The forum was completed about Cloud-Services with the focus on the Windows Azure Services. The main speaker, David Chappell, has great eloquence. Sapo team were the most interceptive at the event making a lot of questions with the subject well study trying to see how Windows Azure Service can fit in our objectives/projects.

Windows Azure Services is on CTP and there’s a long way to go. In my personal opinion Windows Azure Services have nice features but for now shouldn’t be compared with AWS that are much more mature. The CTP release might have profound differences to the first deployment so I’m expecting great new stuff.

I’ll write a lot about windows Azure Services Be aware…

This Friday morning I gave a talk at Shift08 about SaaS/Cloud-Computing. The goal was to give an overview in 40 min about what is the paradigm that SaaS/Cloud-Computing is on, business models and some issues about SLA and BCP.

I was I little bit nervous (my last talk was in June) and my presentation was made on the fly because I have others threads that I’m handling right now.

In my personal opinion the talk went well but it was far away from my latest ones.

I hope everyone enjoy it.

For me Shift was just my talk. I didn’t managed time for enjoy it . However, for what I saw and heard it was AWESOME!

Few days ago I had to speak with someone who knows a lot of architecture and services orientation (an architect… yes I was brave but it doesn’t matter the bravery only if you won in the end) about Software plus Services and my talk wasn’t as good as I liked it to be. Because I don’t lose a “battle” two times in a row I started to make a deeper study about Software plus Services. In this matter, by the way, I don’t have the knowledge needed… YET!!! Hope someday I’ll have it… I’ll work for it, that’s for sure…

Anyway, in this quest (if you have good information, please, send it for me…) I’ve stumbled across a challenge made by Gianpaolo Carraro (Director, Architecture Strategy at Microsoft): “Help us spread the word about Software-plus-Services. All you need is a video camera, this script, and lots of creativity!”

You need to read the story that Gianpaolo made to make clear what S+S is all about and make a movie of it. The win prizes are: S+S t-shirt, Microsoft LifeCam, the top 10 viewed videos will be shown at Tech-Ed SEA and the winner a weekend in Macau!!! Death line 31 of July.

I’m not very good as a “movie maker” L If you need any help you be my guest and mailme!!!

The link is here: http://www.bringitalltogether.asia/

I didn’t do backups till now! What changed?

Not a long time ago, making backups was a task that I had to burn some CD/DVD or buy an external disk. In both cases I had to buy something and the true reliability wasn’t very good because I sooner or later will need the disk space or I’ll lose the track of by CD/DVD backups. If you think in a SMB (Small, Medium Business) you will not buy a robot like ADIC and Veritas software to do it. You will use tapes and some kind of less expensive backup software. Typically the backups were only made to servers and clients have to push and pull their files into a file server.

This architectural model has its benefices but it has some big disadvantages. One of these disadvantages is that the end user is the one that will choose if he will put the file locally or in the server. Ok, you can use for example Sync Center of Microsoft and if you are, it’s right, because if most of the work is made on ERPs, CRMs, Intranets (SharePoint), Intranet Apps, etc, there are lots of files that are in the chain of business but not on constrained to client-server architecture.  Another huge disadvantage is that if you really want to be certain about your data security you will need real Business Continuity Plan (BCP) and be willing to worry/pay for the infrastructures (co-allocation, outsourced or indoor) – it depend what tier that you chose to work with from your BCP and scalability issues.

Off course we continue to talk about SMB because if you want I can speak about Citrix and other systems that give to an organization a higher adaptability and some “bullet proof” systems.

So, I mentioned some disadvantages about “local” backups and I’ll give some reasons to have an indoor backup system. I think that they are quite obvious. It’s faster to recover the data and apps (depend of the tier); SLA (Service Level Agreement) is mostly at 99.99%; the security worries are mostly physical because typically you have all in tapes or in some kind of data storage equipment.

Back to track! I think I made my point of view and this post it’s not about “traditional business continuance or personal backup systems VS Cloud backup” it’s about Cloud Backup.

Cloud backup is a business that emerged from the Cloud Computing business a technological model. Indeed, I didn’t define Cloud Computing but I’ll do it in a couple of days. Don’t worry… One of the foundations of Cloud Computing is large scale advocate cheap storage and computing. In this case we are only interested in Cloud Storage and more accurate Cloud Simple Storage or as some people call it D2C (disk-to-cloud). To contextualize a little more, in the next computing paradigm universe it will exists two major types of computing: Cloud Computing and Proximity Computing. Cloud the Cloud is a place that storage, process and delivers information and Proximity Computing is more for Human-Machine interaction. This means that your files will be on the Cloud and not in your terminal (PC, mobile, whatever… ) because them will be asked to display information and interact with you. I’m sure that you are not seeing where I’m going!?!

In nowadays, as I said before, you have your files in your PC (any device you use) and in a working context in your company server. So, it will be great if you can make a backup without any effort or even worry about all the issues that I wrote above, isn’t it?

The key points that support Cloud Storage are:

- Is very cheap or free

- Large amount of storage (it can be unlimited)

- Automatic

- Incremental

- Access anywhere

- Simple

- Organize

- Instant

- Secure (encryption 448-bit and so one, datacenter with high BCP tier level)

The Cloud Backup market is growing at a huge velocity and for that I’ll talking about some of these players. Most of the companies that are selling D2D solutions based on an IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) of AWS (Amazon Web Services). These companies are ISV (Independent Sales Vendors) of IaaSs providers and even if it isn’t built they can mashup with several IaaS. ISVs mount their business by making a webbase contract with AWS, developing a synchronization software and developing a website that can be using AWS with EC2 too – as simple as that! However, HP (Hewlett Parckard) with the project HP upline already have it own infrastructure and service! Yes, Dell, HP, Sun, IBM, Microsoft and other are turning their business to the cloud…

Mozy, Carbonite, PutPlace and HP upline are some of the companies offering D2D solutions. Architecturally it’s quite different, though, and it has a different pricing structure. Mozy and PutPlace (beta for now) are given 2Gb of backup storage but with PutPlace you can share your files through the web (they are expanding their services). Carbonite, HP upline, MozyPro, PutPlace provide Cloud Storage for a price and they have a pretty good pricing plan!

The biggest disadvantage it can be the bandwidth and latency of the connection for making the backup and the restore. However, in some of these services you have a web application (SaaS) to where it possible to browse the backup files and download use them.

Ok, but how Cloud backup works? I’ll let for later how IaaS are working therefore I’ll talk how a SMB and individual user can use it.

As an individual user I’m using Mozy! I had to sign up in their website, the usual registration procedure, and install an application “MozyHome Remote” that’s responsible of making the management of my files. Before, I had to configure “MozyHome Remote” declaring what kind of files and folders that I want to backup! Now, Mozy will be responsible for time to time seeing if there were some modification on my files and make the respectively synchronization. As simple as that.

As SMB IT Consultant, first I’ll do the same above for each collaborator. Afterwards I’ll calculate if my bandwidth and amount of data to backup can be synchronized in the established timeframe for backups. If not, I have two choices: is possible backup only the critical data or data that can’t be used in a nom VPN to share; or hiring others ISP to performed the upload in different networks. Even so, it’s possible that, for now, making this kind of backup doesn’t bring the glamour that brings for end users. As application are being built, I’m sure, that will make the synchronization with servers-clients.

Microsoft developed Live Mesh and I’m anxious to see it working not just because of these features but because of the implementations of S+S

Ohh… If every data will be processed, storage and delivered by the Cloud why do we need backups? Our Cloud provider should be the one that has to worry about it! I don’t think so! Now you see where I’m going!?! In the Cloud you are able to make mashups and this approach can be the 99,99% of reliability that everyone is asking for. You will be able to have your Live Mesh, Mozy, EC2, Google App Engine, online CRM/ERP, etc and still when you want to change of service provider you will be doing that in a click! That’s the future… halleluiah…

First of all this post is an opinion based on my perspective of the new actual Microsoft and my knowledge about Cloud Computing! It’s important that you understand that I don’t have any inside information or whatsoever!

Currently, the big earning of Microsoft is licensing. Their customer has to pay a licensing fee, buy their own computer/servers and hire their own technology staff. So, the TCO (Total Cost of ownership) is high and, worse, this business model is not so flexible and so adaptable to the necessities that the organizations have to face in a global village.

If you think in a software/infrastructures view you have to answer two questions: Is your software/ infrastructures supporting and adding real/full value to the organization? Will your software/ infrastructures support/handle the organization needs in medium/long term? It’s now, that we start to think that scalability, elasticity and adaptability is very important for the life of an organization/enterprise. This issues are so important that organizations don’t bother to lost some of the in-plan features that some software architectural models like componentry, three-tier, event driven, etc , implemented. Instead, a conceptual view that software should be looked as a service brought SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) the mother of business models like: SaaS (Software as a Service), PaaS (Platform as a Service), S+S (Software plus Services), WOA (Webservices plus objects), etc…

So, in a Service business world, Microsoft business model (till now the traditional model) has not the same importance and in consequence the same revenue! However, Microsoft is not alone in the market. Microsoft has to count with their partners, ISVs (Independent Sales Vendors), final customer s, etc… It’s a really complex equation with heavy calculations! I’m not saying that is an impossible equation, I’m only saying that it’s a little messy and the approach has to be well designed in order to a continuous win-win relation can be guaranteed.

Microsoft didn’t pass right to SaaS and innovates the actual business model adding a kind of SaaS. The result was a new business model that mixes traditional software with cloud based software – Services plus Software (later on I will talk more deeply about this business model). Ok, we can see that this model is a way to not lose the old business model and it opens doors to the future. In my personal point of view and actual Microsoft state is the right approach.

However, we need to think that if we are speaking of Services, a service is not bought, is rented. A service business model is extremely demanding to an organization because the customer s will not pay a license fee plus maintenance, instead will be made a contract to the customer and is paid from time to time. This means that you will not receive a bucket of money and “bye, bye customer… see you in the next version” but you will need to have a true customer orientation and your earnings will be a reflection of this relationship. Your service it really has to be an asset to your customer and therefore the two questions above, without any doubt, need to be answer: YES, YES!!!

So, how Microsoft can make money in a world which is not the leader or the only huge player?

(In a next post

Principles of writing: SaaS\Cloud-Computing )

I very glad to announce, for all that didn’t know of course, that I’m getting happier everyday with Microsoft, because they are getting lighter and understanding what will be the future. It was and it will be a difficult path for them to cross but I think that it will worth it.

Another step was made by starting to not ignore enterprise 2.0 (and maybe other buzz 2.0). They first started to put SharePoint, SQL Server and BizTalk on the “Cloud”. Now, with Microsoft Office Labs they are building (testing the prototype) an internal Facebook-like social network that will be deployed with SharePoint plus office. SharePoint already have wikis and other social apps but it was not a true social Intranet and it wasn’t very used – at least in Portugal.

I know some cases that the organizations stopped buying Intranets and started to use “Facebooks” (a business model Platform as a Service) because more than 80% of their employees were using FaceBook. But the “Cloud” services have some handicaps and one of the biggest is security (can I trust on the Cloud?!?). Organizations are using FaceBook as an Intranet but the files are still staying on the shell (not in the Cloud). I think that is for now and Microsoft too! For the time being Microsoft will upgrade all (all that are possible) their products toward Software plus Services business model.

For internal marketing this “tool” will be great, because big organizations already understood that knowing their employees brings fantastic inputs to the chain of value and ultimately to the leadership and motivation field.

I promise to approach Software plus Services, Marketing 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, etc 2.0 more deeply soon!!!

The bell rang. And I wasn’t very pleased about open the door to anyone. However, I went to the first floor of my house and take a pick on the window. Ohhh… DHL personal… My book… I ran to the door and picked the box.

Finally the one of the biggest missing peace for my look-a-like thesis has arrived: The Big Switch.

I’ll share in this blog several pieces and thoughts about SaaS\Cloud-Computing and surely lots of them will be referenced to this book.

Para que o meu tema fosse aprovado no âmbito de Projecto\Estágio (PESTI) foi necessário elaborar o enquadramento do tema SaaS\Cloud-Computing.

Enquadramento:

The World is spinning faster! As necessidades crescentes da aldeia global acarretam novos desafios às tecnologias da informação. Adaptabilidade, flexibilidade, eficiência e eficácia são alguns dos conceitos que traduzem os desafios de um mundo exigente e altamente competitivo que para as tecnologias da informação implicam maior capacidade de processamento, maior capacidade de armazenamento de dados, maior acessibilidade à dados/informação, maior disponibilidade dos serviços, software mais adaptável/escalável às necessidades de negócio e custos mais controláveis e escaláveis.

Daí emerge um novo paradigma SaaS/Cloud-Computing que permite colmatar as necessidades supracitadas usando sistemas de computação e armazenamento distribuído e aplicações de browser que são acessíveis através da “Cloud” (metáfora para Internet). Este modelo de negócio é tecnologicamente exigente sendo que actualmente só organizações com um elevado capital tecnológico e monetário são capazes de o implementar como Google, IBM, Microsoft, Amazon, Salesforce, etc. Para as empresas não providers os serviços são contratados como outsourcing de hardware e software o que permite reduzir o TCO (Total Cost Ownership) que numa fase inicial é amplamente convergente às necessidades das startups.

Para além da nova perspectiva que o SaaS/Cloud-Computing apresenta ao mundo empresarial também abre novos horizontes à ciência devido à enorme capacidade de processamento inerente.

O SaaS/Cloud-Computing como se apresenta como uma nova perspectiva para as tecnologias da informação está agitar o mercado que responde com novas arquitecturas (Software plus Software, Webservices Object Architecture plus Software Object Architecture e Platform as a Service), modelos de negócio (Managed services providers) e tecnologias. As análises mais optimistas indicam que o SaaS/Cloud-Computing estará numa fase operacional relevante dentro de 4 a 5 anos o que significa que o paradigma ainda se encontra numa fase incipiente.

Fazendo uma retrospectiva verifico que me foquei no Cloud-Computing e deixei de parte o SaaS.

Objectivos:

A temática SaaS/Cloud-Computing está em voga e coloca questões que se pretendem estudar. Assim definir-se os seguintes objectivos tangíveis:

· Definição de SaaS/Cloud-Computing;

· Aferição de desafios e vantagens do SaaS/Cloud-Computing;

· Estudar as plataformas existents;

· Estudar modelos de negócio associados;

· Demonstrar conceito;

(Principles of writing: SaaS\Cloud-Computing)

I announce it in Twitter that I’m making a theoretical work (look-a-like thesis) about SaaS\Cloud-Computing. Therefore, I’ve decided to use my blog to post my reflections and acquire knowledge about the issue.

However, I can’t promise that all my post or even the most part of them will be written in English because I’ll perform my “thesis” in Portuguese. Off course, for me is quite easier to write in Portuguese than in English because it’s my first language.

Settle down a few points for the SaaS\Cloud-Computing writing:

· Everything that I’ll write it’s not a exact science;

· I’m studying the issue so it’s possible that I can contradict myself a few times;

· There aren’t many documentation about Cloud-Computing, most part of it it’s picked up on technical blogs;

I hope you enjoy my writing but be extra careful. In the end maybe I publish my look-a-like thesis here.