HPC in the Cloud: Hybrid Multi-Cloud Enablement -- the Next Wave for Enterprise?

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April 23, 2010

Hybrid Multi-Cloud Enablement -- the Next Wave for Enterprise?

Nicole Hemsoth, Managing Editor, HPC in the Cloud

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This week at Cloud Expo, Oracle and Microsoft discussed their offerings in the public cloud environment with Microsoft emphasizing public clouds and Oracle fine-tuning the discussion on hybrid clouds.

In his talk at Cloud Expo in New York this week, Oracle President Hal Stern stated, "If you look at every one of the cases that has been held up as a great case of public cloud, they ran for a period of time and then put the resources back. That's what made them cost effective." The former Sun Microsystems CTO reminded attendees that the cloud is only useful when dramatic scaling instances are used -- not usually when routine operations are moved out into the cloud. In fact, moving general operations like payroll processing and inventory management, for example, into a cloud might end up being more expensive than continuing those functions in one's own data center.

This means something many enterprises know already -- if not simply from hard experience: the cloud is useful only when it's cost-effective. And sometimes it's not. Accordingly, the cloud-bursting hybrid model is becoming the primary choice, which is an even more attractive option when it's possible to move between cloud providers.

Unlike smaller-scale enterprises, the demands of enterprise and scientific computing, at least in terms of extending into the cloud, require more than simply having the ability to drive key resource-heavy applications into the cloud on an occasional, as-needed basis. When the "cloud bursting" model is implemented, it can often only be accomplished using one of the major players in the public cloud space, like EC2, for instance. Accordingly, there is ever-increasing demand for cloud-bursting ability on a seasonal or an on-demand basis. With that said, there's additional demand to be able to extend applications into multiple clouds, depending on which clouds are designated for which applications, which cloud providers offer better functionality or price, and which are assigned to certain workloads. In the wake of numerous discussions about the fear of "cloud lock-in" this provision of hybrid multi-cloud solutions is a natural step in the right direction.

In an interview yesterday with Gary Tyreman, senior vice president of products and alliances at Univa UD, the discussion hinged on the hybrid multi-cloud environment and how cloud enablers like Univa UD and others are working to make the migration and policy engines hum along to permit seamless transitions among cloud providers.

Tyreman states, "As an enterprise, if I have multiple target service providers I will want a common management metaphor and capability for any resource across any provider. In a compute-intensive environment I should be using the same technology and platform for all of my applications. I don't want to or need to add two or three different capabilities -- that's cumbersome for a company. I will want to take advantage of a policy engine to help me maintain a sense of control over what goes into a particular cloud under what terms of conditions."

Why Hybrid Multi-Cloud?

Over the last several months several companies have been working to form strategic alliances to make hybrid multi-cloud deployment a swift reality through a process bearing minimal hassle, fear, time and cost. Most cloud providers and "cloud enablers" like Univa UD and RightScale for instance are seeing that hybrid clouds are the wave of the future and are thus scrambling to make this option easily accessible. Just this week Univa UD announced integration with Rackspace in addition to its other providers, including Amazon and GoGrid, and also released news on the data migration front as they partnered with Aspera.

Tyreman notes, "The cloud burst model is the most popular choice and while there's always been public and private debates, my personal view -- is that it's all about hybrid. It is going to be about taking advantage of different infrastructure for capacity, cost, and for many different reasons but customers need to be able to have the independence and mobility."

Those who have found the hybrid model appealing desire to maintain control over their data and maximize the cloud when they do use it by selecting a provider that can be ready for them on demand. While the choices governing which provider is used are often open to a host of variables including capacity, cost, permissions, and policy, and functionality, there is now a definite choice as more "cloud enablers" are jumping on board to make this transition a possibility.

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