Dispersed Storage Blog

On January 20^th, I attended a conference on cloud computing and cloud storage hosted by the Mexican federal government who is looking at how they can use cloud systems to provide more efficient and more reliable IT systems both for internal use as well as to better deliver services to its citizens.  They selected eight leading cloud computing and cloud storage vendors to present their cloud strategies:  IBM, EMC, Google, Sun, HP, Cisco, Hitachi, and Cleversafe.  There’s been a lot of press coverage lately of “cloud”, so it was quite interesting to really see the presentations to directly understand the state of cloud technology and what each company is providing.

Surprisingly, six of these companies were consistent in not discussing how their products have evolved to actually address the requirements of the cloud.

IBM presented a definition of cloud computing and spoke very generally about the elements and benefits of cloud computing.  Although IBM didn’t present any new technologies for cloud, they have a very long history in the technology approaches leading up to cloud and are integrating various solutions for the cloud market.

Carlos Medinas of Cisco presented a unified architecture for cloud computing which promised higher efficiency.  Understandably, Cisco views the world as a series of detailed network diagrams which results in a presentation of a series of detailed network diagrams.  Clearly, cloud computing and cloud storage will utilize the Internet network infrastructure provided primarily by Cisco, so they will play a key role; however, Cisco will need to work with various partners to delivery solution-level benefits.

Antonio Guerraro of HP (who was formerly in EDS Mexico) then spoke on the business process capabilities of cloud computing.  HP’s three strategies are to:

-          Help customers secure, manage and administer cloud systems

-          Enable providers of cloud services

-          Provide cloud services through partners like Gobble, Print 2 Cloud, MacCloud, Snapfish, etc.

At this point in the presentation, it became clear that the standard cloud presentation was to 1) define the domain of cloud computing, 2) talk about how your company has been working on cloud-like capabilities since the dawn of (digital) time and then 3) show a big matrix of capabilities that shows that your company knows everything and can do everything – thus providing a complete solution.  As had IBM and Cisco, HP presented this approach which then was repeated by Sun, EMC and Hitachi.

Sun’s unique spin was that cloud-like capabilities was so integral to the company was that it was their company slogan, “The Network is the Computer”.  No doubt Sun has always been on this theme and has played a leadership role with technologies like Java, Ethernet workstations, etc.  With the Oracle merger concluding, it will be interesting to see how that affect’s Sun’s (and Oracle’s) strategy.

EMC understandably featured their virtual computing capabilities through VMware as well as their partnership with Cisco and VMware for providing cloud solutions.  They then positioned their Atmos product as COS – Cloud Optimized Storage – a new a category of storage like NAS or SAN.  EMC touted the capability of Atmos to manage data sets using policies.  For example, you can designate policy levels of “bronze” and “gold” which would each correspond to different reliability levels with higher numbers of copies for data associated with the gold policy.  EMC said that Atmos would automatically make multiple copies as needed which they illustrated by showing a map of Mexico with “4, 5 or ‘n’ copies” scattered across the map.  I can certainly see why EMC would want to sell a system that automatically makes 4, 5 or ‘n’ copies, but it is hard to see how most customers would find that approach cost effective.

As with all the prior presenters, Hitachi Data Systems lead off with defining the cloud storage market.  Hitachi’s definition included three segments:  public cloud, private cloud and content repository systems.  Hitachi asserted their differentiator as being able to provide different storage interfaces – NAS and SAN – on the same pool of drives.  Hitachi also has a “dynamic provisioning” system and retention (compliance) policies and position themselves around the differentiators of integration, reliability & security and scalability.

Each of these prior six presenters told a similar story and it seems as though many vendors are talking about how they have the breadth and depth to cover cloud, but aren’t giving any concrete examples of how their products have fundamentally evolved to address the requirements of a massively scalable, multi-tenancy system.

John Farrell of Google was up next and it was refreshing that he had something different to say.  He started at a very high level by referring to the book The Big Switch by Nicholas Carr.  The general theme was that computing and applications are much more efficient when delivered as a utility, like electricity.  John also provided some insights into the improved cost efficiency – specifically the life cycle cost – of gmail vs. operating an internal email system.

I then concluded the conference by stepping back and looking at long term technology trends to answer the question of whether cloud computing and cloud storage is just an industry fad or a genuine shift.  My presentation then used this technology megatrends framework to look in detail at where cloud storage is headed and how we’ll get there which is the subject a future post…