All about the Cloud - Conference media

• Video of our keynotes, as well as our two final sessions on Private and Public Clouds
• Presentations from many of our other sessions
• Flickr Photo Album
• Press coverage

http://siia.net/aatc/2010/conference_media.asp

Imagine new Cloud world

Over the weekend I had chance to chat with an Accenture person, whom I worked with in past by an larger customer implementation project, we talked about our work and the challenges we faced. By transitioning into Cloud computing world, the adoption process among different ECO system partners in the enterprise software world will be interesting to watch, it will most likely change some of industry practice from today. Imagine this, an AT&T is asking Accenture to deploy its (Oracle) FI module and its (SAP) Procurement module in Amazon EC2 instances.

Software vendor is among (software ECO system) the first to adopt to Cloud world, its ability to adopt will be decided its own future. The transition of shipping software via CD to delivering (free) deployable software component (for any Cloud), is challenging for especially large software company in many ways.

First challenge: Deployable software. Have you download software from download.com and uploaded and installed into a hosting service, which hosted your website? How long does it take you to finish all these work? Or, question is more like, how long do you have patient to read install guide and understand it? I admit, max. time I'm willing to spend is 20 minutes. So, easy to deploy is the very basic foundation within Cloud world.

Second challenge: Integrable software. Its not hard to imagine, within the Cloud(s) there will be different PaaS and IaaS. Your software must be able to integrate with different platform almost instantly.

Cloud computing will reshape software landscape so dramatically, that some of the fundamentally best practice like software upgrades is no longer 'important' and nasty for consumer, it is given in a Cloud world. And things like new functionality and new process is no longer 'hard to get' for consumer, it is given in Cloud world. Software vendor feeds the Cloud every day/minute with new features and consumer decides what to enable, what not to.

PaaS and Vitalization is an essential part of Cloud world, it is in-fact the game-changing play ground for everyone now. Microsoft has been rolling out Azure and VMware and continues to push forward with its SpringSource acquisition. Amazon, though generally labeled as IaaS is also a “player” with its SimpleDB and SQS (Simple Queue Service) and more recently, its SNS (Simple Notification Service). But there’s also Force.com, the SaaS giant Salesforce.com’s incarnation of a “platform” as well as Google’s App Engine. Software vendor might need all 3 elements in your offering: SaaS, PaaS, IaaS to be considered as Cloud player.

Cloud computing

Last 3 days I have attended the conference called "All about the cloud - SaaS summit & SIIA ondemand, 2010" in San francisco. Despite usual terriable commute, the event was an important one for me. I can't remember how long the market has been talking about software as a service and on-demand deployment model, even the succesful emerging of company like Salesforce.com was not enough to disrupt the market perception significantly in the past. Now, this has changed. So what made this 'break-even' possible? It is our current economic crisis, it has changed many of our business practice, and it's changing our thinking of how software should be consumed. So, we do have something useful out of this crisis.

So 'Cloud computing' is for real? no kidding, seriousely, it's a far real thing! If you haven't picked this one yet in your mindset, get a self-eduction today, don't wait.

Here are some notes I took during the conference, which touched upon broad aspects of 'Cloud computing'.

Market trend:
* As of today only 1% of all software deployments is Cloud-based (SaaS, PaaS, IaaS)
* Within next 12 months period, company with traditional IT deployment model will start to move to a Private Cloud mode
* 2010, IBM will be deploying more VM(Vitual machine) than Hardware.
* It changes 3 things: Consumption model, Financial model and Operation model

Technology:
* Anatomy of a Cloud App(animoto.com):
-- At peak time, it consumes 40 EC2 instances,
-- Peformance is a concern.
-- The solution was to use 'RightScale' technology.
* Improved performance by using Cloud:
-- Uploading 1/2 million image files(4TB data)
-- Ussing EC2 Cloud: 200 EC2 instances, 24 Hours loading time, cost per unit $0.10/H
-- Total cost: $480
* Choice of tenancy: Fine Grained vs. Coarse Grained
* Key Value Store: RestFul API, NoSql, askscalability.com

Adoption:
* Moveing to Cloud today: CRM/BI/Collaboration
* Moveing to Cloud 2012: HR/Accounting/FI...

Deployment:
* Public Cloud
* Private Cloud
* Hybrid mode (Private/Public Cloud + On-premise)
* Industry Cloud
* Workforce Cloud

Pricing/TCO:
* You pay a full scalable server environment (IaaS) in Cloud for $0.10/Hour
* How to price your Cloud? - Price all risks into your pricing model

Players:
* Intuit:
-- 27 million users, 13 million use QuickBook Q/A, 4 million business customers
-- Teaming up with Micorsoft in Cloud space
-- Provding open development platform: SDK/ToolKit, PHP, Ruby
-- Involving 3rd party implementations: AuditMyBooks
* Saugatuck Inc:
-- 'Cloud computing' is a paradigm shift
-- 40% all IT deployments will be Cloud-based by 2014
-- 40% all ISVs will be Cloud vendor
-- Current recession has accelerated this trend
-- Biggest potential in Manufactorying/SCM Cloud space
* Oracle:
-- 'Cloud computing" is at hype peak right now
-- 250 ISVs have adopted to Oracle SaaS platform
-- Has the most complete Cloud offering
-- Segmentation of customer: >50(Cloud servers) = large customer, 20-50(Cloud servers) = mid size customer, <20(Cloud servers) = small customer
-- EC2 runs on Oracle database and fusion middle ware
-- 'Private Cloud' is on Oracle.com homepage
* Microsoft:
-- Windows Azure and Office 2010
-- Cloud offers business opportunity
-- What is Cloud?: just in time + scale + provisioning + shared
-- Why Cloud: Accelerating business transition and decision making, lower IT costs
-- Deployment where ever you want and whenever you want
* SAP
-- Hybrid model will have the biggest opportunity
-- Introducing 'new' things with Cloud, rather than move 'old' things into the Cloud
-- Aggressively moving into SaaS space

Media/Press:
* No. 1 topic by far in IT sector
* See big monetizing opportunity in Private Cloud
* $11B in overall Private Cloud space by 2014
* Watch out MS Office 2010!
* Microsoft's message to 'Cloud computing': All-In
* Many of CIOs are still scared
* Its a decision made by consumer
* Its an inevitable move

Venture capital:
* Innovation likes consumer platform
* How important is 'Cloud' for venture capital? Its VERY important!
* Consumer companies are adopting 'Cloud computing' much fast than enterprise
* Expecting active M&A market in 2010

Critical comment:
* What happens to customer service?
* It will be millions of Clouds in the Cloud, Integration will be a challenge
* Security and trust
* The question is, what are Cloud standards? do we need one?

What is my personal conclusion from 3 days exercise? -- Cloud computing is here to stay, spring 2010.