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Volume 4, Issue 10 - December, 2009 - © 2009 by Moose Logic, All Rights Reserved
Cover Story: What the Heck Is Cloud Computing?
Reindeer Trivia Quiz
Things You Probably Didn't Know About Bingo
Citrix Announces Campus-Wide Licensing Option for XenDesktop 4
Cranberry-Citrus Holiday Punch
Moose Logic Coming Events
December Recommended Reading
(Moose Views is a monthly newsletter prepared by Moose Logic to bring you information and tips on maintaining a trouble-free network)
What the Heck Is Cloud Computing?
Thirty years ago, Mitzi Gaynor had a hit with Peter Allen’s Everything Old is New Again.
(You can catch
her performance on YouTube.)
Sometimes I think this should be a high-tech theme song, because we keep seeing the same
concepts coming back again and again, just spun a slightly different way.
Back in the late 1990s, the industry was abuzz with talk about how Application Service Providers (“ASPs”) were going to change the world of computing. Do a Google search for “ASP” today, and you’ll find a lot of hits related to Active Server Pages, the Association of Surfing Professionals, the Association of Shareware Professionals, the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, and the Appalachia Service Project. If you look closely, you may spot the link to the Wikipedia article about Application Service Providers. What you won’t see is a lot of companies boldly identifying themselves as Application Service Providers, because when the ASP industry failed to product the “hockey stick” revenue curve that the pundits were projecting, it quickly because unfashionable (and unattractive to the venture capital community) to be one.
The most perceptive observation I heard at the time was uttered by a former CIO of a large insurance company, who said (and I’m paraphrasing here, because this was a long time ago), “As I look across the landscape of Application Service Providers, there are none of them out there that I would trust with my data, because there isn’t a single one of them that I believe cares as much about my data as I do. And until they can show me that they care as much about my data as I do – by showing me how they’re going to take care of it – they’re not getting my data.”
The ASPs who were able to build successful practices were, in most cases, companies who built offerings around their own products, e.g., accounting software vendors who built an ASP practice around their own software offerings. They were successful, in part, because they had already built a trust relationship with business customers through the consulting and customization work they had done, and their customers were already, to some degree, dependent on them.
But the world turns, and in a few years we began to hear about a cool new concept called “Software as a Service” (“SaaS”). SaaS was really going to set the world on fire and change the way computing was done. A few of us scratched our heads and asked, “Wait a minute – how is a SaaS provider different from an ASP?” but the hype machine was in overdrive. (The cynical answer was: “The difference is that venture capital is actually available to SaaS providers.”)
A few companies quietly, and gradually, made their mark: Salesforce.com has built a great business model around their hosted CRM solution. Some businesses have elected to outsource their email entirely to Google or some other email hosting provider. You can now find service offerings for hosted SharePoint services, hosted Microsoft CRM services, and a variety of hosted accounting applications.
Has that market grown? Yes it has. Has it completely changed the way corporate computing is done? No it hasn’t. Why hasn’t it? Well, partly because of the age-old question, “Who do I really trust with my critical data?”
The latest iteration of this concept is “Cloud Computing.” It’s hard enough to even pin the “experts” down and get them to agree on a definition of Cloud Computing. Back in February, the Wharton Business School hosted a panel discussion of six industry leaders who tried to answer that question. You can read about it in this ZDnet blog post, entitled So what is the cloud, exactly? Experts want to know..
Vance Checkletts, who was involved early on in the Mozy.com operation (on-line backup services) and had moved on to be COO of an EMC subsidiary, was quoted as saying, “Cloud is the worst buzzword I’ve ever heard.” It’s obvious that even these guys were struggling to put together a precise definition, other than that it involves abstracting applications from hardware and networks. To many of us who have been hanging around this industry for a while, that sounds an awful lot like SaaS and, yes, ASP.
Of course, there are some newer technologies – virtualization in particular – that make this latest iteration much more flexible in terms of the ability to rapidly provision processing and storage resources. Many would say that this ability to rapidly and flexibly scale computing capacity up and down is a unique characteristic of “Cloud Computing.” In fact, many companies who have built virtualized infrastructures of their own that exhibit these characteristics are calling them “Private Clouds.”
As most Moose Views readers know, we’re in the business of building these kinds of infrastructures for our customers, so we obviously believe that there is a lot of business value to be derived from a virtualized, highly agile, flexible, and scalable computing environment. And if it makes business sense – by which I mean it passes the acid test of any expenditure: “Will this make my business better?” – then you’re welcome to call it whatever you want to call it, including a “Private Cloud.”
But beware the hype machine. We are, in this author’s opinion, a long way from the point where all corporate computing will move onto some third-party’s hosted infrastructure. Why? Because the trust issue is still there. If my bits are on your hard drive, who really owns the data? If I fall behind on my payments, or even get into what I consider to be a legitimate billing dispute, can my data be held hostage? Is it going to be subject to subpoena, and perhaps disclosure, because of some legal action that you’re going through that’s unrelated to my business? If I want to change hosting providers, how do I get my data back? How is my data being protected, backed up, archived, etc.? (The recent T-Mobile Sidekick debacle should make anyone think twice about that last question.) If you do lose my data, despite all of your assurances to the contrary, what recourse do I have? And, finally, if I’m subject to strict regulatory requirements related to HIPAA, Sarbanes-Oxley, or other regulations, how can I guarantee that I’m in compliance if the data is not under my direct control?
With time, answers to all these questions will become clear…or at least clearer than they are today. In the meantime, I’m not suggesting that businesses shouldn’t look at what services are available out there that might deliver business value. I am suggesting that Cloud Computing is not going to be the answer to everyone’s computing needs, just as SaaS was not and ASPs were not. Like it or not, change in enterprise computing tends to be evolutionary, not revolutionary. The most likely scenario is that Cloud services will prove to be the best solution for certain aspects of computing, such as supporting short-term “burst capacity” at time of peak loads, or extending on-premise assets to provide additional capabilities, and will gradually come to dominate those use cases. But I do not expect to see businesses ripping out their entire infrastructures and moving everything into the Cloud anytime soon.
So, as you evaluate what Cloud Computing may mean to your business, please take the time to think things through very carefully. And remember – your data is your business: if you lose it, chances are very good that your business is toast. So just pretend you have Gandalf whispering in your ear (“Is it secret? Is it safe?”) as you review those Service Level Agreements!
Additional reading:
“Windows Azure and the many faces of cloud”
“Beware the allure of Fool’s Cloud”
“Cloud Computing in the Enterprise – Private (Internal) Clouds"
Back in the late 1990s, the industry was abuzz with talk about how Application Service Providers (“ASPs”) were going to change the world of computing. Do a Google search for “ASP” today, and you’ll find a lot of hits related to Active Server Pages, the Association of Surfing Professionals, the Association of Shareware Professionals, the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, and the Appalachia Service Project. If you look closely, you may spot the link to the Wikipedia article about Application Service Providers. What you won’t see is a lot of companies boldly identifying themselves as Application Service Providers, because when the ASP industry failed to product the “hockey stick” revenue curve that the pundits were projecting, it quickly because unfashionable (and unattractive to the venture capital community) to be one.
The most perceptive observation I heard at the time was uttered by a former CIO of a large insurance company, who said (and I’m paraphrasing here, because this was a long time ago), “As I look across the landscape of Application Service Providers, there are none of them out there that I would trust with my data, because there isn’t a single one of them that I believe cares as much about my data as I do. And until they can show me that they care as much about my data as I do – by showing me how they’re going to take care of it – they’re not getting my data.”
The ASPs who were able to build successful practices were, in most cases, companies who built offerings around their own products, e.g., accounting software vendors who built an ASP practice around their own software offerings. They were successful, in part, because they had already built a trust relationship with business customers through the consulting and customization work they had done, and their customers were already, to some degree, dependent on them.
But the world turns, and in a few years we began to hear about a cool new concept called “Software as a Service” (“SaaS”). SaaS was really going to set the world on fire and change the way computing was done. A few of us scratched our heads and asked, “Wait a minute – how is a SaaS provider different from an ASP?” but the hype machine was in overdrive. (The cynical answer was: “The difference is that venture capital is actually available to SaaS providers.”)
A few companies quietly, and gradually, made their mark: Salesforce.com has built a great business model around their hosted CRM solution. Some businesses have elected to outsource their email entirely to Google or some other email hosting provider. You can now find service offerings for hosted SharePoint services, hosted Microsoft CRM services, and a variety of hosted accounting applications.
Has that market grown? Yes it has. Has it completely changed the way corporate computing is done? No it hasn’t. Why hasn’t it? Well, partly because of the age-old question, “Who do I really trust with my critical data?”
The latest iteration of this concept is “Cloud Computing.” It’s hard enough to even pin the “experts” down and get them to agree on a definition of Cloud Computing. Back in February, the Wharton Business School hosted a panel discussion of six industry leaders who tried to answer that question. You can read about it in this ZDnet blog post, entitled So what is the cloud, exactly? Experts want to know..
Vance Checkletts, who was involved early on in the Mozy.com operation (on-line backup services) and had moved on to be COO of an EMC subsidiary, was quoted as saying, “Cloud is the worst buzzword I’ve ever heard.” It’s obvious that even these guys were struggling to put together a precise definition, other than that it involves abstracting applications from hardware and networks. To many of us who have been hanging around this industry for a while, that sounds an awful lot like SaaS and, yes, ASP.
Of course, there are some newer technologies – virtualization in particular – that make this latest iteration much more flexible in terms of the ability to rapidly provision processing and storage resources. Many would say that this ability to rapidly and flexibly scale computing capacity up and down is a unique characteristic of “Cloud Computing.” In fact, many companies who have built virtualized infrastructures of their own that exhibit these characteristics are calling them “Private Clouds.”
As most Moose Views readers know, we’re in the business of building these kinds of infrastructures for our customers, so we obviously believe that there is a lot of business value to be derived from a virtualized, highly agile, flexible, and scalable computing environment. And if it makes business sense – by which I mean it passes the acid test of any expenditure: “Will this make my business better?” – then you’re welcome to call it whatever you want to call it, including a “Private Cloud.”
But beware the hype machine. We are, in this author’s opinion, a long way from the point where all corporate computing will move onto some third-party’s hosted infrastructure. Why? Because the trust issue is still there. If my bits are on your hard drive, who really owns the data? If I fall behind on my payments, or even get into what I consider to be a legitimate billing dispute, can my data be held hostage? Is it going to be subject to subpoena, and perhaps disclosure, because of some legal action that you’re going through that’s unrelated to my business? If I want to change hosting providers, how do I get my data back? How is my data being protected, backed up, archived, etc.? (The recent T-Mobile Sidekick debacle should make anyone think twice about that last question.) If you do lose my data, despite all of your assurances to the contrary, what recourse do I have? And, finally, if I’m subject to strict regulatory requirements related to HIPAA, Sarbanes-Oxley, or other regulations, how can I guarantee that I’m in compliance if the data is not under my direct control?
With time, answers to all these questions will become clear…or at least clearer than they are today. In the meantime, I’m not suggesting that businesses shouldn’t look at what services are available out there that might deliver business value. I am suggesting that Cloud Computing is not going to be the answer to everyone’s computing needs, just as SaaS was not and ASPs were not. Like it or not, change in enterprise computing tends to be evolutionary, not revolutionary. The most likely scenario is that Cloud services will prove to be the best solution for certain aspects of computing, such as supporting short-term “burst capacity” at time of peak loads, or extending on-premise assets to provide additional capabilities, and will gradually come to dominate those use cases. But I do not expect to see businesses ripping out their entire infrastructures and moving everything into the Cloud anytime soon.
So, as you evaluate what Cloud Computing may mean to your business, please take the time to think things through very carefully. And remember – your data is your business: if you lose it, chances are very good that your business is toast. So just pretend you have Gandalf whispering in your ear (“Is it secret? Is it safe?”) as you review those Service Level Agreements!
Additional reading:
“Windows Azure and the many faces of cloud”
“Beware the allure of Fool’s Cloud”
“Cloud Computing in the Enterprise – Private (Internal) Clouds"
Reindeer Trivia Quiz
This
is the time of year when the Moose has to relinquish the limelight to his close cousins, the
reindeer (for at least one night). Check your reindeer knowledge:
- True or False: Both male and female reindeer grow antlers in the summer.
- When do male reindeer drop their antlers?
- What is the term for the wild reindeer of North America?
- Where did reindeer originate?
- Reindeer were brought into Alaska from Siberia between 1862 and 1902. Why were they imported at that time?
- What is the main difference between cow's milk and reindeer's milk?
- How much does a full-grown male reindeer weigh?
- How far might wild reindeer migrate in a given year?
- What do reindeer eat?
- True or False: Reindeer are good swimmers.
Did You Know: Bingo
December
is Bingo’s Birthday Month.Bingo is derived from an Italian game called Lo Giuoco del Lotto d’Italia, popular during the 16th century.
The game called Bingo was first manufactured by Edwin S. Lowe in 1929. It was originally called “Beano,” but Lowe changed the name after an excited player called out “Bingo” rather than “Beano.” Liking that name better, Lowe decided to change the name of the game.
Lowe hired a mathematician named Carl Leffler of Columbia University to help him create 6000 unique Bingo cards. Being paid on a cards produced basis, Leffler found the more he made the harder his job was. Near the end, he was charging $100 for each unique card. Soon after completing the task of creating all 6000 cards, the professor went insane.
Bingo raises more than $5 billion every year for charitable organizations in the United States.
Bingo is played on every continent and in 90 percent of the world’s countries.
At the height of the Depression in the U.S., it is estimated that 10,000 bingo games were played every week. Today, Americans spend more than $90 million each week on bingo.
The largest Bingo game in history was played in New York’s Teaneck Armory. The game had 60,000 players, with another 10,000 being turned away at the door. Ten automobiles were given away.
Citrix Announces Campus-Wide Licensing Option for XenDesktop 4
Citrix has announced a new Campus-Wide licensing option for XenDesktop 4. Here’s what you
need to know about it:
- The licensing is based on the concept of “Full Time Equivalents” (FTEs), using the same definition as a Microsoft Campus or School Agreement (and you must have one of those to qualify for the Citrix offering).
- For K-12 educational institutions, a “campus” may be defined as a single school, or as an entire school district. Either way, all FTE students must be licensed – either all FTE students attending that single school, or all FTE students in all schools within the district.
- For higher educational institutions, a “campus” may defined as “a school or department, an individual location, or an entire multi-campus university.” For example, it could be the entire University of YourState, the University of YourState SpecificCity Campus, or just the University of YourState School of Engineering. Again, whichever definition you choose, you must license all FTE students that fall within that definition.
- You are not required to license faculty and staff, but if you choose to do so, you must license 100% of them, “using the same FTE calculation as your Microsoft Campus or School Agreement.”
- There is a minimum purchase requirement of 1,000 licenses. You don’t necessarily have to have 1,000 students, you just have to buy 1,000 licenses.
- This is an annual license (you pay it every year), and the suggested pricing is as follows:
- XenDesktop Platinum—$29/year/FTE
- XenDesktop Enterprise—$19/year/FTE
- XenDesktop VDI—$9/year/FTE
Cranberry-Citrix Holiday Punch
1 quart cranberry juice
1 cup sugar
2 cups orange juice
1 cup pineapple juice
3/4 cup lemon juice, freshly squeezed
2 cups chilled ginger ale
1 pint rainbow sherbet
Blend cranberry juice, sugar, and other fruit juices. Refrigerate until ready to serve. At serving time, stir in the rainbow sherbet and ginger ale and sweeten to taste.
1 cup sugar
2 cups orange juice
1 cup pineapple juice
3/4 cup lemon juice, freshly squeezed
2 cups chilled ginger ale
1 pint rainbow sherbet
Blend cranberry juice, sugar, and other fruit juices. Refrigerate until ready to serve. At serving time, stir in the rainbow sherbet and ginger ale and sweeten to taste.
Answers to Reindeer Trivia Quiz
- True
- At the beginning of winter, usually late November to mid December.
- Caribou.
- Northern Europe and Asia.
- They were imported following a famine to replace the caribou that were over-hunted.
- Reindeer's milk is four times richer in butter fat than cow's milk.
- 400 pounds.
- They can migrate more than 1,000 miles each year.
- Mushrooms, lichen, and Arctic vegetation.
- True - they are aided by a layer of hollow hairs on top of their undercoat that provides buoyancy.
