Cloud
– The easy next step
Sorry for the length of this
article, however, i have tried to include each section that happened there. New
to the cloud computing can refer this from wikipedia about Cloud Computing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_cloud#Private_cloud
As
the tag line said “ THE EASY NEXT STEP”, i wanted to take that easy
step, so I went to attend the conference
( Inflexion Convex) on Cloud Security by ITNEXT magazine, and was able to find
the views of various tech geeks, who are already practicing Cloud security,
or have implemented clouds at various organization, as well meet the teams
who have come out as winner from the
contest that happened there for finding the best Cloud Implementation. Around
700 CXO/ Directors/ Technology Evangelists of various big companies like Cisco,
Microsoft, Sify, Mc Afee, EMC2, World
Bank, Coca Cola, Deloitte, Polycon, Ramco, Oracle, Intuit, KPMG, Web Sense, GSK
etc were present there for putting their
view across about cloud security, measures to be taken for cloud security,
Decision making factors, and what the management expectation from cloud. As
well present were various cloud enablers and enthusiastics who were there to
learn more about the pro/con of cloud implementation, various challenges in
cloud implementation ,and the best practices being adopted by the implementers.
The conference was attended by
more than 1000 people in serene complex of Indian Habitat Center, Lodhi Road,
New Delhi on 18-19 feb. Good weather on these days made the overall feeling a delight
to attend it.
The conference started around
10Am, and there was lot of excitement from everyone , even before attending the
conference, as they were about to get into the arena where it is going to be
only cloud talking for next 2 days.
1. Dr. Peter Cochrane
(http://www.petercochrane.org.uk/) was the first one, who was invited as Key
speaker to put the key notes at the inflexion convex. He mentioned about the
cloud being the eternal force for people and things and the biggest problem in
the cloud zone right now is to make management and managers think
differently. He brought the amazing
point of view that the todays Y-Gen has never connected the computers to
anything with wire, they know mostly about wireless only. You can find them
connecting laptop to wire, that too for
charging only. He suggested that the todays Y- Gen is living in the
multi-screen world, and need the things very quickly every time. They would go
to office, not only for doing their work, but for getting distracted, for change,
for finding something new TODAY, finding some new innovation TODAY and this
Gen-Y doesn't believe in hiding anything, rather sharing everything. If we slow
them down , then we are slowing the progress.
He mentioned that the cloud is more secure, more
cost effective, more resilient, more empowering
than anything we have seen before.
The implementation of cloud
should come up with the flat structure in the hierarchies, as more hierarchies
will bring more trouble. From security point of view, a cloud is a moving
target, so by that logic its more secure because its much harder to hit a
moving target than the sitting target.
Dispersing the encrypted data across different cloud location is the way to
go in future. About security he
mentioned that the security threats is not alone from the lone hacker, who is
trying to hit the target from an individual machine, rather lots of large
organization and other governments are also there as threat, considering they
have large amount of cash to move for their security or to check others
security.
Also,the companies who opt for
the DIY approach ( Do it Yourself) approach, where they are involved in
doing most of the things themselves, and are not leveraging the others
expertise/ cost effectiveness for their sub-function, may soon find it hard to survive in
the market zone.
Idea will be to start with the
not to critical application to be moved to cloud, and then if that suits as per
economies, security, scalability, then slowly
bump the whole setup. As per the surveys done, the percentage of
managers Ok to move to cloud with reference to apps are IT Helpdeks(?), Web Conferencing(?),
SCM(40%), ERP (38%) etc..
An earlier presentation of Peter
can be found at this location http://www.cochrane.org.uk/publications/articles-lectures-preprints-and-reprints/why-the-cloud-will-become-the-norm-within-10-years/
2. Green Pledge section
from Sify was also there which stated
" I pledge to use the
knowledge and skills I have acquired to improve and sustain the natural
environment and resources with in my organization.
I Commit myself to cutting my organization
e-waste and carbon emission by deploying better and new technologies.
I will embrace a strategy that
strives to leverage green IT solutions for improving energy efficiency. I
Pledge to leave a cleaner and greener planet for my future generation."
3. Stalls from the various
cloud service providers Like Cisco, Microsoft were also there, with
the brochures mentioning details about their specialty and edge in providing
services.
4. Dylan Morrison ( Director,
Sales Operations-APAC, Cisco) was from Australia, so started the note by
engaging with the audience, by talking about the cricket and then moved towards
explaining stagflation ( stagnation + Inflation), and suggested that the cloud
comes to us as solution for stagflation. Big Data and Cloud are coming here, so
we need to be assured that how much ready is our organization for facing them.
Dylan Morison gave us 10 good reasons to get on to the cloud.
5. Pracheta Budhwar( Microsoft)
spoke about setting up the cloud from group, and mentioned that start is
what is required right now for cloud
area, and with Windows 2012 servers, and MS System Center it makes a swift
transformation towards the private cloud making. The foundation for
setting up the Cloud is : setup the
data center which supports cloud, building on which the virtualization
etc.. She also suggested that there is a Microsoft virtual academy, which the
technology loving people can use, and learn from the contents available there.
6.Anupama Ahluwalia ( VP,
Marketing, Coca Cola India) mentioned about the trends in the marketing
culture, that has become more participatory culture now. Consumers and
marketeers are engaging directly on equal footing. Consumers are smarter than
ever now, and they don't see themselves the way they are. Kids want to be
older, teenagers think they are adults, and we all know about the middle age.
The marketing challenge is to maintain a constant balance between the familiar
looking product and fresh product.
Companies does not own the brands anymore, rather the consumers do. Stories by
the customer spread the value offering
of the product, and the consumers are the marketers cloud. While talking
about the marketing in the age of cloud, she mentioned that the CMO( Chief Marketing Officers) are touting
as more spender on IT now, than the CIO's.
7. Then there were different workshops about leadership skills,
getting started with cloud etc. I opted for the workshop on Getting started
with Cloud - Anindya Roy. He started
with the basic details about the cloud, then moved onto types of cloud, and the
various type through which the implementations can be done. His exposure on
cloud topics was very wide. He spoke about how the meter billings and all are
being done for cloud usage, how to avoid greater billings by keeping tab
on the usage in initial phase. He
mentioned how the regular user can get a experience of using cloud by just
investing 1 dollar, and try the trials available at Amazon Web Services. He
also mentioned about the various start-ups which are not at all investing
anything in their starting phase, and are able to test the cloud with minimal investment, and are sure that when
they will go in market, then the scaling up will not take much time due to
cloud facility available to their web services. he also mentioned about one
beta web site fbpay.com, which used the web services through cloud , and during
the beta phase made very minimal investment, and was able to get their working
correctly. This went on for full house session, due to the intense knowledge
and answers by the speaker. Though there were lots of good questions pouring in,
but due to the shortage of time, the session had to be winded up.
He mentioned about the server
location also to be considered, due to
some legal laws about the countries data to be kept in the servers in that
country only.
Also spoke about latency time,
that can affect the overall application, when the server location is too far.
Though in major application, it may not seem as affect, however for application
like instant messaging, the latency of
milliseconds may turn out to be big
8. Also, the BYOD pattern
is greatly evolving , and is storming the IT infra gates was mentioned by
Suresh Vedula, Director Enterprise Sales, Nokia. He also spoke about how the
trends for four major things are coming up these days like BYOD, Apps and Apps Store, Cloud, and
Social media,which are the main
influence towards market.
9. There was a full house debate
on the promise and perils of cloud, where 13 CEO's of companies were
going to answer questions from different CIO's. In one of the question related
to CIO's expectations from cloud, the response was given that the CIO's
expectation from the cloud providers is to look for a)SLA guarantees b) Data
Migration methodology and flexibility c)
Security of data.
Rajesh Rege from Cisco clarified
that there is a need to convince the consumer about the product longevity,
cloud environment and the company of the cloud for making the consumer accept
it.
Rajesh Janey , President, EMC
mentioned that Still there are few loop holes, which need to be fixed before
the customers can readily agree to accept the movement to cloud. Customers
are looking for the standards/ benchmark in the cloud market, so that it
become seamless for customer to move from one CSP to another Cloud service
provider easily, in case of any issues. SLA
points are to be be considered
well before presenting it to customers. Governance model to be done
before presenting it to customer.
Jagdish Mahapatra from McAfee
mentioned that the Cat is out of Bag and the CIOs does not have much choice now, than to move to Cloud.
On question about, whether the
LOB managers( Line of Business) or the CIO will take a call about the
implementation of cloud in the organization, the view came out that still it
will be the CIO's call to decide about the cloud implementation decisions.
However LOB owners and CIOs will have to collectively work towards
agreeing on the cloud adoption strategy.
Neeraj Gill from Polycom
suggested that the Cost cannot be and should not be the primary factory for
decisions on cloud strategy, rather the advance planning is very much required,
and proper cloud adoption strategy to be made,
to have the proper ROI.
Nikhil Arora from Intuit advised
that small businesses can really benefit from cloud, and any business
that demands agility is a good candidate
to move to cloud.
Managing director of Oracle
India, Sandeep Mathur was of the view
that the clear reasons for going to cloud will include the get in and get
out to be easy for the consumer, and decision making of CIO will be
critical while deciding about it.
Second Day
Chandra, who is a partner in Mc
Kinsey India was not able to come, so joined through Skype after few glitches
in system. He also discussed that how the transformation of BPO to rural India
, is so much possible with ease now due to cloud infrastructure.
There was a special presentation
by the Dept of IT, Govt of Maharashtra. They
showcased , how they have implemented cloud, and were able to save lots
of money. This was presented to showcase
that even the government departments are coming forward for
cloud strategies, which are usually seen as late comers in adopting new technologies.
The cloud implementation awards
were also presented to the companies, who showcased their cloud implementations done internally and externally.
First runner up was SNAPDEAL.com
( Prize Rs. 75K), and the first prize was
grabbed by HCL Technologies (Prize
Rs. 1 lakh).
Bikky Khosla from TradeIndia.com
said that he expects that the B2B space in India will take off
Dinesh Jain, CEO, TDI
international mentioned that the pace at which the web based interactive media
are coming up, he feels that the web based interactive media might just
overtake the TV media in few years
S Parthasarthy, Senior Director,
Enterprise Risk Services from Deloitte mentioned about creating a cloud
strategy for the enterprises. His presentation was very informative,
however due to the time constraint, the
presentation had to be cut off. He provided a very transparent view on the
available Cloud Service Providers and suggested that it is advisable to go
to cloud by taking baby steps, instead
of going big bang. This will not only ensure the cloud acceptability in
your organization, rather will also help in ensuring that even after change its
the smooth working for your organization.
#Cost of retraining the
employees, and cost of retrenchment also to be considered, as the movement
to cloud may bring some changes in the positions which were required no more.
#Moving to cloud may bring some
change for the user interface, so user accpetability is also to be
considered.
Atul Gupta, Director , KPMG spoke
about the points for cloud strategy. He mentioned that step by step process is
required for finding and implementing the right strategy. 2) Design reference/target architecture 3) Establish a governance model, to
avoid breaches.
He also mentioned that there is still a grey area for legally
binding materials. Like the location of data center of cloud service provider may not be
easily accessible to customer, and there can be different legal laws for data
related things, which may not be applicable in other countries. Eg, Whatsapp is
not allowed in Canada legally, due to the law structure there. Also
Blackberry was asked to provide the
security encryption keys for their messengers to Govt of India. So , the legal
consideration is also important before
finding and settling up with the cloud provider.
Lastly there was a workshop by S.
Maheshwaran, Manager, Engineering Sales, Websense. He spoke about the biggest
challenges that cloud implementation has right now:
a) Data segregation and protection
b) Data identity
c) Data Leakage
d) Certificate of the Cloud
vendor is also required to be checked, as it should have same reputation as
your already received certificate. Else during audits, it will be difficult to
again get the certificates, as you may not know the location of cloud vendors
server.
e) Whose liability it will
be, in case of data breach.
Maheshwaran also gave some key
data points about the perception and acceptance of cloud by public, on the
basis of surveys done by Data Center Councilof India. It states that percentage
of public accceptance for different clouds are like this:
6%
public cloud
29%
private cloud
65
% hybrid cloud
Regarding the question about
complete migration, only 2% are planning for complete migration.
As that was the last session on
2nd day, so i left for home with lots of knowledge and exciting ideas.
These
events though would be concentrating on the AWS products, however would be
still beneficial as they would showcase the AWS cloud, and the best practices
about it, which eventually will be a new learning.
Also,
please share your thoughts/ suggestions about this article
