Published January
2016.
“[…] the operating model of many IT departments is
shifting away from capital expenses (CapEx) when possible and toward a
primarily operational expense-funded (OpEx-funded) model for completing projects.
A large component of recent successes in these areas is due to a shift of
non-premises, corporately managed resources to public cloud infrastructure and
Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platforms. Since cloud resources can be billed just
like a monthly phone bill, shifting IT resources to the cloud also shifts the
way the budget for those resources is allocated.”
In “Building a Modern Data
Center – Principles and Strategies of Design”
All of
technology is a manifestation of yearning. The dominions of fabled gods and
heroes are the real drivers of
invention. Well before SF mythology planted the seeds. But I’ve yet to read a SF
book wherein the Cloud Computing concept and technology is accurately depicted.
While I was reading this book, I kept thinking on Alan Turing, who wanted to
create a machine that could think and be smart; but remember that he thought of
that in a world where there was none of that, i.e., he created machines and
started that road of newness. In this day and age, it’s very easy to
think things up, because we’ve all sorts of technological stuff and the only
thing that I find closer to what Turing was looking for, are the algorithms that
detect my pattern of preferences in a web browser and make suggestions to what
I should be buying. We are so far in having that AI that is able to pass the "Turing
Test". I wonder if he were to be alive in this era, how disappointed he
would be, the machines that can think only exist in SF. The SDDC is one of
those not so far-fetched concepts taking place as I’m writing this. 10 years
ago I can guarantee it was still in the realm of SF… Who would have thought in
10 years we’d be talking about concepts so technological advanced?
I’ve been
working in and around Data Centres, in several roles, almost as long as my
career in IT. At the beginning of my IT career, more than 20 years ago, every
time I had to deal with the Data Centre I used to start fuming. Everything was a
bitch to implement. One has to take into account the concept of Cloud
Computing hadn’t been invented yet. There were no SDN, SDS, SDC, HCI, and SDDC
acronyms in place…SDx had yet to come into the fore. When I started working
more closely with the guys coming from the depths of IT, I felt certain that
deep in the bowels of that realm there were bearded geeks in flip-flops.
Nowadays the bearded guys are replaced by pimpled youths in Adidas, and it’s
those who are dreaming up more SDx three-letter words. Either that, or the
people from IT are being told by sales: “Hey,
we need more three-letter word technologies; can you guys come up with something for
us to use and earn a few more euros?” As I’m writing this post, the SDDC is just a bunch of
virtualised servers, (in some cases) of software-defined storage, and SDN. I’m
not sure the SDDC technology is there yet. In my book, SDDC only can be substantiated
by the full virtualisation of the three cornerstones of data infrastructure:
SDC (Software Defined Compute: Memory and CPUs), SDS (Software Defined
Storage - the place where we put our stuff, allowing for deduplication, compression, pooling of different types of storage media, and so on), and SDN (Software Defined Network - the stuff that gets things from one place to another). With the possible exception of
the SDN, none of these technologies are at a point where they can be put
together into one seamless, and trouble-free computing ecosystem. I know what
you’re thinking as you read this lines: “But
Amazon, Google, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft already use infant SDDCs”.
Quite true. But don’t forget any one of those companies have the staff to work
the kinks out of them. Without the proper staff forget it!
Lowe’s book has
some good stuff by incorporating research data from more than 1,200 IT pros
from 53 countries, also tracing the evolution of enterprise data centres, from
legacy islands of data through virtualisation and cloud computing, to the rise
of software-defined centres. As stated in the book, the question is not whether
we should adopt cloud computing or not. The crux of the matter is whether we’ve
found the right implementation to go along with our own business needs. Nowadays
we all use smartphones, web email, have Facebook accounts, Google accounts. Why
do you think this is happening? Are we all stupid? Of course not. Cloud computing
resources are omnipresent and it’s the new way we interact and exchange
information with each other. There's no way around it. It’s more efficient, more social, more scalable
and I dare say more secure. It may also lower cost depending on the type of
implementation. This benefits everyone. Each business is the way in into this
ecosystem, making them social and giving them a voice. The only thing Lowe,
Davis and Green don’t say is that Cloud Adoption is full of deadly perils…The
picture they paint seems too rosy for me, and I’m in the trenches, so I know what I’m
talking about. I’d have liked to see more stuff on the pitfalls-side of things. There are a
lot of them. The IT Data Centre guys doing the implementations have to be aware the road is
not paved in gold all the way; there are also a lot of mud and pot-holes…they must bring a dinghy and their Wellington boots along for the ride when
participating, running, or sponsoring an infrastructure project aimed at taking my beloved stuff into the Cloud. Mum’s the word.
SF = Speculative
Fiction.
