How do I get to the Cloud?

It is typical for IT not to have seen much personnel or budget increases over the last number of years. However, user expectations have dramatically increased because of the consumerization of IT. The new standard in the minds of the users we service is the ‘appstore’ approach for everything. In addition most IT teams are still aligned in traditional technology silos and struggle to adopt “as a service” models.

These problems are compounded by where most IT teams spend time.  It is estimated that 60 – 70% of time spent is on lights on activities, straight operations or firefighting. The remainder of time is spent on new project initiatives leaving little time for proactive strategies to adopt new service models in End User Computing (EUC) or Private or Federated Cloud. How then can we break  this cycle and move the blocks forward to take advantage of Cloud?

The first step is to carve out time that does not exist. The only way to do this is to spend less time in operations by undertaking the following:

1. Categorize, Automate and Orchestrate

You have two choices on where you begin; datacenter or end user services. The decision is usually dependant on what provides greater business value to the organization at the time vs. what is the right starting point.

2. Standardize a percentage of IT as a catalog

As much as we want to believe it, not everything is unique; IT departments treat everything as custom builds when not all are. Even if this starts as a very simple catalog; office applications (EUC) or a simple two tier VM configuration (Private Cloud) the important thing is to work through the process.

3. Turn over delivery

Once you have completed step 1 and 2, enable a suitable business group to self-provision. In the initial adoption this may not be end users; it may be business or application analysts.  “Get it done” as this is when you reduce time in operations. Prepare yourself as this is a learning process.  It may require some training to the transition team.

Once you have achieved the first three steps you can move to higher value activities in steps 4 and 5.

4. Adopt a Virtual Datacenter

The vast majority of IT shops are virtualizing OSes, however turning your datacenter into software is a huge enabler. It allows you to thin provision a host of physical devices including networking and storage.

5. Apply Security and Policy to the Virtual Datacenter

Ensure that the virtual datacenter is more secure; software can be encrypted and encoded and policy driven. Apply these to your virtual datacenter

After turning your datacenter into software you are ready to drive efficiencies by implementing steps 6 – 8.  Most people would argue that the evaluation should happen first and this is true for a business case.  In the execution stage, the point of evaluating after steps 1 to 5 is that your organization has matured their understanding of the process and technology and can now take better advantage of the many options.  In addition, in a large enterprise it is unlikely that a environment will be all or nothing i.e. Public vs. Private Cloud.

6. Evaluate where you are doing your computing

Once your Virtual Datacenter is secure and encrypted it can be migrated anywhere so take advantage of lower cost opportunities to run your IT services

7. Evaluate the efficiency of what you are delivering

Okay we have come a long way however the journey is not complete; evaluate whether it is more efficient for you to deliver each service internally or through a 3^rd party. It is important that at this point it is an evaluation; there is one more critical step to complete before farming any in-house services.

8. Brand

You are the department who has serviced your users effectively for years; your intellectual property is the knowledge and understanding of the users and the business you do. Users should continue to come to you for all requirements even if some are being delivered through 3^rd party. Ensure that the users do not see whitespace between the internal IT team and service providers you select. Your role in this new model is to be the one stop shop from a provider perspective and maintain quality control no matter how services are delivered. 
We did not mention Cloud or Federation or any the terms that are loaded with promise and expectations. We have described a process that does enable Cloud adoption. 

 

Microsoft Licenses and the Cloud

Technorati Tags: Cloud,Microsoft Licensing,Mobility

Cloud represents a large opportunity for both customers and service providers alike.  The details of how Microsoft Licensing works between customers and Cloud providers can be a little confusing however.  The confusion increases as you look at OS and  enterprise software licensing such as Exchange, SharePoint and SQL (Please refer to the License Mobility Overview document from Microsoft for links on how to verify additional Microsoft products). 

While you cannot transfer Windows OS licenses to your Cloud provider, it is possible with some Microsoft enterprise applications.  In order to be eligible to transfer licenses between you and your Cloud Provider, you need to have a Microsoft Volume Licensing (VL) agreement as well as have current maintenance or Software Assurance (SA).  Enrollment and active maintenance provides you access to the Microsoft License Mobility program.

To make use of the Microsoft License Mobility Program your provider should be an authorized License Mobility partner (Note: It is possible for a Cloud Provider to provide Windows licensing under the Service Provider Licensing Agreement “SPLA” without being a authorized Mobility Partner so ensure you review this).  Once you determine your eligible Mobility Licenses and select an License Mobility Partner you are required to submit a License Verification form to Microsoft. 

After the process is complete you can assign the licenses for use in your providers datacenter.  There are a few provisos  to be aware of; the minimum time that you can assign a license is 90 days and if you switch providers you need to resend the License Verification form to Microsoft.

To understand the process lets look at an example.  Customer A is running Exchange within a private cloud environment.  They wish to migrate the Exchange VM to their trusted Cloud authorized License Mobility Partner. 

In this case the OS license would be provided through the SPLA license as part of the Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) agreement with the Cloud Provider.  Customer A would ‘transfer’ the Exchange license to the Cloud providers datacenter while switching off the Exchange VM running in their private Cloud.  Provided the Exchange VM remains dedicated to Customer A, the VM can run on a shared virtualization platform within the Cloud providers datacenter.

The list of authorized Mobility Partners and eligible enterprise applications are available from Microsoft’s website.  While this seems complex, a good Mobility Partner and provider should be able to step you through the process. 

VMware NSX: Transform Your Network

The merging of vCenter Network and Security 5.1 (vCNS) and Nicira has been branded the VMware NSX (Network Virtualization Platform).  VMware has invested heavily in this solution and the internal business unit developing networking and security solutions.

The NSX platform attempts to address the problems with networking and virtualization.  Cloud is all about speed.  Virtualizing networking is about breaking down physical boundaries. 

VMware has transformed the provisioning time for an OS instance by decoupling hardware and software within a virtual machine.  Unfortunately the VMs requirement for additional services (network, firewall and security) takes the minutes to deploy a VM back up to days. 

VMware’s NSX initiative is designed to decouple hardware and software within the network stack.  A production VM needs IPs, VLANs, Firewall, ACLS, QoS etc. etc.  The time to deploy these network services kills the flexibility of virtualization.  It also limits mobility as there is a dependency on networking and switching physical hardware.  It also has an impact on DR as these services do not transport with the VM. 

To address these problems VMware has built a network hypervisor.  The server VM believes it is talking to  physical network gear even though the network routing and switching is virtualized.  This is likely to have an impact in the networking market as the average markup on network gear is 70% vs. 20% in the hardware server market. 

Virtualized networking is available today in the product line.  these virtual wires float within the software or virtualization layer.  These virtual wires can speak to physical servers as they can be mapped to a physical environment through the VXLAN standard.

VMware has extended the virtual network to partners through VXLAN to integrate physical appliances like F5 Load Balancers. 

VMware NSX enables stretching to other Cloud environments.  In addition NSX enables

1. On boarding Customers Faster
2. The ability to offer new, automated network services to customers
3. Reduce Costs
   1. Move away from traditional physical networking
4. Deliver Flexibility through elastic networking that scales out as needed

Integrating NSX does not require a rip and replace of your existing network hardware vendor.  You only need IP connectivity and high performance network fabric to integrate NSX.