The spring of the private cloud

Is the spring of the private cloud coming soon? Yes, at least the analyst's forecasts are optimistic. "In 2012 and in the next few years, large companies may only take into account the building and application of private cloud platforms,"--IDC in a survey published at the London Cloud Security conference. ”

In China, the prospect of private cloud development is more desirable. In 2012, private cloud will be the main growth point of China's cloud computing market, with a market scale of 17.521 billion yuan (RMB), which will exceed 40 billion yuan by 2013, according to the latest CCW survey.

Although the domestic and foreign analytical institutions are optimistic about the future development of the private cloud, we still want to find out what has happened to the private cloud, especially the private cloud market in China. More importantly, in the future of the waterway, there are some undercurrent, reefs need to be ascertained and avoided.

The key pushing hands: the increasingly rich cloud ecological circle

Remember in 2010, the reporter participated in the cloud computing related meetings, that year also by the manufacturer or media crown for "China's cloud computing landing first." However, in the General Assembly scene, not only rarely see the local manufacturers of the figure, even foreign manufacturers of cloud computing products and solutions are also weak, and the real case of the cloud is basically not.

Over the next two years, however, cloud computing has quickly become the most popular industry in the country, thanks to the recognition of cloud computing as a trend, coupled with national policy incentives. Although the industry has begun to question whether cloud computing is overheating, the entire cloud computing industry has come to a certain number of points:

First, cloud computing technology, products and solutions have tended to mature.

We know that enterprise users have to build a cloud platform, often refers to IaaS, and IaaS solution is also the most mature and rich. At present, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Dell and other IT vendors are generally providing two types of IaaS solution: both to support users to move the entire traditional it architecture to the cloud environment, but also to provide software and hardware integration solutions, so that users realize cloud computing "out-of-the-box." and local manufacturers are both hands ready. "Some users are more reliant on IBM, HP and other major manufacturers of products, then we are mainly to do integration, to provide them with professional services, but some users pay more attention to cost, or do not care about the brand, only concerned about the final effect, then we have their own development, based on open source software cloud solutions available. Rong Wang Donghui, chairman of the board told reporters. In addition, Wang Donghui says, they are also making some architectural adjustments to Rongzhifa's software products, enabling them to deploy both in the traditional IT environment and in the public and private cloud environments.

The second is the cloud service provider's hierarchy category is richer.

Any industry chain, the number of players, the level of richer, it represents the more mature industry chain. At first, a variety of manufacturers are indeed "swarm" to the cloud, but over time, they have their own advantages and angle of entry has been clear. For example, Dawn, with its advantages in high-performance computing and good relations with the government, specializes in building "urban clouds" with local governments. Friends of the Tianyu system and the winning software companies are committed to cloud computing core technology research, development of cloud computing operating system and application software; and the Golden Wisdom Education Information Technology Co., Ltd. ("Golden Wisdom Education"), such as a large number of enterprises in various sectors of information technology for many years, is to be a user into the "cloud".

In addition, an industry source said: "In the two or three-line region, some unknown companies, with a saved server, pirated VMware, for the vast number of small and medium-sized manufacturing, service customers to provide entry-level IaaS services." Its low prices are unimaginable, but still profitable, but also consider the siege to the broad. "Journalists believe that this use of pirated software, although not correct, but an ecological circle members from the exclusively" Spring "to" mixed "is the normal performance of the development, but also reflects the market demand for cloud computing is multi-level.

Core Power: Match user needs

Different from two years ago, the case of cloud landing is getting more and more. For example, in the Public cloud field, Chongqing's medical Health Cloud, Shanghai Telecom's financial cloud, Guizhou mobile communication cloud, Sina's SAE (the Engine) can be regarded as a true public cloud. In the private cloud field, there are more cases. On the one hand, we see that many cloud computing solution providers usually take their own "practiced" and build a variety of clouds internally, such as Huawei, ZTE, a wide range of desktop clouds, Tianya development test cloud, and so on, on the other hand, education, aviation, apparel manufacturing and other industries can see

"From our survey, the main reason why companies deploy private clouds is that they want to achieve rapid deployment of resources and increase resource utilization." "said Peng, a senior analyst at IDC.

The reporter's series of interviews also confirmed the IDC analyst's statement. For example, Tianjin Port Global Rolling Dock Co., Ltd. IT executives said: "I really do not care what is cloud computing, I am concerned about two points." First, there is no better technology to free our IT staff from the trivial IT operational dimension, devote more effort to thinking about how it applications support business; second, the new technology can reduce energy consumption as much as possible and reduce TCO (TCO), because the company has a specific assessment in this regard. And cloud computing just satisfies our two-point demand, so we're on cloud computing. "Today, the company has deployed private cloud storage through the cloud silos of the world's super cloud, while continuing to build IaaS."

And, enterprise users of their own needs are clear, the understanding of cloud computing is also quite rational. A CIO who declined to be named said: "Today, many manufacturers are advertising cloud computing can bring new business model, our view is that really can achieve business model innovation naturally Good, if not, we will not refuse cloud computing." Because we will eliminate a number of servers every five or six years, to buy new servers, and sometimes software. And we have calculated, this time, the direct deployment of a set of IaaS and the kind of hardware and software to buy the traditional IT system construction model compared to the cost of actually not much more, the effect is better, say go also nice. Why do you think we have a reason to refuse?

The reporter thought that the CIO's "truth" instead made cloud computing, especially the private cloud based on the IaaS model, truly predictable, and no wonder some companies that offer entry-level IaaS construction services are doing well in the two or three-tier cities.

Of course, not all users expect cloud computing to be so, and many big institutions do take a strategic view of cloud computing. For example, the Department of Product Innovation Management of ICBC and IBM jointly released the cloud computing white paper. The white paper is a very detailed analysis of how cloud computing combines with the specific business model of the bank and how to open up innovative banking services.

An Apple has subverted the entire mobile phone industry, and cloud computing can also give companies the power to reshape their industries.

Private Cloud Forerunner's experience

Although the concept of cloud computing is approaching the "notoriously" level, the experience of cloud landing is still invaluable.

Shan, director of Anhui University's Network Center, shared their "cloud maker screening standards" he said: "We look at three aspects: first, the company's system integration capacity to be strong, to understand the mainstream of servers, storage, network equipment; second, to the application is more clear; again, to have strong software development capabilities, Because there are many two development or customization of the work, need to have a software development background of the company. ”

However, not all enterprise users will choose cloud computing solution vendors to build a cloud platform, some large and medium-sized enterprises are more interested in the way to build private cloud, Tianya Cloud Computing Department director Wang Qingpo introduced the company's private cloud construction has faced and overcome some of the difficulties, for the latter to learn from.

Wang Qingpo said that the construction of a private cloud on its own mainly has the following "three ridge" is needed to step over:

One is the selection of software. Currently, there are many open source and commercial software related to cloud computing, and how to select it takes time and effort to study patiently. Their experience is: all-inclusive software is not necessarily the best, testing and choose to meet the needs of the enterprise is the most appropriate.

The second is the adjustment of application architecture. Application to migrate from a physical static environment (not cloud environment) to an elastic dynamic environment (cloud environment), which has a lot of architectural level of carding work, rather than simply moving. Wang Qingpo said that the vast majority of applications to do this "cloud adaptation" adjustment, the Internet application because it is deployed in the cluster environment, the change is not particularly big, and some enterprises to face the changes may be larger.

The third is the application of type analysis. In addition to architectural adjustments, it is necessary to classify applications. For example, to identify which applications are computationally intensive, which applications are bandwidth-intensive, and so on, those applications that have a particularly high demand for network bandwidth are best not to be lumped together. In addition, there will inevitably be a lot of testing work, for example, some applications are originally in the physical environment, but the performance degradation after migrating to the virtual environment, it is necessary to analyze the reasons for performance changes.

"This is our main problem, and those who intend to build their own private cloud are more or less likely to encounter, to be prepared for this." So, I suggest that companies that are not very strong in research and development can buy off-the-shelf business systems directly, or use Open-source software more appropriately. "Wang Qingpo said.

But whether it's a private cloud or a direct purchase of a business system, Chen Yu, the CTO, says: "Cloud computing is not just a technology-specific IT project, it's a social project that subverts everyone's thinking habits, reconstructs corporate procurement processes, and reshaped the way the business units are used, Need to get the attention of business executives and strong support, but also very much need to get the relevant business unit understanding and coordination, which requires the IT department to devote a lot of effort to fully communicate and coordinate. ”

In addition, senior researchers in the cloud computing industry, Sina Micro-Bob Master @forestzrd also reminded corporate users to focus on cloud computing standards, he said: "The standard is essentially to solve an interoperability and portability issues." Although the enterprise just want to be a private cloud, can not take the standard too, but if the enterprise needs to evolve to the mixed cloud in the future, it is necessary to consider the current product support to the standard. "He believes that some open source cloud computing software for the standard of support is relatively good, but large it vendors often grasp the fact that the specific choice of how to choose the enterprise depending on the situation."