Intel's Cloud Storage Infrastructure

Intel's Ajay Chandramouly, Cloud and Data Center Manager, shares his best IT practices for deploying cloud technologies with peers in the industry at SNW. His big trends are cloud, IT consumerization and security.

Cloud Scoreboard

There have been some meaningful acquisitions in the cloud and data center space recently, not the least of which was Dell’s offer to buy enterprise storage maker Compellent Technologies for nearly $1 billion earlier this week. Dell hopes this will help them close the gap in the storage arena with HP, who recently won the Dell-HP bidding war for 3Par. Other notable acquisitions include Juniper’s $95 million acquisition of Altor Networks, which provides virtualization security for data centers, and Cisco’s purchase of LineSider Technologies, a privately held provider of network management software that makes it easier for businesses to create their cloud computing infrastructures. The latter two acquisitions emphasize the importance of management software and security in cloud computing.

Some of the key Data Center vendors like: Cisco, Intel, VMware, Oracle, Dell, HP and IBM are purchasing other companies in order to provide vertical data center solution stacks to their customers, but none of them have the “best of breed” in all the verticals such as network, storage, server and enterprise applications. Its back to the future in terms of proprietary vertical stacks.

What the Cloud is NOT...

Given all the various interpretations of what exactly the cloud means, I've decided to take a different approach to articulating what the cloud is by calling out what the cloud is not! Make sense? Its kind of like the SATs when you had to pick the right antonym of a word.

If you can't buy it on your personal credit card, its not the cloud.
If there is a consultant in the room, its not the cloud.
If someone is trying to sell you hardware, its not the cloud.
If you own all the hardware its not the cloud.
If you need to install software to use it, its not the cloud.
If you can't connect to it from your own machine, its not the cloud.
If it only runs one OS, its not the cloud.
If you need to specify beforehand the number of machines you want, its not the cloud.
If you know where the machines are physically located, its not the cloud.
If you can't provision or de-comission in less than 10 mins, its not the cloud.
If there is no API, its not the cloud.

What do you think? Did I miss anything?

Does Cloud Computing = Outsourcing??

No different as far as I can tell. You may want to ask yourself the following:
1. Do you have a dedicated or shared environment?
2. If shared, how is it managed?
3. What information do you host publicly?
4. How do you define and what are your controls? Controls will vary from each environment so translations will be required.

Upshot: If your cloud provider can meet your security goals then you're good. Simple as that.