Private Clouds Better for Data Warehousing than Public Clouds

Cloud solutions are useful when additional computing power is needed. And cloud capabilities are relatively easy to procure because customers can sign up with a credit card—via an online portal—and start using services within minutes. This is the public cloud delivery model of Amazon and Google, among others.

Public clouds, however, can have a “not-so-silver lining,” with documented concerns over security, privacy, availability, data loss and latency issues. Organizations wishing to mitigate risks associated with storing and analyzing sensitive data in public clouds are increasingly turning to private clouds.

Public cloud solutions generally satisfy user expectations for applications like sales force automation or marketing campaign management. However, data warehousing requirements such as high availability, mixed workload management, near real-time data loads and complex query execution are not easily managed or deployed using public cloud computing models. By contrast, private clouds for data warehousing offer the higher performance, better security and predictable service levels expected by today’s business users. Read more

Is Cloud Computing Hurtling Towards Disaster?

The freight train of cloud computing has left the station and is on an exponential growth tear. But just like in the cartoon strips, there might be broken tracks or a chasm ahead with emerging complexity and ensuing fragility in the public cloud. In terms of cloud computing, should enterprises enjoy the fast paced ride, or think cautiously about what lies ahead?

Cloud computing makes sense for companies seeking to deploy IT solutions faster and more flexibly on a pay-as-you go basis. However, it’s not all upside for cloud computing as complexity in cloud environments (especially public) increase, there’s also potential for catastrophic failure within systems.  And while IT and business users should expect occasional downtime, as public cloud complexity rises there’s also potential risks for much worse.

Previous columns have examined architectures and technological complexities of cloud computing environments. We’ve also examined how the moving pieces in cloud computing are often interdependent and tightly coupled where failure in one component can affect the performance of others. We have also seen how it’s wise to not assume large cloud providers offer a safer choice in terms of keeping data secure, and protected from loss.

As cloud environments inevitably experience technological advances, increased multi-tenancy, colossal system sizes, tight coupling of processes and components, and myriad IT personnel decisions (and errors) these systems will grow more risky to the point where system accidents will become commonplace.

Charles Perrow, author of “Normal Accidents”, says of such environments; “Given (these system) characteristics, multiple and unexpected interactions of failures are inevitable. This is an expression of an integral characteristic of the system, not a statement of frequency.”

Solutions then to these challenges then include adding more redundancy and buffers for components and processes and also additional data protections (i.e. backups on and offsite) to prevent temporary or worse – complete data loss. It should also be a goal to lessen the chances of failure through better training of personnel managing such systems and disaster planning with the expectation that system failure isn’t just possible, it’s very likely.

Public clouds are extremely beneficial to many organizations–allowing them to obtain compute and storage resources with just a few clicks and a credit card.  However, there are certainly risks and other considerations (e.g. operations, data, security, privacy, legal) as well–and these should not be overlooked.

Perrow reminds us that great events have small beginnings. With data as the lifeblood of an organization, it’s good to enjoy all the benefits that cloud computing brings, however it’s also wise to pay attention to the little details and dependencies that could turn a small hiccup into a severe case of heartburn.

Is Bigger, Better in the Cloud?

Bigger is better – is a phrase that’s widely assumed to be self-evident. However, whether it is cruise ships capsizing, or international banks catching a major cold/flu in the 2008 Financial Crisis, we know that while there’s presumably safety in the concept of “size” there can also be inherent complexity and subsequent risk.

Risk management is a critical topic business and IT professionals must take into account in terms of cloud computing.  And especially for mission critical data such as human resources, payroll, financial or even patient data, security and privacy of sensitive data is a paramount concern when considering cloud delivery models.

Courtesy of Flickr/Serhat Demir

But in cloud computing, risk comes in other forms as well including financial viability, especially when there seems to be a new cloud entrant in the marketplace every week. New and attractive markets usually attract entrants at a sizzling pace, however, when the eventual market shakeup comes due, there’s also a chance your cloud provider might go out of business completely, taking your data and applications with them.

And let’s not forget operational risk in the cloud, where it might be assumed large cloud providers might have the upper hand in hiring the talent and expertise necessary to manage inherently complex cloud environments.   However, all the talent in the world is not going to save an environment that’s poorly architected, tightly coupled, and one operational mistake (or bad decision) away from catastrophic meltdown.

Ultimately, one cannot master risk. Instead, management of risks is about all we can hope for.

Mark Twain once famously said; “put all your eggs in one basket – and then watch that basket.” However, Mr. Twain surely didn’t have cloud computing on the mind when he spoke.

For IT and business professionals considering cloud computing solutions, it’s probably tempting to short-list those providers that have a sizable and large cloud computing presence (e.g. the top ten largest and established vendors). However, for a few of these companies, cloud computing is an ancillary business and there’s no guarantee that strategic plans won’t shift to the point that spin-offs aren’t a possibility. In addition, with cloud computing margins already thinning by some estimates, there’s also a good chance investor pressures may force cloud providers to skimp on redundancy or recklessly cut corners elsewhere.

Long way of saying, when it comes to cloud computing, I’m not convinced there’s safety in numbers, nor that a bigger presence and/or market share signals a fundamentally better offer.

Questions:

• When it comes to cloud computing, do you believe bigger is better and possibly safer?
• What criteria do you look for in assessing a cloud provider?

From Complexity to Simplicity in the Cloud

The inner workings of cloud computing can be quite complex. That’s why the founders of Dropbox are on the right path—make cloud computing as simple as possible with easy to understand user-interfaces to mask “behind the scenes” infrastructure and connections.

Open up the lid of “black box” cloud computing and what you’ll see is anything but simple. Massive and parallel server farms that never sleep, algorithms worming and indexing their way through global websites, large data sets waiting in analytical stores for discovery, message buses that route, control and buffer system requests, and massive processing of images, text and more on a grandiose scale.

That’s why companies that take the complexity out of cloud computing are thriving. Take for instance, Dropbox, a company that allows users to access their personal or corporate files from any internet connected device. A Technology Review article featuring Q&A with CEO Drew Houston cites the efforts of Dropbox to mask behind the scenes efforts of “having your stuff with you, wherever you are.”

With various operating systems, incompatibilities, file formats and more, Dropbox engineers had to wade through mountains of bugs and fixes to make the user experience as seamless as possible. “There are technical hurdles that we had to overcome to provide the illusion that everything is in one place…and that getting it is reliable, fast and secure,” Houston says.

Looking at Dropbox from the outside, a user only sees “visual feedback” via a folder, icon or the like on his/her desktop. But underneath the hood there’s a whole gaggle of technologies and code that makes Dropbox work. And to create a seamless experience, painstaking efforts are involved down to the tiniest components says Houston; “Excellence is the sum of 100 or 1000 of…little details”.

If information technology leaders plan to bring “BI to the masses”, simplicity will be a necessary requirement to mask the inherent complexity of cloud computing. Ultimately, there are plenty of business users that won’t care how their particular applications are delivered, only that they are carried out with efficiency, reliability and security. Thus, user interfaces designed with clarity, elegance and ease-of-use in mind will ultimately put a “wrapper” on complexity and drive further adoption of cloud computing delivery models.

And it’s also likely that business users will never appreciate the hard work that goes into designing, delivering and sustaining their applications on a 24x7x365 basis, and accessible from any internet enabled device. But then again, perhaps that’s the point. Application availability, security, reliability, simplicity and productivity are now the expectations of business users – it’s best to deliver “in the cloud”exactly what they want.

Is there Too Much Complexity in the Cloud?

A recent analyst report suggests public clouds are prone to failure because they are inherently complex. However, just because there are multiple interacting objects in a particular environment, this doesn’t necessarily imply complexity.

Cloud computing is all the rage for business users and technology buyers. And why not, especially because it provides a fast and flexible option for delivering information technology services. In addition,cloud computing also drives value through higher utilization of IT assets, elasticity for unplanned demand, and scalability to meet business needs today and tomorrow.

However, there are risks in the cloud, especially in the public cloud where business and news media regale with case studies of data loss, security issues, failed backups and more. Perhaps one reason that public clouds are prone to failure—and perhaps always will be—is that some analysts consider these environments to be complex and tightly coupled.  And if indeed this is the case, then IT buyers must consider that failure isn’t only possible, it’s inevitable.

Yet, first we must ask, are public clouds really complex environments?

To understand if a particular system is complex, we must understand if it has characteristics such as connected objects (nodes and links with interdependencies), multiple messages and transactions, hierarchies, and behavioral rules (instructions).

Public cloud services available from companies such as Microsoft, Google, Amazon Web Services (AWS) etc., often consist of various components such as applications (front end and backend such as billing), controllers and message passing mechanisms, hardware configurations (disk, CPU, memory), databases (relational and NoSQL), Hadoop clusters and more.  In addition there are various management options (dashboards, performance monitoring, identity and access) and these environments typically operate with multiple users, multiple tenants (compute environments shared with more than one application and/or company), and sometimes span multiple geographies.  And from a complexity standpoint we haven’t even yet discussed processes in building cloud environments much less operating them.

In summary, in a cloud environment there’s lots of moving pieces and parts interacting with each other (not necessarily in a linear fashion) within any given timeframe.

Multiple interacting agents can help define whether a particular environment is complex or not, however another key determinant is also very important—whether processes are tightly or loosely coupled. Richard Bookstaber, author of Demon of Our Own Design, writes that tightly coupled systems have components critically interdependent with little to no margin for error. “When things go wrong, (an error) propagates linked from start to finish with no emergency stop button to hit,” Bookstaber says. So a tightly coupled system is one where linkages (dependencies) are so “tight” that errors or failures cascade and eventually cause the entire system to fail.

This discussion is important from a risk management perspective for cloud computing. If we believe that data is one of the most valuable assets of a corporation and if we believe public clouds are complex environments with tightly coupled components that have little to no slack (buffers) to stop failures, then there should be a set of practices and processes set in place to manage the potential risk of data breach, theft, loss or corruption.

So what say you, should public clouds be considered “complex” environments?  Are they “high risk” systems prone to failure?