Understanding its Slow Take-Off in Europe, June Cloud Computing Market

Transcription

1 Understanding its Slow Take-Off in Europe, June 2012 Cloud Computing Market

2 Table of Contents Abstract... 4 Introduction... 4 Cloud Computing Market Situation... 5 IaaS vs. PaaS vs. SaaS: Differences in Market Perspectives... 5 Public vs. private (and hybrid models)... 6 Reasons for Slow Take Off of the Cloud Computing Market General Market Confusion Differences in Pricing Policies Absence of neutral market place Lack of technical standardization Lock-in policy of larger vendors Fears regarding Data protection and legal frameworks European Union mandate on Data Protection vs. U.S. Patriot Act Differences between European Legal Frameworks Inability to test cloud services before buying Overcoming Slow Take Off: Benefits of adopting Cloud Services Successful cloud deployments of IaaS Zimory and Successful IaaS Deployments IaaS Cloud Brokerage model Zimory Cloud Brokerage Management of Connection Certificates Open Cloud Solution Zimory Open Cloud Solution Conclusion Copyright 2012, Zimory GmbH Strictly Confidential Page 2

3 Contact Information Copyright 2012, Zimory GmbH Strictly Confidential Page 3

4 Abstract This document analyses various causes for the slow take-off of the Cloud Computing market in general, based on recent research and published articles. Proposals to overcome the slow takeoff of the market are also listed in the following white paper, with particular emphasis on Infrastructure-as-a-Service. Keywords: Cloud Computing Market, Cloud Services, Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), Public Clouds, Private, Clouds, Hybrid Clouds, Security Policies. Introduction The term Cloud is being increasingly used and analyzed in the IT market. Cloud services are synonym of innovative features that clearly differ from the traditional utility computing. Clouds are by definition flexible, dynamic, scalable and heterogeneous, with three defined categories: Software as a Service, Platform as a Service and Infrastructure as a Service. These qualities have proved to be very positive for IT engineering and businesses. Nevertheless, and because of its novelty and vertiginous technical and business evolution, the cloud computing market presents a certain number of obstacles when moving to the cloud, especially in the early stages., Decision makers face a sizable number of challenges when considering moving to the cloud which need to be carefully analyzed with regards to the following aspects: Pricing policies Neutral market place Technical standardization Lock-in policies Data protection and security policies Cloud security testing The following paper analyzes these challenges, offering factual, theoretical and practical reasons for the slow take-off of the cloud computing market.it also analyzes possible instances to overcome these difficulties, describing Zimory's position and practical solutions to address these market obstacles. Copyright 2012, Zimory GmbH Strictly Confidential Page 4

5 Cloud Computing Market Situation The following section presents a general description of the Cloud Computing market's current situation, comparing cloud services and models from various market parameters. This general view of the market will be the basis for presenting and analyzing reasons for the slow take-off of the Cloud Computing market. IaaS vs. PaaS vs. SaaS: Differences in Market Perspectives The Cloud Computing market is categorized by three service types. The following table 1 compares the differences between these categories regarding market dynamics. IaaS PaaS SaaS Speed of adoption Small and mid-size companies are adopting cloud services more easily and with more enthusiasm than large companies who are a bit more reluctant and still in a test phase. Somewhere between SaaS and IaaS. Being developer-oriented, speed of adoption for this specific target audience is predicted to rise in the shortterm. Most abstract option of thehttp://softwarestrategiesbl og.com/2011/07/24/predictin g-cloud-computingadoption-rates/ three cloud service categories, which lately has obstructed speed of adoption Kommentar [Unknown A1]: This is an interesting article 07/24/predicting-cloud-computingadoption-rates/ you may want to adapt your content accordingly unless you have other research that references otherwise (in which case you could reference it) in the market. Highest percentage of usage in the market, or popularity May actually become so overused that will loose its cloud quality. Customer/Use Customers maintain control of Developers build applications Customers control very little r their software environment. and use provided APIs and of what happens inside the tools to hook them into the cloud. No equipment. IaaS vendors provider's environment and run provide VMs. them there. Maangement Virtualization enters and plays Interaction between developer Providers manage and control of software a crucial role in customers' and provider environments almost everything. Customers environment software environment just point their browsers at it management Providers There are many 'IaaS' Developers require tools to Providers make most providers that do not offer true create applications to the important resource decisions. Cloud IaaS. platform. Manage the hooking and Not easy to categorize. 1 Network World, Inc. IaaS vs. PaaS vs. SaaS. Jeff Caruso. November, Consulted on: 1st June Copyright 2012, Zimory GmbH Strictly Confidential Page 5

6 Make efforts to avoid running of these applications customers from lock in. on their own environment. Service Openness, portability, ability to Targeting a very specific Reduction of costs sacrificing principles get easily out of the cloud. market. customer control. Not a finished and concrete product. The table shows that regarding the speed of adoption, qualities such as customer control, openness, portability and virtualization clearly put IaaS ahead of other cloud service categories. In addition and regardless of the usage facilities, SaaS continues to be the most abstract of the Cloud categories since it implies many different layers that are yet to be explicitly defined. PaaS is the middle-ground between facility without customer control on one hand, which is SaaS and complexity with customer management of IaaS. Public vs. Private (and Hybrid mmodels) It might be a confusing task for customers to clearly identify the cloud service model that is best suited to their needs. The increasing availability of choices such as exclusive equipment and isolation might blur the differences between cloud service models. Articles such as Private cloud vs. Public Cloud vs. Hybrid Cloud (Nancy Gohring for Network World, Inc) and Gartner's Evaluating Infrastructure as a Service 2 review the technical considerations f when choosing a cloud model, these include: Kommentar [Unknown A2]: I would include links to the reports or articles Applications and data to be moved to the cloud Applicable regulations and legal frameworks to the company and the provider Geographic locations of the company and the provider Required Service Levels and Service Level Agreements to be established with providers Usage patterns for workloads Integration implications between applications and enterprise functions The following table 3 illustrates the most important differences between cloud models, in relation to the target market and usage parameters: Public Clouds Private Clouds Hybrid Clouds Target Better adapted for companies Better adapted for companies - A composition of at least Companies that need to move their data that need to comply with two or more clouds dynamically without having to strong security regulations (private, community or comply with strong regulations (e.g. pharmaceutical, medical, public) offering the for business. governmental). 2 Gartner, Inc. Evaluating Cloud Infrastructure as a Service. Lydia Leong. March, Based on: Gartner, Inc. Design your Private Cloud with Hybrid in mind. Thomas J. Bittman. February, Copyright 2012, Zimory GmbH Strictly Confidential Page 6

7 Responsibility Providers have the biggest responsibility regarding control and management of resources and data. Customers/ end users responsible for directly controlling and managing data. Providers also participate in management if required. Number of users Any number of users. Single user/ entity (a company, for example) Implementation Shared implementations. Unshared implementations. Provider External Service provider. On premises or off-premises. benefits of multiple deployment models.. - The customer provides and manages some resources in-house and has others provided externally - Gartner predicts it to be the most commonly used cloud model. It requires both onpremises resources and off-site server based cloud infrastructure. The choice of cloud model will depend on customer needs and the purposes of cloud adoption. Reasons for Slow Take Off of the Cloud Computing Market In the following section, theoretical and practical approaches will be reviewed to understand the slow take-offof the Cloud Computing market. based on The causes analyzed include: 1. General market confusion 2. Differences in pricing policies 3. Absence of neutral market place 4. Lack of technical standardization 5. Lock-in policy of larger providers and vendors 6. Inability to test cloud services before buying 7. Fears regarding data protection 1. General Market Confusion The continual and vertiginous evolution of the cloud computing services and market is more than evident for the IT world. While evolution implies many positive changes and adaptations, it also carries a certain amount of confusion and uncertainties, and the Cloud Computing market does not escape from this fact. The complexity and the broadness of the market can lead customers to have a blurred outlook on the market and consequently by making uninformed decisions, it can take them away from the expected results. There are still important doubts about basic differences between cloud solutions, data protection, testing and pricing policies. Evidently, cloud computing is nowadays more than a trending topic in all media, regardless of the target audience. Many cloud computing providers have taken advantage of this popularity to create what has been Copyright 2012, Zimory GmbH Strictly Confidential Page 7

8 defined as a cloudwashing 4 strategy, categorizing their offerings with the cloud quality, even if they are not truly cloud computing services. The cloud-washing phenomenon and the market complexity among other reasons leaves customers with doubts and apprehension when facing the decision of cloud adoption. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) of the United States Department of Commerce created a Cloud Computing Roadmap stating that a neutral common understanding and model is needed by customers in order to clearly and consistently understand how cloud services compare (i.e., apples to apples.) 5 Cloud computing solutions available in the market are multiple and diverse, which is a great advantage from the point of view of adaptability and flexibility; however, these characteristics add, complexity to the cloud adoption decision making. Customers need to better understand their organisational needs in order to find the right cloud solution. Futhermore, since this is anevolving market, many efforts and research are yet to be done towards technical and market standardization and neutrality. Providers are obliged to accurately documenti information about their cloud computing services and make this accessible to the market. This will allow clients to make an informed decision about cloud adoption, and will contribute to a positive evolution of the Cloud Computing Market, especially in the early stages, eliminating the general confusion that is present in the market. 2. Differences in Pricing Policies Differences in pricing policies is one reason for the slow take-off and confusion in the Cloud Computing marketthere are often traditional, conservative and inflexible pricing policies that go against the basic cloud principles of adaptability, flexibility and scalability. Customers that makean uninformed cloud adoption decision, choose the cheapest or simplest offer in the market, without even analyzing whether or not it suits their long term needs. Bad decisions obvoiusly lead to great frustrations, constituing a bad precedent for the Cloud Computing market in general. According to Gartner's Pricing and Buyer's Guide for Web Hosting and Cloud Infrastructure, most pricing models include everything or are all in. However, some providers for example, supply itemized pricing, making customers pay for resources separate to management costs. Prices also present an enormous variation depending on the capacity of VM storage, CPU and RAM. The compute capacity is a variable that is yet to be clearly defined between providers. All of these ambiguities leave no doubt that customers must choose providers that give clear product technical specifications which will determine what customers will get for what they pay, as well as clear flexibility, adaptability and scaling conditions. All of these requirements will guarantee an informed cloud adoption decision and consequently customer satisfaction. NIST's Cloud Computing Roadmap states that the Cloud Computing industry needs to clearly and consistently categorize cloud computing services regarding interoperability and portability guidance and technology. 4 Gartner, Inc. Pricing and Buyer's Guide for Web Hosting and Cloud Infrastructure, Lydia Leong. March, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)-United States Department of Commerce. US Government Cloud Computing Technology Roadmap Volume I Release 1.0. Lee Badger, David Bernstein, Robert Bohn, Frederic de Vaulx, Mike Hogan, Jian Mao, John Messina, Kevin Mills, Annie Sokol, Jin Tong, Fred Whiteside and Dawn Leaf. November 2011 Copyright 2012, Zimory GmbH Strictly Confidential Page 8

9 According to a 451 Group research regarding the State of European Cloud Provider Market, few providers offer a true pay-as-you-go service. 6 Many customers see the pay-as-you-use service as one of the most attractive qualities when considering moving to the cloud. However, they should look for cloud service providers that offer clear and proven standards for the pay-as-you-go service. The 451 research also states that there is a large variance in what service providers will document as a performance standard and/or commit to under a Service Level Agreement. Whether comparing IaaS, PaaS or SaaS, the level of technical commitments offered or SLAs provided can vary considerably from one provider to the next. 6 Cloud service providers are obliged to establish clear and public SLAs based on different qualities and levels of service, as a basic condition in order to create a neutral contract that benefits the interests of both parties.. Feldfunktion geändert 3. Absence of neutral market place The arrival and evolution of cloud computing has been revolutionary, especially with regards to competition in the marketplace. There is no doubt that cloud computing represents an enormous milestone for IT engineering. There are, however, many elements to be improved in the Cloud computing evolution process in order for it to continue being as positive as it has been so far. One of these elements is the absence of a neutral marketplace and the consequent appearance of market monopolies. The Journal of Issues in Informing Science and Information Technology in the article Should the Cloud be Regulated? 7, addresses this problem stating that the massive move to the cloud and the promise of reduction of costs through the economies of scale raise the problem of the creation of monopolies. Sources for these monopolies are listed as being the following: 1. Resource scarcity: great difference of resources between big companies and SMEs. 2. High entry barriers: related to evident economies of scale. Big companies, obviously being a clear market minority, make great investments in resources and infrastructure, leaving smaller market players handicapped. 3. Control of the platform for cloud computing construction: Complete management of access and control. Clearly, the rise of market monopolies in cloud computing directly leads to the reduction of cloud service providers, which is conterproductive to the markets positive evolution and growth. It would also leave customers with fewer choices to suit their needs. The creation of monopolies results in small or middle vendors being pressured to drop their prices, which also requires major investments that big IT enterprise names are obviously better positioned to make or even are already doing. It is now clear that big companies are making enormous efforts towards the access control to the Internet. Net Neutrality defenders claim that a larger companies' main objective is to establish a market monopoly of cloud computing services. Hence, it is said, direct controls are necessary to ensure satisfactory performance: control over profits, specific rates, quality of service, extensions and abandonments of service and plant, even permission whether to enter the business at all. 7 Feldfunktion geändert 6 The 451 Research: Hosting. State of the European Cloud Provider Market. February The Journal of Issues in Informing Science and Information Technology. Volume 8. Should the Cloud be Regulated? Abbas Strømmen-Bakhtiar, Amir R. Razavi Copyright 2012, Zimory GmbH Strictly Confidential Page 9

10 The market requires clear, standard and neutral regulations to guard and balance its openness, where all market players are treated as equals, in order to ensure provider diversity and the positive technical and market innovation of Cloud Computing services Lack of technical standardization Cloud Computing is a relatively new market for IT engineering and IT businesses. At this point it is impossible to generalize about providers' implementation and quality approaches. Since the Cloud Computing market continues to evolve, there is an evident gap regarding best-practice policies and the establishment of technical standards. This lack of standards slows the take-off of the market as it leads to customer apprehensions and insecurities when considering cloud adoption. The powerful market leaders that embrace quality and adaptability, are yet to be established. Those who manage to offer solutions with transparent technical standards, interoperability and compatibility seem to win the battle in the long-term over the big historical names in the IT market. Customers' interest and knowledge in Cloud Computing is clearly increasing and will lead them to demand for more technical compatibility and interoperability, as well as for well-defined technical standards. Clear technical specifications will be the basis for establishing Service Level Agreements. SLAs are the core of a fair relationship and contract between Cloud Computing customers and providers. NIST's analysis of thecloud Computing Roadmap states that the Cloud Computing industry needs to develop and adopt consistent technical specifications, of high quality and completeness, to enable the creation and practical evaluation of Service-Level Agreements (SLAs) between customers and cloud providers (interoperability, portability, and security guidance and technology) 7. Otherwise, Cloud Computing market difficulties in the early stages will remain or even increase while customers are unable to objectively compare between providers' offerings. NIST analysis found that comparison variables are still blurry and differ considerably regarding the following aspects: Agreement terms. Technology basis and performance: Supported hypervisors, functional specifications, network interfaces, scalability, dynamic elastic allocation of resources, tenant isolation, customer and support services, etc. Time measurements. Guarantee and data security policies. These are basic elements for the establishment of any secure and fair contract between two parties, especially in the IT business. Finally, the NIST strongly recommend providers to establish clear, standard and consistent categories of cloud services in order to develop an architectural reference for where category and technological interoperability and portability must take place. Clear game rules will provide the market with the necessary reliability and security for it to have a more fluent take-off and development, promoting a safe and sane environment for investment in technological and business innovations. Kommentar [Oriana 3]: Include take-off (difficulties, obstacles) Feldfunktion geändert 5. Lock-in policy of larger vendors From inception the IT business market has been trying to fight against vendor lock-in. The rise of Cloud Computing services seems to put the issue back on the table. The presence of lock-in policies is closely related Copyright 2012, Zimory GmbH Strictly Confidential Page 10

11 to the absence of a neutral marketplace, since large vendors are interested and even invest in creating a certain customer dependency on their product environment, which leads to a closed market monopoly. This is opposite to the interoperability and compatibility cloud principles Large cloud service vendors use this customer dependency as a selling strategy, making their products inoperable and incompatible with products from competing businesses, which obliges customers to rely on them for product maintainability and update. Vendor lock-in policies go against the most basic cloud principles: To buy or install a web-based service, with no physical software or hardware that needs to be to maintained and upgraded strictly by the vendor who will obviously charge customers for these services as well. It is important to recognise the integrity from the majority of cloud SMEs, such as Zimory, who are putting all their efforts to fight against these lock-in policies that benefit only a few. If customers are to truely achieve their Cloud goals then they need to consider moving away from this economic and technical monopoly of the big market names. These efforts are demonstrated by Zimory with products that offer high-quality, flexible service capability while still increasing efficiency. The software maintains openness and independence, connecting various virtualization technologies into one cloud, and allowing flexible movement between private and public clouds. Diversity and interoperability allows market players to invest in relevant innovations rather than in maintaining or updating systems. 6. Fears regarding Data protection and legal frameworks Cloud adoption implies data interaction between customers and cloud service providers. These functional and operational characteristics of cloud services put data protection and security issues as one of the priorities to be analyzed when considering cloud adoption. Even though sources such as Network World state that security issues have dropped in importance 8 comparing the market situation to a few years ago (an evidence of the positive evolution of customers' confidence in cloud services advantages), data protection and security issues are still one of the most important concerns preventing some customers from moving to the cloud, and it is a subject matter that implies many perspectives. Cloud solutions have intrinsic and dynamic characteristics of proactivity and the interaction from the customer's point of view might seem difficult to control with conventional IT security standards. Cloud computing security is in reality not isolated from the standard IT security, data protection policies and regulations. Nevertheless, the architectural design, potential scaling, reliance on networking, multi-tenancy and shared resource qualities of the cloud computing service architecture lead to conclude the necessity of reviewing current security control policies. This re-examination of current policies would provide the market with the necessary reliability and transparency for a more fluent start. As affirmed in the NIST Cloud Computing Roadmap, security concerns need to be documented, understood, and addressed to a degree that security in a cloud is clearly understood and managed. 5 Customers need to be assured by cloud service providers by providing clearand consistent information regarding data security policies and regulations in order to facilitate the mainstream adoption of cloud services. Feldfunktion geändert 8 Network World, Inc. Private cloud vs. public cloud vs. hybrid cloud. Nancy Gohring. November, Consulted on: 1st June Copyright 2012, Zimory GmbH Strictly Confidential Page 11

12 Gartner 9 recommends that decision makers should analyze data protection and security implications before moving to the cloud, by considering the following: Regulations of the country where the data is stored, where the company is located and where the cloud service provider is located. Awareness of who controls and regulates data. Customers using services of a US company are exposed to the Patriot Act, for example. Specific regulations such as the US Patriot Act are outlined below. Transparency as a work principle should form a basis for cloud computing companies and customers. Players in the cloud computing market must be aware of the applicable regulation to their business. Cloud Service vendors must make security issues as one of the fundamental elements, if not the most important, to be documented and explained to customers before moving to the cloud. In order to provide a more concrete outlook of regulations which are impacting the cloud computing market, the following table 10 has been presented to describe the US Patriot Act and the European Mandate on Data Protection, which will form the basis of an analyzed comparison opposing these two legal frameworks: European Mandate on Data Protection Defined legal framework with criminal sanction for anyone breaking the EU data protection regulations. Prohibition to access or share EU citizens' personal data. Required notification of data release (or sharing with third parties). US Patriot Act Submission of US companies and their foreign affiliates to be submitted to US regulations, regardless of their location. Possibility of accessing personal data if companies or individuals are suspected to have terrorist implications Direct prohibition of sharing data controlled by US companies with third-parties European Union mandate on Data Protection vs. U.S. Patriot Act When comparing these two laws, it becomes evident that security is an issue to be handled with extreme care withboth customers and providers needing to be fully aware of applicable regulation to their businesses. These regulations are proven to be contradictory and incompatible to each other. It presents a situation that becomes an obstacle for the cloud computing market to progress and evolve, with complexity and stringiness that affect both cloud adoption decisions and cloud usage. At first, American regulations appeared to be more flexible in general aspects than European laws, mainly because of country multiplicity and cultural differences; until the appearance of the U.S. Patriot Act. A law that in general complicates all market dynamics and interactions, especially those regarding data protection and security. It is a law with many blurry regulations, which still causes big controversy about its implications to business and even personal privacy. The U.S. Patriot Act is also in direct contradiction to the European Union Data Protection mandate because it obliges, for example, American companies managing data in Europe to comply with both European and American regulations. European laws strictly protect access or sharing of European citizens' personal data, 9 Gartner, Inc. Predicts 2012: Cloud Computing Is Becoming a Reality. David Mitchell Smith, Yefim V. Natis, Gregor Petri, Thomas J. Bittman, Eric Knipp, Paolo Malinverno, Joseph Feiman Lydia Leong. December, Based on: Informa. Can European Firms Use U.S. Clouds to Store Data? January, Consulted on 31th May Copyright 2012, Zimory GmbH Strictly Confidential Page 12

13 precisely demanding notification when this data is shared with third-parties. On the other hand, as stated in the article: Can European Firms Use U.S. Clouds to Store Data?, the U.S. Patriot Act requires U.S. companies (and their foreign subsidiaries) to comply with U.S. government data requests regardless of location, provided that data is under the control of a U.S. Company ( ) such data sharing is not allowed to be revealed to a third party. 10 Evidently, this conflicts with the European mandates strict demands of data sharing notification. Confusion and ignorance that result from these contradictions turn fear about data protection and legal frameworks into an argument for not moving into the cloud. However, it is important to note that this is not a problem that is unique to the cloud computing market, but also to traditional data centers. Feldfunktion geändert Copyright 2012, Zimory GmbH Strictly Confidential Page 13

14 Differences between European Legal Frameworks European boarders were never an obstacle for business dynamics and interaction. However, as described in this paper the market confusion that is apparent in the evolving cloud computing market could be one of the reasons for the slow market adoption. In Predicts 2012: Cloud Computing Is Becoming a Reality; Gartner affirms that European diversity will make cloud adoption considerably slower. How slow will depend on how strict national regulation and data privacy issues are in a specific country, and how pressing the business requirement of reaping the benefits of cloud computing will be" 9 Gartner also acknowledges Europe's IT literacy and maturity, qualities that will support the cloud adoption process in the European market. Furthermore, the 451 Group analyst notices that European companies are taking a practical approach when it comes to data. It s widely acknowledged that enterprises in Europe want to keep their data in the country and ideally close to the organization. 6 A simple answer that can be the departure point of finding a solution to contradictory and unclear regulations. Zimory responds to this practical approach since its enterprise-grade technology provides secure data and application processing in clouds, keeping the data in the country. Zimory's technology matches the levels of security, quality, reliability, availability and continuity found in their internal data centers. Feldfunktion geändert Feldfunktion geändert 7. Inability to test cloud services before buying For customers, being able to test products for themselves before buying is an important requirement. It is especially important for customers to perform security testing on cloud services, since clouds might be a sensible target for hackers. However, conditions and conventions are still unavailable for customers to test cloud services for themselves before moving to the cloud. Vendors rely on third-party and independent testing entities to verify the well functioning and packaging of their products. On the other hand, Gartner points out that clouds are providers' most valuable property 9, which makes them reluctant to allow access to potential customers only for testing purposes. These circumstances present further evidence for the slow take-off of the cloud computing market. To improve this situation in the short-term, it is integral for cloud vendor's quality systems to support and complete security testing, making it available for customers before cloud adoption. This is visibly one of the most awaited improvements in cloud computing evolution, since it might be able to answer questions regarding data security and protection issues. A breaking point for improving the slow take-off of Cloud Computing market. maybe tell, that Zimory offers this service, to test the cloud before buying and the security measures that are systems fulfill. Feldfunktion geändert Copyright 2012, Zimory GmbH Strictly Confidential Page 14

15 Overcoming Slow Take Off: Benefits of adopting Cloud Services Having analyzed the main reasons for the slow take-off of the Cloud Computing market, the following section presents the solutions to overcome market difficulties in early stages of cloud adoption. Zimory solutions will be presented as an example to the real feasibility of overcoming these obstacles. Successful cloud deployments of IaaS Success in Infrastructure as a Service is a clear indicator that Cloud Services vendors are focusing their efforts on improving the quality of cloud services to overcome market challenges. IaaS is being used for different purposes and in various contexts such as: R&D projects and load testing Building and deploying Web- based applications Moving non-critical and data with no regulation monitoring from expensive data resources Acting more quickly on IT opportunities without having to wait on IT resources Underlying infrastructure for SaaS and PaaS In Overcoming the Challenges of Cloud Reality 11, Spirent identified the following successful provider use cases for IaaS clouds: Increased efficiency during a specific contract flow Lowered costs and savings by consolidating servers through virtualization: When physical servers are under-utilized to the 10-15% average, virtualization allows them to be used to 40-50% utilization rate and even up to 75% Increased elasticity and speed of access through the pooling of resources and leveraging automation, allowing to add aspects such as on-demand self service Supported application awareness and dynamic resource optimization Programmatic control over resources, allowing to manage resources and configurations as needed Kommentar [Unknown A4]: Agree with Rudi that the subsequent sections on IaaS and Cloud Brokerage are too much of a marketing sell, it needs to be more specific, highlighting a problem that was discussed and how a product addresses that issue and what are the benefits to the customer etc. Try not to provide a general description of the solution that is no longer in context... Zimory and Successful IaaS Deployments Zimory cloud solutions, zimory connect and zimory manage are an important example of successful IaaS deployments. zimory connect enables the scheduled (time-controlled) deployment of resources, allowing users to make unused hosts available for only the time needed. Zimory software is designed to support fast performance activation and deployment. Pre-configured, templates and best practice design decreases the deployment time for virtual machines substantially to seconds rather than minutes. In addition, Zimory s provisioning features strongly support the business model of an IaaS Cloud Service and address areas beyond the usual deployment logic allowing: Rapid migration technology, transparent storage management, scheduling mechanisms, homogeneous view of server resource, Virtual Private Cloud/ network provisioning and image upload mechanisms. 11 Spirent. Overcoming the Challenges of Cloud Reality. May Consulted on May 31st Copyright 2012, Zimory GmbH Strictly Confidential Page 15

16 IaaS Cloud Brokerage model Innovation is criticalin order to overcome the slow take-off of the cloud computing market and to contribute to its evolution. The IaaS Cloud Brokerage business model introduces dynamics to cloud service use cases allowing three or more independent parties (providers, traders and buyers) to do business together (buying and selling products) reducing procurement procedures and verifying closely at the same time whether they meet preestablished trading criteria or not. All interactions and processes are supported by the flexibility of cloud spotpricing in IaaS Cloud Exchange. IaaS Cloud services allow complete management and governance, generating analytics of context and interactions, all of which complies with security standards. In the Gartner report Cloud Services Brokerages Challenge Traditional IT Service Providers for Cloud Services Delivery 12 identifies six main differences between Cloud Services Brokerage and standard Cloud services: 1. Buyers can be different: Buyers can have different ranges, from individuals and SMBs to large businesses. 2. Cloud Brokerage cannot modify the actual service implementation or own the technology: Possibility of integrating or customizing one or multiple cloud services. Kommentar [Unknown A5]: Need to be consistent with the use (or not) of capitalizaton for 'Cloud' 'Cloud Services' Cloud Brokerage and 'Cloud Computing' 3. Technology used for integration, customization and management can be different as can the integration scenarios: Multi-tenancy of shared environments for Cloud brokerage technologies for integration and governance. 4. Contract managed differently: Integration of services where the only guarantee of performance or availability is through the established SLA agreed on in the customer contract or the brokerage agreement. 5. Channel for cloud brokerage may be widely different than those established for traditional system integrators. 6. New cloud specialists: New cloud brokerage specialists coming from other businesses different from the traditional IT services world, presenting different marketing messages, different technical and businessrelated skills, new value propositions and well- established partner ecosystems dominated by third-party cloudnative IT providers. The IaaS Cloud Brokerage model presents the following general characteristics: Based on requirements from the consumer and the seller Independence Open and complete APIs: Reduced lock-in Scalable: Improved offerings and resources Multi-tenancy: Depending on security requirements for offering and buying of resources Decoupling: Control, focused on responsibilities 12 Gartner, Inc. Cloud Services Brokerages Challenge Traditional IT Service Providers for Cloud Services Delivery. Tiffani Bova, Daryl C. Plummer. May 2012 Copyright 2012, Zimory GmbH Strictly Confidential Page 16

17 As an innovative and breakthrough solution, the IaaS Cloud Brokerage Model faces the following challenges: Integration of two decoupled elements of the infrastructure (geographically distributed and nonhomogeneous) Market differentiation from technology used by suppliers. Environment homogeneity Decoupling of environments carrying complex technical challenges To respond to these challenges the IaaS Brokerage model must meet the following requirements: Liquidity of the IaaS environment to generate dynamic pricing Decoupled architecture: neutral point from cloud exchange partners' infrastructure, using control points Support for different consumer business model Support for different selling models Single pane of glass: algorithms providing an entire view of the exchange Legal compliance: Systems providing clear SLAs to users, complying with legal requirements Restricted handling of metadata. Zimory Cloud Brokerage With these challenges and requirements described above in mind, Zimory presents its Cloud Brokerage model based on the Zimory Cloud product technology. The following description presents a general view of the Zimory Cloud Brokerage solution. First of all, the Zimory Cloud product consists of two core components: zimory manage manages user access to the distributed cloud environment. It contains a business administrator frontend to control the users and a user frontend giving access to the cloud environment. zimory connect provides the main logic, database and messaging component of Zimory Cloud. It also provides a web-portal for the data center administrator of the physical cloud environment. It consists of the modules Gateway, Central, Storage and Runtime Storage. Copyright 2012, Zimory GmbH Strictly Confidential Page 17

18 Figure: Components of Zimory Cloud Stack in the cloud exchange setup With the actual buying and selling mechanisms being executed in an external Cloud Exchange module, the Zimory technology stack has the role of settlement. The buying and selling can be done in various ways from long-term contracting to a short term stock exchange model. Every seller on the Cloud Exchange requires at least a single instance of zimory connect in each of the datacenters as a local management hub, this allows the Seller to offer services to the marketplace. In addition, every Consumer in the Cloud Exchange requires at least one zimory manage, which enables the entry point for the Consumer and the end-user and provides the Cloud-API. The Consumers can choose to use the portal to resell cloud capacity to end-customers, or use the internal capacity pool for another purpose such as serving their internal cloud. The connection between the instances is controlled by the cloud exchange system. The cloud exchange system outputs certificates that control connection. Therefore, the cloud exchange is able to control the delivery mechanism on order and review the settlement status of transactions. All Consumer functions are compiled in the zimory manage component, whereas the Sellers functional requirements are reflected in the zimory connect module. Both modules are also interconnected using an open API, which enables both parties to buy and sell capacity, without being locked into the technology. Finally, multi-tenancy is another core requirement. The Zimory technology stack due to its modularity allows each component to be used in a shared, group-shared or exclusive mode. This allows the user to run the platform with various strict requirements regarding multi-tenancy and even mega-tenancy. Management of Connection Certificates The Cloud Exchange requires connection control between the zimory connect and zimory manage modules. In order to do this, the Cloud Exchange module where the trading takes place, delivers the following information on contracts between partners: Copyright 2012, Zimory GmbH Strictly Confidential Page 18

19 1. Contract parties 2. Contract volume 3. Contract time With this information, the Zimory platform generates connection certificates that enable a temporary connection between a specific zimory connect and a zimory manage. The certificates will be generated by the cloud exchange module and automatically pulled by the zimory manage and zimory connect instance. Based on this certificate the Consumer can utilize the resources and also monitor the usage of the end-users, as well as define decoupled end-user pricing that suits their business models. For more information, see the Infrastructure Cloud Exchange white paper. Copyright 2012, Zimory GmbH Strictly Confidential Page 19

20 Open Cloud Solution Well-developed open cloud solutions are a powerful tool to speed up the adoption of cloud services, since open cloud solutions are based on the following principles : Interoperability Elasticity, efficiency Open standard formats and interfaces No customer lock-in Zimory Open Cloud Solution Zimory's new, open cloud business solution is representative of how an open cloud solution can contribute to the evolution of the cloud computing market. Offering European customers improved interoperability and reduced costs fully compliant with the EU mandate on Data Protection. Zimory's software offers user, consumption and the metadata of a service, available in an open standard interface. This provides full transparency and monitoring of user consumption and data, enabling organizations to manage costs more efficiently. Using proven open source technologies as a basic framework, Zimory offers a new capacity management tool and monitoring facility capable of fine grained analysis of usage patterns in large clouds for extended periods of time. In essence, it allows technical administrators to run heterogeneous, geographically distributed clouds efficiently, whilst still maintaining guaranteed SLAs. All of these characteristics with the made in Germany quality guarantee and market customers have demonstrated to have great confidence in clouds made in Germany, especially because of their quality and the compliance of data security policies. With their open cloud solution, Zimory negates vendor lock-in and addresses issues around data portability, privacy and security in order to deliver substantial benefits to its global constituents. Conclusion After analyzing causes for the slow take-off of the Cloud Computing market, it is possible to make the following conclusions: It is necessary to define and standardize clear pricing policies. This will instill reliability and credibility in the market, augmenting customer confidence in cloud services. SLAs need to be clearly defined, including all possible service scenarios, prior to cloud adoption. Avoiding market cloud washing will clarify general aspects of the cloud computing market. A neutral market place is requiered in order to maintain provider diversity and avoid market monopoly and consequently vendor lock-in for customers. Technical standardization is a must, especially with regards to data portability, adaptability, scalability and interoperability. The establishment of technical and general standards is a fundamental for increasing cloud adoption. Data protection and security policies: Customers and providers must be aware of applicable regulations and legal frameworks for their businesses. Security continues to be an important concern for customers considering cloud adoption. Providers need to focus their efforts on ensuring cloud services are security tested in the short-term,in order to solve concerns regarding data protection. Copyright 2012, Zimory GmbH Strictly Confidential Page 20