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October 10, 2008
The Grid-Cloud Connection (Pt. II): Spare the Hype
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As we saw in the first installment, there is no denying the connection between grid computing and cloud computing. The question going forward, however, is twofold: (1) How has the evolution from the former to the latter influenced the capabilities of dynamic datacenter solutions; and (2) How tightly are these companies willing to latch onto the cloud computing bandwagon?
The brief answer? The advent of cloud computing has drastically affected the product offerings and solutions by grid computing veterans. Everything is about flexibility, mobility, virtualization and, overall, being on-demand. As for the second prong, well, that’s not such an affirmative answer. After seeing how quickly a nebulous term can lose favor among the user community, vendors are (wisely, it would seem) betting on the delivery model but not necessarily the terminology.
Cloud, Utility, Whatever
Univa UD’s plan with its Reliance product is to help customers take advantage of their existing infrastructures by providing, among other things, application awareness, quality-of-service guarantees and automated SLAs. As noted earlier, its datacenter automation strategy no longer includes United Devices’ staple Grid MP middleware. Far from a rip-and-replace situation, the company is partnering with other vendors to ensure that previous datacenter investments are not wasted but, instead, optimized.
Univa UD is marketing Reliance as an appliance for both in-house use and for service providers looking to build their cloud or utility infrastructures. According to Alex Brown, general manager of Univa UD’s Data Center Business Division, the company has customers using it in both scenarios. A large telecom provider, he says, is using Reliance as a piece of its utility services model. The provider already has invested huge sums of money in its utility infrastructure, and Reliance will work alongside Opsware and SMART to provide maximum flexibility. On the internal side, Brown points to a customer looking to get rid of departmental resources by morphing its current infrastructure into a service-oriented one. Because it is relatively easy to make this switch in-house, Brown says products like Reliance could be called -- if you you’re down with the cloud lingo -- a “cloud in a box.”
Of course, not everybody is down with calling everything “cloud computing” -- including Brown. Although he certainly sees Reliance as a cloud-enabling appliance, he recognizes that preferred labels differ from customer to customer, and there is no need to alienate. “I’ve been trying to avoid, necessarily, labeling us with that term [cloud computing], because at the end of the day, what Reliance will enable some people are going to call cloud, [while] others are going to call it something else -- grid or utility or whatever.” However, (at the risk of “splitting hairs”) he adds that “cloud” tends to be more application-specific, whereas “utility” connotes a shared infrastructure.
Another reason for Univa UD to be careful about applying the cloud label is the fact that Reliance is not a cloud. Gordon Jackson, technical director for the company’s Data Center Business Division, notes that Reliance simply enables cloud services, it does not provide cloud services. For example, he says, Reliance could provide the intelligence for Amazon’s cloud infrastructure, but certainly would not be considered the cloud in that situation. People are started to get the nuance between these two roles, he says, but there still is some confusion, so there is no need to slap on the cloud label -- at least “until the 20-odd definitions of cloud out there result in one or two concrete, or more concrete, definitions.”
Additionally, both Jackson and Brown agree that most organizations -- including Univa UD’s customers -- will get comfortable with internal service delivery before they start accessing services externally, so there is no need to add to the confusion between whether an internal cloud really is a cloud. Whatever you call it, Brown says, the technology will become ubiquitous because the economics are just too compelling, and that -- not a buzzword -- is what Univa UD is banking on.
Let’s Just Call it all ‘Dynamic Application Service Management’
DataSynapse is a little more welcoming of the cloud computing buzz than are some of its competitors, but that doesn’t mean it expects the term to last forever. With that in mind, says Ivan Casanova, vice president of product marketing, the company has developed its own term to encompass the whole cloud/utility computing landscape: Dynamic Application Service Management (DASM).
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