The Four Clouds of the Datacenter

In the real world, meteorologists classify clouds into four categories according to their base height: "high" clouds, "middle" clouds, "low" clouds, and "vertical" clouds, which can form at many heights. After this week's announcement that HP and Microsoft would jointly invest $250 million in developing and selling integrated cloud computing technology, it seems that a similar selection will emerge in datacenters, as vendors seek to offer clouds targeting different strata of customers. HP and Microsoft announced that they would jointly develop systems that are highly optimized for hosting Microsoft Exchange Server and Microsoft SQL Server. These systems will provide pre-integrated server, storage, networking and application packages for deploying and managing Microsoft's database and e-mail services with "push-button" simplicity.

While the prospect of tapping into third-party computing infrastructures remains a goal for many organizations, the most pressing concern for most is to virtualize as much as possible of their internal infrastructure into "secure" or "private" clouds. Indeed, for many users "cloud" currently implies nothing more than converging virtualized server, storage, and network resources into a single pool that workloads can draw upon as needed. However, these users are finding that the complexity of deploying virtual infrastructure can be overwhelming, especially in mid-sized organizations, which have the need for datacenter capabilities, but lack the depth of personnel to manage complex new datacenter functions such as virtual infrastructure.

In response, there has been a movement among the major systems vendors to provide integrated stacks that combine multiple layers of IT infrastructure, including servers, storage, networking, and software, into a single package that can be managed as a unit. Cisco is taking advantage of the need for such solutions to break into the server market, collaborating with VMware and EMC as part of the Virtual Computing Environment (VCE) alliance to deliver integrated solutions that are optimized for deploying cloud infrastructure. Oracle has integrated its database software with advanced storage functions based on Solid State Disks (SSD) in its Exadata appliance, and if its acquisition of Sun succeeds, it will be able to fold much of Sun's server, storage and software technology into future systems. IBM has strengthened the integration between its various server platforms by unifying the management experience for administrators across all of them.

Now, HP and Microsoft have declared each other to be their respective "preferred partners" for virtualization and management, two core aspects of cloud computing. As a result, the pieces have fallen into place for four distinct integrated stacks that customer might consider for the basis of next-generation datacenters oriented towards cloud computing. With a few gaps, each of these stacks will provide the foundation for end-to-end virtual infrastructure that can be used to treat servers, storage, and software as a single pool of resources that can be drawn upon on demand by virtualized workloads (see Table 1). Coincidentally, the nature of these cloud alternatives could be viewed as mirroring their counterparts in the real world, with Microsoft and HP having the greatest reach at the low end of the market, IBM best positioned to take on the needs of high-end customers, Oracle (plus Sun technology) floating in the middle, and VCE opportunistically pursuing deployments at all altitudes.

Table 1: Integrated stacks for deploying datacenter clouds

		HPMSFT Low	Oracle* Middle	IBM High	VCE Vertical
Processor Architecture		x86	SPARC	POWER	x86
Virtualization
	Hypervisor	Hyper-V	Xen (Oracle VM, Virtual Iron, Sun xVM)	PowerVM (POWER), zVM (System z)	VMware ESX
	I/O infrastructure virtualization	HP Virtual Connect	-	IBM BladeCenter Open Fabric Manager	Nexus 1000v, VN-Link  (network)
Storage		IBRIX Fusion	- (Amazon S3 for database backup)	GPFS	Vblock
Management
	Platform Management	HP Insight Control, Microsoft SystemCenter	Sun Management Center	IBM Systems Director	VMware vCenter, Cisco UCS Manager
	IT Automation	HP Business Technology Optimization Software	Sun Ops Center, Sun N1 Service Provisioning System	IBM Tivoli	EMC Ionix
Operating System		Windows	Solaris, Linux	AIX, Linux (POWER) zOS, Linux (System z)	-
Database		Microsoft SQL Server	Oracle 11g	IBM DB2	-
Messaging & Collaboration		Microsoft Exchange Server	-	Lotus	Zimbra**
Public Cloud Services		Windows Azure	-	IBM Computing on Demand	VMware vCloud Express

* Assumes acquisition of Sun is completed

** Assumes acquisition by VMware is completed

 

Of course, none of these arrangements are exclusive. Each of these vendors and coalitions continues to fully support the use of their products in conjunction with other technologies. As the members of the VCE coalition describe their approach, they will present customers with two sets of offerings: one that is "prix fixe", i.e. highly integrated and presenting the least complexity to deploy and support, and a list of "a la carte" products, in which the customers or some other solution provider put together pieces of the solution, possibly selecting components from multiple vendors. However, these strategic stacks will grant their proprietors the greatest leverage in terms of vertical integration, and the opportunity to offer add-ons and professional services with the optimal economies of scale.

After the announcement from HP and Microsoft, some observers reacted by questioning what was really new about the arrangement. After all, as Microsoft and HP point out, they have been collaborating for 25 years, and their business and technology are already interwoven in many aspects. From a practical standpoint, perhaps the most significant change is that HP will now actually start selling and pre-loading Microsoft software on its servers, something it previously only did with Microsoft's desktop software on its desktops and notebooks.

But what really changed is the context in which the announcement was made. After the era of "disaggregating" the IT industry in the 1990's, vertical integration is fashionable again, and the leading vendors are no longer hesitant to position their own stacks in the market, even at the risk of perceptions that they might not be as committed as before to integrating their products with those of other suppliers. At a critical juncture for the industry, with the rise of virtual computing and the prospect of significant computing resources being shifted to third-party cloud suppliers, users have become willing to consider the adoption of unique platforms in exchange for their simplicity and the promise of lower operational costs. The hardware and software systems vendors have responded to that demand by introducing their own cloud formations, in an effort to rain on their competitors before they get wet themselves.

Comments

[Terina Doherty]

Thankyou for a refreshingly realistic view of the Cloud Computing model and uptake. With so much hype in the market its good to point out the complexities involved and the real uptake of Cloud.