The document discusses the concept of cloud computing. It defines cloud computing according to analysts and NIST as a scalable, on-demand pool of shared computing resources that can be accessed over the internet. The document outlines the characteristics of public clouds and different types of cloud services including SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS. It discusses the benefits of cloud computing such as cost savings, time savings, increased agility and scalability. Some concerns with security and reliability are also addressed. The document concludes by encouraging experimenting with non-critical systems and hybrid cloud solutions.

1. What the Heck is Cloud? Erik Carlin Senior Architect, Rackspace Cloud Division erik.carlin@rackspace.com Prepared for: Rackspace Non-Profit Technology Conference Date:April 16, 2010

2. EC2 Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud

3. GAE Google App Engine

4. TRC The Rackspace Cloud

5. Bonus… Bing But It’s Not Google 

6. Cloud Confusion “The interesting thing about cloud computing is that we’ve redefined cloud computing to include everything that we already do. I can’t think of anything that isn’t cloud computing with all of these announcements. The computer industry is the only industry that is more fashion-driven than women’s fashion. Maybe I’m an idiot, but I have no idea what anyone is talking about. What is it? It’s complete gibberish. It’s insane. When is this idiocy going to stop?” - Larry Ellison, 9/08 6

7. The Cloud is… 7 Utility Computing? Grid? Virtualization? Usage-based billing? On-demand? Programmatic? Scalable? xaaS?

8. 8 Understanding the Cloud

9. Cloud Forerunner 9 Edison dynamo, circa 1884

10. From Electricity to IT “The bulk of business computing [will shift] out of private data centers and into the cloud.” - Nicholas Carr, The Big Switch 10

11. 11 Defining the Cloud

12. Cloud Computing According to the Analysts “A pool of highly scalable, abstracted infrastructure, capable of hosting end-customer applications, that is billed by consumption.” - Forrester “A style of computing where massively scalable IT-related capabilities are provided ‘as a service’ across the Internet to multiple external customers.” - Gartner 12

13. Cloud Computing According to NIST “Cloud computing is a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.” http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/SNS/cloud-computing/ 13

14. Five Characteristics of Public Clouds Broad Access Lightweight entry/exit On-demand Usage-based pricing Highly scalable/elastic 14

15. Typical but NOT necessary… 15 Virtualization Multi-tenant

16. 16 Types of Clouds

17. Application Clouds (SaaS) Ease of Use Low Complexity Flexibility Minimal Control Typical Consumers End Users Examples Salesforce.com TurboTax Online Microsoft Online Services Rackspace E-mail 17

18. Platform Clouds (PaaS) Ease of Use Medium Complexity Flexibility Medium Control Typical Consumers Developers Examples Rackspace Cloud Sites Google AppEngine Force.com 18

19. Infrastructure Clouds (IaaS) Ease of Use High Complexity Flexibility Maximum Control Typical Consumers Developers System Administrators Examples EC2, S3 Rackspace Cloud Files, Cloud Servers FlexiScale GoGrid 19

20. 20 Reasons to Use the Cloud

21. Cost Savings From Fixed to Variable Pricing Traditional: Buy enough compute to satisfy maximum anticipated demand Cloud: Dynamically buy enough compute to satisfy actual demand Cost savings particularly significant for transitory compute needs 21

22. Cost Savings Example Problem NY Times wanted to convert 11 million articles from 1851-1922 from raw TIFF images (4 TB) to PDF Solution Leveraging 100 EC2 instances and S3, all 11 million articles were converted to PDF in just under 24 hours Compute Cost? $240 http://open.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/11/01/self-service-prorated-super-computing-fun http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2008/02/taking-massive.html 22

23. Time Savings From Days/Weeks to Minutes Traditional: Procure, receive, unpack, rack, cable, configure new server Cloud: On-demand compute via programmatic call or mouse click Essentially eliminate new server deployment latency Significant time to market implications 23

24. Time Savings Example: New Server Deployment Traditional 72,000 minutes or ~7½ weeks * Cloud 2 minutes * Percent Time Savings 99.997% * Actual data from a pharmaceutical enterprise 24

25. Time Savings Example: Batch Processing Assume a job has 100 units of work and 1 server can complete 1 unit/hr at a cost of $1/hr 1 server would take 100 hours to complete the job at a cost of $100 10 servers would take 10 hours to complete the job at a cost of $100 100 servers would take 1 hour to complete the job at a cost of $100 25 Limiting Factor? Capacity

26. Increased -ilities More Agility, Scalability, Flexibility… Traditional: Capacity planning (maybe) to stay ahead of IT resource requirements. Generally unable to meet immediate increases in demand. Cloud: Scale up (and down!) on-demand Virtually unlimited compute and storage available Enables “just enough” compute so you are only using what you need (green) Enables “just in time” compute to auto-scale applications in response to spikes in demand Generally, no commitments Interesting implications for Dev/QA environments, upgrades, and troubleshooting 26

27. Increased Scalability Example YouDecide2008.com In January 2008, information was posted about the presidential debates resulting in an increase from 25,000 visitors to more than 300,000 – in one day. Traditional Hosting = Site Crash! 27

28. Increased Scalability Example Rackspace Cloud Sites = Auto-Scale 28 2nd Presidential Debate 1st Presidential Debate 3rd Presidential Debate VP Debate

29. Lifestyle Impact 29

30. 30 Reasons NOT to Use the Cloud

31. The BIGGEST objection… Security! The cloud is for everyone but not for everything. (but remember, cloud doesn’t necessarily mean shared) 31

32. Other Reasons Not To Use the Cloud Reliability? Madden Syndrome: driving vs. flying Performance/lack of isolation concerns Latency Need more control Regulatory issues - HIPPA, SOX, PCI Want a “managed” solution If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it! Some items derived from this IT Management & Cloud blog post 32

33. 33 Cloud Demo

34. 34 Closing Thoughts

35. Closing Thoughts Cloud is still hosting and hosting requires trust “As a Service” should come with service Move one or more non-critical systems to the cloud to get experience Consider hybrid solutions Experiment with backup and archiving to cloud storage It’s still early in cloud time, but... 35

36. The Future is Cloudy! 36

37. http://www.rackspacecloud.com/blog/

38. 38