Channel Pro - February 2009

ASSESSING THE IMPORTANCE OF CLOUD COMPUTING WOULD BE EASIER if there were widespread agreement on what it is. Alas, almost every expert out there has his or her own definition. Here’s how three major IT analyst firms define the term. The first two cast their net widely enough to encompass almost any Internet-based computing resource. The third seeks to distinguish cloud computing from the related field of software as a service (SaaS) by limiting it to platform-related offerings.

IDC: An emerging IT development, deployment, and delivery model enabling real-time delivery of products, services, and solutions over the Internet.

GARTNER INC.: A style of computing in which massively scalable IT-related capabilities are provided "as a service" using Internet technologies to multiple external customers.

FORRESTER RESEARCH INC.: A pool of abstracted, highly scalable, and managed compute infrastructure, capable of hosting end-customer applications and billed by consumption.

There is a wide variety of cloud operators to choose from, ranging from corporate giants like Microsoft to smaller companies such as GoGrid and BlueLock. “Evaluate them carefully,” Eaton of Cloudworks advises. “It’s a really important relationship.”

Start by comparing the cloud vendor’s offerings to your needs. Some cloud platforms, such as Amazon’s EC2, essentially offer access to a complete virtual server. “That gives you the greatest degree of freedom in how you configure your application and the operating system,” says Forrester’s Staten. Other clouds, such as Google App Engine, give you little to no control over OS selection and setup options, but are far simpler to use. “Anybody who has the basic skills to write a Python script can drop that onto Google App Engine, and they take care of everything else,” Staten says.

Don’t just assess a cloud vendor’s technical capabilities, though. Pose the same tough questions you’d ask of any significant new partner. How long have they been in business, and how solid are they financially? What kind of support do they offer, and how strong is their SLA? How deep is their data center management know-how? And don’t rely solely on the cloud provider for answers either. Ask an existing client or two how responsive the cloud vendor is to problems, and how often problems occur. “You really have to be careful about what people’s claims are,” Eaton warns.

Needless to say, once you’ve found a cloud you like, experiment with it in-house before putting customer solutions onto it. In fact, Research 2.0’s Tuttle recommends moving your own company’s infrastructure

onto the cloud as a good initial step. “My goal would be to create a suite of cloud-based applications that I really understand [and] that I can make work in my customer environments,” he says. Once you’re ready to trust your clients’ systems to the cloud, start with the least-critical ones. “The ability to hand off something that has less risk associated with it is always a good way to approach it,” says Wolff of BlueLock.

Ultimately, though, how you approach the cloud is less important than beginning your approach now. According to David Mitchell

Smith, a vice president at Gartner Inc., channel pros without cloud computing skills could be at a competitive disadvantage as soon as 12 to 18 months from now, given the rapid rise in SMB demand. Tuttle shares that view. “The fact is that more and more services every day are going into the cloud,” he says. “As a channel guy you need to get there, and you’d probably rather get there before your clients than after.”

RICH FREEMAN is ChannelPro-SMB’s senior consulting editor.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

CLOUD-BASED “PLATFORM-AS-A-SERVICE” OFFERINGS are beginning to catch on, especially with SMBs.

SUCH SERVICES FREE END USERS from the costs of buying and maintaining
hardware. They also scale up and down dynamically and offer pay-as-you-go pricing.

HOSTING CUSTOMER SOLUTIONS ON CLOUD PLATFORMS can help channel pros exchange infrastructure management work for more profitable consulting and integration engagements.