Management Strategies for the Cloud Revolution: How Cloud Computing Is Transforming Business and Why You Can't Afford to Be Left Behind |  | Author: Charles Babcock
Publisher: McGraw-Hill
Category: Book
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Media: Hardcover
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Pages: 272
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Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.2
ISBN: 0071740759
Dewey Decimal Number: 004.36
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ASIN: 0071740759
Publication Date: April 16, 2010
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Product Description
Increase efficiency while saving money with “on-demand” computing The biggest game-changing force in business since the creation of the Internet, cloud computing simplifies and lowers the cost of operations while providing flexibility and power you never dreamed possible. Make your strategic move now, with Management Strategies for the Cloud Revolution! "Management Strategies for the Cloud Revolution is an important work that captures the concepts and technological advances fueling the rapid adoption of cloud computing today. It illuminates how specific core technologies have led to the emergence of those patterns as the foundation for the next generation of IT-managed infrastructure."
—Rich Wolski, Chief Technology Officer and cofounder of Eucalyptus Systems, Inc., and Professor of Computer Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara “Explains in marvelously plain English how clouds will change our world. . . . If the potential of cloud computing doesn’t excite you now, it will after you read this book. Buy a copy and put it on your CEO’s desk. Babcock explains it all.”
—Paul Gillin, bestselling author of The New Influencers “A valuable primer and handbook. It will help you master the technology and follow the story as innovators craft the future of cloud computing.”
—Ted schadler, VP and Principal Analyst, Forrester Research, Inc., and coauthor of Empowered About the Book Everyday business as we know it is poised for a monumental shift, courtesy of cloud computing—the biggest game-changer since the creation of the Internet itself. There’s no doubt about it: If you want to compete in the future, you must begin educating yourself about cloud computing now. From InformationWeek editor Charles Babcock, a leading authority on the business benefits and pitfalls of cloud computing, Management Strategies for the Cloud Revolution provides the tools every manager needs to create a new business strategy that harnesses all the power cloud computing has to offer. Cloud computing is the equivalent of renting time on a computing infrastructure over the Internet, rather than building your own from the ground up. Access to the cloud is growing quickly, and the benefits are undeniable. Those who begin incorporating cloud computing into their business strategy will enjoy: - Dramatic Cost Savings: The cloud makes available innovative technologies that would otherwise be too expensive.
- Ubiquitous Access: Employees can access the server power they need anytime, anywhere, and send it the program they want to run.
- Unprecedented Agility: Business processes and business infrastructures can be altered quicker than ever.
- Steady Traffic Flow: Even during peak loads, systems in the cloud can overcome bottlenecks and expand to meet the user’s needs.
Working on the cloud, your analysts, business intelligence experts, and researchers can access large-scale, high-speed, highly reliable systems while paying only for short-term use. You didn’t set up your own electrical grid to power your computers. Why pay big money to use them when you don’t have to? The cloud is on the horizon, and it’s looming larger by the day. Learn how to take full advantage of it with Management Strategies for the Cloud Revolution.
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| Customer Reviews:
 The Cloud Revolution Is Here June 20, 2010
Joseph S. Maresca (Bronxville, New York USA)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
The Cloud Revolution by Babcock
McGraw Hill Publication
Reviewed by Dr. Joseph S. Maresca
The cloud refers to a number of advances. i.e. the data centers,
the Web setting of conventions for loosely coupled systems and
an ability to activate virtualized servers remotely via
standard Web services. Amazon charges 8.5 cents per hour
for the use of a server on the EC2 cloud infrastructure.
The cloud offers a business model where many services,
including computer server power, storage, network bandwidth
and others can be obtained at a very competitive price.
The cloud now gives the user programmatic control
over a part of the data center and the ability to command
a server in the data center to run an application program.
The user simply swipes a credit card and checks off on
what servers are to be activated by the mouse.
In everyday language, the cloud consists of all those
servers out on the internet which deliver information and
services to end users everywhere.
The new data centers are engineered so that the servers
are configured and managed uniformly. So, fewer people are
required. The cloud data center tolerates hardware failures
and routes work around them. It solves through software
the hardware problems that used to require a shutdown
of machinery and replacement of parts. Managers or trouble
shooting software for these data centers still have a hierarchy
of choices to receive data and record it redundantly or
tridundantly depending upon the criticality of the data.
In addition, the MTBF is available to anticipate equipment
failures with earlier fixes scheduled to
anticipate the breakdown before it occurs.
The internet user of the future will send the server
instructions on what to do, add the data, select from a
list of services and proceed to manipulate the
results utilizing standard algorythms , as necessary.
With cloud computing, the master/slave relationship of computing
will be banished and replaced by a peer-to-peer relationship
arising between the client and server.
Amazon.com has pioneered cloud computing as a rentable
infrastructure in its EC2 data center. The cloud is designed
to host massive clusters of servers like Google's,
whose combined computing power is unimaginable.
The new machine provides the availability of seemingly
endless server cycles for any request sent to it by an end user.
Cloudwatch, Auto Scaling and Elastic Load Balancing are
useful when a hosting Web site doesn't know much about
the traffic. Cloudwatch with Autoscaling results in a
charge of 1.5 cents per hour for each EC2 server used.
Right now, cloud data centers can cost up to a half billion
dollars apiece according to public documents citing Microsoft
permits for cloud centers.
The cloud's operating managers estimate what constitutes
a safe surplus of computing capability utilizing historical
patterns which are derived from the servers' total workload.
The concept of a private cloud is just over the horizon.
A private cloud would be run by a pool of servers functioning
like a single giant computer through a layer
of machine management software. Coping with failure
means giving your application the capability to failover
to another server automatically without losing data.
The redundancy is contained and managed in the software.
Cloud computing does not mean that operations can occur
without some level of control . The standard "General Controls,
Security, Data Recovery" protocols will still apply at the
facility which manages the thousands of servers.
Samples typical audit procedures at the cloud data facility are:
(1) Are the environmental controls relating to heat,
power and light operational?
(2) Is there an Uninterruptible Power Source at the facility?
Has it been tested?
(3) Is there adequate insurance for facility operations?
(4) Is data recoverable when a server fails? How?
(5) Are there provisions for Disaster Recovery?
(6) Is the Contingency Plan set forth to describe actions to
be taken when the facility is operating under an out-of-normal circumstance(s).
i.e. loss of key personnel, unavailability of spare parts from key suppliers etc.
(7) Are software (applications or systems ) programming customizations tested adequately prior to installation
(8) How is data accounted for in the failover procedure?
(9) How are financial charges accounted for and controlled in
the various financial applications
The book is an excellent technical resource. There are areas
for further development.
 Provides solid insight.. May 2, 2010
Mark Ayre (Cambridge, MA)
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
Drawing on his extensive experience in the IT world and his position as "editor-at-large" of the well respected InformationWeek, author Charles Babcock aims to offer "..the first book to provide practical cloud computing understanding and strategy for business".
So does the book meet/exceed the promise made?
Based around a promising synopsis the book begins with a solid foundation in the chapter layout and topics to be covered which include the potential pitfalls of adopting cloud technology.
The author provides his own thoughts on what cloud computing actually is (a subject of some intense debate even now) - although the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)'s formal definition is included as one of the book's appendices and it is clear the writer understands that whilst flexibility is one of cloud computing's main attributes it also contributes to people's confusion..
In answer to those that might argue that cloud computing is simply the latest buzz word based around pre-existing technologies - such as traditional mainframe computing, whilst acknowledging the contributions of what has gone before the author argues that although this is true to an extent it is the way these and emerging technologies have been combined and refined - virtualization in particular as well as a number of cultural changes that truly is leading to a paradigm shift.
Indeed, whilst an understanding of the machinations behind the cloud may be considered unimportant if not to a degree desirable for the majority of service consumers it is critical for those that wish to take full advantage of the opportunities it presents such as CIO's/IT professionals and progressive business managers and it is this audience I feel the book is most appropriate for. It tackles the hype commonly associated with the subject matter head on and the chapter entitled "Overcoming Resistance to the Cloud" covers the main issues with a focus on vendor lock-in all using an easy to read, conversational tone.
The author is clearly an advocate of the cloud, but presents his case without vendor bias whilst referencing the main players in the field as appropriate and concludes by means of a glimpse of the potential that current and future implementations may provide that although cloud based computing at present could be considered a disruptive technology it may provide the most intoxicating blank sheet of "paper" on which the future will be written.
Management Strategies for the Cloud Revolution: How Cloud Computing Is Transforming Business and Why You Can't Afford to Be Left Behind
 Okay discussion, but no management strategies... June 20, 2010
Brian (Tacoma, WA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
A cloud, by any other name...
The first question, before even opening this book, is "what is cloud computing?" Now is as good a time as any to come out and admit that "cloud computing" is probably a poor name for what we are talking about. Is this technology is like a cloud ? Is it amorphous or misty or something? Does it make funny animal shapes in the sky? Where did that name come from? Charles Babcock doesn't know, or he isn't saying. He too has a difficult time explaining what is meant by the term. He fumbles around, a sometimes tries to compare cloud computing to other things. On page 15 he starts explaining how cloud computing is really more like mountain streams joining up in a valley to form a glacier... an image which clarifies nothing, and probably makes things worse. Part of the problem is that Cloud computing is such a new, rapidly changing field. It isn't easy to differentiate what what lies at the heart of cloud computing, and what characteristics are incidental. For now, "cloud computing" is what it's called. It's stupid, but get over it.
Well what is it?
Cloud computing doesn't refer to a single concept or design. It conflates several ideas that should be examined separately. Together, these represent a vision of how computing will be conducted in the future. The prominent features of Cloud Computing include:
1) You don't own that computer
For one thing, it refers to a shift that will take personal computing away from home computers and put it in accounts at gigantic industrial-sized computing centers. In the Cloud Future, you won't own a computer with its own processor, memory, and software. You will own a "dumb terminal" that can't do anything except access the superior hardware and software "in the cloud". If you create a word document, you won't store it on a disc in your computer; you'll store it in memory space allocated on your cloud account.
What will the cloud supercomputer look like? To give you an idea of the size we're talking about, the clouds Babcock et al envision will dwarf the giants of today. Google is a large-scale service by current standards. It operates an estimated (page 10) 600,000 servers worldwide. Microsoft and Amazon both run embryonic clouds now, whose capacities are closely guarded secrets, but which at least rival Google's capacity, and which grow by leaps and bounds. Amazon regularly fills entire shipping containers with server racks, and plugs the entire container into their cloud as a functioning module. Massive computing centers like this profit from economies of scale. Hardware is purchased in large volumes, reducing cost; and labor (i.e. maintenance and tech support) are likewise centralized, cutting down on redundancy.
2) Scalability
Creating gargantuan computing centers with multiple users and practically unlimited capacities is attractive to businesses, because it enables "scalability". That's basically like elasticity of capacity. It allows businesses with cloud accounts to continually redefine how much of the cloud's capacity, processing power, and memory they wish to use. Babcock cites a good example: SONY records operates a website to sell Michael Jackson records. When Jackson died, traffic on the website surged, causing the site to go down. They lost millions in potential sales when that happened, as users turned to alternative sites to make their purchases. What could poor SONY do? It wouldn't have been cost effective for them to buy and maintain the servers needed to accomodate a surge like that. Spikes of that magnitude don't occur very often, so most of the time that extra capacity would go unused. Enter the cloud. If SONY had been operating the MJ website on a cloud, they could have accommodated the surge by tapping into the cloud's enormous resources (for a fee, naturally), and then "scaled back" when the surge receeded.
and 3) The need for speed
The above example shows how capacities can be scaled to meet (and not exceed) customer demand. Since the cloud is composed of billions of processors, processing power can also be scalable. If you have a big number-crunching job (as NASA does, in Babcock's example), you can contract the cloud for more processing power. The flip side this is that you don't get the processing power unless you're willing to pay for it. Is that fair? ... it's actually kind of a sticky debate. The internet has generated a discussion about "net neutrality", where individual information packets are treated the same no matter who they come from or where they are going. Some people want to create prefered pathways on the internet to get faster, more reliable service (for a fee, naturally). So far, regulations have remained in place to prevent a two-tiered system from developing. Unlike the internet, clouds are (so far) privately owned, so they can operate the way they like. They are not subject to those sort of regulations, and frankly there is no incentive to maintain neutrality if some customers are willing to pay a premium for preferred service. It's the same as the airlines; most carriers offer Business and First Class tickets, because multi-tiered service is a business model that works. In the cloud, information may be handled according to who is paying a premium for processing speed and power. If you don't mind that your TurboTax will take an extra few seconds to calculate, you can pay less. If you're playing a graphics-intensive video game online, you may have to pay extra. Where it gets to be a survival issue is when you're operating a processing-intensive business on the cloud. If you aren't willing to pay the premium for top service, you will be at a disadvantage competing with businesses who are. That's just normal market forces at work. Or is it? Businesses with deep enough pockets (or other types of leverage) may be able to contract with the cloud to operate at capacities that, by contract, nobody else can compete with. That can potentially increase the cost of market entry for some businesses. Over the past three decades, software development has grown explosively, in part because of the very low start-up cost has encouraged a lot of talent to enter the field. The cloud could potentially do away with that. The market forces of the cloud favor large customers over small, and could put young start-ups at a competitive disadvantage. One hundred years ago, Standard Oil did the same thing with railroad shipping, driving costs up for smaller volume refiners, effectively driving them out of business. Now the oil industry is dominated by the "supermajors" oligarchy, who can dump millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico and still realize massive profits, because customers have so few options to choose from. Market forces don't always favor the customer.
Provisioning
This part is smoke-and-mirrors. Babcock tries to say provisioning is a new benefit of cloud technology. End users will somehow be able to interact more with websites and with each other, through "provisioning", which is basically customizing software to fit your needs. From what I can tell, this is not unique to the cloud, and the examples he cites (filling out forms on the web) are not impressive. If there's something special about the cloud that will revolutionize interacting with websites, Babcock hasn't explained it very well.
Who said anything about passing on the savings to you?
While Charles Babcock gushes unabashedly that economies of scale will trim computing costs down to nothing, consumers should not assume the "cloud revolution" will save them a penny. End users on their "dumb terminals" at home will use cloud resources online for tasking. This means logging on to, say the Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), run by Amazon, using it's processors (for a fee) to run Amazon's software (for a fee) to create a document, and then storing it in memory (for a fee) allocated to the user's account. When he wants to print his docment, he will access it and it will send the job to his home printer. Using this system, the user will always have the latest software, operating on a computer that experts will keep virus-free and running at top performance. Corrupted discs, software incompatabilities, and other failures will be a thing of the past.
Sounds good, right? The thing is, once you no longer own your own software and hardware, there's a strong financial incentive for the cloud service provider to change the fee structure from one-time costing to per-use costing. This means that instead of buying MS Word to install on your computer and then use as much as you like, you will be charged a few cents every time you want to edit, save, or print a document. Bill Gates has been pushing for something like this since the early 90's, because his accountants have shown that over years, nibbling a few pennies at a time at customers' pocketbooks is more profitable than hitting them up once for relatively larger purchases. How nice for him.
"We have your documents. If you ever want to see them again, leave $10,000 in unmarked bills..."
An added disadvantage of having all of your documents on a super computer that you don't actually own is that you have to go through the cloud provider every time you want to access your own files. That means that if you somehow run afowl of the cloud provider, you are cut off from your own documents. It also means that if somebody hacks your cloud account and erases or alters your files, you have no backup. Cloud providers could engineer some solution where you can save documents on a home storage system, but don't hold your breath waiting for that. It seems evident that "dumb terminal" architecture's purpose is to maximize user dependence on the cloud. Home storage devices would threaten cloud provider storage fees, but they can't complain about that publically. What they will say (and there is a legitimate side to this) is that allowing a way for home devices to upload documents onto the cloud creates an unacceptable risk of viral infection. If they really wanted to get mafia about it, they could put some viruses on the cloud themselves, and then make a lot of publicity about all the disruption it caused. Before long, they'd have customers and paid "experts" on television clamoring to abolish home storage devices.
One Stop Shopping
In an even more sinister vein, forcing users to save their documents in the cloud creates a "one stop shopping" opportunity for hackers looking to commit industrial espionage, political espionage, or for "Big Brother" organizations like the NSA to sift through citizens' personal documents. Cloud providers will no doubt promise customers the moon and more regarding security and privacy protection, but I think big telecom providers have already shown us where your privacy stands on their list of priorities. When government agencies came knocking, PATRIOT ACT in hand, to conduct warrantless wiretapping in 2002, big telecoms put up no fight whatsoever on behalf of their customers' privacy.
Vulnerabilities of scale
Cloud architecture represents a giant leap towards greater centralization of computing resources. The cloud future looks like it will be controlled by a smaller number of more powerful (and better funded) players. Just as centralization can create economies of scale to reduce cost, it also introduces vulnerabilities to large-scale failures that aren't a risk in more disperse systems. By its very name, cloud computing sounds far-off and nebulous, but obviously the "cloud" (i.e. that massive computing center) is actually physically located somewhere. No matter where you put it, it will be vulnerable to some physical threats. Earthquake, hurricane, tornado, tsunami, floods, sinkholes, mudslide, volcano, whatever. Then there are threats which are not geographically predictable: large-scale power outages like affected the East Coast in 2003; terrorist attacks, etc. The point is that with our current system, dangers like this may affect users in a limited region, but do not cause major economic cataclysm. The internet was actually a DARPA project designed to create a communications network that would withstand a nuclear attack. Cloud computing is too centralized for that. If the nation depended on just five or six clouds, imagine the disruption if one of them went down. As is documented here, even in their short history clouds have experienced major failures.
I am reviewing this book, actually
I have to admit that I came to this book with a lot of preconceptions. What I know of cloud computing raises a lot of privacy and civil rights concerns, and I didn't trust Babcock to address them. He's a writer for a tech journal, so I assumed he embraces all change unreservedly. Well.. he does get a little embarrassing sometimes (p23: "The cloud is going to seize the hopes, the dreams, and the ambitions of people around the world- and supply the processing cycles to help make them a reality." ...God, somebody get me a bucket, I think I'm going to be sick.) but overall I was pleasantly surprised to see him touch on some of my pet issues. Not as deeply or as critically as I would have liked, but it was something. Perhaps the greatest credit goes to Babcock for showing how powerful the economic advantages of cloud computing are. The promises of increased efficiency and reduced cost are so compelling, I think it is safe to say the business world will not be able to resist them. Like fighting a rising tide, the strategy is not "how do we stop this?", it should be "what is our strategy to deal with this?" It's good to know that up front. Cloud computing poses a lot of threats to privacy and civil liberties, so efforts to address these concerns should not be wasted on fighting overwhelming market forces. They should be directed at getting ahead of these problems early on, hopefully at the formative stages, when the business model is evolving. This means exercising your sovereign power as a consumer. The average person doesn't know how powerful he is, and I'm not necessarily talking about "end user revolts", as Babcock alludes to, but consciously exercising your power as a consumer each day. When vendors start to woo you with initial offers, you need to tell them that attracting your business depends on ironclad guarantees on your privacy and security. When you start to get surveys asking how you feel about X,Y, and Z related to cloud computing, you need to rank privacy and security as your top issues. It is also important to identify and support open-source (i.e. nonproprietary) projects, such as the Eucalyptus project, which codes Application Program Interfaces (API's). Open-sources help keep any individual company from dominating cloud computing. Finally, it is important to remember that when your friends are on the cloud, and its fun and cool, but you start to see your privacy eroding, you need to get up the courage and discipline to leave.
Technology will never be the root cause of our problems, just as it will never be the solution to all our problems. All the things that really matter depend on human behavior. And your behavior is one thing you can control.
Good read but nothing to write home about July 7, 2010
Ak
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The book is well structured and very readable. I was reading it by the pool while being on vacation so it is a nice read without giving you a headache. Although there are some parts of the book that could have been more abbreviated: such as the definition of cloud computing and the chapter that goes on and on about Amazon's EC2 power failure without getting anywhere.
The title is not very well adapted to the content since the author does not talk much about processes and example of processes that have been implemented at the enterprise level. There is a nice example on Sony Entertainment and how they managed to move to the cloud but there are not many real world examples. It does not go deep into the subject of adoption the author talks more about the vendors, standards and lack of maturity. I know that the concept is new but I know quite a few companies that are already preparing to make the move (at least they have started virtualizing part of their infrastructure) so I was expecting more "inside info" on preparation and adoption. The chapter on Nasa's Nebula project is good and well researched. Definitely a good read but do not expect to become a cloud guru by reading this book
 Very Little Value - August 6, 2010
Loyd E. Eskildson (Phoenix, AZ.)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Babcock's book is very superficial - offering almost nothing in comparative costs, and even less in strategies, problems, cons, etc. Obviously he is sold on cloud computing - however, I can remember when time-sharing was the wonder of computing back in the mid-1960s. That obviously didn't last. Then we have the the additional problems of slow data transfer, security, and add-on charges that can balloon a bargain into a budget-buster. As for reducing potential overload situations with in-house equipment, mainframers scheduled heavy uses for low-use times - hardly a big problem.
On the other hand, there are some possible attractive aspects, and the book did cite some interesting new realities. For example, we now have containers filled with racks of more than 2,000 servers. Microsoft's newest facility is designed to be operated by 45 staff and utilize 300,000 servers; it will be the world's largest. Google has a string of 12 or more server centers, totaling about 500,000 - 600,000, believes Babcock. Cloud computing centers can be positioned to use low-cost 2 cent kwh hydroelectric power; of course, that takes it away from other low-cost users as there is only a finite amount. Amazon charges 8.5 cents/hour for use of an EC2 cloud server, Rackspace 1.5 cents - then there are the 'other' charges. And Babcock's point is valid that this would reduce the cumulative need for redundancy and peak capacity - however, in the era of cheap computing that's less important than before.
Recent overload situations include [...] when he died, as well as [...] at the same time (inquiries about his life). Extreme Makeover also has had problems.
Cloud computing loses about 10-15% of computer power to overhead processing.
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