The Data Center: Security, Compliance Issues Holding Back the Clouds

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AS OF 12/4/2008 2:11AM EST

The Data Center: Security, Compliance Issues Holding Back the Clouds
By John Rath

August 15, 2008 — In previous columns I described consumer and enterprise cloud computing. I told myself that I didn’t want to write on the topic anymore—primarily because it is getting a second round on the hype cycle and maybe a little too much attention (and resultant misunderstanding). I decided to take a step back, though, and think about the concepts and technology, and where we are in the technological maturity of cloud computing.

I don’t think it is worth trying to define what cloud computing is, since I have read a lot of definitions by some very credible people and I don’t think I agree with any of them 100 percent. I think the main reason that the definitions are so rough right now is because we are still in the beginning stages. As I’ve explained before, clouds aren’t any miraculous new technology; it is simply the evolution of computing and the future of how information technology can potentially operate going forward. I think today’s definitions are too much of a comparison with the Internet itself, or SaaS. True cloud computing is still in research and development and the best is yet to come.

The two things (in my opinion) holding back cloud computing from truly taking off in the enterprise are security and compliance. With an abstract concept like cloud computing, telling your security department that you are moving the company’s sensitive data and mission-critical processing to a “cloud” might get some laughs. Exactly where is the data physically located? Are there other companies using the same equipment? Who has access to these systems? How is data transferred to and from the cloud? What operating systems run the cloud? What if the cloud provider goes out of business?

All of the governance and security work to secure business transactions and data simply cannot be thrown out the window with a bunch of unknowns because the cloud is cost-effective and means less overhead and worries for the company data center. From an ITIL standpoint clouds can be a dream for businesses that apply chargebacks. Because clouds form a pay-as-you-go model, you can tie specific service catalog items to the exact compute and storage power used in the cloud. I think there are some emerging market opportunities to compliment the cloud such as Operations Support Systems software to help manage the accounting of cloud resources and cloud management software for the sake of compliance and monitoring. Companies or projects to watch include Elastra, Rightscale, Kaavo, Mosso, 3tera and the Eucalyptus project.

I think workload portability can become a crucial step in the evolution of cloud computing. Today, many companies are offering seamless migration of virtual machines in real time between servers. The same principle applies to clouds; the option needs to be there that allows the entire cloud to be migrated to another cloud or cloud provider with ease. Many have contemplated that clouds will allow the enterprise to move their compute power to whichever data center or location offers the cheapest power, most energy-efficient data center or most attractive renewable energy used. It is kind of like today’s location-aware applications for your smartphone—workloads must be location-aware to move to a preferred location or data center.

There are also a number of benefits for disaster recovery and business continuity. If you know that a particular location is expecting or experiencing problems, you should be able to dynamically set a rule in your cloud management software that excludes those particular resources from being used.

Today, it is a colocation arrangement that lets companies not worry about ever-changing data center infrastructure, security and overhead. Equipment at a single colocation site is still a single point of failure though. Wouldn’t it be better to have a provider that has several data centers spread throughout the country (or world), and because of this is then able to offer you a colocation package that gives you compute power across their cloud? If your needs are big enough, maybe they offer you a container at multiple data centers and a reserved parking spot for disaster recovery purposes at another one or two locations. With cloud computing, the focus really changes to the employees and how they access the Internet, where your infrastructure (in the cloud) is safe.

A nice aspect of cloud computing is that it is something companies can ease into. Keep using existing resources and configure them such that, if the applications require additional resources, they can seamlessly use the cloud infrastructure. As time goes by and the shift will happen that the cloud is being used more than the legacy, company-owned equipment. Let’s not forget the network either. Moving all of this data around in the cloud would not be feasible without the advances made in DWDM, Wide Area Network Optimization tools and many other technologies. These same things that carriers use in their networks can also be applied to an enterprise cloud to connect all of the nodes together.

Although cloud computing has received a lot of attention and marketing hype this last year, I believe the fundamentals of the concept are very promising and should allow IT to mature their infrastructure and computing needs into the cloud, and reap the benefits it has to offer.

John Rath is an independent consultant and blogger at Datacenterlinks.com. He can be reached at johnsr4@gmail.com.

Related Search Term(s): backup & recovery, cloud computing, security

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