While Cloud Computing is getting an incredible amount of attention, the focus is heavily on IaaS and an infrastructure-up view of Cloud. Many of the so-called PaaS offerings that are being made available provide a significant benefit to the efficiency of the services that are provided to developers, but is it enough? What happens if we eliminate the "middle" of the cloud computing stack and host the applications as close to the bare metal as possible? This is the promise of the Application Driven Cloud.

1. The Case for Application Driven
Cloud Computing
Adam Davis
@itheresy
http://www.linkedin.com/in/davisa/

2. A little context about my perspective…
Systems Admin
Information
Security
Infra
Engineering
Application
Architecture
Cloud/DevOps

4. All good things must come to an end
• My job was to care for pets instead of herding cattle
• Lack of standardization across application teams
• Not a cost effective use of resources
• Industry moved to shared services functions
• Gave rise to ITSM and application of frameworks like
ISO20000, ITIL, ISO9001, Six Sigma

5. Where we originally aspired to…

6. Photo Credit: dsearls@flickr
Instead, we wound up with…

7. FORD AND HIS MODEL T
A little diversion

8. In 1913, Henry Ford is widely credited for having
perfected the modern assembly line

9. Efficiencies were gained through standardized
parts and assembly and limited variation

10. Moving the work from one worker to another until
it became a complete unit, then arranging the flow
of these units at the right time and the right place
to a moving final assembly line from which came a
finished product

11. Reducing the production time of an entire Model T
from 12.5 hours to 93 minutes with less manpower

12. What’s next?... Automation!

13. Automation needs to be fit for purpose and not
constrained by the procedure it replaces

14. But for enterprise cloud computing, that’s
exactly what we are building
Photo Credit: dsearls@flickr

15. Yes… There is efficiency here, but it
is not victory.

16. If we are going to invest in architecting
our applications differently for cloud-
scale, shouldn’t we re-architect how
we host them?

17. Machine Templates

18. IT organizations are chartered with
adding value through the delivery
of business applications

19. There are too many layers of indirection
Application
Platform as a Service
Infrastructure as a Service
Software Defined
Compute
Software Defined
Networks
Software Defined
Storage

20. We’ve made great strides in autonomic
infrastructure
• Software defined everything
• Autonomic infrastructure agents

21. What if we had autonomic application
management?
Application
Application
Application
Application

22. Aren’t our platforms just
applications?

23. Platform
Application
Application
Application

24. What if the applications had a means to communicate directly
with the autonomic platforms and infrastructure?
Platform
Application
Application
Application
Compute
Network
Storage

25. Proposed alternative model – Autonomic all the
way down
Applications
Lightweight Platforms
Software Defined
Compute
Software Defined
Networks
Software Defined
Storage

26. Thank you.