August 13th, 2009
Private cloud formations rising, but remember SOA lessons
We’ve been tracking developments in the private cloud space for the past couple of years. As noted in my last post, there’s plenty of concern about the security and reliability of cloud computing.
Perhaps one way to address these concerns is through private clouds that remain in the confines of the enterprise.
A survey just released by Evans Data shows that there’s lots of interest in “private” cloud” development among software developers. In fact half of the 500 developers questioned said they expect to deploy apps in a private cloud environment sometime over the coming year. About 30% are currently working on applications destined for a private cloud environment, while an additional 19% expect to enter development within the next 12 months.
In addition, Java appears to be the language of choice for cloud formations. The largest group of developers (48%) think that Java is the best language for developing in the cloud - followed by C#.
There’s plenty of concern about security and reliability, however. Three-quarters of developers think that data for applications deployed in the cloud should be backed up outside the public cloud - either in traditional onsite storage or in a private cloud. (Disclosure: I have authored a number of survey reports for Evans Data, but not this one.)
But are we rushing too quickly into private clouds? Gartner analyst Tom Bittman warns that IT professionals building private clouds may be making the same mistakes as with SOA — that is, putting technology ahead of business requirements. He advised against building a cloud “and hoping they wil come.” As he puts it in a new post: “We’ve got to get our IT people to stop thinking about products and technologies and even architectures first, and instead to focus on understanding their service requirements first.”
“Start by understanding your service catalog (most organizations don’t have one), understand the SLAs and costs for each service (most don’t know that, either), build strategic plans for each of those services (does anyone have this?), determine which ones might go to the cloud in the future and when that cloud service will be “ready” (OK, this takes some work), make your ROI decision about building a private cloud service, and then you can start looking at architectures and products and technologies.”
Sound familiar? Anyone who has worked to introduce SOA methodologies into their organization will recognize the challenges Tom outlines.
ZDNet colleague Dana Gardner also just posted a panel discussion on cloud security issues, held at the recent Open Group conference.
Joe McKendrick is an author and consultant with deep knowledge and insights regarding trends and developments in the technology industry. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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