The Cloud and NFV- Enabling Green Computing and IT Optimization

                                Computing is like the Fashion industry - Every 15 Years or so the old fashion comes back in a new Avatar. During 1970's computing was all about mainframes and shared resources. Access to the mainframe was through the Dumb Terminals or Thin clients. The mainframes did bulk of the processing. They were like host computers. The era of miniaturization gained pace in the 80's and 90' and it led to the development and widespread adoption of personal computers. Corporates started to move away from mainframes due the availability and affordability of personal computers and various operating systems like UNIX, DOS, Windows and Linux.

Today we are advancing towards cloud computing - Don't you see lot of similarities here with the mainframe era ?  In this New Avatar, the Dumb Terminals have been replaced by the Smart Terminals (Smart Phones/Tablets etc). The mainframes have been replaced by Data Centers or an array of multiple COTS Servers. Smart Terminals are being extensively used to access services and applications deployed on to the cloud. People who are critical of cloud computing today, reminds me of a time when there were mini power stations in each of the corporate houses. Today electricity is like a utility.  We consume the same from a central resource and pay the bill towards the end of the billing cycle

Cloud computing is also like a utility and its wide adoption is expected in the coming years. So there is no point of investing massively on an IT infrastructure unless you are planning to get into the cloud space yourself or your scale of business is not operationally viable to move towards cloud. I agree that this transition towards utility or cloud computing is going to be difficult for most of us, as we all know any change is susceptible to resistance .

Here are the most noticeable trends which are being witnessed in the Cloud-Virtualization and NFV space today:- 

1) More than 80 percent of the computing world is using one or the other form of Resource Slicing Framework, that's widely known as the virtualization framework. Virtualization framework is being used to slice your big machines or existing data-center into multiple processing units. Typically the compute, network and storage can be sliced or virtualized using these frameworks. Major vendors in this space are VMware(vSphere) and Citrix (XenServer).

  2) With the help of virtualization framework a typical corporate data-center can easily be converted into multiple VM's or computing units. But only having this capability is not going to help. Lots of administrative work is still there to manage the life cycle of VM's distributed across various servers located in a data-center.  Here is when the requirement for automation kicks-in.  The OpenStack based framework enables you to automate the virtualized data-center management to a greater extent. The service catalogs can be published to abstract the IT overhead and manual interventions. The service catalog can be made available for the users to seek various IT related services and the same can be automated in the background using the framework like OpenStack.

3) The telecom operators are building private clouds under a banner called NFV (Network Function Virtualization). The NFV is an architectural concept for deploying network functions on a virtualized infrastructure. ETSI has taken a lead in defining the specification around the management of Virtualized Network Functions. The specification also defines the automation, management and orchestration framework around the Virtualized Network Functions (VNF’s)

4) The Investment in the Corporate or IT data-center is now on a downward spiral or at it’s minimum. Capacity planning is a lot easier with the Cloud adoption. Some of the e-commerce vendors are depending on Cloud to burst the special day or Occasional peak traffic on to the cloud - This phenomenon is known as cloudburst.    Gone are the days where the infrastructure players consider the special day (like NewYear/Christmas/Diwali/Ramzan etc) traffic handling requirements for making massive CAPEX investments in advance.

Top 5 Motivation Factors behind Cloud

1. CAPEX to OPEX Model
2. COST Reduction and Pay for what you use
3. Avoid over-provisioning of the Network infrastructure. Cloud allows Automatic spinoff’s of Compute units when required
4. Green Computing – Optimum utilization of resources
5. Scalability, Reliability and Disaster Recovery at ease. 

 Top 5 Factors that discourage wide adoption of cloud

 1) Fear Factor - CIO's are not yet ready to fully transition their Infrastructure on to the Cloud stating mostly security reasons and regulatory issues.

2) Regulatory Compliance- There can be some regulatory issues; like in some regions movement of data out of country is not allowed. For most us this aspect is not a deterrent, except if you are into some secret or Mission Critical Projects. 

3) Internet bandwidth – Reliable and high-speed internet connection is a key requirement to access services on the cloud

4) Job Security Fear – Some of the IT organizations are not ready to embrace cloud due to the fear of job loss.

5) Vendor Lock-in – There is a perception among the fence sitters that once the product is deployed or tailored for the cloud, it’s difficult to pull out and move to a different vendor. There are tools, frameworks and business that enables cloud vendor independent design and deployment.

Note: Do feel free to get in touch with me if you require any help and w'll be more than happy to assist you. I'm also taking up speaking engagements in the Cloud and NFV space. This post was  aimed at a wider audience and I'll cover more details, Business Ideas and Market Trends in the upcoming posts.