Tell a Friend07.07.10
(And a sneak-peek at Windows 8!)
Many of our clients are wondering how “the cloud” will change the enterprise.
Cloud computing encompasses many things.
- Software as a Service (SAAS)—“Rental” of defined applications, such as Microsoft BPOS, Google Apps, or SalesForce.com.
- Infrastructure as a Service (IAAS)—Think of this as hosted virtual machines on which you can install anything. You handle administration, upgrades, etc. Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) takes this approach, in which, unlike a simple “rented virtual machine”, you can add “compute units” easily, even automatically, to scale your solution.
- Platform as a Service (PAAS)–Provides a “cloud OS” on which you can install applications. It provides a set of services to perform computing tasks, but without interaction with the hardware layer. The two most prominent PAAS examples are Google App Engine (GAE) and Microsoft Azure. GAE takes a more pure approach – you may only access services through Web calls. Windows Azure, in contrast, falls between IAAS and PAAS – it features both a “Web role” (like GAE) and a “worker role” that allows services to be created to run continuously. While this provides more flexibility—evidenced by Azure’s support for many programming languages, while GAE supports only two—it also means that more of the responsibility for making your application scalable rests on you.
But the more relevant question for the typical corporate IT department is this: What is the likely impact of PAAS on the traditional client/server support model that exists in most enterprises today?
Most enterprises are not likely to move all their data storage and server and desktop computing power to the cloud, if for no other reason than Internet connections can, and do, go down.
But even in the traditional client/server environment, change is coming.
Just last month, part of the roadmap for “Windows 8” (desktop and server) leaked, and it promised two cloud-based features of profound importance:
- Users will be able to store desktop profiles and settings in the cloud, and share them across multiple PCs and mobile devices—like roaming profiles on steroids!
- Microsoft plans to build an “app store” into the OS. It’s not clear yet what kinds of applications will be available, but the possibilities are endless.
If both of these features are available in the next version of Windows operating systems, here are some thoughts on what that could mean for the typical IT shop:
- Get ready to consider moving all your user settings management (GPOs, profiles etc) to the cloud.
- Expect Windows Update Services to go to the cloud, and for applications (first just Microsoft’s, but eventually others) to be purchased, licensed, installed and maintained without the need for any local hardware resources. This model would allow application rental, even for traditional “heavy” client software such as Microsoft Office.
In both scenarios, Microsoft’s “Software Plus Services” model implies that enterprises will be able to securely intervene in their users’ cloud interactions, to custom configure administrative templates and applications, and that a local cache of settings will be available to mitigate a loss of Internet connection. But if you’d rather save on hardware, and don’t mind relying on Microsoft, you will likely be able to essentially outsource System Center.
Bottom line: It’s an open question as to how eager organizations will be to hand responsibility for core IT support services to an outside provider; but the advantages of cloud computing in terms of cost, flexibility and scalability are likely to be compelling.