Tag: Cloud @de

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Cloud Computing

TecArt-CRM Mobile: Modular “All-in-One Business Suite” from the Cloud

The choice of a suitable customer relationship management (CRM) solution is a bit of a challenge for any business. Here, the final decision depends on the specific requirements and special needs. In this context, the flexible use of a solution is of crucial importance in order not to get into long-term contracts and high investment costs. This INSIGHTS report provides an overview of the cloud CRM solution of TecArt GmbH from Erfurt, Germany, shows the functions and what benefits a company receives.

Preface

Despite its history, the importance of the customer relationship management (CRM) is steadily increasing in companies. Without the consistent focus on its customers and the unconditional design of necessary processes, a company is no longer competitive today. Only with a holistic and cross-enterprise relationship marketing the cooperation between a company and its customers can be long-term oriented and strengthened, what has decisive impact on the current and future success. For this, the different departments, such as marketing, sales, customer service, and also the research and development must be integrated into the processes.

On the one hand the comprehensive integration of these departments is organizational not always easy to implement, on the other hand an appropriate IT solution must be found, which meets the requirements of the company almost perfect. For that massive investments in on-premise systems have been made in the past, leading to long-term, inflexible licensing costs. In times of cloud computing respectively of software-as-a-service (SaaS), it is not necessary to commit to long-term provider contracts. Instead, the solution is charged per user and ideally per month, making the monthly or annual cost / benefit ratio more transparent.

It should be noted that the advantage of the flexibility of a SaaS solution is not to have the opportunity to switch a provider annually or even semi-annually. Despite SaaS, a business plans in a long-term. The cost and effort of constantly evaluating a new provider and migrate afterwards, bears no relation to the actual benefit. In some cases, this may be considered if the satisfaction with the vendor decreases. The actual flexibility advantage of SaaS is the scalability in terms of monthly usage per user and functionality. This means that a company can better respond to its monthly requirements by including flexibly respond to employee turnover. This allows for improved planning with seasonal workers, for which usually a certain number of licenses for this period has been purchased in advance and which are no longer needed after the application and turned to dead capital. Using a SaaS solution, the number of required users can be increased for a given month and decreased again. This makes it possible to better plan for the future.

This also applies to a SaaS CRM system, which is much more about than just a database of customer information. In particular, the emerging market of mobile collaboration enables sales representatives to always access current live data and to edit it at the same extent. Moreover, the amount for further services should be taken into consideration. This has the background that current SaaS CRM solutions on the market promise an integration with other external SaaS offerings, for example e-mail services, but are sub-optimal implemented. In this context, among other aspects, it is also important to look on the availability of interfaces to connect the CRM solution with existing systems.

Overview TecArt-CRM

The market for CRM systems from the cloud has grown rapidly in recent years. Led by Salesforce the solutions for customer relationship management have evolved from on-premise installation to web-based cloud solutions. The variety of SaaS CRMs address, depending on the functionality and scope of services, different target groups. From the large corporation, over the medium-sized company up to the freelancer, the market offers a wide range of different systems for the web-based customer relationship management.

The TecArt GmbH from Erfurt, Germany, focuses their TecArt-CRM to medium-sized and larger companies. Apart from a complete web-based solution, the company also offers its software for the on-premise installation in an own data center. The current advantage businesses reach only with the use of the cloud-based solution TecArt-CRM Mobile which this INSIGHTS report describes.

Holistic modules for flexible use

TecArt-CRM Mobile is designed for small and medium-sized businesses who actually do not have a full-time IT department and therefore no powerful IT infrastructure, but also want the advantage of multiple locations.

Six main modules, including services for the management of e-mails, contacts, appointments, tasks, and documents that form the core of the SaaS application and belong to the standard scope of the CRM system. For a fixed monthly fee per user, 5 GB of storage for each user is included as well, which can be increased at an extra cost if required. Hosting, maintenance of the system and the daily backup of the data is assumed by TecArt GmbH.

One of the great strengths of TecArt-CRM Mobile is the ability to expand the base system, as required by additional modules per month and to cancel again. With that companies receive a very flexible access to more value-added services to customize the CRM system according to their requirements. These useful services include inter alia a project management, supply management, contract management or resource planning.

Mobile cloud allows access from any place

Besides the web-based access TecArt-CRM Mobile also allows to retrieve and manipulate the data in the CRM system via mobile. For this, the major mobile operating systems iOS, Android, Windows Phone and Blackberry, but also older systems such as Windows Mobile and Symbian are supported for mobile synchronization.

For the mobile synchronization of information TecArt GmbH has developed the service “TecArt-Push” that extends the browser-based cloud solution TecArt-CRM with a push function. This is comparable with the solutions as known from Google Apps and Apple iCloud. Besides a CRM system companies also receive a full-fledged mobile groupware for different devices to access emails, contacts, appointments and tasks that are automatically synchronized with TecArt-CRM.

And even field worker get the valuable opportunity to access information on the go and both collect and edit data such as emails, calendars, contacts etcetera.

In addition to the synchronization of data the “TecArt-CRM web app” also allows access to further data and information from other services in the backend of the CRM system via a mobile Internet connection. This means that among others also documents, tickets, projects, contracts and offerings can be accessed. Using an integrated geolocation service contacts can also be find in the immediate vicinity of the current location.

Cooperation with cloud marketplaces to increase the reach

Cloud marketplaces belong to the future of cloud computing and are a logical development to enable enterprises and developers a good overview and easy access to IT resources. In addition, there are also less good cloud applications on the market that offer either no real value, are not well thought out or have a poor architecture and are therefore also not well safety implemented. Thus, cloud marketplaces help to separate potential top applications from rather insignificant services and provide decision support for the selection. This is firstly ensured by the marketplace provider itself, and also through an evaluation system, through which the users can post comments and ratings. In addition, cloud marketplaces clean up and summarize the different cloud offers thematically. They form an independent ecosystem of cloud services.

Cloud marketplaces can also help young companies to increase their visibility and reach. But even for established companies that start with cloud services, opportunities arise to present themselves to a wide audience and to prove transparently to the existing competition.

This is also part of the TecArt GmbH strategy, which closed collaborations with two cloud marketplaces for their TecArt-CRM Mobile offering, the Telekom Business Marketplace and the Fujitsu Cloud Store. In particular, the inclusion criteria of the Business Marketplace by Deutsche Telekom are very high and have high requirements in terms of architecture and security of the cloud application, which will be reviewed with audits. Since the Deutsche Telekom focuses on quality rather than quantity, the inclusion of TecArt-CRM Mobile is a very positive sign.

Additional APIs and software simplify integration

Good cloud applications are characterized by their transparency, openness and the associated interfaces (APIs Application Programming Interface) that can be integrated with existing software solutions or which extends the applications themselves.

This also TecArt has understand and offers in addition to the core modules and the advanced services other features and software to enhance the TecArt-CRM product line. Among others with this a synchronization with Outlook via additional software can be established or the integration with a PBX is realized. Furthermore, the range of proprietary web services for enterprise developers is very interesting to also bind existing software solutions like enterprise resource planning, time-recording system or their own website to TecArt-CRM.

Price model: Pay-per-use or on-premise

TecArt-CRM can be used on three different reference models. The traditional on-premise models “Company” and “Enterprise” aimed at those who are still conservative and want to take care of hosting and operating their infrastructure themselves. For that TecArt-CRM can be purchased at a fixed price. Here, however, the additional costs for the operation and maintenance of the required IT infrastructure must not be neglected.

The modern way of obtaining IT is offered via TecArt-CRM Mobile. Here a fixed base amount is calculated for various core modules per user per month. Additional modules can be flexibly added per user and are also charged on a monthly basis. The advantage of this solution variant is that TecArt care to 100% of the hosting, operation and maintenance of the necessary IT infrastructure as well as the TecArt-CRM system. A customer only consumes the needed services.

Security and location advantage

The issues of data protection and data security is still strongly debated in the context of the cloud. In particular, in a very sensitive environment such as customer relationship management, in which many personal but also specifically business-critical data are processed, a company shall not decide for any provider. Instead, a provider must be chosen that meets the company’s standards and in particular meets all privacy and data security technology areas.

In the area of data security TecArt uses SSL encryption, to establish a secure connection during the data transmission between the server and the client. Furthermore, the location of the data center is in Germany and is certified according to the ISO security standard 27001. TecArt guarantees an availability of 98% on annual average for its services. Furthermore, the company offers more protection with override security of documents by a personalized versioning and control that ensures the data is always kept in a consistent state. A read-write user-level protection also ensures that only authorized persons have access to modules, objects, and individual documents. In the case of manual deletion by a user each employee has a personal trash. If this is not enough, automatic backups of the system are made daily, which are stored for seven days.

In addition to data security, data protection needs to be considered with a lot of sensitivity. Due to the German headquarters the TecArt GmbH is subject to the European and German data protection law and guarantees that no data will be passed on to U.S. government agencies. Furthermore, TecArt strictly follows the classification level “CONFIDENTIAL”. This means that all data and documents that are being stored and processed in the TecArt cloud services meet the security suitability of the steps for authorities, confidential and sensitive position.

Awards testify to quality

Even if awards are always in direct connection with the jury, they have a tendency for the quality of a solution. If there are more than one award of operating independently and different consortia or associations, a company may proceed with a clear conscience believe that the quality is actually true.

TecArt already won six independent awards. Including the Hosting & Service Provider Award 2013, the title BEST OF 2013 in the category CRM within the Innovationspreis-IT 2013 of the initiative Mittelstand and the Telekom Innovationspreis 2012.

Management Advisory

The choice of a suitable customer relationship management solution is a bit of a challenge for any business. The final decision depends on the specific requirements and special needs. In this context, the flexible use of a solution is of crucial importance in order not to get into long-term contracts and high investment costs.

At this point TecArt-CRM launch into and offers beside important core features the ability to expand the system monthly as required by other modules with more specific functions, which gives the users a considerable added value in total.

If the entire TecArt-CRM portfolio is considered, it is not just about a pure CRM solution. With fully integrated functions for the management of e-mails, tasks, appointments, contacts, tasks and other services, TecArt-CRM offers a company much more than a standard system for customer relationship management. TecArt-CRM focuses entirely on the standard processes of a company including synchronization of mobile devices and thus supports any company in its future cloud collaboration. For this reason, the solution is in the proper sense a collaborative CRM, which is, in this case, actually better expressed as an all-in-one business suite from the cloud.

Companies that also want to concentrate on the topic of “Social CRM” – The use of modern social networks for customer communication. – TecArt-CRM is currently not the right solution. For that the company from Erfurt currently have no functionality in their portfolio.

Furthermore TecArt-CRMs great diversity and modularity is also one of its weaknesses. This is not necessarily a great negative point. Nevertheless, a customer should bring a lot of time for the selection process for the first registration. In addition, during the decision-making process, on which module should already be selected from the start and which not, one can quickly lose the overview. At this point it is clear that a maximum modularity in this case is not always beneficial and prefabricated packages simplify the decision process.

Bottom line, TecArt-CRM is a highly recommended and well-designed CRM system that brings a lot of DNA and approaches for a modern cloud collaboration and can help each company to cooperate better with its customers in the future.

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IT-Infrastructure

Business-Bricks-as-a-Service (BBaaS) – Business Building Blocks in the Cloud

Companies and developers stick in a dilemma. On the one hand, cloud computing should provide easy access to IT resources. But on the other hand, an enormous knowledge about distributed programming is assumed, to create solutions that are both scalable and highly available simultaneously. In particular, the issue of the responsibility for scalability and high availability for the virtual infrastructure respectively of the web application is largely suppressed by the cloud providers. This leads to a higher complexity of knowledge on the way into the cloud and to a lack of the seemingly simple use of cloud services. Furthermore, the cloud is currently lacking of complete services that represent individual modules for a specific business scenario and can be adapted easily and independently from each other.

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Cloud Computing

Cloud Computing is not simple!

Cloud computing promises to be simple. Starting here and there a virtual server and the own virtual cloud infrastructure is ready. Those who think that I’m right with the statement are totally wrong. Virtual servers are only a small component of a virtual infrastructure at a cloud provider. A few virtual machines aren’t a cloud. The complexity sticks in the architecture of the application. And thus in the intelligence that the architect and the software developer included. That this is sometimes not implemented, the one or the other cloud user have showed us more than once impressively. Regularly the same suspects fail when their cloud provider is struggling with himself. Cloud computing ist not simple! I do not mean simple software-as-a-service (SaaS). I am talking about infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) and platform-as-a-service (PaaS), and here even granularity about the premier class named scalability and high-availability. And that’s what you should understand and fully take into account if you want to use cloud computing successfully, away from the marketing of the cloud providers.

Software-defined Scalability and Software-defined High-Availability

Currently new terms circulating through the IT stratosphere. Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and Software-Defined Data Center (SDD). A SDN introduces another level of abstraction above the network components. Typically, each router and switch has its own local software through which it is supplied with intelligence by programming. The network administrator tells the router, for example, under what conditions which packet should be routed or not. Within a SDN the task of incorporating a local intelligence for each component is eliminated. The intelligence moves one level up into a management layer in which the entire network is designed and each rule is defined centrally for each component. If the design is completed, it will be rolled out across the network components and the network is configured. With a SDN it should be possible to change a complete network design by “push the button” directly without having to touch each individual component.

The idea of ​​the SDN concept must also be taken into account mandatory when using a cloud infrastructure. Because the use of a PaaS, but much more of an IaaS means a lot of self-responsibility. More than you might think at first glance. To start one or two virtual machines does not mean that one uses a virtual cloud infrastructure. There are and will remain two virtual servers. An IaaS provider only provides the components, such as the aforementioned virtual machines, storage, and other services plus APIs with which the infrastructure can be used. Bottom line, to put it simply, an IaaS provider only supplies its customers with the appropriate resources and tools in order to build their own virtual infrastructure respectively own virtual data center on the providers cloud infrastructure.

One must therefore ensure with software (the own application) that the cloud infrastructure scaled if necessary (Software-Defined Scalability, SDS) and in the event of a failure of a cloud infrastructure component a replacement component (eg, virtual machine) is started and is thus replaced (Software-Defined High-Availability, SDHA). The software therefore provides the scalability and high-availability of the virtual cloud infrastructure so that the web application itself is scaled and fail-safe, and uses the character of each cloud provider.

How a cloud computing infrastructure is used almost to perfection shows Netflix impressively.

Cloud Computing ist not simple!

Source: Adrian Cockcroft

Netflix the supreme example

Netflix is the world’s largest cloud service ​​by far. The video streaming service has become responsible for a third of all Internet traffic during peak periods. This user requests must be answered, of course, performant and at any time. Since its launch in 2009 Netflix sets on cloud technologies and has shifted its complete technology stack including the resulting infrastructure to the cloud of the Amazon Web Services in November 2012. Here about 1,000 virtual Linux-based Tomcat Java server and NGINX web server are running. There are also other services such as Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) and the NoSQL database Cassandra in conjunction with memcached and a distributed memory object caching.

However, this is only one side of the coin. More important is the use of multiple Availability Zones in the Amazon Cloud. Netflix uses a total of three Availability Zones to increase the availability and speed of the own service. Occurs a problem in an Availability Zone, the architecture of the Netflix application is designed that the service can continue to run through the other two. Here Netflix has not relied on the pure marketing promises from Amazon, but developed with the Chaos Gorilla its own software that is testing the stability of the virtual servers Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). In short, the failure of a complete EC2 Region or Availability Zone is simulated to ensure that the Netflix service continues to function in an emergency. One of the biggest challenges is in the fact that in the event of an error in an Amazon region, the Domain Name System (DNS) is automatically reconfigured so that Netflix customers do not notice the failure. The different DNS providers APIs make this task not easier. In addition, most have been developed that the settings have to be done manually, which does not make it easier to automate this.

Bottom line, it is to say that Netflix plans ahead for the error case and does not rely on the cloud. Because sometimes something goes wrong in the cloud, as in any ordinary data center. You only need to be prepared for it. Who is more interested in what Netflix makes to reach this state should read “Netflix: The Chaos Monkey and the Simian Army – The model for a good cloud system architecture” (only in German).

Simplicity counts

Maybe I’m asking too much. Finally, cloud computing is a relatively new concept. Nevertheless, Netflix shows impressively that it works. However, when you consider what huge efforts Netflix makes to be successful in the cloud, you just have to say that cloud computing is not simple, and a cloud infrastructure, no matter at which provider, needs to be built with the corresponding architecture. This means, conversely, that the use of the cloud must be more simply in order to achieve the promised cost advantages. Because if one uses cloud computing the right way, it is necessarily not cheaper. In addition to savings in infrastructure costs which are always reckoned up, the other costs as may for the staff with the appropriate skills and the costs for the development of scalable and fault-tolerant applications in the cloud should never be neglected.

The positive sign is that I see first startups on the horizon, who take care of this problem and have set the simple demand of finished cloud resources to their task, without worrying about scalability and high-availability as a user.

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Cloud Computing

Windows Azure Infrastructure Services – Microsoft is not yet on par with Amazon AWS

That Microsoft, as one of the world’s leading IT companies eventually have to fight with an “online store” and a “search engine” for market share, probably, no one ever dared to dream in Redmond. But that is the reality. Amazon and its Amazon Web Services (AWS) are the engine of innovation in the cloud computing market. And even Google is catching up steadily. Google has specifically in the platform-as-a-service (PaaS) market with the App Engine and the software-as-a-service (SaaS) market with Google Apps already well positioned products. Amazon, however, is in the area of infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) the absolute market leader. Here also Microsoft attacks now. After Windows Azure was positioned as a pure PaaS on market at the beginning, more and more IaaS components were added successively. With the new release, Microsoft has now officially rolled out the Windows Azure infrastructure services. For many this step comes too late, as a large market share in this area already have been spent to AWS. However, where it initially looks disadvantageous also some benefits, that are overlooked by most, are hidden.

Windows Azure Infrastructure Services at a glance

Basically, the Azure infrastructure services are nothing new. In a public release preview this have already been presented in June 2012. According to Microsoft, “… more than 1.4 million virtual machines have been created and used by hundreds of millions of processor hours.” In addition, today already more than 50 percent of Fortune 500 companies use Windows Azure and thereby manage a total of more than four trillion data and information on Windows Azure. The capacity for compute and storage solutions double in about every six to nine months. According to Microsoft, every day nearly 1,000 new customers register on Windows Azure.

With the release of Windows Azure infrastructure services, Microsoft’s cloud computing stack has now officially completed. In addition to the operation of virtual machines, the update includes the associated network components. Furthermore, Microsoft now offers support for virtual machines and also the most common Microsoft server workloads such as Microsoft BizTalk or SQL Server 2012. In addition to Windows the Linux operating system is fully valid supported on the virtual machines. The Windows Azure Virtual Networks should also allow hybrid operations.

New instances and updated SLAs

In addition to new virtual instances, for example with more storage capacity of 28GB and 56GB, virtual images are also prepared, such as for BizTalk Server and SQL Server. Prepared Linux images, inter alia CentOS, Ubuntu and Suse Linux Enterprise Server (SLES), are provided by commercial vendors. Furthermore, there are numerous open source applications prepared in the VM Images depot on self-service basis. Microsoft server products including Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2013, SharePoint Server 2013, BizTalk Server 2013 have already been tested from Microsoft to run on the virtual machines.

Furthermore, the Service Level Agreements (SLAs) have been revised. Microsoft guarantees 99.95 percent availability including financial security, if there is a failure on Microsoft’s side. In addition to an SLA for cloud services Microsoft offers seven SLAs specifically for memory, SQL database, SQL Reporting, Service Bus, Caching, CDN and media services.

7/24/365 Support

A Microsoft support team is available every day around the clock. The support plans are divided into four levels from developer support through Premier Support.

Price reduction for virtual machines and cloud services

Such as Amazon AWS also Microsoft passes his savings through economies of scale to its customers. This immediately following new prices and extensions are available:

  • Virtual machines (Windows, default instances), are up to 31 May in reduced prices. The new general availability rates apply from 1 June 2013. For a small instance the new price is € 0.0671 per hour.

  • The prices for virtual machines (Linux) for default instances have been reduced by 25 percent. From 16 April 2013, prices for small, medium, large and extra large instances be reduced by 25 percent. The price for a small Linux instance will be reduced from € 0.0596 per hour to € 0.0447 per hour in all regions.

  • The prices for virtual networks start at € 0.0373 per hour, effective from 1 June 2013. Up to 1 June, customers can use the virtual network for free.

  • The prices of cloud services for Web and Worker roles were reduced by 33 percent for default instances. From 16 April 2013 the price drops for small, medium, large and extra large instances by 33 percent. The price for a small worker role will be reduced from € 0.0894 per hour to € 0.0596 per hour in all regions.

Not too late for the big part of the pie

Even though Microsoft is very late in the highly competitive market for infrastructure-as-a-service does not mean that they missed the boat. In many countries the adaptation of cloud computing just started. In addition, the big money is made at the established corporate clients and only then with the startups. Even Amazon has understood that and has taken the appropriate measures.

Furthermore, the importance of the private cloud, and thus the hybrid cloud increases worldwide. And here the hand already looks quite different. Microsoft has with its Windows Server 2012 a well-placed product for the private cloud, which can be seamlessly integrated with Windows Azure. Here Amazon AWS can just quickly be active with a possible acquisition of Eucalyptus. A first intensive cooperation between the two companies already exists.

However, the Windows Azure infrastructure services are primarily public cloud services. And here it must be said that the diversity of the service portfolio of the Amazon Web Services is still significantly greater than of Windows Azure. For example, services such as Elastic IP or CloudFormation are missing. Nevertheless, Microsoft with its portfolio is currently the only public cloud provider on the market, who can be seriously dangerous for Amazon AWS. Because “infrastructure means more than just infrastructure” and therefore it is about “making the infrastructure usable“.

See also: Amazon Web Services vs. Microsoft Windows Azure – A direct comparison (to be updated)

And what about Google?

Google should not be underestimated in any case. On the contrary, in a first performance comparison between the Google Cloud Platform and Amazon AWS, Google emerged as the winner. However, the current service portfolio of the Google Cloud Platform is confined in the core of computing power, storage and databases. Other value added services that rely on the platform, are still missing. In addition, Google can currently only be seen as a pure public cloud provider. In the private/ hybrid cloud environment are no products to be found yet. This needs to be improved with collaborations and acquisitions to meet the needs of conservative corporate customers in the future. Especially since Google still has a not to be underestimated reputation problem in data protection and data acquisitiveness. Here more transparency must be shown.

Microsoft is not yet on par with Amazon AWS

With the official release of the Windows Azure infrastructure services, Microsoft has begun to catch up with the Amazon Web Services in infrastructure-as-a-service market. But a game at eye level can not be mentioned here. Because something new, or even innovations can not be found in the new Azure release. Instead, Microsoft only tries to catch up the technology advantage of Amazon AWS with the extension of infrastructure resources, … but that’s it. The degree of innovation by Amazon should not be underestimate, who expand its cloud platform with other disruptive services and functions at regular intervals.

Nevertheless, in the attractive environment for enterprise customers Microsoft is in a good position and has expanded its portfolio with the Azure infrastructure services with another important component towards Amazon. In addition, Microsoft already has a very large on-premise customer base that needs to be transferred to the cloud now. Among them renowned and financially well-positioned companies. And this is precisely the area in which Amazon has still to build trust. Moreover, one should not neglect the ever-growing private cloud market. Here, the hands on both sides are equally quite different.

That Microsoft is not yet on par with Amazon in the IaaS area does not mean that they will not be successful. It is not necessarily decisive, to be the first on the market and have the best product, but to persuade its existing and potential customers expect to provide an added value. And it would not be the first time that Microsoft would do this.

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Cloud Computing

One third of German companies use the cloud. Really? I don’t think so.

According to a survey of Bitkom among 436 German companies a third of all respondents use cloud computing in 2012. This sounds good at first and shows that the cloud adoption is going upwards in Germany. However, I assume that the number is sugarcoated. No, not by Bitkom itself, but because it is still unclear what cloud computing really means, and most of the surveyed companies have simply said yes, even though they are not using cloud. Support for my assumption I get from Forrester Research.

Survey results of Bitkom

That one in three companies in Germany relies on cloud roughly means a growth of 9 percent compared to 2011. Additionally, 29 percent plan to deploy cloud solutions. Another third sees cloud computing not on the agenda. The survey reveals that currently 65 percent of large firms with 2,000 employees have cloud solutions in the use. The middle class between 100 to 1999 employees is at 45 percent. Smaller companies with 20 to 99 employees cover a quarter.

Private cloud is preferred

Moreover 34 percent of surveyed companies rely on their own private clouds. Compared to 2011, a growth of 7 percent. 29 percent plan to use this cloud form.

Now, let’s come to my assertion that the statement that one third of German companies use the cloud, is sugarcoated. Because what I hear and see again and again, is now also publicly stated by Forrester Research, more precisely by James Staten, who even describes this as cloud-washing. 70 percent of “private clouds” are no clouds.

70 percent of “private clouds” are no clouds

The problem is mainly in the fact that most IT administrators continue to lack an understanding of what cloud computing, whether public or private cloud, really means. As James Staten writes, 70 percent of interviewed IT administrators are not aware of what a private cloud really is. Most named a fully virtualized environment already a cloud, which in general does not have the core features of a cloud.

Virtualization is not cloud computing

One has to make clear again at this point, that the mere virtualization of an infrastructure does not makes a private cloud. Virtualization is a subset of cloud computing and a key component. But: The areas self-service, scalability, resource pools, automation, granular billing, on-demand delivery of resources and so on, no ordinary virtualization solution is offering, and only is provided by a cloud infrastructure.

Frighteningly, some vendors are so perky and sold there former on-premise virtualization solutions now as a cloud. The “confession” I have received from an employee of a very large U.S. vendor, who is now offering cloud solutions. The context in the personal conversation was about “We have adjusted our VMware solutions by simply written cloud on it to quickly have something “cloud-ready” on the market.”

German companies believe to have a “private cloud”

Similarly, I see it with German companies. I would not blame the Bitkom. Finally, they have to rely on the correct answers to the questions. And what should they do if the respondents due to ignorance may answer incorrect by claiming to use a private cloud, even though this is no more than a virtualized infrastructure without cloud properties.

With this in mind, you should see the results of this Bitkom survey critical, relativize it and acknowledge that not one third of German companies use cloud computing.

Update: 12.03.13

I do not want to give the impression that I take my statements out of the air. Yesterday somebody told me that their “Terminal-Server” is a private cloud. Reason: There are so many definitions of cloud you can choose.

Update: 13.03.13

Also Exchange server with OWA are often named as a private mail cloud.

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Cloud Computing

AWS OpsWorks: More PaaS functionality in Amazon’s cloud portfolio

Correctly, we name the Amazon Web Services (AWS) as an infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS). AWS Elastic Beanstalk splits the stock, whether the service should be counted as a platform-as-a-service (PaaS). Anyway, AWS provides various PaaS functionality in its cloud portfolio for some time and extends it now with AWS OpsWorks (still in beta).

What is AWS OpsWorks?

AWS OpsWorks is a solution for the flexible and automated application management. It addresses IT administrators and DevOps developers, who can use it to manage the complete lifecycle of an application, including resource provisioning, configuration management, software updates, monitoring and access control. AWS OpsWorks can be used for free. Costs emerge for the deployed virtual AWS infrastructure resources.

OpsWorks allows you to create a logical architecture, the provisioning of the required resources based on the architecture and providing the application and the necessary software packages for a specific configuration. OpsWorks then cares about the operation of the application and supports the life cycle including autoscaling and software updates.

AWS OpsWorks details

AWS OpsWorks supports different application architectures and works with any software whose installation is script-based. Based on the Chef framework you can use your own ready recipes or those from the community. An event-based configuration system helps during the application lifecycle management. These include customizable deployments, rollbacks, patch management, auto-scaling and auto healing. With that an update can be rolled out just by updating a single configuration file. Moreover OpsWorks has the ability to host AWS instances based on a precisely self specified configuration. This also includes the scale of an application based on the application load, or a time-based auto scaling as well as monitoring the application and the replacement of faulty instances.

With OpsWorks applications can be build in so-called “Layers”. A Layer defines how a set of together managed resources are configured. An example could be a web layer. This includes EC2 instances, EBS volumes including a RAID configuration and mount points and Elastic IP addresses. In addition for each layer, a software configuration can be created. This includes installation scripts and steps for initialization. Is an instance added to a layer, OpsWorks ensures that it will receive the corresponding configurations. OpsWorks provides pre-defined layers of technologies such as Ruby, PHP, HAProxy, Memcached and MySQL. These can be customized and extended.

Technology from Germany

OpsWorks was invented in Germany and is based on the technology Scalarium of the Berlin company Peritor. Scalarium was bought in 2012 by Amazon.

Comment

Indeed, AWS OpsWorks is not a concrete PaaS offering. This is due to the building blocks philosophy of the Amazon Web Services. This means that the offered services will be made ​​available as granular as possible. The customer then has the option to integrate the services for its use case and how it needs them. For that, of course, a lot of personal contribution and knowledge is required, which for the infrastructure of a typical PaaS is not required. However, AWS OpsWorks closes in terms of convenience the gap to the PaaS market and offers more and more PaaS functionality in the Amazon Cloud.

About one thing a customer should be aware of. And that applies not only to AWS OpsWorks but for the use of each AWS service. The lock-in in the AWS infrastructure becomes bigger and bigger with each service Amazon is releasing. This need not be a bad thing. A lock-in is necessarily anything negative and may even be beneficial, on the contrary, as long as the own needs are met, and not too large compromises have to be made ​​by the customer himself.

As a customer you just have to keep this in mind before the way into the AWS cloud, as well as in any other cloud, and consider possible exit strategies or multi-cloud approaches.

Categories
Cloud Computing

ProfitBricks under the hood: IaaS from Germany – be curious

Last week I had a briefing with ProfitBricks to get a better understanding of the infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) offering from Germany and to ask specific questions. I examined ProfitBricks critically with two articles in the past, number one here and number two here. First, because I don’t like marketing phrases that just promise much more than really is behind it and secondly because even the technical promises must be kept.

ProfitBricks details

ProfitBricks presents itself as a typical infrastructure-as-a-service providers. A graphical web interface is used to form customized servers to an entire data center. A complex network structure shall ensure a real isolation of the customer’s network in the virtual datacenter. A meshed network with a redundant Infiniband connection and a highly redundant storage (including automatic backup) provides the performance and availability of data.

In addition, ProfitBricks has its own security team and highly experienced system administrators that provide a round the clock support.

Locations

ProfitBricks has data centers or co-locations in Germany (Karlsruhe) and the USA (Las Vegas). However, both data centers are not connected with each other – physical nor virtual. So no data exchange between Germany and the United States can take place in this way.

The infrastructure components

At ProfitBricks servers can be equip from 1 to 48 cores, and between 1 GB and 196 GB of RAM. The maximum is currently at 60 cores and 250 GB of RAM per server, which can be enabled through a support contact. Storage is available between 1 GB and 5000 GB. However, this can only be assigned to one server directly. So there is no central storage. To realize this, one has to build its own central storage appliance and distribute the storage over it.

Within a self-designed data center (see below), two zones (similar to Amazon Availability Zones) are available. This allows to configure two servers, whereby one of them will not notice about problems in the area of the second server.

There is no centralized firewall. Instead, each of all NICs in a server can be configured with their own rules. A central firewall can achieved by creating a dedicated firewall appliance (Linux + IPTables or a prepared commercial firewall as an ISO image).

Although a load balancer is available, ProfitBricks recommends to build an own one based on an appliance because among others the ProfitBricks one has no monitoring included.

ProfitBricks do not offer additional own value-added services. And on their own admission, this will never happen. Instead, the provider relies on a network of partners that will provide appropriate services for the infrastructure platform.

Currently unique: The Data Center Designer

What really convinced me at ProfitBricks is the “Data Center Design (DCD)”. Such a one no IaaS provider worldwide has it in this format.

Based on these graphical web interface one is able to create a complete virtual data center individually and activate the configuration or modify it with a mouse click – whether it’s about servers, storage, load balancers, firewalls, or the corresponding network.

Is a data center design ready, it can be saved and deployed. Previously the user obtained more information about a check through the system. Here is determined whether everything is configured correctly – e.g. that all servers have a boot drive with the corresponding image. Then the total cost per month for this virtual data center is itemized.

However, the DCD has still a weak point. Is a data center deployed, no single server can be removed from the design or stopped via the web interface. Therefore the entire data center must be un-deployed. Then the server is removed and the data center must be re-deployed. Using the proprietary SOAP API that supports, among other things Java and C #, a single server should be removed. This web feature is to follow, as well as a REST API, in the future.

The customer is mostly left on its own

ProfitBricks offers a German support, which has either worked for years as an administrator, or was involved in the development of the system. Support is included for free. Even if one evaluates the platform only with a test account.

Otherwise ProfitBricks is a common self-service like all the other IaaS providers. This means that a customer is self-responsible for the design of its virtual infrastructure and how an application on the infrastructure can scale and provided highly available.

With additional questions and approaches, for example for configuring a separate firewall appliance or a dedicated load balancer, external partners should help.

Prices

The billing follows exact to the minute per hour. The cost break down on this as follows:

  • 1 Core = 0,04 EUR per hour
  • (Windows Server plus 0,01 EUR per hour)
  • 1 GB RAM = 0,09 EUR per hour
  • 1 GB storage = 0,09 EUR per 30 days
  • 1 GB traffic = 0,06 EUR per GB traffic

For the US market:

  • 1 Core = 0,05 USD per hour
  • (Windows Server plus 0,02 USD per hour)
  • 1 GB RAM = 0,015 USD per hour
  • 1 GB storage = 0,09 USD per 30 days
  • 1 GB traffic = 0,08 USD per GB traffic

Live Vertical Scaling

ProfitBricks supports the so-called Live Vertical Scaling. This means that further resources such as CPU and RAM can be add to a virtual server during operation. This feature must be enabled separately for each server, and the server must then be restarted once.

However, what I have noted here and what has be confirmed by ProfitBricks during the briefing, the operating system, database, software and the own application must support it. The systems need to realize that suddenly more cores and RAM are available and use it. And in the opposite case also deal with, when the resources scale down again.

ProfitBricks is interesting

ProfitBricks is an interesting infrastructure-as-a-service offering. Especially in the very cloud-sparse (IaaS) Germany with a data center in Germany. Particularly noteworthy is the Data Center Designer (the only USP), which is currently unique in the world and provides convenience features, that the other IaaS providers are neglecting. Admittedly the designer rakes at one point or another (Example: removing server), but that will certainly change in a next version.

At the end of the day ProfitBricks is a pure infrastructure-as-a-service provider that has its strengths in infrastructure operations. This also showed the briefing. Therefore an interview with CEO Achim Weiss confuses me, which I had read a few weeks ago. Besides enterprises he called Internet startups as ProfitBricks target customers. Today, I consider this as an utopia. Without a services portfolio like the offering of the Amazon Web Services, this target group can not be achieved. The service gap can and should be closed by service partners. Another but quite legitimate approach if the strengths are in a different area.

Categories
Strategy

Disgusting: Amazon treats people like virtual machines – the human cloud

This article is not directly about cloud computing, but if I look at the whole issue I see many similarities with the concept of the Amazon Web Services. Beyond that it makes me very angry, how a company like Amazon treats its employees – notabene HUMANS.

Background

A recently published documentary by the ARD (video) has revealed the inhuman machinations of the world’s biggest retailer Amazon with temporary workers in Germany. That the working conditions in the Amazon logistics centers are generally described as very poor is no secret, there have been several reports about it. But what this report reveals is among all human dignity, for which all stakeholders including Amazon itself must be held publicly accountable.

The report reveals that the success of Amazon is generated on the back of temporary workers that must “live” under worst conditions, and this here in the middle of Germany. Therefore the corporation collects Europe-wide contract workers and accommodate them in unused holiday villages. Amazon uses subcontractors e.g. for the recruitment and the “security” of the temporary workers. In totally overcrowded buses, employees are brought into the distribution centers. If they come to late to the shiftwork – even without their own fault – they paid less. The documentary shows how a company like Amazon “… must bring along 5,000 people for three months and then get rid of.”

Amazon treats contract workers like virtual machines

In order to get a little curve to the cloud, I see so many parallels between the disregard of human dignity through Amazon and the cloud computing concept as it operates by the Amazon Web Services. Simply swap the term “virtual machine” to the word “human“.

Amazon requires, as the report good describes, “humans on demand” and let them work through 15 days in a row. Amazon transfers the concept of the cloud, so the principles of “on demand” and “pay per use” in its retail business and in the logistics centers, and thus creates its “human cloud”. It is a very good analog example for the technical situation of the webshop during the Christmas season. Meanwhile, excessive resources for computing power are needed to keep the shop stable because of the high requests. The situation is similar in the logistics centers. If the requests at the webshop increase, the commissions are need to approved, accepted and prepared for shipment. If the requests decline, even in the warehouses less is going on. Accordingly, fewer people are needed, which are then no longer need to be paid. An example of an Amazon headman of the logistics center in Koblenz: “3300 employees work here, 3100 of them are temporary.”

Theoretically a nice idea Amazon, but that does not work! You can not boot up humans like virtual machines and then dispose them when they are no longer needed!

Categories
Cloud Computing

Office 365 Home Premium – Microsoft does not rely on software-as-a-service

Yesterday Microsoft has introduced its new Office for the retail market. The new Office 365 Home Premium promises to deliver new capabilities for direct connection to social networks, SkyDrive and Skype to facilitate communication with family and friends. In addition, each user has his personal office anywhere. Use it on a PC, tablet or smartphone – and even on the Mac. The control is done in addition to keyboard by touch or pen input. But who thought that Microsoft offers its new office to the idea of the cloud as SaaS (software-as-a-service), is mistaken.

Cloud but not software-as-a-service

Office 365 Home Premium is not SaaS or a cloud service in the strict sense, because the office is not provided or used over the browser. (Although there are the completely free Office Web Apps, which have directly nothing to do with Office 365 Home Premium.) Microsoft gives the reason that not all Office functions can be operated performant in the browser. Instead, Microsoft is going an “interesting” way which is totally new. Microsoft Office becomes hybrid. Microsoft names this truly innovative technology as “Office streaming”. Through “Click 2 Run” an office suite can be installed in minutes. The interesting thing is that Microsoft initially installed the statistically most used basic functions, so you can quickly start working with Office. So you are able to work with Office already during the installation. In the background the rest is installed. The cluo: If a function is called, for example of Word, while Office is still in installation mode, this function is prioritized accurately and directly streamed. (Whether this type of installation, a user really needs is another question, but the idea is good.)

Cloud is just in the backend

Office 365 Home Premium syncs all personal settings and documents automatically to the cloud. Thus all data are available on all connected PCs. This also works on other PCs, if you log on there with a Microsoft account of hotmail.com, outlook.com or live.com. Based on the new technology “Office on Demand” the office is then streamed from the cloud for processing on the respective computer. “Office on Demand” installs Office on the local system in a virtual environment. When the session is closed, the virtual environment and the Office with all the data completely disappears from the system. Thus, Microsoft would ensure privacy when using on other computers.

Prices and goodies

Office 365 Home Premium includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, and also Outlook, Access and Publisher. By subscribing a user automatically has to have the latest Office solution on the hard drive or on the road via”Office on Demand”. Other goodies: 60 minutes per month with Skype to landlines, additional 20 GB SkyDrive storage and use rights for up to five devices, laptops, tablets and smartphones, for both Windows and Mac environments.

Prices

  • Office 365 Home Premium: 99 EUR per year
  • Office 365 University: 79 EUR for 4 years
  • Office Home & Student 2013 for 139 EUR
  • Office Home & Business 2013 for 269 EUR
  • Office Professional 2013 for 539 EUR

Office 365-Business

From 27 February 2013 also new Office 365 business services with new functions will be available, which will probably also include a SkyDrive Pro version.

The strategy is consistent with Windows 8

That Microsoft does not rely on SaaS is a little surprising, but it fits into the Windows 8 strategy. The applications are mostly held locally to ensure the speed and necessarily not have to rely on a data connection. All personal settings and documents, if the user wants, are stored in the cloud in order to ensure the location and platform independent access. This is ensured by “Office on Demand” and streaming.

Is the Microsoft Office suite still contemporary?

For me, the question arises, why Microsoft continued its commitment to this massive office suite and does not offer applications separately. I understand the strategy to give end users access to Outlook. Parents can e.g. organize the family. But who does that really? After Microsoft’s research probably some. So, reference customers were allowed to talk about their use cases during the launch event. I’m not so sure. If you look at the behavior of (young) users, who prefer to self assemble their productivity suite and do not want to get dictated by mom and dad. (The influence of their friends is much greater.) Dropbox for storage, Evernote for taking notes, Remember the Milk or Wunderlist for tasks, GMail or Outlook.com for e-mail are among the favorite candidates. The Cloud and Mobile apps make it possible.

Office is good, no question! But is this powerful solution still contemporary? Do users really want to get dictated what they should use or do they prefer to assemble their own solutions. Word and Excel are an added value for each personal productivity suite, but for that they must be offered separately, and I do not mean the Office Web Apps.

Categories
Cloud Computing

Amazon Web Services vs. Microsoft Windows Azure – A direct comparison

Many companies are currently in the evaluation of public cloud services such as IaaS. The first thoughts brush the two large and supposedly known providers in the scene – Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Windows Azure. Both have an extensive and growing range of cloud services today. But, if you want to compare both portfolios the challenges increase with the number of services.

Amazon Cloud vs. Windows Azure

The following table shows the cloud service portfolio towards 1:1 and provides clarity. Who provides what in which area, what is the name of the respective service and under what URL to find more information about it.

Feature

Amazon Web Services

Microsoft Windows Azure

Computing power
Virtual machines Elastic Compute Cloud Role Instances
High Performance Computing Cluster Compute Instances HPC Scheduler
MapReduce Elastic Map Reduce Hadoop on Azure
Dynamic scaling Auto Scaling Auto Scaling Application Block

Storage
Unstructured storage Simple Storage Service Azure Blob
Flexible entities SimpleDB Azure Tables
Block Level Storage Elastic Block Store Azure Drive
Archiving Amazon Glacier
Storage Gateway AWS Storage Gateway

Databases
RDBMS Relational Database Service SQL Azure
NoSQL DynamoDB Azure Tables

Caching
CDN CloudFront CDN
In-Memory ElastiCache Cache

Network
Load Balancer Elastic Load Balancer Fabric Controller / Traffic Manager
Hybrid Cloud Virtual Private Cloud Azure Connect
Peering Direct Connect
–
DNS Route 53
–

Messaging & Applications
Async Messaging Simple Queue Service Azure Queues
Push Notifications Simple Notification Service Service Bus
Bulk Email Simple Email Service
Workflows Amazon Simple Workflow Service
Search Amazon CloudSearch

Monitoring
Resource monitoring CloudWatch System Center

Securiry
Identity Management Identity Access Management Azure Active Directory

Deployment
Resource creation CloudFormation
–
Web Application Container Elastic Beanstalk Web Role