When is a Cloud not a Cloud... and Why Azure is setting the standard..

Every company that provides "online" services these days seems to have their own definition of what their "cloud" means.... which is mad seeing that its' almost a common place word now.  Of course the term "Private Cloud" is now also massively over used - and think its' just the new word for Data Centre..... What? Well is a nutshell, just because you running vSphere or Hyper-V in your Data Centre, doesn’t mean that you can call it a "private cloud".... ok.. rant over!

After speaking to some of our key customers this week about Azure, I was asked to summarise what is was all about.... thought it was worth sharing...

So What is Cloud Then....

Well, the US National Institute of Standards and Technology has published what "many" consider to be the best definition of a cloud. Essentially, there are 5 characteristics of what defines a "cloud", but the one that really defines it as a differentiation to say, a "hosted data centre" is “on demand self-service”. This essentially means that it's a place where a consumer of the cloud can deploy what they need, when they need it, and without requiring any human assistance from the provider of that service..... automated self service in other words!

NIST also describes the different service models of Cloud as follows (yeah....its never a one size fits all):

• Software-as-a-Service (SaaS): A vendor offers a software services, such as Office 365, that you can consume without installing Exchange, SharePoint, or Skype for Business on premises.
• Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS): Developers can upload programs or consume storage and databases without deploying traditional virtual machines. Instead of managing a SQL Server virtual machine and the guest OS, they simply consume capacity from a massive managed database service.
• Infrastructure-as-a-Service (Iaas): Here a service provider rents out an entire infrastructure. Consumers don’t need to worry about storage, switches, or host machines. Instead everything is virtual and gets deployed automatically - virtual networks, virtual storage and virtual machines. Again, this is (or should be) an entirely self-service software-defined deployment.

NIST also describes the various different cloud deployment models, of which in reality there are three:

• Private cloud: There’s just a single (therefore private) tenant in this cloud, deployed either on customer premises (their data centre) or at a service provider’s site. For example, a customer runs a private cloud in their own data centre. Again it needs to inhibit self service, automation and all that to be truly classified as a cloud.
• Public cloud: A service provider runs a multi-tenant environment in which each tenant (or customer instance) is isolated virtually from everyone else. An example of this is a customer that consumes for example,  
  Office 365.
• Hybrid cloud: A customer runs services across two or more clouds, spanning private and public cloud. A customer in this instance would be running virtual machines in a private cloud in their own data centre, but also uses the capabilities of a larger public cloud for public services or burst capacity.

So Azure then - what's that about?

Essentially it's a bunch of Windows Servers running in the cloud..... simples...but we'll go into a bit more detail or this is a pointless post right!!

Those that are a bit more techy (I used to be super techy once!), will know that if you install a new copy of Windows Server on a physical server, it is really easy to add new roles and services by simply opening up Server Manager, loading up the "add roles and features" wizard and choosing the services you want to add -  deploy a domain controller, a file server, an application server, a Hyper-V host, a web server, and many many more roles.  Windows Server then does the rest, installs, configures and starts the services.  

Thinking bigger now.... no... really big, let's say you had a giant Windows Server that spanned a couple of million physical servers located in data centres around the globe. That's basically what Azure is.... make sense?

These physical giant servers or even the Windows Server instances don't need to be managed by the consumer  - Microsoft takes care of all of that. Instead, consumers get access to a dedicated management portal....oh and of course PowerShell - Microsoft's SDN language, which allows consumers to deploy whatever they want on those servers. Consumers can rapidly deploy storage systems, databases, virtual networks that are isolated by default, virtual machines that run Windows Server or even Linux (Yes, Linus), Microsoft-managed Remote Desktop Services farm (Virtual desktops), and much much  more.

So...Is Azure SaaS, PaaS or IaaS?

Yes, Yes and Yes...Basically Microsoft’s cloud offering is all three. Azure spans all three of the service models:

• PaaS: This is where Azure has its origins. Back in the day, Azure was originally launched as a solution for developers, but it has now rapidly evolved to be far more since then. Still used for developers, but consumers can (both live and development or DR upload multi-instance web applications without worrying about actually deploying web servers, operating systems, or load balancers — this stuff just works! What's even better is you can deploy application and WAN acceleration services such as Riverbed SteelHead directly into Azure, just like you would in a traditional Data Centre.
• SaaS: Azure Active Directory Services, provides a single sign-on authentication and authorization model. There are online backup and cloud-based disaster recovery services that simply allow you to deploy solutions with very little management in the cloud. Office 365 is also SaaS, but doesn't actually sit in Azure.....yet!
• IaaS: This is the newest element of Azure, in which you can deploy virtual machines and all the necessary dependencies in Azure, without worrying about server, networking or storage hardware.

Microsoft Azure today, currently offers both public cloud functionality and hybrid cloud services. The latest version of Windows Server (2016 version) is even managed just like Azure making it even easier for organisations to move to Azure - see below.

Businesses can run their business IT services entirely within Azure or linked into Azure services with on-premises services via a number of means, including:

• Backup data to the cloud via Azure Backup
• Connecting Azure websites with on-premises databases
• Using Azure as a DR site for Hyper-V virtual machines, vSphere virtual machines, or physical servers using Azure Site Recovery
• Spreading services on-premises and Azure via site-to-site VPN or ExpressRoute

There’s also now a public preview of Microsoft Azure Stack (MAS) that will allow you to run a Windows Server 2016-based version of Azure on-premises, with a consistent management and deployment engine (Azure Resource Manager or ARM).

So just how BIG is Azure

What makes Azure (and the other leading big cloud vendors such as AWS) different is that it is a cloud-scale deployment. No other cloud provider even comes close to the sheer size and scalability of "big three". Azure currently exists in 22 regions (with 5 more recently announced around the world), with each region consisting of multiple data centres the size of 16 football pitches.  Of course the bigger they get, the bigger the economies of scale and cheaper and more competitive the service become to consumers....which in turn makes them bigger!

By choosing Azure, businesses are essentially putting their services and applications into an unlimited pool of availability, scalability and functionality. This should be a huge advantage for a business of any size. Businesses can "get into" Azure with no long-term commitment, and they just pay for just what they use - this negates the need to "invest" in shed loads of infrastructure. Billing is clear and simple, there is full geo-load balancing and full DR built in.

The Role of IT is Changing?

IDC and Gartner have been saying this for years but it is slowly happening and the pace is increasing.... Since the consumption of cloud services such as Office 365 or Azure removes the need to manage servers and hardware, the role of IT shifts from that of rack server and storage installer, IT is now able to better focus on the delivery of services to the business. In the case of Azure, IT still has a function, but it shifts from the hardware procurement and installation to the application and service delivery on which the business runs.

Want to know more over a beer?

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