Mike D’s Blog

Recently, Fujitsu submitted their cloud API to the DMTF for consideration in the standards process. The news caught my eye a long time ago and I read up on the effort a long time ago but just never got around to blogging about it. Well, here I am with time to blog so let me give you a quick run down of what’s going on and then link you to a great post by William Vanbenepe for more detailed information.

VMware had submitted our vCloud API to the DMTF a while back. This was an effort to get the conversation and process started on creating a standardized cloud API for all to use. We don’t expect that ours will be the end result of this process. We really just did the submission to spark the discussion (although we also think ours is a good start). Fujitsu was the first to follow with a submission although there are others out there with an API (Amazon, Rackspace, Google, SUN, etc). Hopefully the others will submit their thoughts and participate in this process.

So what is this Fujitsu API? It’s actually less of an API and more of a definition of interconnects. I mean there are no functions per-se. Nothing to program against. It’s really interesting to see what they wrote up. I think if you combine their submission with the VMware submission you get some overlap in definitions but they really do provide a good synergy.

Anyhow, I just thought I’d make everyone aware of what’s going on. This will be a long process and we probably won’t see the first draft until the end of 2010 at the earliest. If you happen to work for or work with one of the other companies that has an API out there then encourage them to work with this process so we can get something the ISV ecosystem can really get behind. I’ve said it once and will say it 1,000 times – standards is the only way this cloud thing is going to work and stick around.

Read more on the details of the Fujitsu API at William’s blog.

As I stated on Tuesday, I was speaking on a cloud panel at a TMForum event last week. It was a really great event. One of the things that TMForum announced the day that I was down there was the Enterprise Cloud Buyers Council. It’s a really interesting group that combines leading Enterprises in the cloud space with leading Service Providers/Telcos in the cloud space to figure out what Enterprises really need from a cloud. This is something that nearly everyone I’ve talked to in the cloud vendor world has struggled to truly understand. Sure there are some base requirements out there:

• Fast provisioning


• Security


• Support for enterprise apps and operating systems


• Etc

To date though people have pretty much taken a “build it and they will come” approach. While that’s fine it’s really hard to get to the commodity type of pricing that consumers want when you have to put out a lot of CapEx in order to stand up capacity on services you hope the market will consume. It’s much easier for the business to have a set of requirements to operate against. It’s the aim of this new council to work on those requirements.

Just looking through the press release on the first vendors to sign up I see a lot of familiar names:

• Alcatel-Lucent


• Amdocs


• AT&T


• BT


• CA


• Cisco


• EMC


• HP


• IBM


• Microsoft


• Nokia Siemens Networks


• Telecom Italia


• Telstra


• Deutsche Bank


• Commonwealth Bank of Australia

I’ve been working with pretty much everyone on that list to build up their cloud service so I know for a fact that all are advanced enough in cloud that we should get a good list of requirements from this group. More will be coming into the fold soon from the enterprise side to join the two enterprises already on the list.

What’s even better is this organization is also working with the DMTF. The DMTF seems to be the one common group that all of the standards orgs and bodies are working with. They already have a formal relationship with CSA (the Cloud Security Alliance) and an informal one with OCCI (the Open Cloud Computing Initiative).

Make sure you follow this org closely and sign your own organization up to help with the effort if you’re getting into cloud. Of course I’d really like to see more enterprises in this group than vendors in order to get good material out. Right now it’s too heavy on the vendor side of the house.

Here’s a list of things they are currently working on to keep your eyes on:

• Common Cloud Services Product Definitions


• Cloud Security Issues


• Cloud-to-Cloud Interoperability, Data Portability and APIs


• Service Provider Benchmarking


• Buyer-demand Forecasting


• Federated Cloud Stores


• Cloud Service Level Agreement Process Management


• Cloud Network Performance and Latency Issues

I’d be interested to hear other’s thoughts on this new buying council and the impact to the industry.

I’m sure you’ve all seen this by now but just in case – this one is hillarious.

In 2008, VMware launched the VMware Service Provider Program (VSPP). This program allows service providers to pay for VMware licenses on a per VM per month usage basis. This aligns better with the monthly charges that service providers give to their customers and reduces the upfront Capex spend for service providers.

Today VSPP has over 700 service providers in the program. That’s a pretty large presence. What’s more is that nearly all of these service providers are in the middle of adding VMware-powered cloud service to their existing managed hosting environments. That is the power of the VMware vCloud initiative – choice of several hundred different providers to get you exactly what you need and compatibility between all of those various cloud providers.

For more information on the new milestone of VSPP read this press release. For more information on VSPP go here.

Previously I have talked a bit about OVF and how great it is for the industry. VMware’s implementation of OVF is called vApp and it’s fully OVF 1.0 compliant. The tool used for creating vApps is called VMware Studio and it can be found here.

The new version of VMware Studio (2.0) is now in beta. One of my favorite features of VMware Studio 2.0 is the Eclipse plug-in. Now developers can develop their apps, test them out locally with VMware Workstation, and then build them into a vApp and inject that vApp directly to a VMware Virtual Infrastructure or vSphere environment or even a VMware powered cloud. The ability to go straight from the development environment through to the cloud from within your IDE is pretty powerful – especially with how popular the cloud is for a development platform. Just another way that VMware is showing its leadership in the cloud space.

Here are some more highlights of VMware Studio 2.0 beta:

• Build vApps and virtual appliances (with in-guest OS and application components) compatible with VMware Infrastructure, VMware vSphere 4.0 and vCloud.
• Use an Eclipse plug-in version in addition to the stand-alone form factor. A Web Console and Command Line Interface are also furnished.
• Ability to accept existing Studio-created VM builds as input
• Support for Windows 2003 and 2008 Server as guest operating systems in addition to major linux distros.

ISV partners:

• Author and build virtual appliances optimized for VMware Infrastructure and VMware vSphere 4.0: Support for OVF 1.0 and 0.9
• Publish patches to update deployed virtual appliances
• Extensible in-guest management framework
• Automatic Dependency resolution (static)
• Support for 32 bit and 64 bit versions of SLES 10.2, RHEL 5.2 and 5.3, CentOS 5.2 and 5.3, Ubuntu 8.0.4.1 as guest operating systems

Studio 2.0 also provides general purpose features enhancements in provisioning and user experience

• VMware ESX Server, VMware ESXi, VMware Server 2.0, 1.0.4, 1.0.5, 1.0.6 and VMware Workstation 6.5.1 enabled as provisioning engines
• Infrastructure enhancements in the GUI and builds

The public Beta is accessible now from http://www.vmware.com/appliances/learn/vmware_studio.html.

It seems every time I’m in an account and finish talking about VMware’s cloud strategy and ecosystem Oracle comes up as a discussion point. Customers ask why Oracle seems to be going in the complete opposite direction of their strategic directions and cloud in general. I don’t have a good answer for that one other than to agree with them. Take the announcement from earlier last week that Oracle is killing off Virtual Iron shortly after the acquisition. It’s yet another virtualization technology they bought and have subsequently killed (SUN xVM being the other). This is just one of the many reasons customers are seeing SUN running against their strategic directions (virtualization is somewhat crucial to getting the cloud going). You add in Oracle’s licensing practices and disjointed vision and you can see the puzzle pieces falling into place. Meanwhile you have people like VMware, Intel, Cisco, and EMC (VICE) all aligning with customers’ strategic vision and taking them on the path to better days.

On April 27, the DMTF launched the Open Cloud Standards Incubator. The goal as described by the DMTF press release is as follows:

The work of the Open Cloud Standards Incubator will focus on ways to facilitate operations between private clouds within enterprises and other private, public, or hybrid clouds by improving the interoperability between platforms through open cloud resource management standards. The group also aims to develop specifications to enable cloud service portability and provide management consistency across cloud and enterprise platforms.

The Open Cloud Standards Incubator was formed as part of the DMTF Standards Incubation process, which enables like-minded DMTF members to work together and produce informational specifications that can later be fast-tracked through the standards development process. The incubation process is designed to foster and expedite open, collaborative, exploratory technical work that complements the DMTF mission to lead the development, adoption and promotion of interoperable management initiatives and standards.

Winston Bumpus, current President of the DMTF and fellow VMware employee has blogged a lot about cloud and the need for standards. His latest blog entry continues to highlight this push for VMware and the industry at large. VMware has had a lot of success in collaborating with others in the industry through the DMTF. The first successful example of that is the OVF (Open Virtualization Format). I’m sure the incubator project will yield similar (if not better) results.

I’d like to officially add another person to my list of those that “get” cloud. Congratulations to Dave Malcom, CTO of Surgient. I know what you’re going to say, “why are you giving props to the competition?” Well, at this point in cloud computing’s development those who understand what’s going on need to band together to push this concept forward – especially when you have companies like Oracle running in the complete opposite direction of cloud. So what did Dave say that made me perk up and write a post? Simple, he wrote the truth in plain english. Go here to read the post and then come back for comments.

Dave lays out 5 characteristics for cloud computing. Here’s my color commentary on each:

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From rPath comes a really neat little video on cloud computing. I agree with pretty much everything in it and think you’ll find it useful as well. Enjoy!

iCloud has just started offering free desktops from their cloud based service. You heard that right – a free desktop that you can login to from anywhere. It also comes with free storage (3 GB worth). Here are some of the specs:

• Access to your friends, files and digital life on any computer
• 3 GB free storage space to safely store documents, photos and music online
• 30 free applications such as Office, Mail, Music, Video, IM, Sharing, Games, Collaboration and Development tools
• 20 free widgets
• Free backup to provide secure storage, including WedDav
• Zero installation, icloud runs in your Internet Explorer or Firefox browser

I logged in this morning with my free account and it’s pretty nice. At least it looks that way on the surface. If you can get around the little bit of sluggish performance, the reliance on IE (Firefox is only experimental), and the fact that you can’t logout then things run pretty well. Some interesting apps are included that might make this thing actually usable. That’s the big question though – would you use this as your primary machine all the time?

Here’s a challenge. Someone go and give up their machine at home and only use iCloud for a full 15 days. Do whatever you would normally do. Report back here with your findings. Were you able to really get everything done? How did you get all your data up there? How did you get the photos off your camera and into the desktop? It’s things like this that I think everyone would really be interested in hearing. So there it is. If anyone is up to the challenge then I have a $25 iTunes card for the first to respond to the challenge. I guess that’s sort of humorous since iTunes won’t run in iCloud. Anyhow, the offer still stands.

I’d also be interested in anyone else’s experience on what they liked or didn’t like about the offering. Like I said, it has some good things going for it. I just wonder if consumers will stick with it.

Where does VMware and SaaS intersect? The Virtual Appliance Marketplace (VAM) is the answer. VAM has been around for some time now – over 2 years by my recollection. VAM started as a place for people who built virtual appliances to put them up on the web for others to download. VMware was the first company with such a site and is still the largest such repository.

Virtual Appliances are pre-built virtual machines with an operating system and application stack ready to go. Appliances vary greatly in what they’re used for and how “pretty” they are. There’s everything from IBM software stacks to pre-built virtual storage nodes to something as simple as a web browser. All you have to do to use one is download it and open it. This is why I say this is where VMware and SaaS intersect.

SaaS is usually talked about in reference to someone like a Salesforce.com. In the Salesforce model you log into a website, fill out a form, and an instance of the software is created for you – no installs necessary. Appliances are very similar. You log into VAM, find your appliance and download it, and your instance is ready to run. That’s the play for VMware in the SaaS space and it’s a strong one. The great thing about appliance is they’re easy to build and they work with any application you have to make it SaaS enabled.

Do you want to get started converting your applications to a SaaS model? It’s easy. Just get your apps loaded into a VM. You can use something like the free VMware Converter to do that. Next, download and use the free VMware Studio to convert those VMs into virtual appliances. Presto! You have service enabled your application. Wasn’t that easy?

As you can see, VMware plays in more than just the IaaS stack. In the future I’ll shed some light on how VMware impacts the PaaS stack.

For those that haven’t heard VMware’s overall cloud strategy there’s a 2 part series that Chuck Hollis wrote up from the EMC Strategy Forum that took place back in mid-March. The two articles are worth a read. The first is here. The second is here. You’ll get a good idea of where we’re going. If you’d like to see how EMC fits in then go all the way to the beginning of the series and follow along.

Yesterday marked a huge day of history in the world of cloud computing. The Open Cloud Manifesto was finally released to the public. You might ask, “What the heck is an open cloud manifesto”. I’m glad you asked. Basically what happened is someone to 6 pages to basically write that cloud interoperability should be based on open standards. Wow! Shocking, isn’t it? Stop the presses!!! Someone in the computer world wants open standards around something.

There’s a lot I have to laugh at when looking at this whole manifesto. First there’s the name. Manifesto is usually used in the political arena to talk about your stance on a certain topic. OK. That’s certainly the point here. However isn’t this a little bit of a majestic or more to the point strong name for simply saying you want some standards in an emerging IT field? I mean it’s pretty much given these days that if there’s something interesting happening in IT then someone is going to declare that it should be open and free for the masses. The whole problem I have with that is a guy’s gotta eat. Not everything in the world can be free. At some point companies have to make money to pay the employees so they can eat and be well nourished so they can complain that things aren’t free. As Dane Cook would say, “It’s a vicious circle”. This is probably why people like Microsoft and Google and Amazon didn’t sign the document.

I also find it interesting that a manifesto about openness was done in a closed environment. This is the reason the CCIF pulled out even though they helped author the document in the first place. There’s some poetic justice there somewhere.

So here we are probably 500 blogs, a few dozen news articles, and countless thought cycles later with the “major” news that we need some open standards in cloud interoperability. I really question why we needed a document like this anyways. The IT industry and standards bodies were already working on this problem in an open way. You already had CCIF, OCCI at the OGF, SNIA, and probably DMTF before too long. How many different open standards can you really have going on at the same time anyways? So great, Manifesto crowd, now we’re going to have open standards just like you wanted – 20 of them. Well, there’s always tomorrow when I’ve heard the Proprietary Capitalism Manifesto will be released with Microsoft, Citrix, Amazon, and Google as the original signers. Can’t wait to read that one!

I recently came across a blog post from Cassatt saying that virtualization isn’t required for the cloud. What a stupid topic I thought to myself. Of course it’s required. After reading through the post (which was well written) I thought that I’ve been in the virtualization space for so long that maybe I’m missing something. Then I started to think about the cloud implementations that I’m currently doing with 3 of the largest service providers in the world. Sure all of them have virtual and physical servers. All of them have lots of other devices (networking, storage, security, etc) in the datacenter as well. Do you really need to virtualize everything in order to stand up a cloud? The answer is no. What is this? A VMware person saying you don’t need virtualization? If you’re my boss then stop and read on before you fire me.

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Many of you reading this have probably been wondering where the blog posts have been. I’ve been silent for a long time now and so much has been going on worth writing about. The fact is that I transitioned over to be the global cloud architect for VMware starting on January 1 this year. At first I thought this was a good move since cloud hasn’t taken off, it’s immature, and everyone is trying to figure it out and will be waiting for a year before doing anything with it. I thought this is great because I’ll get to stay home with the family some more and finally have time for other things in life. Boy was I wrong!

For the first month on the job I read a lot and talked to a lot of people to figure out what cloud is, how people are defining it, if it’s even important, and who the players are. It took a while to come up to speed but I can now say that I have a PhD in all things cloud. Around Feb 1 I started going out and talking to customers about VMware’s cloud vision, our roadmap, and asking questions about what the customer’s vision of cloud was and what they’d like to do with it. I’ve spoken to just over 200 enterprise customers to date and about 60 different service providers on cloud related topics. Below are my findings in no particular order. I think after reading you’ll see why I’m getting my butt kicked.

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