read an article over on GigaOm about Rackspace announcing a private/hybrid cloud based on their OpenStack offering.  This got me to thinking and asking the question, “Is Rackspace

cloud really open?”  Yes, it’s built on OpenStack but what does that mean today for enterprise customers looking for an open solution.  One of the main arguments with going with an open solution is to avoid vendor lock in.  This is the promise of OpenStack.  If my relationship with my Cloud provider no longer meets my needs I can take my workloads and go somewhere else.  It also means that I can supplement one cloud provider with another or even my own.

There are questions as to if OpenStack will have this type of portability.  So, far both Rackspace and HP have launched public Clouds based on OpenStack.  Ideally, I would be able to have my own OpenStack control panel and have workloads running on either cloud.  I don’t keep daily update with the progress of the OpenStack project but, I believe there still isn’t a fully baked control panel yet so both Rackspace and HP have had to create their own.  Will they converge at some point?

According to the above GigaOm article Rackspace has introduced a hybrid cloud option based on their current offering.  I believe this is still a private cloud hosted in a Rackspace datacenter that allows you to extend out to their public cloud.   If you have or want an all Rackspace solution this is a great product.  However, how is this any different than being locked in to any other existing cloud provider if there isn’t interoperability between OpenStack providers and a control panel hosted by the customer?

Do any of the existing Openstack Clouds meet your functional open cloud requirements?

Update 4:45 PM EST 8/15/2012

So, thanks to the comments below, I have a clearer perspective of what OpenStack is and isn’t.  I always expected OpenStack to be a complete solution from Orchestration to Cloud Infrastructure.  I originally envisioned OpenStack as modules that included a Cloud Manager.  As a virtual data center manager, I could choose to install all of the OpenStack platform and build my own private cloud or just the Cloud Management component.  This would be a standard interface that anyone with OpenStack cloud management experience could use from organization to organization or from provider to provider.

But this isn’t what OpenStack provides.  OpenStack provides a common set of API’s for cloud providers (private or public) on which I could role my own Cloud Management or use a solution like Rightscale.  So, as a virtual data center provider, I still have the challenge of selecting both a management and cloud platform.  OpenStack may make more provider’s available to me given my selected management platform but it doesn’t solve my management platform problem by itself.

Related Posts

VMware or OpenStack – Who will win the hearts of the data center?

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Does the Enterprise have a use for OpenStack and IaaS?

August 8, 2012 By 5 Comments

OpenStack has gotten a lot of attention the past few months.  As well as it should as it’s an ambitious project.  The question that I constantly ask, “What is the impact to the enterprise of these IaaS solutions.”  In theory when the OpenStack project is mature I should be able to move workloads from my private cloud to an OpenStack provider’s public cloud using my OpenStack console.   But the maturity of the OpenStack platform isn’t there which got me thinking of a bigger question.  Is Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) as a platform something I can move my existing enterprise services?

There’s no doubt that PaaS, and SaaS solutions have a place in the traditional enterprise. If you are looking for a new ERP, a great case can be made for either PaaS or SaaS. However, when you look at traditional enterprise workloads that you want to implement or migrate to a IaaS provider the story changes considerably.

I consider the traditional enterprise as a medium to large organization with an established IT system. When you look at this definition I’m hard pressed to find a use case for moving workloads from the enterprise data center to a IaaS cloud.  Before, I get the folks at HP Cloud, Rackspace and VMware worked up let’s take a look at the fundamentals of IaaS and what use cases they apply best.

Cloud Definition
First let’s take a look at what defines a cloud service.  For a service to be considered a cloud offering it must have the following attributes:
- Elastic
- User Self Service
- Accessible via a broadband service
- Built on shared resources
- Measured Service

When we look at IaaS, Amazon’s AWS fits nicely into this definition.  It’s definitely elastic as it’s one of their biggest selling points.  In respect to self service if you have an e-mail address and credit card you can spin up an instance without ever talking to anyone.  It’s accessible via broadband including VPN type networks.  It’s built on a shared infrastructure and most importantly it’s a measured service.

One of the major perceived advantages to cloud computing is cost.  The nature of the applications residing on IaaS are different from those of PaaS and SaaS.  SaaS especially lends itself to a “pay for what you use” model. If you have 1000 e-mail accounts today you pay for 1000 e-mail accounts.  If that changes to 900 e-mail accounts you pay for 900 e-mail accounts.   AWS has this same model for IaaS.  If you need 300 Ghz of CPU and 1TB of storage for an hour  you pay for only the 1 hour of use.  The problem is that this model is geared toward cloud aware applications and developers.

If I have an application that benefits and is designed to take advantage of multiple instances then the AWS model works well.  For example during periods of high demand, I can spin up 10 more instances of my application server.  When the demand subsides, I turn off the instances.  Thus, I don’t have to build out for my surges and therefore save costs on overall compute.  But traditional enterprise applications are not built this way.  Generally speaking, if I need to go from supporting 1,000 users to 1,500 users I upgrade my server and become stuck with this fixed asset until I replace it.   Also, to take advantage of paying only for the CPU, Memory and Storage that you are using the virtual instance must not be running.  If we take a look at a traditional enterprise service like a simple file server, how often do you turn off your file server?  What about your messaging server or utility database servers?

These two attributes of the existing enterprise systems are examples of why IaaS isn’t making headway in the Enterprise.

The Enterprise Needs a New IT Service Model 

The problem isn’t the IaaS model.  The problem is that we try and shoe horn an old service model into a new delivery mechanism.  When looking at your workload the idea isn’t “Will running my existing messaging service in IaaS be cheaper/more reliable?”  The question is how do I want to provide messaging to my end users?  When you answer that question you can then begin to look at different delivery methods that may include IaaS, PaaS or SaaS.  We have to change our way of thinking around these traditional services to reap the benefits of cloud computing.

Your thoughts?  Have you dismissed cloud computing due to it’s perceived costs vs. self-hosting?

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Rackspace CEO: 'We're playing a different game' than Amazon

August 1, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Reblogged from GigaOM:

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For Rackspace, there's no turning back from OpenStack now. As of Wednesday, all new customer workloads will deploy on the company's open source cloud computing platform, leaving the company's legacy platform for existing customers that want to take their time transitioning to the new cloud. Now, the competition to dethrone cloud king Amazon Web Services (s amzn) really begins. Or does it?

Read more… 942 more words

Rackspace is making a risky but needed transition. I’m going to be blunt and say that their previous cloud offering just wasn't very good. It was way too much manual interaction needed from their support and wasn't integrated into their enterprise managed hosting solution. I haven't looked at the pricing yet but, I think for Napier to say that their cloud solution will be priced competitively will be a bit of a stretch. Rackspace has never been a value play in the hosted arena and I don’t see that changing for cloud. I do wonder how that strategy will translate as they will need to compete with Amazon for developers as I don’t believe they have a hybrid cloud solution for their traditional enterprise hosted customers.
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Has Amazon opened the door for a more enterprise friendly private/public cloud option?

May 28, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Amazon is getting tantalizingly closer to providing a native platform that enables extending your private cloud to AWS.  This service allows for the importing and exporting of VMDK (VMWare), Citrix, XEN VHD and Hyper-V VHD images of Windows 2003 R2 and 2008 R1/R2 servers. I can easily see a 3rd party provider creating software that provides software synchronization of your private VM’s into you Amazon storage and offing a cloud manager to manage the movement of workloads.

Better still, as Amazon gains experience in this service they could create a hybrid cloud manager that makes this process seamless.  I think this is an opportunity for the OpenStacks and CloudStacks of the world to leverage the service to create the automation within the OpenStack platform.  You could then have the option of choosing to extend your private cloud to OpenStack native providers such as Rackspace or AWS.  Ideally, I’d like to see Amazon and Rackspace compete on the attributes of their infrastructure and not on compatibility of their stack with the enterprise hypervisor of the day.

 

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Why Rackspack and Openstack may not be too late (You have no hand)

May 8, 2012 By 1 Comment

I posted earlier on why I believe Rackspace’s open source initiative Openstack may be too late.  Now I’m going to discuss why it may not be too late.  The solution has been in development from July of 2010 to May 1st 2012 when Rackspace offered the first widely deployed production ready Openstack offering.

Openstack is all about avoiding vendor lock in.  I hate vendor lock in.  Every time I see an end to end solution pitched from a single company, I begin to cringe.  What happens when the relationship sours?  What about just leveraging competition to get better pricing or terms?  Amazon’s AWS has consistently added to its arsenal of products to keep their customer happy and lure more customers.  But once you have invested in their API it becomes much more difficult to move your application to another cloud provider; as once said on a famous sitcom, “You have no hand”.

No Hand

Enterprise resources are especially precious in our current economic environment.  When we talk about the enterprise, picking and choosing what IT projects to invest development resources and dollars into has to be strategically aligned with business goals.  Basically, there’s only so much to go around.

So, organizations may not have many options when it comes to teaming with a cloud provider that allows them to either roll a hybrid cloud model or plan for a hybrid cloud.  You can go with VMware and one of their vCloud partners but, if you loath vendor lock in then vCloud isn’t much better of an option than AWS.  You may have more cloud vendors to choose from but you are stuck with what some people consider an expensive compute stack.

This is where Openstack has a great opportunity.  Most of the current cloud managers positioned at the enterprise only have integration with Amazon’s AWS.  The idea of having the ability to have a provider class cloud manager at the core of your private cloud that allows you to easily extend your cloud to a number of cloud providers the class of RAX is pretty appealing.

In my previous post I asked if you wanted to roll a cloud today what were your options.  In this post I’m asking the question if you wanted to roll a cloud today and not be locked in what are your options?

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Why Rackspace and Openstack may be too late

May 8, 2012 By 2 Comments

Fanatical Support

I wanted to take some time and make sure that I clarified my position on Openstack.  Rackspace and NASA announced this open source project back in July of 2010.  Openstack is a cloud manager for private or public clouds.  Openstack positions itself as an alternative to vCloud and through 3rd hosting provider party an (potentially) open standards alternative to Amazon’s AWS.

So, I was quoted in a GigaOM article that I felt Openstack and by proxy Rackspace may be little late to the cloud manager game.  The jest of some of the posts was that this is still a relatively new market and there is plenty of time for new competition.  I don’t totally agree with the full statement.  I do believe that we are early in the market but I don’t agree that there’s plenty of time  for competition.

My primary point – If a customer wanted to roll a cloud today what are their options?  Rackspace has offered Cloud based services for a long time.  One of their challenges has always been their lack of API into their IaaS based solutions.  That’s one of the reasons why they decided to sponsor Openstack.  And they now offer their Openstack Cloud in limited availability.  One of the main strengths of AWS includes the API’s.  There’s obviously some great scalable applications built on the Amazon cloud which has been in production since 2002.  Zynga is a great use case for AWS and use of the AWS API to build a hybrid cloud.  So, past performance is a critical consideration to overcome for enterprise customers considering Openstack.

Building a cloud manager is hard work.  Cloud managers are extremely complex orchestration systems that are part data center automation, CRM and accounting systems.  I guess you can think of them as ERP for the cloud.  So, I’m not saying that the Openstack development crew is taking too long to deliver their solution; I’m saying the project may have been kicked off too late.

When I talk to customers today about public clouds, I’m constantly asked about AWS in addition to other solutions I put before them.  In my non-technical customers AWS already has a huge part of their mind share when they think public cloud.  When I talk to the today about private cloud strategies they and we talk Openstack they ask me who has it in production today?  How does it extend to hybrid models today?  I believe Openstack will have a great story to tell some months from now.  But that’s the challenge.  It’s not vaporware the code is out there to download and install and jump start a cloud development project.  But if you want a production ready solution now…. vCloud, Abiquo, NetIQ, Dell, Eculyptus are all out there waiting for you.  I don’t believe AWS is too late for private cloud but public cloud is looking like a one horse race today.

So, today what are end user options for cloud?  What companies come directly to mind when asked the question?  Is it too late for the Openstack consortium?

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