“Anything” as a Service (XaaS) .. you knew this was coming ..

March 18, 2011 Leave a comment

In the Cloud Computing world, where so many things are in flux, it should come as no surprise that virtually “anything” can (and will) be provided “as a Service”. For starters, we had (I go into more detail on this from my “Cloud Computing: IT as a Service” post):

  • IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service): Virtual, but logically-physical hardware. Servers in the sky that you can connect to remotely as though they were actual hardware. You expend a lot of effort into managing servers (imaging, patching, load-balancing, etc.), but have high flexibility as they support most types of existing applications you can deploy without rewriting or porting code.
  • PaaS (Platform as a Service): A virtual platform, where applications are deployed as services. You have next to no server management, and automagic scalability is built-in, but an existing application code must be written or ported into the new environment.
  • SaaS (Software as a Service): An application you customize / configure atop a base application, owned by the service provider. Some allow only configuration (tailoring organization- and and user-specific information), while others have higher levels of UI customization opportunities; think adding applications to Facebook or customizing your iGoogle or MSN home pages.

Then, realization and logical extension brought us (in no particular order):

  • IT as a Service (ITaaS): Standard IT applications, like Email, online file sharing,  online backup, online meetings online workspace collaboration and more.  The keyword here is ‘online’, of course, but these are commodity (common, and available from multiple providers) applications that every organization utilizes to one extent or another. ITaaS creates the opportunity for an organization to make a ‘rent’ versus ‘buy and maintain’ decision that can help them preserve capital.
  • Extended ITaaS applications grew out of the above and include online disaster recovery (backup plus online storage), online synchronization (synchronization plus online storage), online content sharing (photo uploads, players for slide shows plus online storage) and more. Thanks to Cloud Computing, any size company can offer value-added services to enable these functions, acquire customers and pocket the difference between what they collect from their users and their monthly Cloud Computing fees.

For background, let me discuss some earlier methodologies and new technologies:

  • Application programming interfaces (APIs): Command and content structures exposed by a software program to allow access by another program. APIs allow the second program to control and obtain data from the first. We’ve had APIs for years and years.
  • Web Services: APIs exposed to the Internet and accessible by web sites, web applications and other web services. Web services are used to provide data to most client applications .. odds are, your mobile phone gets weather data from one web service, bus information from another, and so on. I discuss this at length in “Composite Applications: Do You Use Them?”. The answer is: “yes”, though you may not realize it.

With these, evolution brings us to:

  • Content as a Service: Previously known as “web pages” (I’m kidding .. a little). Once a standard connection methodology (Web Services) allowed programmatic access to applications (via APIs), the sky becomes the limit. Content contained web pages and enjoyed by end users could now be mashed into other applications on other sites. The new content enhances the host application, making it a more valuable resource. Zillow is a good example of a site that does this: publicly-available data like maps and real estate tax records are mashed together with local multiple-listing services data (which may or may not be available at no cost), resulting in a site that displays map with home plats, taxes, prices and realtor references (and more) that the user can use to do research.
  • Data as a Service: Lots of companies have lots of accumulated data. Some accept the data in the form of online customer backups from their products, like Intuit (Quicken). Intuit could (I do not know if they do this) create an anonymous data warehouse with this end user data, assembling income and spending patterns by geography, and providing this data as a service to companies making business decisions about branch locations based on these criteria.

While assembling these data is only an API access away, creating and validating business use cases for these assemblies is the real magic in this cauldron. Many companies are providing programmatic access to composite content and data as a service, and for a price. Aggregators of these data (Microsoft’s Windows Azure Marketplace, for one) broker transactions and collect fees for data access. Virtually any company can buy and sell data through this kind of marketplace, making even more interesting business models.

There’s more (there always is). Applications as a service is a paradigm that has been around for a long time, but are now expanding into more fee- and transaction-based models, including those with API access.

Back to the original topic: Are we now in the world of ‘anything-as-a-service’? Does XaaS exist?

It does, and you’re using it .. even though you might not realize it.

Filed under Architecture, Cloud

How Well Does Your Architecture Accommodate Change?

March 2, 2011 Leave a comment

Designing and maintaining a flexible architecture is the grail of the IT, application development and business triumvirate in a company. A flexible architecture allows:

  • Rapid addition of new, and extending existing application features.
  • Enhancing applications by including data from internal and external sources.
  • Exposing application data to a wider variety of devices and audiences.

With this flexibility, the business can pursue opportunities with minimal impact to baseline infrastructure.

The sad part: many architectures evolve (or mutate) over time, adding new, function-enhancing components to existing components as afterthoughts. In short, this is not an ideal scenario. The company may have achieved short-term business goals, but in an inflexible (and risk-ridden) way.

Without a flexible architecture, we see more than technical challenges: we see friction in company units:

  • IT and development can be seen as blockers, while the business is viewed as making unreasonable demands.
  • Time-to-market, and therefore, potential competitive advantage is lost.
  • Development cycles can be disrupted, adding significant expense to projects and products .

How do flexibility constraints manifest in the enterprise?

  • Physical and IT: not enough servers and / or not enough time / resources to deploy them.
  • Development of new features takes too long to code, or application / IT infrastructure won’t support enablement without changes to underlying components.
  • Access to internal and external data is restricted by policy, especially if business requirements require enhanced security levels in light of the modern online world.

If poorly-supported changes are implemented, success can become company’s worst enemy. Launching a product or feature atop an architecture that isn’t ready creates a new set of issues:

  • End user impact: users have a less-than-positive experience with your product.
  • Competitive risk: your great and game-changing ideas are exposed to the world before your application is ready for prime time.
  • Unanticipated downtime / impact on other systems: ‘bolt-on’ additions to an existing architecture can pose risks to the original components.

Avoiding issues and achieving success requires planning, execution and resources. The first two are wholly depending on an organization’s ability to complete IT and development projects. The last item is a hardware and resource issue that extending components into a solution that includes cloud computing (even if only on an interim basis) can help manage. Identifying your business goals and performing an inventory on your current state is an excellent place to start; a skilled architect can help you describe the future state and a migration path to your grail.

Filed under Architecture, Cloud

Cloud: Oh EC2 .. Say it ain’t so!

March 1, 2011 Leave a comment

Seen today when starting a single large EC2 instance:

Untitled

Gives another new meaning to the term ‘unlimited’.

Filed under Cloud

Cloud Computing: Migrating to Microsoft BPOS

December 25, 2010 Leave a comment

To make the search  engines happy: “Migrating Microsoft Small Business Server Exchange Server to BPOS”. Note that I did a full migration; not an email co-existence (where some users are BPOS and others are local).

This turned out to be pretty much a no-brainer .. although in the process, I made it harder than it needed to be (not on purpose, of course).  Here’s the short story:

Original State:

  • Microsoft Small Business Server 2000 (with Exchange 2000)
  • Microsoft POP3 Connector collecting mail from an internet email server
  • A mix of Windows XP and Windows 7 clients
  • A mix of Microsoft Office 2003, 2007 and 2010

Final State:

  • Exchange Online
  • A mix of Windows XP and Windows 7 clients (upgrade work in-progress)
  • (Mostly) Microsoft Office 2010

    My biggest concerns:

    • Avoiding mail interruption (MX record delays, profile confusion, etc.)
    • Preventing loss of email content
    • Migrating existing email to the online services

    As I’d migrated my own (a much smaller) domain to the cloud a few months ago, I figured I had it cooked. However, I was wrong. My steps were:

    • Create BPOS users and assign email services
    • Cut the MX record away from my domain to BPOS
    • Set up a second profile (pointing to BPOS) on each Outlook 2010 client
    • Drag and drop old email between profiles in Outlook.

    While this worked nicely (I have only five users on my domain), it was not optimal. I avoided email interruption and loss of email content, but I went to a much greater level of effort in the process. To my defense, Microsoft had not yet released the Exchange Email Migration Process document .. as it did not exist.

    Sometimes it’s hell to be an early adopter. That said: Kudos to the team at MS who built the migration tool.

    The correct (and easier) way? Well, start with a plan that includes:

    • Users: User list, size of each mailbox, user (or workstation) availability during / after the migration. Depending on the size of your domain, be prepared to create logical groups you can migrate in succession. Suggestion: Prepare good communication and ensure user rights: to keep your hands off the workstations, your users must be able to install software on their local machines.
    • Clients: I upgraded to Outlook 2010 as part of the migration; some before the migration, some after. Outlook 2003 and 2007 work just fine if you choose to remain on older versions. There appears to be no client-side difference as to when you do the upgrade.
    • Schedule: Migration is simple, but it does take time. If executed properly, users will receive new emails immediately, but may not have access to older emails without incurring complexity on the workstation (i.e., accessing multiple profiles).
    • Your availability: depending on the technical prowess of your users and the clarity of your instructions, you will have questions to address. Make sure you have time to work with your users and watch your migration process.

    I’m serious: make a plan. To get you started (these steps can occur in parallel):

    • With your LiveID, create your Microsoft Online Services account, identifying the services (and quantity of each) you want. You have an option of a 30-day trial before signing up for a one-year commitment. The full-meal deal is $10 / user / month. You’ll be asked to create an internal domain (something like yourdomain.microsoftonline.com) and an administrator account.
    • In the Microsoft Online Services Administration Center, create your users and assign desired services to each. Have the creation process email you their initial (system-assigned) password.
    • Ask your users to install the Microsoft Online Services Sign-in Client. This is a fairly simple process and a fast install. I asked my users to do the install but not the login, as I wanted to make sure everyone could get installed before wrapping myself up in loops that included system troubleshooting.
    • Validate your MX record. While you’re at it, confirm you can access your domain registrar to make changes to it. The validation process is harmless; that is, it won’t make any changes to your email domain. However, you must confirm with BPOS that you can redirect the record when the time comes. It takes about a day to confirm. Microsoft has registrar-specific instructions on the Migration pane in the Microsoft Online Services Administration Center.
    • Install Microsoft Online Services Migration Tools on a capable workstation (mine was pretty low-end). See the minimum requirements at Migration Tools Prerequisites. As the tool only migrations one email account at a time, you might try installing on more than one machine. The link to install is in the Microsoft Online Services Administration Center, under the ‘Migration’ tab.
    • Confirm your Migration Tool can connect to your local Exchange Server.

    When your MX record is validated AND your users have the Microsoft Online Services Sign-in Client installed AND you can connect to your local Exchange Server with the Migration Tools (the following steps can also occur in parallel):

    • Edit each user in the Microsoft Online Services Administration Center, changing the domain from yourdomain.microsoftonline.com to yourdomain.com.
    • Forward the system-assigned password instructions to your users (note: Microsoft could do a little better job of automating this, starting with a subject line that includes the user name), changing the domain name to yourdomain.com. Your users will sign in with the system-assigned password, changing it on their first login. When they do, the login client will set up a new Outlook profile with their full email address. Caveat: I don’t know what will happen if the current profile is named with full email address; mine were all ‘Outlook’. Possibility: if you create the users after you validate the MX record, you might be able to avoid the ‘changing the domain name’ step above. I didn’t.
    • Warn your users: they will see an empty Inbox after the previous step.  Have them close Outlook and select their old profile until their migration is initiated. Once their individual mailbox migration is initiated, they should use the new profile instead of the old. Microsoft did a nice job of email forwarding for in-process mailbox migrations; mail is delivered to both profiles. Possibility: you may want to run migrations after COB, advising users to log onto their new profiles in the morning. This depends on the number of mailboxes you need to migrate, and the size (i.e., time required ) of each.

    You’re now ready to go. The rest is actually simple:

    • Update your MX record (instructions for this on the Migration tab in the Microsoft Online Services Administration Center). Email will go to the old Exchange location and be forwarded to the new until the record is propagated. Once email stops showing up in the old profiles, the MX record is moved.
    • Run the Migration Tool, identifying the users you want to migrate.
    • Advise the users to start using their new profile.
    • Wait (bandwidth, mailbox size).
    • Watch for errors; I had a few users with corrupt records. Start another user while dealing with these.

    Once migration is complete (confirm this by email delivery to only the new profiles):

    • Write your users with instructions on how to change their default profile to the new. You can avoid deleting the old (depending on your retention policies); the OST will persist until you remove it.
    • Users will need to set up their email signatures; they can pull existing from their Sent Items folder.
    • Shut down your local Exchange Server services; archiving per your local policies.

    I managed to get all but one of the migrations without issue (record corruption errors I referenced above).  However, this was just in time for a service outage. Service outages happen; usually for only a few minutes.  During this time, the Outlook icon in the status bar will show a tiny hourglass, and your Outlook windows may freeze. Release this choked thread: mouse over the status bar icon, right-click and click ‘cancel server request’. Your mail windows will refresh so you can save drafts and documents.

    You can check the status of the service in your region with the links below .. HOWEVER it requires a login (dumb). If login service is hosed, so is the ability to get service status:

      Here’s what I saw tonight .. argh:

    image

    That said, the service is quite reliable, and I don’t need to manage my Exchange Servers anymore. Add to this the improved access to mobile and web clients, and you have a terrific commodity-based service you can share with your customers.

    Filed under Cloud

    Cloud Computing: BPOS Fun Facts

    December 6, 2010 Leave a comment

    I rummaged around the Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) site on behalf of a customer over the weekend. The customer currently has an (aging) Exchange Server on-premises, and we’re all keen to eliminate the silicon (and the associated pains) therein.

    Just what do you get from BPOS, you might ask? Besides getting out of managing your Exchange and SharePoint servers, it is suited for organizations that:

    • View messaging and collaboration as mission-critical.
    • Require security, reliability and access flexibility.
    • Want to avoid managing commodity IT functions in favor of focusing on strategic IT initiatives.

    BPOS is sold on a per-user, monthly charge basis; $10 / user / month for the suite (present-day pricing; see current pricing on the home page). Exchange Online is $5 / user / month by itself, other ala carte pricing can be found on the BPOS Home Page.

    Looking to do your own BPOS implementation? Microsoft has been most helpful in providing reams of documents to confirm you can use the service successfully.

    The simple answer? If your organization is, or can host these servers on-premises, you can enjoy (celebrate) the advantages of hardware-free management and reliable uptime.

    We’re sold; will capture and share our migration experience.

    Filed under Cloud

    Test Driving Office Web Apps: First Blush

    November 26, 2010 Leave a comment

    Had some spare time over the Thanksgiving holiday and thought I’d take the online versions of Microsoft Office applications for a little test drive.

    As I’ve been spending a lot of time in PowerPoint lately, I started here first. Most notable:

    • Lack of transitions
    • Lack of animations

    Not fatal, in themselves. However, most everything else I typically use is intact. I was able to create the short deck below in under ten minutes. Especially nice is support for SmartArt, those handy little art-lets to which you can add text in outline format (you’ll see flow slides in the presentation below):

    Not bad for ten minutes’ work; an additional minute to figure out how to share it across the web, and voila, instant availability.

    Excel is no slouch, either. Shortcuts like cell ranges (type ‘January’ in the first cell, then grab-and-drag the lower right to create the rest of the years’ labels), drag-and-copy and drag-and select work well. Formulas are a bit tricky at first (I expected to find them on the ‘Insert’ menu), but press the ‘=’ sign and let cell context-sensitivity do the rest .. I was able to total up rows and columns with ease. Control-key formatting (B, U and I) works with single cells and selected ranges. Graphing was a nice surprise; I built out a quick calendar and column range and it updated in near-real time as I changed data. Very nice.

    The best of the three (IMHO) is Word. Tables, spell-check, style-based headings and a bunch of other goodies are supported, along with bullets, numbered paragraphs, text alignment and quotations. I created the following document in less than five minutes with the help of my friends at Lorem Ipsum:

    http://cid-ecddcf497d93928b.office.live.com/embedicon.aspx/TestDocument.docx

    (update: no document preview because no ‘embed’ option for the link).

    Absent was support for table of contents, though .. will discuss that (and a few other bits) later.

    What about saving? With the Word WebApp, you have a save icon that stores the document in your SkyDrive. The PowerPoint and Excel WebApps have a “Where’s the save button” button that returns a response of “saved automatically” (also to SkyDrive). This does impede performance a bit, as there’s a fair bit of round-trip traffic going between your PC and the server. The “Save As” button will save a local copy, and the “Open in xyzzy” works nicely with local copies of the software (xyzzy, if installed).

    All in all, a very nice set of features to create, store and access documents from virtually anywhere. Unlike Office Live, you can work with Microsoft Office documents directly from http://office.live.com even on the Google Chrome browser.

    Oh: did the above paragraph confuse you? You’re not alone:

    • http://office.live.com gives you access to the online version of Microsoft Office applications and saves these documents to SkyDrive.
    • http://officelive.com is free web hosting and document storage .. however, you can also edit documents with the same online versions of Microsoft Office applications (as above) .. and they’re still stored in SkyDrive.

    .. someone should call the branding police Winking smile This may be why Microsoft is rebranding the whole online document thing under the umbrella of Office 365: now called Office Professional Plus, these WebApps join Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and Lync Online (formerly Microsoft Office Communicator).

    In my next pass at this, I’ll upload some locally-created documents with advanced features and see how the online versions deal with them.

    Filed under Cloud

    Cloud Computing: IT as a Service

    November 1, 2010 1 Comment

    At PDC last week, I heard Microsoft utter the umbrella term: “IT as a Service” to describe their Cloud Computing direction. In short, ITaaS encompasses the three commonly-known ‘as a Service’ offerings:

    • IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service): Virtual, but logically-physical hardware. Servers in the sky that you can connect to remotely as though they were actual hardware. You expend a lot of effort into managing servers (imaging, patching, load-balancing, etc.), but have high flexibility as they support most types of existing applications you can deploy without rewriting or porting code. Amazon has capability in this space, as does VMWare.
    • PaaS (Platform as a Service): A virtual platform, where applications are deployed as services. You have next to no server management, and automagic scalability is built-in, but an existing application code must be ported to the new environment. Google AppEngine fits here, as does the application platform side of the Windows Azure Platform.
    • SaaS (Software as a Service): An application built atop a base application. Some allow only configuration (tailoring organization- and and user-specific information), while others have higher levels of UI customization opportunities; think adding applications to Facebook or customizing your iGoogle or MSN home pages. On the business size, Force.com is the big player in this place with their CRM application.

    Looking at the features now available in the Windows Azure Platform update, Microsoft looks to have the broadest offering in Cloud Computing; while light on packaged SaaS platforms, they’re heavy in the application development space.

    But, there’s more (there always is): The Microsoft offering has also taken familiar server-based applications into the cloud. Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Office Communications Online and Office LiveMeeting and made them available as subscription services, wrapping them under the umbrella brand: the Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS).

    Not to confuse the market with Darwinian brand evolution, Microsoft also announced Office 365, adding Office Professional Plus (web versions of Word, Excel, etc.) and Lync Online (unified communications) to the mix.

    Like the rest of the cloud, the business model is pay-as-you-go and your IT Department don’t need to muck about with hardware for near-commodity application functionality.

    Google is in the fray as well; Google Docs and GMail are Cloud alternatives for productivity applications and are mostly free for smaller organizations, although I found their documentation a bit daunting the last time I explored moving my domain there.

    While there are several TCO analyses out there; grab one (or ping me and I’ll assist). Suffice to say: for energy (not) expended managing servers, cloud computing should be on the radar of all organizations.

    Filed under Architecture, Cloud

    Is the Cloud a Bubble?

    July 9, 2009 Leave a comment

    We say "no" and so does Google, Amazon and others. We describe cloud computing as the future and are building tools to access data in the cloud (see Ray Ozzie in the MIX08 keynote). Collectively, there are lots and lots of data centers built and in progress to prove resolve in this arena.

    The concept of hosting applications in the sky is as old as the first dot-com bubble (circa 1997-2000), when Application Service Providers made a valiant stand to build a business model to compete with self-hosted software. Besides lacking a reproducible way to do customizations and a tendency to over- or under-build their data centers, many of these companies didn’t have the financial legs to survive the customer learning curve; acquiring and retaining customers took time.

    Most detrimentally, these companies lacked the trust that their cloud vision would allow their customers to regain control of their data in case of failure .. so the whole thing unraveled.

    I was there, btw.

    This model is significantly different. Data centers are owned by extremely well-funded entities, support both commodity and specific software components and allow the hosting of customer-generated code.

    Today, Cloud Computing allows:

    • Fiscally-conscious VCs the ability to place a larger number of inexpensive bets, without having to deal with the cost and time associated with platform outlays. Further, if they hit a big one, scalability is built into the cloud by default, so no emergency (and time-consuming) build-outs.
    • Small development teams (or an individual) with vision and some coding expertise to host their dream in moments.
    • Businesses of all sizes to outsource commodity (and, for that matter, specialty) applications to reduce IT costs.

    The world-flattening Web has leveled the playing field to a point where an online presence of the smallest quilt shop in the Midwest can compete with the Macy’s White Sale. Commodity components like shopping carts, electronic transactions and advanced product display / selection can be dropped into a project to monetize the owner’s vision.

    Beyond monetization components, applications can be brought to life with a wide variety of real-world data: your location coupled with proximity to something you might want to buy, traffic or transit (you have to get there somehow) .. even knowing the weather can add value to an application.

    All of this goodness is not restricted to the browser. The power of the client (mobile or PC-based) can be harnessed to access data stored in the Cloud, a fundamental basis for our Software Plus Services model. This model can deliver unparalleled user experiences across a variety of devices.

    On the Cloud as a bubble; GigaOM disagrees in: "Bursting the Cloud Bubble: 5 Reasons It’s Not Just Hype".

    Filed under Cloud, Reference Posts

    Whoops: Did I say “Cloud-Line”?

    February 17, 2009 Leave a comment

    aYup: I did.

    On-line, off-line and “Cloud-Line”.

    The latter being a paradigm where information or services in the Cloud are accessible from a local or web client for consumption by the content owner, or their designates.

    Seems like it was forever ago that I coined: “Wetware”, as in hardware, software (obvious) and “Wet-Ware”, describing those of us who are (closely) human, and interact with computers.

    I rock.

    Filed under Cloud, Reference Posts

    Why did I compare “Cloud” to “SOA”?

    November 21, 2008 Leave a comment

    Color me busted. Don’t I look good?

    Right after publishing “Is the Cloud Getting ‘Clouded’” I got a ton (well; a lot for me) of email questioning my analogy of “overloaded terms” as comparing SOA to the Cloud.

    Some on the mails were from CTO-types and techies of companies with whom I am working (thanks for reading! Click on my ads and buy a lot of something!!).

    To avoid giving my opinion multiple times in emails, I’ll state it here. To those of you who emailed me: expect this link when I respond. Please note: this is not by way of defense, but rather of discussion .. I stand ready to receive all flames and pragmatic corrections to my words. With more brains and opinions, we are smarter overall.

    First: I am not comparing “SOA” to “Cloud”. Some infrastructure and integration bits aren’t too far off though, a number of parallel technologies and methodologies exist:

    • Remote (from your application perspective) processes and data.
    • Calls made via Web service to gain access to the remote processes and data.
    • Services that expose processes and data on the remote system.
    • Return values from the web service calls.

    Your application makes the calls and then acts on the return values to continue the work you need to accomplish .. but that really wasn’t my point.

    By way of background, I published “Services Orientation – The Architecture Formerly Known As SOA – Introduction” a few years ago. In this post, I made the statement that I felt the term “SOA” was misused as a noun. I feel SOA to be a paradigm or a methodology, rather than the modified noun usage, e.g., “Our enterprise sports a ‘services-oriented architecture’”.

    Yeah: let the grammar police arrest me for nuance. I will smile and nod.

    In the same way, the purposes of the “Clouded” post was to point out my feelings that “Cloud” is being misused, although not quite in the same way: Cloud has become the “catch-all” phrase for services in the sky, however, at the 100,000-foot level:

    The same “Cloud” (services and storage in the sky via the Internet), but different implementations, requiring different development architectures. However, similar web service access methodologies between the three. Clear as mud? Write me and I’ll connect you to the right folks on our side.

    P.S.: On SOA, why just an “Introduction”, you might ask. You might also ask “where’s the rest of the posts”? To be frank: I got busy. By the time I got back to that series, many of the questions I raised were being answered by myself and by others. It is totally my fault for not connecting the bits together. Write me, and I’ll send you links that help, or take a call with you to help sort it.

    Filed under Architecture, Cloud, Reference Posts

    ← Older posts

    Newer posts →

    Follow

    Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

    Join 220 other followers