Cloud computing: Management, capacity, budget trade-offs

While IT pros face different problems and have different solutions, everyone sees the impact of cloud computing on the rapid development and profound changes in the IT industry.

It pros believe that many of the changes are centered on management and day-to-day operations. Whatever the purpose of the organization, everyone can see the enormous potential of work in the cloud-style operation.

Ray O ' Brien, CTO of NASA's Ames Research Center, directs the implementation of NASA's internal Cloud computing Project Nebula, where the storage components are a core part of the OpenStack project. O ' Brien says one of the reasons for implementing the cloud project at NASA is to find out what the real role and impact of cloud computing is in such a large IT organization.

"We have to take into account everything, including management and budgeting. "But it turns out that NASA didn't really do that," he said.

O ' Brien says the general pattern of project development in NASA is the bulls, hardware and budget in several different directions, and each team and department is responsible for one of them. Project leaders have a great deal of autonomy in the choice of infrastructure, O ' Brien said, and this poses the dilemma of having to spend a lot of money on the one hand and not having a comprehensive, realistic plan and understanding of the project's vision on the other. "At the development level, NASA is a less centralized organization." "he said.

James Cuff, director of research at Harvard University, agrees with O ' Brien that IT staff is increasingly vulnerable to resource control. This is particularly true in academia, who says that cloud-computing infrastructure services such as AWS become so simple and economical that end users ignore them. An increasing number of end users are avoiding this problem, which makes the already chaotic state of running a large number of infrastructures more complex.

"The bottom line is that we've abandoned the bare metal business. "Cuff said. As hardware goods become cheaper, he has reason to have some infrastructure based on a multitude of requirements, and the cloud infrastructure is the most functionally capable of meeting the needs of High-performance computing systems that users need. Whether he thinks it or not, there is at least one reason why cloud computing will be a big winner in the future. "17 cents per kwh." "he added.

The power cost of simply cuff the system is higher than the power cost of the AWS product line. In addition, AWS performs better than Harvard in running large computational grids, so cuff believes the shift is inevitable.

Anti-infrastructure

Brian Butte, head of cloud computing at PricewaterhouseCoopers, has warned that seemingly seemingly slow development of software in every sector of the enterprise is a cautionary tale of infrastructure, services.

Butte believes that a cloud computing service and a cloud-style infrastructure will eventually become a recognized trend, which is the main reason for the changes that have taken place in the traditional IT sector. "You will find that the biggest catalyst for this change is the CFO," he said. "he said.

But the CFO does not want to have any hardware assets, Butte said, at least not wanting to have all the infrastructure. Few companies have their own buildings, or even their furniture, and they outsource everything to businesses that can provide services at a higher quality and cheaper price. It is now clear that the IT department can operate in a similar way, and people prefer not to run the data center by themselves, but more with hosting services.

"They all know that Microsoft's newest ad, ' Oh, ethically stick it in the cloud. '" Butte said.

The key problem, Butte says, is that rather than a new IT technology, cloud computing is an opportunity to readjust the entire enterprise, with the help and support of it technology, to make each process more automated and streamlined. "It's human resources, it's finance, it's everything," he says. "Everything is accessible through cloud computing." ”

Of course, this change is not easy to achieve, and its transformation process will not be completed in a short time. Many companies have been butte called "estate tax" business applications, the common term of these businesses are very historical, very important, difficult to change. ' There's just nothing in place, ' he said. ' The best way to implement cloud computing is to do it one small step at a time.

"Cloud computing cannot be done overnight. You cannot fully implement cloud computing through a project or over 10 projects. "he said. "It takes a very long process." ”

(Responsible editor: admin)