Cloud Computing and the Microsoft Developer - A Down-to-Earth Analysis

Cloud Computingand the Microsoft Developer:A Down-to-Earth Analysis
Andrew J. Brust
Founder & CEO
Level: Intermediate

Founder, CEO, Blue Badge Insights
Providing strategy and advisory services to MS partners + customers
Microsoft Regional Director, MVP + Member, Microsoft BI Partner Advisory Council
Visual Studio Live! speaker, co-chair, user group leader, advisor to NY Technology Council
“Redmond Review” columnist for Visual Studio Magazine and Redmond Developer News
brustblog.com, @andrewbrust
Bio

Author
Find it online soon at:http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/whitepapers

Agenda
Framing the Cloud Question
Cloud Stack Components
Cloud Stack Economics
Other Dimensions
Timing and Motivation

The Paradox of Futurism
Do what I say, not what I do
Getting ready, and getting your work done
Should you go to the cloud or should it come to you?

Principles and Considerations
Elasticity
IaaS vs. PaaS
Storage
Data: Structured or Relational?
Symmetry: How much changes?

The Cloud Shouldn’t Be a Big Deal
Things get really useful when people stop fetishizing them
But things always start with a fetish phase
You shouldn’t need:
Special code, tools or thoughts
Cloud should be a near dialect, not a new language
But big shifts rarely provide this early on

The Service Spectrum

Agenda
Other Dimensions

Basic Services
SQL Azure, [SQL Azure Reporting, Data Sync]
SQL Express, Standard in Windows EC2 Instances, Relational Data Service (RDS – MySQL/[[Oracle]])
Database
AppFabricService Bus, Access Control, Caching, [[Integration, Composite App]]
Simple Notification Service (SNS), AWS CloudFormation
Application Server, Deployment
Web Role, Worker Role
((Elastic Beanstalk))
PaaS Compute
Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
((VM Role))
IaaS Compute
Queue, Table, BLOB StorageAzure Drive
Simple Queue Service (SQS), SimpleDB, Simple Storage Service (S3)Elastic Block Storage (EBS)
Storage
Windows Azure hypervisor
Xen (highly customized)
Virtualization
[CTP], [[Announced]], ((Beta))

Management
AzureWatch[[[3rd pty: Paraleap]]]
Auto Scaling/CloudWatch
Dynamic Scaling
Azure CDN
CloudFront
Content Delivery
((Azure Traffic Manager))
Elastic Load Balancing
Load Balancing
Remote Access
Intrinsic
Remote Control
((Azure Connect))
Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)
Hybrid/Private
[[[3rd Party]]], ((Beta))

The Amazon Stack: Extras
Elastic MapReduce
Map-Reduce
High Performance Computing
Clustering

Force.com
Database.com
Database
SiteForce
Sites
AppForce
LOB App Gen
VMForce
PaaS Compute
VMware vSphere
Virtualization

RackSpace
Cloud Files CDN (Akamai)
CDN
Cloud Servers
IaaS Compute
Cloud Files, Cloud Drive
Storage
XenServer
Virtualization

Other Stacks
App Engine

PaaSDev Stacks
Azure:
.NET (C#, VB and C++) with Visual Studio
PHP, Ruby, Python or Java with Eclipse
AWS Elastic Beanstalk: Java with Eclipse
Force.com VMForce: Java with Spring/Eclipse
Google AppEngine: Java, Python with Eclipse
VMWare Cloud Foundary: Java with Spring/Eclipse, Rails and Sinatra for Ruby, Grails on Groovy, Node.js

Windows Azure Companion
Azure Installer
Originally designed for PHP and PHP-based CMSes
Configure ATOM feed to install any Azure-tested application

Agenda
Other Dimensions

Instance Sizes

Amazon Pricing
Prices Higher in N. California, Ireland, Singapore; higher still in Tokyo

Instance Sizes

Economics: Azure vs. AWS(N. Virginia/US pricing)
Compute Arrangements:
Azure: Pay as You Go, Subscription (54% off)
AWS: On-Demand, Reserved (50% off), Spot
Storage Fees:
Azure: $0.15/GB/Month stored; $0.01 per 10,000 txns
AWS: $0.10/GB/Month provsnd; $0.10 per million txns
Database Fees:
SQL Azure: $10/GB/Mnth; $0.10/GB in, $0.15/GB out
AWS RDS: $10/GB/Mnth; $0.10/GB in, <=$.15/GB out
PLUS $0.11-$2.60/hour, based on RAM, cores

Amazon Other Instance Types

Agenda
Other Dimensions

SaaS Stacks:

Hybrid/Private
Common wisdom: most enterprises will use hybrid approach to cloud, either while migrating or forever.
Azure Connect
VPN connection allows on-premise assets and cloud assets to co-mingle
Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)
A private, isolated section of AWS cloud
Allows VPN connection to on-premise assets
EC2 dedicated instances: physically isolated servers in a VPC
Azure Appliance:
Allows Azure hardware and OS to run physically on-premise
Announced almost 1 year ago; details still to come

Ecosystems
Amazon’s is huge: I count 409 partners listed at: http://aws.amazon.com/solutions/solution-providers
Microsoft’s is growing. I count 81at the Windows Azure Marketplace:http://windowsazure.pinpoint.microsoft.com/en-US/applications/search?q=azure

Momentum (in Redmond)
Azure is extremely complete and capabale, relative to the market
AWS may be startup-friendly but MS is enterprise-friendly
The smartest people at Microsoft are working on the cloud and morale is high
It’s the bright spot in Redmond
But it’s not lucrative…yet.
The opportunity for you

What’s Missing From the Cloud?
Microsoft
0365/Azure integration
Azure Appliance
Azure VM Role guidance
General
Business Intelligence
SANs
Appropriate licensing from ISVs

Agenda
Other Dimensions

Should You Move?What Should You Take?
Everyone should do some sandbox work
Partner Network, MSDN and free offers make this feasible
Managed partners should pursue proactively
Build a practice with a small, elite crew
Brownie points with MS and better chance of leads
Cloud candidates:
Managed hosting engagement
Departmental app
Mobile app, for any platform
Anything that is straight ASP.NET + SQL Server and may need to scale.

When?
If your clients are ready, go!
If not, get ready anyway
Sell the hybrids
As with any new technology, sometimes you need to make it your own decision
How you will transform:
You get Microsoft’s SLA
You now provide turnkey hardware + infrastructure

Business Models
Moving from solutions to products
Moving from consulting firm to ISV
Moving from hourly revenue to periodic fees
It isn’t about on-prem vs. off
It’s about needing less infrastructure expertise and sysadmin talent (but you still need some)
It’s about automated provsisioning
It’s about bigger customers

Thank You!
Resources at: http://bit.ly/cloudkeynote
brustblog.com, @andrewbrust
andrew.brust@bluebadgeinsights.com

Cloud Computing and the Microsoft Developer - A Down-to-Earth Analysis

by Andrew Brust

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